1. Sociological Imagination: An Introduction
Chapter 1
Sociological Imagination: An Introduction
Lecture PowerPoint
© W. W. Norton & Company, 2008
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2. What Is Sociology? Sociology is the study of human society.
Peter Berger: Sociological Perspective – seeing the general in the particular, society in your personal life, decisions, beliefs, values, etc.
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3. The Power of Society Do we simply “pick” our marriage partners?
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4. What Is Sociology?
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.
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6. Personal Troubles/Public Issues
The sociological imagination turns Personal Troubles (unemployment) into Public Issues (lack of jobs, closing of factories and changing landscape of society).
According to Mills, “Society, not people’s personal failings, is the cause of poverty and other social problems.”
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7. What Is Social Identity?
Social identity is 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).
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8. What is a Social Institution?
A social institution is a group of social positions, connected by social relations, that perform a social role.
For example, the legal system, the labor market, or language itself have a great influence on our behavior and are constantly changing.
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9. The Sociology of Sociology
Auguste Comte — society is better understood by determining the logic or scientific laws governing human behavior, called “social physics” or “positivism”
Harriet Martineau — first to translate Comte’s written works to English; one of the earliest feminist social scientists
Karl Marx — theory of historical materialism that identifies class conflict as the primary cause of social change
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10. The Sociology of Sociology
Max Weber — emphasis on subjectivity became a foundation of interpretive sociology (also, symbolic interactionism)
Emile Durkheim — founder of positivist sociology; developed theory that division of labor helps to determine how social cohesion is maintained, or not maintained, in that society
Georg Simmel — formal sociology, or a sociology of pure numbers
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12. The Sociology of Sociology.
The Chicago School focused on empirical research with the belief that people’s behaviors and personalities are shaped by their social and physical environments, social ecology.
Functionalism, conflict theory, feminist theory, symbolic interactionism, postmodernism, and midrange theory are all modern sociological theories.
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13. CRIME Let’s look at crime from three perspectives: Functionalism
Conflict theory
Interactionism
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14. Functional Theory (Functionalism)
Crime has a function in society because it provides jobs for individuals in law enforcement, the judicial system, and corrections. It is dysfunctional in that it reduces the quality of life for victims.
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15. Conflict Theory
Crime occurs because of the unequal distribution of resources in society. An inner-city drug dealer may not have access to a legitimate income, so he or she uses illegal means to obtain items that are valued in society.
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16. Interactionism
Examine crime from the perspective of the person committing the crime. This individual may justify his actions by telling himself that he is not really hurting anyone when he robs a convenience store. Alternatively, if someone is hurt, a criminal may justify it as a casualty of war: she didn’t mean to do it; rather, she had to do it.
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17. Divisions within Sociology
Interpretive sociology focuses on the meanings people attach to social phenomena, prioritizing specific situations over a search for social facts that transcend time and place.
Positivist sociology, also called the “normal science” model of sociology, attempts to reveal the social facts that affect social life by developing and testing hypotheses based on theories about how the social world works.
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18. Divisions within Sociology
Microsociology understands local interactional contexts, focusing on face-to-face encounters and gathering data through participant observations and in-depth interviews.
Macrosociology looks at social dynamics across whole societies or large parts of them and often relies on statistical analysis to do so.
Photo Courtesy of Getty
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19. Central Concerns for a 21st-Century Sociologist: Globalization
No social change today is as important as globalization. Globalization is arguably the most important instigator of social change and affects all aspects of the social world.
Globalization is a central issue in sociology as well as the social world.
Globalization is defined by increasingly fluid global flows and the structures that expedite and impede these flows.
Copyright 2014, SAGE Publications, Inc.
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20. Central Concerns for a 21st-Century Sociologist: Globalization
Positives
Greater access to goods, services, and information throughout the world
Negatives
Undesirable things (diseases, illegal drugs, greater inequality & exploitation) flow more easily around the world.
Copyright 2014, SAGE Publications, Inc.
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21. Central Concerns for a 21st-Century Sociologist: Consumption
The process by which people obtain and utilize goods and services
As consumption increased so did the proliferation of credit cards and, predictably, credit card debt.
Consumption and globalization are deeply intertwined.
Copyright 2014, SAGE Publications, Inc.
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22. The McDonaldization of Society
The process by which the rational principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of society and more societies throughout the world.
McDonaldization leads to the creation of rational systems that have 4 defining characteristics:
Efficiency
Calculability
Predictability
Control
Copyright 2014, SAGE Publications, Inc.
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