Chapter 1: The Sociological Perspective PDF

# Chapter 1: The Sociological Perspective ## The Sociological Perspective - Why were these men so silent? - Why did they receive such despicable treatment? - What was I doing in that homeless shelter? - After all, I hold a respectable, professional position, and I have a home and family. Sociolo...

# Chapter 1: The Sociological Perspective ## The Sociological Perspective - Why were these men so silent? - Why did they receive such despicable treatment? - What was I doing in that homeless shelter? - After all, I hold a respectable, professional position, and I have a home and family. Sociology offers a perspective, a view of the world. The sociological perspective (or imagination) opens a window onto unfamiliar worlds and offers a fresh look at familiar worlds. In this text, you will find yourself in the midst of Nazis in Germany and warriors in South America, as well as the people I visited who live in a city dump in Cambodia. But you will also find yourself looking at your own world in a different light. As you view other worlds--or your own--the sociological perspective enables you to gain a new perception of social life. In fact, this is what many find appealing about sociology. The sociological perspective has been a motivating force in my own life. Ever since I took my introductory course in sociology, I have been enchanted by the perspective that sociology offers. I have thoroughly enjoyed both observing other groups and questioning my own assumptions about life. I sincerely hope the same happens to you. ## Seeing the Broader Social Context The sociological perspective stresses the social contexts in which people live. It examines how these contexts influence people's lives. At the center of the sociological perspective is the question of how groups influence people, especially how people are influenced by their society-- a group of people who share a culture and a territory. To find out why people do what they do, sociologists look at social location, the corners in life that people occupy because of where they are located in a society. Sociologists look at how jobs, income, education, gender, age, and race-ethnicity affect people's ideas and behavior. Consider, for example, how being identified with a group called females or with a group called males when we are growing up shapes our ideas of who we are and what we should attain in life. Growing up as a female or a male influences not only our aspirations but also how we feel about ourselves. It also affects the way we relate to others in dating and marriage and at work. Sociologist C. Wright Mills put it this way: "The sociological imagination [perspective] enables us to grasp the connection between history and biography." By history, Mills meant that each society is located in a broad stream of events. Because of this, each society has specific characteristics--such as its ideas about the proper roles of men and women. By biography, Mills referred to each individual's specific experiences. In short, people don't do what they do because of inherited internal mechanisms, such as instincts. Rather, external influences--our experiences--become part of our thinking and motivations. In short, the society in which we grow up, and our particular location in that society, lie at the center of what we do and how we think. Consider a newborn baby. If we were to take the baby away from its U.S. parents and place it with the Yanomamö Indians in the jungles of South America, when the child begins to speak, his or her words will not be in English. You also know that the child will not think like an American. He or she will not grow up wanting credit cards, for example, or designer clothes, a car, a cell phone, an iPod, and the latest video game. Equally, the child will unquestioningly take his or her place in Yanomamo society--perhaps as a food gatherer, a hunter, or a warrior--and he or she will not even know about the world left behind at birth. And, whether male or female, the child will grow up assuming that it is natural to want many children, not debating whether to have one, two, or three children. This brings us to you--to how your social groups have shaped your ideas and desires. Over and over in this text, you will see that the way you look at the world is the result of your exposure to specific human groups. I think you will enjoy the process of self-discovery that sociology offers. ## Origins of Sociology ### Tradition Versus Science Just how did sociology begin? In some ways, it is difficult to answer this question. Even ancient peoples tried to figure out how social life works. They, too, asked questions about why war exists, why some people become more powerful than others, and why some are rich but others are poor. However, they often based their answers on superstition, myth, or even the positions of the stars, and they did not test their assumptions. Science, in contrast, requires theories that can be tested by research. Measured by this standard, sociology emerged about the middle of the 1800s, when social observers began to use scientific methods to test their ideas. Sociology grew out of social upheaval. The Industrial Revolution had just begun. