Intro to sociology

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Chapter One: What is Sociology
● Sociological Imagination
○ The application of imaginative thought to the asking & answering of sociological
questions
■ Assess & describe problems within society
■ Evaluate the factors that contribute to ex) Unemployment
■ How we can think of a solution to the problem of
unemployment
○ Social Structures
■ Who Does What
■ DOL (division of labor)
■ Who knows who
■ Social networking
■ Who gets what
■ Stratification
● Social Order
○ Norms
■ Codified set of rules that dictate and shape human behavior
○ Socialization
■ Learning of shared beliefs and practices
● Sanctions
○ A system of rewards and punishments
■ Can be formal; a fine for speeding
■ Or informal; like a stare
● Auguste Comte
○ Father of sociology
● Emile Durkheim
○ Social Fact
■ The aspects of social life that shape our actions as individuals
■ Ways of acting thinking and feeling
○ Natural Facts
■ Biological and psychological components of things
○ Saw man as Homo Duplex
■ Man is bodily sensoral apparatus
■ Man is beliefs, aspirations, understandings
■ The group must take come first over the individual
○ Anomie breakdown of society bc of no norms
● In every theory a theorist is acknowledging theories from before him and either agree or
disagreeing
● Mechanical Solidarity
○ The primitive stages of society
○ Economy and stability means there is no need to assign multiple roles
● Organic Solidarity
○ Society is more complex & more differentiated
■ Division of labor
■ A growing complexity in society
■ A Massive population increase causes this
■ 3 outcomes
■ Extinction
■ Rebalancing
■ Expansion between society but not within
● Karl Marx
○ Concerned about a critique of the political economy & how economists treats
certain affairs; social
○ Sees man as “man the maker”
○ Societies are disrupted by a division
○ Inequality is based on economics
■ Either have the means or you dont
○ Historical Change
■ The differences between the current situation and the new possibilities
must be glaring (can no longer be ignored)
■ Those seeking the change must convince and overpower their opponents
■ Every revolution must possess the ability to implement new structures
that will be lasting and endure
■ Societies are divided into the haves and have nots
■ Bourgeoisie and proletarians
■ Everything is about power
■ Emancipation: about liberating workers from current state
■ Critique
■ The progression of history in relation to the economy
■ Historical materialism
● Max Weber
● Harriet Martineau
○ First woman sociologist
○ Payed attention to things that people didn’t i.e. marriage family children etc
● W.E.B. DuBois
○ One of the founders of the NAACP
○ Double consciousness
■ Meant to articulate what black Americans feel in the US
■ From Slavery to emancipation to racism
● POST QUESTION
○ In what key ways did Weber’s interpretation of modern development differ from
that of Marx? Which do you find more comprehensive?
■ Durkheim: Division of labor for a basis of social cohesion and organic
solidarity
■ Marx: Concerned w the expansion of capitalism shown through the
division of classes
■ Weber: Rationalization