SYG 2000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Global Community, C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination
Document Summary
Everything we do influences the social world. Sociologists are interested in the interaction between people: how you influence groups and how groups influence you o. How/why people and groups interact with one another. How different groups or societies are organized and function. How changes in one society affect other societies o. The global society (the world as an interdependent entity) Sociology - the scientific study of social life, social change, and the social causes and consequences of human behavior. People live most of their lives in groups. Interactions between people and groups are reciprocal: each influences the other o: groups feature recurrent social patterns, ordered behavior, shared expectations, and common understandings o. Common sense ideas seem sensible to any reasonable person; they are taken for o granted and rarely questioned o. Sociology uses scientific methods to test ideas, including common sense assumptions. Scientific methods involve analyzing evidence in a way that is planned, objective, systematic, and repeatable.