introduction to sociology and the sociological imagination

8/14/2019 Introduction to Sociology and the Sociological Imagination

1/27

An overviewPrepared by John N. Abletis

Department of Sociology, PUP


2/27

the study of societyand social interactionstaking place within it

the study of social facts

the study of social structures the study of social processes

the queen of the social sciences

Research areas in Sociology [Fields ofSpecialization]

among social scientists and cultural workers,sociologists are the more frequent and vivid in

displaying the sociological imagination

Sociology

Our Social World Model


3/27


4/27

Society and Culture

Societies are self-perpetuating groups of peoplewho occupy a given territory and interact with oneanother on the basis of shared culture (Bryjak &Soroka, 2001, p. 65)

Cultureis a peoples way of life or social heritageand includes values, norms, institutions, andartifacts that are passed from generation togeneration by learning alone (Ibid, p. 31)

Sociocultural System The field of culture is the primary concern of

Anthropology, yet the experience of sociologicaldiscovery could be described as culture shock

minus geographical displacement (Berger, 1963,


5/27


6/27

Social Processes

actions taken by people in social units.

Processes keep the social world working

(Ballantine & Roberts, 2011, p. 20)

to understand a social unit we mustconsider the structure and processes within

the unit as well as the interaction with the

surrounding environment. No matter what

social unit the sociologist studies, the unit

cannot be understood without considering the

interaction of that unit with its environment.

(Ibid)


7/27

Social Institutions

[They] are orderly, enduring, and established

ways of arranging human behavior and doing

things. Social relationships in institutions are

structured for the purpose of performing sometask(s) and accomplishing some specific goal.

(Bryjak & Soroka, 2001, p. 193)

Family

Education Religion

State (Polity) [primary concern of Political Science]

Economy [primary concern of Economics]

Mass Media [primary concern of Media Studies]


8/27

Social Facts

they consist of manners of acting, thinking, andfeelingexternalto the individual, which areinvested with a coercivepower by virtue of whichthey exercise control over him. Emile Durkheim

(1895, p. 52)

We are located in society not only in spacebut intime. Our society is a historical entity that extendstemporally beyond any individual biography.Society antedates us and it will survive us. It wasthere before we were born and it will be there afterwe are dead. Our lives are but episodes in its

majestic march through time. In sum, society is the


9/27

Research Areas in Sociology

According to the International Sociological

Association, the following are the primary

research areas of sociologists worldwide:

AgingAgriculture and Food

Alienation Theory and Research

Armed Forces and Conflict Resolution

Arts

Biography and Society

Body in the Social Sciences

Childhood


10/27


Clinical Sociology

Communication, Knowledge and Culture

Community Research

Comparative Sociology

Conceptual and Terminological Analysis

Deviance and Social Control

Disasters Economy and Society

Education

Environment and Society

Family Research


11/27


Futures Research

Health

History of Sociology

Housing and Built Environment Labor Movements

Language and Society

Law Leisure

Logic and Methodology

Mental Health and Illness

Migration


12/27


Organization

Participation, Organizational Democracy and Self-

Management

Political Sociology Population

Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policty

Professional Groups

Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations

Rational Choice

Regional and Urban Development

Religion


13/27


Science and Technology

Social Classes and Social Movements

Social Movements, Collective Action and Social

Change Social Psychology

Social Indicators

Social Transformations and Sociology of

Development

Sociocybernetics

Sociotechnics, Sociological Practice

Sport


14/27


Tourism, Internationl

Women in Society

Work

Youth

source: http://www.isa-sociology.org/rc.htm


15/27

Sociological Imagination

the quality of mind essential tograsp the interplay of man and society,of biography and history, of self andworld. C. Wright Mills (1959, p. 10)

personal troubles vs. public issues It is now the social scientists foremost

political and intellectual task to makeclear the elements of contemporaryuneasinessand indifference. (Ibid, p.20)

By such means the personaluneasiness of individuals is focusedupon explicit troubles and the

indifference of publics is transformedinto involment with public issues. (Ibid,


16/27


Three sorts of questions consistently asked by

classical social analysts:

What is the structure of this particular

society as a whole? What are itsessential components, and how are they

related to one another? How does it

differ from other varieties of socialorder? Within it, what is the meaning of

any particular feature for its continuance

and for its change? (p. 13)


17/27


Where does this society stand in human

history? What are the mechanics by which

it is changing? What is its place within and

its meaning for the development ofhumanity as a whole? How does any

particular feature we are examining affect,

and how is it affected by, the historicalperiod in which it moves? And this

periodwhat are its essential features?

How does it differ from other periods? -


18/27


What varieties of men and women now

prevail in this society and in this period?

And what varieties are coming to prevail?

