Sociology researches social issues through the use of theoretical frameworks. Examine the news and pick a controversial new
Chapter 1 Review Assignment
Instructions: Please read the instructions carefully and contact me if you have any questions prior to submitting your work.
After reading the chapter and reviewing the PowerPoint and supplemental readings on the course site, you should complete the following tasks:
Answer the questions below. Your responses should be about one, 5 to 7 sentence, paragraph per question set (meaning numbers 1,2,3, etc should be about one paragraph in length.) Your responses should demonstrate a clear engagement and understanding of the course material, critical application of the sociological concepts/theory and should include clear grammar and sentence structure.
IMPORTANT NOTE: You should cite any evidence/information from the text or other sources (this is important, if you do not cite, your work will be reported as plagiarism)
Please review the assignment rubric under 'Course Resources' for clearer indication of grading distribution and let me know if you have any questions/concerns.
Questions:
1. Sociology researches social issues through the use of theoretical frameworks. Examine the news and pick a controversial news story about a big current social issue; this could be police brutality, poverty, sexual assault, etc.). Consider what different questions a sociologist researching this topic might ask if they were investigating this issue from a conflict versus functionalist versus symbolic interactionist perspective; this is to say, how would each of these theories examine this social issue? How might these differing approaches work together to build a deeper sociological understanding of the issue?
2. In regards to the sociological imagination, think of a problem that impacts you personally (e.g., the high cost of tuition, unemployment, divorce, etc.) and explain how you would make sense of it differently if you viewed it as (a) only a personal problem or (b) influenced by a public issue. How do possible solutions to the problem differ depending on how you view it?
3. Imagine you would like to look at reasons behind the high college dropout rate in the United States. How might your explanations differ based on whether your analysis was on the micro, meso, or macro level? Why? Which level or levels would you focus on for your study? Why?
Please use this link to upload your work.
Assignment is due on Sunday Feb. 13th by 11:59 pm.
Worth 15 points.
Late assignment will be accepted, but deducted 2 points for every 24 hours they are late.
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!!!!DO NOT SUBMIT ANY .PAGES FILES!!!!
Chapter 1: Chapter Objectives and Instructions
Chapter Learning Objectives:
To read these particular portions of the chapter, please click on the links below and you will be taken to that section of the book.
1.1 What Is Sociology? (Links to an external site.)
- Explain concepts central to sociology
- Identify how different sociological perspectives have developed
1.2 The History of Sociology (Links to an external site.)
- Explain why sociology emerged when it did
- Describe how sociology became a separate academic discipline
1.3 Theoretical Perspectives (Links to an external site.)
- Explain what sociological theories are and how they are used
- Describe and analyze the similarities and differences between structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism
1.4 Why Study Sociology? (Links to an external site.)
- Explain why it is worthwhile to study sociology
- Identify ways sociology is applied in the real world
Instructions:
For this week, you should review each section in the chapter reading and complete your chapter recap assignment and/or discussion board. You should also review all supplemental readings and/or videos that are provided for you in the module. Please remember that your responses for the chapter recap assignment should be approximately 5 to 7 sentences in length per question set (not individual questions). You should only upload word or pdf files (please DO NOT upload .pages files). Additionally, your discussion board responses are due on Friday (initial response to the discussion prompt) and Sunday (respond to at least TWO of your classmates posts). Your posts should also be approximately 5 to 7 sentences in length per question set (not individual questions). Please let me know if you have any questions concerns about the assignments.
Help:
Please find the assignments rubric under the 'Course Resources' module here: Course Resources
You and also find book resources for your textbook here: Link (Links to an external site.)
I am always here to help so don't hesitate to contact me with any concerns you may have. Happy learning!!!
VIDEO: What is the Sociological Imagination
VIDEO: What is Symbolic Interaction
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
Chapter 1: AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
COLLEGE PHYSICS
Chapter # Chapter Title
PowerPoint Image Slideshow
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Learning Objectives
What is Sociology?
Explain concepts central to sociology
Understand how different sociological perspective have developed
The History of Sociology
Explain why sociology emerged when it did
Describe how sociology became a separate academic discipline
Theoretical Perspectives
Explain what sociological theories are and how they are used
Understand the similarities and differences between structural functionalism, conflict theory and symbolic interactionism
Why Study Sociology?
Explain why it is worthwhile to study sociology
Identify ways sociology is applied to the real world
What is Sociology?
