Chapter 1- Lecture Flashcards
What is sociology?
Sociology is the systematic study of human groups and their interactions.
What is the sociological perspective?
Refers to the unique way in which sociologists see our world and can dissect the dynamic relationships between individuals and the larger social network in which we all live.
What are some examples of what we can use the sociological perspective to understand?
- Drinking and driving
- Texting and driving
- How we handle technology
How can we use the sociological perspective with regards to technology (what are some of the questions we can ask)?
- How we handle our technology in society
- Is technology the boss of us now
- Social inability to handle our technology
- Robbing us of our autonomy
Whose idea is the sociological imagination?
Charles Wright Mills
What is the sociological imagination?
Developing an appreciation of how individual challenges are influenced by larger social forces.
What are personal troubles? Examples?
- Result from individual challenges
- Antidepressant use in Canada
What are social issues?
Caused by larger social factors
What does quality of mind refer to?
One’s ability to look beyond personal circumstance and into social context
What is the trick with personal troubles and social issues?
The trick is in understanding how these personal troubles may indeed be due to larger social issues.
What does the sociological imagine refer to?
Peoples “private troubles” that are related to “public issues”
What are the three components of the sociological imagination?
1) Biography
2) History
3) Social Structure
What is biography?
The nature of “human nature” in a society; what kind of people are in a particular society, an individual’s personal story
-Are your problems related to the person you were born as?
What is history?
How a society came to be and how it is changing and how history is being made in it, the historical background that affects who you are, how you grew up
-international vs. Canadian students
What is social structure?
How various institutional orders in a society operate, which ones are dominant, how they are held together, how they might be changing, a network of relatively stable opportunities and constraints influencing our individual behaviours
- things that keep our society glued together
- Institutions
- Ex. university, religions, medical reality (one health region), prisons, politics (government)
What does the sociological imagine bring about?
Awareness of all people in all ranks of society and with all sorts of problems and that using a sociological imagination can lead to social change.
What is the system of socioeconomic stratification (e.g., the class structure), social institutions, or, other patterned relations between large social groups that is the structure of social network ties between individuals or organizations?
Social structure
What is domestic violence rising with economic downturn and a drop in divorce rates an example of?
How personal troubles can be related to larger social issues
What is social organization based on established patterns of social interaction between different relationships (such as those between parents and children, teachers and students, employers and employees), that is regulated through accepted norms and shared values?
Social structure
What does agency refer to ?
The idea that each of us has, to some extent, the ability to alter our socially constructed lives
-Capacity to make decisions for yourself
What is structure?
The relatively stable opportunities and constraints influencing our individual behaviours.
-Ex. married by a priest or pastor (What are you responding to? A world that values religious control.)