Lesson 1: An Introduction to Sociology


Attention

Sociology is the study of human society and social interaction...essentially the interconnectedness among people and social systems!


Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this lesson's material, students will be able to:

  • Reflect on the current state of your Sociological Imagination.
  • Apply the Sociological Perspectives to an analysis of a social phenomena.

Teaching

Sociology is the systematic study of human society and social interaction.

A society is a large social grouping that shares the same geographical territory and is subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations.

We study sociology because it surrounds us.  We are a part of our society and it effects us in personal ways.

Processes of Change: Globalization, Urbanization, and Technology

We can also recognize that our world is changing.  Through the processes of Globalization and Urbanization the boundaries of our cultures are blurring and our awareness of culture and different political authorities is much greater than it has been.

Technology is playing a role as well.  Computers have become much more commonplace than only a few years ago.  Our access to this wider range of information sources makes it all that more important that we understand our social world better.

And finally, with the changes going on in the global arena…countries collapsing, international terrorism, and the environmental crisis…all of these lend themselves to a study and deeper understanding through Sociology

The Sociological Imagination

 

The Sociological Imagination is, according to Mills, the ability to see the relationship between individual experiences and the larger society.

By understanding SI, we can gain an appreciation for approaching problems that we encounter from a sociological perspective.  In the past, when I required research papers from my students in Sociology (aren't you glad that is in the past!?) this was a difficult concept to teach.

It is clear to see that we can look at many issues in this manner and by doing so we practice our Sociological Imaginations!

As we make our way through this course we will be further challenged not only exercise an SI in terms of our own society, but from a global perspective.  We will be examining social life her in the US through this course, but we will also consider social life in other countries.  Our lives are truly global if you consider the political unrest, terrorism and the global marketplace issues of today.

We will exercise our ability to see a relationship between every day experience and the entire global scene!

I'll give you an example:

Consider the purchase of a new car.  Certainly this is a personal decision, but we must face that even if it says Dodge on the front of it, many of the components for the car came from many other countries.  Some of those countries may still have child labor, for instance.  We might be at war with some of them.  Who knows these days!

Now I buy the car because, in this culture, I have been show this car 1000 times through advertising and the web.  I'm an educated consumer because I do web based research before I buy, but I'm still struck by it's sleek lines and color (good engineering).

The gas I will put into the car rarely comes from the US.  The gas I use is refined by the oil we get from OPEC members, so I am participating in the global marketplace.  Changes in any of the countries that supply the parts and labor for my car will affect the price of the car and the gas.

We see expressions of global culture, marketplace, politics and economics in almost everything we do.

Consider your own purchases, your job, your day-to-day activities from a global SI perspective and you will appreciate how interdependent we have all become.

But what about day-to-day? 

As we go about our business every day it is sometimes difficult to imagine a direct impact of world affairs on us.  (911 certainly brought some of this awareness to many of us)

However, our jobs themselves are shaped by social forces which are the focus of sociological study.  Trends in population (people moving out of Maine), inequality (gender differences in pay and type of work), education (welcome to KVCC!), the economy (ups and downs in the current economy of Maine) and politics (the current efforts of the administration to improve the lives of people living in Maine), all play a role in what we do every day and the future prospects that stand before us.

Take a look at your own job and/or activities and look at the titles of the chapters in the book and you will see that Sociology touches our everyday lives.


Where did Sociology come from?

Much of the social sciences in general arise from the schools of Philosophy...individuals who simply observed the world and tried to figure out how it worked.

Your textbook does a really good job of outlining the contributions of the various major figures in Sociology. But Sociology itself began to distinguish itself from Philosophy because of real human needs.

Sociology is a relatively young science. It grew out of a growing concern that arose with the establishment of cities and other large groupings of people and the growing inequalities among individuals.

I will leave the biographies out for now and focus on the social trends that gave rise to the need for a study of Sociology.

Trends at this time were such that individuals were coming out of the farms and working in establishments. Consider the evolution of the shoe factory.

Hans Shoemaker the Shoemaker

Imagine there is a person named Hans Shoemaker. He is a shoemaker in a small village and shares the market with 3 other shoemakers. Hans is the best though, so he does well. He does so well that when he hears about a meeting of shoemakers in the city he is the only one who can afford to go.



He attends the meeting and finds out that a stitching machine has been invented! He is so excited! He understands that if he gets this machine he can make twice as many shoes per day. Seeing the opportunity in getting this machine he buys it and returns to his village.

Now, not only does Hans have the most curious contraption in his store window, he can produce twice as many shoes. Eventually, as you can guess, one of the other shoemakers is forced out of business. His name was Ivan. Ivan was a good shoemaker but he could not compare to Hans, either in skill or in speed (particularly with that new fangled machine!)

