Sociology (Beginning of semester to Test #1)
The different approaches to research based on anti-positivism or positivism...
Are considered the foundation for the differences found today between qualitative sociology and quantitative sociology.
Manifest functions
Are the consequences of a social process that are sought or anticipated.
In 1838, the Sociology term was reinvented by...
Auguste Comte
Karl Marx rejected...
Auguste Comte's positivism and believed societies grew/changed as result of struggles of different social classes over the means of production. At the time he was developing his theories, "The Industrial Revolution" & "The Rise of Capitalism" which led to great disparities in wealth between owners of the factories/workers.
Three paradigms have come to dominate sociological thinking...
Because they provide useful explanations: structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.
Culture
Can also be described as the product of people in a society
Classic sociological theories vs new sociological theories
Classic are still considered important and current but new build upon the work of their predecessors and add to them.
Emile Durkheim applied Spencer's theory to explain how societies change/survive over time. He believed that society is a...
Complex system of interrelated and interdependent parts that work together to maintain stability and that society is held together by shared values, languages, and symbols.
Social Institutions (government, education, and religion) reflect _____ in their inherent inequalities and help maintain the unequal social structure.
Conflict theory
Sociological Theory Today continued...
Conflict theory then gained prominence, as there was renewed emphasis on institutionalized social inequality. Critical theory, and the particular aspects of feminist theory and critical race theory, focused on creating social change through the application of sociological principles, and the field saw a renewed emphasis on helping ordinary people understand sociology principles, in the form of public sociology.
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
Durkheim helped establish sociology as a formal academic discipline by establishing the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895 and by publishing his Rules of the Sociological Method in 1895. In another important work, Division of Labour in Society, he laid out his theory on how societies transformed from a primitive state into a capitalist, industrial society. He thinks that "people rise to their proper levels in society based on merit." He also believed that sociologists could study objective "social facts". He believed that through such studies it would be possible to determine if a society was "healthy" or "pathological". He saw healthy societies as stable, while pathological societies experienced a breakdown in social norms between individuals and society.
Sociology in the Workplace...
Employers continue to seek people with what are called "transferable skills." This means that they want to hire people whose knowledge and education can be applied in a variety of settings and whose skills will contribute to various tasks. Studying sociology can provide people with this wide knowledge and a skill set that can contribute to many workplaces, including an understanding of social systems and large bureaucracies; the ability to devise and carry out research projects to assess whether a program or policy is working; the ability to collect, read, and analyze statistical information from polls or surveys; the ability to recognize important differences in people's social, cultural, and economic backgrounds; skills in preparing reports and communicating complex ideas; and the capacity for critical thinking about social issues and problems that confront modern society.
Polish-Austrian sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838-1909)
Expanded on Marx's ideas by arguing that war and conquest are the basis of civilizations. He believed that cultural and ethnic conflicts led to states being identified and defined by a dominant group that had power over other groups.
Term Sociology
First created in 1780 by the French essayist, Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes, (1748-1836), in an unpublished manuscript.
Harriet Martineau - (1802-1876)
First woman sociologist - was a writer - addressed wide range of social science issue - early observer of social practices (economics, social class, religion, suicide, government, and women's rights) - her writing career began in 1931 - She wrote a series of stories called "Illustrations of Political Economy" - had an education about economics - first to translate comte's writing from French to English and thereby introduced sociology to English-speaking scholars - credited with the first systematic methodological international comparisons of social institutions in two of her famous sociological works - "Society in America" (1837) and "Retrospect of Western Travel" (1838)
An example of something a sociologist will study...
Food stamps (where it's increasing/decreasing & why)/Different types of households (Single parents or married parents)
Georg Simmel (1858-1918)
Georg was a German art critic who wrote widely on social and political issues. He took an anti-positivism stance and addressed topics such as social conflict, the function of money, individual identity in city life, and the European fear of outsiders. His work focused on the micro-level theories, and it analyzes the dynamics of two-person and three-person groups. His work also emphasized individual culture as the creative capacities of individuals. Simmel's contributions to sociology are not often included in academic histories of the discipline, perhaps overshadowed by his contemporaries: Durkheim, Mead, and Weber.
