sociology

• Sociology


  Socio (social) + logos (study of)
• Sociological imagination


  Enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society
• Common sense


  Commonly held beliefs that are taken-for-granted, often individualistic, biological, or superstitious
• Common sense beliefs can be ideological, justifying particular social arrangements
• Ideology


  Beliefs that justify the particular social arrangement in society
• Sociological imagination


  1. Associating personal troubles and public issues

  2. Seeing that others share these troubles

  3. Realising the solution is not to struggle individually, but to join forces with those who share the experiences
• The first wisdom of sociology is that things are not what they seem
• Sociology


  • Differs from natural science as human actions are intrinsically different from natural phenomena
  • Combines systematic theory and observation to provide explanations of how things work
• Major factors sociologists use to analyze the social world

  • Nations
  • Gender
  • Class
  • Education
  • Background
• Sociological approaches to health and illness

  • Functionalist approach
  • Political economy and Marxist approaches
  • Symbolic interactionism/social constructionism
  • Foucault's postmodern approach
  • Feminist approach
• Modernity must be questioned - does it inevitably imply social progress or does it also have adverse impacts on human lives?
• Three classical sociological theories

  • Emile Durkheim: Functionalism
  • Karl Marx: Conflict theory
  • Max Weber: Idealism/symbolic interactionism
• Mechanical solidarity

  Social order based on shared morality in traditional society
• Organic solidarity


  Social order based on specialization and division of labour in modern society
• Anomie


  State of normlessness, breakdown of norms in society
• Structural functionalism


  • Believes society is made up of interdependent parts that operate together to keep society balanced
  • Emphasizes value consensus and social equilibrium
• Functionalism has been used to justify social domination and stratification
• Conflict theory


  Assumes society is a stage for struggles for power and dominance, with the dominant class exploiting the subordinate class
• Alienation


  According to Marx, workers under capitalism suffer alienation from the products they make, the process of making, their co-workers, and their basic human nature
• Conflict theory overemphasizes the economic basis of inequality and may not capture the full complexity of social struggles
• Substantive rationality


  Involves choice of means to ends guided by some larger system of human values
• Instrumental rationality


  Emphasizes the use of the most efficient means to achieve specified ends
• Iron cage


  The dehumanizing process of rationalization that places human beings in an impersonal, rule-bound bureaucratic system
• McDonaldization


  The rational principles of efficiency, predictability, control and calculability that underlie the success of McDonald's and the rationalization of human lives
• The significant decline in death rates in the last century owed more to public health reforms than to advances in medical science
• Social model of health and illness

  Focuses on how interlocking material, structural, and cultural factors affect the health of individuals, in contrast to the biomedical model