DATE:21st JAN,2022 NAME:KHUSHI CHOUDHARY

WORD COUNT:2030 ROLL NO:21/818

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INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 1

1.Examine the practice of sociology.How does a practising sociologists make a

distinction between sociology and common sense?
REASONS TO PRACTICE SOCIOLOGY:
Sociology is practiced for mainly four reasons as stated by Allan
G.Johnson .The four reasons are:
a.It is practiced because there is so much unnecessary suffering in the
world and to do something we need to understand where it comes
from.It has moral dimensions.Moral as in what we are as human
beings and what our life together consists of.
b.We are the part of the problem and practising sociology is a way to
be a part of the solution.It helps us to see how one thing is connected
to another and how to find ways to make a difference.We can't
change the world all by ourselves but we can make decisions as how
to participate in it thereby help making the world a better place to live
in.
c. ‘faith’ is one of the reasons for practicing sociology.Also, the
choices that we make as individuals matter more beyond our
lives ,that things dont have to be the way they are but they won't get
better by themselves .We need to find systematic ways to figure
things out and do something.
d. It helps one to keep in touch with the essence of his/her own life in
the world .It also connects the individual and the society and takes us
towards basic truth as who we are and what our lives are about, that is
‘the essence of own reality’.
Practicing sociology is to observe,to think and make sense ,how we
are living in the world and ‘of’ the world that is where we belong in
the bigger community and lastly to play a meaningful role in the life
of own species.
DATE:21st JAN,2022 NAME:KHUSHI CHOUDHARY
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DIVERSITY:It is ‘diversity’ that brings about variety of people in the

world followed by differences.These differences have positive
consequences such as ‘rich mix’ and negative consequences such as
including and excluding others ,for rewarding some people more and
others less,treating some with dignity and others with informality
leading to division ,inequality,injustice and oppression.Difference is
used as a basis for privilege .People are so reluctant to talk about
privilege especially those who belon to privileged
groups .INDIVIDUALISM:A major reason is that people only tend to
think in terms of ‘individualism’, that is a society is a collection of
people living in a particular time and place and nothing more and
affecting social life as by isolating us from one another ,promoting
divisive competition and making it harder to sustain the sense of
community.Individualism affect social life by isolating us from each
other ,promoting diverse competition and making it harder to sustain a
sense of community.It reduces everything to the personality and
behaviour of the people we perceive to be in charge .It not only
affects social life but also how we ‘think’ about social life and how
we make sense of it.From an individualistic perspective,the way to
make a better world is to put ‘right people’ responsible or by
changing how children are socialized or to kill people who wont or
cant be better than they are.The solution of collective problems such
as poverty,terrorism ,natural disaster then becomes an accumulation
of individual solution and not collective solutions.Individualism is a
way of thinking that encourages us to explain the world in terms of
what goes on inside individuals.We think this way because we have
developed the human ability to be reflexive ,we have learned to look
at ourselves as ‘selves’with greater awareness and insight than
before .The idea of individuals has to exist so that we think about
ourselves as ‘individuals’ .The problem lies in the approach that
ignores that difference between the individual people who participate
in social life and the relationships that connect them to one another ,to
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groups and societies.The title of this chapter ‘The forest ,the trees and
the one thing’ lays down the meaning that a forest is a collection of
individual trees,that exist in a particular relation to one another .The
‘empty space’ that separates individual trees from each other is
‘relationships among’ trees that make a forest what it is.
SOCIAL SYSTEM:The larger things that we participate are known as
social systems.Social systems are defined as any collection of parts or
elements that are connected in ways that cohere into whole.For
example ,family is a social system where a collection of elements
related to one another forms a unit.Elements also include shared
ideas that tie those positions together to make relationships and what
makes family members related to one another as kin.There is a
‘dynamic relationship’ between social system and people who
participate in them also considering that ‘people aren't systems and
systems aren't people.Allan G.Johnson thereby gives an example ‘the
united states is a racist society that privileges whites over people of
any colour’,hence it does not describe any individual but individuals
cant avoid to participate and cant help but be affected by that.In spite
of this systems and people are closely connected to each other which
is a basic part of sociological practice.There are two things that
depends when people participate in a social system.Firstly,the system
and how it works ,and what people do as they participate in it.People
are what make a system “happen”.Without the participation of
people ,system will exist only as an idea.A system affects how we
think,feel and behave as participants through the process of
‘socialization’.People make systems ‘happen’ being aware or
ignorant and systems lay out paths of least resistance that shape how
people participate.People and systems do not exist without each
other.This results in ‘patterns’ of social life .
We usually do not understand what goes on in the social systems by
looking at individuals.Allan G.Johnson thereby gives another example
of ‘suicide’ . If we think as to why people tend to kill themselves , a lot
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of reasons like depression,guilt ,loneliness,religious belief as a greater