Hans, however, is no fool. He recognized that Ivan was a pretty good stitcher so he approaches him in the pub (where all out-of-work shoemakers go to drown their sorrows) and offers him a job!

Now Hans sees that he can produce twice again as many shoes as he has Ivan on the machine and he can do all the cutting work. This trend continues and soon there is a little shoe factory in the town, which used to have 4 independent shoemakers. The shoes are of still high quality but they are produced faster. The people begin to have new expectations of shoemakers and the output and quality of them. This results in the purchase of more shoes.

Now, there starts to be a problem in some cases. It might be that Ivan, Henri and Isaac (the other three shoemakers) miss owning their own business. And they begin to realize that Ivan is making a lot of money for just sitting around out front sizing shoes and talking to buyers. They begin to grumble and say things like "Hans, he is a scoundrel!" and "He could not make so much money without us, ya?"

None-the-less, our every bright Hans sees the situation and decides that he does need these three to continue to work for him so he gives them raises. (Ivan has been quoted as saying "That Hans, he is an angel, ya?"


Analysis

You can see that there is a conflict that is arising here. There is a conflict between the Owner of the Means of Production (Ivan) and the Production Worker (Ivan, Henri and Isaac). Ivan wants to pay the workers as little as possible to maintain high productivity while the workers want to make as much as possible.

This fundamental conflict was the basis of the work of Karl Marx (thus he understandably produced a philosophy of collective ownership called Communism). We will talk more about Communism later.

People like Emile Durkheim viewed this scenario from what he called a Functionalist point of view. Basically he saw that Ivan needed his workers and the workers needed Ivan and that we could understand all of society by understanding these relationships. These thoughts will be very important when we consider Social Structure later in the course.

Let alone that at the time of the industrial revolution the ideas of Charles Darwin were the rage...Sociologist Herbert Spencer, ingratiating himself to the rich aristocracy, coined the term "Survival of the Fittest" to describe groups of people, industries and countries! Charles Darwin didn't adopt the term (taking it from Spencer!) until the 5th edition of "Origin of Species" and synonymous for "Natural Selection"

Other trends that were going on in society to bring the field of Sociology was increased Urbanization. This term refers to the trend for more and more people to live in cities. We will talk more about this when we talk about populations, but let it be said that when more and more people live in smaller and smaller places problems arise.

  • Urbanization
    • Led to the development of social problems including, but not limited to, the following:
  • Crime
    • Inequality and the haves and have nots…I will actually have an interesting thing to say about the way in which table manners effected the level of crime when we discuss crime!
  • Sanitation
    • Consider that awnings were created so that the sewage thrown from the upstairs dwellings would not land on people! Gross!)
  • Food Distribution
    • Growing your own….farmer's market….Hannaford…can you see the trend?
  • Housing
    • he invention of the walk up above the store inhabited by the owner, who eventually got enough money to move out to the country…ironic…who then rented the walk up to his employees, then the factory was moved out to the country to reduce the commute for the owner and to expand and the worker is left living in the inner city in under-maintained housing….it is pretty easy to see why this stuff happened!)

Thus, similar to psychology's rise from philosophy, great thinkers began to speculate about the social problems of urbanization and industrialization (and eventually globalization today). This gave birth to the field of study known as Sociology.


The Perspectives

Now get ready, this is going to get a little technical…!

Over the years of study in Sociology there have risen four basic perspectives that one can take to explain a particular social phenomena. These are expressions of the Sociological Perspective. These are fundamental ways of viewing the world and provide some basic framework for explaining social events. I will provide a technical explanation of each one and then an example of how they can be applied to understand a social event. Not all events lend themselves to every perspective so we as social scientists can pick which one best fits and go with that one! Pretty nifty huh?

Functionalist Perspectives
(also known as Functionalism and Structural Functionalism)

Their most basic assumption is that society is a stable, orderly system characterized by societal consensus

· Their most basic assumption of this perspective is that society is a stable, orderly system characterized by societal consensus.
· Society consists of interrelated parts that serve functions needed by the system.
· Societies develop social structures, or institutions that persist because they play a part in helping society survive. These institutions include: the family, education, government, religion, and economy.
· Adverse consequences that affect one institution affect all others as well.

Application of the Functionalist Perspective

I will be courageous in this exercise by using the events of 911 for each of these examples. I do not presume to understand completely what happened but by taking different perspectives we can certainly appreciate that the situation is complex.

