Sociological foundations

SOC10500 INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETY

What is Sociology?

 Study of groups and group interactions, societies and social interactions

 Scientific study of society and human behavior

 Sociology looks for patterns

 From smallest interactions to the biggest questions
 Micro-level focuses on small groups and individual interactions (peer
groups, workplace)
 Macro-level looks at trends among and between large groups and
societies (media, government)
Society and culture

 Society is defined as a group of people who live in a defined geographic

area, who interact with one another, and who share a common culture

 Culture refers to shared practices, values, social rules, and beliefs

 Culture is ubiquitous
 A group’s way of life, from routine, everyday interactions to the most important
parts of group members' lives

 Sociological research focuses on social facts, which are the laws, morals,
values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and the cultural rules that
govern social life
An eye on society

 Sociological perspective
 Seeing the general in the particular
 Placing individual behavior in a wider social context (seeking patterns, generalizations)
 Seeing the strange in the familiar
 Understanding how things come to be defined as normal, common-sense, acceptable

 Sociological imagination (Mills)

 Relationship between individual behavior and the wider culture that shapes choices and
perceptions
 Seeing our own and other people’s behavior in relationship to history and social structure
 Personal decisions do not exist in a vacuum. Cultural patterns and social forces put
pressure on people to select one choice over another
Sociology as an academic discipline

 Not a new pursuit, for thousands of years thinkers have studied societies
 Theories of social conflict, economics, social cohesion, power
 Enlightenment philosophers developed principles to explain social life and
promote social reform
 Must place modern Sociology in historical context
 Enlightenment, Scientific and Industrial Revolutions
 Comte (1838)
 Sociology as systematic science for studying society
 Study society using the same scientific methods utilized in natural sciences
 Potential of social scientists to address social problems, better society
 Positivism
 Scientific study of social patterns