Soc 102- Introduction to Sociology/Study Guide for Exams

I. The Sociological Imagination

-          The Sociological Imagination: The sociological imagination is the intersection between individual lives and larger social influences. C. Wright Mills emphasized the connection between personal troubles (biography) and structural (public and historical) issues. For example, Mills argues that if only a few people are unemployed, that’s a personal problem. However, if unemployment is widespread, it’s a public problem because economic opportunities have collapsed and the problem requires solutions at the societal level rather than at the individual level.

A.    Microsociology: How People Affect Our Everyday Lives: Microsociology focuses on small-scale patterns of individuals’ social interaction in specific settings. In most of our relationships, we interact with others on a micro, or “small,” level.

B.     Macrosociology: How Social Structure Affects Our Everyday Lives:  Macrosociology focuses on large-scale patterns and processes that characterize society as a whole.  Macro, or “large,” approaches are especially useful in understanding some of the constraints—such as economic forces, social movements, and social and public policies—that limit many of our personal options on the micro level.

Ii.  SOME Origins of Sociological Thinking

A.    Auguste Comte

1.      French thinker Auguste Comte is considered the father of sociology. Comte believed that the study of society must be empirical. 

2.      Comte believed that information should be based on observations, experiments, or experiences rather than on ideology, religion, or intuition.

3.      He saw sociology as the scientific study of two aspects of society: social statics and social dynamics. 

B.     Émile Durkheim

1.      Durkheim believed sociologists could find social facts. He sought to find social facts—aspects of social life, external to the individual, that can be measured. He described society as characterized by unity and cohesion because its members are bound together by common interests and attitudes.

2.      The division of Labor was one of Durkheim’s central concepts. He wanted to show how people can be autonomous and individualistic while being integrated in society. Social solidarity, or social cohesiveness and harmony, according to Durkheim, is maintained by a division of labor—and interdependence of different tasks and occupations, characteristic of industrialized societies, that produce social unity and facilitate change.

3.      Durkheim was also interested in social integration. In his study of suicide, he showed the importance of combining theory with research. His work revealed the relationship between social integration and the amount of suicides among populations. For instance, Durkheim calculated the suicide rates of women and men, of the married and unmarried, and of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. He found the tighter an individual’s social bond, the less likely they were to commit suicide.  Durkheim’s analysis of suicide is still relevant today. Suicide is still a main cause of death with elderly white males most likely to commit suicide. This reflects often being widowed, diseases, and a lack of support networks.  

C.     Karl Marx

1.      Marx tried to explain changes in society that were taking place during the Industrial Revolution. (Look up p.9 in your book to read what happened during Industrial Revolution).

2.      Capitalism was the main focus for Marx. He saw the most important social changes to society reflected the development of capitalism, an economic system in which the ownership of the means of production—like land, factories, large sums of money, and machines—are in private hands.

3.      Class conflict was an important driving force in society according to Marx. He believed that          society is divided into the “haves” (capitalists) and the “have-nots” (proletariat). Also, there are the petit bourgeoisie, or small business owners and owner workers, who have their own means of production.  The petit bourgeoisie might end up in the proletariat because they are driven out by competition or failure. For Marx, capitalism is a class system where conflict between the classes is commonplace, and where society is anything but cohesive. Instead, class antagonisms revolve around struggles between the capitalists who seek to increase their profits by exploiting workers, and workers who resist but must give in because they depend on capitalists for jobs.

4.      Marx argued that alienation, or the feeling of separation from one’s group or society, is common across all social classes. Workers feel alienated because they don’t own or control either the means of production or the product. The workplace alienates workers from their humanness.

D.    Max Weber

1.      For Weber, social organization was more important than economic factors. While economic factors were important, ideas, religious values, ideologies, and charismatic leaders were just as crucial in shaping and changing societies. A complete understanding of society, according to Weber, must analyze the social organization and interrelationships between economic, political, and cultural institutions.

2.      Weber posited that an understanding of society requires a “subjective” understanding of behavior. Such understanding, or verstehen (pronounced fer-SHTAY-en), requires knowing how people perceive the world in which they live.

3.      Weber viewed a value-free sociology as possible. A value-free researcher is one who separates her or his personal values, opinions, ideology, and beliefs from scientific research.

E.     W.E.B. Du Bois

1.      W.E.B Du Bois was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard, and applied sociological concepts to study the experience of African Americans in the United States. 

2.      The problem of the twentieth century, he wrote, is the problem of the color line. Du Bois was certain that the race problem was one of ignorance and wanted to provide a “cure” for prejudice and discrimination. He founded NAACP (National Association for the advancement of colored people). Such cures included black political power, civil rights, and providing blacks with a higher education.

Ii.  Contemporary Sociological Theories

A.    Functionalism

1.      Functionalists maintain that society is a complex system of interdependent parts that work together to ensure a society’s survival. They argue that society is a social system.

2.      Each structure fulfills certain functions, or purposes and activities, to meet different needs that contribute to a society’s stability and survival. Some social patterns are dysfunctional because they have a negative impact on a group or society.

3.      Manifest and latent functions are two kinds of functions. Manifest functions are intended and recognized; they are present and clearly evident. Latent functions are unintended and unrecognized; they are present but not immediately obvious.

4.      According to some critics, however, functionalism is so focused on order and stability that it often ignores social change. Another criticism is that functionalism often ignores the inequality that a handful of powerful people create and maintain.

