SO4001 Lecture 2 PDF

SO4001 Lecture 2 Dr James Carr What is sociology? What do sociologists do?  House-keeping A point on note taking – slides are numbered… Student email accounts – firewalls etc. 2  NB - Tutorials Start week 3 Run for weeks 3, 5...

SO4001 Lecture 2 Dr James Carr What is sociology? What do sociologists do?  House-keeping A point on note taking – slides are numbered… Student email accounts – firewalls etc. 2  NB - Tutorials Start week 3 Run for weeks 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11. Tutorials are not lectures Personalised timetable. International and Erasmus students. NB… 3  NB – Tutorials Update!! Tutorial Updates… Friday tutorials @15h00 are cancelled. Friday tutorials @16h00 are cancelled. More updates may follow, keep an eye to lecture slides and announcements on Brightspace. 4  Learning outcomes Today you will be….. Introduced to: Sociological perspectives and… The discipline (i.e. subject) of sociology 5  Assigned reading Terrible Magnificent Sociology – pp.3-11 Other useful sources… Punch, S., Marsh, I., Keating, M. and Jeni Harden (2013) Sociology: Making sense of society, 5th ed., Harlow: Pearson (read pages 3-12). 6  Read further … Berger, P.L. (1963) Invitation to Sociology, N.Y.: Doubleday. Excerpt available through the resources section of Sulis. Also, the Sociology Dept. Handbook 7 Last Lecture What is Sociology? 8  What is sociology? The systematic study of society 9  What dimensions of society do sociologists study? Social Identity Media and e.g. class, gender, communications ‘race’, ethnicity, Science & technology age Social Inequality The family Work Crime & deviance Organisations Social movements The economy The environment Health Political sociology The body Religion Culture 10  The Sociological Perspective The lens that sociologists use to help them see the social world more clearly 1. Seeing individuals as social beings, impacted by social forces 2. Seeing the general in the particular 3. Seeing the strange in the familiar 12  The Sociological Perspective Seeing individuals as social beings, impacted by social forces Group membership(s): Family, Gender identities, Class, Sexualities, ‘Race,’ ethnicity, religion Micro and macro factors and implications. 13  The Sociological Perspective Seeing the general in the particular Recognising that we are patterned by social forces Structure/agency debate… Turn to the person beside you for three minutes – how much agency do we have as individuals? 14  The Sociological Perspective Seeing the strange in the familiar… Seeing with new eyes – what’s on your own doorstep – not easy ‘Common knowledge’ and received ‘wisdom’ Vs sociological understandings. Requires = Parking assumptions 15  What do sociologists want to know? How does society work? How do we organise ourselves socially? What groups constitute society? How do we govern ourselves socially? [Power dynamics…] What kinds of ‘rules’ (formal and informal)have we created and live by? 17  What do sociologists want to know? How do these ‘rules’ shape how we relate to other members of our groups and other groups? At the micro level, e.g. intimate relationships and…..familial, professor, culture shock, eye contact, the macro-level, e.g. the economy; the political… Do these relationships advantage some groups over others? 18 View the world through new eyes. 19 Set them down… Problematise… Happy/challenged?? Recognise. You and Me.  What is sociology? The systematic study of society 21  Varoufakis 2017 'Not sufficient to study society, we have to defend it' Varoufakis, 30th August, 2017 22  Next Lecture Thursday… The Development of Sociology 23