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Slide 1
SOCIOLOGY
The Sociological
Imagination
Chapter One
Diversity, Conflict, and Change
Kenneth J. Neubeck
University of Connecticut
Davita Silfen Glasberg
University of Connecticut
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 2
The Sociological Imagination
• Sociology — study of people as
participants in and creators of society
– The way in which society is organized, things that lead to
stability, conflict and eventual change
• Life chances — one’s ability to
experience life and all its beneficial
offerings
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Slide 3
Personal Troubles and Public
Issues: Dana’s Story
• Personal troubles — matters involving a
person’s character and his or her relations
with others over which the individual has
control
• Public issues — societal conditions that
transcend the individual and lie beyond his
or her personal environment and controllike the structure of the society, how the
institutions in a society are arranged etc.
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Slide 4
The Sociological Imagination
in Action
• Sociological imagination —enables
individuals to understand how broad
features of society and the times in which
they live affect and describe them.
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How society is structured
How and why it seems to be changing
How these affect people
SI= H+B+SS and how these are related
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Slide 5
The Sociological Imagination
in Action
• Core concepts — fundamental ideas
helpful in analyzing features of society
– Derived from major intellectual traditions
that historically shaped the discipline of
sociology. European roots in early
industrial society 18th and 19th centuries.
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Slide 6
Ibn Khaldun founder of “Sociology”
• Origins lie in antiquity- Tunisian, Ibn
Khaldun.(1332-1395)- Khaldun talked about
• societies are living organisms that
experience cyclically:
– birth, growth, maturity, decline, and
ultimately death due to universal causes.
– The Causes involve weakening social solidarity.
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Slide 7
Sociology: Intellectual Traditions
and Core Concepts
• A century and a half after Ibn
Khaldun, Machivelli wrote “THE
PRINCE”
• 4 centuries after Ibn Khaldun, Auguste
Comte coined the word “Sociology”
– Contemporary thinking in U.S. directly
influenced by intellectual developments in
late 18th and 19th centuries in Europe
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Slide 8
Sociology: Intellectual Traditions
and Core Concepts
– Auguste Comte- coined the word
“sociology” and sought to model it after
the physical sciences- “social physics”
– Stages: 1. Theological 2. Metaphysical 3.
Positive (or scientific)
– Émile Durkheim: Influential Functionalist
Thinker
• Importance of culture and functions played by
commonly shared moral values, beliefs,
ceremonies and rituals- social solidarity
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Slide 9
Sociology: Intellectual Traditions
and Core Concepts
• The Functionalist Perspective
– Societies are adaptive social structures that help
human beings adjust to their physical, political,
economic, and cultural environment.
– Also called Structural- Functionalism: because it
takes note of social structure
• Human society is naturally stable
• Maintained by values, rules, and practices- a common
culture
• Division of labor facilitates harmony and must be
accepted by individuals.
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Slide 10
Sociology: Intellectual Traditions
and Core Concepts
– Appropriate relationship of individual to
society is one of accommodation and
adaptation.
- Deviants are inadequately socialized and so
we need agencies of social control
- Social control agencies will ensure that
individuals adapt to society are re-socialized
adequately.
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Slide 11
Sociology: Intellectual Traditions
and Core Concepts
• Social facts — social and cultural features of
a society, existing independently of
individuals who make it up, which influence
people’s behavior- the “extrinsic coercion”
that guides behavior.
– Sum total of social facts= collective conscience
• Durkheim talked about division of labor and
society based on either 1. Mechanical or 2.
Organic Solidarity.
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Slide 12
1. Mechanical Solidarity: like a machine, each part useless
without the others
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Small rural communities with little division of labor
Strong group relations, individual non existent outside the group.
Individual conscience is the same as the collective conscience
People interested in each other because of the group and
common values
• Repressive law, punishment for the sake of punishment, eliminating
the individual for the sake of the group
.
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Slide 13
Organic Solidarity: like organs of a body, each organ
autonomous but depends for its survival on other
organs
-City communities, high level of division of labor
-Weak group relations. People interested in each
other only because of functions each can perform
for them “ what can he or she do for me”
-Individual conscience not the same as collective
conscience
- Restitutive law: for the purpose of restoring the individual
so he continues functioning for society.
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Slide 14
• In stressing the importance of meeting
society’s needs for order, Durkheim failed to
see inequality as a matter for concern
• Why is that? What part of the sociological
imagination was he ignoring?
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Slide 15
Sociology: Intellectual Traditions
and Core Concepts
• The Conflict Perspective
– Social divisions and struggles
characterize society; also belief that
social change is result of conflict
• Rousseau found class inequality to be
unnatural and in violation of human nature in
pre-revolutionary France.
