1. Sociology

2. Cool Insights from Sociology
• Humans cannot be understood apart from social context
(i.e. society)
• Society makes us who we are by structuring out
interactions and laying out an orderly world before us
• Society is a social construction, that is, it is an idea
created by humans (i.e. doesn’t exist in the biological
world but only in the social world) through social
interaction and given a reality through our
understanding of it and our collective actions.
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Sociology?
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3. Society Influences You
• Death…
Related to
society? Of
course!
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Sociology?
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4. Baby Names
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Sociology?
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5. Names that have gained the
most popularity,
2004 – 2010
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Sociology?
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6. What Does Society Look Like?
• While the idea of society is familiar, describing it can
be difficult. Ultimately society is made up of many
different components, such as culture, race, family,
education, social class, and people’s interactions.
• People who share a culture and territory
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7. Meaning through Interaction
• People actively and collectively shape their own lives,
organizing their social interactions and relationships
into a meaningful world.
• Sociologists study this social behavior by seeking out
its patterns.
• Patterns are crucial to our understanding of society
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8. Society
• Society is a group of people who shape their lives in
aggregated and patterned ways that distinguish their
group from other groups.
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Sociology?
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9. The Social Sciences
• Social Sciences are the disciplines that use the
scientific method to examine the social world, in
contrast to the natural sciences, which examine the
physical world.
• Examples of social sciences include economics,
psychology, geography, communication studies,
anthropology, history, and political science.
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10. How Sociology fits in
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11. What is Sociology?
Sociology is the systematic or scientific study of
human society and social behavior, from largescale institutions and mass culture to small groups
and individual interactions.
Sociology is also the study of reifications, or social
constructions.
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12. Sociology
• Howard Becker defined sociology as the study of
people “doing things together.”
• This reminds us that society and the individual are
inherently connected, and each depends on the
other.
• Sociologists study this link: how society affects the
individual and how the individual affects society.
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13. Levels of Analysis
• We can study society from different levels:
• Microsociology is the level of analysis that studies faceto-face and small-group interactions in order to
understand how they affect the larger patterns and
institutions of society.
• Microsociology focuses on small-scale issues.
– Ex: Symbolic Interactionism
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14. Levels of Analysis (cont)
• Macrosociology is the level of analysis that studies
large-scale social structures in order to determine
how they affect the lives of groups and individuals.
• Macrosociology focuses on large-scale issues.
– Ex: Functionalism, Conflict Theory
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15. How We Use Levels of Analysis
• Pam Fishman took a micro-level approach to studying
issues of power in male–female relationships.
• She found that in conversation, women ask nearly three
times as many questions as men do, perhaps because a
speaker is much more likely to ask a question if he or she
does not expect to get a response by simply making a
statement.
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16. How We Use Levels of Analysis
• Christine Williams took a macro-level approach to
studying women in male-dominated occupations and
men in female-dominated occupations.
• She found that women in male-dominated positions
faced limits on their advancement (the glass ceiling),
while men in female-dominated positions experienced
rapid rates of advancement (the glass escalator).
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17. Levels of Analysis (cont)
• When conducting research, methodology involves the
process by which one gathers and analyzes data.
• Quantitative research translates the social world into
numbers that can be treated mathematically; this type of
research often tries to find cause-and-effect
relationships.
• Any type of social statistic is an example of quantitative
research.
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18. Levels of Analysis (cont)
• Qualitative research works with non-numerical data
such as texts, fieldnotes, interview transcripts,
photographs, and tape recordings; this type of research
often tries to understand how people make sense of
their world.
• Participant observation, in which the researcher actually
takes part in the social world he or she studies, is an
example of qualitative research.
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19. The Sociological Imagination
• C. Wright Mills used the term sociological
imagination to describe the ability to look at issues
from a sociological perspective.
• Personal troubles versus public issues
– Ex: unemployment, obesity
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20. The Sociological Perspective
• Incorporates Mills’ notion of the sociological
imagination 
• The sociological perspective is a quality of the mind
that allows us to understand the relationship
between our particular situation in life and what is
happening at a social level.
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21. The Sociological Perspective
• When using a sociological perspective, one focuses
on the social context in which people live and how
that social context has an impact on individuals’
lives.
• This is the essence of what sociology does.
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22. The Sociological Perspective (cont)
• One way to gain a sociological perspective is to
attempt to create in ourselves a sense of culture
shock, which is a sense of disorientation that occurs
when one enters a radically new social or cultural
environment.
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23. The Sociological Perspective (cont)
• Bernard McGrane suggests that people wanting to
use a sociological perspective should utilize a
beginner’s mind, which means approaching the
world without preconceptions in order to see things
in a new way.
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24. Starting Your Sociological Journey
• An important distinction can be made between the
everyday actor, who has the practical knowledge
needed to get through daily life, but not necessarily
the scientific or technical knowledge of how things
work,
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25. Starting Your Sociological Journey
• and the social analyst, who studies the social world
in a systematic, comprehensive, coherent, clear, and
consistent manner in the pursuit of scientific
knowledge.
• Both approaches have strengths and weaknesses.
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26. Introduction to Sociology: What is
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27. Take Away Points
• Humans cannot be understood apart from the social
context they live in (society, culture and time + place)
• The world around us profoundly shapes and influences
who we are, how we behave and even how/what we
think.
• It is the job of the sociologist to understand how this
process works and to what effect.
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28. Defining the Sociological
Perspective
• “Sociology is the scientific study of
human society and social interactions.”
• What makes sociology “scientific?”
Levels of Understanding Drug Use
Personal experience
with drug use
Awareness of friends
and associates’ patterns
of drug use
Systematic study
of a random
sample of drug
users

