SOCY1050 Study Guide - White Australia Policy, Social Stratification, Erik Olin Wright
Document Summary
How social structures and institutions affect attitudes, actions and opportunities. How individuals construct, maintain and alter social organization. Challenging what is accepted and taken for granted. Sociological imagination: allows us to distinguish between a trouble and an issue; the ability to see the macro in the everyday. Understanding of realities of ourselves in connection with larger social realities. Look for explanations in depth and breadth. Qualitative researchers: make inferences and theoretical statements about empirical contexts. Positivism: knowledge can only be comprised of empirical evidence. Scientific method based on observation and measurements. Humans only constituents in patterns of behaviour. Post-positivism: a theory is only scientific when it can be falsified and tested. Acknowledges that the social world is a human construction and truth depends on context. Error and bias are inevitable in human sciences and must be accounted for. Social actors" subjective constructions of reality of prime concern. People have agency" and create their own worlds and actions.
