SOCI 30 Study Guide - Spring 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Sociology, Tobacco Smoking, Ted Conference
SOCI 30
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Week One
What is sociology?
● The systematic study of human interaction
○ Individuals, groups, organizations, and society
○ Personal issues (love, poverty, wealth, health, etc) best understood in
socio- historical context
Sociology is systematic
● Empirical research
○ Controlled, systematic observations inthe real world
○ Probabilistics
■ Laws of probability
Approaches to sociological research: methods
● Quantitative
○ Research uses numerical data and sophisticated techniquest (statistics)
for analysis
■ Example of comparing health or census data from various
countries
● Qualitative
○ Research based on non-numerical information that describes social life
■ Example of Judith Stacey comparing white Pentecostals with
secular egalitarians
What is macrosociology?
● Big picture: study of broad patterns of social life
○ Quantitative Methods
○ Large-scale analyses of social systems, structures, trends, patterns or
(regional, national) populations
● Disease epidemics, economic crises, human trafficking m suicide rates, crime
rates, divorce, marriage,
● Can focus on smaller groups, but relates them to a larger social structure
What is microsociology?
● Studies small scale, everyday social interactions
● Typically qualitative methods
● Observe, participate with, and/or interview people in the social worlds
● Families, classrooms, hospitals, on social media sites, etc
How do they complement each other?
● Studies how we create and reproduce larger, social systems division patterns
etc on the ground level that microsociologists study more abstractly
What is the sociological imagination?
● The ability to see the influence of the social, cultural and historical processes
on our private lives
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
● C. wright mills
● Examples
○ Student debt
How does it help us see differently?
● More informed and intentional in our choices as part of our communities
● Also helps us recognize that solutions to many social problems life not in
changing the personal situations and characteristics of individual people but
in changing public policy social institutions and roles available to them
How is reality socially constructed?
● Individually or collectively?
● Various societies/Groups construct the world differently
● Culture: a complex system of meaning and behavior that make up a way of
life for a given group
○ Partiular as o thinkin, eelin, and atin
○ Society's personality
○ Example:
■ Macro: american culture
■ micro : soc 30 culture
○ Our selves are objects and subjects of culture
● By interpreting sensation
● We experience the world (and culture) through
○ Sight, sound, feel ,taste, and smell
○ bombarded by stimuli
○ ”ot eperienin orld as is ut throuh an interpretatie lens
○ Only focus on relevant stimuli
○ Actively seek out stimuli to interpret
How is reality socially constructed?
● Through conceptualization
○ Grouping Our sensory experiences into categories or concepts based
on their similarities
○ Link current sensory experience with past or imagined future
○ Makes order out of chaos
○ Simplify organize and generalize the world
○ Categories often become taken-for granite, natural or inevitable
When does this become problematic?
How is reality socially constructed?
● Through symbols
● How are they different than signs?
○ Symbols
■ Allow us to:
● Transcend immediate environment
○ imagination, memories, plan etc
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Personal issues (love, poverty, wealth, health, etc) best understood in socio- historical context. Research uses numerical data and sophisticated techniquest (statistics) for analysis. Example of comparing health or census data from various countries. Research based on non-numerical information that describes social life. Example of judith stacey comparing white pentecostals with secular egalitarians. Big picture: study of broad patterns of social life. Large-scale analyses of social systems, structures, trends, patterns or (regional, national) populations. Disease epidemics, economic crises, human trafficking m suicide rates, crime rates, divorce, marriage, Can focus on smaller groups, but relates them to a larger social structure. Observe, participate with, and/or interview people in the social worlds. Families, classrooms, hospitals, on social media sites, etc. Studies how we create and reproduce larger, social systems division patterns etc on the ground level that microsociologists study more abstractly. The ability to see the influence of the social, cultural and historical processes on our private lives.