Sociologists study how society affects people and how people affect society.
Social relationships, social interaction, identity formation, group interactions, all things social!
What is Sociology:
Sociology is the scientific study of human social relations, groups, and societies.
Addresses what the dimensions of the social world are, how they influence our behavior, and how we in turn shape and change them. Examples: racial segregation, marriage rates, graduation rates, and wage gap.
Purpose of sociology is to understand and generate new knowledge about human behavior, social relations, and social institutions on a larger scale.
Is an academic discipline that takes a scientific approach, a way of learning about the world that combines logically constructed theory and systematic observation.
Sociologists use research methods, including surveys, interviews, observations, archival research, and so forth to yield data that can be tested, challenged, and revised.
Systematic and scientific study of society, including the patterns of social relationships, social interaction, culture and all things social, and how these influence people’s attitudes and behaviors and reality. Also looking for how societies develop and how they change (egalitarian). Sociologists do not accept the ‘common sense’ approach to social interactions. They do not accept something as fact because ‘everyone knows it’. Examples: Women tend to be chattier than men and Military families tend to end in divorce and separation more often than traditional marriages.
Studying Part and Whole:
social structure is the patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of the individuals. On the macro scale, social structure is the system of socioeconomic stratification (e.g., the class structure), social institutions, or, other patterned relations between large social groups. On the meso scale, it is the structure of social network ties between individuals or organizations. On the micro scale, it can be the way norms shape the behavior of actors within the social system. key basis of the sociological perspective is the concept that the individual and society are inseparable.
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What are Society and Culture?
Sociologists learn about society as a whole while studying one-to-one and group interactions.
Society: a group of people whose members interact, reside in a definable area and, often, share a culture.
Culture: includes a group’s shared practices, values, and beliefs.
Critical Thinking: analyzing, conceptualizing, examining, inferring, listening, questioning, reasoning, synthesizing. Critical thinking isn’t just thinking a lot, but rather attempting to pinpoint and minimize biasing influence from culture or upbringing. Critical thinking is to seek out and be guided by knowledge and evidence that fits with reality even if it refutes our cherished beliefs. Curiosity to widen perspective and knowledge.
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Why Study Sociology?
Peter L. Berger: "someone concerned with understanding society in a disciplined way.“
Sociology can be exciting because it teaches people ways to recognize how they fit into the world and how others perceive them.
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.
“transferable skills.” This means that employers want to hire people whose knowledge and education can be applied in a variety of settings and whose skills will contribute to various tasks.
Why study sociology? A variety of careers: social services, counseling, community planning, health services, marketing, law, teaching, criminal justice.
Critical thinking exercise: If you try to answer these questions fully, it will quickly become apparent that we carry around certain assumptions and values. We support a certain team, for instance, because it makes us feel like we're a part of a community. This sense of community is a value that matters to some people more than others. Furthermore, when trying to explain team sports to an alien, you have to explain the value we put on winning and losing. When you think like an alien tour guide, you are forced to take a deeper look at the things we do and things we value. They don't always sound so logical and true from the outside looking in!
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Theoretical Perspectives
Theory: is a way of explaining different aspects of social interactions and to create testable propositions about society.
Macro-Level Theories: attempts to explain large-scale relationships and answer fundamental questions such as why societies form and why they change.
Micro-Level Theories: cover very specific relationships between individuals or small group.
Paradigms: philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them.
Theory: Sociologists analyze social phenomena at different levels and from different perspectives. Sociologists may study specific events and interpersonal relationships (MICRO) or the relationship between social structures or larger social patterns (MACRO). These levels of analysis have given way to a system of ideas that are intended to explain society and how it functions, and provides an orienting framework from which to explain why things are the way they are in society and to ask and answer certain questions- Sociological Theories Sociologists’ might not be interested in knowing why does one person commit crime, but would be more interested in learning why certain communities have higher and lower crime rates. In order to do so, sociologists’ would develop a theory to explain why people commit crimes. Effective theories would be able to explain, but would so have predictive power. Theories are not final statements about human behavior.
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The History of Sociology
People have been thinking like sociologists long before sociology became a separate academic discipline: Plato and Aristotle, Confucius, Khaldun, and Voltaire all set the stage for modern sociology.
Influences on the emergence of sociological thought
Scientific Revolution
The Enlightenment
The Industrial Revolution
Urbanization
Scientific Revolution:
rise of modern natural and physical sciences, beginning in Europe in the 16th century, offered scholars a more advanced understanding of the physical world. Contributed to the belief that science could also be applied to human affairs, thereby enabling people to improve society or even perfect it.
