01:920:101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Auguste Comte, Social Fact, Norm (Social)

• School: Rutgers University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: 01:920:101
• Professor: Professor Springer

Document Summary

Sociological imagination: the application of imaginative thought to the asking and answering of sociological questions. Someone using the sociological imagination thinks himself away from the familiar routines of daily life. Social structure: the underlying regularities or patterns in how people behave and in their relationships with one another: basic concepts. Social construction: an idea or practice that a group of people agree exists. It is maintained overtime by people taking its existence for granted. The difference between a boy and a girl are not purely biological. The goal of sociology is not to try to teach you that the biological realm is a residual category with a minor role in explaining human behavior. Sociology to disentangle what is biological from what is socially constructed. It is rational to act this way. If you need something out of the person you are trying to appease, your good behavior becomes an incentive for them. Acting this way is a social norm.