In what ways are they selected andformed, liberated and repressed, made

sensitive and blunted? What kinds of

human nature are revealed in theconduct and character we observe in this

society in this period? And what is the

meaning for human nature of each and


19/27

Grand Theory

To be aware of the idea of social structure and

to use it with sensibility is to be capable of

tracing such linkages among a great variety of

milieux. To be able to do that is to possess thesociological imagination. (p. 17)

[T]hat every self-conscious thinker must at all

times be aware ofand hence be able to

controlthe levels of abstraction on which he

is working. The capacity to shuttle between

levels of abstraction, with ease and with clarity,

is a signal mark of the imaginative and


20/27

Methodological Inhibition

But no method, as such [natural scientific

method/statistics/positivism], should be used to

delimit the problems we take up, if for no other

reason than that the most interesting and difficultissues of methodusually begin where established

techniques do not apply. (p. 83)

If the problems upon which one is at work are

readily amenable to statistical procedures, oneshould always try to use them... No one, however,

need accept such procedures, when generalized,

as the only procedure available. Certainly no one

need accept this model as a total canon. It is not


21/27

Use of Method and Theory

Method has to do, first of all, with how to ask andanswer questions with some assurance that theanswers are more or less durable. Theory has to do,with paying close attention to the words one is using,

especially their degree of generality and their logicalrelations. The primary purpose of both is clarity ofconception and economy of procedure, and mostimportantly just now the release rather than therestriction of the sociological imagination. (p. 135)

For the classic social scientist, neither method northeory is an autonomous domain; methods aremethods for some range of problems; theories aretheories of some range of phenomena... that he must

be very well acquainted in a substantive way with thestate of knowled e in the area with which the studies


22/27

Use of Method and Theory

Serious attention should be paid to general discussion ofmethodology only when they are in direct reference to actualwork... But neither Method nor Theory alone can be taken aspart of the actual work of the social studies. (p. 136)

Classic social science... Neither builds up from microscopic

study nor deduces down from conceptual elaboration. Itspractitioners try to build and to deduce at the same time, in thesame process of study, and to do so by means of adequateformulation and reformulation of problems and of their adequatesolutions. To practise such a policy... is to take up substantiveproblems on the historical level of reality; to state these

problems in terms appropriate to them; and then no matter howhigh the flight of theory, no matter how painstaking the crawlamong detail, in the end of each completed act of study, to statethe solution in the macroscopic terms of the problem... Thecharacter of these problems limits and suggests the methodsand the conceptions that are used and how they are used.

Controversy over different views of methodology and theoryisrobabl carried on in close and continuous relation with


23/27

Mills on Academic

Specialization

As he comes to have a genuine sense ofsignificant problems and to be passionatelyconcerned with solving them, he is oftenforced to master ideas and methods thathappen to have arisen within one or another ofthese several disciplines. To him no socialscience specialty will seem in any intellectuallysignificant sense a closed world.He alsocomes to realize that he is in fact practising thesocial science, rather than any one of thesocial sciences, and that this is so no matterwhat particular area of social lie he is mostinterested in studying. (p. 157)


24/27

On Politics

In common with most other people, he does feelthat he stands outside the major history-makingdecisions of this period; at the same time heknows that he is among those who take many of

the consequences of these decisions. That is onemajor reason why to the extent that he is aware ofwhat he is doing, he becomes an explicitly politicalman. No one is outside society; the question iswhere each stands within it. (p. 204)

In a world of widely communicated nonsense, anystatement of fact is of political and moralsignificant. All social scientists, by the fact of theirexistence, are involved in the struggle betweenenlightenment and obscurantism. In such a world

as ours, to practise social science is, first of all, to


25/27

Note about the term

sociological I hope my colleagues will accept the term sociological imagination.

Political scientists who have read my manuscript suggest thepolitical imagination; anthropologists, the anthropologicalimaginationand so on. The term matters less than the idea, which Ihope will become clear in the course of this book. By use of it, I donot of course want to suggest merely the academic discipline of

sociology. Much of what the phrase means to me is not at allexpressed by sociologist.In England, for example, sociology as anacademic discipline is still somewhat marginal, yet in much English

journalism, fiction, and above all history, the sociological imaginationis very well developed indeed. The case is similar for France: boththe confusion and the audacity of French reflection since the SecondWorld War rest upon its feeling for the sociological features of mansfate in our time, yet these trends are carried by men of lettersrather than by professional sociologists. Nevertheless, I usesociological imagination because: (1) every cobbler thinksleather is the only thing, and for better or worse, I am asociologist; (2) I do believe that historically the quality of mindhas been more frequently and more vividly displayed by classic

sociologists than by other social scientists; (3) since I am goingto examine critically a number of curious sociological schools, I need


26/27


27/27

References

Ballantine, J. H. & Roberts, K. A. (2011). Our SocialWorld: Introduction to Sociology, 3rded., CA: PineForge Press

Berger, P. (1963). Invitation to Sociology, NY: Double

Day Bryjak, G. J. & Soroka, M. P. (2001). Sociology:

Changing Societies in a Diverse World, 4thed., MA:Allyn and Bacon

Durkheim, E. (1895). The Rules of SociologicalMethod [Excerpts]. Retrieved April 18, 2012 from

http://durkheim.uchicago.edu/Summaries/rules.html

International Sociological Association (n.d.). Research

Committees Retrieved April 18 2012 fromhtt // i i l / ht

introduction to sociology and the sociological imagination

Documents