What is Sociology?
• Sociology is the ―systematic and scientific study
of human behavior, social groups, and society‖
• Basic insights
– Who we are is affected by the groups we belong to
– Interaction takes place in patterned ways
Two questions
• Why do people behave the way they do?
• Why are their social situations the way they are?
(Coser et al. 1991:4)
Sociology as a science
• ―systematic methods to study the social
and natural worlds and the knowledge
obtained by those methods‖ (Henslin 2007b:3)
• Built on the logic of correlation (cause and
effect) explanations
• Social Sciences: Anthropology;
Economics; Political Science; Psychology
Sociological Perspective
• Seeing the general in the particular
• Seeing the strange in the familiar
• A collective view beyond the individual
view
• Peter Berger (1963:23)
– ―the first wisdom of sociology is this—
things are not what they seem…Social
reality turns out to have many layers of
meaning.‖
Sociological Imagination:
(Mills 1959 [2000])
• Sociological Imagination: ―...the vivid
awareness of the relationship between
experience and the wider society.‖
• The sociological imagination helps us to
grasp the relationship between history
and biography
– links between history and biography
– links between public issues and personal
troubles
Origins of Sociology
• The Enlightenment
• A New Industrial Economy
• The Growth of Cities
• Political Change
• A New Awareness of Society
European Beginnings
• Two goals of early European social
philosophers and sociologists
– understand and explain how and why
societies endured—to understand the
aspect of order and stability
– what caused societies to change and
what shaped the nature of that change
Early Sociologists
• Auguste Comte • Emile Durkheim
– Positivism; Father of – Sociology as a
Sociology discipline
• Herbert Spencer – Study Social Facts
– Social Darwinism – Suicide: group
integration
• Karl Marx
– Bourgeoisie & • Georg Simmel
proletariat – Importance of
– Society driven by interaction and role of
economic forces social types
• Max Weber • Harriet Martineau
– Verstehen – Work was ignored but
published before
– Importance of values Weber and Durkheim
– Translated Comte
Seeing the General in the Particular
RATE OF DEATH BY SUICIDE
20
20
18
18
16
16
14
14
12
12
10
10 20.2 8
8
6
6 10.9 12.4
4
4
6.2 2
2 4.9
1.9 0
0
African Americans Whites
By Race and Sex PER 100,000 PERSONS
Males Both Sexes Females
U.S. Bureau of the Census
Sociology in North America
Jane Addams
(1860-1935) and
Social Reform
W.E.B. Du Bois
(1868-1963) and
Race Relations
Sociology in North America
• 1940s - Talcott
Parsons and social
theory emphasis
• 1950s – C. Wright
Mills return to social
reform
The Sociological Imagination
• took issue with American sociological practice
in the fifties
• ‗nowadays men often feel that their private lives
are a series of traps‘
• ‗their visions and their powers are limited to the
close-up scenes of job, family [and]
neighborhood‘
• "neither the life of an individual nor the history
of a society can be understood without
understanding both, we need to develop a way
of understanding the interaction between
individual lives and society.‖
Sociological Theory
• Macro-sociology – • Micro-sociology –
study of society as a study of individuals
whole within society
• society shapes
individuals
• positivism
• perspectives
– consensus
(Functionalism)
– conflict (Marxism)
Major Theoretical Perspectives:
Functionalism
• How is social order maintained?
• Subsystems/institutions have functions;
mutually interdependent
• Concern for social order, stability, and
integration
• What function does this play?
• Manifest and Latent functions
• Dysfunctions
• Social change occurs through evolution
Major Theoretical Perspective:
Conflict/Marxism
• How is society organized and who benefits
from this?
• Social life is characterized by conflict over
power and resources
• Social change comes from conflict
• Marxism focuses on how people organize
themselves to satisfy their material needs
Sociological Theory
• Macro-sociology – • Micro-sociology –
study of society as a study of individuals
whole within society
• society shapes • individuals create
individuals society
• positivism • social construction of
• perspectives reality
– consensus • perspective
(Functionalism) – Symbolic
– conflict (Marxism) Interactionism
Major Theoretical Perspective
Symbolic Interactionism
• How, and in what way, do people interpret
and negotiate their surroundings?
