sociology. what does society look like? what is sociology? levels of analysis the sociological...

The Sociological Perspective

Sociology

What does society look like?

What is sociology?

Levels of Analysis

The Sociological Perspective

Starting your sociological journey

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Lesson Outline

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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Cool Insights from Sociology

Death… Related to society? Of course!

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Society Influences You

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Baby Names

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Names that have gained the most popularity, 2004 – 2010

...Or, the names I’ll begin seeing all the time in 2022-2028

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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What Does Society Look Like?

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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Meaning through Interaction

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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Society

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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The Social Sciences

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How Sociology fits in

Sociology is the systematic or scientific study of human society and social behavior, from large-scale institutions and mass culture to small groups and individual interactions.

Sociology is also the study of reifications, or social constructions.

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What is 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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Sociology

We can study society from different levels:

Microsociology is the level of analysis that studies face-to-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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Levels of Analysis

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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Levels of Analysis (cont)

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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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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How We Use Levels of Analysis

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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Levels of Analysis (cont)

Qualitative research works with non-numerical data such as texts, field-notes, 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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Levels of Analysis (cont)

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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The Sociological Imagination

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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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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The Sociological Perspective

In small groups:

How would you explain the following social problems using the sociological imagination/perspective?◦ Obesity◦ Homelessness/Poverty◦ Unemployment◦ Marriage◦ The metropolis ◦ War

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Using the Sociological Perspective

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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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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The Sociological Perspective (cont)

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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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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Starting Your Sociological Journey

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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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Take Away Points