Download Chapter 1 – The Sociological Perspective

Chapter 1 – The Sociological
Perspective
Putting Social Life Into Perspective
 Sociology – the systematic study of human society and
social interaction
 Why study it?
 helps us gain a better understanding of ourselves and our
social world
 Enables us to see how behaviour is largely shaped by the
groups to which we belong and the society in which we live
 Helps us look beyond our personal experiences and gain
insights into society and the larger world order
 Society – a large social grouping that shares the same
geographical territory and is subject to the same political
authority and dominant cultural expectations
 Global interdependence – a relationship in which the
lives of all people are closely intertwined and any one
nation’s problems are part of a larger global problem
 Commonsense knowledge – a form of knowing that
guides ordinary conduct in everyday life
- many commonsense notions are actually myths
The Sociological Imagination
 Sociologist C. Wright Mills
 Sociological reasoning as the:
 sociological imagination – the ability to see the relationship
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between individual experiences and the larger society
Enables us to understand the link between personal experiences
and the social contexts in which they occur
Helps us to distinguish between personal troubles and social (or
public) issues
Personal troubles – private problems of individuals i.e. one person
being unemployed
Public issues- matters beyond an individual’s own control that are
caused by problems at the societal level i.e. plant closings
Example of an issue
 If a person commits suicide, many consider it the result of
the individual’s personal problems
 Using our sociological imagination – can look at it as a
societal problem
 Emile Durkheim (early sociologist) – high suicide rate was
symptomatic of large-scale social problems.
The Development of Sociology
 Early social thinkers concerned with social order and stability:
 August Comte:
 coined the term sociology and founder
 most important contribution was positivism: belief that the world
can best be understood through scientific inquiry
 believed that scientists & sociologists working together were
capable of greater social understanding than church authorities
or politicians and felt that the former should make all major
decisions
about society!
Emile Durkheim
 the founder of modern sociology
 was also interested in change in society, mainly because he
lived during the Industrial Revolution (an era of great
upheaval)
 “people are the product of their social environment”
 social facts – patterned ways of acting, thinking, and feeling
that exist outside any one individual – exert social control
over each person
 observed that a breakdown in traditional organization, values,
and authority results in a dramatic increase in anomie –
individual feels society’s stability is breaking down, change is
coming too fast and he/she cannot cope
 the founder of functionalism: the belief that society works
logically and works to protect its members
 differing views
 believed that conflict – especially class conflict – is inevitable and
necessary
 class conflict is the struggle between members of the capitalist
class (who own and control tools, land, factories and money) and
members of the working class , who must sell their labour because
they have no other means to earn a living
 society should not just be studied but should also be changed
because the status quo (the existing state of society) involved the
oppression of most of the population by a small group of wealthy
people
 acknowledged the importance of economic interests in
shaping human action, but suggested that other factors – such
as religion- were also directly related to social change
 Sociology should be value free – that is, research should be
conducted in a scientific manner and should exclude the
researcher’s personal values and economic interests
 From Western Europe sociology spread in the 1890’s to the
U.S.
 First department of sociology was established at the
University of Chicago
 Early 1900s sociology moves to Canada, appearing first at
McGill University in Montreal (1925) and then at the
University of Toronto