SOCI 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Microsociology, Macrosociology, Fatalism
16 Mar 2018
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It(cid:859)s (cid:272)o(cid:373)pli(cid:272)ated, hard to defi(cid:374)e nature of the discipline. A dictionary defines sociology as the systematic study of society and social interaction. These aspects of social life never simply occur; they are organized processes. Society: group of people whose members interact, reside in a definable area, and share a culture. Culture: the group(cid:859)s shared pra(cid:272)ti(cid:272)es, (cid:448)alues, (cid:271)eliefs, (cid:374)or(cid:373)s a(cid:374)d artifa(cid:272)ts. Makes it a rich and dynamic discipline: positivist sociology. Closely aligned with the forms of knowledge associated with natural sciences: interpretive sociology. Focus is on understanding or interpreting human activity in terms of the meanings that humans attribute to it: critical sociology. Tied in to the different theoretical traditions: 1) ethnography, 2) multivariate statistical, text and discourse analysis. Focus is on the social dynamics of intimate, face-to-face interactions. Research is conducted with a specific set of individuals such as conversational partners, family members, work associates, or friendship groups.