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Europe's economy was changing from agriculture to factory production. Masses of people were moving to cities in search of work. Their ties to the land were broken, distancing them from a culture that had provided ready answers to the difficult questions of life. The city greeted them with horrible working conditions: miserable pay; long hours; dangerous, exhausting work. For families to survive, even children had to work in these conditions; some children were even chained to factory machines to make certain they would not run away. With their world turned upside down, people could no longer count on tradition to provide the answers to questions about social life. The success of the American and French revolutions also encouraged people to rethink social life. As new ideas emerged, they uprooted traditional social arrangements even further. Especially powerful was the new idea that individuals possess inalienable rights. As this idea caught fire, many traditional Western monarchies gave way to more democratic forms of government. Increasingly, people found the answers provided by tradition inadequate. About this same time, the scientific method--using objective, systematic observations to test theories--was being tried out in chemistry and physics. This revealed many secrets that had been concealed in nature. With traditional answers failing, the logical step was to apply the scientific method to questions about social life. The result was the birth of sociology. ### Auguste Comte and Positivism This idea of applying the scientific method to the social world, known as positivism, apparently was first proposed by Auguste Comte. With the social upheaval of the French Revolution still fresh in his mind, Comte left the small town in which he had grown up and moved to Paris. The changes he experienced in this move, combined with those France underwent in the revolution, led Comte to become interested in what holds society together. What creates social order, he wondered, instead of anarchy or chaos? And then, once society does become set on a particular course, what causes it to change? ### Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who is considered the founder of sociology, began to analyze the bases of the social order. Although he stressed that the scientific method should be applied to the study of society, he did not apply it himself. ### Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), sometimes called the second founder of sociology, coined the term "survival of the fittest." Spencer thought that helping the poor was wrong, that this merely helped the "less fit" survive. As Comte considered these questions, he concluded that the right way to answer them was to apply the scientific method to social life. Just as this method had revealed the law of gravity, so, too, it would uncover the laws that underlie society. Comte called this new science sociology--"the study of society" (from the Greek logos, "study of," and the Latin socius, "companion," or "being with others"). Comte stressed that this new science not only would discover social principles but also would apply them to social reform. Sociologists would reform the entire society, making it a better place to live. To Comte, however, applying the scientific method to social life meant practicing what we might call "armchair philosophy"--drawing conclusions from informal observations of social life. He did not do what today's sociologists would call research, and his conclusions have been abandoned. Nevertheless, Comte's insistence that we must observe and classify human activities to uncover society's fundamental laws is well taken. Because he developed this idea and coined the term sociology, Comte often is credited with being the founder of sociology. ### Herbert Spencer and Social Darwinism Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), who grew up in England, is sometimes called the second founder of sociology. Spencer disagreed profoundly with Comte that sociology should guide social reform. Spencer thought that societies evolve from lower ("barbarian") to higher ("civilized") forms. As generations pass, the most capable and intelligent ("the fittest") members of a society survive, while the less capable die out. Thus, over time, societies improve. To help the lower classes is to interfere with this natural process. The fittest members will produce a more advanced society--unless misguided do-gooders get in the way and help the less fit survive. Spencer called this principle "the survival of the fittest." Although Spencer coined this phrase, it usually is attributed to his contemporary, Charles Darwin, who proposed that organisms evolve over time as they adapt to their environment. Because they are so similar to Darwin's ideas about the evolution of organisms, Spencer's views of the evolution of societies became known as social Darwinism. Spencer did not conduct scientific studies. Like Comte, he simply developed ideas about society. Spencer gained a wide following in England and the United States, where he was sought after as a speaker, but eventually social Darwinism was discredited. ### Karl Marx and Class Conflict Karl Marx (1818-1883) not only influenced sociology but also left his mark on world history. Marx's influence has been so great that even the Wall Street Journal, that