SOCI 1501W Lecture 6: Soci 1501w notes6
Document Summary
Notes 6: (cid:498)the first wisdom of sociology is this things are not what they seem to be(cid:499) (peter berger, invitation to sociology). A primer on doing sociology: facts never speak for themselves- only theory can. Theory ultimately determines what passes for a fact. An if theory is, in part, an effort to control reality, then letting fact speak means concealing social control further: we"re all culturally determined. Claims like, i choose, humans have free-will, we"re all authors of our destiny, our actins reflect our choices are believed because our culture says so. Culture tells us we must choose-and where and when humans can choose: same stuff, different day- social life is patterned, ordered, and regular. Chaos and catastrophe, deviance and criminality, likewise rarely occur randomly and indeterminately. This all makes social life predictable and stable, even if it changes: its not thing but what we make of the thing that makes it real.