Auguste Comte (1798–1857) coined the term sociology to characterize a new “social physics,” the scientific study of society.
The Enlightenment:
18th-century philosophers believed humankind could attain new heights by applying scientific understanding to human affairs.
Ideals such as equality, liberty, and fundamental human rights.
Belief that sociological understanding would create a more egalitarian, peaceful society, in which individuals would be free to realize their full potential.
Shared hope that a fairer and more just society would be achieved through the scientific understanding of society.
These ideas influenced Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), whom many consider the first modern sociologist.
The Industrial Revolution:
Traditional agricultural economies and the small-scale production of handicrafts in the home gave way to more efficient, profit-driven production.
Rapid social change, growing inequality, sociologists sought to gain a social scientific perspective on what was happening and how it had come about.
German theorist and revolutionary Karl Marx predicted that industrialization would make life increasingly intolerable for the masses, believed that private property ownership by the wealthy allowed for the exploitation of working people, and that its elimination, and revolution, would bring about a utopia of equality and genuine freedom for all.
Urbanization:
Industrialization fostered the growth of cities, as people moved from rural fields to urban factories in search of work.
Early industrial cities characterized by pollution and dirt, crime, and crowded housing tenements.
In Europe, early sociologists lamented the passing of communal village life and its replacement by a savage and alienating urban existence.
French sociologist Emile Durkheim worried about the potential breakdown of stabilizing beliefs and values in modern breakdown of society modern urban society.
Durkheim argued that traditional communities were held together by norms-shared, accepted standards of behavior and belief. He thought modern industrial communities were threatened by anomie-a state of disruption of the norms that give order and meaning to peoples’ lives.
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Auguste Comte is considered by many to be the father of sociology.
Thought that society could be studied using the same scientific methods utilized in natural sciences-positivism
Believed in the potential of social scientists to work toward the betterment of society.
Auguste Comte (1798–1857), widely considered the “father of sociology,” became interested in studying society because of the changes that took place as a result of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. During the French Revolution, which began in 1789, France’s class system changed dramatically. Aristocrats suddenly lost their money and status, while peasants, who had been at the bottom of the social ladder, rose to more powerful and influential positions. The Industrial Revolution followed on the heels of the French Revolution, unfolding in Western Europe throughout the 1800s. During the Industrial Revolution, people abandoned a life of agriculture and moved to cities to find factory jobs. They worked long hours in dangerous conditions for low pay. New social problems emerged and, for many decades, little was done to address the plight of the urban poor.
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Emile Durkheim: helped establish the first department of sociology as a formal academic discipline in Europe in 1895.
Believed that sociologists could study objective social facts:
Social solidarity: social ties that bind a group of people together.
Societies could be labeled as “healthy” or “pathological”.
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917): His belief that behavior should be understood within a larger social context not just on individual experience. Anomie, the loss of direction felt in a society when social control of individual behavior becomes ineffective. Social fact is anything that is capable of exercising a social constraint on an individual and transcends the individual.
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Karl Marx
Conflict theory: believed that societies grew and changed as a result of the struggles of different social classes over the means of production.
Developed during the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of goods and the means to produce them.
Karl Marx: (1818-1883) Believed that society was divided between two distinct classes that clash in pursuits of interests. Bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Marx emphasized group identification and associations that influence one’s place in society. Karl Marx was a German, economic and political thinker and sociologist. Ideas influenced the development of economics and political science as well as sociology and helped inspire communist revolutions.
Virtually all societies throughout history have been divided into economic classes, with the capitalist class who owned the means of production (the bourgeoisie) prospering at the expense of the working-class, wage workers (the proletariat).
Class conflict: competition between social classes over the distribution of wealth, power, and other valued resources in society.
Condemned capitalism’s exploitation of working people, the proletarian class, by the ownership class, the bourgeoisie.
Ownership of the means of production, the sites and technology that produce the goods (and sometimes services) we need and use, would come to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
Viewed capitalism as a transitional stage to a final stage in which economic classes and the unequal distribution of rewards and opportunities linked to class inequality would disappear and be replaced by a utopia of equality.
Believed social change would be revolutionary, not evolutionary, and would be the product of oppressed workers rising up against a capitalist system that exploited the many to benefit the few.