staunch advocate of capitalism, has called him one of the three greatest modern thinkers (the other two being Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein). Marx, who came to England after being exiled from his native Germany for proposing revolution, believed that the engine of human history is class conflict. He said that the bourgeoisie (boo shwa ZEE) (the capitalists, those who own the means to produce wealth--capital, land, factories, and machines) are locked in conflict with the proletariat (the exploited workers, who do not own the means of production). This bitter struggle can end only when members of the working class unite and violently break their chains of bondage. This revolution will usher in a classless society, one free of exploitation. People will work according to their abilities and receive goods and services according to their needs (Marx and Engels 1848/1967). ### Karl Marx (1818-1883) believed that the roots of human misery lay in class conflict, the exploitation of workers by those who own the means of production. Social change, in the form of the overthrow of the capitalists by the workers (proletariat), was inevitable from Marx's perspective. Although Marx did not consider himself a sociologist, his ideas have influenced many sociologists, particularly conflict theorists. Marxism is not the same as communism. Although Marx proposed revolution as the only way that the workers could gain control of society, he did not develop the political system called communism. This is a later application of his ideas. Indeed, Marx himself felt disgusted when he heard debates about his insights into social life. After listening to some of the positions attributed to him, he shook his head and said, "I am *not* a Marxist" (Dobriner 1969b:222; Gitlin 1997:89). ### Emile Durkheim and Social Integration The primary professional goal of Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) was to get sociology recognized as a separate academic discipline. Up to this time, sociology had been viewed as part of history and economics. Durkheim, who grew up in eastern France and was educated in both Germany and France, achieved his goal in 1887. That year, at the University of Bordeaux, he became the world's first professor of sociology. ### Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) contributed many important concepts to sociology. His comparison of the suicide rates of several countries revealed an underlying social factor: People are more likely to commit suicide if their ties to others in their communities are weak. Durkheim's identification of the key role of social integration in social life remains central to sociology today. Durkheim also had another goal: to show how social forces affect people's behavior. To accomplish this, he conducted rigorous research. Comparing the suicide rates of several European countries, Durkheim (1897/1966) found that each country has a different suicide rate—and that these rates remain about the same year after year. He also found that different groups within a country have different suicide rates and that these, too, remain stable from year to year. His data showed that Protestants, males, and the unmarried kill themselves at a higher rate than do Catholics or Jews, females, and the married. From these observations, Durkheim concluded that suicide is not what it appears--simply a matter of individuals here and there deciding to take their lives for personal reasons. Instead, social factors underlie suicide, which is why a group's rate remains fairly constant year after year. But what are those social factors? Durkheim concluded that the main one is social integration, the degree to which people are tied to their social group. If people have weaker social ties, they are more likely to commit suicide. How does this apply to Protestants, males, and the unmarried, those who have the higher rates? Protestantism, said Durkheim, encourages greater freedom of thought and action; males are more independent than females; and the unmarried lack the ties and responsibilities that come with marriage. In other words, members of these groups have fewer of the social bonds that keep people from committing suicide. In Durkheim's terms, they have less social integration. Despite the many years that have passed since Durkheim did his research, the principle he uncovered still applies: People who are less socially integrated have higher rates of sucide. Even today, those same groups that Durkheim identified--Protestants, males, and the unmarried--are more likely to kill themselves. Here is the principle that was central in Durkheim's research: Human behavior cannot be understood only in terms of the individual; we must always examine the social forces that affect people's lives. Suicide, for example, appears to be such an intensely individual act that psychologists should study it, not sociologists. As Durkheim stressed, however, if we look at human behavior only in reference to the individual, we miss its social basis. ### Max Weber and the Protestant Ethic Max Weber (Mahx VAY-ber) (1864-1920), a German sociologist and a contemporary of Durkheim's, also became a professor in the new academic discipline of sociology. Like Durkheim and Marx, Weber is one of the most influential of all