Subtle influences on the decision we make come from society’s expectations, or norms: by virtue of

growing up in a specific family in a particular society at a certain time in history we learn how we are
supposed to act, think, and look.

Normative: behaviours, appearances, and thoughts that correspond to society’s norms. For example
today post-secondary education is normative in that it corresponds to norms about the kind of education
people need before entering the workforce. In contrast, for a young woman in the 1950s, a university
education would not have been normative comments that society’s expectations were that you should
get married young, and have children.

Essence of sociology is the connection between individual experiences and larger social forces that exist
outside the individual, this is also known as a relationship between the micro level (the level of individual
experiences and choices) and the macro level (the level of broader social forces).

This relationship is bidirectional, your personal choices also have an impact on the people around you,
your community, and workplace: agency (people’s capacity to make choices, which then have an impact
on other people and on the society in which they live).

What is sociology?

The systematic study of society, using the sociological imagination. Connection between the micro/macro
level is the essence of sociological perspective.

C. Wright Mills (1916 – 1962) defined as the discipline of sociology on the basis of sociological imagination,
which involved looking for the intersection of biography and history, tracing the linkages between
individual experiences and larger sociocultural forces.

Sociological imagination is not just about thinking, it is also about action. Microlevel: where paying
attention to the relationship between individual choices and larger social forces will make you a more
informed parent, border, teacher, office manager, or team member. Macro level: trying to improve some
aspect of your community or even society as a whole.

In trying to build knowledge, and facilitating social action within the discipline of sociology the sociological
imagination is used to study just about anything that is related to people.

Comparing sociology and other disciplines; Differences between physiology and other social science
disciplines?

Ibn Khaldun’s work (1332 – 1406), recognized as a significant forerunner to sociology. Studied structures
and processes of power in different societies. Proposed as societies grew in size, labour was no longer
used for survival, but for pursuit of luxury for societies wealthy and powerful.

Origin is a sociology as a discipline can be traced to the historical. That includes the French Revolution
(1789 – 1799), and the accompanying enlightenment. Time of rapid social, political, and economic change
– cities increased in size, transition to a wage economy, absolute monarchies threatened, power of
religion declined, and the power of science.

Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857), suggested that empirical research and theory should be used in pursuit to
understand and explain social change as well its consequences.
While, historians study the past, anthropologists studied premodern societies, political scientists and
Allied structures a governance, the attention of scholars within each of these disciplines was focused on
a certain part of society. In contrast, sociologists studied all of these parts of society, while using a wide
range of research methodologies and theories. Sociology = most comprehensive of social sciences.

Sociology goes a step further: proposes that society is more than a compilation of history + government
+ economy, etc. There is a web of interconnectedness among its parts, they interact in particular ways,
and the nature of that interaction contributes to any social phenomenon (tattooing). What governs a
sociological approach is an analysis of these interactions and an emphasis on tracing the linkages between
individual experiences and large sociocultural forces.

Building your sociological imagination: your sociological toolkit

Consists of: empirical research methods, sociological theories, and critical thinking.

Empirical research methods

Is used to create knowledge, “reliable knowledge” which serve as the basis of social action.

Data collection that produces verifiable findings and is carried out using systematic procedures.

Sociological research methods are empirical because, through direct observation of the social world, they
generate findings that can be verified by other methods of the academic community.

Sociological theorizing

Data gathered using empirical methods are explained using sociological theories.

Central to explaining changes during the French Revolution, continues to be crucial to understanding and
explaining society.

Theory: set of propositions intended to explain a fact or a phenomenon. Three different approaches to
theorizing: positivist, interpretive, and critical.

Positivist: approach to theorizing that emphasizes explanation and prediction. Used to examine
relationships between variables in an effort to learn more about how society works, enabling subsequent
improvements in the social environment. Example: knowledge of factors that contribute to hate crimes =
development of more effective prevention and intervention efforts.

In contrast, interpretive and critical theorizing reject the positivist assumption that there are objective
laws governing the way society works, instead, they emphasized the cultural and historical specificity of
all processes.

