Understanding Sociology: An Introduction

Introduction to Sociology

• Sociology is the study of groups, group interaction, societies, and social interactions.
• Robertson I., in 1987, defined sociology as the scientific study of human society and social behavior.
• Other definitions include the academic study of society, the systematic and scientific study of society, and social interaction.
• Sociologists seek a precise and systematic understanding of the social world that goes beyond personal experiences.

Society and Culture

• Society refers to a group of people who:
  • Live in a defined geographic area
  • Interact with one another
  • Share a common language
• Sociologists study society at different levels:
  • Macro-level analysis examines trends between large groups and societies.
  • Micro-level analysis focuses on the study of small groups and individual interactions.
• Culture is a group's way of life, encompassing their shared practices, values, and beliefs.

Sociological Imagination

• Sociological imagination involves awareness of the relationship between an individual's behavior and the wider society (and culture) that shapes choices and perceptions.
• C. Wright Mills is associated with the sociological imagination.

Social Facts

• Social facts include laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and all the cultural rules governing social life.

Figuration

• Figuration is the process of simultaneously analyzing individual behavior and the societal structures shaping that behavior.

Historical Contributions

• Thought connecting the individual and society can be traced back centuries:
  • 13th Century: Ma Tuan-Lin (China)
  • 14th Century: Ibn Khaldun (Tunesia)
  • 18th Century: Enlightenment Philosophers (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) in Europe

Social Forces

• All intellectual fields are shaped by their social setting.
• Sociology takes the social setting as its subject matter.
• Three social events occurred with great impact on sociology:
  • Political
  • Industrial
  • Intellectual
• These forces gave rise to intellectual activity and new social orders.
• Auguste Comte, who coined the term "Sociology," was a product of this period.

Political Influences: The French Revolution

• The French Revolution in 1789 significantly impacted social thinkers, drawing attention to its negative consequences.
• French society underwent changes with limited civil liberties for individuals.
• Post-revolution, an individualistic fraternity replaced the class-based society.
• The basic slogan was fraternity, equality, and liberty.

Industrial Revolution

• The Industrial Revolution resulted in:
  • Increased mobility
  • New kinds of employment
  • Social and political upheaval
  • Millions of people moving into cities.
  • Many people turning away from traditional religious beliefs.

Intellectual Forces

• Intellectual forces contributed to the development of Sociology in addition to social forces.
• Key intellectual movements:
  • Renaissance
  • Reformation
  • Enlightenment

The Renaissance

• The Renaissance was a period that marked a significant revival in learning.
• Basic assumptions about the universe faced scrutiny, with scholars presenting alternative answers.
• Thinkers of the Enlightenment were greatly influenced by the Renaissance.
• Important personalities included Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes, and John Locke.

The Reformation

• The Reformation emerged amidst the Renaissance.
• The Catholic Church previously held a monopoly over clerical affairs, marked by abuses and stifled criticism.
• Martin Luther's defiance in 1517 led to an open breach with the church.
• Emphasis on justification by faith and Bible reading empowered individuals with greater responsibility for their salvation.
• The Reformation amplified the activities begun during the Renaissance.

The Enlightenment

• The Enlightenment was characterized by remarkable intellectual development and philosophical change.
• Introspection, intuition, tradition, authority, and revelation were dismissed as sources of knowledge.
• Thinkers embraced the critical scientific spirit, scrutinizing social institutions and practices.
• The period stressed the efficacy of individuals and their ability to comprehend and control the universe through reason and empirical research.
• Issues such as social order, change, inequality, power, religion, and family became central to sociological attention.
• Prominent thinkers included Charles Montesquieu and Jean Jacques Rousseau.
• Key sociological questions included:
  • What gives social life order and stability?
  • What causes social change and development?
  • What is the correlation between social life and individual behavior?
  • What are the sources of power, authority, and inequality in societies?
• These thinkers stimulated the origin and development of sociology and continue to inform sociological theorizing.

Intellectual Growth of Science

• Resulted from increasing use of natural science methods to explain the physical world.
• It became plausible to apply scientific methods to understanding the social world.
• Sociologists like Comte and Durkheim advocated for the application of scientific methods, modeling sociology after physical and biological sciences.

Auguste Comte (1798-1857)

• Named the scientific study of social patterns "Sociology" to refer to his study of society.
• Believed scientific methods could reveal the laws governing societies and usher in a "positivist" age of history.

Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)

• An early observer of social practices, including economics, social class, religion, suicide, government, and women's issues.
• Translated Comte's work from French to English, introducing sociology to English-speaking scholars.
• Credited with systematic methodological international comparisons of social institutions.
• Noted the inconsistency of believing in equality while denying women's rights.

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

• Rejected Comte's positivism.
• Believed societies grew and changed through struggles between different social classes over production means.
• Theorized amidst the Industrial Revolution, which showed great wealth disparities between factory owners and workers.
• Predicted the inequalities of capitalism would lead to worker revolts.
• His idea of social conflict leading to social change remains a major theory in modern sociology.

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

• Rejected Comte's philosophy and Marx's theory on class struggle, opposing communism.
• Favored a government that allowed market forces to control capitalism.
• Influenced early sociologists like Émile Durkheim.

