SOC 107 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Social Reality, Antipositivism, Symbolic Interactionism

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 107
• Professor: Alan Sears

Document Summary

Knowing and learning (week 3) kyv-chapter 2 (35-58) and brt-chapter 3. Symbols mobilize our responses to the environment and help us bring together, or conceptualize aspects of it. In contrast animals live in a world of signs. A sign differs from a symbol in that its meanings remain constant. Its meaning is identified with its physical form and may be grasped through the senses. Not everything we know counts in the same way (ex. facts and opinion) No real rules vs rules of vigour. Deliberate frames in sociology, in which you can consciously switch frames, but not in everyday life. Different ideas of how we know and how knowledge works. Positivism: assumption that all types of sciences operate using the same methods. Science is essentially about objectively capturing sense data. We should use different methods to study the universe. We want to ask questions about every classification we have.