ITS READINGS
Readings week 1
Chapter 2: Asking and answering sociological questions.
Thinking sociology:
- We think about objects of sociological study social phenomena: ‘if people define
situations as real, they are real in their consequence’
o In this case we make things real together.
- We study these phenomena on different levels.
o Macro: large in scale (e.g. capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy).
o Meso: intermediate social forces between micro and macro (e.g. social
movements, service sector industry, neighborhoods).
o Micro: individual level (e.g. rituals, emotion management).
- (de)familiarize (what are we doing when we are thinking sociology? – You learn, you
defamiliarize and familiarize).
o Defamiliarize: asking questions (places that are familiar to us and questioning
what it is or why it is like that, distancing yourself from what you know).
o Familiarize: regarding a perceived situation as normal (trying to familiarize
yourself in situations that are unfamiliar to you – new situations).
- Personal troubles, public issues: We (as sociologists) should learn to see personal
problems as connected to society and environment.
o Connect personal problems to public issues (e.g. suicide is often relatable to
the public environment/society).
People often blame the individual actions of people when they are experiencing for example
poverty or depression, while these are often related to environmental issues/society/public
issues (sociologists should focus on that).
- Social (historical, cultural, political, economic) context really helps sociologists too
see things clearly.
There are three theories of the causes of poverty. Analyses on a meta level all the
sociological theories around poverty (theories and approaches).
- Behavioral theories
- Structural theories
- Political theories.
In short: thinking sociology
= Understanding
sociological phenomena,
analyzing sociological
theories, collecting
empirical data.
Doing sociology:
Sociology as a science: you have a special relationship with the subject of study, you have to
find a balance between scientists, participants, and society.
- Exists of factual research and theoretical questions.
, - Involvement and detachment: As a sociologist you are really involved in your subject,
but you also must be detached at the same time.
o e.g. when working with opinions and people, you cannot make this personal.
- Same questions of knowledge as other sciences (e.g. ‘method reliable?’,
‘generalization possible?’, etc.).
- Different questions of knowledge than other sciences (Animals and objects cannot
resist to results, humans can - this makes it different to study humans and
environment from a sociological perspective). This brings the following challenges:
o Self-conscious: give meaning.
o Adapting to research (e.g. social desirability).
o Resist (and sometimes attack) scientists: people can disagree and fight the
conclusions.
o Society changes all the time. It is not a stable thing. So, what is measured now
might be different in a couple of years.
- Ethical concerns
o Influence: as sociologist you can have an influence on people.
o Vulnerability: they could be very vulnerable, for example racism.
o Anonymity: being careful with personal information at all times.
o Consent: You have to ask for consent, even though they might answer
differently because of that (because personal information will be shared), but
this is a part of ethical behavior.
Methodology: practical technique/tools/guidelines. Being able to grasp the empirical
environment of others – observe ideas/writings/sayings. Observing social and natural
phenomena.
- Qualitative research: research that is focused on the quality of social life. The texture,
what is the meaning, how do people interpret things (interpreting, in-depth and close
to social experience).
o Ethnography.
o Interviewing.
o Focus groups: bringing people together and discussing about a topic –
relational aspect of a topic, action and reaction, what kind of interactions
(collective level of how ideas are formed).
o Document analysis: analyzing documents/aspects/social media over the years
regarding a certain topic.
o Life history studies: understanding the life course of people and
reconstructing it into a more temporal understanding of someone’s
life/opinion.
- Quantitative research: measuring, controlling and numerical representation (good
thing is that you can generalize, BUT you also have to categorize, which is not always
as representable as it should be – non response is also a problem).
o Survey research: questionnaires which create an understanding of how large
people experience/see things.
o Register data.
o Experiments: 2 groups and different stimuli and see what happens.
- There are no strict boundaries:
o Open questions in survey.
, o Quantitative analysis of text/interviews.