911 was an act of terrorism. One might ask why driving airplanes into tall buildings would be a strategy of war. It is clearest to see it from a functionalist point of view. Appreciate that our economy and government rely upon commerce to survive. By disrupting consumer buying (we were all too worried to go out shopping) and worker productivity (our work slowed down) our economy took a hit. This even affected all of us because each part of our society is linked to each other part through our shared economy.

In addition, we saw certain elements of our society become heroes who were not usually heroes in such a public way. The loss of firefighters and law enforcement when the towers collapsed can still be seen in the bumper stickers of individuals who may have not known any firefighters. We support our fire departments more and homeland security has become a household term. Our systemic interconnectedness to these events has changed our culture.

Conflict Perspectives

The most basic assumption is that groups with divergent interests engage in ongoing power struggles for control of scarce resources in society. (we discussed this one in the Shoemaker story)

Feminist Perspectives

(a sub-division of the Conflict Perspective)

· These direct attention to women’s experiences and the importance of gender as an element of social structure. The basic assumption is that men and women are equal and should be given equal rights.
· They also assume that we live in a patriarchy, or a system in which men dominate women, and that masculine characteristics are more highly valued than feminine characteristics.
· Feminist perspectives believe that society reinforces social expectations through social learning, which is acquired through major social institutions.

Application of the Conflict Perspective

911 was the result of a long standing dispute between Osama Bin-Laden and the US presence in Saudi Arabia. Upon invitation from the Saudi government a base was constructed on Saudi territory. According to some strict interpretations of Islamic texts this is a violation of a sacred trust to that land granted by God. This placed us in conflict with the belief systems of this radical group of Islamic Fundamentalists.

Bin-Laden proclaimed a "holy war" against any and all American establishments and people.

We were in additional conflict with this group due to the very possession of vast national wealth and power. As the only true "world power" left on the planet, the US is a target of a lot of criticism since it is the only national power with the ability to enforce it's will across the globe. These issues continue to be pressing.

Symbolic Interactionist Perspectives

The symbolic interactionists perspective emphasizes the meaning that individuals and groups attribute to culture, society, and social interactions. This perspective is very "individual" based.

The conflict and functionalist perspectives are often criticized for their emphasis on the macro-level.
· Macro-level analysis examines whole societies, large-scale social structures, and social systems.
· Microlevel analysis examines small groups rather than large-scale social structures.

Application of the Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

This is a more difficult one to understand. Most of the other theories focus on the larger aspects of society. This perspective takes into consideration an interpretation of social issues on a smaller scale.

In President Bush's address following 911, he spoke that "Freedom has been attacked". I believe that this was a profound comment and not simply an act of nationalistic pride. It is true that "freedom" was attacked and we now do not live "free" of the thought that we can get on a plane and it will not be hijacked. We have fears of diseases being brought to our country and many other threats of terror.

From a Symbolic Interactionist point of view we may feel that these freedoms are a symbol of pride in our country and they inspire us to act in defense of strongly held beliefs. These cannot really be measured on a national scale but we saw individuals take out the American flag and post it everywhere they could as a symbol of their support for the victims and for what has been lost.

These values, of course, were not shared by all, but by many small groups.

The Symbolic Interactionist viewpoint would analyze these concepts, the use of language and the use of symbols (flags, crosses, demonstrations) as components in understanding our social world.

Postmodern Perspectives

The basic idea of these perspectives is that existing theories have been unsuccessful in explaining social life in contemporary societies that are characterized by post-industrialization, consumerism, and global communications.

An information explosion and an economy in which large numbers of people either provide or apply information characterize postindustrial societies.

There is a corresponding rise of a consumer society and the emergence of a global village in which people communicate via electronic technologies.

Application of the Postmodern Perspective

The easiest application of this perspective on 911 is the wide use of technology to coordinate the efforts of the terrorists. Technology has played a major role not only in changing the way in which our culture operates but the way in which crime is committed. This perspective also emphasizes the importance of a global economy, industrialization and consumerism…the very targets of the terror attacks.

Consider a circumstance you have been in. How could you interpret that situation utilizing each of these perspectives? This is a good exercise of your Sociological Imaginations!

Assessment

Lesson 1 Discussion

Reflect on your current understanding of Sociological Imagination. Describe a situation in your life where you feel social factors have influenced your actions. How do any of these factors relate to large social forces such as globalization, urbanization, and technology?

Lesson 1 Quiz

For this quiz you are going to apply the Sociological Perspectives to a social phenomena. Your instructor will work with you to select a specific event or circumstance in our world in order to complete this quiz. Write out an analysis of the phenomena for each of the perspectives listed in the quiz.

  1. Functional
  2. Conflict
  3. Symbolic Interactionist
  4. Post-Modern