Sociology Notes PDF - Social Structures, Revolutions, and the Sociological Imagination

Thinking socially can be hard because we have a hard time We think about the world from our own perspectives “I”. Vision is a key sensory input, two eyes can perceive a better depth perception, however a person with one eye will have a lot more trouble with this Your eyes d...

Thinking socially can be hard because we have a hard time We think about the world from our own perspectives “I”. Vision is a key sensory input, two eyes can perceive a better depth perception, however a person with one eye will have a lot more trouble with this Your eyes do more than let you locate yourself spatially in the world , they determine the perspective of the world around us. We naturally understand the world through lived and experienced common sense. o We take the world for granted o The world is just :there” o We build on everyday knowledge, and social knowledge o Difficult to move beyond everyday stocks of knowledge We need to move beyond this in order to develop a sociological perspective Our long stretched self centred perspective will work against this We distinguish ourselves through other people and environment From personal trouble to social structures: We live in a society but it also lives in us o Social structures effect us Relatively stable social relations are called social structures o Our experiences tend to appear unique to us o Social structures appear remote and impersonal o In order to see it within ourselves there’s 3 things to realize: Micro Macro Global Microstructures: patterns formed during intimate face to face interactions. o Family, friendship circles, workplace associations o If your looking for a job, people will ask all their close friends and family for help, but they have similar handfuls of knowledge. If you ask someone who you are weakly connected to (a weak tie), there’s a higher chance of them having different social circles and will help you find employment quicker. Macrostructures: social relations that lie above your circle of intimates and acquaintances o EX. Patriarchy System of economic and political inequality between men and women Most married women work full time in society, they still do the bulk of the house work, child care, elder care. The government encourages this by providing programs such as subsidized childcare and elder care. The workload is still unequal in the house and causes dissatisfaction. This will often lead to the dissolution of the marriage. The causation for this is not always a compatibility issue, but instead a macrostructure issue. Global structures: Patterns of social relations that lie outside the above the national level o Ex. International organizations, economic relation between countries, and trade markets o Charity and foreign aid have been unable to end world hunger and poverty because they are unable to fix the global structures causing this. European powers locked some of these countries into poverty when they colonized them Poor countries paying high amounts of interest on the loans that they have from western countries. o Relieving foreign debt would be a step towards ending this issue.  Micro, macro, and global structures effect our personal lives. Origins of the sociological perspective: This perspective is only about 200 years old It was born when three modern revolutions pushed people to think in a new way. Scientific revolution: - ~1550, the idea that things had to be based on evidence and not just speculation o Systematic observation and public scrutiny o Tradition, authority and secrecy, were the opponents of this way of thinking o Using evidence for a particular point of view Democratic revolution: ~1750, the idea that people are responsible for society and that human intervention can solve social problems o Before this it was believed that god ordained the social order o The American and French revolutions showed that people could replace rulers they deemed unsatisfactory and experience large change. People controlled society, not god. A science of society could do many things; improve welfare citizens, fix social problems. Industrial Revolution: ~1780, large scale application of science technology to industrial processes. o Mass amounts of people moving from the countryside to city. Working long hard jobs City was filthy, diseases were rampant ▪ Responded through crime, strikes, push for change Large amounts of people losing faith in their religion This present pressing social problems that demanded a change of perspective C.Wright Mills: Focused on social class and the political class The sociological Imagination: Agency- a persons ability to act in a given environment o Agency is a free will. Enable and restrain our behaviours. o Social structure pressures us and effects our behaviours, but we still have some agency The capacity to relate history to biography, to relate personal troubles to public issues. This is called the sociological imagination. He’s challenging us to use sociological imagination to connect our personal biography to human history and to social structure. o First terrible/ magnificent lesson of sociology o Critically understand the complexity of society and its influence on our own personal histories We are doing this in the context of understanding human experiences as seen in the larger context We can distinguish bad circumstances resulting from poor choices, and bad results coming from circumstances far beyond a persons control Mills believes that we must confront personal issues but also structural issues Mills three groups of questions: o A social structure is something you can’t wish away. They’re stable in that moment. o Social structures have an enduring quality to them, but they change over time. How they change o Bring humans into the mix. Men and Women and how they interact within the social structures