Karl Marx - (1818-1883)
German Philosopher and economist - in 1848 he and Friedrich Engels (1820-1985) coauthored the communist manifesto - The book is one of the most influential political manuscripts in history also - present's Marx's theory of society which differed from what Auguste Comte proposed.
In the 1930s and 1940s
German philosophers, known as the Frankfurt School, developed critical theory as an elaboration on Marxist principles.
Society
Group of people who live in a defined geographic area and interacts with one another and who share a common culture
Auguste Comte (1798-1857)
He played an important role in development of sociology as a recognized discipline. He studied to be an engineer, but later became a pupil of social philosopher Claude Henri De Rouvroy Comte de Saint Simon (1760-1825). Both men thought that social scientists could study society using the same scientific methods used in natural sciences. Comte believed the laws that governed society, sociologists could address problems such as poor education poverty. He named the scientific study of social patterns positivism.
Max Weber (1864-1920)
He was a prominent sociologist and established a sociology department in Germany at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich in 1919. He wrote on many topics related to sociology including political change in Russia and social forces that affect factory workers. He is known best for his 1904 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The theory that Weber sets forth in this book is still controversial. Some believe that Weber argued that the beliefs of many Protestants, especially Calvinists, led to the creation of capitalism. Others interpret it as simply claiming that the ideologies of capitalism and Protestantism are complementary.
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)
He was an english philosopher - he published "The Study of Sociology" which was the first book with the term "sociology" in the title. He rejected much of Comte's philosophy and Marx's theory of class struggle and his support of communism. Spencer favored a form of government that allowed market forces to control capitalism. His work influenced many early sociologists including Emile Durkheim. (1858-1917)
Functionalism grew out of the writings of English philosopher and biologist...
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)
Max Weber (1864-1920) Continued...
His book, The Nature of Social Action (1922) weber described sociology as striving to "interpret the meaning of social action and thereby give a causal explanation of the way in which action proceeds and the effects it produces. He and other like-minded sociologists proposed a philosophy of anipositivism whereby social researchers would strive for subjectivity as they worked to represent social processes, cultural norms, and societal values. This approach led to some research methods whose aim was not to generalize or predict but to systematically gain an in-depth understanding on social worlds.
Study Patterns
How sociologists view society and what they're interested in
When Elizabeth Eckford tried to enter Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957, she was met by an angry crowd. But she knew she had the law on her side. Three years earlier in the landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education case, the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned twenty-one state laws that allowed blacks and whites to be taught in separate school systems as long as the school systems were "equal."One of the major factors influencing that decision was research conducted by the...
Husband-and-Wife team of sociologists, Kenneth and Mamie Clark
World's First Sociologist
Ibn Khaldun of Tunisia - he wrote about many topics of interest today, and he set a foundation for both modern sociology and economics. (That includes a theory of social conflict, which is a comparison of nomadic/sedentary life, description of political economy and a study connecting a tribe's social cohesion to its capacity for power.)
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) continued
In 1897, Durkheim attempted to demonstrate the effectiveness of his rules of social research when he published a work titled Suicide. Durkheim examined suicide statistics in different police districts to research differences between Catholic and Protestant communities. He also attributed his differences to socioreligious forces rather than to individuals or psychological causes.
Dynamic Equilibrium (later sociologists named this (Parsons))
In a healthy society, all parts work together to maintain stability and that states called...
Ma Tuan-Lin
In the 13th century, she first recognized social dynamics as an underlying component of historical development in his seminal encyclopedia, General Study of Literary Remains
Auguste Comte's philosophy was described in books...
"The Course In Positive Philosophy"(1830-1842) "A General View of Positivism" (1848)
George Herbert Mead (1863-1931)
-was a philosopher & sociologist whose work focused on the ways in which the mind and the self were developed as a result of social processes. -he argued that how an individual comes to view himself or herself is based to a very large extent on interactions with others. He called specific individuals that impacted a person's life significant others and he conceptualized generalized others as the organized and generalized attitude of a social group. Mead's work is closely associated with the symbolic interactionist approach and emphasizes the micro-level of analysis.
