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Summary sociology
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SociologyLecture 1: Introduction
What is sociology?
- The systematic study of human society.
- The study of how people live together.
- This study based on social facts: social forces that influence us but which we cannot
change or control (language or currency for example).
o Something people assume to be a habit, a convention.
o Social facts cannot be reduced to individual facts.
o Social facts transcend the individual.
- Sociology is a form of consciousness, the ability to see:
o The general in the particular.
o The strange in the familiar (to question the convention).
o Individuality within a social context.
- How to see these things?
o Sociological imagination: the ability to connect the ‘personal troubles of
milieu’ with ‘public issues of social structures’.
One needs to take the role of the other to see the social within the individual and
vice versa (empathy).
A trouble is a private matter.
An issue is a public matter.
- Sociology is important to understand social situations, we need this to solve
problems.
What are sociological questions?
- Inequality.
- Cohesion (why do societies unite or divide?).
- Rationalisation or modernization (how is loneliness a product of modern
society?/conspiracy theories for example).
- Identity.
Lecture 2: Sociological perspectives I
Sociological perspectives:
- Functionalism
- Conflict approach
- Rational choice
- Symbolic interactionism
You need multiple perspectives to understand society as a whole, you don’t understand an
elephant without multiple perspectives.
Perspective: a way of seeing, you accept the blind spots that come with it. You can’t see it
through another perspective.
Theory: composition of ideas, rules or principles.
Model: simplified representation of some aspects of the real world.
, Functionalism:
Society as a complex social system in which all parts cohere and work together to produce
stability.
Society as a body, all parts work together so that the body works well.
Question: what is the function of social phenomena (what does it do for society)?
- For example: what is the function of a royal family?
Key concepts: social structure and social functions.
Three sorts of functions:
- Manifest functions: intended effects of a social phenomenon.
- Latent functions: unintended consequences of a social phenomenon.
- Dysfunctions: unintended, negative or subversive consequences of a social
phenomenon.
Why do people work?
- Manifest functions: income, production of goods.
- Latent: time structuring, social contacts, meaning, well-being, status and identity.
- Dysfunction: stress, overburdening.
Durkheim: research of suicide -> what is the function of suicide for a society?
Durkheim: research of religion: people believe something together, despite of what it is that
they believe in, it is a function of society to believe together.
Critique on functionalism:
- One-sided emphasis on consensus (blind spot for conflict and inequality).
- One-sided focus on stability (blind spot for change).
- Teleological (effects are understood as goals, while “society” is not a conscious actor
with needs).
- Reductionist (reduction of social phenomena to their role in the functioning of
society).
The conflict approach:
Social relations are the result of constant struggle between social groups.
Conflict is inevitable and brings about social change.
Social structures favor some groups more than others instead of promoting the functioning
of the system.
- Lower groups try to improve their position, higher groups try to maintain their
position.
- The powerful versus the powerless, oppressors and the oppressed.
- Continuous state of conflict through struggle for resources.
Social order is a result of power imbalances and domination instead of consensus and
conformity.
Conflict drives social change -> conflict is shaped by means of production -> class conflict
between those having resources to exploit others -> class conflict between bourgeoisie and
proletariat.
The dominating class has the power to produce dominating ideas.
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