Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Individual Society
“Sociological Imagination” - personal troubles of the individual fall within public issues
Example: Suicide
• Durkheim proposed that suicide should be viewed as a social act
• individuals with intermediate social solidarity had lower suicide rates
• high social solidarity = altruistic suicide (suicide bombings, mass suicide)
• low social solidarity = anomic/egoistic suicide (no regulations or lack of attachments)
My Notes
Lecture 1 - Intro
What is Sociology?
• Systematic study of human behaviour in a
social context
• Informs about social structures, behaviour,
culture, etc.
• Dispels myths
Sociological Perspective
• Seeing the general in the particular, the
strange in the familiar
• Identify social context in which we live and
how these contexts shape our lives
Sociological Imagination
• C. Wright Mills
• A sociological vision
• A way of looking at the world that allows links
between the apparently private problems of
the individual and important social issues
• Connecting individuals to social structures
• Interconnection between life of an individual
and the history of society
Durkheim’s Suicide
• Why do people commit suicide?
Durkheim’s Suicide
• Seemingly isolated and antisocial activity
• In fact, closely related to social forces
• Suicide rates vary by degree of social solidarity
• Effect different categories of the population
• Solidarity: degree of shared beliefs and values,
intensity and frequency of their interaction