Theory
A way to explain different aspects of social interactions and to create a testable proposition proposition (hypothesis) about society.
Functionalism
Also can be called structural-functional theory, it sees society as a structure with interrelated parts designed to meet the biological and social needs of the individuals in that society.
Reification
An error of treating an abstract concept as though it has a real, material existence.
Constructivism
An extension of symbolic interaction theory which proposes that reality is what humans cognitively construct it to be. We develop social constructs based on interactions with others, and those constructs that last over time are those that have meanings which are widely agreed-upon or generally accepted by most within the society. This approach is often used to understand what's defined as deviant within a society. There is no absolute definition of deviance, and different societies have constructed different meanings for deviance, as well as associating different behaviors with deviance.
Durkheim believed
Individuals may make up society, but in order to study society, sociologists have to look beyond individuals to social facts.
Communism
Is an economic system under which there's no private ownership - owned communally/distributed as needed. Marx believed it was a more equitable system than capitalism.
Many sociologists believe that functionalism...
Is no longer useful as a macro-level theory but that it does serve a useful purpose in some mid-level analyses.
Culture
It refers to the groups shared practices, values, and beliefs. It encompasses a group's way of life from routine and everyday interactions to the most important parts of group members lives. It includes everything produced by a society and its rules.
Early 19th century...
It saw great changes with the Industrial Revolution and increased mobility, and new kinds of employment. It was time of great social and political upheaval with the rise of empires that exposed many people to societies/cultures other than their own.
Sociological theory
Its constantly evolving and should never be considered complete.
Thinkers:
John Locke, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes
While ____'s predictions may not have come true in the time frame he predicted, his idea's that social conflict leads to change in society is still one of the major theories used in modern sociology.
Karl Marx
Micro-level theories
Look at very specific relationships between individuals or small groups.
Conflict Theory
Macro - Focuses on the way inequalities contribute to social differences and perpetuate differences in power.
Structural Functionalism
Macro/mid - Focuses on the way each part of society functions together to contribute to the whole.
Symbolic Interactionism
Micro - Focuses on the one-to-one interactions and communications
Criticism
One criticism of the structural-functional theory is that it can't adequately explain social change. Also problematic is the somewhat circular nature of this theory; repetitive behavior patterns are assumed to have a function.
In sociology, a few theories provide broad perspectives that help explain many different aspects of social life, and these are called ______
Paradigms
History of Sociology
Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Khaldun, and Voltaire set the stage for modern sociology
Robert Merton (1910-2003)
Pointed out that social processes often have many functions.
Sociological Theory Today continued...
Postmodern social theory attempts to look at society through an entirely new lens by rejecting previous macro-level attempts to explain social phenomena. Generally considered as gaining acceptance in the late 1970s and early 1980s, postmodern social theory is a micro-level approach that looks at small, local groups and individual reality. Its growth in popularity coincides with the constructivist aspects of symbolic interactionism.
Figuration
Process of simultaneously analyzing the behavior of individuals and the society that shapes that behavior.
Criticism continued...
Research done from this perspective is often scrutinized because of the difficulty of remaining objective. Others criticize the extremely narrow focus on symbolic interaction. Proponents, of course, consider this one of its greatest strengths.
Qualitative Sociology
Seeks to understand human behaviors by learning about it through in-depth interviews, focus groups, and analysis of content sources (like books, magazines, journals, and popular media).
Harriet Martineau - (1802-1876) (PartII)
She found workings of capitalism at odds with the professed moral principals of people in the US - she pointed out the faults with the free enterprise system in which workers were exploited and impoverished while business owners became wealthy.
Mary Wollstonecraft
She wrote about women's conditions in society. She was also the first feminist thinker.
Dysfunctions
Social processes that have undesirable consequences for the operation of society are called...
Herbert Spencer saw the similarities between ____ & ____;
Society & the human body; he argued that just as the various organs of the body work together to keep the body functioning, the various parts of society work together to keep the society functioning.
While the field and it's terminology have grown...
Sociologists still believe in the positive impact of their work.