social good which explains suicides taken one at a time.But what do
we do if we add up all the suicides in a society at a given year which
was also questioned by sociologists Emile Durkheim explained
further as ‘suicide rate’. A suicide rate is a number that describes
something about a group or a society not the individuals who belong
to it.Social life is messier and more interesting because they aren’t
something ,they are ongoing processes.They are continuously being
created and re-created as people ‘do’ things in order to make them
‘happen’. ‘It’ never happens twice.Secondly ,what makes things still
messier and interesting is that we aren't all in the same situation. This
is because we occupy a variety of social positions within each
system , we experience each situation differently. There are several
‘we’s’ in social life and practising sociology shows us how we’s
affect what happens.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SOCIOLOGY AND COMMON SENSE

The difference between sociology and common sense are:
1.sociology has a body of concepts ,methods,data ,no matter how
loosely coordinated,for which common sense of even the most acute
and well informed kind cannot be a substitute.sociology aims to be
general ,if not universal ,whereas common sense is particular and
localised. Common sense is based on personal experience and one’s
point of view.One of the lasting contributions of sociology has shown
that common sense is highly variable ,subject to the constraints of
time and place and more specifically ‘social constraints’ that is,
restrictions or compulsions imposed by the society on each individual.
Sociology is very difficult to separate from common sense in human
condition and especially in the study of one’s society therefore,it is
not suggested to be seeked deliberately to few people .
2.Sociology has had two alternatives that is a) submergence in
common sense of the scholar’s own environment b)absorption in a
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narrow and self satisfied technical virtuosity unconnected with the

substance of social enquiry.Common sense is full of snares and
pitfalls ,so technical virtuosity becomes a distraction when pursued as
an end in itself.Sociology does not have formal theory that can be
readily communicated.It does not confine itself to a body of facts
delimited by space and time like subjects of geography and history do
to a great extent.It deals with both arguments and facts but the
connections among them appear loose,open and ambiguous.Sociology
provides a room with ambiguity and disagreement.Also,sociology
maintains room for current affairs but does not exclude academic
interests.Sociology is a discipline which is not about
economic,political,or domestic life ,caste,class,community but it is
about the interconnections among all these and other aspects of social
life.
3.Common sense is not only localized but also bound by
time,place,class,community,gender, and many more.It is also not
reflective as it does not question its own origins and presuppositions
neither by deliberating it nor by using any such methods.Sociology is
influenced by common sense to a lesser or greater extent which is a
part of our own ‘social environment’ ,but common sense in its turn is
influenced by sociology.
4.Common sense is based on limited range of experience of particular
people in particular place and in a specific time.In matters such as
kin,marriage,family,religion,worship,work,and others , people intend
to believe their own way of practising and following and doing things
is a right way and is also reasonable.They take into account that
others way of practising and following is very different and contrary
but also wrong to common sense . It is because they only observe ,
notice and experience the ways and processes in only bits and pieces
and not the entire context.Witnessing such different practises which is
very unfamiliar in their proper context makes those practises appear
quite sensible ,familiarity with a wide range of practises occasionally
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makes one’s own ingrained ways of actin and thinking appear very
peculiar.
5.Sociology not only deals with facts from an entire range of human
societies but also places these facts on the same plane of analysis and
observations.Common people are not expected to master up these
facts with which the sociologists deal.They follow their best method
of illustration and no consistent rule of procedure for the selection and
arrangement of facts made by the sociologists.On the other hand
sociological practice develops a characteristic style of argument that
does not tend to filter through scope of circles in the course of
time.With time,sociological mode of reasoning has had some effect
on thinking about education,politics , class and inequality.
6.Common sense constructs imaginary social arrangements in which
there is no inequality,no oppression,no strife and no constraint on
individual choice.Thus when sociological reasoning acts upon
common sense ,it tends to moderate both the utopian and the fatalistic
elements in it.Whereas ,sociology is anti-utopian in its central
preoccupation with the disjunction between reality and ideal,between
what human beings consider right,proper and desirable and their
actual condition of existence not in this or that particular society but
in humans societies as such.It is also anti-fantalistic in its
orientation .It does not accept the particular constraints taken for
granted by common sense as eternal or immutable.It provides a
clearer awareness than common sense of the range of alternative
arrangements that have been or may be devised for the attainment of
broadly the same ends.No social arrangement is without some
costs.Social costs and benefits are difficult to weigh and measure than
purely economic ones.A finely tuned judgement is essential for this
and that can be formed only through the disciplined and
methodological examination of the varieties of social arrangements
created , adopted and replaced by successive generations.
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DATE:21st JAN,2022 NAME:KHUSHI CHOUDHARY
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CITATIONS AND REFERENCE

1.Johnson,Allan G.2008, ‘The Forest And The Trees’
2.Beteille,Andre.2009, ‘Sociology And Common Sense’