B.     Conflict Theory

1.      Conflict theory examines the ways in which groups disagree, struggle over power, and compete for scarce resources (such as property, wealth, and prestige). In contrast to functionalists, conflict theorists see disagreement and the resulting changes in society as natural, inevitable, and even desirable. Karl Marx predicted that conflict would result from widespread economic inequality. Later, conflict theorists emphasized that the key sources of economic inequity in any society also include race, ethnicity, gender, age, and sexual orientation.

2.      Social Inequality is key to understanding to society from a conflict perspective. Unlike functionalists, conflict theorists see society not as cooperative and harmonious but as a system of widespread inequality. For conflict theorists, there is a continuous tension between the “haves” and the “have-nots,” most of whom are children, women, minorities, and the poor.

C.     Symbolic Interactionism

1.      A micro approach to social interaction, the central idea of symbolic interactionsim is the role of constructing meaning through symbols. Our actions are based on interaction in the sense that people take each other into account in their own behavior. Thus, we act differently in different social settings, and continuously adjust our behavior, including our body language, as we interact.

2.      Symbols are key to symbolic interactionist analysis. Symbolic interactionism looks at subjective, interpersonal meanings and at the ways in which we interact with and influence each other by communicating through symbols—words, gestures, or pictures that stand for something and that can have different meanings for different individuals.

3.      One of the most common criticisms, however, is that symbolic interactionism ignores the impact of macro-level factors such as economic forces, social movements, and public policies on our everyday behavior.

III. The Scientific MethoD

A.    Scientific Sociology: Sociologists rely on the scientific method. The steps in the research process include careful data collection, exact measurement, accurate recording and analysis of the findings, and thoughtful interpretation of results, and, when appropriate, a generalization of the findings to a larger group. Throughout this process, sociologists are interested in the relationships between variables.

1.      A variable is a characteristic that can change in value or magnitude under different conditions. Variables can be attitudes, behavior, or traits such as ethnicity, gender, and social class. A hypothesis is a statement of a relationship between two or more variables that they want to test. Sociologists predict a relationship between an independent variable, a characteristic that determines or has an effect on the dependent variable, the outcome.

2.      Reliability is the consistency with which the same measure produces similar results time after time. Validity is the degree to which a measurement is accurate and really measures what it claims to measure.

3.      Deductive and inductive reasoning are two very different but equally valuable research approaches that examine relationships between variables. Stated generally, deductive reasoning begins with a theory, prediction, or general principle that is then tested through data collection. An alternative mode of inquiry, inductive reasoning, begins with a specific observation, followed by data collection and the development of some general conclusions or theories. (Look up the figure on p.24 for the difference between deductive and inductive approaches).

4.      Sampling allows a sociologist to obtain information that is representative of a population. Researchers typically draw a sample, a group of people (or things) that are representative of the population they wish to study. A probability sample is one in which each person (or thing, such as an e-mail address) has an equal chance of being selected because the selection is random. A nonprobability sample is any sample in which little or no attempt is made to get a representative cross section of the population.

B.     Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches:  In qualitative research, sociologists examine non-numerical material that they then examine and interpret. For instance, in a study of grandfathers who are raising their grandchildren, the researcher tape recorded, in-depth interviews, and then analyzed the responses on issues like financial worries and daily parenting activities. In quantitative research, sociologists focus on a numerical analysis of people’s responses or specific characteristics.  

Correlation and Causation: Causality is difficult to determine when human behavior is involved. Sociologists are more interested in probability. They talk about correlation or the relationship between two variables. Ideally, they can only suggest or indicate that one variable is associated with another, rather than it causes another variable. For instance, divorce is closely associated with marrying young, having children before marriage, and experiencing domestic violence.

Iv. Some Major Data Collection Methods

·         Researchers use surveys to systematically collect data from respondents using questionnaires, face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews, or a combination of these techniques. Questionnaires can be mailed, used during an interview, or self-administered (such as student course evaluations).

·         Secondary analysis examines data collected by someone else. The data may be historical materials, (such as court proceedings), personal documents, (such as letters and diaries), public records, (such as state archives on births, marriages, and deaths), and official statistics, (such as health information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

·         Field research is when a social scientist systematically observes people in their natural surroundings. In participant observation, researchers interact with the people they are studying but do not reveal their identities as researchers. If you recorded interaction patterns between students and professors during your classes, you would be engaging in participant observation. In nonparticipant observation, researchers study phenomena without being part of the situation.

·         An experiment is a carefully controlled, artificial situation that allows researchers to manipulate variables and measure their effect. In the classic experimental design, there are two groups that are very similar in size and on characteristics such as sex, age, ethnicity or race, and education. In the experimental group, the subjects are exposed to the independent variable. In the control group, they are not.

·         Before the experiment, the researcher measures the dependent variable in both groups using a pretest. After the experimental group is exposed to the independent variable, the researcher measures both groups again using a posttest. If the researcher finds a difference in the dependent variable, she or he assumes that the independent variable is having a “causal” effect on the dependent variable.

Ethical Research: Ethical research relies on a code of ethics which provides a set of minimal rules for professional conduct in order to protect participants.  Basic principles of ethical research include consent from participants, not harming (do no harm), humiliating, abusing, or coercing participants, not exploiting subject or assistants for gain honoring all guarantees of anonymity and confidentiality.