1. Introductory Sociology Soc. 101
Chapter 1:
Sociology and the Real World

2. Overview Asking the Big Questions What is Sociology?
What Does Society Look Like?
Levels of Analysis
The Sociological Perspective
Starting Your Sociological Journey

3. Asking the Big Questions
Understanding social life
The role of superstition, myth, religion and tradition
The difference between sociology and common sense understandings of the world

5. The Origins of Sociology
The emergence of social sciences (19th Century)
Borrowing from the natural sciences
Applying the scientific method to the study of the social world
Sociology is a relatively recent or modern discipline
Overlap between sociology and other social science disciplines

7. What is Sociology? The study of society
The systematic/scientific study of human society and social behavior
from large-scale institutions and mass culture to small groups and individual interactions
The study of “people doing things together” (Howard Becker)

8. Howard Becker

9. The fundamental premise of sociology:
Humans are
social animals

11. How Sociology is Organized LEVELS OF ANALYSIS
MACRO
Large-scale patterns
Political, economic, cultural and other social institutions
“Top-Down” approach
MICRO
Small groups and interaction
Everyday life, group membership and identity
“Bottom-Up” approach

15. Studies on Power and Gender
MACRO
Christine Williams
Women in male-dominated occupations
Glass ceiling
Men in female-dominated occupations
Glass escalator
MICRO
Pam Fishman
Male–female relationships through conversation
women ask 3x as many questions
Because they do not expect to get a response by simply making a statement

16. The Sociological Perspective

17. “Invitation to Sociology” by Peter Berger
What makes a good social thinker?
Passionate interest in the world of human affairs
Intense, curious and daring in the pursuit of knowledge
Cares about issues of ultimate importance to humanity
As well as the most mundane occurrences of everyday life

18. CULTURE SHOCK We are like “fish in water”
How to see the world in which we are immersed
A sense of disorientation that occurs when one enters a radically new social or cultural environment
The impact of a new place on outsiders or foreigners
Make the familiar strange
Example from the movie “Cast Away”

22. “BEGINNER’S MIND” From Zen Buddhist tradition
Adapted to sociology by Bernard McGrane
Contrast with “expert’s mind”
Filled with facts, assumptions, preconceptions, projections and opinions
“Discovery is not the seeing of a new thing, but rather a new way of seeing things”

23. “The Promise” by C. Wright Mills
“Sociological Imagination”

24. C. Wright Mills

25. The Sociological Imagination
The link between personal life experience and broader social forces
Mutual influence / interdependence
How society shapes individuals
How individuals shape society

26. The sociological imagination helps make a distinction between:
the “personal troubles of milieu” and the “public issues of social structure.”

27. The intersection between biography and history
Personal
Individual
Private
Social
Collective
Public

28. SOCIOLOGICAL VARIABLES Which of these helps to define you?
History
Nationality
Culture
Politics
Economics
Social Class
Religion
Race/Ethnicity
Sex/Gender
Education
Family

29. Starting Your Sociological Journey

30. Famous Sociology Majors

31. Why sociology is so radical
Sociologists must:
question everything
look at assumptions
uncover thoughts and beliefs
focus on the overlooked
reinterpret understandings

33. Focus Throughout Textbook
Sociology and Everyday Life
Contemporary American Society
The U.S. in Global Perspective
The Mass Media and Popular Culture