week 9 Flashcards
sociology
“the science of companions”
- Seldom about individuals
- About groups of people or people
in relation to other people
- Social – always implies other
people
- What we study is social actions
(people actions in relation to other
people, social patterns,
- social institutions (may not have a physical shape but influence our lives – may
be inscribed in the law – example: race and gender à channels our thinking)
- Elective social action – social movements, trade unions, collective workplace
sociologists
Sociologists study the wide variety of social action of people and the social patterns organisations and institutions arising from our collective social action
sociological systems
- Micro systems
◦ Small systems
Families, relationships and individuals - Meso – systems
◦ medium systems (organisations, groups, communities)
◦ things which are organised formally in organisations, groups, and
communities
◦ Grouped around something common - Macro system
◦ Large system
◦ umbrella level
◦ national, global level à economy
Development of sociology alongside changes in society
The enlightenment (19th century)
◦ A body of thought (or a movement) based on rational, secular and scientific explanations developed in the eighteenth century, which challenged explanations of the world based on religion or superstition.
Introduction to sociology as a discipline
What is sociology
‘socio’ derives from Latin socius meaning companion
-logy stems from the Latin logia meaning ‘sayings’
The Latin was derived from the Greek word ‘logos’ which means ‘word’ and ‘legein’ which means to speak
◦ Shift in how people attempted to understand society
◦ Before enlightenment, the text that people refer to
were predominantly religious texts
◦ With enlightenment, people applied scientific
principles from natural science in order to understand the world – moved away from religious or superstitious beliefs
◦ The shift away from religion hasn’t entirely occurred as it is still important today
◦ We need to challenge what we think we know with scientific principles and rational thought
- Questioned the legitimacy of monarchy
- Questioned if it is ordained by God
Time is an important factor in sociological study
Social theory derives from sociological research, it is not fixed, it’s flexible
Good sociology always has a historical element to it
Constructs (race and gender) has history and has changed over time
Outcome of enlightenment - French Revolution
◦ Unequal society:
- Monarchy, taxing peasants, exploiting workers‚
◦ Overthrowing existing structures of France (monarchy)
◦ Building principles: (still guide France today)
- Liberty
- Equality
- Fraternity
◦ Realisation of High levels of inequity in the idea of monarchy
◦ Take away inequality in social relations à feature of the 19th century
Conceptualisations of these principles still guide society today
Industrial revolution
◦ Change in mode of production
- Changed from farming and shifted towards a form of production known as industrial
- The hold of landowners was broken over people (doesn’t mean society is more
equal) – there were new employment opportunities
- Employment opportunities came about but meant that people left rural and moved
to urban areas
- Lead to:
* Overpopulation
* Unsanitary conditions
* Poverty
* Dire housing conditions
- Inequality was between those who owned the factories and those who worked in the factories
Social stratification
The hierarchy of different layers of unequal social classes in society; levels of social distinction or social difference.
◦ These eras showed the importance of social stratification
- Placing people in different layers of unequal social classes in society; levels of
distinction or social difference
- Gives a hierarchy to society
- Occurs according to class/economic/ ability and disability
- Replicated in other forms is social distinction
The need for sociology
◦ Empowering
- Provides a deeper understanding of society
◦ Study human relations in all its complexity (individual - society)
◦ Being an informed and engaged member of society
◦ Transformative
- Questioning the taken for granted
◦ Makes you think more empathetically
Reasons why sociology is an outcome of modernity – need to understand what is happening in society and why is it so unequal
How can one change society for the better – the forefathers, Carl Marx (“we understand the world to change it”)
Sociological perspectives
- Tradition vs science
Sociological perspectives
Auguste Comte
◦ Suggested scientific method to uncover the laws that underline society
◦ There are certain unwritten social laws that underly society
◦ Shapes the way in which we engage with each other
◦ Purpose of sociology is to uncover these, use those principles to change society for the
better/ reform it
Sociological perspectives
Herbert Spencer
◦ Societies are evolving -the most capable and intelligent adapt and survive
◦ These ‘fittest’ members produce a more advanced society
- Aka – social Darwinism
- Inspired by Charles Darwin (evolution)
- Those who survive evolution are the fittest (intelligent, flexible)
- Applied these principles to society