• Key assumptions:
– People act toward things based on meanings
– People give meanings to things based on
interactions with others
– Meanings change as relationships change
Schools of Symbolic Interactionism
Chicago School Iowa School
• individual is subjective & • generalizable & predictable
unpredictable • adherence to roles; create
• constructing & meaning but not the roles
reconstructing our social themselves
roles • stable, predictable, &
controllable networks of
• changing & negotiating statuses and roles
statuses & roles • empirical methods
• participant observation & • deductive theorizing with
ethnographic methods prediction & controls of
• explanatory & investigative social phenomena
theorizing
Major Theoretical Perspectives
Theory View of Society
Functionalism Composed of interrelated parts that
work together to maintain stability.
Conflict Society is characterized by social
inequality; social life is a struggle for
scarce resources.
Symbolic Interactionism Behavior is learned in interaction with
other people.
•Which one is best?
•Why did SI begin in US?
Max Weber and social action
• subjective meaning that humans attach to
their actions
• believed more and more of our behavior
was being guided by zweckrational
• modern society shift in motivation
• based on structural and historical forces.
Ways of knowing –
Kinds of “Truth”
• Belief or faith
– Knowing without
empirical evidence
• Expert testimony
• Simple agreement
• Science
– Logical system based
on direct, systematic
observation
Major Types of Research
• Quantitative research focuses on data
that can be measured numerically
(comparing rates of suicide, for example).
• Qualitative research focuses on
interpretive description rather than
statistics to analyze underlying meanings
and patterns of social relationships.
Sociological Research
• Research Model: 4 broad steps
– formulating a research question
– collecting data
– analyzing the data
– share results with peers
Deductive and Inductive Logical Thought
Variables
• Types of variables
– Independent: the variable that causes the change
– Dependent: the variable that changes (it’s value
depends upon the independent variable)
• Correlation
– A relationship by which two or more variables
change together
• Cause and effect
– A relationship in which change in one variable
causes change in another
• Spurious correlation
– An apparent, though false, relationship between two
or more variables caused by some other variable
Correlation Does Not Mean Causation
• Conditions for cause and effect to be
considered
– Correlation
– Time
– Correlation is not spurious
• Storks and babies
• Ice cream consumption and crime
• Music lessons and high SAT scores
• Web usage and tolerance (2000 GSS)
Who we study
– Population
• The entire group of people who are the
focus of the research
– Sample
• The part of the population that
represents the whole
– Random Sample
• Drawing a sample from a population so
that every element of the population has
an equal chance of being selected
Research Methods:
Survey Research
• Describes a population without
interviewing each individual.
• Able to gather data on large numbers of
people at a lower cost
• Standardized questions force
respondents into categories.
• Relies on self-reported information, and
some people may not be truthful.
Research Methods:
Analysis of Existing Data
• Also known as secondary analysis
• Less cost in collection of data
• You have to rely on validity and
ethics of someone else
• Sometimes data does not ―fit‖ well
with research question
• Examples: NCVS, UCR/NIBRS,
Census, GSS & NORC
Research Methods:
Experiments
• Study the impact of certain variables on
subjects‘ attitudes or behavior.
• Designed to create ―real-life‖ situations.
• Used to demonstrate a cause-and-effect
relationship between variables.
• Some behavior is not testable in this way
• Artificial environment
Research Methods:
Field Research/Ethnographic
• Study of social life in its natural setting.
• Observing and interviewing people where
they live, work, and play.
• Generates observations that are best
described verbally rather than
numerically.
• Subject to interpretation
• Danger of going ―native‖
Ethical Guidelines for Research
• Must strive to be technically competent &
fair-minded
• Must disclose findings in full without omitting
significant data & be willing to share their
data
• Must protect the safety, rights and privacy of
subjects
– Brajuha research project
• Must obtain informed consent-- subjects are
aware of risks and responsibilities and agree
– Humphrey Tearoom Trade
• Must disclose all sources of funding & avoid
conflicts of interest
• Must demonstrate cultural and gender
sensitivity
Limitations of Scientific Sociology
• Human behavior is too complex to predict
precisely any individual’s actions
• The mere presence of the researcher may
affect the behavior being studied
– Hawthorne Effect
• Social patterns change
• Sociologists are part of the world they study
making value-free research difficult