Download Sociology

Introduction to Sociology
Week 2
Mike Klemp-North
Week 2 Class Outline
 For the Good of the Order
 Attendance
 New Enrollees
 Blackboard Updates
 E-Mails and Meebo
 Syllabus Questions
 Sociology Chapter 1and 2
 Q and A
The Origins of Sociology
 One of the youngest of academic disciplines, sociology has its origins
in powerful social forces.
 Social Change
 Industrialization, urbanization, political revolution, and a new awareness of
society
 Science
 3-Stages: theological, metaphysical & scientific
 Positivism–A way of understanding based on science
 Gender & Race
 These important contributions have been pushed to the margins of society.
Sociological Theory
 Theory: a statement of how and why facts are related
 Explains social behavior to the real world
 Theoretical paradigm: A set of fundamental assumptions
that guides thinking
 Structural-functional
 Social-conflict
 Symbolic-interaction
Structural-Functional Paradigm
 The basics
 A macro-level orientation, concerned with broad patterns that shape society as a
whole
 Views society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote
solidarity and stability
 Key elements:
 Social structure refers to any relatively stable patterns of social behavior found in
social institutions.
 Social function refers to the consequences for the operation of society as a whole.
Who’s Who in the Structural-Functional
Paradigm
 Auguste Comte
 Importance of social integration during times of rapid change
 Emile Durkheim
 Helped establish sociology as a discipline
 Herbert Spencer
 Compared society to the human body
 Robert K. Merton
 Manifest functions are recognized and intended consequences.
 Latent functions are unrecognized and unintended consequences.
 Social dysfunctions are undesirable consequences.
Critique
Structural – Functional Paradigm
Social-Conflict Paradigm
 The basics:
 A macro-oriented paradigm
 Views society as an arena of inequality that generates conflict and social change
 Key elements:
 Society is structured in ways to benefit a few at the expense of the majority.
 Factors such as race, sex, class, and age are linked to social inequality.
 Dominant group vs. disadvantaged group relations
Who’s Who in the
Social-Conflict Paradigm
 Karl Marx
 The importance of social class in inequality and social conflict
 W.E.B. Du Bois
 Race as the major problem facing the United States in the 20th
century
Feminism and the
Gender-Conflict Approach
 A point of view that focuses on inequality and conflict
between women and men
 Closely linked to feminism, the advocacy of social equality
for women and men
 Women important to the development of sociology: Harriet
Martineau and Jane Addams
The Race-Conflict Approach
• A point of view that focuses on inequality
and conflict between people of different
racial and ethnic categories
• People of color important to the
development of sociology: Ida Wells
Barnett and W.E.B. Du Bois
Critique
Social Conflict Perspective
Symbolic-Interaction Paradigm
 The basics
 A micro-level orientation, a close-up focus on social interactions in
specific situations
 Views society as the product of everyday interactions of individuals
 Key elements
 Society is nothing more than the shared reality that people construct as
they interact with one another.
 Society is a complex, ever-changing mosaic of subjective meanings.
Who’s Who in the
Symbolic-Interaction Paradigm
 Max Weber
 Understanding a setting from the people in it
 George Herbert Mead
 How we build personalities from social experience
 Erving Goffman
 Dramaturgical analysis
 George Homans & Peter Blau
 Social-exchange analysis
Critique
Symbolic-Interaction
Applying Theory
Major Theoretical Approaches
Critical Evaluation
 Structural-Functional
 Too broad, ignores inequalities of social class, race & gender, focuses on
stability at the expense of conflict
 Social-Conflict
 Too broad, ignores how shared values and mutual interdependence
unify society, pursues political goals
 Symbolic-Interaction
 Ignores larger social structures, effects of culture, factors such as class,
gender & race
Applying the Approaches
Sociology of Sports
Structural Functional
 A structural-functional approach directs our attention to the
ways in which sports help society operate
 Sports have functional and dysfunctional consequences
Sports and Conflict
 Social-conflict analysis points out that games people play
reflect their social standing.
 Sports have been oriented mostly toward males.
 Big league sports excluded people of color for decades.
 Sports in the United States are bound up with inequalities
based on gender, race, and economic power.
Figure 1.2
“Stacking” in Professional Football
Sports as Interaction
 Following the symbolic-interaction approach, sports are less
a system than an ongoing process.
Is Sociology Nothing More than Stereotypes?
“sociology advocates no one political orientation”
C. Wright Mills
“The sociological imagination is not merely a fashion. It is a
quality of mind that seems most dramatically to promise an
understanding of the intimate realities of ourselves in
connection with larger social realities.”
Walter Lippmann
The facts we see depend on where we are placed
and the habits of our eyes.
Sociological Investigation
A logical system that derives knowledge
From direct, systematic observation
Common Sense vs.
Scientific Evidence
 “Poor people are far more likely than rich people to break the law.”
 “The United States is a middle-class society in which most people are more
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or less equal.”
“Most poor people don’t want to work.”
“Differences in the behavior of females and males are just ‘human nature.’ ”
“People change as they grow old, losing many interests as they focus on
their health.”
“Most people marry because they are in love.”
Three Frameworks
for Sociological Investigation
 Scientific sociology
 The study of society based on systematic observation of social behavior
 Empirical evidence–Information we can verify with our senses
 Interpretive sociology
 The study of society that focuses on the meanings people attach to their
social world
 Critical sociology
 The study of society that focuses on the need for change
Scientific Sociology
Terminology
 Concepts–A mental construct that represents some part of the world
in a simplified form
 Variables–Concepts whose values change from case to case
 Measurement–A procedure for determining the value of a variable in a
specific case
 Operationalizing a variable–Specifying exactly what is to be measured
before assigning a value to a variable
Scientific Sociology Terminology
 Reliability–Consistency in measurement
 Does an instrument provide for a consistent measure of the subject
matter?
