Society: a group of people who live within some type of bounded territory and who share a common

way of life.

Culture: is common way of life shared by a society or a group.

Definition of sociology: it is a social science which studies the processes and patterns of human
individual and group interaction, the forms of organization of social groups, the relationship among
them.

Sociology: is the scientific study of society, which is interested in the study of social relationship
between people in group context.

sociological imaginations

❖ In the attempting to understand social behavior, sociologists rely on an unusual type of creative
thinking.

❖ It described such thinking as the sociological imaginations– an awareness of the relationship

between individual and wider society..

❖ A key element in the sociological imagination is the ability to view one’s own society as an
outsider would, rather than only from the perspective of personal experiences and cultural
biases.

Scope and Concerns of Sociology: Sociologists are trying to understand, explain, and analyze the effect
of social world, social environment and social interaction on our behavior, worldviews, lifestyle,
personality, attitudes, decisions, etc.,

Social Control: Focuses on the ways in which members of a society influence one another so as to
maintain social order.

Social Change: Focuses on the way society and institutions change over time through technical
inventions, cultural diffusion and cultural conflict, and social movements, among others.

Social Processes: Focuses on the pattern in which social change takes place, and the modes of such
processes.

Social Groups: Focuses on how social groups are formed, structured, and how they function and change.

Social Problems: Focuses on the social conditions which cause difficulties for a large number of persons
and which the society is seeking to eliminate. Some of the problems may include:, crime, chronic
alcoholism, suicide, addiction,, ethnic conflict, war, industrial conflict, slum areas, poverty, child abuse,
marital conflicts, et
Major Theoretical Perspectives in Sociology

❖ Structural Functionalism : Sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to
promote solidarity and stability

❖ Social conflict theory ; Sees society in a framework of class conflicts and focuses on the struggle
for scarce resources by different groups in a given society.

Symbolic interactionism: Stresses the analysis of how our behaviors depend on how we define others
and ourselves.

Feminism: Feminist sociology focuses on the particular disadvantages, including oppression and
exploitation faced by women in society .

Social Exchange theory :Focuses on the costs and benefits which people obtain in social interaction,
including money, goods, and status.

Rational choice theory . Assumes that individuals will operate in rational way and will seek to benefit
themselves in the life choices they make

relationship among sociology and other disciplines.

Sociology occupies an important position among the disciplines, usually called the social sciences. These
include sociology,, psychology, economics, political science, history and human geography.

Basic Features of a Society

First, a society is usually a relatively large grouping of people in terms of size.

Second, the most important thing about a society is that its members share common and distinct
culture.

Third, a society also has a definite territory. The populations that make up a given society are thus
locatable in a definite geographical area.

Fourth, the people who make up a society have the feeling of identity and belongingness.

Fifth, members of a society are considered to have a common origin and common historical
experiences.

Seventh, a society is autonomous and independent in the sense that it has all the necessary social
institutions and organizational arrangements to sustain the system.
Types or Categories of Society.

Sociologists classify societies into various categories depending on certain criteria. One such criterion is
level of economic and technological development attained by countries. Thus, the countries of the world
are classified as

❖ First World.

❖ Second World.

❖ Third World.

Types or Categories of Society

❖ Hunting and gathering societies.

❖ Pastoral and horticultural societies.
❖ Agricultural societies
❖ Industrial Society.
❖ Post-industrial society.(The highly industrialized which have now passed to the post-industrial
level include the USA, Canada, Japan, and Western Europe).
The concept of culture :is one of the most widely used notions in sociology. It refers to the
whole ways of life of the members of a society.

Basic features of culture

❖ Culture is organic and supraorganic

❖ Culture is implicit and explicit
❖ Culture is stable and changing
❖ Culture is learned and shared

Components of Culture

❖ Material culture (objects)

❖ Nonmaterial culture (rules)

❖ Language

Material Culture

➢ Everything human beings make and use.

➢ Material culture allows humans to cope with extreme environments and survive in all
climates.

➢ Material culture has made human beings the dominant life form on earth.
Nonmaterial Culture

Knowledge, beliefs, values, and rules for appropriate behavior.Elements of nonmaterial culture:

➢ Norms

➢ Mores

➢ Values

Language and Culture

❖ Language makes it possible for humans to share culture.

❖ Animals are controlled by their biology, but human behavior is determined by culture
and language.

❖ Children learn culture through language, socialization, and role models.