- Those at the top of society are the most intelligent à will bring progress to society and bring advancements
- Has been discounted because he didn’t consider what makes people the most capable (what are the resources, social resources, social constructs)àwhat holds people back
Sociological perspectives
Carl Marx
◦ Proposed radical change – revolution
◦ Society is made up to two opposing classes bourgeoise and proletariats
◦ The nature of society is class struggle
- Answer to Darwinism is capitalism
- His solution is radical change and revolution – throw it out
- What he was fundamentally concerned with is class inequality
- Society is the outcome of class inequality (constant class struggle outcome is
nature of society)
- Whose ideas won between 2 groups
Sociological perspectives
Emile Durkheim
First person to establish sociology as university subject (forefather of this discipline)
◦ His seminal text ‘social facts’ show how social forces affect people’s behaviour
◦ Identified social integration – people with weaker ties are more likely to commit suicide
- Just as there are natural facts of the world, there are also social facts in the world
- Relates to social forces which influences out behaviour
- Distinction between solidarity (people are connected and support each other) and
anomy (anti-human society, people operate as individuals and there is no
connection between people)
- Argues that suicide is the outcome of anomy
* Suicide is still seen as very selfish, very individualistic act (cut off from people) – in the background of such an individualistic act, ties have been broken
* No one act is individual – it is shaped and formed by certain levels of solidarity
- Notion of social facts is not popular today
* Social facts are subject to change and flexible – context and time specific
- His idea that no one is individualised
* Each individual carries with them what are happening in their society
Sociological perspectives
Max Weber
◦ Religious ideas brought about capitalism
◦ Protestants unlike the Catholics believed in predestination, searched for signs of the
elect
◦ Applied frugality, ascetism – Protestant ethic – to make more money (spirit of
capitalism)
- Engaged with capitalism but unlike Marx
- Despite enlightenment, we still haven’t totally cut off religious ties
- Protestant ethic : Calvinistic churches à no matter what happens on earth, you will
get your due in the after life
- Protestant ethic is what makes people ideal capitalism – encourages spirit of
capitalism
Sociological Imagination - C. Wright Mills (1959)
Social Facts
◦ Ideas, feelings and ways of behaving ‘that possess the remarkable property of existing outside the consciousness of the individual” – Durkhein
- Durkheim – suicide – individual but also shows how people were cut off from other
people
- Have power even if we can’t determine if it is
◦ They also have a strong power even when undetected and exert a social force
- Flexible facts because they are created amongst people
- Social fact is the things when there is no law or scientific but is found in society
- Social agreement that influences our behaviour
Sociological Imagination - C. Wright Mills (1959)
Social forces
◦ Influences or pressurizes
◦ Anything humans create that influence or pressure people to interact, behave, respond
or think in certain ways
◦ Shape and change any human activity which people think about themselves and other,
and the things they do to and with one another
Social facts have a strong social force
◦ Influence way we think of other people (race, gender, sex) and influence how we think of ourselves
Quotes
◦ “The vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society.” It is the ability to see things socially and how they interact and influence each other”
◦ “The first fruit of this imagination is the idea that the individual can understand her own experience and gauge her own fate only by locating herself within her period, that she can know her own chances in life only by becoming aware of those of all individuals in her circumstances”
◦ “That is why it is by means of the SI that men and women now hope to grasp what is going on in the world, and to understand what is happening in themselves ad minute points of the intersections of biography and history within society
- Mills was discontented with the role in which sociologists merely recording the way people behaved and how it was influenced by social facts and forces
- Argues from critical point
Need to look beyond the surface – sociological imagination What is it
o Vividawarenessoftherelationshipbetweenexperienceandthewider society
o Itistheabilitytoseethingssociallyandhowtheyinteractandinfluence each other
- Idea that we can understand fate in particular historical period
- Explain why we experience certain things when we look at broader perspective
- What force you can have on your own life if you understand your circumstances
◦ What happens in a person’s life (Biography) is merely a minute intersection with the history that unfolds in the background even though you are an agent of history
◦ Mills looks at unemployment – way of explaining how sociological imagination works (example)