Georg Simmel (1858-1918)

• Primarily focused on micro-level theories.
• Analyzed the dynamics of two and three-person groups.
• Emphasized individual culture as a part of creative capacities of individuals.

Emile Durkheim (1858-1913)

• Believed objective "social facts" could be studied by sociologists.
• Thought that determining if a society was "healthy" or "pathological" was possible through such studies.
• Viewed stable societies as healthy, while pathological societies experienced breakdowns in social norms.
• Studied social ties (social solidarity) and proposed religion could explain suicide rates.

George H. Mead (1863-1931)

• Studied the development of the mind and self through social processes.
• How individuals view themselves stems from interactions with others.
• Introduced "significant others" for individuals impacting a person's life.
• Conceptualized "generalized others" as the organized attitude of a social group.
• Closely associated with the symbolic interactionist approach emphasizing micro-level analysis.

Max Weber (1864-1920)

• Known for "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.”
• Some suggest Weber argued that Protestant, especially Calvinist, beliefs led to capitalism's creation.
• Others interpret it as ideologies about how capitalism and Protestantism are complementary.
• Believed it was difficult to accurately predict group behavior using standard scientific methods.
• Researchers should be aware of how cultural biases influence their research.
• Weber and Dilthey introduced "verstehen", which is a German word meaning understanding in a deep way
• To seek "verstehen", outside observers attempt to understand a social world (entire culture or small setting) from an insider's viewpoint.
• Proposed "antipositivism," which is a philosophy where researchers strive for subjectivity to represent social processes, cultural norms, and societal values.
• This approach led to research methods aimed at gaining in-depth understanding rather than generalization or prediction.

Quantitative and Qualitative Sociology

• Quantitative sociology uses statistical methods like surveys with large numbers of participants.
• Researchers quantitatively analyze data to uncover patterns of human behavior.
• Qualitative sociology seeks to understand human behavior through in-depth interviews, focus groups, and content analysis.

Theories

• Theories explain social interactions and formulate testable propositions, called hypotheses.
• Grand theories aim to explain large-scale relationships and fundamental questions about why societies form and change.

Paradigms

• Paradigms are philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and experiments.
• Three paradigms that dominate sociological thought are structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.

Paradigms Focus

• Structural Functionalism: focus on the way each part of society functions together to contribute to the whole.
• Conflict Theory: Focus on the way inequalities contribute to social differences and perpetuate differences in power.
• Symbolic Interactionism: Focus on one-to-one interactions and communications.

Structural Functionalism

• Functionalism, or structural-functional theory, views society as a structure with interrelated parts designed to meet social and biological needs.
• Structural Functionalism came from Herbert Spencer(1820-1903), English philosopher and biologist.
• Spencer found similarities between society and the human body.
• Spencer argued that, like organs working together, various parts of society work together to keep society functioning.
• Spencer's reference to parts of society indicated social institutions (patterns of beliefs/behaviors to meet social nees); government, education, family, healthcare, religion, and the economy.
• Function is the part any recurrent activity plays in overall social life, and therefore the contribution to social stability and continuity.
• Dynamic equilibrium refers to a stable state in which all parts work together properly in a society that is healthy.
• Manifest functions that are sought or anticipated. Latent functions are unsought consequences of a social process.
• It encounters difficulty explaining social change.
• The theory's circular nature assumes repetitive behaviors have a function, but the function is only evident because the behaviors are repeated.

Conflict Theory

• Karl Max (1818-1883) said the society is individuals from social classes that compete for resources (social, material, and polical).
• Social institutions (government, education, and religion) reflect competition through inequalities and maintain an unequal social structure.
• Max Weber agreed with Marx, and believed in addition to these inequalities that inequalities of political power and social structure cause conflict.
• Weber noted that different groups were affected differently based on education, race, and gender.
• Weber also argued that reactions to inequality were moderated by class differences and rates of social mobility and by perceptions about the legitimacy of those in power.
• Conflict theory is criticized for too much focus on conflict and not recognizing the concept of social stability.
• Social structures are stable, and change gradually and not abruptly as the conflict theory would lead one to believe.

Symbolic Interactionist Theory

• Micro Level Approach.
• People make sense of social worlds through the exchange of meaning through language and symbols.
• Goffman used theater as an analogy for social interaction and recognized people's interactions showed patterns of cultural "scripts".
• When what part a person may is unclear, they must improvise their roll.
• Constructivism proposes that reality is what humans cognitively construct it to be.
• We develope social constructs based on interaction with others.
• Those contracts that last that have a wide meaning or are agreed upon are generally accepted by most within a society.
• Research done from this theory has been scrutinized for its lack of objectivity.
• Others critics believe there is an extremely narrow focus on symbolic interaction, which others call it' greatest strength.

Why Study Sociology?

• Sociology makes people excited to know how they fit in the world and how others perceive them.
• Studying Socioloty allows an individual to have awareness of classifications (economic or status levels, education, ethnicity, or sexual orientation) and how that impacts perceptions.
• Sociology teachers individuals to think critically and not to accept easy answers.
• It improves organization of thought to better ask and formulate better questions and answers .
• Sociology makes people more aware there are many different kinds of people that do not necessarily think the way they do.
• To see the world from other point of view, increasing their willingness and ability.
• Makes people more prepared to live and work in a diverse and integrated world.