The document discusses the relationship between sociology and common sense. It notes that while common sense seems to provide clear answers to social issues, sociology reveals that the social world is more complex. Sociology is often seen as equivalent to common sense and not taken seriously. However, sociology uses the scientific method and empirical evidence to develop deeper understandings of how social, cultural, economic and political factors influence human behavior and society in ways that may not be obvious. While common sense comes from personal experiences, sociology aims to study issues from multiple contexts and perspectives in order to more fully understand how and why certain social phenomena occur.

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Let's start with the sincere, brief confession of a sociologist: "Sociologists are often in an
unenviable position when they have to explain exactly what they are doing. When they ask
me, I usually say: I'm a sociologist. It provides me with a conversation with another
person. When I do not want to talk, I just say: - I'm giving up at the NY State University, or
I'm saying - I'm a professor, or - I'm doing research. But, often, comes the question - what
do you teach? And again I'm left to think fast and satisfying, if not meaningful, answer.
One time, my four-year-old niece visited my family for the first time. She wanted to see
my office. I showed it to her - books, chairs, table, accessories. Then she said - show me
what you are doing when you do. You can imagine her excitement. But from that
experience I did not learn anything. So a few years later, when the teacher's son asked
the parents to come and describe what they were doing, he agreed to volunteer. The
other fathers were already in attendance. One was the mayor, the second carpenter, and
the third soldier. The reactions of the children were great judging by the desire of my son
to appear. I'm just lucky. After all, how often do we get the opportunity to present
sociology to children attending second grade? When I did not really impress them, I told
them I was a professor at the faculty. That, of course, sounded very similar to being a
school teacher, worse than being a sociologist. Finally, desperate to preserve the child's
dignity and social standing among peers, I asked them if they wanted to look in the
briefcase of a sociologist. They jumped from the chair and gathered around the table. My
son breathed. Then, in my office at the university, my cousin visited me from abroad. We
have not been seen since childhood.
Sociology - academic science or applicative science in the service of
society?

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After I showed him several projects I worked on and showed him papers and loads of
results, he asked me - do you think anything will do anything to do with this? It is very
difficult to explain sociology to someone who is not a sociologist, even to children and
families who fully accept us as persons (Wimberley, 1998, p. 10). How often do you hear
this: Sociology? "This is a great thing, but what can you do with it?", Steele asks in his
article in which he tries to outline the mechanisms for empowering sociology as a
profession (2000, p 1). Because of the simple, almost impossible definition of society,
the subject that sociology deals with, and its breadth, it is faced with perceiving and
challenging its science. When trying to explore and describe everything we live in,
sometimes it happens to be quite prosaic, which is why sociology leads to a balanced
position with common sense. In addition, there is an impression that sociologists are
not known as experts.
Economists, psychologists, ethnologists have clearly defined areas of work, but not
sociologists, they seem to be able to do everything and nothing. Sociology is very wide,
it has many different areas, but it is precisely because of this that it is in the phase in
which its concepts are abandoned and they form new, more specific social sciences
that then build new specialists who are more specialized and thus more easily
employable. In addition, when taught, it is unclear how one should be taught in order to
give students a "basic set of" knowledge, because the area in which sociology deals
enormously. According to theoretical standpoints, sociology is in crisis, it is large and
disintegrated, unrecognized, and its existence is questioned because it is science, and
its science is in many cases questioned. This and all related questions will be discussed
in this thesis. It will try to distinguish the most burdensome the sociology currently
encounters, point to the relation of sociology as science within the walls of the
university and sociology as applied, public science. Finally, in the empirical part of the
paper, they will try to find out what this topic is like by those who are sociologists
dealing with their employment and those who are educated to make society better
today sociologists and sociologists. From Comte's queen of all sciences to Urry and
Wieviorka's sociology in the movement that lost its subject of study, sociology passed a
huge path. It seems that sociology has much in common with its primary, broad and
complex subject of study - society. It studies that some labeled groups are socially
accepted as ethnic, gender or sexual minorities, but it itself is a labeled science whose
experts are often called upon and not taken seriously (Best, 2003). It attempts to deal
with social problems and provide answers to social problems and challenges, but it itself
sees itself as a social problem (Best, 2003). She tries to give and explain a clear
distinction between science and ideology, but she has also found numerous times
replaced for ideology or its concepts have been used by various ideologies, from
fascism to communism.
