Download What is a Social Theory?

Welcome to Sociology
Everyday Actor
Everyday Actor (Taken-for-granted wisdom)
◦ Practical knowledge to get through daily life
Skills of an Everyday Actor
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYmrg3o
wTRE&feature=related
• Language
–Hugh Laurie and Ellen
• Your “practical knowledge”?
Everyday Actor vs
Social Analyst
• Social Analyst (Questions Everything)
• Seeks information that is:
– Systematic
– Comprehensive
– Coherent and
– Clear
The Social Analyst
• Takes the perspective of stranger in social world
• Questions most everything “Everyday Actor”
assumes is true or real
– Language
– Gender roles
– Power relationships
The Beginner’s Mind
The Beginner’s Mind
Opposite of expert’s mind.
To explore social world, important to
clear our minds of:
• Stereotypes
• Expectations, and
• Opinions
• We are more receptive to experiences.
What is Sociology?
Sociology is a social science
Levels of Analysis
Macrosociology: Focus -> Large scale
social structures
◦ Family, Economy, Education, Healthcare
Microsociology: Focus -> Social
interactions
◦ Friendship groups, work groups, peers
Social Institutions
 Social Structures that provide basic social needs
 Examples:
◦
◦
◦
◦
Education
Economics
Politics
Family
What basic social needs do these meet?
The Macro-Micro Continuum
Ways of Knowing
• What do you know?
• How do you know it?
• Science
– Logical system that bases knowledge on direct,
systematic observation
• Scientific Sociology
– Study of society based on systematic observation of
social behavior
• Empirical Evidence
– Information we can verify with our senses
Society
Shapes the lives of people in
various categories such as:
 Children
 Adults
 Women and men
 Rich and poor
Children
Women
Men
Rich People & Poor People
Sociological Imagination
• Term coined by C. Wright Mills
• Mills says, “To understand social life, we
must understand the intersection
between biography and history.”
Sociological Imagination
C. Wright Mills (1959)
The Sociological Imagination
helps people understand:
1. Society
2. Society’s effects on their lives
C. Wright Mills
Described as an ‘American Utopian' - committed
to social change, and angered by the oppression
he saw around him
Mills argued that a small group of men within
the political, military and corporate spheres the power elite - made ‘the decisions that
reverberated into all areas of American life’
Sociological Imagination
Sociological
Imagination
Culture Shock
Happens when you:
–Experience disorientation
–Upon entering new environment
Culture Shock
Culture Shock—Food
Culture Shock
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBND33B
NfZw
***Sociology’s Family Tree:
Theories and Theorists
30
What is a Social Theory?
• Organized and verifiable ideas
– Explain society & social behavior
• Creates order
• Helps us make sense of world
– And our place in world
Sociological Theories
Not just how things happen, but
•Why?
Social Context
18th & 19th century
New system of production:
◦ Industrial revolution
◦ Capitalism
◦ Colonialism
Social Context
• Enlightenment: New Ideas
• Humanism
• Importance of human rather than divine matters
• Science
• Knowledge of physical world by
•Observation & Experimentation
• New political forms
• Democracies
34
Auguste Comte
35
Auguste Comte
• Laid groundwork for future sociologists
• Sociology to be treated like scientific
discipline
• Coined the term “Sociology” (1839)
• Society=Organism
36
Harriet Martineau
37
Harriet Martineau
• Social activist
• Labor unions
• Abolition of slavery
• Women’s suffrage
• Traveled to United States
• Translated Comte’s work from French to
English
38
Herbert Spencer
39
Herbert Spencer
• Society=Organism
• Societies adapt to changing
environment
• “Survival of the Fittest”
• Lamarkianism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxfbq4evdTY
40
Émile Durkheim
41
Emile Durkheim
• Émile Durkheim worked to
establish sociology as academic
discipline.
• Social factors that hold society together
• Studied relationship between social
factors and suicide
42
Karl Marx
43
Karl Marx
• Karl Marx was a German philosopher and
political activist.
• Marx contributed to conflict theory.
44
Karl Marx
• Marx believed that capitalism was
creating social inequality
• between the bourgeoisie, who owned the
means of production (money, factories,
natural resources, and land),
• and the proletariat, who were the workers.
• According to Marx, this inequality leads to
class conflict.
45
Max Weber
46
Max Weber
• Max Weber also interested society
becoming industrialized.
• Concerned with process of rationalization,
– applying economic logic to all human activity.
• Believed that contemporary life was filled
with disenchantment
• Result of dehumanizing features of
modern societies.
47
Disenchantment
•Character of modernized, bureaucratic,
secularized western society,
-- Science is more highly valued than
belief,
-- Processes oriented toward rational
goals
-- As opposed to traditional society
George Herbert Mead
49
George Herbert Mead
• George Herbert Mead was interested in the
connection between the individual and
society.
• In Mind, Self and Society (1934), Mead
describes how the individual mind and self
arises out of the social process.
• “I” and the “Me”
50
Erving Goffman
51
Erving Goffman
• Erving Goffman interested in the “self”
• Goffman used the term dramaturgy to
describe the way people strategically
present themselves to others.
MODERN SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT
Structural Functionalism
 Society as:
 Stable
 Ordered system
 Interrelated parts
53
Structural Functionalism
• Social institutions: Meet needs of society
– Family
– Education
– Politics
– Economy
–Function
54
Conflict Theory
 Social conflict basis:
 Of society and
 Social change
 Source of Conflict:
 Inequality
Conflict theory
• Focus:
–Dominance
–Competition
–Social change
Conflict theory
 Materialist
 Labor and Economic reality
 Critical of existing arrangements
 Dynamic historical change
 Inevitable
Symbolic Interactionism
 Interaction
 Symbols
 Shared meaning
 Social creation of reality
Feminist Theory
 Gender inequalities
 Nature
 Source
 Gender structures social world
 Goal: Eliminate inequalities
Queer Theory
 Sexual identity is social construct
 No sexual category fundamentally
deviant or normal
 Questions basis for all social
categories
Postmodernist Theory
•
•
•
•
Social reality is:
Diverse
Changing
No truth, reason, right, order, or
stability
• Everything is relative & temporary
Theory in Everyday Life
Theory in Everyday Life
Perspective
Level of Analysis
Focus of Analysis
Case Study