SOC 201 Chapter 2: Chapter 2.2
Document Summary
More generally, sociologists understand that individuals make choices about how they will act, that they do have free will, but sociologists know that it is the social environment that makes some choices easier and others harder. Consider the case of the motorist who arrives at an intersection: The na ve observer might say that we cannot predict her next move, that it"s her choice. Yet we can be confident that she will not shift into reverse and back up; neither will she choose to remain in the intersection for more than a few moments. Allan g. johnson, who has written a number of books for sociology students, explains it this way: the individualistic perspective that dominates current thinking about social life doesn"t work : Nothing we do or experience takes place in a vacuum; everything is always related to a [social] context of some kind. We have to ask about the larger context in which this takes place.
