SOC 2010 HON Honors Introduction to Sociology 1 12 15 What is Sociology And what does it mean to think sociologically Giddens et al pp 3 10 22 25 Sociological imagination The application of imaginative thought to the asking and answering of sociological questions Someone using the sociological imagination thinks himself away from the familiar routines of daily life Social structure The underlying regularities or patterns in how people behave and in their relationships with one another Social construction An idea or practice that a group of people agrees exists It is maintained over time by people taking its existence for granted Socialization The social processes through which children develop an awareness of social norms and values and achieve a distinct sense of self Although socialization processes are particularly significant in infancy and childhood they continue to some degree throughout life No individuals are immune from the reactions of others around them which influence and modify their behavior at all phases of the life course Microsociology The study of human behavior in contexts of face to face Macrosociology The study of large scale groups organizations or social interaction systems How can sociology help us Awareness of cultural differences Assessing the effects of policies The Sociologist s Role Self enlightenment Mills C Wright The Promise pp 1 7 in Mapping the Social Landscape 6th Edition edited by Susan J Ferguson New York McGraw Hill BB Distinguish between personal troubles and public issues by separating these phenomena we can better comprehend the sources of and solutions to social problems Men often feel that they cannot overcome their troubles What men are directly aware of and what they try to do are bounded by the private orbits in which they live Their visions and powers are limited to the close up scenes of job family neighborhood they move vicariously and remain spectators The more aware they become of ambitions and threats of those around them the more trapped they seem to feel History is about successes and failures of individual men and women Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both 1 Men do not usually define the troubles they endure in terms of historical change and institutional contradiction The history that now affects every man in world history Everywhere in the underdeveloped world ancient ways of life are broken up and vague expectations become urgent demands Everywhere in the overdeveloped world the means of authority and of violence become total in scope and bureaucratic in form Men need factual information as well as skills of reason What they need and what they feel they need is a quality of mind that will help them to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summation of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within themselves This is called the sociological imagination The sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals The first fruit of this imagination and the first lesson of the social science that embodies it is the idea that the 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 By the fact of a man s living he contributes to the shaping of this society and to the course of its history even as he is made by society and by its historical push and shove The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society 3 main questions that social analysts ask 1 What is the structure of this particular society as a whole 2 Where does this society stand in human history 3 What varieties of men and women now prevail in this society and in this period For the sociological imagination is the capacity to shift from one perspective to another from the political to the psychological from examination of a single family to comparative assessment of the nation budgets of the world from the theological school to the military establishment from considerations of an oil industry to studies of contemporary poetry It is the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self and to see the relations between the two In large part contemporary man s self conscious view of himself as at least an outsider if not a permanent stranger rests upon an absorbed realization of social relativity and of the transformative power of history The sociological imagination is the most fruitful form of this self consciousness Perhaps the most fruitful distinctions with which the sociological imagination works is between the personal troubles of milieu and the public issues of social structure 2 Troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of his immediate relations with other they have to do with his self and with those limited areas of social life of which he is directly and personally aware A trouble is a private matter Values cherished by an individual are felt by him to be threatened Issues have to do with matters that transcend these local environments of the individual and the range of his inner life They have to do with the organization of many such milieux into the institutions of a historical society as a whole with the ways in which various milieux overlap and interpenetrate to form the larger structure of social and historical life An issue is a public matter Some value cherished by publics is felt to be threatened Unemployment When in a city of 100 000 only one man is unemployed that is his personal trouble and for its relief we properly look to the character of the man his skills and his immediate opportunities When in a nation of 50 million employees 15 million men are unemployed that is an issue and w may not hope to find its solution within the range of opportunities open to any one individual The very structure of opportunities has collapsed Must consider the economic and political institutions of the society and not merely the personal situation and character of a scatter of individuals War Personal problem when it occurs may be how to survive it or how to die in it with honor how to make