Symbol: Anything representing something else, carrying a particular meaning recognized by

members of a culture.

Mechanisms of Cultural Change

Two mechanisms are responsible for cultural change:

❖ Innovation – new concepts, ideas, and material objects.

❖ Diffusion - the movement of cultural traits from one culture to another.

Innovation:

❖ Invention - recombining elements already available to a society.

❖ Discovering new concepts.

❖ Finding new solutions to old problems.

❖ Devising and making new material objects.

Diffusion:

❖ Results when people from one group or society come into contact with another.

❖ Diffusion is marked by reformulation, in

which a trait is modified in some way so that it fits better in its new context.
Cultural Lag: The phenomena through which new patterns of behavior emerge even though
they conflict with traditional values.

Subcultures

❖ Distinctive lifestyles, values, norms, and beliefs of certain segments of the population
within a society.

❖ Types of subcultures include: ethnic, occupational, religious, political, geographic, social

class and so on .

Socialization is the lifelong social experience by which individuals develop their human
potential and learn culture.

Socialization is the cultural process of learning to participate in group life.

Personality— the patterns of behavior and ways of thinking and feeling that are distinctive for
each individual.

Becoming a Person: Biology and Culture

❖ Every human being is born with a set of genes, inherited units of biological material.

❖ The Human Genome Project found that humans have about 30,000 genes.

❖ Genes influence the chemical processes in our bodies and control some of these
processes.

❖ Most of our body processes, are the result of the interaction of genes and the
environment (physical, social, and cultural).

Modern sociologists view nurture as much more important then the nature in shaping of
human behavior.

The self-concept: is a general term used to refer to how someone thinks about, evaluates or
perceives themselves. To be aware of oneself is to have a concept of oneself.

The Concept of Self

❖ An awareness of the existence, appearance, and boundaries of one’s own body.

❖ The ability to refer to one’s own being by using language and other symbols.

❖ Knowledge of one’s personal history.

 ❖ Knowledge of one’s needs and skills.

❖ The ability to organize one’s knowledge and beliefs.

❖ The ability to organize one’s experiences.

❖ The ability to take a step back and:

❖ look at one’s being as others do

❖ evaluate the impressions one is creating
❖ understand the feelings and attitudes one stimulates in others.

Piaget’s Stages of Development

❖ Sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2)

▪ Infant relies on touch and the manipulation of objects for information about the
world, slowly learning about cause and effect.

❖ Preoperational stage (about age 2)

▪ Child begins to learn that words can be symbols for objects. The child cannot see
the world from another person’s point of view.

❖ CONCRET/ Operational stage (age 7 to about age 12)

▪ The child begins to think with some logic and can understand numbers, shapes,
and spatial relationships.

❖ Formal, logical thought (adolescence)

 People at this stage are capable of abstract, logical thought are able to
anticipate consequences of their actions.

Moral Development: Research suggests that not every person is capable of thinking about
morality in the same way. Just as our sense of self and our ability to think logically develop in
stages, our moral thinking develops in a progression of steps as well.

Kohlberg’s Stages of Morality

❖ Stage 1. Orientation toward punishment.

❖ Stage 2. Orientation toward reward.

❖ Stage 3. Orientation toward possible disapproval by others.

 ❖ Stage 4. Orientation toward formal laws and fear of personal dishonor.

❖ Stage 5. Orientation toward peer values and democracy.

❖ Stage 6. Orientation toward one’s own set of values.

Cooley’s: Looking-Glass Self

❖ We imagine how our actions appear to others.

❖ We imagine how other people judge these actions.
❖ We make a self-judgment based on the presumed judgments of others.

Mead’s Stages of Development

The self develops in three stages:

1. Preparatory stage - The child imitates the behavior of others.

2: play stage children become able to pretend to be other people: just as an actor,
doctor, parent and superhero.

❖ In this stage, they learn role playing.

3: Game stage - The child learns there are rules that specify the proper and correct
relationship among the players.

Freud’s View of the Self

The self has three separately functioning parts:

❖ id - the drives and instincts every human inherits, but which remain unconscious for
the most part.

❖ Superego - society’s norms and moral values as learned primarily from our parents.

