An overview

Prepared by John N. Abletis 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

Global Community
Society
National Organizations, Institutions, and Ethnic Subcultures

Local Organizations and Community

Me (and My Inner Circle)

Ballantine & Roberts, 2011, p. 3

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, p. 65) Culture is a peoples way of life or social heritage and includes values, norms, institutions, and artifacts that are passed from generation to generation by learning alone (Ibid, p. 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,

Social Structures

patterned, recurring social relationships

Small

groups Formal organizations Social institutions Society

Social Processes

actions taken by people in social units. Processes keep the social world working (Ballantine & Roberts, 2011, p. 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, p. 193)
Family Education Religion State (Polity) [primary concern of Political Science] Economy [primary concern of Economics] Mass Media [primary concern of Media Studies]

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, p. 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

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

Clinical

Sociology 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

Research Areas in Sociology

Tourism,

Internationl Women in Society Work Youth

source: http://www.isa-sociology.org/rc.htm

Sociological Imagination

the quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay of man and society, of biography and history, of self and world. C. Wright Mills (1959, p. 10) personal troubles vs. public issues It is now the social scientists foremost political and intellectual task to make clear the elements of contemporary uneasiness and indifference. (Ibid, p. 20) By such means the personal uneasiness of individuals is focused upon explicit troubles and the indifference of publics is transformed into involment with public issues. (Ibid,

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 periodwhat are its essential features? How does it differ from other periods?

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

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 ofand hence be able to controlthe 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

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

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

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

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

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 mans 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

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

References

Ballantine, J. H. & Roberts, K. A. (2011). Our Social World: Introduction to Sociology, 3rd ed., CA: Pine Forge Press Berger, P. (1963). Invitation to Sociology, NY: Double Day Bryjak, G. J. & Soroka, M. P. (2001). Sociology: Changing Societies in a Diverse World, 4th ed., MA: Allyn and Bacon Durkheim, E. (1895). The Rules of Sociological Method [Excerpts]. Retrieved April 18, 2012 from http://durkheim.uchicago.edu/Summaries/rules.html International Sociological Association (n.d.). Research Committees. Retrieved April 18, 2012 from

http://www.isa-sociology.org/rc.htm