29. The Sociological Imagination
• C. Wright Mills coined the term
“sociological imagination” to refer
to “...the vivid awareness of the
relationship between private
experience and the wider society.”
C. Wright Mills

30. Sociology and Common Sense
• Common sense assumptions are usually based on very
limited observation.
• Moreover, the premises on which common sense
assumptions are seldom examined.
• Sociology seeks to:
• use a broad range of carefully selected observations; and
• theoretically understand and explain those observations.
• While sociological research might confirm common
sense observation, its broader base and theoretical
rational provide a stronger basis for conclusions.

31. Sociology and Science
• Science is “...a body of
systematically arranged
knowledge that shows
the operation of general
laws.”
• As a science, sociology
employs the scientific
method
The Scientific Method
Analyze Data
Gather Data
Choose research design
Formulate hypotheses
Review of literature

32. The Development of Sociology
• Sociology emerged as a separate discipline
in the nineteenth century
• This was a time of great social upheaval due
largely to the French and Industrial
Revolutions
• Several early sociologists shaped the
direction of the discipline

33. Auguste Comte (1798-1857)
• Responsible for coining the term
“sociology”
• Set out to develop the “science of
man” that would be based on
empirical observation
• Focused on two aspects of society:
• Social Statics—forces which produce
order and stability
• Social Dynamics—forces which
contribute to social change

34. Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)
• Authored one of the earliest
analyses of culture and life in the
United States entitled Theory and
Practice of Society in America
• Translated Comte’s Positive
Philosophy into English
Harriet
Martineau

35. Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)
• Authored the first sociology text,
Principles of Sociology
• Most well known for proposing a
doctrine called “Social Darwinism”
• Suggested that people who could not
compete were poorly adapted to the
environment and inferior
• This is an idea commonly called
survival of the fittest

36. Karl Marx (1818-1883)
• Marx is the father of conflict theory
• Saw human history in a continual
state of conflict between two major
classes:
• Bourgeoisie—owners of the means of
production (capitalists)
• Proletariat—the workers
• Predicted that revolution would
occur producing first a socialist
state, followed by a communist
society

37. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
Emile Durkheim
• Durkheim moved sociology fully
into the realm of an empirical
science
• Most well known empirical
study is called Suicide, where
he looks at the social causes of
suicide
• Generally regarded as the
founder of functionalist theory

38. Max Weber (1864-1920)
• Much of Weber’s work was a critique
or clarification of Marx
• His most famous work, The Protestant
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
directly challenged Marx’s ideas on
the role of religion in society
• Weber was also interested in
bureaucracies and the process of
rationalization in society

39. Theoretical Perspectives: Functionalism
• Functionalism sees society as a
system of highly interrelated parts
that work together harmoniously
• The image that functionalists use to
understand society is a living
organism
• Each part of society works together
for the benefit of the whole much
like a living organism

40. Theoretical Perspectives: Conflict Theory
• Conflict theory is grounded in the work of Karl
Marx
• Society is understood to be made up of
conflicting interest groups who vie for power
and privilege
• This dynamic results in continuous social
change, which is the normal state of affairs
• Conflict theory focuses heavily on inequality
and differential distribution of power and
wealth

41. Theoretical Perspectives: The Interactionist
Perspective
• Focuses on how individuals make sense of
and interpret the world
• This perspective tends to focus on the “microorder” of small groups
• Has given rise to several specific
approaches:
– Symbolic Interactionism developed by George
Herbert Mead
– Ethnomethodology developed by Harold Garfinkel
– Dramaturgy developed by Erving Goffman