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Slide 16
Sociology: Intellectual Traditions
and Core Concepts
– Karl Marx: Proponent of Radical Change
• Marx concluded industrial capitalism—an
economic system in which the means of
production were owned by relatively few
(thesis)—produced class inequalities
(antithesis) that led to the system’s downfall
and a new system based upon socialism(synthesis)
• Believed that social progress required conflict
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Slide 17
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Slide 18
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Slide 19
Sociology: Intellectual Traditions
and Core Concepts
• Bourgeoisie — ownership class or group of
capitalists who are the principal private
owners of society’s means of production
under capitalism
• Proletariat — working class; those who do
not own the means of production and must,
therefore, sell their labor power in order to live
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Slide 20
Sociology: Intellectual Traditions
and Core Concepts
• False consciousness —failure of workers to
understand that capitalism and not
themselves are to blame for their alienation
and misery
• Class consciousness —workers’
understanding of what capitalism was doing
to them and their realization that it would be
desirable to join others in struggle against
capitalist class
– Sub-structure (unter-bau), Super-structure (uberbau)
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Slide 21
Sociology: Intellectual Traditions
and Core Concepts
• Socialism — political economy in which
production of goods and services involves
social cooperation between workers to create
wealth
– Means of production are likely to be owned or
controlled by the state.
Communism- wealth produced and controlled by the
workers, there is no “state” in an ideal communistic
society.
Marx & Alienation: Functionalists talk about
inadequate socialization to explain deviant
behavior, Marx talked about alienation:
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Slide 22
Sociology: Intellectual Traditions
and Core Concepts
– Max Weber: Student of Social
Stratification and Bureaucracy
• Weber placed more emphasis on importance
of analyzing features of a society other than
its economic system
• Viewed unequal distribution of power and
prestige as central figures of society
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Slide 23
Sociology: Intellectual Traditions
and Core Concepts
• Social stratification — ways in which people
occupying different social positions can be
ranked from high to low
• The position you occupy within a social
structure determines your “life chances”
• Life chances aren’t equal for everyone.
• Bureaucracy — organization characterized
by clear-cut division of labor, hierarchy of
authority, adherence to formal rules.
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Slide 24
Sociology: Intellectual Traditions
and Core Concepts
• Weber was very concerned over implications of
increasingly bureaucratized society. Bureaucracy
stifles freedom and reason because everything is
predetermined and clear-cut based upon rules. Weber
called it the “Iron cage of Bureaucracy”.
Ours is a highly bureaucratized society. There are rules
governing every aspect of your behavior, rules based
upon laws, from the moment you are born to the
moment you die and even beyond (wills, debts etc).
Two types of societies described by Tonnies
• Gemeinschaft (community- based natural willWesenwille ) and Gesellschaft (society- based on
rational will or Kurwille)
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Slide 25
Functionalist and Conflict
Perspectives
Measure
Functionalist Perspective
Conflict Perspective
Notable features of society
Common culture, stability,
harmony
Societal diversity, power
differences, systematic
inequalities
View of human nature
Irrational, in need of control
Rational or “good”
Individual’s relation to society
Individuals should adapt to
society’s needs
Society should be organized to
meet its members’ needs
Sources of deviant behavior
Failure of people to be
adequately socialized
Alienation of people from
harmful features of society
Views of deviance
Disruptive, dangerous
Inevitable
Basis for social progress
Order in society
Conflict leading to
transformation of society
Means to social progress
Conformity to social roles and
the demands of social
institutions
Comte, Durkheim
Social movements for
fundamental societal change
Influential European thinkers
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Rousseau, Marx, Weber
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Slide 26
Sociology: Intellectual Traditions
and Core Concepts
• Symbolic Interactionism: People
Constructing Social Reality
– Contemporary sociologists disagree over
the degree people are pushed to behave
in certain ways by prevailing features of
society and the degree to which they
create their own reality.
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Slide 27
Sociology: Intellectual Traditions
and Core Concepts
– Human agency — ability of humans to
react to and change the social conditions
surrounding them
– Social determinism — important
features of society are determinants
of what happens to individuals and how
they behave and act.
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Slide 28
Sociology: Intellectual Traditions
and Core Concepts
– Symbolic Interactionism — sociological perspective that
focuses on such topics as the ways in which shared
meanings among individuals develop or changes through
social interaction by use of language
– George Herbert Mead, the “I” (subjective part of the
personality) and the “me” (objective part of the personality)
By judging yourself through the eyes of others you
become aware of your self. In other words, you see
yourself as others have seen and reacted to you. Your
image of the “self” develops in this manner
– Me-memory images of social conduct of others towards
you
– “I” spontaneous reaction based upon those memory
images, whenever you encounter anything.
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Slide 29
Ethnomethodology
• The methodology of the people- Harold
Garfinkle
• Garfinkle claims that people are continually
creating social structure through their
actions and interactions
– In order to uncover this “structure”
ethnomethodologists deliberately break rules
and violate people’s assumptions.
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Slide 30
Different Perspectives,
Different Voices
• Sociologists commonly borrow core
concepts from different intellectual traditions
• Sociology studied, and used for betterment
of humanity- the classical tradition is a
humanistic endeavor.
– Unfortunately most sociologists today work for
corporation or the government and hence lose
the “humanistic” part of their field.
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