SOCY 122 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Social Fact, The Hockey Sweater
15 Jun 2018
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October 24, 2016
Division of labour: The more individual people become the more they rely on others
Rules of sociological Method:
- Designed “to extend the scope of scientific rationalism to cover human behaviour”
o The scope of scientific reason-the idea of an empirical observationally based
science of social behaviour
- Study cause and effect in social action – to make predictions
- “manifesto on behalf of the cause of a sociology that is objective, specific and
methodical”
- Systematic step by step study of what sociologists do
- What is a social fact?
- Distinct from biology—both deal with living organisms
- Sociology deals with shared ideas and patterns of conscious action as well as with social
institutions and structures
o Different patterns of conscious action can be grouped into institutions
- Social structures and processes analogous (similar) to biological structures and their
functions – but distinct
o Biology is helpful because it gives us a way of thinking about society
- Distinct from psychology – both deal with conscous human beings
- Making the distinction establishes society, not the individual, as the focus of sociology—
its unique realm of study
- Sociology focuses on society – not whats going on in the heads of individuals
- Looks at how individuals interact with others
- Sociology’s domain—th study of a pre-existing, unique entity, comprised of identifiable,
institutionalized patterns of action into which individuals are born
o Patterns are so repetitive that you can call them an institution
▪ The lectures are an institutionalized way of passing on knowledge
- Individuals become social beings – they are socialized
o It is the social beings that sociologists are interested in
- Become members of a society by internalizing the existing ways of thinking, feeling, and
acting – the norms of the society
- Psychology – individual consciousness
- Sociology—social consciousness
- Ways of acting, thinking and feeling which exist outside the consciousness of the
individual and have a coercive power that imposes itself upon individuals
o Limits out behaviour
- Acting as brother, husband, citizen means following “obligations” or patterns of action
that are defined in custom or law that exist outside the individual and precede him
o Religious beliefs have prior existence and external
o Language is the same
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Document Summary
Division of labour: the more individual people become the more they rely on others. Designed to extend the scope of scientific rationalism to cover human behaviour : the scope of scientific reason-the idea of an empirical observationally based science of social behaviour. Study cause and effect in social action to make predictions. Manifesto on behalf of the cause of a sociology that is objective, specific and methodical . Systematic step by step study of what sociologists do. Distinct from biology both deal with living organisms. Sociology deals with shared ideas and patterns of conscious action as well as with social institutions and structures: different patterns of conscious action can be grouped into institutions. Social structures and processes analogous (similar) to biological structures and their functions but distinct: biology is helpful because it gives us a way of thinking about society. Distinct from psychology both deal with conscous human beings.
