SUMMARY
Book: ‘Sociology: A global introduction’
Authors: John J Macionis & Ken Plummer
Edition: 5
Summarized by: L. C. Claassen
Dear student,
Please keep in mind that this is a SUMMARY. This work contains merely the MAIN topics
and ideas of the book. It is a simplified version of the real work, so it does not contain every
single concept. In order to fully grasp the material, I strongly advise you to READ THE
BOOK.
If you read the book, you will come across all sorts of explanations and examples which
clarify the topics in the most sophisticated way possible. You will be far better able to
remember all the information that was given to you if you understand it FULLY.
Then again, you are a student, and students have all sorts of other responsibilities. There are
other courses that you must study for and there are other assignments that you must make. Of
course, at times, it is equally important to take a break and not think about school for a while
in order to rest and regain your focus. Next to all this, you probably have a social life as well.
It is completely understandable if you choose to make a compromise for your time by only
studying a summary.
If that is the case, I hope that my summary will help you on your way to learn the material
and pass the exam. I have tried my best to gather all the main information and to write it
down in an understandable way. However, I would recommend you to at least compare
different summaries, and take a look at the lecture material, so that you DO NOT MISS OUT
on any important information. I am a learning student myself, so I make mistakes. This means
that my summary is NOT an end-all be-all solution for passing your exam. And NEITHER is
any other summary that you may use. Nevertheless, I hope that it is of use to you and I wish
you the best of luck in your academic career.
- Lauran
,NOTE: This summary does not contain all chapters of the book ‘Sociology’ by Macionis &
Plummer. It only contains the following chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16,
17, 18, 19, 22, 23, and 26.
CHAPTER 1: THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION
Sociology
- Sociology: the study of the social; the way people do things together. General patterns of
social life can be recognized in specific individuals. Sociology shows how society shapes
what we do.
- Emile Durkheim: a pioneer of sociology. He studied suicide and concluded that certain
categories of people are more likely to take their own lives than others. Durkheim says that
this has to do with social integration: the degree to which people are connected to society.
Higher suicide rates were found in more isolated and individualistic people. Two different
types of suicide can be distinguished:
1. Anomic suicide: suicide due to too little integration (e.g. social breakdown).
2. Altruistic suicide: suicide due to too much integration (e.g. suicide bombers).
The roles of sociologists
- Sociologists have different roles. Here are a couple important ones:
1. Researcher: gather data about the nature of our social life.
2. Theorist: create a deeper understanding of sociology and develop new ideas.
3. Critic: question and interrogate what we understand about sociology.
4. Educator/teacher: spread knowledge.
5. Dialogist: create dialogues and discussions in society about sociology.
6. Critical citizen: spread social awareness and think about the social life as a member
of society.
Sociological thinking
- Knowledge about sociology can be applied in our daily lives. This sociological thinking has
four general benefits:
1. It creates ways of critical thinking that challenge our common understandings.
2. It allows us to see opportunities and limits of society.
3. It enables us to actively participate in society and shape our own lives.
4. It helps us to recognize human differences and the challenges of a diverse world.
- Sociological thinking also comes with limits. Three are distinguished:
1. Sociology is dynamic; we are studying something that changes all the time.
2. People who study sociology are part of society; it is difficult to get an outsider view.
3. Sociological knowledge is recursive: it feeds back on to itself; knowledge gained
about a particular subject eventually becomes part of society, which makes people
more aware of this subject. This can lead to a spiral where people start focusing more
and more on the subject because they become more and more aware of it.
,- Ethnocentric: being biased by a particular cultural view.
Transformations of society
- The enlightenment: a new wave of thinking that emerged in the past, which focused on
among other things rationality, reason, empiricism and science and has shaped our modern
world.
- Auguste Comte: a French philosopher who is seen as one of the founders of sociology. He
said that, throughout time, humans have comprehended the world in three different stages:
1. Theological stage: thoughts about society are formed through religion.
2. Metaphysical stage: understand society as a natural phenomenon, rather than a
supernatural one.
3. Scientific stage: apply the scientific approach to understand the social world.
- Comte was a proponent of positivism: understanding the world based on science.
- Two great social transformations have been the French Revolution of 1789 and the
Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century. These revolutions have massively changed
our societies in four key ways:
1. Because of the development of machines and factories, people became part of large
industrial workforces instead of working at home. The new industrial economy
resulted in great poverty.
2. Because factories attracted a lot of people in need of work, large cities developed
around them.
3. Because of this new capitalistic society, the idea emerged that society was a product
of individual self-interest rather than moral obligations. A new political climate
emerged that focused on individual rights and freedom.
4. Ferdinand Toennies, a German sociologist, came up with the following idea:
because of the new social organization, Gemeinschaft (a tightly integrated human
community) declined and made place for Gesellschaft (the pursuit of self-interest,
separation and individualism).
Digitalization
- Another remarkable change of society has happened because of the development of digital
technology. This so-called Cyber Revolution has brought communication to a new level.
There have been various terms to describe this new era:
1. The Digital Age: highlights the digitalization of society and how smaller and
smaller gadgets become integrated into daily life.
2. The Cyborg Age: highlights the way people adapt to live with technology.
3. The Information Age: highlights the rapid growth of availability of information.
4. The Network Society: highlights new ways of communication.
5. The Virtual Age: highlights how our reality is shaped through technology.
, - Regarding the study of sociology, the development of technology has resulted in the
availability of new topics (e.g. digital dating) and new studying methods (e.g. the internet).
CHAPTER 2: THINKING SOCIOLOGICALLY, THINKING GLOBALLY
Theories
- Theory: a statement of how and why certain facts are related to each other.
- Theoretical perspective: a basic image or viewpoint that guides thinking and research.
- Over the course of time, there have been three major theoretical ways of thinking that have
shaped sociology, together called the classical perspectives. New perspectives that have
emerged recently are called emerging perspectives.
Classical perspectives
- The first classical perspective is the functionalist perspective: society is a complex system
with different parts that are interconnected and work together to form a stable whole. Our
lives are guided by social structure: stable patterns of social behavior. The consequences that
these patterns of behavior have on society are called social functions.
- Herbert Spencer: a sociologist that helped shape the functionalist perspective. He
compared society to the human body; just like different organs of the human body have
different functions, so do different aspects of society.
- Talcott Parsons: the major U.S. proponent of the functionalist perspective. He tried to
identify the basic tasks that all societies must complete in order to survive. According to
Parsons, societies must (1) be adaptable, (2) achieve their goals, (3) maintain themselves and
(4) have well-socialized members.
- Robert Merton: a contemporary of Parsons who expended the idea of social functions. He
said that the consequences of a certain social behavior could be different for different people.
Merton also divided social functions into two distinct types:
1. Manifest functions: recognized intended consequences of a social pattern.
2. Latent functions: unrecognized unintended consequences of a social pattern.
- Social dysfunctions: social patterns that have undesirable consequences for society. People
disagree on what is useful and what is harmful.
- The second classical perspective is the conflict perspective: society is an arena of
differences and inequalities that cause conflict and change. This perspective points out that
social structures often benefit some and deprive others. Typically, people at an advantage
strive to maintain their position and those with a disadvantage are motivated to move to a
better position.
- Both the first and the second perspective have a macro-level orientation: focusing on broad
social structures and looking at society as a whole; looking at the big picture.
