SOC 1101 Lecture Notes - Auguste Comte, French Revolution, The Sociological Imagination

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 1101
• Professor: Stephan Larose

Document Summary

Lecture 1 - the sociological imagination: what is it, and why does it matter. Sociology is the study of social interactions and how they relate to society. It is a binding tradition, an ongoing field. It is the systematic study of social interactions. Sociologists also investigate and change commonly held assumptions, they like to debunk false perceptions. For example, how male nurses are seen as gay, it"s seen as a feminine perception because it doesn"t pay very well. The first thing sociologists would do is investigate this phenomenon. They would look at the pattern of social behaviour, how the assumptions are held and maintained and what they could do to change this. If you want to understand society you need to study sociology. The sociological imagination is the ability to make connections between what you are going through personally and other larger events going on in the world. Mills shows how society works in terms of our own personal life.