Defining Sociology
- “The systematic study of human society”
- Looking at individual behaviour in a social context
- Recognizing and understanding patterned behaviour
- Understanding social order/ structure
- Understanding social change
Seeing the general in the particular
- Hand- holding
- Individual behaviour represents that of categories of people (e.g.
men/women)
- Social contexts- different effects on different categories of people, rather than
on individuals
- Canadian Airborne Regiment (p.2-3)
Seeing the strange in the familiar
- Giving up the notion of individual decision- making
- Seeing the guiding hand of society in our thoughts and deeds
- Recognizing the “determinism” constraining our “free will”
Suicide: Individual behaviour in a social context
- Rates are remarkably stable over time
- Durkheim looked at suicide rates among different categories of people (High-
affluent, Protestant, single) (Low- poor, Catholic, married)
- Level of social integration/ isolation
- Rates increase during rapid social change (Aboriginal communities have
higher suicide rates, extreme rapid changes) (Change in individual
status/social mobility)
Canadian Sociology
- Differs from American or European sociology
- Early French- Canadian (i.e. Catholic) influences
- Reflects Canadian economy, which depends on natural resources (extraction
and export)_ fur, lumber, fish, oil, uranium
- Second largest country in the world so nation- building difficult:
communications, communication technologies, and the media important
areas
- Canada is a county rooted in immigration: thus ethnicity, intergroup
relations, stratification and social class became important areas of sociology
research Women Founders of the Social Sciences
- Women have been “written out” of history or ignored: their early
contributions to politics, literature, the arts, and science (including scientific
sociology were unrecognized)
- The box on page 17 deals with the many women who have contributed to
social science (theory and methods) since the mid- 1500s
- Sociologists (including feminists) still fail to recognize the work of these
women
Thinking sociologically requires sociological theory
What is theory?
- “A statement of how and why specific facts are related”
- A framework for understanding cause and effect
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