Prepared by John N.

Abletis
An overview Department of Sociology, PUP
Sociology
 the study of society and social interactions taking place
within it
 the study of social facts
 the study of social structures
 the study of social processes Our Social World Model
 the queen of the social sciences
 Research areas in Sociology [Fields of Specialization]
 among social scientists and cultural workers, sociologists
are the more frequent and vivid in displaying the
sociological imagination
 a debunking science
 Global
Community

Society

National Organizations,
Institutions, and Ethnic
Subcultures

Local
Organizations and
Community

Me (and
My Inner
Circle)

Ballantine & Roberts (2011:31)

Society and Culture
 “Societies are self-perpetuating groups of people who
occupy a given territory and interact with one another
on the basis of shared culture” (Bryjak & Soroka
2001:65)
 “Culture is a people’s way of life or social heritage and
includes values, norms, institutions, and artifacts that are
passed from generation to generation by learning
alone” (Ibid:31)
 Sociocultural System
 The field of culture is the primary concern of
Anthropology, yet “the experience of sociological
discovery could be described as ‘culture shock’ minus
geographical displacement” (Berger 1963:23)
Social Structures
 patterned, recurring social relationships
 Small groups
 Formal organizations
 Social institutions
 Society
 are social things (Lemert 2012:135)
 giver order to lesser set of social things
 durable and enduring
 invisible
 big and powerful
Social Processes
 “…actions taken by people in social units. Processes keep the social
world working…” (Ballantine & Roberts 2011:20)
 “… to understand a social unit… we must consider the structure and
processes within the unit as well as the interaction with the surrounding
environment. No matter what social unit the sociologist studies, the unit
cannot be understood without considering the interaction of that unit
with its environment.” (Ibid)
Social Institutions
 “[They] are orderly, enduring, and established ways of
arranging human behavior and doing things. Social
relationships in institutions are structured for the
purpose of performing some task(s) and accomplishing
some specific goal.” (Bryjak & Soroka 2001:193)
 Family
 Education
 Religion
 State (Polity) [primary concern of Political Science]
 Economy [primary concern of Economics]
 Mass Media [primary concern of Media Studies]
 Health and Insurance
Social Facts
 “they consist of manners of acting, thinking, and feeling
external to the individual, which are invested with a
coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control
over him.” —Emile Durkheim (1895:52)

 “We are located in society not only in space but in time.

Our society is a historical entity that extends temporally
beyond any individual biography. Society antedates us
and it will survive us. It was there before we were born
and it will be there after we are dead. Our lives are but
episodes in its majestic march through time. In sum,
society is the walls of our imprisonment in history.”
—Peter Berger (1963:92)
Research Areas in Sociology
 According to the International Sociological
Association, the following are the primary research
areas of sociologists worldwide:
 Aging

 Agriculture and Food

 Alienation Theory and Research

 Armed Forces and Conflict Resolution

 Arts

 Biography and Society

 Body in the Social Sciences

 Childhood
Research Areas in Sociology
 ClinicalSociology
 Communication, Knowledge and Culture

 Community Research

 Comparative Sociology

 Conceptual and Terminological Analysis

 Deviance and Social Control

 Disasters

 Economy and Society

 Education

 Environment and Society

 Family Research
Research Areas in Sociology
 Futures Research
 Health

 History of Sociology
 Housing and Built Environment

 Labor Movements

 Language and Society

 Law

 Leisure

 Logic and Methodology

 Mental Health and Illness

 Migration
Research Areas in Sociology
 Organization

 Participation, Organizational Democracy and Self-

Management
 Political Sociology

 Population

 Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policty

 Professional Groups

 Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations

 Rational Choice

 Regional and Urban Development

 Religion
Research Areas in Sociology
 Science and Technology
 Social Classes and Social Movements

 Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change

 Social Psychology

 Social Indicators

 Social Transformations and Sociology of Development

 Sociocybernetics

 Sociotechnics, Sociological Practice

 Sport

 Stratification

 Theory
Research Areas in Sociology
 Tourism,
Internationl
 Women in Society

 Work

 Youth

source: http://www.isa-sociology.org/rc.htm
CHED Memo 20, S. 2013
 General Education - common to all programs.