sociologists, and you will come across his writings and theories in later chapters. Let's consider an issue Weber raised that remains controversial today: ### Max Weber (1864-1920) was another early sociologist who left a profound impression on sociology. He used cross-cultural and historical materials to trace the causes of social change and to determine how social groups affect people's orientations to life. #### Religion and the Origin of Capitalism Weber disagreed with Marx's claim that economics is the central force in social change. That role, he said, belongs to religion. He came to this conclusion when he (1904/1958) contrasted the Roman Catholic and Protestant belief systems. Roman Catholics, he said, were taught that because they were members of the only true church, they were on the road to heaven. This made them comfortable with traditional ways of life. The Protestant belief system, in contrast, undermined the spiritual security of its followers, motivating them to embrace change. Protestants of the Calvinist tradition were told that they wouldn't know if they were saved until Judgment Day. Acutely uncomfortable with this uncertainty, they began to look for "signs" that they were in God's favor. Concluding that financial success was a divine blessing and that God did not want them to waste this blessing, they began to live frugal lives. Saving their money, they began to invest it to make even more. This fundamental change in the way money was viewed, said Weber, produced the capital that brought about the birth of capitalism. Weber called this self-denying approach to life the Protestant ethic. He termed the readiness to invest capital in order to make more money the *spirit* of capitalism. To test his theory, Weber compared the extent of capitalism in Roman Catholic and Protestant countries. In line with his theory, he found that capitalism was more likely to flourish in Protestant countries. Weber's conclusion that religion was the key factor in the rise of capitalism was controversial when he made it, and it continues to be debated today. We'll explore these ideas in more detail in chapter 13. ## Attitudes in Early Sociology ### Attitudes of the Time You may have noticed, all the sociologists we have discussed are men. In the 1800s, sex roles were rigid, with women assigned the roles of wife and mother. In the classic German phrase, women were expected to devote themselves to the four K's: *Kirche, Küchen, Kinder, und Kleider* (church, cooking, children, and clothes). Dying to break out of this mold meant risking severe disapproval. Few people, male or female, received any education beyond basic reading and writing and a little math. Higher education, for the rare few who received it, was reserved for men. A handful of women from wealthy families, however, did pursue higher education. A few even studied sociology, although the sexism so deeply entrenched in the universities stopped them from obtaining advanced degrees or becoming professors. In line with the times, the writings of women were almost entirely ignored. Jane Frohock, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, for example, were little known beyond a small circle. Frances Perkins, a sociologist and the first woman to hold a cabinet position (as Secretary of Labor under President Franklin Roosevelt), is no longer remembered. ### Harriet Martineau and Early Social Research A classic example is Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), who was born into a wealthy family in England. When Martineau first began to analyze social life, she would hide her writing beneath her sewing when visitors arrived, for writing was "masculine" and sewing "feminine" (Gilman 1911:88). Martineau persisted in her interests, however, and eventually she studied social life in both Great Britain and the United States. In 1837, two or three decades before Durkheim and Weber were born, Martineau published *Society in America*. When I read this book, I was impressed with her analyses of this new nation's customs--family, race, gender, politics, and religion--an insightful examination of U.S. life that is still worth reading today. Martineau's research, however, met the same fate as the work of other early women sociologists and was ignored. Instead, she became known primarily for translating Comte's ideas into English. ### Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) turned to sociology, where she discovered the writings of Comte. She became an advocate for the abolition of slavery, traveled widely, and wrote extensive analyses of social life. ## Sociology in North America ### Early History: The Tension Between Social Reform and Sociological Analysis Transplanted to U.S. soil in the late nineteenth century, sociology first took root at the University of Kansas in 1890, at the University of Chicago in 1892, and at Atlanta University (then an all-black school) in 1897. From there, academic specialties in sociology spread throughout North America. The growth was gradual, however. It was not until 1922 that McGill University gave Canada its first department of sociology. Havard University did not open its department of sociology until 1930, and the University of California at Berkeley did not follow until the 1950s. Initially, the department at the University of