Sociology Lecture Notes

Three ways to do Sociology:  1. Positivist Sociology Research discovers facts through the use of science. Scientific observation of social behaviour.  \- Science is the logical system that develops knowledge from direct, systematic observation.  \- Sometimes called empirical sociology. Something...

Three ways to do Sociology:  1. Positivist Sociology Research discovers facts through the use of science. Scientific observation of social behaviour.  \- Science is the logical system that develops knowledge from direct, systematic observation.  \- Sometimes called empirical sociology. Something that can be verified by one of our five senses.  \- 5 examples of widely held belief that is not supported by science:  o Poor people are far more likely than rich people to break the law o Canada is a middle-class society in which most people are more or less equal.  o Most poor people don't want to work.  o Differences in the behaviour of females and males are just 'human nature' o People marry because they're in love.  \- These are all things that are seemed to be common sense when they're actually inaccurate.  o Widely accepted truths that are forced onto us.  Concepts, Variables, and Measurement Concept: a mental construct that represents some part of the world in a simplified form \- Eg. Family, economy. Gender, social class.  Variable: a type of concept. It's value changes from case to case.  \- Eg. Height: this varies from person to person. Social class can be used to describe someone's social standing.  Measurement: a procedure for determining the variable in a specific case.  \- Some are easy to measure, eg. Blood tests.  \- **Sociological variables are hard to measure because the value of the variable are going to in part depend on how it is defined. ** \- You have to specify exactly what is to be measured before you assign a value to that variable.  o Eg. Before we can measure the value of a social class you have to decide what we're measuring. Wealth? Number of school years?  ▪ Specificity is key.  Statistics:  Sociologists work with large numbers of people.  \- Mean, median, and mode.  Descriptive statistics are used to describe their results.      Reliability and Variability: if a number is going to be useful it has to be both of these things.  A number will be reliable if you continuously get the same result every time you measure it.  Validity is actually measuring exactly what you intended to measure.  \- Eg. If you wanted to know just how religious students are at uofw. You ask students how often they attend a religious service. If someone is continuously attending these services, it doesn't mean that they're religious. They could attend for a number of other reasons. This doesn't give you a valid answer to your research question.  Correlation and Causation:  Correlation -- where two or more variables change together  Cause and effect -- a relationship in which change in one variable causes change in another.  \- The one that causes the change in the dependant.  Spurious correlation -- an apparent but cause but false relationship between two variables, but it is actually caused by some other variable.  \- Eg. January has the lowest marriage rate in Canada. January is also the highest death rate in Canada. These two may change in the same month, but they are not correlated. They are a spurious correlation.  \- Eg. Delinquency rates are high when people live in crowded housing. Crowded housing does not turn people bad. Both of these things are caused by a third factor: poverty.  If we want to show that it is a correlation we have to show:  \- That they are correlated.  \- That the first one happens before the dependent variable happens.  \- There is no evidence that a third variable has been overlooked.    The Ideal of Objectivity:  Objectivity -- someone who has a personal neutrality in conducting research.  \- It's impossible to be completely neutral.  Value-relevant vs value-free \- Value relevant is more commonly studied because we chose something we care about.  o Once the research is underway, researchers should attempt to be value-free.  o They should look at the research as what it is, not what we think it should be.  o Researchers have to stay open minded and be willing to accept whatever results come from their work, whether or not they agree with it.      2. Interpretive Sociology  We attach meaning to our actions.  Interpretive sociology is the study of society that focuses on discovering the meanings people attach to their social world. \- What people mean by what they do.  The importance of meaning:  \- Not an objection of science but it does change the meaning.  Focuses on 4 things:  \- Actions -- we can observe this directly. Interpretive sociology focuses on people's actions and their surroundings. Many of our actions are social actions.  \- Reality is subjective. To the positivist, reality lies in front of us. To the interpretivists, reality is constructed by the course of your everyday life.  \- Qualitative date. Positivists focus more on quantitative. Interpretive focus on qualitative.  \- Subjective meaning. They step back and look at the bigger meaning. We learn more by interacting with people. By looking at the subjective meaning.  Weber's Concept of Verstehen  German word for understanding.  It is the interpretive sociologists job not to just observe what the person is doing, but to share in their world of meaning coming to appreciate why they act as they do.  Subjective thoughts and feelings are often dismissed because they are hard to measure, but it is the interpretive sociologistspurpose to focus on these things.  \- It doesn't reject the practice of observing the behaviour.  Most researchers have a hybrid of the positivists and interpretivists practices. 3. Critical Sociology  The study of society that focuses on the need for social change. It holds that idea that reality is something that is "out there" and is something that sociologists have to study.  \- They assume that society is fixed. The idea that society cannot be changed.  \- Critical sociology does not ignore facts.  o They make use scientific methods to learn.  o The difference is how the question is asked.  ▪ The positivist sociologist would ask "how much income inequality is there?"  ▪ The critical sociologist would ask "should there be this much inequality?" Critical sociology does reject the scientific neutrality that requires sociologists to be objective within other perspectives.  \- Scholars within this tradition use their personal connections to study different aspects and are not objective.  \- Positivists claim that to the extent that critical sociology becomes political, it cant be considered scientific because of their own biases. The response of critical sociologists is that all research is political. Either the results call for change or it doesn't.  o Politics also refer to power and power relations, not just political figures or governments.  o If all the research is going to be political, the critical perspective says that we can chose what side we want to take.  \- When studying income inequality, a researcher using a critical approach may take upon the research as a goal to push for less inequality in incomes.    Positivist orientation -- structural-functional approach  Interpretive orientation -- symbolic-interaction approach  Critical orientation -- social-conflict approach.  o Animated by the idea of reducing social inequality.    Research Methods: a systematic plan for doing research.  The experiment:  \- Investigating the cause and effect under highly controlled conditions.  o Usually expressed in "if" and "then" statements. If something happens then there will be this result.  \- 4 steps to discover if the hypothesis is correct or not.  o 1. Discover the independent variable. Which is the cause of the change. Discover the dependent variable. What is the result of the cause o 2. Measuing the initial variable of the dependent variable.  o 3. Exposing the dependent variable to the independent variable. (exposing the change to the cause of the change)  o 4. Evaluate if the expected change has occurred. If so, it verifies the hypothesis.  \- A successful experiment has a very controlled environment of all variables. An experiment in a lab is the most controlled, but they are sometimes done "in the field".          The Sanford Prison Experiment  These people who were not criminals and were just random people, it was surprising to discover these individuals take on the roles of prisoners and guards to the extent that they did.  \- Rose questions about what prisons to do people.  Researchers need to consider any potential harm that could come to the individuals participating in the research experiments.    Stanley Milgram experiment:  Why do people agree with things that are clearly wrong?  Out of fear or out of the need to feel cooperative  \- People are obedient even when they know it is wrong.  o When they felt it wasn't there responsibility they would continue.  o When they were in a respected environment.  Why were the people who resisted in the minority?  \- People's obedience override their moral values.  o Authority can make people do things that they wouldn't normally do.  ▪ Abuse of power is dangerous for this reason.    Survey Research:  Surveys are very useful to find out specifics of people. What their religion is, etc.  A research method in which subjects respond to a series of statements or questions on a questionnaire or in an interview.  It's impossible to survey everyone, so researchers use samples. They use a sample minimum of 15,000 people.  \- They have to have a specific set of questions. Questionnaires are useful here.    In the Field: Participant Observation Investigators observe people while joining them in their routine activities.  \- Allows them to study everyday social life.  \- Mostly qualitative data.  o Has much fewer hard and fast rules compared to questionnaires and other methods.  \- Doesn't disturb these environments.  o If you want to get an insider viewpoint, you have toact and feel like these people, but still remain an observer  Using Available Data: Existing Sources  \- Data gathered by government agencies, eg. Statistics Canada o Long form census \- Unites Nations and World Bank