 Specialized learning – Program (e.g., BA Sociology)

New GE Curriculum (36 units + 18)
 24 units of core courses
 Understanding the Self
 Readings in Philippine History
 The Contemporary World
 Mathematics in the Modern World
 Purposive Communication
 Art Appreciation
 Science, Technology, and Society
 Ethics
 9 units of GE electives (Dept chosen)
 3 units of life and works of Rizal
 6 units of NSTP
 12 units of Filipino subjects
CHED Memo 40, S. 2017
 Program name: BA Sociology (vs. BS)
 Program goal:
BA Sociology
 Learning Outcomes:
Curriculum Format

+4 + 12 Filipino subjs.
+7 + 21 Socio subjs.
[< 23 old curr.]

+2 + 6 Local langs.

149 < 152 old curr.

 Breakdown of CoursesSkills/competencies
Stakeholders relative to desiredrequired graduates (Tracks)
Breakdown of Courses relative
• Marketing
BusinessThe Contemporary
Development Worker toresearch
World (GE) desired graduates (Tracks)
Gender and Society (GE elec)
• Marketing
Social Envisioned
Researcher Sociological Theories 1 (core course) Final Program
types of
(Sectors: Civil Society/
Philippine Politics, Governance and Citizenship (GE elec)
• Social
Traditional
Contemporary Issues (core)
graduates (Tracks) Sociological Theories
NGO, Government,
Business)
Sectors 2 (core)
• Online/digital
Sociology of Education
• Corporate
Political Sociology
(core)
and Human social
Requirement
responsibility
Rights (core)
(Sectors: Academe, Social Statistics (core)
Social Researcher
Breakdown • Academe
of CoursesSocial
relative
Demography•and Public
to desired graduates • Basic Research (Thesis)
Humanrelations
Ecology (core)
(Tracks)
Government, Business, Research Methods 1 (core)
Social Change and Labor (core)
• Human resource management
• Government
Field Study (core)
Social Science
Civil Society/NGO) Teacher All
Social CORE courses
• Business Methods 2 (core)
Research
Technology • Data analysis
Practicum (core)
Social Project•Development
All sociology electives and Management (core)
Social networking
Field Study
• Civil Society/NGO
Introduction to Community Development (socio elec)
• Innovation
Research 1 of
Sociology
Development
Education
course)(socio elec)
Rural-Urban Sociology and Perspectives on National Development (socio elec)
(core
Cultural Anthro• (socio
NGO work
elec)
Practicum
Research 2 (socio
(core elec)
course)
Indigenous Communities in the Philippines (socio elec)
Development Worker Special • CivilTopics
Society/NGO• Advocacy • Development Project
in Sociology (socio elec)
Social Stratification (socio elec)
• Research
Practicum
• (socio elective)
Organizational Sociology (socio elec)
Social Entrepreneurship Proposal
Students are advised to take their
• Policy
Economic Sociology
Government FREE Electives (6 units)
(socio elec)
Special
at •the
Topics
Government in Sociology (socio elec)
Industrial Sociology (socio elec)
College of Education.
• Planning
Language Electives (Mandarin, Cebuano, Ilocano)
Sociology of the Family (socio elec)
• Business • Research
Sociology of Youth (socio elec)
All socio electives have research component.
Sociology of Gender
Academe • Public (socio elec)
and Private
Sociology of Environment (socio elec)
Students • Teaching
are advised to take their FREE Electives (6 units)
Social Science Educator • Academe • Basic Research (Thesis)
Language Electives (Mandarin, Cebuano, Ilocano)
• Research
All research subjects.
at Psychology, History, Economics, CPSPA, CAL, or COC.
Students are•advisedExtension
to take their FREE Electives (6 units) at Cooperatives,
Economics, CPSPA or CBA.
Intelektwalisasyon ng Filipino sa Iba’t-ibang Larangan
Pagsasalin sa Kontekstong Filipino
World Literature
Sociological Imagination
 “the quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay of man and
society, of biography and history, of self and world.” —C. W.
Mills (1959:4)
 capacity to shift from the most impersonal to the most intimate;
“to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning
for the inner life and the external career of a variety of
individuals” (P. 5)
 personal troubles vs. public issues
 “It is now the social scientist’s foremost political and intellectual
task… to make clear the elements of contemporary
uneasiness and indifference.” (P. 13)
 “By such means the personal uneasiness of individuals is focused
upon explicit troubles and the indifference of publics is
transformed into involvement with public issues.” (P. 5)
Sociological Imagination
 Three sorts of questions consistently asked by
classical social analysts:
 What is the structure of this particular society
as a whole? What are its essential
components, and how are they related to one
another? How does it differ from other
varieties of social order? Within it, what is
the meaning of any particular feature for its
continuance and for its change? (P. 13)
Sociological Imagination
 Where does this society stand in human history? What
are the mechanics by which it is changing? What is its
place within and its meaning for the development of
humanity as a whole? How does any particular
feature we are examining affect, and how is it
affected by, the historical period in which it moves?
And this period—what are its essential features? How
does it differ from other periods? What are its
characteristic ways of history-making? (P. 13)
Sociological Imagination
 What varieties of men and women now prevail in
this society and in this period? And what varieties
are coming to prevail? In what ways are they
selected and formed, liberated and repressed,
made sensitive and blunted? What kinds of
“human nature” are revealed in the conduct and
character we observe in this society in this period?
And what is the meaning for “human nature” of
each and every feature of the society we are
examining? (P. 13)
Distortions in Classical Sociological Work
 Type 1: theory of history - “trans-historical straitjacket”