- Mixed methods
o Combining methods
o Triangulation
- Methodological future of sociology
o Visual sociology
o Digital sociology: huge amount of data which makes it easier to do research.
o Big data analysis.
o Machine learning and al.
Chapter 3: Theories and perspectives.
Theorizing: There are many different ways to theorize (e.g. functionalism, feminism)
- Allows you to make something particular, something universal.
- Based on logical reasoning and argumentation: not anything goes.
- Allows you to interpret the empirical.
- Shared and coherent set of concepts and ideas.
Sociology of sociology: theories have histories. Theories are complex and can change all the
time. It is a power mechanism.
- Theories emerge a certain context.
- Theories express power mechanism.
- Theories are result of conflicts: it is always a certain theory against another one.
Sociology is a frank attempt to assist in supplying a real popular demand. It springs from the
people’s thought, not alone for the lucubration’s of closet speculators. At the same time
sociology attempts to inform and control the very popular thought by which it has been
inspired.
- Methods and empirical research.
Connell (2018) Decolonizing sociology
What have the founding fathers of sociology in common:
- White and western European.
- Male.
- 19th century.
- Upper class.
this has consequences regarding what they focused on and what the found. There is a lot
of blind spots because the focus was on a certain type of people and a certain situation
within Europe or within a certain class for example.
With questioning the theories comes questioning the methods.
Sociology has caused lifesaving interventions:
- E.g. Feminist theory, gender theory, postmodernist theory, etc.
Decolonizing sociology:
- Post-colonial theory: sociology was a product of colonizing societies questioning the
legacy of the ‘classical’ sociological framework.
, o ‘Give the voice to the ‘subalterns’ (who is the ‘other’?)
- Problems of eurocentrism:
o The world is perceived through the eyes of white western men (also often the
sociologists).
They silence other voices (e.g. non-western words, ideas, and
realities).
o They ignore colonial and imperial relations.
o Strengthen already existing power relations (global North vs global South).
Eurocentrism: cultural phenomenon that views the histories and cultures of non-western
societies from a European or Western perspective.
The task of the sociologists: making problems real to our mind helps us to solve those
problems by also understanding the environment and different opinions in the environment.
Tutorial week 1
What does sociological thinking entail: you are doubting everything you know
(defamiliarizing: why are things like this and why do others perceive it like this as well?) and
you familiarize everything that is unfamiliar for you (observe new situations and interpret
what these are and what people think these are). Looking at subjects from different contexts
to understand and see how (personal) problems are related to situation (social structures –
bigger social structure issues) and context.
- Provide an example of thinking sociologically about a social issue: smoking. Smoking
used to be normal until someone doubted about the normal states of affair. After
research they found that smoking is unhealthy and causing long cancer. Surely but
slowly the perception of smoking twisted because people defamiliarized a smoking
environment. Now smoking is almost perceived as dirty, dumb and ‘tokkie’.
What makes sociology a scientific discipline: How you can create theories and use them
makes sociology a scientific discipline. What do we know that can help us to explain this
phenomena? Academic skills and argumentation (scientific argumentation) makes sociology
an academic discipline.
- Explain how sociology differs from lay perspectives/bar talk: The steps you take
between observation and conclusion. This has to be reasoned (beargumenteerd)
sufficiently in order to be able to be accepted.
- Explain how sociology differs from journalism: journalism projects situation as they
come. They report what happened without researching contexts and mechanisms
behind occurring situations. Sociology creates a more in depth-investigation
regarding events. Why did these happen? What lies behind people’s actions and
what can be connected from the environment to this specific person’s/companies’
actions.
What does decolonizing sociology entail?: deleting/altering the biased views of white old
upper class European men regarding sociology and making them more generalizable
regarding the whole society. Recognizing and acknowledging where it goes wrong regarding
sociological perceptions and theories and correcting this, but what does correcting these
perceptions and theories look like? Rewriting text and including other texts in curricula –
