Sociological Perspective What is Sociology Sociology is the systematic study of the ways in which people are affected by and affect the social structures and social processes that are associated with the groups organizations cultures societies and the world in which they exist Can help you understand the social forces you confront the forces that constrain and free you as you go about living your life See how social forces influence your life allows you to control your own life Sociology casts an intellectual net that provides an unparalleled approach to understanding social life Other Definitions Society people who share a culture and a territory Social location position the group membership that people have because of their location in history and society Social context conditions environments cultural context and patterns of relationships within which people live What is the sociological perspective Sociological perspective is a way to see and understand the connections between individuals and the broader social contexts in which they live Devil Wears Prada Cerulean Sweater Ex Bumper sticker my child s honor student status is best understood as the result of educational opportunities affluence and stable family life not of parenting skills child of a sociologist The Sociological Imagination Sociological Imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society C Wright Mills What is the structure of society How components are interrelated What is the relation between society and history Where one society stands in human history and the changes that are occurring in it history making How does it differ from other periods of time Affect history and affected by history What types of people live and succeed in a society and why What kinds of human nature What ways are they selected and formed Allows us to peer beyond immediate confines to understand broader social and historical forces at work in our lives To see ourselves in different light The Sociological Imagination Biography and History Ex Bill Gates Link between private troubles and public issues Ex Credit Card Debt Individual can understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only by locating himself within his period that he can know his own chances in life only by becoming aware of those of all individuals in his circumstances Most fruitful distinction with which the imagination works is between the personal troubles of milieu and the public issues of social structure Troubles Occur within the character of the individual and within the range of his immediate relations with others Self and social life o Private matter values cherished by an individual are felt by him to be threatened o One man unemployed look to mans skills and opportunities to fix Issues matters that transcend these local environments of the individual and the range of his inner life o Organizations of many such milieu into the institutions of a historical society as a whole o Public matter some value cherished by public is felt to be threatened o Crisis in institutional arrangement Contradictions and antagonisms o 50 million unemployed consider economic and political institutions of society to fix To formulate issues and troubles we must ask what values are cherished yet threatened and what values are cherished and supported by the characterizing trends of our period When people cherish some set of values and do not feel any threat to them they experience well being When they cherish values but do feel threat they experience crisis All values seem involved threat of panic Uneasiness unaware of cherished values but aware of threat Indifference neither aware of any cherished values nor experience of threat Single Stories Individualism based National Rhetoric American Dream and Bootstraps Mentality The Problem With Single Stories What is the single story of the homeless What are other possible stories Sociology vs Other Sciences differences in what scientists look for in study Sociology is a social science examine human relationships Anthropology is concerned with the study of culture artifacts structure ideas and values communication cultural and physical o Sister discipline of sociology Sociologists focus on industrialized and post industrialized societies and the effect of structure on people s lives contemporary Economics is the study of the production and distribution of material goods and services micro macro o What goods are being produced at what rate cost and how they are distributed o What determines production and consumption what motivates buying one item over another Sociologists focus on how the distribution of goods and services results in inequality Political science focuses on how governments are formed how they operate and how they are related to other institutions theoretical and applied Sociologists examine how those in power affect people s lives not a single social institution Psychology is concerned with the processes that occur within the individual clinical or experimental Sociologists stress factors that are external to the individual Sociologists concerned with events in present not history Ex Juvenile Delinquency o Historians examine it in some particular past setting social context o Political scientists be interest in power structure o Economists emphasize the economic aspects gangs to conditions o Anthropologists study implements of deliq Such as tools used to theft structure of leaders and followers the belief system of group and language o Psychologists would study within leaders more aggressive o Sociologists look at attitudes towards property why they steal how they divide up stolen stuff the social class difference between leader and follower upholds groups value differently Emphasize routine activities of the police the courts and changing norms Types of Sociology Structural and Interactional Structural the focus is placed on the group o Interested how membership in a group such as religion influences people s behaviors and attitudes such as how they vote o Scientists form aggregates people who are grouped together for the purpose of social research because of characteristics they have in common Interactional emphasis on individuals what people do in presence of others o Data what they have observed read recorded or been told Research of Sociology Methods Statistics How is Sociology a Science The scientific method is the process of gathering empirical scientific and
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