 Type 2: systematic theory of the ‘nature of man and society’ –

identifying invariant properties of life, “arid formalism”, ahistorical

 Type 3: “liberal practicality” and cultivating method for its own sake.
Grand Theory
 “To be aware of the idea of social structure and to use it with sensibility
is to be capable of tracing such linkages among a great variety of
milieux. To be able to do that is to possess the sociological imagination.”
(P. 17)
 “[T]hat every self-conscious thinker must at all times be aware of—and
hence be able to control—the levels of abstraction on which he
is working. The capacity to shuttle between levels of abstraction, with
ease and with clarity, is a signal mark of the imaginative and systematic
thinker.” (P. 43)
Methodological Inhibition
 But no method, as such [natural scientific
method/statistics/positivism], should be used to delimit
the problems we take up, if for no other reason than
that the most interesting and difficult issues of method
usually begin where established techniques do not
apply. (P. 83)
 If the problems upon which one is at work are readily
amenable to statistical procedures, one should always
try to use them... No one, however, need accept such
procedures, when generalized, as the only procedure
available. Certainly no one need accept this model as a
total canon. It is not the only empirical manner. (P. 85)
Use of Method and Theory
 ‘Method’ has to do, first of all, with how to ask and answer
questions with some assurance that the answers are more or
less durable. ‘Theory’ has to do, with paying close attention
to the words one is using, especially their degree of
generality and their logical relations. The primary purpose
of both is clarity of conception and economy of procedure,
and most importantly just now the release rather than the
restriction of the sociological imagination. (P. 135)
 For the classic social scientist, neither method nor theory is an
autonomous domain; methods are methods for some range
of problems; theories are theories of some range of
phenomena... that he must be very well acquainted in a
substantive way with the state of knowledge in the area with
which the studies being examined are concerned. (Ibid)
Use of Method and Theory
 Serious attention should be paid to general discussion of methodology only
when they are in direct reference to actual work... But neither Method nor
Theory alone can be taken as part of the actual work of the social studies. (P.
136)
 Classic social science... Neither ‘builds up’ from microscopic study nor ‘deduces
down’ from conceptual elaboration. Its practitioners try to build and to deduce
at the same time, in the same process of study, and to do so by means of
adequate formulation and reformulation of problems and of their adequate
solutions. To practise such a policy... is to take up substantive problems on the
historical level of reality; to state these problems in terms appropriate to them;
and then no matter how high the flight of theory, no matter how painstaking
the crawl among detail, in the end of each completed act of study, to state the
solution in the macroscopic terms of the problem... The character of these
problems limits and suggests the methods and the conceptions that are used
and how they are used. Controversy over different views of ‘methodology’ and
‘theory’ is probably carried on in close and continuous relation with substantive
problems. (Pp. 142-143)
Mills on Academic Specialization
 As he comes to have a genuine sense of significant problems and to be
passionately concerned with solving them, he is often forced to master
ideas and methods that happen to have arisen within one or another
of these several disciplines. To him no social science specialty will seem
