1.1 What is Sociology?

Cell phone:
The cell phone gives people the opportunity to connect immediately over a great distance. It gives
people the chance to talk to relatives who live abroad, and hear their voices.
The child is able to contact her parents immediately when needed. She will feel more secure in her
daily business because she can easily contact a trusted party. She loses a bit of her freedom because
she cannot easily lie to her parents about her whereabouts. Her parents are able to contact a third
party to verify her business.

Critical thinking:
Name a social force that has affected the way you relate to others. To date, how have you embraced,
challenged, and/or resisted that force?
The creation of instant messaging has affected the way I relate to others greatly. It is the medium
through which I have most social interactions on a daily basis. I have not tried resisting this force
because it gives me great freedom of movement. It does not help one in learning to pick up the
subtleties of face-to-face social interactions. It does however give a greater access to the mind of the
other party. Since youre not talking to a person but your computer. Also I find it gives people a
chance to reflect or filter what they are about to say. Meaning the interaction can be more easily
faked and/or the interaction is more relative to the person.

1.2 Social Facts

Four types of social ties that bind men and women too strongly or weakly to the group:
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Egoistic: A state in which the ties to the group are weak, so one encounters less resistance to
suicide. Society offers women more opportunities to attach themselves to the group; women
are disproportionally assigned nurturing roles and men are disproportionally assigned roles
that distance them from the group.
Altruistic: A state in which the ties attaching the individual to the group are such that the
persons sense of self cannot be separated from the group. When such a person commits
suicide, it is on behalf of the group the love more than themselves.
Anomic: A state in which the ties attaching the individual to the group are disrupted due to
dramatic changes in circumstances.
Fatalistic: A state in which the ties attaching the individual to the group are so oppressive
there is no hope of release. Under these conditions, individuals see their futures as
permanently blocked.

Critical Thinking
Identify a social fact that you or someone you know resisted. Describe the corresponding reaction
from family, friends, or acquaintances.
Egoistic and altruistic; Ive had a group of friends in which I played the part of the scapegoat. This was
in a time when I was trying to figure out who I was. I have never been good at maintaining social
connections. Thus these friends were the only friends I had at the time. I believe my (at the time)
best friend and I have had a symbiotic relationship, by which I mean that we both were somewhat
addicted to getting high and the same games. I believe this is what kept us together. However his
inability to make a real emotional connection to another person, and me being lost, made it so that
he too partook in scapegoating me when we were with the group. At the time I truly needed good
friends, these friends werent. Their way of scapegoating me was always in either a joking way, or a
more serious but more subtle way. Thus I was never sure of the way they thought about me. At the
times I just thought I was delusional the social tie, to me, was altruistic. Because I truly wanted these
people to be my friends, they talked me down and I believed them. The times I was sure I was being
made fun of, the social tie changed to egoistic. I removed myself from the group, not physically but
emotionally. This was an easy escape from this situation, however the loneliness that followed put a
great strain on my heart and emotional body. So I had to go back to altruistic in order to survive.
Looking back, I might indeed have been delusional for not seeing the way they worked. But this truth
would in time have given me a fatalistic view. I knew this would end me. So I waited, slowly learning
to cope with this. After a while I finally found a respect for myself and rationalized a way of coping.

1.3 The Sociological Imagination

Social imagination: A perspective that allows us to consider how outside forces, especially our time
in history and the place we live, shape our life stories or biographies.
Troubles: Individual problems, or difficulties that are caused by personal shortcomings related to
motivation, attitude, ability, character, or judgment. The resolution of a trouble, if it can indeed be
resolved, lies in changing the person in some way. For its relief, we focus on that persons character,
skills, and immediate opportunities.
Issue: A social matter that affects many people and that can only be explained by larger social forces
that transcend the individuals affected. We need to think beyond personal shortcomings and to
consider the underlying social forces that created it.

Critical Thinking
Describe a way in which your life has been shaped by some larger social force.
I grew up being ashamed of myself because of the way society thinks about homosexuals.

1.4 The Emergence of Sociology

Critical thinking
Identify something in your life that depends on the labor of someone in another country.
The software I use on my phone and laptop are made in another country. Their bug fixes and updates
for the proper performance of the machines are depending on the labor of the software engineers
over sea.

1.5 The Early Sociologists

Can you name at least one idea that has opened your eyes and made you see the world around you
in a new way?
Seeing and hearing is just a reflection of your minds eye. It stated that everything observed is
filtered by your subconscious, which in turn is raised by the events in your life. This would mean that
everything that your subconscious picks up, is already filtered by your subconscious and thus it
reinforces its own ideas. I believe this is the main reason why certain bad habits are hard to get rid
of. Or why certain bad habits are dealt with, only to be replaced with another. I believe it is possible
for one to change ones character, by perceiving things consciously in a new way. However I believe a
precise and directed change would be very hard to procure, because the mind is much vaster than
most people believe it to be.
This would be the foundation of my inner workings.

Auguste Comte (1798 1857)

Gave sociology its name (1839). Postivism: Valid knowledge about the world can be derived only
from using the scientific method.
Comte advanced the Law of three stages, which maintains that societies develop according to
three stages. Theocratic, metaphysical and positive.
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Theocratic: Stage 1
People explain the events going on in the world as the work of personified deities with
supernatural qualities which allow them to exert their will upon the world.

Metaphysical: Stage 2
People draw upon abstract and broad concepts to define features of reality that cannot
be observed or known through observation. Metaphysics deals with big philosophical
questions such as the meaning of life, and good versus evil.

