LESSON 1 MICROSOCIOLOGY

• Sociology is the study of human society. It examines social institutions like (family, religion politics), stratification within society (class structure, race and ethnicity, gender roles), basic social processes (socialization, deviance, social control) and the structure of social units ( groups, networks, formal organizations, bureaucracies)
• Psychology is the scientific study of the individual and of individual behavior. Although this behavior may be social in character, it need not be. Psychology addresses such as topics as human learning, perception, memory, intelligence, emotion motivation, and personality.
• Social Structure, in sociology, the distinctive, stable arrangement of institutions whereby human beings in a society interact and live together.
• Agency refers to the idea that people make their own decisions and are responsible for their own actions.
• Structure has : social forces, social control, social class, culture, and ethnicity.
• Agency has: individual choices, free will/ independent action, solidarity, choosing a religion, critically reading media.
• Microsociology is one of the main levels of analysis or focuses of sociology, concerning the nature of everyday human social interactions and agency on a small scale: face to face:
• Microsociology is based on subjective interpretative analysis rather than statistical or empirical observation.
• Macrosociology is a large scale approach to sociology, emphasizing the analysis of social systems and populations at the structure level, often at a necessarily high level of theoretical abstraction.
• According to Boatca, 2007, Macrosociology deals with large- scale, long term social processes, phenomena and structures, such as social change, stratification, or the capitalist world economy.
• The common concerns of Macrosociology are: Economies, Social Change, Globalized Structures, Multinational groups, political organizations, religions.
• For Maiwald and Suerig, 2019, Microsociology is a research that deals with "small" social units such as family and couple relationships, small social groups, or the individual.
• Macro level sociology addresses large- scale, national, or global issues. On the other hand, Microsociology explores local, interpersonal issues on a smaller scale.
• The Functionalist Perspective- a framework for building a theory that assumes society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability.
• The structural- functionalist perspective organizes sociological observations by identifying various structures of society and investigating the function of each one.
• Conflict Perspective- a framework for building a theory that assumes society is an arena for inequality that generates conflict and change
• Symbolic- interaction is a theoretical framework that guide sociologist that envisages society as a product of everyday interactions of people doing things together.
• Symbolic- Interaction theory states that the meaning we ascribe to objects, processes, ideas, concepts, and systems, are subjective.
• Symbol- something that represents an object, emotion, process, etc. in the real world.
• Interaction- how the meaning of a symbol is interpreted and modified through social interaction.
• Functionalism- a framework for the sociological theory that looks at society as a complex system whose components work together to promote unity and stability
• Symbolic- interactionism- is a framework in sociological theory regarding social behaviour that emphasizes linguistic or gestural communication as well as its subjective understanding.
• social psychology bridges psychology and microsociology
• Social Psychology/ Microsociology is a systematic study of the nature and causes of human social behavior.
• social psychologists primary concern is human social behavior.
• According to Fine, 1995, social psychologists are not only interested in what people do, but also what individuals feel and think.
• Social psychologists are not satisfied to simply document the nature of social behavior. Instead, they want to explore the causes of such behavior
• Social psychologists study social behavior in a systematic fashion.