sociology

1. Overview of These Notes
• What is sociology
and the sociological
imagination
• A Social Riddle
– Why do Western
Societies dominate
other Societies
throughout the
World?

2. Chapter One: The
Sociological Perspective
and Research Process
• Sociology is the systematic study of human
society and social interaction
• Why Study Sociology?
– Sociology helps us see connections between our
lives and the larger recurring patterns of the
society and world
– Sociology often reveals limitations of myths
associated with commonsense knowledge that
guides ordinary conduct in everyday life

3. Chapter One: The
Sociological Perspective
and Research Process
• Society is a large grouping that shares
the same territory and is subject to the
same political authority dominant
cultural expectations

4. C. Wright Mills “The
Promise”
•
1916-1962
Published
in 1959

5. Mills was Considered a
Radical
• His Personal
Behavior
• His Academic
Work

6. What is the Sociological
Imagination?
The intersection of Biography and
History
• Biography
– Experiences and Attributes
• History
– Society in its Historical Context

7. What is the Sociological
Imagination?
Three Questions Relevant to the
Sociological Imagination
• How are activities patterned in a
society?
• Where does this society stand in
human history?
• What varieties of people are
produced in this society?

8. What is the Sociological
Imagination?
Personal Troubles and Public Issues
• Troubles are private matters limited
to the aspects of daily life of which
people are directly aware
• Public Issues are forces outside of
the control of most people
– Business cycles
– National policy
– Values and religious traditions

9. Mills was fascinated by the process in
which “personal troubles” became
recognized as “public issues.”
• He wondered how do people
define their personal conditions
– Realization of impersonal forces
– Losing the feeling of inadequacy?
– False Consciousness
• Mills thought that this process
was important for societies in
generating social change

10. The Sociological
Imagination
• The distinction between personal troubles
(biography) and public issues (history)
• Developing our own sociological imagination
means we have to account for perspectives of
people from diverse backgrounds
– The world’s high income countries have
developed industrialized and advanced economies
– low income countries are still agrarian
– We have to think about other countries because
our future is intertwined with other nations

16. Jared Diamond “The Fate of Human Societies”

22. Guns, Germs, and Steel
• Western Societies become dominate because
– They have more natural materials to work with in the
domestication of wild grains
– The latitude of Western Societies means domesticated
grains and animals can easily be transferred over large
areas
– Domestication of animals leads to human exposure to
disease and through natural selection, disease
resistance
– Western Societies explore and colonize other societies
because of technology advances – due to earlier starts
with agriculture and related developments
– Non-Western Societies are decimated by diseases the
people in Western Societies carry, but have developed
resistance to over hundreds of years.