Chicago, founded by Albion Small (1854-1926), dominated sociology. (Small also launched the *American Journal of Sociology*, serving as its editor from 1895 to 1925.) Members of this early sociology department--whose ideas continue to influence today's sociologists--include Robert E. Park (1864-1944), Ernest Burgess (1886-1966), and George Herbert Mead (1863-1931). Mead developed the symbolic interactionist perspective, which we will examine later. The situation of women in North America was similar to that of European women, and their contributions to sociology met a similar fate. Among the early women sociologists were Jane Addams, Emily Greene Balch, Isabel Eaton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Florence Kelley, Elsie Clews Parsons, and Alice Paul. Denied faculty appointments in sociology, many turned to social activism (Young 1995). ### Jane Addams and Social Reform Although many North American sociologists combined the role of sociologist with that of social reformer, none was as successful as Jane Addams (1860-1935). Like Harriet Martineau, Addams came from a background of wealth and privilege. She attended the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia, but dropped out because of illness (Addams 1910/1981). On one of her trips to Europe, Addams was impressed with work being done to help London's poor. From then on, she worked tirelessly for social justice. In 1889, Addams co-founded Hull-House, located in Chicago's notorious slums. Hull-House was open to people who needed refuge --to immigrants, the sick, the aged, the poor. Sociologists from the nearby University of Chicago were frequent visitors at Hull-House. With her piercing insights into the social classes, especially the ways in which workers were exploited and peasant immigrants adjust to city life, Addams strived to bridge the gap between the powerful and the powerless. She co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union and campaigned for the eight-hour work day and for laws against child labor. Her efforts at social reform were so outstanding that in 1931, she was a co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, the first sociologist to win this coveted award. ### Jane Adams (1860-1935), a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace, worked on behalf of poor immigrants. With Ellen G. Starr, she founded Hull-House, a center to help immigrants in Chicago. She was also a leader in women's rights (women's suffrage), as well as the peace movement of World War I. ### W. E. B. Du Bois and Race Relations With the racism of this period, African American professionals also found life difficult. The most notable example is W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), who, after earning a bachelor's degree from Fisk University, became the first African American to earn a doctorate at Harvard. After completing his education at the University of Berlin, where he attended lectures by Max Weber, Du Bois taught Greek and Latin at Wilberforce University. Hired by Atlanta University in 1897, he remained there for most of his career. ### W(illiam) E(dward) B(urghardt) Du Bois (1868-1963) spent his lifetime studying relations between African Americans and whites. Like many early North American sociologists, Du Bois combined the role of academic sociologist with that of social reformer. He was also the editor of *Crisis*, an influential journal of the time. It is difficult to grasp how racist society was at this time. Du Bois once saw the fingers of a lynching victim displayed in a Georgia butcher shop. Although Du Bois was invited to present a paper at the 1909 meetings of the American Sociological Society, he was too poor to attend, despite his education, faculty position, and accomplishments. When he could afford to attend meetings, discrimination was so prevalent that restaurants and hotels would not allow him to eat or room with the white sociologists. Later in life, when Du Bois had the money to travel, the U.S. State Department feared that he would criticize the United States and refused to issue him a passport. Each year between 1896 and 1914, Du Bois published a book on relations between African Americans and whites. Of his almost 2,000 writings, *The Philadelphia Negro* (1899/1967) stands out. In this analysis of how African Americans in Philadelphia coped with racism, Du Bois noted that some of the successful African Americans were breaking their ties with other African Americans in order to win acceptance by whites. This, he stressed, was weakening the African American community by depriving it of their influence. *The Souls of Black Folk* (1903), one of Du Bois' most elegantly written books, preserves a picture of race relations immediately after the Civil War. The *Down-to-Earth Sociology* box on the next page is taken from this book. ## Down-to-Earth Sociology ### Early Sociology in North America: Du Bois and Race Relations W. E. B. Du Bois wrote more like an accomplished novelist than a sociologist. The following excerpts are from pages 66-68 of *The Souls of Black Folk* (1903). In this book, Du Bois analyzes changes that occurred in the social and economic conditions of African Americans during the thirty years following the Civil War. For two summers, while he was a student at Fisk, Du Bois