SOC 104 Study Guide - Fall 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Sociology, Social Forces, Patricia Hill Collins
12 Oct 2018
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SOC 104
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
SOC104-Lecture 1
Lecture 1
What Is Sociology?
• The systematic study of human society and human interaction
o Can be quantitative + qualitative
Why Study It?
• Gain understanding of self and surrounding
How Do we Study It?
• How can we study ourselves in the midst of our daily social interactions?
• How can we perceive our cultures, genders, organizations?
• How do others perceive us?
Fundamental Assumptions
• We are immersed in society
• Sociology has a lot to teach us about ourselves-- about how we have come to be the
people we are, what we value, what we desire
• Immersion makes it easier and harder to study
Wonder & Estrangement
• Ordinary conduct→why do we do things the way we do?
• Taking things for granted
• Most of us rely on common sense knowledge to guide our ordinary conduct in everyday
life
Discipline Of Sociology
• Industrial economy-massive economical, technological social change
• Growth of cities-urbanization-mass movement of people, social politics
o Pollution, crime
• Political change
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
• Believed people are a product of social environment
• Society is built of social facts
• Suicide theory
• Anomie: A condition when condition when social control becomes ineffective as a result
of the loss of shared values and a sense of purpose in society
• Believed in social order
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
• Conflict (especially class conflict) was necessary
o Bourgeoisie and proletariat
o Capitalist system made poverty
• Capitalist class controls and exploits the masses of struggling workers
• Results in alienation
• Marx predicted that the workers would become aware of its exploitation, overthrow
capitalist
Theoretical Perspective
• Theory
• Perspective
o Basic image of society that helps us think about social issues and guide social
research
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2
To Summarize
• Sociology involves using different perspectives to systematically study the social world
• Different perspectives can be used to interpret the same issues/topics in different ways
• These different perspectives allow us to deconstruct the taken for granted ways of
thinking
Social Things (pg 1-33, 51-60, 72-73)
• Sociology is an important feature of social life (p6)
• Intuition is evidence of sociology in us (pg7)
• Social imagination can affect emotions (pg 8)
• Sociological Competence=what we know and how we know it
• “Sociological Incompetence requires the participation of others who may be in the
position to so foul up the normal course of some aspect and of social life as to injure
those affected by their actions or failure to act”(p9)
• Natural disasters are complex forms of social incompetence (p11)
• People know a lot about social things, but cannot talk about them without help or
showing they have challenges talking about them (p13)
• “When we live in small worlds, it is usually difficult to understand the larger social forces
that affect us” (p 14)
• C. Wright Mills said “sociology is the activity by which persons of differing degrees of
training and experience often learn eventually to create imaginative reconstructions of
larger structural forces that affect their lives” (pg 15)
• Sociological imagination “the ability of some to learn-often with good luck or coaching or
perhaps with formal schooling-to realize that, just as often, that one’s personal problems
are in fact public issues” (pg 15)
• Mills believed that sociology isn’t just for the professionals
• 19th century was a man centred world where women were treated like they couldn’t do
outside work (pg17)
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)-Yellow wallpaper, Sociologist (pg16-17)
• False Consciousness Friedrich Engels 1820-1895) -surprising inability for people to use
their native social competence (p20)
o People are unable to realize the social things that cause their troubles (p20)
o People often blame themselves or anything other than the actual social cause
(p20)
o Abuse example: will be taught that it is because of their own mistakes or their
own fault or lead to believe to think falsely of the situation (p24)
o Taught and imposed by indirect means so lovingly and gently (p24)
• Poverty is a social effect (p21)
• Oppression is as much sociological as it is economical or political (p22)
• Karl Marx “religion dulled the minds of those who suffered the most” (p22)
• People overcome bad situations when they think and look critically, normally the right
answer is right in front of them (p24)
• “Humans are feelers and doers before they become thinkers” (p24)
• Practical sociology- the understanding that arises from the first imaginative peeks behind
the surface appearances of everyday life (p26)
o Knowledge that coherently accounts for a person’s reality
o Forms confidence in their place, rights and possibilities in the world (p26)
o We are connected with others even before we realize we are connected (P28)
o Some practical knowledge requires more social work to accomplish (p29)
• Erving Goffman (1920-1982)- “Universal human nature is not a thing”(p30)
o “When we act in obedience to the practical sociologies we possess, we act to a
disconcerting degree much like all others” (p30)
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