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Max Weber: established a sociology department in Germany in 1919.
Antipositivism: whereby social researchers would strive for subjectivity as they worked to represent social processes, cultural norms and societal value.
The influence of culture on human behavior had to taken into account, including the cultural bias of researchers.
Verstehen: to understand in a deep way.
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Second level
Third level
Fourth level
Fifth level
Max Weber (1864-1920): in order to comprehend behavior one must understand the subjective meaning people attach to actions. One of his greatest contributions was that of the development of the ideal type, not referring that something is the best, but rather a model by which other things could be compared. Example: you could come up with your preferences in a mate and that would be what you use to evaluate your dates. However, your ideal type is what you prefer, but may not be what others prefer.
In the United States, sociology was first taught as an academic discipline at the University of Kansas in 1890, at the University of Chicago in 1892, and at Atlanta University in 1897. Over time, it spread to other universities in North America. The first department of sociology opened at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, in 1922, followed by sociology departments at Harvard University in 1930 and at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1950s
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Functionalism (Structural Functionalism)
Views society as a structure with interrelated parts designed to meet the biological and social needs of individuals who make up that society.
Interrelated parts work together and promote social cohesion to achieve order, stability and productivity.
Primary question: what function does a particular institution, phenomenon or social group serve for the maintenance of society?
Assumption: any existing institution or phenomenon serves a function; if ti served no function, it would evolve out of existence.
Roles of deviance
Traditional gender roles contribute to stability
Functionalist (Functionalism): Each aspect of society is interdependent and contributes to society’s functioning as a whole. Functionalists dissect societies into their “parts” or institutions. What are some examples of these parts? (Family, Education, Economy, Polity, Religion, Healthcare, Media, Kinship systems). From this perspective, the interrelated parts meet the biological and social needs of individuals who make up a given society. Thusly, society is held together by social cohesion, in which members of society agree upon, and work together to achieve order, stability and productivity. Durkheim suggested two forms of social cohesion or solidarity:
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Functionalism (Structural Functionalism)
Durkheim:
Mechanical solidarity: when people in a society maintain similar values and beliefs and engage in similar types of work.
Organic Solidarity: arises when the people in a society are interdependent, but hold varying values and beliefs and engage in varying types of work.
Merton: social processes often have many functions:
Manifest functions are the consequences of a social process that are sought or anticipated, while latent functions are the unsought consequences of a social process.
Primary question: what function does a particular institution, phenomenon or social group serve for the maintenance of society?
Assumption: any existing institution or phenomenon serves a function; if ti served no function, it would evolve out of existence.
Roles of deviance
Traditional gender roles contribute to stability
Modernity
Mechanical solidarity: arises when people in a society maintain similar values and beliefs and engage in similar types of work. This most commonly occurs in traditional, simple societies such as those in which everyone herds cattle or farms (Amish).
Organic Solidarity: arises when the people in a society are interdependent, but hold varying values and beliefs and engage in varying types of work. Most commonly occurs in industrialized, complex societies.
Another noted structural functionalist, Robert Merton (1910–2003), pointed out that social processes often have many functions. Manifest functions are the consequences of a social process that are sought or anticipated, while latent functions are the unsought or unintended consequences of a social process. A manifest function of college education, for example, includes gaining knowledge, preparing for a career, and finding a good job that utilizes that education. Latent functions of your college years include meeting new people, participating in extracurricular activities, or even finding a spouse or partner. Another latent function of education is creating a hierarchy of employment based on the level of education attained. Latent functions can be beneficial, neutral, or harmful. Social processes that have undesirable consequences for the operation of society are called dysfunctions. In education, examples of dysfunction include getting bad grades, truancy, dropping out, not graduating, and not finding suitable employment
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Conflict Theory
Views society as a competition for limited resources.
Society is made up of individuals who must compete for social, political and material resources.
Conflict in society is the primary means of change. (Bourgeoisie and Proletariat)
Social conflict between groups can exist wherever there is the potential for inequality:
Racial, gender, religious, political, economical, sexuality, etc.
Unlike Functionalism, which defends the status quo, avoids social change and promotes social order, conflict theorists challenge all these conventions.
Primary question: Who benefits from the way social institutions and relationships are structured? Who loses?
Assumption: interests are not shared and often opposing; only some groups have the power and resources to realize their interests. Because of this, conflict is inevitable
Example: crime and deviance. Behaviors labeled criminal or deviant are defined by the most dominant groups in society. Example: Petty theft versus white-collar crime.