Positive: Stage 3
People use scientific explanations to understand the world. Comte placed sociology in
this third stage of thinking; he maintained that sociologists were scientists who studied
the result of the human intellect.

Comte recommended that sociologists study social statics, the forces that hold societies together
and give them endurance over time, and social dynamics, the forces that cause societies to change.

Karl Marx (1818 1883)

Most well-known writing: The Communist Manifesto.
It is the sociologists task to analyze and explain conflict, the major force that drives social change.
Specifically, Marx saw class conflict as the vehicle that propelled society from one historical epoch to
another. He described class conflict as an antagonism growing out of the opposing interests held by
exploiting and exploited classes.
The nature of that conflict is shaped by means of production, the resources as land, tools,
equipment, factories, transportation and labor that are essential to the production and distribution
of goods and services.
The Industrial Revolution was accompanied by the rise of two distinct classes: the bourgeoisie, the
owners of the means of production; and the proletariat, those individuals who must sell their labor
to the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie search for labor-saving technologies, employ the lowest-cost
workers, and find the cheapest materials to make products. The bourgeoisies interest lies with
making a profit and the proletariats with increasing wages.
Marx believed that capitalism was the first economic system capable of maximizing human ingenuity
and productive potential. He also believed that capitalism ignored too many human needs.

mile Durkheim (1858 1918)

mile Durkheim focused on the division of labor and solidarity. The division of labor is the way a
society divides up and assigns day-to-day tasks. Durkheim was interested how division of labor
affected solidarity, the system of social ties that acts as a cement connecting people to one another
and to the wider society. Durkheim observed that the Industrial Revolution changed the division of
labor and, by extension, the nature of solidarity from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity.
Pre-industrial societies are characterized by mechanical solidarity, a system of social ties based on
uniform thinking and behavior. In these societies religion and family are extremely important. As a
result, the social ties that bind are grounded in tradition, obligation and duty. Mechanical solidarity
is, next to pre-industrial societies also associated with groups that are isolated and homogeneous,
such as the Old Order Amish, and in groups that demand disciplined and coordinated action, such as
military units.
Post-industrial societies are characterized by organic solidarity, a system of social ties founded on
interdependence, specialization, and cooperation. People relate to others for the most part in terms
of their specialized roles in the division of labor and as costumers. Costumers do not need to know
someone personally to interact with them. In industrial societies most day-to-day interactions are
short-lived, impersonal, and instrumental (we interact with most people for a specific reason). In
addition, few individuals possess the knowledge, skills, and resources to be self-sufficient.
Consequently, social ties are strong, not because people know one another, but because strangers
depend on one another to survive.

Max Weber (1864 1920)

Max Weber made it his task to analyze and explain how the Industrial Revolution affected social
action actions that people take in response to others- with emphasis on what motivates people to
act. He believed that social action is motivated in one of four ways. In reality, motives are not so
clear-cut but involve some mixture of the four:
1. Traditional: A goal pursued by someone because it was pursued in the past.
2. Affectional: A goal pursued in response to an emotion such as revenge, love, or loyalty.
3. Value-rational: A desired goal is pursued with a deep and abiding awareness that the ways in
which people go about pursuing goals are valued as much or more than achieving the desired
goal. There are no compromises or cost-cutting. Instead, action is guided by a set of
standards or codes of conduct.
4. Instrumental-rational: A valued goal is pursued by the most efficient means at any cost and
irrespective of the consequences. There is no code of conduct governing the pursuit of goals.
There is an inevitable self-destructive quality to this form of action, as this no holds barred
approach will eventually collapse on itself.

W.E.B. DuBois (1868 1963)

DuBois offered the concept of the color line, a barrier supported by customs and laws separating
nonwhites from whites, especially with regard to their roles in the division of labor.

Jane Addams (1860 1935)

In 1889 Jane Addams (with Ellen Gates Starr) cofounded one of the first settlement houses in the
United States, the Hull House. Settlement houses, which originated in London, were community
centers that served the poor and other marginalized people. Wealthy donors supported them, and
university faculty and college students lived with the clients, serving and learning from them. At the
time of its founding, immigrants constituted almost half of Chicagos population. In addition, the city
was industrializing and experiencing unprecedented population growth. These dramatic changes
were accompanied by a variety of social problems, including homelessness, substandard housing,
and unemployment.
Addams maintained that the settlements were equivalent to an applied university where knowledge
about how to change the situation of people could be applied and tested. Addams advocated for
sympathetic knowledge, firsthand knowledge gained by living and working among those being
studied, because knowing others increases the potential for caring and empathetic moral actions.

General
Why do the ideas of the classic sociologists matter today? Why take the time to learn and think with
them? The early sociologists gave us valuable frameworks for thinking about the world in which we
live and the social issues we face. These frameworks allows us to consider (1) how the division of
labor, the means of production, solidarity, and the color line connect us to and estrange us from
others in our community and beyond; (2) the reasons we pursue goals, the means we use to
achieve them, and their consequences; and (3) techniques for understanding the situation of others
(sympathetic knowledge).

Critical Thinking
Which of the six theorists offer you the most useful concepts for thinking about the world in which
you live? Explain.
Max Weber gives me the most useful concepts for thinking about the world. Because it gives a
structured view of the way people attain their goals. It enables me to structure people more
efficiently in my daily business.

1.6 Sociological Theory