❖ ego - tries to mediate in the eternal conflict between the id and the superego, and to
find socially acceptable ways for the id’s drives to be expressed.
Stage Age Period Characteristic to Be Achieved

Trust vs. mistrust Birth to 1 year Sense of trust or security

Autonomy vs. shame and doubt 1 to 4 years Sense of autonomy

Initiative vs. guilt 4 to 5 years Sense of initiative

Industry vs. inferiority 6 to 12 year Sense of duty and accomplishment

Identity vs. role confusion Adolescence Sense of identity

Intimacy vs. isolation Young adulthood Sense of intimacy

Generativity vs. stagnation 30s to 50s Sense of productivity and creativity

Sense of ego integrity - achieved by

Integrity vs. despair Old age acceptance of

the life one has lived

Erikson’s Eight Stages of Human Development

Agents of Socialization

❖ The Family

❖ The School

❖ Peer Groups

❖ The Mass Media and Socialization

The family: is the most important agent of primary socialization, which is the process of
mastering the basic skills required to function in society during childhood.

Schools : are largely responsible for secondary socialization, or socialization outside the family
after childhood.

Peer groups: help children and adolescents separate themselves from their families and
develop independent sources of identity.

The mass media includes TV, radio, movies, videos, CDs, the Internet, newspapers, magazines,
and books.

Primary socialization: means individuals have Learned a language and can think
logically.Accepted the basic norms and values of the culture.

Adult Socialization: Adults are much more aware than young people are of the processes
through which they are being socialized. Adults often have more control over how they wish to
be socialized and therefore can generate more enthusiasm for the process.

Desocialization: Total institutions involve loss of identity and separation from the rest of
society. Examples are cults, prison, boot camp, rehab, etc.

Resocialization: is when people adopt new norms, behaviors, values, and attitudes.

Factors In Effective Resocialization

❖ Isolation from the outside world.

❖ Spending all of one’s time in the same place with the same people..

❖ Loss of freedom of action.

 ❖ Total Institutions: Environments such as prisons or mental hospitals in which the participants
are physically and socially isolated from the outside world.

A social group consists of a number of people who have a common identity, some feeling of unity, and
certain common goals and shared norms.

Social group refers to two or more people who interact regularly and who have things in common, like
a romantic couple, a family, friends, classmates, or coworkers.

A social aggregate is a collection of people who are in the same place at the same time, but who
otherwise do not necessarily have anything in common, and who may not interact with each other

Characteristics of Social Groups

❖ Permanence beyond meetings of members.

❖ means for identifying members

❖ Mechanisms for recruiting new members.

❖ Goals or purposes.

❖ Norms for behavior.

❖ Means for controlling members’ behavior.

group is any number of people with similar norms, values, and expectations who interact with one
another on a regular basis.

❖ Groups play a vital part in a society’s social structure.

Primary groups involve interaction among members who have an emotional investment in one
another, who know one another intimately, and who interact as total individuals rather than through
specialized roles.

secondary group: is characterized by much less intimacy among members. It usually has specific goals,
is formally organized, and is impersonal.

Functions of Groups

❖ Define their boundaries.

❖ Choose leaders.

❖ Make decisions.
 ❖ Set goals.

❖ Assign tasks.

❖ Control members’ behavior.

A leader :is someone who occupies a central role or position of dominance and influence in a group.

Instrumental leadership , in which a leader actively proposes tasks and plans to guide the group
toward achieving its goals

Expressive leadership : in which a leader works to keep relations among group members harmonious
and morale high.

Groups: A group or social category that an individual uses to help define beliefs, attitudes, and values
and to guide behavior.
 ▪ Small Group: Many kinds of social groups, such as families, peer groups, and work groups, that
actually meet together and contain few enough members so that all members know one
another.

Dyad - The smallest possible group, it contains two members.

Triad - A group consisting of three members.

Large Groups: Associations: Associations are purposefully created special-interest groups with clearly
defined goals and official ways of doing things.

Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

❖ In a Gemeinschaft (community), relationships are intimate, cooperative, and personal.

❖ In a Gesellschaft (society), relationships are impersonal and independent.

Social solidarity: is a way of measuring how people connected to another or what makes them feel
connected to one another.

Solidarity: means people are about and feel responsible for each other.

Mechanical solidarity: is a form of social organization which based on

• Sameness, homogeneity of the society

• Low division of labor or specialization

Weber: Six Characteristics of Bureaucracies

1. A clear-cut division of labor.

2. Hierarchical delegation of power.

3. Rules and regulations.

4. Impartiality.

5. Employment based on technical qualifications.

6. Distinction between public and private spheres.