INTRODUCTION

TO SOCIOLOGY
P. B I A N C A P. L A P U Z
OUTLINE

•What is sociology?
•Sociological Imagination
WHAT IS SOCIOLOGY?

• Sociology is the scientific study of human social life, groups, and societies. (Giddens, 2006)
• Sociology is the systematic study of human society (Macionis, 2012)
– Scientific discipline focused on patterns of of behavior
• First coined by Augusto Comte in 1838, a combination of “socius” (Lartin) and “logos” (Greek)
• Study of society
– Society – group of people living within a bounded territory
– Culture – Shared way of life of people within a society
“Do you think we choose the
times into which we are born?
Or do we fit the times we are
born into?”

Abraham Lincoln (in the 2012 film “Lincoln”)

SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

• “The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and

the relations between the two within the society. That is the task and its
promise.” (Mills, 1959)
• ”…requires us to ‘think ourselves away’ from the familiar routines of our daily
lives in order to look at them anew (Giddens, 2006)
• Asks the question “when do personal problems become public issues?” (e.g.
unemployment, access to healthcare, etc.)
SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

• When a society becomes industrialized, a peasant becomes a worker, a feudal lord is liquidated or becomes a
businessman. When classes rise or fall, a man is employed or unemployed; when the rate of investment goes up or
down, a man takes new heart or goes broke. When wars happen, an insurance salesman becomes a rocket launcher, a
store clerk, a radar man; a wife lives alone; a child grows up without a father. Neither the life of an individual nor the
history of a society can be understood without understanding both.Yet men do not usually define the troubles they
endure in terms of historical change…. The well-being they enjoy, they do not usually impute to the big ups and downs
of the society in which they live. Seldom aware of the intricate connection between the patterns of their own lives and
the course of world history, ordinary men do not usually know what this connection means for the kind of men they
are becoming and for the kinds of history-making in which they might take part. They do not possess the quality of
mind essential to gasp the interplay of men and society, of biography and history, of self and world… .What they need
… is a quality of mind that will help them to [see] . what is going on in the world and … what may be happening
within themselves. It is this quality … that … may be called the sociological imagination. in this excerpt. Mills uses male
pronouns to apply to all people. It is interesting-even ironic-that an outspoken critic of society like Mills reflected the
conventional writing practices of his time a s far as gender was concerned.
(Mills, 1959)
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SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

• GETTING IN: The social logic of Ivy League admissions, Malcolm Gladwell, 2005
– Discussed exclusionary policies of Ivy League schools against Jews in the 1930s
• Harvard
– 1905 – meritorious admission policies
– 1922 – Jews made up 1/5 of Harvard student population
– Fall of 1922 – aside from admission exams, merit started to mean character, family background,
social status, race and color, religious preferences
– 1960s – muddled admission policies, academic performance certainly just one of traits that can
get you in
• Princeton – sent emissaries to boarding schools to rate potential students based on level of
desirability and material
Sociology is understanding
how social factors affect
peoples’ lives and actions and
using that knowledge to change
the status quo.
SOCIOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE
ORIGINS/HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY

• Scholars struggled to explain what was happening in society due to radical changes that took place
in 18th and 19th century Europe
– Rise of a factory-based economy (e.g industrial revolution in Great Britain)
– Explosive growth of cities
– New ideas about democracy and political rights (e.g. French revolution in 1789)
• Auguste Comte (1798–1857) saw sociology as the product of three stages of historical
development:
• Theological stage – God’s will
• Metaphysical stage – natural phenomenon
• Scientific stage – Positivism – understanding the world based on science
(Macionis, 2012)
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
(MACIONIS, 2012)
• Sociological Perspective is seeing the general in the
particular (Berger, 1963)
–Society shapes the lives of people in patterned ways
–Think of ways how your social status, gender, or general
identity affect your choices in life
BENEFITS OF SOCIOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE
• Seeing the strange in the familiar
– e.g. college education—matter of privilege?
• Seeing society in our everyday lives
– e.g. childbearing—what factors affect women’s choices to bear a child?
– e.g. suicide—Durkheim observed that differences in suicide rates/tendencies may
be found in the level of social integration of people (i.e. categories of people with
strong social ties had low suicide rates, and more individualistic categories of
people had high suicide rates
BENEFITS OF SOCIOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE
• Seeing Sociologically enables us to understand Marginality and Crisis
– Understand how “exclusion” impact peoples’ lives
– In case of unemployment during the Great Depression, Mills argued that people
realized that there they did not have jobs or could not find one because the
economy collapse not because they were lazy, god-forsaken, or due to any other
individual trait
APPLYING THE SOCIOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE
Think of situations where you can apply the sociological perspective
(personal or social)
APPLYING THE SOCIOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE
• Sociology and Public Policy
– Laws and regulations that guide how people in communities live and work
• Sociology and Personal Growth
– The sociological perspective helps us assess the truth of “commonsense.”
– The sociological perspective helps us see the opportunities and constraints in our lives.
– The sociological perspective empowers us to be active participants in our society.
– The sociological perspective helps us live in a diverse world.