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Is society whole, one being for itself, which casts Durkheim's social fact on us, which
one we can try, but will not be able to resist, or is it just a set of individuals? Is sociology
a complete science, or is it too fragmented, and if so, can it be compiled, and that its
scientists, sociologists, do not rely on those debris? Raymond Boudon says that a
person becomes a psychologist if he has problems with himself, and a sociologist if he
has problems with the society in which he lives (Boudon, 2013). Nothing in the world is as
it seems and we all know that things are not just black and white. It seems to me that
sociology is doing a very valuable and grateful job - it scratches and digs deep under the
surface of things, all in order to clarify them. We live in a society that gives us a
significant impression on us, which we are most often not aware of. From the media to
the media, from state policies to sexism, from imposing lifestyles to fostering hatred;
some things work, and we accept, because the only thing we know is that "it must be so."
But sociology is one that shows that there are other ways and we are not always
cornered. Like any science, it is subject to change, but sociology opens the mind to the
world as well as the world of the mind. Sociology needs to sharpen its blade ... Some
questions to which the world needs new answers are many years of unknown, and they
are completely new. Solving both of these and others, as in previous times, requires a
healthy dose of what Mr. Wright Mills famously referred to as sociological imagination -
he is trying to at least try to show that things are not as they are, and that nothing should
be taken for granted. Finally, as Turner (1998) described it, the majority of sociologists
and sociologists began the path of discipline because they were interested in people
and concerned about humanity. Most sociologists, to varying degrees, wanted to make
the world a better place; rarely they wanted to be quantitative methodologists or
researchers who would develop and use new methodologies and the latest statistical
techniques, and they did not really teach sociology to become top theoreticians working
on abstract models and the theory of the functioning of the world (Turner, 1998). Like
sociology itself, and the story of its survival in science and survival as an expert, once it
opens, it becomes, perhaps not the Pandora's Box, and then at least the land of
miracles. The work will attempt to highlight the above most problematic areas and
propose mechanisms for the growth and development of sociology, so that students
and students of sociology can demonstrate that they do not learn sociology due to
sociology, but to learn to acquire knowledge that will make them a driving force for
better society.
By asking "what sociology is studying?" Even when it is able, to some extent, to clarify
what society is, that is, what could be covered by society, does not end the doubts that
bear the question with itself. Take for example the issue of emigration of young people.
When asked why young people are leaving Croatia, it almost seems to us that the
answer to this question is quite clear.
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Young people are leaving Croatia because they cannot find a job; for this reason I cannot
earn money, cannot base my family or live a life she would like. This answer seems to us
to be completely clear, correct and ultimately sound-social. The common sense is what
experience and the linking of what we know and what we are watching tells us that it
should be right, but we cannot be absolutely sure about it because it is not something
that is based on verified scientific facts. So common sense and science are two things
that are different and which certainly are not synonyms. Such thinking is much simpler
when thinking about natural sciences in which the causes and consequences of the
relationship are much clearer. Social sciences, and especially sociology, are met with a
much larger scope of study objects found in a given socio-historical context and which
carry many factors that can affect a larger or lesser extent of what we are studying and
therefore sociology is encountered with another problem that closes at the academic
boundaries and does not allow her to go as a science that could take some concrete
steps in solving social problems. Sociology is often seen as an equivalent to common
sense. When sociologists discuss a topic, people usually get the impression that they
have been able to say the same to a certain topic on their own as some "expert" said. The
word expert is here under the alleged meanings of course, just so, to show the
impression that people are getting. That it would not all remain healthy in the sense of
linking sociology and common sense, and many scientists have written about that topic.
Healthy reason is defined as the knowledge possessed by those in the center and are
part of the social situations and processes that sociologists seek to understand them
more closely; common sense can be synonymous with so-called. folk wisdom or may be
synonymous with knowledge by engineers, politicians, journalists, or those who work
with other people and must anticipate and interpret the behavior of some people or
groups of people (Taylor, 1947). The question is: what is the relationship between
sociology and common sense? In his book titled "Sociology and common sense," David
Thomas (1978) speaks of sociology and common sense in interaction and accordingly
sets four theories: a) Sociology needs to be interrupted with a healthy mind; b) sociology
must be based on common sense; c) sociology and common sense are incomparable;
and d) sociology and common sense are identical. As will be seen through the work of
scientists who have dealt with this topic, there are attitudes that may be appropriate to
each of these four theses. In the article "Killing the Messenger: Social Problems of
Sociology", Joel Best (2003) is somewhat comical, trying to draw attention to the
problem of not knowing sociology, and thus sociologists and sociologists as serious
scientists whose job is to promote society. He immediately recounts the anecdote
where President T. Roosevelt, trying to stop the miners' strike, agreed on their request
for one member of the commission to be an eminent sociologist. If we imagine for a
moment this claim, we can say that the workers have recognized the importance of
experts to help solve the situation they encountered, but Roosevelt himself placed
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Edgar Clark, who was the head of the railroad, with the argument that anyone who
thinks about social problems can be as expert as sociologist (Best, 2003).