Micro-Level
Sociologists study small groups/individual interactions
Social Facts
Sociologists study them which are laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and all of the cultural rules that govern social life. (These are the things that may contribute to the changes that are studied)
Macro-Level
Sociologists study trends among and between large groups and societies.
Sociological Imagination
Sociologists use this to study culture, it is the awareness of the relationship between a person's behavior and experience and the wider culture that shaped the person's choices and perceptions - way of seeing our own and other people's behavior in relationship to history and social structure.
Key basis of the sociological perspective
The concept that the individuals and the society are inseparable.
Sociologists study...
The experiences of individuals and how the experiences are shaped by interactions with social groups and society as a whole.
Dramaturgical Analysis
The focus on the importance of symbols in building a society led sociologists like Erving Goffman (1922-1982) to develop a technique called
Karl Marx predicted...
The inequalities of capitalism would become so extreme that workers would eventually revolt. This would lead to the collapse of capitalism which would be replaced by communism.
Sociology
The study of groups and group interactions, societies, and social interactions from small and personal groups to very large groups
Husband-and-Wife team of sociologists, Kenneth and Mamie Clark
Their research showed that segregation was harmful to young black schoolchildren, and the Court found that harm to be unconstitutional.
Sociology Theory Today
These three approaches are still the main foundation of modern sociological theory, but some evolution has been seen. Structural-functionalism was a dominant force after World War II and until the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, sociologists began to feel that structural-functionalism did not sufficiently explain the rapid social changes happening in the United States at that time.
Paradigms
They are philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and the experiments performed in support of them.
Social institutions
They are the parts of society that Spencer referred as the patterns of belief/behaviors that focused on meeting social needs such as government, education, family, healthcare, religion, and the economy.
Quantitative Sociology
Uses statistical methods such as surveys with large numbers of participants.
Comte believed that...
Using scientific methods to reveal laws by which societies/individuals interact would usher in a new "positivist" age of history.
Max Weber (1864-1920) Continued...
Weber believed that it was difficult to use standard scientific methods to accurately predict this behavior of groups as people hoped to do. They argued that the influence of culture on human behavior had to be taken into account. This applied to researchers, who they believed should be aware of how their own cultural biases could influence their research. To deal with this problem, Weber and Dilthey introduced the concept of verstehen, a German word that means to understand in a deep way. In seeking verstehen, outside observers of a social world attempt to understand it from an insider's point of view.
Some individuals and organizations are able to obtain and keep more resources than others and these "______" do what?
Winners & use their power and influence to maintain social institutions. Several theorists suggested variations on this basic theme.
Max Weber...
agreed with Marx but also believed that in addition to economic inequalities, inequalities of political power and social structure cause conflict. Weber noted that different groups were affected differently based on education, race, and gender, and that people's reactions to inequality were moderated by class differences and rates of social mobility, as well as by perceptions about the legitimacy of those in power.
Studies that use the symbolic interactionist perspective
are more likely to use qualitative research methods, such as in- depth interviews or participant observation, because they seek to understand the symbolic worlds in which research subjects live.
Grand Theories
attempt to explain large-scale relationships and answer fundamental questions
Conflict Theory has been criticized...
because it tends to focus on conflict to the exclusion of recognizing stability. Many social structures are extremely stable or have gradually progressed over time rather than changing abruptly as conflict theory would suggest.
German sociologist Georg Simmel (1858-1918)
believed that conflict can help integrate and stabilize a society. He said that intensity of the conflict varies depending on the emotional involvement of the parties, the degree of solidarity within the opposing groups, and the clarity and limited nature of the goals. Simmel also showed that groups work to create internal solidarity, centralize power, and reduce dissent. Resolving conflicts can reduce tension and hostility and can pave the way for future agreements.
Alfred Radcliff-Brown (1881-1955)
defined the function of any recurrent activity as the part it played in social life as a whole and therefore the contribution it makes to social stability and continuity.
The prominent sociologist Peter L. Berger (1929), in his 1963 book Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective
describes a sociologist as "someone concerned with understanding society in a disciplined way." He asserts that sociologists have a natural interest in the monumental moments of people's lives, as well as a fascination with banal, everyday occurrences. Berger also describes the "aha" moment when a sociological theory becomes applicable and understood:
In the 18th century, Age of Enlightenment philosophers...
developed general principles that could be used to explain social life.
