Sociology is the systematic study of society and social interaction. In order to carry out their studies, sociologists identify cultural patterns and social forces and determine how they affect individuals and groups. They also develop ways to apply their findings to the real world.
participating in the development of colonial power relationships between the
indigenous people of North America and the Europeans that persist up until today.
Through contact with the Scots and the French fur traders, the Cree and
Anishinabe were gradually drawn out of their own indigenous modes of production
and into the developing global capitalist economy as fur trappers and provisioners
for the early European settlements. It was a process that eventually led to the loss of
control over their lands, the destruction of their way of life, the devastating spread
of European diseases, the imposition of the Indian Act, the establishment of the
residential school system, institutional and everyday racism, and an enduring legacy
of intractable social problems.
In a similar way, historical materialism analyzes the constraints that define the way
individuals review their options and make their decisions in present-day society.
From the types of career to pursue to the number of children to have, the decisions
and practices of everyday life must be understood in terms of the 20th century shift
to corporate ownership and the 21st century context of globalization in which
corporate decisions about investments are made.
The historical materialist approach emphasizes three components (Naiman 2012).
The first is that everything in society is related—it is not possible to study social
processes in isolation. The second is that everything in society is dynamic (i.e., in a
process of continuous social change). It is not possible to study social processes as
if they existed outside of history. The third is that the tensions that form around
relationships of power and inequality in society are the key drivers of social change.
In the language of Marx, these tensions are based on “contradictions” built into the
organization of the economic or material relationships that structure our livelihoods,
our relationships to each other, our relationship to the environment, and our place
within the global community. It is not possible to study social processes as if they
were independent of the historical formations of power that both structure them and
destabilize them.
Feminism
Another major school of critical sociology is feminism. From the early work of
women sociologists like Harriet Martineau, feminist sociology has focused on the
power relationships and inequalities between women and men. How can the
conditions of inequality faced by women be addressed? As Harriet Martineau put it
in Society in America (1837):
All women should inform themselves of the condition of their sex, and of their own position. It
must necessarily follow that the noblest of them will, sooner or later, put forth a moral power which
shall prostrate can’t [hypocrisy], and burst asunder the bonds (silken to some but cold iron to
others) of feudal prejudice and usages. In the meantime, is it to be understood that the principles
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