Interpretive: focuses on understanding the way that people come to understand themselves, others, and
the world around them. They presume that human beings are self interpreting animals, constructing and
shaped through culture.

Goal of sociology: describe the role culture plays in creating people and societies, how people come to
think about their positions within that culture and their relationships with other people.
Critical: explores the role that power plays in social processes, the reason some people’s understanding
of the world become dominant (the rule being reflected in the legislation), accident ties that knowledge
to emancipation – empowering subordinated groups in society.

Example: members of certain social are subordinated in society in many ways, including through being
victimized by heat crimes and emphasize the importance of changing society in order to end that
subordination.

These approaches to theorizing give rise to a number of specific theoretical perspectives and sociology,
some address microlevel, emphasizing individuals as the basic component of society, others emphasize
the macro level, focusing on societal institutions as the basic component of society.

Core theoretical perspectives in sociology: functionalists, conflict, symbolic interactionist, feminist, and
postmodern.

The functionalist perspective

Takes a positive approach to theorizing, its concern is with how social order is maintained, specifically
during times of significant societal change.

Through this lens, everything in society works to restore order and balance.

Micro level perspective, society is perceived as comprising a number of structures (economy, education,
government, religion), each of which fulfils important functions that keep society running smoothly,

Some of the functions served by each structure are manifest functions, those that an institution is
intended to fulfil. Example: the manifest function of post-secondary education is job training.

Latent functions: those that are less obvious, a latent function of post-secondary education is made
selection.

Core assumption: consensus and cooperation are fundamental to the maintenance of social order.

Society is made up of norms and values: (collectively shared criteria by which we determine whether
something is right or wrong), and those norms and values exist because most people agree to should exist.

Problems emerge with one or more of the main foundational structures (become dysfunctional: one of
society structures no longer fulfils its function effectively), consensus is threatened, but society in peril.

In the case of stability and social order, this perspective assumes that in most cases other structures will
adapt to restore order.

Emile Durkheim (1858 – 1917), one of the founders of sociology, and the functionalist view. He stated
that, rapid social change creates anomie: a mass feeling of normlessness, or uncertainty about what the
rules or in this unfamiliar situation. He also proposed that a consequence of anomie is deviant behaviour,
when we are no longer certain about which rules do or do not apply, people may act in ways that are
dysfunctional to society.

The conflict perspective

macrolevel view that focuses on large institutions, it takes a critical approach that emphasizes power and
emancipation.

Dark lens, proposes that society is characterized by conflict and competition over scarce resources.

Conflict perspective view society as comprising a small group of powerful people at the top of society and
a large group of powerless at the bottom. At the top, they control the resources and hence have a vested
interest in structuring society in such a way as to keep the Lord of powerless people at the bottom,
allowing more people to reach the top would mean having to share resources with them.

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883), founders of the conflict perspective. Marx emphasized the economics sphere as
the driving force of inequality, precisely the power differentials and conflict between the owners of the
means of production (bourgeoisie) and those who are employed by the old owners (proletariat) under
capitalism.

Resources distributed unequally, as a result conflict occurs within groups. In the workplace, some
individuals have more power than others to control aspects of the work environment. Even within families
some members have more power than others.

The theory proposes that conditions of inequality can be changed to eliminate that inequality, where a
time in the future when the proletariat would rise up to unite and fight their oppressors. Praxis:
responsibility that scholars have to provide subordinated groups in society with the knowledge, they need
to and their powerlessness.

Max Weber (1864 – 1920), agreed that capitalism was intertwined with inequality, he maintained that the
source of thine equality was not economic but ideological.

Conflict and functionalist perspective both emphasize the macro level, other frameworks focus on the
microlevel, the people make up society rather than the institution.

The symbolic interactionist perspective

Takes an interpretive approach that analyses how we develop understanding.

George Herbert mead (1863 – 1931) and Herbert Blumer (1900 – 1987).

You can look at this perspective as a way to look at the world regular, clear lenses. Society is depicted as
comprising individuals who are engaged in various forms of communication, through words, facial
expressions, gestures, and cooling.

The symbolic forms of communication, over time come to mean particular things to different people
based on common shared understandings that develop between individuals.

