Chapter 1 Slides Flashcards
Who was Ibn Khaldun?
He was a precursor to sociology before sociology existed
What did Ibn Khaldun look at and what questions did he ask?
He looked at structures in society in his time and the patterns of power he witnessed there. He asked questions like who gets to make decisions in society and who has power over others and how.
When was Sociology born and where?
More formally in the 1700s in Europe out of the French Revolution
Why did Sociology become born out of the French Revolution?
France was changing rapidly and the enlightenment and industrial revolution was underway. Though was becoming the basis for knowledge and authority instead of religion
Who is referred to as the father of Sociology?
Comte
What did Comte believe?
Science can be used to understand social change
What happened in Sociology from the 20th to 21st century?
There is a shift from the presence of disciplinary boundaries to a blurring and blending of these boundaries. Sociology becomes more closely related to other disciplines like psychology and anthropology
What is Post Disciplinarity?
When boundaries between social disciplines have blurred
What can Post-disciplinarity allow for?
Sex, our thought processes, and social structures can now be approached through a wide array of disciplines
What are the two changes brought about by the 21st century?
Post-disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity
What is Interdisciplinarity?
Working together to understand a social phenomenon
What are some examples if Interdisciplinarity?
Family Studies
Gender Studies
Where they don’t necessarily restrict themselves to working within a specific disciplinary boundaries
What is Sociology?
Sociology is the systematic study of society using the Sociological Imagination
What is the Sociological Imagination?
The ability to perceive interconnections between individual experiences and lager sociocultural forces
What is Micro level?
Individual experiences
What is Macro level?
Sociocultural forces
What is Definition 2 of the Sociological Imagination?
The cognitive ability we develop to think about micro individual experiences and larger macro forces as they relate to one another
Who coined the idea of Sociocultural forces?
C. Wright Mills
Who is the Sociological Imagination for?
It isn’t just for academics but for everyone who is part of society
What are the 2 important products of the book of Sociological Imagination?
The concepts of personal troubles and public issues
What did Mills suggest about Personal Troubles?
Personal troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of his immediate relations with others. They have to do with those limited areas of social life of which he is directly and personally aware.
What do Public issues have to do with according to Mills?
Matters that transcend these local environments of the individual and range of his inner life. They have to do with the organizations of many such milieu into the institutions of society as whole, with the ways in which various milieu overlap and interpenetrate to form the large structure of social and historical life. Some values cherished by public’s us felt to be threatened
What do sociologists study?
The interconnections between the micro (individual) and the macro (broader, zoomed out, structural levels)
What is important to note about the macro and micro?
It is bi direction and something on the micro level can influences the macro level and vice versa
What is agency?
The Capacity to make choices fee from society
What are Life Chances?
The opportunities that an individual has in life, based on various factors including stratification, inequality, race, ethnicity, gender
What are Norms?
Society’s expectations for how we are supposed to think, look and act.
What does it mean to look for the strange in the familiar?
Examining larger social forces that have influenced a choice
What are the tools we use to build our Sociological Imagination?
Empirical Research methods
Sociological theorizing
Critical thinking