Unfortunately, in our culture, sociology is rarely taken seriously; Even when they are
recognized, according to Best, sociologists become objects of a joke (Best, 2003). She
says that Diane Bjorkklund (according to Best, 2003) wrote reviews for over 80 novels in
which characters are sociologists and almost none in one, sociologists are not overly
impressive characters. Best very strongly concludes that sociologists are almost never
"heroes, but rather bad guys or fools" (Best, 2003, p. 1). Best reveals what many think of
sociology - it is equivalent to common sense, only because of the phenomena that we all
know gives complicated names and as such is completely unnecessary: "sociology is the
scientific study of the obvious" (Best, 2003, p. 2). And we do not forget the constant
confrontation of sociologists with social workers or socialists, and the sociology with
ideology, which Best says is skillfully covered with the crux of science, lacing liberals
and irresponsible radicals, and blaming society. Watts (2011) says sociology has a long
history of conflict with common sense. Through almost all of its history, sociology faces
criticism that it has "discovered" what every intelligent person could actually figure out
(Watts, 2011). But Watts notes that, as a sociologist, he has learned to be skeptical of
common sense, especially when dealing with complicated social problems (Watts, 2011).
Questions such as "why some things become more popular than some others, or how
much the media affects us" is like everyone knows the answer. Many have the view that
sociology is unnecessary or to deal with "selling fog" because when it comes to these
issues everyone thinks they are "experts" and there is not much else left to wonder why
this is so? Probably because all people have some experience in social situations or
issues sociology deals with, for example, Most people have no experience with clash of
atoms or the creation of chemical substances. Our experience or common sense often
leads us to believe that we know the answers to all social issues, but we do not really
know how complex they are, the importance of time, space, culture, socioeconomic,
socialization, educational, gender and many other contexts in all this.
Although Watts notes that every science must be empirical, and those in social science
can come from the experience of the respondents, i.e. of common sense, this should
not be taken for granted (Watts, 2011). Common sense is right, but usually only partially
and often has the tendency to show the world more orderly and less complex than it
really is. It illustrates this with simple but very perceptive examples of everyday
proverbs: whether the distance of love fire is sparking, or whether it is old and wise: "far
from the eyes, far from the heart"; is a better sparrow in your hand, or is it still necessary
to take risks in order to profit and possibly catch a bigger bird? How Best (2003) says,
even when they are established as experts, sociologists are seldom taken seriously.
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"The physicist, psychologist and sociologist walk down the street and mourn the dead
body: - It is a mass of 80 pounds weighing and is not in motion - says the physicist; - it's
a dead man - a psychologist states; and the sociologist only transcends the body and
continues to walk in search of a group" (Best, 2003, p 3). No Wirth says that the
sociologist would stop, inspect the body in search of wallets, documents and similar
things to identify the body and put it in the context of the society from which it comes
(Wirth according to Best, 2003).
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References
Wimberley, R. C. (1998). Applied Sociology? Even Musicians Give Concerts. The
American Sociologists, (29) 4, p. 5 - 19.
Steele, S. (2000). „Bugged“ by the New Millennium: Sociology in the Future – the
Future of Sociology Need a Vision! Michigan Sociological Review, 14, p. 1 - 10.
Best, J. (2003). Killing the Messenger: The Social Problems of Sociology. Social
Problems, 50 (1), p. 1 - 13.
Boudon, R. (2013) Sociology as Science – An Intellectual Autobiography (trans. Peter
Hamilton). Bardwell Press: Oxford.
Turner, Jonathan H. (1998). Must sociological theory and sociological practice be so
far apart? A polemical answer; Sociological Perspectives, (41) 2, p. 243 - 258.
Taylor, C. (1947). Sociology and Common Sense. American Sociological Review, (12) 1,
p. 1 - 9.
Thomas, D. (1978). Sociology and Common Sense. An Interdisciplinary Journal of
Philosophy, (21) 1 - 4, 1 - 32.
Watts, D. (2011). The Myth of Common Sense: Why The Social World Is Less Obvious
Than It Seems“, Freakeconomics; URL: http://freakonomics.com/2011/09/29/the-
myth-of-common-sense-why-the-socialworld-is-less-obvious-than-it-seems/
(Accessed 30.05.2019)
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