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Sociology a global introductionMacionis & Plummer
Chapters 1-12, 15, 17-19, 22, 23, 25, 26
Tessa Faber
,Chapter 1 – The Sociological Imagination
The power of sociology is to demonstrate just how strong are the social forces that organize
society in very, very different ways – and to demonstrate it in time and space.
The first wisdom of sociology is this: things are not what they seem.
[A key to sociological thinking is the basic idea that society guides our actions and life
choices.]
What is sociology?
Sociology is the systematic, sceptical and critical study of the social. It studies the way
people do things together. Sociology becomes a form of consciousness, a way of thinking, a
critical way of seeing the social.
Contrary to the popular view that sociology is just common sense, it often stains against the
common sense. Once it becomes ingrained in your thinking, it will always be asking for you
to ‘think the social’, and it will entail challenging the obvious, questioning the world as it is
taken for granted, and de-familiarising the familiar.
Seeing the general in the particular
Peter Berger characterised the sociological perspective as a way of seeing the general in the
particular. He meant that sociologists can identify general patterns of social life by looking at
concrete specific examples of social life. Sociologists recognise that society acts differently
on various categories of people. There are many factors that shape our lives, including
gender.
Seeing the strange in the familiar
Peter Berger says in his Invitation to Sociology, ‘The first wisdom of sociology is this: things
are not what they seem’. Zygmunt Bauman says in his Sociological Thinking, we need to
‘defamiliarise the familiar’.
The sociological perspective provides deeper insights that may not be readily apparent.
At the broadest level, sociology sets out to show the patterns and processes by which
society shapes what we do.
Table 1.1 The architecture of social life: the layers of reality
• Cosmic
• World and globe
• Social and cultural
• Interactional
• Individual
Individuality in social context: the strange case of suicide
Human behaviour is not as individualistic as we may think. Proud of our individuality, we
resist the idea that we act in socially patterned ways. Yet much of social life is indeed
shaped, even determined, by factors outside of our control.
A demonstration of how social forces affect human behaviour can be found in the study of
suicide. No act seems more individualistic – more driven by personal ‘choice’ – than the
decision to take one’s own life.
,If Emile Durkheim, a pioneer of sociology, could show that an intensely individual act like
suicide was socially shaped, then he would have made a strong case for sociological analysis.
He showed that social forces help shape even the apparently most isolated act of self-
destruction. Statistics showed that some categories of people were more likely than others
to take their own lives. Specifically, Durkheim found that men, Protestants, wealthy people
and the unmarried each had significantly higher suicide rates when compared with women,
Roman Catholic and Jews, the poor and married people, respectively. Durkheim deduced
that these differences corresponded to people’s degree of social integration: how they
bonded, connected and tied into society.
à Durkheim claimed that low suicide rates characterised categories of people with strong
social ties; high suicide rates were found among those who were more socially isolated and
individualistic.
Different kinds of suicide:
• Anomic suicide. Too little integration – common at times of massive social change
and social breakdown – could lead to anomic suicide.
• Altruistic suicide. Too much integration could lead to altruistic suicide.
• Egoistic suicide. Too little regulation could lead to egoistic suicide.
• Fatalistic suicide. Too much regulation could lead to fatalistic suicide.
Market capitalism had led to a breakdown of the old integration. Whatever freedom’s
advantages for men, concluded Durkheim, autonomy meant lower social integration, which
contributed to a higher male suicide rate. Likewise, the wealthy clearly have much more
freedom of action than the poor but, once again, at the cost of a higher suicide rate.
Christian Baudelot and Roger Establet – have examined world changes and concluded that,
although suicide is shaped by social factors, these have changed somewhat since the time
that Durkheim was studying. Suicide, for example, has declined amongst the wealthy and
grown amongst the poor.
The Chinese exception
In some parts of the world, such as Iraq, suicide rates are very low; but Asia accounts for 60
per cent of the world’s suicides.
In almost every country of the world, men are more likely to commit suicide than women.
Yet in china, this is not so.
Whereas in the West suicide is linked to city life, in China it is three times higher in the
countryside.
Methods and research: what sociologists do
Key roles that a sociologist performs in a modern society:
- Sociologists are researchers: they document the nature of the social times we live in.
- A second task of the sociologist is that of the theorists: they aim to foster deeper
understanding of what is going on, and provide a way for sociological knowledge to
become cumulative – wisdom can be passed on and developed from generation to
generation. Sociologists develop wider ideas and help facilitate theoretical and
analytical thinking about society.
, - Sociologist as critic. Sociology fosters a critical attitude to social life, seeing that
things are never quite what they seem, and common sense never quite that
common. Sociology developed as tool to build an emancipatory knowledge: to help
us understand the world in order to advance it.
- The sociologist as educator and teacher.
Many other roles for sociologists:
- Sociologists can be artists, generating ideas that can inform and enhance human
creativity.
- Sociologists can be policy shapers, advising governments and groups on the nature of
the social world.
- Sociologists can be commentators and public intellectuals, providing a social
diagnosis of the ills of our time.
- There are also dialogists, creating organised dialogues across the multiple different
voices to be heard in a society. At every level of social life we confront conflicts, and
sociologists can facilitate listening to different voices and maybe evolving common
ground as a basis for discussions.
Finally, then, sociology has a wide and generic role in society: the sociologist becomes the
critical citizen in society.
Sociology helps people to challenge what is taken for granted, to look at their social world
creatively, and to make the link between the private problems of individuals and the public
problems of cultures. Sociology can help crate critical, socially aware citizens, who can make
informed and knowledgeable decisions.
What is public sociology?
Sociology involves multiple audiences and groups:
- People and everyday life
- Professional sociology
- Public and popular sociology
- Practitioners and applied
- Policy and ‘political’
Many sociologists study the world in order to provide a better understanding and achieve an
improved social world.
The sociologist as critical citizen: sociology in everyday life
Sociology and social marginality
Sociological thinking is especially common among social ‘outsiders’. The term social
marginality refers to a state of being excluded from the social fabric and being treated as an
outsider.
The more acute people’s social marginality, the more likely they are to be keenly aware of
their surroundings and to see the world from a different perspective. To an extent, sociology
is an outsider discipline.
All those who can be relegated to the outskirts of social life typically become more aware of
social patterns that other take for granted.
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