taught in a segregated school housed in a log hut "way back in the hills" of rural Tennessee. The following excerpts help us understand conditions at that time. "It was a hot morning late in July when the school opened. I trembled when I heard the patter of little feet down the dusty road, and saw the growing row of dark solemn faces and bright eager eyes facing me.... There they sat, nearly thirty of them on the rough benches, their faces shading from a pale cream to deep brown, the little feet bare and swinging the eyes full of expectation, with here and there a twinkle of mischief, and the hands grasping *Webster's* blue-black spelling-book. I loved my school, and the fine faith the children had in the wisdom of their teacher was truly marvelous. We read and spelled together, wrote a little, picked flowers, sang, and listened to stories of the world beyond the hill.... On Friday nights I often went home with some of the children, sometimes to Doc Burke's farm. He was a great, loud, thin Black, ever working, and trying to buy these seventy-five acres of hill and dale where he lived; but people said that he would surely fail and the "white folks would get it all." His wife was a magnificent Amazon, with saffron face and shiny hair, uncorseted and barefooted, and the children were strong and barefooted. They lived in a one-and-a-half-room cabin in the hollow of the farm near the spring.... Often, to keep the peace, I must go where life was less lovely; for instance, 'Tildy's mother was incorrigibly dirty, Reuben's larder was limited seriously, and herds of untamed insects wandered over the Eddingses' beds. Best of all I loved to go to Josie's, and sit on the porch, eating peaches, while the mother bustled and talked: how Josie had bought the sewing-machine; how Josie worked at service in winter, but that four dollars a month was "mighty little" wages; how Josie longed to go away to school, but that it "looked liked" they never could get far enough ahead to let her; how the crops failed and the well was yet unfinished; and, finally, how mean some of the white folks were.For two summers I lived in this little world.... I have called my tiny community a world, and so its isolation made it; and yet there was among us but a half-awakened common consciousness, sprung from common joy and grief, at burial, birth, or wedding; from common hardship in poverty, poor land, and low wages, and, above all, from the sight of the Veil* that hung between us and Opportunity. All this caused us to think some thoughts together; but these, when ripe for speech, were spoken in various languages. Those whose eyes twenty-five and more years had seen "the glory of the coming of the Lord," saw in every present hindrance or help a dark fatalism bound to bring all things right in His own good time. The mass of those to whom slavery was a dim recollection of childhood found the world a puzzling thing: it asked little of them, and they answered with little, and yet it ridiculed their offering. Such a paradox they could not understand, and therefore sank into listless indifference, or shiftless-ness, or reckless bravado. *“The Veil” is shorthand for the Veil of Race, referring to how race colors all human relations. Du Bois' hope, as he put it, was that “sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins" (p. 261).* ## The Continuing Tension and the Rise of Applied Sociology The apparent contradiction of these two aims—analyzing society versus working toward its reform—created a tension in sociology that is still with us today. Some sociologists consider that their proper role is to analyze some aspect of society and to publish their findings in sociology journals. This is called *basic* (or *pure*) sociology. Others say that basic sociology is not enough, that sociologists have an obligation to help bring justice to the poor and to try to make society a better place in which to live. Somewhere between these extremes lies *applied sociology*, using sociology to solve problems. The founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People by W. E. B. Du Bois, Jane Addams, and others was one of the first attempts at applied sociology and one of the most successful. As illustrated in the *Down-to-Earth Sociology* box on the next page, applied sociologists work in a variety of settings. Some work for business firms to solve problems in the workplace. Others investigate social problems such as pornography, rape, environmental pollution, or the spread of AIDS. A new application of sociology is determining ways to disrupt terrorist groups. As illustrated by the *Cultural Diversity* box on the next page, studying job discrimination is also part of applied sociology. Today's applied sociology has created a new tension, with criticism coming from two directions. The first is from those who want sociologists to focus on social reform. They say that although sociology is applied in some specific setting, there is no goal of rebuilding society, as early sociologists envisioned. The second criticism comes from sociologists who want the emphasis to remain on discovering knowledge. Their position is that when sociology is applied, it is no longer sociology. For example, if sociologists use sociological principles to help teenagers escape from pimps, what makes it sociology