Lecture 1 - Introduction to Sociology & Sociological Theory Flashcards
What is Sociology?
“The systematic study of social behaviour in human societies”
What is the society all about?
Relationships
What is Microsociology?
Face-to-face individual interactions
What is Macrosociology?
Institutions, social organizations, corporations, bureaucracy
What is the “Social Imagination?”
How individual circumstances and events are connected to larger social forces and structures
Who had the first application of the method of science to the study of human history?
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
What is Social Structure?
Patterns of behaviour. How society is organized. Shapes and constrains our choices
What is Agency?
Our capacity to think and act. Constrained by structure, but also able to effect change
- We do have choices - we are actors and can actually change social structure
What did Emile Durkheim do?
Formally established sociology as a discipline
- Studied individual suicide as separation from social ties
What is Anomie?
What results when there is a lack of collective consciousness, or no united code of right and wrong.
What grew out of Durkheim’s work?
Structural functionalism - identify the basic functions that must be fulfilled in all societies
What was Karl Marx’s most important thing to know?
The most important thing you need to understand about society was its “mode of production” - how goods are produced, what social relationships are needed for this to happen
- Industrial Capitalization
What grew out of Max Weber’s work?
Rise of a rationally organized society.
- Formal rationality - calculating most efficient means to achieve a goal
What is Verstehen?
Understanding the meanings carried by actors that lead them to make decisions
What is intersubjectivity?
Individuals orient their behaviour based on what they think (subjectively) others think