Social Solidarity
emphasizes the interdependence between individuals in a society, which allows individuals to feel that they can enhance the lives of others. It is a core principle of collective action and is founded on shared values and beliefs among different groups in society.
Critical Race Theory
grew out of a critical analysis of race and racism from a legal point of view. Critical race theory looks at structural inequality based on white privilege and associated wealth, power, and prestige.
Besides desegregation, sociology...
has played a crucial role in many important social reforms, such as equal opportunity for women in the workplace, improved treatment for individuals with mental handicaps or learning disabilities, increased accessibility and accommodation for people with physical handicaps, the right of native populations to preserve their land and culture, and prison system reforms.
Symbolic Interactionism
is a micro-level theory that focuses on the relationships among individuals within a society. Communication—the exchange of meaning through language and symbols—is believed to be the way in which peoplemake sense of their social worlds. Theorists Herman and Reynolds (1994) note that this perspective sees people as being active in shaping the social world rather than simply being acted upon.
Critical theory
is an expansion of conflict theory and is broader than just sociology, including other social sciences and philosophy. A critical theory attempts to address structural issues causing inequality; it must explain what's wrong in current social reality, identify the people who can make changes, and provide practical goals for social transformation.
George Herbert Mead (1863-1931)
is considered a founder of symbolic interactionism though he never published his work on it. Mead's student, Herbert Blumer, coined the term "symbolic interactionism" and outlined these basic premises: humans interact with things based on meanings ascribed to those things; the ascribed meaning of things comes from our interactions with others and society; the meanings of things are interpreted by a person when dealing with things in specific circumstances. If you love books, for example, a symbolic interactionist might propose that you learned that books are good or important in the interactions you had with family, friends, school, or church; maybe your family had a special reading time each week, getting your library card was treated as a special event, or bedtime stories were associated with warmth and comfort.
Sociology can be exciting because...
it teaches people ways to recognize how they fit into the world and how others perceive them. Looking at themselves and society from a sociological perspective helps people see where they connect to different groups based on the many different ways they classify themselves and how society classifies them in turn. It raises awareness of how those classifications—such as economic and status levels, education, ethnicity, or sexual orientation—affect perceptions.
Conflict theory
looks at society as a competition for limited resources. This perspective is a macro-level approach most identified with the writings of German philosopher and sociologist Karl Marx (1818-1883) who saw society as being made up of individuals in different social classes who must compete for social, material, and political resources such as food, housing, employment, education, and leisure time.
Practice of religion
makes the figuration concept understandable - people experience their religions in a distinctly individual manner, and religion exists in a larger context. An individual's religious practice may be influenced by government dictation/holidays/teachers. These influences underscore the important relationship between individuals practices of religion and social pressures that influences that religious experiment.
Sociology teaches people...
not to accept easy explanations. It teaches them a way to organize their thinking so that they can ask better questions and formulate better answers. It makes people more aware that there are many different kinds of people in the world who do not necessarily think the way they do. It increases their willingness and ability to try to see the world from other people's perspectives. This prepares them to live and work in an increasingly diverse and integrated world.
The social facts serves...
one or more functions within a society.
Janet Saltzman Chafetz (1941-2006)
presented a model of feminist theory that attempts to explain the forces that maintain gender inequality as well as a theory of how such a system can be changed.
Macro-level theories
relate to large-scale issues and large groups of people
The thinkers
responded to what they saw as social ills by writing about topics they hoped would lead to social reform.
Social Facts
the laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and all of the cultural rules that govern social life.
Latent functions
the unsought consequences of a social process. They can be beneficial, neutral, or harmful.
Emile Durkheim believed that...
to study society, a sociologist must look beyond individuals to social facts such as laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashion, and rituals, which all serve to govern social life.
Erving Goffman (1922-1982)
used theater as an analogy for social interaction and recognized that people's interactions showed patterns of cultural "scripts." Because it can be unclear what part a person may play in a given situation, he or she has to improvise his or her role as the situation unfolds.
