48-101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Social Fact, Symbolic Interactionism, Auguste Comte

• School: University of Windsor
• Department: Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology
• Course: 48-101
• Professor: Nakhaie

Document Summary

It is a science that constructs theories about social relationships making up a society. Using observations, experimentations, using findings to make predictions. Try to be gender neutral in sociology. People who are suicidal are less attached in the community/society and less involved. Conclusion from experiments: the lower integration the more suicidal. Suicide is directly related to the social involvement. In sociology, these can bias results in research: We study ourselves, we have feelings and ideas which affect the research. Our selection of research methods might be incorrect. Three characteristics of social facts: they are external to individuals, everyone act differently towards different people/situations, social facts must be studied as a thing; have to be value-free (sociology must be treated as an object) Social workers are interested in practice; sociology is interested in building knowledge using evidence from experiments. We have social focus, distinguishes sociology from psychology (c. wright mills)