 Validity–Precision in measuring exactly what one intends to
measure
 Does an instrument actually measure what it sets out to measure?
Causation
 Cause and effect
 A relationship in which change in one variable causes change in another
 Types of variables
 Independent: The variable that causes the change
 Dependent: The variable that changes (its value depends upon the independent
variable)
 Correlation
 A relationship by which two or more variables change together
 Spurious correlation
 An apparent, though false, relationship between two or more variables caused
by some other variable
Correlation
Does Not Mean Causation
 Conditions for cause and effect to be considered
 Existence of a correlation
 The independent (causal) variable precedes the dependent variable in time.
 No evidence suggests that a third variable is responsible for a spurious
correlation between the two original variables.
Figure 2.1a
Correlation and Cause: An Example
Correlation is not the same as cause. Here’s why. (Continued on next slide.)
Figure 2.1b (cont.)
Does religion drive people to drink?
Three other terms -  Mean
 Average of results
 Median
 Middle result
 Mode
 Most frequent result
What are the three statistics from
above?
1,2,2,3,4,4,5
No!
The US Household income’s mean is
63,344 and median is 46,326.
Scientific Sociology Terminology
 Objectivity
 A state of personal neutrality in conducting research
 Value-free research
 Weber said sociologists should strive to be dispassionate and detached.
 Replication
 Repetition of research by other investigators
 Helps limit distortion caused by personal values
Limitations
of Scientific Sociology
 Human behavior is too complex to predict precisely any
individual’s actions.
 The mere presence of the researcher might affect the
behavior being studied.
 Social patterns change.
 Sociologists are part of the world they study, making valuefree research difficult.
Gender and Research
 Androcentricity
 Approaching the topic from a male-only perspective
 Gynocentricity
 Approaching the topic from a female-only perspective (less common
than androcentricity)
 Overgeneralizing
 Using data collected from one sex and applying the findings to both
sexes
Gender and Research
 Gender blindness
 The failure to consider the effect of gender at all
 Double standards
 Using different standards to judge males and females
 Interference
 This occurs when a subject reacts to the sex of the researcher,
interfering with the research operation.
Summing Up
Three Research Orientations
Ethical Guidelines for Research
 Must strive to be technically competent & fair-minded
 Must disclose findings in full without omitting significant data & be willing
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to share their data
Must protect the safety, rights, and privacy of subjects
Must obtain informed consent; subjects are aware of of risks and
responsibilities and agree
Must disclose all sources of funding & avoid conflicts of interest
Must demonstrate cultural sensitivity
Sociological Research Methods
A Systematic Plan for Conducting Research
 Experiment–A research method for investigating cause and effect under
highly controlled conditions
 Hypothesis–An unverified statement of a relationship between variables (an
educated guess)
 Placebo–A treatment that seems to be the same but has no effect on the
experiment
 Hawthorne effect–A change in a subject's behavior caused by the awareness
of being studied
Steps in the Ideal Experiment
 Specify the dependent and independent variables.
 Measure the dependent variable.
 Expose dependent variable to independent variable.
 Re-measure dependent variable to see if predicted change
took place.
 If no change, modify hypothesis & re-test
Control
 To be certain that the change in the dependent variable was due
to the exposure to the independent variable, the researcher must
keep constant other factors that might intrude.
 One method is to break group into experimental and control
groups.
 Experimental group is exposed to independent variable.
 Control group is exposed to a placebo.
Survey Research
A research method in which subjects respond to a series of statements or
questions in a questionnaire or interview
 Population
 The people who are the focus of the research
 Sample
 The part of the population that represents the whole
 Random Sample
 Drawing a sample from a population so that every element of the
population has an equal chance of being selected
$35,000 to $50,000
The Talented One Hundred: Lois Benjamin’s African
American Elite
Source: Adapted from Lois Benjamin, The Black Elite: Facing the Color Line in the Twilight of the 20th Century (Chicago: Nelson-Hall,
1991), p. 276)
Questionnaire
A series of written questions
that a researcher presents to subjects
 Closed-ended
 A series of fixed responses; easy to analyze but narrows range of
responses
 Open-ended
 Free response; broadens range of responses but harder to analyze
Most surveys are self-administered; pre-testing can avoid costly
problems.
Other Research Methods
 Interview
 A series of questions that a researcher administers in person
 Participant observation
 A research method in which investigators systematically
observe people while joining in their routine activities
 Existing Data
Summing Up
Four Research Methods
Interplay Between
Theory and Method
 Inductive logical thought
 Reasoning that transforms specific observations into general theory
 Induction “increases” from specific to general
 Deductive logical thought
 Reasoning that transforms general theory into specific hypotheses suitable for
testing
 Deduction “decreases” from general to specific
Figure 2.2
Deductive and Inductive Logical Thought
Sociologists link theory and method through both inductive and deductive logic.
Ten Steps
In Sociological Investigation
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Select and define topic
Review the literature
Develop key questions to ask
Assess requirements for study
Consider ethical issues
Select a research methodology
Collect the data
Interpret the findings
State conclusions
Publish the findings
Lying with Statistics
 Data selection
 Data might not be the whole truth.
 Data interpretation
 As if numbers can only mean one thing
 Use of graphs to “spin” the truth
 Manipulating timeframes on graphs
 Using scale to inflate or deflate a trend
Controversy and Debate (cont.)