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Summary KCSS Notes - IBCOM Year 1
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IBCOM Year 1KCSS Notes
Chapter 1
Sociology is a new way of looking at the world.
Social integration - How they bonded, connected and tied into society.
Key roles sociologists perform in modern society:
1. Researchers
2. Theorists
3. Critics
4. Educators and teachers
5. Artists
6. Policy shapers
7. Commentators and public intellectuals
8. Dialogists
Benefits of the sociological perspective:
1. It becomes a way of thinking, a 'form of consciousness' that challenges familiar
understandings of ourselves and others.
2. It enables us to assess both the opportunities and the constraints that characterize our
lives.
3. It helps us to be active participants in our society.
4. It enables us to recognize human differences and human suffering and to confront the
challenges of living in a diverse world.
Problems with the sociological perspective:
1. Sociology is part of a changing world.
2. Sociologists are part of what they study.
3. Sociological knowledge becomes part of society.
Enlightenment - Fresh philosophies
Sociology in many ways is the product of enlightenment.
Enlightenment highlighted the following ideas:
1. Rationality and reason became a key way of organizing knowledge.
2. Empiricism
3. Science
4. Universalism
5. Progress
6. Individualism
7. Toleration
8. Freedom
9. Human nature was uniform: rational, individual and free.
10. Secularism
Positivism - A means to understand the world based on science.
,Ferdinand Toennies: Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
Saw the modern world as the progressive loss of gemeinschaft, or human community.
This is because of the Industrial revolution and fostering individualism and business
emphasis on facts and efficiency.
Family and traditions were undermined with self-interest which he dubbed
gesellschaft.
Different aspects of the broad social change:
1. The digital age
2. The cyborg age
3. The information age
4. The network society
5. The virtual age
Sociology is changing its nature with new topics and new methods.
Chapter 2
Theory - Statement of how and why specific facts are related.
Theoretical perspective - A basic image that guides thinking and research.
Three perspectives that dominate sociological thinking:
1. Functionalism
2. Conflict
3. Action theory
Functionalism - A framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts
work together and interconnect - often to promote solidarity and stability.
Social structure - Patterns of social behavior
Social functions - Consequences for the operation of society.
Manifest functions - Recognized and intended consequences of any social patterns.
Latent functions - Consequences that are largely unrecognized and unintended.
Social dysfunctions - Any social pattern's undesirable consequences for the operation of society.
Not all the effects of any social structure turn out to be useful.
People may disagree about what is useful or harmful.
Conflict perspective - A framework for building theory that sees society as an arena of differences
and inequalities that generate conflict and change.
Investigates how factors such as social class, race, ethnicity, sex, disability and age are
linked to unequal distribution of money, power, education and social prestige.
Macro-level orientation - A focus on broad social structures that characterize society as a whole.
Micro-level orientation - A focus on the emerging meanings of social interaction in specific
situations.
Symbolic interactionism - A theoretical framework that envisages society as the product of the
everyday interactions of people doing things together.
, To understand such interactions, great emphasis is placed on studying everyday social
life through tools such as life stories and observation.
Homans and Blau:
Social exchange analysis - Social interaction amounts to a negotiation in which individuals are guided
by what they stand to gain and lose from others.
People typically seek mates who offer at least as much - in terms of physical
attractiveness, intelligence and social background - as they provide in return.
Whether using a functionalist, conflict or action perspective, they all shared common assumptions
derived from their male and Western position.
In contrast, newer perspectives generally see a range of other voices that were missed
out of sociology in the past.
Essentialism - The belief in essences that are similar.
Global perspective - The study of the larger world and each society's place in it.
Three reasons why global thinking should figure prominently in the sociological perspective:
1. Societies all over the world are increasingly interconnected.
2. A global perspective enables us to see that many human problems we face in Europe
are far more serious elsewhere.
3. Thinking globally is also an excellent way to learn more about ourselves.
Globalization - The increasing interconnectedness of societies.
Creates greater awareness of diversity and hybridization.
Hybridization - It stimulates international markets and wealth, and helps towards a more universal
humankind.
'Global' in contemporary times usually means that dominant (capitalist) societies are taking over the
finances and cultures of other societies.
Key features of globalization:
1. Shifts the borders of economic transactions.
2. Expands communications into global networks.
3. Fosters a new, widespread 'global culture'.
4. Develops new forms of international governance.
5. Creates a growing awareness of shared common world problems.
6. Fosters a growing sense of risk.
7. Leads to the emerge of 'transnational global actors' who 'network'.
Ulrich Beck: World Risk Society
Argues new technologies are generating risks which are of a quite different order from
those found throughout earlier human history.
These risks appear with the industrial world which are not 'in nature' but
'manufactured'.
Globalizers - Argue there is a growing global economy which is transcending nations and providing
the motor force of change.
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