Conflict Theory: Looks at society as a competition for limited resources. Conflict theory sees society as being made up of individuals who must compete for social, political and material resources such as political power, leisure time, money, housing and entertainment. Social conflict between groups can exist wherever there is potential for inequality: racial, gender, religious, political, economical, and so on. So unlike functionalism, which defends the status quo, avoids social change, and promotes social order, conflict theorists challenge all these conventions. Conflict is a part of everyday life in all societies. Conflict theory gave birth of feminists theory.
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Symbolic Interactionist Theory
Directs sociologists to consider the symbols and details of everyday interactions, what these symbols mean and how people interact with each other through these symbols.
This perspective is centered on the notion that communication—or the exchange of meaning through language and symbols—is how people make sense of their social worlds
Primary question: what do the social symbols that surround us mean and how do they affect our lives?
Example: crime and deviance. Focus on the ways in which people label one another as deviant, why the label sticks, and meanings underlying such a label.
3 Basic Premises:
1. Humans act toward things on the basis of the meanings they ascribe to those things.
2. The meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with others and society.
3. These meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he/she encounters.
Symbolic Interactionist (Interactionism): Directs sociologists to consider the symbols and details of everyday interactions, what these symbols mean and how people interact with each other through these symbols.
According to SI, people attach meanings to symbols and then they act according to their subjective interpretation of these symbols. Society is thought to be socially constructed through human interpretation. What are some examples of symbols? (Use the symbol of the crucifix).
Non-verbal communication: gestures: salute, clinched fist, flipping someone off, facial expressions, dress codes, etc.
In verbal conversation, spoken words serving as the predominant symbols, make this subjective interpretation especially evident. The words have a certain meaning for the ‘sender’ and during effective communication, they hopefully have the same meaning for the ‘receiver’. In other terms, words are not static ‘things’; they require intention and interpretation. So, conversation is an interaction symbols between individuals who constantly interpret the world around them. Anything can serve as a symbol as long as it refers to something beyond itself. (Ex. Music notes, religious symbols, corporate logos, behaviors, gestures, etc.)
Let’s take the example of the American institution of marriage. What might some of the symbols involved? (wedding bands, engagement ring, vows of life-long commitment, a white bridal dress, a wedding cake, a religious ceremony, flowers, music etc.)
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Sociological Perspectives Summary
1. Theoretical Perspectives in Sociology
a. Theory is a general statement about how some parts of the world fit together and how they work; it is an explanation of how two or more “facts” are related to one another. Sociologists use three different theoretical perspectives to understand social behavior.
b. Symbolic interactionism views symbols, things to which we attach meaning, as the key to understanding how we view the world and communicate with one another.
i. Through the use of symbols, people are able to define relationships to others; to coordinate actions with others, thereby making social life possible; and to develop a sense of themselves.
ii. A symbolic interactionist studying divorce would focus on how the changing meanings of marriage, divorce, parenthood, and love have all contributed to the increase in the rate of divorce in U.S. society
c. The central idea of functional analysis is that society is a whole unit, made up of interrelated parts that work together.
i. To understand society, we must look at both structure (how the parts of society fit together to make up the whole) and function (how each part contributes to society).
ii. Robert Merton used the term function to refer to the beneficial consequences of people’s actions to keep a group in balance, and dysfunction to refer to consequences that undermine stability.
iii. Functions can be either manifest (actions that are intended) or latent (unintended consequences).
iv. In trying to explain divorce, a functionalist would look at how industrialization and urbanization have undermined the traditional functions of family.
d. According to conflict theory, society is composed of groups competing for scarce resources.
i. Karl Marx focused on struggles between the bourgeoisie (the small group of capitalists who own the means of production) and the proletariat (the masses of workers exploited by the capitalists).
ii. Contemporary conflict theorists have expanded this perspective to include conflict in all relations of power and authority.
iii. Just as Marx examined conflict between capitalists and workers, many feminists stress a similar conflict between men and women.
iv. A conflict theorist would explain that divorce is seen as the outcome of the shifting balance of power within a family; as women have gained power and try to address inequalities in their relationships, men resist.
e. The perspectives differ in their level of analysis. Functionalists and conflict theorists provide macro-level analysis because they examine the large-scale patterns of society. Symbolic interactionists carry out micro-level analysis because they focus on the small-scale patterns of social life.
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