in any intellectually significant sense a closed world. He also comes to
realize that he is in fact practising the social science, rather than any
one of the social sciences, and that this is so no matter what particular
area of social lie he is most interested in studying. (P. 157)
On Politics
 In common with most other people, he does feel that he
stands outside the major history-making decisions of this
period; at the same time he knows that he is among those
who take many of the consequences of these decisions. That
is one major reason why to the extent that he is aware of
what he is doing, he becomes an explicitly political man. No
one is ‘outside society’; the question is where each stands
within it. (P. 204)
 In a world of widely communicated nonsense, any statement
of fact is of political and moral significant. All social
scientists, by the fact of their existence, are involved in the
struggle between enlightenment and obscurantism. In such a
world as ours, to practise social science is, first of all, to
practise the politics of truth. (P. 198)
Note about the term “sociological”
 I hope my colleagues will accept the term ‘sociological imagination’. Political scientists who have read
my manuscript suggest ‘the political imagination’; anthropologists, ‘the anthropological imagination’–
and so on. The term matters less than the idea, which I hope will become clear in the course of this
book. By use of it, I do not of course want to suggest merely the academic discipline of
‘sociology’. Much of what the phrase means to me is not at all expressed by sociologist. In
England, for example, sociology as an academic discipline is still somewhat marginal, yet in much
English journalism, fiction, and above all history, the sociological imagination is very well developed
indeed. The case is similar for France: both the confusion and the audacity of French reflection since the
Second World War rest upon its feeling for the sociological features of man’s fate in our time, yet
these trends are carried by men of letters rather than by professional sociologists. Nevertheless, I
use ‘sociological imagination’ because: (1) every cobbler thinks leather is the only thing, and for
better or worse, I am a sociologist; (2) I do believe that historically the quality of mind has been
more frequently and more vividly displayed by classic sociologists than by other social scientists;
(3) since I am going to examine critically a number of curious sociological schools, I need a counter
term on which to stand. (P. 26)
Sociology is a debunking science
 Peter Berger (1963) argued that dimensions
of sociological consciousness have four
characteristics:
 Debunking
 Unrespectability
 Relativizing
 Cosmopolitan
 “Sociology is more like a passion. The
sociological perspective is more like a demon
that possesses one, that drives one
compellingly, again and again, to the
questions that are its own. An introduction to
sociology is, therefore, an invitation to a very
special kind of passion.” (Ibid:24)
References
 Ballantine, Jeanne H. and Keith A. Roberts. 2011. Our Social World: Introduction to
Sociology. 3rd ed. CA: Pine Forge Press.
 Berger, Peter. 1963. Invitation to Sociology, NY: Double Day
 Bryjak, G. J. and M. P. Soroka. 2001. Sociology: Changing Societies in a Diverse World. 4th
ed. MA: Allyn and Bacon
 Durkheim, Emile. 1895. The Rules of Sociological Method [Excerpts]. Retrieved April 18,
2012
(http://durkheim.uchicago.edu/Summaries/rules.html).
 International Sociological Association (n.d.). Research Committees. Retrieved April 18, 2012
(http://www.isa-sociology.org/rc.htm).
 Lemert, Charles. 2012. Social Things. 5th ed. Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
 Mills, C. W. 1959. The Sociological Imagination, NY: Penguin Books