SOCL 2001 Unit 1 Chapter 1 The Sociological Imagination An Intro 01 15 2016 The Sociological Imagination Sociology is the study of human society In the mid twentieth century sociologist C Wright Mills argued that we need to use our sociological imagination to think critically about the social world around us The sociological imagination is the ability to connect one s personal experiences to society at large and greater historical forces Using our sociological imagination allows us to make the familiar strange or to question habits or customs that seem natural to us What Is a Social Institution A social institution is a o group of social positions connected by social relations that perform a social role Social institutions such as the legal system the labor market or language itself have a great influence on our behavior and are constantly changing o The interactions and meanings we ascribe to social institutions shape and change them o how individuals define themselves in relationship to groups they are a part of or in relationship to groups they choose not to be a part of We all contribute to one another s social identity which can also be thought of as a grand narrative constructed of many individual stories Social identity is The Sociology of Sociology The French scholar Auguste Comte o founder of what he called social physics or positivism o felt that we could better understand society by determining the logic or scientific laws governing human behavior Harriet Martineau o the first to translate Comte s written works to English o was one of the earliest feminist social scientists Historical materialism o a theory developed by Karl Marx o identifies class conflict as the primary cause of social change Max Weber o felt that culture and politics as well as economics were important influences on society o his emphasis on subjectivity became a foundation of interpretive sociology Emile Durkheim o considered the founding practitioner of positivist sociology o developed the theory that the division of labor in a given society helps to determine how social cohesion is maintained or not maintained in that society Georg Simmel o established what is today referred to as formal sociology a sociology of pure numbers The Chicago School o focused on empirical research with the belief that people s behaviors and personalities are shaped by their social and physical environments Double consciousness o a concept developed by W E B DuBois o refers to an individual s constant awareness of how others perceive them and how those perceptions alter their own behavior Modern sociological theories include o Functionalism o conflict theory o feminist theory o symbolic interactionism o postmodernism o midrange theory Sociology and Its Cousins Sociology focuses on making comparisons across cases to find patterns and create hypotheses about how societies work now or in the past Sociology looks at how individuals interact with one another as well as at how groups small and large interact with one another History and anthropology tend to focus more on particular circumstances though in cultural anthropology in particular there can be a lot of overlap with sociology Psychology and biology examine things on more of a micro level than sociology does and economics is an entirely quantitative discipline Political science focuses on one aspect of social relations power These distinctions are important but it s also important to keep in mind that a lot of overlap exists between the work done in different academic disciplines Divisions within Sociology Interpretive sociology Positivist sociology o focuses on the meanings people attach to social phenomena prioritizing specific situations over a search for social facts that transcend time and place o also called the normal science model of sociology o attempts to reveal the social facts that affect social life by developing and testing hypotheses based on theories about how the social world works Microsociology o seeks to understand local interactional contexts o focusing on face to face encounters and gathering data through participant observations and in depth interviews Participant observation Looking at a very small group How poverty affects the lives of individuals Macrosociology o generally looks at social dynamics across whole societies or large parts of them and often relies on statistical analysis to do so Macro meaning big Surveys can be this looking at broad big structures in the world Looking at national stats Poverty rates in LA the US What is Sociology The study of human society New Orleans for example o Tourists go to bourbon street think differently about it than natives do o Natives probably don t even go on bourbon think about it differently than tourists The function of sociology is to reveal that which is hidden as all sciences do pierre Bourdieu o Example NYC intersection All individuals in this unison impact the social structure People that see the same people every day and had this social relationship w them The sociological imagination Coined by c writght mills Historical context connecting biography w history o It is not enough to merely read history and look at what happened Example family o Due to TV shows and other things people thought that family only meant one thing Family still changes even in the 1950s o There is a lot more to circumstances than merely meets the eye o Take a dugger kid drag drop to another time period and people think differently about them Using your sociological imagination C wright mills riding a motorcycle o Making the familiar strange Question habits or customs that seem natural o Put context on things o Why do you do a certain thing o Jell O shaking in black and white In other countries it is filled with other dishes Making inference that it s red green and tastes like fruit We re not all about chicken jello Jello came about in the 1950s b c of rationing back in WWII when the casserole came about Era of economic expansion debut of stay at home mom Why was gelatin dessert so big in 1950s A refrigerated dessert was way to show off that you had a fridge so it was a status symbol Grandma put all ketchup packets back in the ketchup bottle b c she remembered the rationing in WWII what are you going to hold on to when you re grandparents They don t play today s hits in the nursing homes today The play music from when those people were younger Will you be listing to Kesha in the nursing home while someone spoon feeds