Unit 1

• What is sociology?


  The systematic study of society, using the sociological imagination.
• Sociologist study the difference between the micro and the macro.

  micro - individual experiences and personal choice

  macro - Broader social choices like life chances
• Personal choices - what you choose to wear to school

  Family and friends - parents not allowing you to wear certain things to school

  Life chances (things born into)- Where you live (big city vs rural)

  Social norms (effects everyone regardless of like chances)- what cloths are determined to be appropriate in different settings (50 years ago you would wear suits to university)
• Sociological imagination- the ability to perceive the interconnections between individual experience and larger social forces
• Empirical research methods:

  • reliable knowledge is the necessary foundation for social action
  • Direct observation - verifiable knowledge
• Sociological theorizing:

  • theory - a guide for how to view the world and used that to explain what you see.

  Positivist - macro approach

  • Emphasizes explanations and productions
  • Explains relationships through variation
  • asks what is happening

  Interpretive - micro approach

  • Focuses on the ways people come to understand themselves, and the world around them
  • socially constructed though culture
  • asks what does it mean

  Critical - macro and micro approach

  • explores the role powers play in society
  • Knowledge is toed to emancipation
  • Asks who has power
• Norms - societies expectations for how we are supposed to act, think, and look
• Normative- Behaviors, appearances and thoughts that correspond to societies norms
• Micro level - the level that focuses on individual experiences and choices

  
  

  Macro level - the level that focuses' on broader social forces
• Agency - peoples ability to make choices that then effect others around them and the society in which thy live in
• Sociological imagination - being able to see the connections between individual experiences and the larger social forces
• Colonialism - when one nation gets control over another nation in a different part of the world
• Colonization - when colonizers set up communities in their colonies and exploit the indigenous people
• Social statistics - forms of social organizations
• Social dynamics - processes of social change
• Empirical methods - data collection that produces verifiable connections and is carries out using systematic procedures
• Classical sociological theories - theories developed in the early years of sociology and form the foundation for newer theories
• Contenporary theories - theories developed since the 20th century
• Manifest functions - an intended functions of one of societies structures
• Values - collective ideas of what is considered wrong or right
• Latent dysfunction - an unintended function of one of societies functions
• Social facts - observable social phenomena external to individuals that experience power over them
• Material social facts - social facts that have tangible reality
• Non-material facts - social facts that are not tangible
• Mechanical solidarity - the social bonds that happened preindustrial societies that are based on similarities
• Organic solidarity - Bonds the exist in industrial societies based on the different roles that people play in the division of labour
• Collective conscience- the unidentified cultural knowledge that is passed in groups with religious rituals
• Anomie - A sate where traditional norms deteriorate, processes of social control decline, and institutions become dysfunctional
• Bourgeoisie - the owners of the means of production
• Proletariat - the people who work for the Bourgeoisie
• Surplus value - products are sold for more than they cost to make
• Alienation - detachment between the worker and their labour that is perpetuated by capitalism (workers can't afford to buy what they produce)
• Praxis - the responsibility that scholars have to educate marginalized groups with the knowledge they need to end their powerlessness
• Significant other - any person that has significant meaning to you (patner, parents, siblings, friends)
• Generalized other - an overall sense of peoples expectations of you
• Front stage - the role we play when we are Infront of other people
• Back stage - how we behave when we are no longer around certain people (similar to unmasking)
• Impression management - the process of controlling how we look and act around others to correspond with the role we are playing
• Total institution - social systems that house and look after people while sectioning them away from society
• Feminism - the idea that women are humans equal to men