Introduction to Sociology and Sociological Theory

Question 1

What is sociology?

Answer 1

The systematic study of social behaviour in human societies
The nature of human life
- many social theorists want to understand the taken for granted nature of social life
Why is it that peple typically act in an orderly routine and generally predictable ways

Question 2

What is society>

Answer 2

It is all about (social) relationships

The scope of society extends as far as the relevant social relationships (Canadian Society)

Question 3

What is micro sociology?

Answer 3

Face to face, individual interactions

Zooming into society with a microscope. What people do when they try to work out a problem in a group

Question 4

What is macro sociology?

Answer 4

Institutions, social organization

Zooming out to look at the big picture. Social structure power bureaucracy

Question 5

What is socioloical imagination?

Answer 5

can help us to see how individual circumstances and events are connected to larger social forces and structures
The ability to link the two levels

Question 6

What is the birth of sociology?

Answer 6

Comes from Europe in the late 19th century
A lot of scientific development happening
Social and political changes happening
Urbanization -> mass migration from rural to cities
- up rooted homes to move to cities where there is not a lot of social institutions

Question 7

How does the french revolution effect sociology?

Answer 7

Powerful are deathly afraid of what mobs might do
Leads to worry and new ways of thinking for people in charge
Have to start thinking about the population
Sociology was invented to deal with all these dramatic problems and worries

Question 8

How was sociology born?

Answer 8

19th-century European scholars were aware that their world was changing rapidly and fundamentally
(assumption was that just like the rest of reality we could solve problems through science)
Society could be understood with the use of reason and scientific study
Believed society could be understood as social laws that are scientifically discoverable like the natural laws of the physical science

Question 9

What is social strucutre?

Answer 9

Patterns of behaviour. How society is organized shapes and constrains our choices. Can be understood through social theory
(strucutre - larger pattern, organization, rules, things, you are born into adn are established)

Question 10

What is agency?

Answer 10

Our capacity to think and act constrained by structure but also able to effect change.
(recognition that we do have choices adn we act
Free will. we cna change strucutre through agency)

Question 11

Emile Durkheim

Answer 11

Formally established sociology as a discipline
Studied individual suicide as separation from social ties
Focused on rates rather than individual cases to understand this activity as an indication of the deeper pathological problem of society

Question 12

What is anomie?

Answer 12

That results when there is a lack of collective consciousness, or no united code of right and wrong. Durkheim worried about what was happening as society moved away from close-knit groups

Question 13

What is strucutral functionalism?

Answer 13

Grew out of Durkheims work
Functionalist theory seek to identify the basic functions that must be fulfilled in all societies
If something exists in a society it must perform a necessary function that is important for the reproduction of society

Question 14

How do institutions function to maintain social order>

Answer 14

Recognize the significance of shared social experience in binding people together

Question 15

Who is Karl Marx?

Answer 15

The most important thing you needed to understand about society was its mode of production - how goods are produced, what social relationships are needed for this to happen
Principally interested in understanding industrial capitalism which was the mode of production of his day in Europe
Exploitation –> surplus
Capitalism reinvests the surplus to expand
Workers alienated from the products of their labour
Tensions at the heart of capitalism will result in class struggle and capitalism downfall

Question 16

Who is Max Weber?

Answer 16

Rise of a rationally organized society
Contemporary society viewed as a shift in power from traditional and charismatic to process of legal-rational authority
Formal rationality
Individuals judged by objective performance
Authority is derived from the positions people occupy, which determines their role
Interpretive approach to theory
-Verstehen: Understanding the meanings carried by actors that lead them to make decisions

Question 17

What is formal rationality? (Max weber)

Answer 17

Calculating most efficient means to achieve a goal

Question 18

Max Weber (emily notes)

Answer 18

( does not agree the most important this is the mode of production. Shifts from rules and traditions to charismatic authority. Bureaucracy important efficient. Does not matter who they are, it is their rank)

Question 19

What is Pierre Bourdieu do?

Answer 19

Pierre Bourdieu redefined webers analysis of modern sociology
Cultural capital ( know how to behave in certain contexts)
Social capital (connections, who you know)

Question 20

What is verstehen?

Answer 20

-Verstehen: Understanding the meanings carried by actors that lead them to make decisions

Question 21

What is symbolic interactionism?

Answer 21

Interpretive approach and grew out of webers verstehen
Microsociology
-focus on the individuals and their interactions
-a bottom-up approach focused on communication
Intersubjectivity
-individuals orient their behaviour based on what they think others think
-ability to stand in other’s shoes increases as we are better socialized. allow us to imagine the roles of others

Question 22

What is conflict theory?

Answer 22

Focus on power: top-down domination and resistance from bottom
The target of rules to fall in line
Power provokes resistance

Question 23

What is feminist sociology?

Answer 23

Subordination of women in a patriarchal society
Grew out of conflict theory
-Classical theory was monopolized by men and reflected a male perspective
Feminism focused on patriarchy to address the resulting bias
Early feminism: demand for equal chance to gain access
Radical ( seeks change in the nature of social relationships, not just equality of rights)
Dorothy SMith: research from the subjectivity of lived experience to take into account the position of poor minority and sexually differentiated women