SOCL 2001 Study Guide - Spring 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Social Class, Trust Law, Sociology
SOCL 2001
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Sociology Chapter 1: Its Nature and Development
• What is Sociology?
o Scientific study of social relationships, social institutions and society
o August Comte is the founder
o Socius (companion) + logos (word) = sociology (words about human association
or society)
o Sociology is the study of social life and the social causes and the consequences of
human behavior
• Sociology is a perspective- we encounter many daily questions: why do most of us feel
uofortale ith a group of people e do’t ko?
• Another way to see what sociology is, is to observe some sociologists at work
• Its broad discipline but one common thing: sociology is concerned with every aspect of
the self in relationships with others and every aspect of the social world that affects a
perso’s thoughts or atios
• What is Sociology perspective?
o Way of looking at society and social behavior
o Way to recognize patterns in social events and view personal experiences in the
light of these patterns
o Sociologists consider the world from their own unique perspective
o Sociological perspective helps us to see beyond our own individual experiences
• Sociological imagination?
o Coined by C Wright Mills, American Sociologist
o Vivid awareness between experience and wider society
• How does Sociological perspective operate?
o 2 levels: macro and micro
o Macro: large-scale structures and broad
▪ Ex: war and unemployment rate
▪ Solution: structural or organizational level
o Micro: how individuals behave in social situations
▪ Ex: social problems of a veteran or an unemployed worker
▪ Solution: personal or inter-personal level
o EX: Divorce
▪ Micro: how husband and wife interact. Most likely to occur if
personalities are incompatible
▪ Macro: looking at divorce rates cross-culturally. Most likely to occur if
society is modern
• Sociology VS other disciplines
o Economics: exchange theory- instead of goods and services, sociologists deal
with love, trust, and friendship in exchange theory
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
o Political science: conflict theory- political science is primarily concerned with
power, conflict, and how we regulate them, sociologists use similar ideas to deal
with the power and conflict in everyday life
o Anthropology: anthropologists study society as a whole, whereas sociologists
concentrate to one particular aspect
o Psychology: Social psychology is the study of how an individual influences his or
her social interactions with other individuals and how social behavior influences
the individual; symbolic interactionism- major sociological perspective that
shares the same origin with social psychology
o History: basically descriptive, however, many historians are turning to
sociological methods of analysis to determine what social forces influenced
specific historic events
• Development of Sociology in America
o Chicago school- after WWI, a group of scholars at the Univ. of Chicago developed
an approach to social psychology known as the Chicago school
o This was the leading center until the 1940s
o 7 of the 27 presidents of the ACA taught/ educated here
o Charles Horton Cooley, George Hebert Mead, WI Thomas were leading figures
o Center shifted to Harvard and Columbia after 1940
o Leading figure there was Talcott Parsons
o Research on traditional subjects (family, race, criminology, urban society)
continued
• Eminent Sociologists and their contribution
o August Comte (mathematician and natural scientist)
▪ known for the law of human progress: theological/fictions,
metaphysical/abstract, scientific/positive
▪ viewed society as a type of organism (like plants, society has a structure-
simple to complex)
▪ sociology focuses on both social status and social dynamics
o Herbert Spencer (training in math and natural sciences)
▪ Believed in evolutionary progress
▪ Theor of soial eolutio surial of the fittest
▪ Adaptation, competition, and survive
▪ Society evolves from homogeneity and simplicity to heterogeneity to
complex
o Karl Marx (descendent of rabbis)
▪ One of the authors of the communist manifesto (1847)
▪ Emphasized political evolution
▪ Economic determinism: all changes, including society conditions and
society itself, are based on economic factors
▪ Economic inequalities result in class struggle between the bourgeoisie
and the protestant
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Most likely to occur if personalities are incompatible: macro: looking at divorce rates cross-culturally. The way in which society is integrated: theres two types, mechanical: all people live in the same way and share similar responsibilities, organic: people have highly differentiated tasks, responsibilities, and behaviors. We are dependent b/c of our skills/unique status: max weber (dr. from univ of heidelberg germany, best known books: the protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism, the. Sociology of hinduism and buddhism, theory of social and economic. Is sociology a science: components of scientific theory, concepts and variables- a concept is an abstract system of meaning that enables us to perceive a phenomenon in a particular way. Independent: variable is the presume to cause an effect: cause: dependent: variable that is presumed to be affected by the independent variable: effect. Inexpensive: disadvantage, out-dated/missing data, **content analysis is an important secondary analysis. Important concept: population: group of people to be studied.