and not social work? At this point, let’s consider how theory fits into sociology. ## Down-to-Earth Sociology ### Careers in Sociology: What Applied Sociologists Do Most sociologists teach in colleges and universities, sharing sociological knowledge with college students, as your instructor is doing with you in this course. Applied sociologists, in contrast, work in a wide variety of areas --from counseling children to studying how diseases are transmitted. Some even make software more “user-friendly.” (They study how people use software and give feedback to the programmers who design those products.) To give you an idea of this variety, let's look over the shoulders of four applied sociologists. ### Leslie Green who does marketing research at Van- (tarveer Group in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, earned her bachelor's degree in sociology at Shippensburg University. She helps to develop strategies to get doctors to prescribe particular drugs. She sets up the meetings, locates moderators for the discussion groups, and arranges payments to the physicians who participate in the research. "My training in sociology," she says, "helps me in 'people skills. It helps me to understand the needs of different groups, and to interact with them." ### Stanley Capela whose master's degree is from Fordham University, works as an applied sociologist at HeartShare Human Services in New York City. He evaluates how children's programs --such as ones that focus on housing, AIDS, group homes, and preschool education --actually work, compared with how they are supposed to work. He spots problems and suggests solutions. One of his assignments was to find out why it was taking so long to get children adopted, even though there was a long list of eager adoptive parents. Capela pinpointed how the paperwork got bogged down as it was routed through the system and suggested ways to improve the flow of paperwork. ### Laurie Banks who received her master's degree in sociology from Fordham University, analyzes statistics for the New York City Health Department. As she examined death certificates, she noticed that a Polish neighborhood had a high rate of stomach cancer. She alerted the Centers for Disease Control, which conducted interviews in the neighborhood. They traced the cause to eating large amounts of sausage. In another case, Banks compared birth records with school records. She found that problems at birth --low birth weight, lack of prenatal care, and birth complications—were linked to low reading skills and behavior problems in school. ### Daniel Knapp who earned a doctorate from the University of Oregon, decided to apply sociology by going to the city dump. Moved by the idea that urban wastes could be recycled and reused, he first tested this idea in a small way --by scavenging at the city dump at Berkeley, California. After starting a company called Urban Ore, Knapp (2005) did studies on how to recycle urban wastes and worked to change waste disposal laws. As a founder of the recycling movement in the United States, Knapp’s application of sociology continues to influence us all. From just these few examples, you can catch a glimpse of the variety of work that applied sociologists do. Some work for corporations, some are employed by government and private agencies, and others run their own businesses. You can also see that you don’t need a doctorate in order to work as an applied sociologist. ## Cultural Diversity in the United States ### Studying Job Discrimination: A Surprising Example of Applied Sociology Sometimes sociologists do *basic sociology* – research aimed at learning more about some behavior -- and then someone else applies it. Devah Pager was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. When she was doing volunteer work, homeless men told her how hard it was to find work if they had been in prison. Pager decided to find out just what difference a prison record made in getting a job. She sent pairs of college men to apply for 350 entry-level jobs in Milwaukee. One team was African American, and one was white. Pager prepared identical résumés for the teams, but with one difference: On each team, one of the men said he had served 18 months in prison for possession of cocaine. *Figure 1.3* shows the difference that the prison record made. Men without a prison record were two or three times as likely to be called back. But Pager came up with another significant finding. Look at the difference that race-ethnicity made. White men with a prison record were more likely to be offered a job than African American men who had a clean record! The application of this research? Pager didn’t apply *anything*, but others did. After President Bush was told of these results, he announced in his State of the Union speech that he wanted Congress to fund a \$300 million program to provide mentoring and other support to help former prisoners get jobs. As you can see, sometimes only a thin line separates *basic* and *applied sociology*. ### For Your Consideration What findings would you expect if women had been included in this study? ## Theoretical Perspectives in Sociology Facts never interpret themselves. To make sense out of life, we use our common sense. That is, to understand our experiences (our "facts"), we place them into