Communication can be direct (people in same room, email, telephone), or indirect (actors, directors,
writers, journalists, communicate to an audience at home).

As we communicate with others, we come to attribute meaning to our experience and thereby develop
particular perceptions of, understandings of, and reactions to ourselves, and other people, and the world
around us. This understandings grow and change over time, from situation to situation, depending on
whom we are communicating with.

Significant others: specific people who are important to us (parents, partners, children, friends), play an
important role in our socialization, the lifelong process by which we acquire the knowledge and skills for
everyday life and society.

We have passed through all the main stages socialization once we have developed generalized others: an
overall sense of people’s expectations, even if we are not in the presence of someone who is important
to us, we may still care about what others think of the way we look or act. Reflects our ability to take into
account more than just our perspectives or the perspectives of specific people care about us, but also the
perspective of a multitude of nameless, faceless people.

The feminine perspective

The system of ideas and political practices based on the principle that women are human beings equal to
men.

Harriet Martineau (1802 – 1876), female founder of sociology.

Feminist sociologists in the early years perceived sociology as a project of social c critique in which
research and theory had a morally necessary focus on the description, analysis, and correction of social
inequality.

Feminist sociology today:

1. feminist perspectives contend that academic research had traditionally been androcentric (male
centric), and that it has failed to adequately study women’s experiences, instead treating men’s
experiences at the normative human experience.
2. They assume that society is structured on the basis of gender, and therefore that people
experiences are also structured on the basis of gender. Males and females are often treated
differently and often face different expectations regarding their behaviour.
3. They attest that research and theory must be intertwined with practice, the fundamental
objective underlying all critical theories.

Dorothy Smith (1987), fundamental figure in contemporary feminist theory, reflects all three of these
assumptions.

Standpoint theory: because men and women have occupied different positions in society they have
developed different viewpoint. Standpoint of women as a marginalized/oppressed group have been
ignored or derided. Central to feminist theory: listening to women’s voices and experiences.

Feminist practices range from the micro level (inform how individuals make choices and carry out their
everyday activities, the way in which they interact with their partners or socialize with children) to the
macro level (community level, foundations for various programs “women in science”). At the most macro
level (feminism is the foundation for large-scale social movements such as those that result in women
being given the right to vote in federal elections)
 The postmodern perspective

from the polls to second world war era, postmodernists point out the ways in which our lives have
dramatically changed since the war.

Before/during the war, Western societies were industrial, based primarily on manufacturing products but
since that time, they have largely lost industrial base and now primarily produce ideas and images. Arising
from this view of postwar society are two forms of postmodernism: skeptical and affirmative.

Skeptical postmodernism: D social changes have created inescapable chaos and meaninglessness,
because these forms of postmodernism for the possibility of any meeting in the world, not played a
significant role in sociology.

Affirmative postmodernism: the manner in which society has changed means that we cannot rely on grand
overarching theories of society (functionalist/conflict) or broad categories of people (gender labels like
mad or black). Instead it focuses on the local and specific, deconstructing what is perceived as knowledge
and asking questions of that knowledge.

Post structuralist theories: Michael Foucault, made the claim that truth is not objective, but rather
historically produced, he emphasized the relationship between knowledge and power. There are many
different discourses in society (ways of understanding a particular subject or social phenomena).

Which of those discourses comes to be perceived as valid depends on where the competing discourses
are located within the structure of power, discourse emerges from a structural location of power it
becomes an bleach discourse and widely accepted. At a broader level, certain types of knowledge are
granted more legitimacy by the public than others. In the 21st century, scientific claims to hold this rule,
and in pre-enlightenment Europe it was religion.

critical thinking

Helps you develop your sociological imagination

mould of thinking – about any subject, concept or problem – in which the thinker improves the quality of
his or her thinking by skilfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual
standards upon them.

Thinking dualistic lead, and evaluate information or arguments as true or false, as accurate or inaccurate
= lower order thinking, based on memory, recall, and paraphrasing.

Higher order thinking = extrapolate information from one domain and apply to another. Example: take
knowledge of Anomie and applied volunteer work with the Red Cross following a local flood.