I. What is sociology?

1. I. What is sociology? • A. Seeing Sociologically • B. Sociological Theory • C. Research Methods

2. A. Seeing Sociologically Sociology: < “the scientific study of human social life, groups, and societies.” (Giddens & Duneier, p. 3) • a “way of seeing”; a perspective • Seeing what?

3. Scope of sociology: Micro (self, everyday life) Macro (global, historical)

4. Sociology is about relationships: things people space People

5. Sociological Imagination • C. Wright Mills, 1959 • A “quality of mind”: • “objective… not detached” • Thinking self away from the daily routine • Feel trapped? (25) • “grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society”

6. Biography (self) History (“unruly forces”)

7. Mills’ Promise • social scientist’s concern with history: epoch • concern with biography: type of character that prevails • Understanding these things—the sociological imagination—is “our most needed quality of mind.” (36)

8. Sociological imagination: the coffee example • Daily ritual (often shared) • Legitimate drug • Social and economic relations in production and consumption • Global socio-economic and political development • Ecology

9. Berger’s Invitation • Like Mills, sees impossibility of detachment: “His (the sociologist’s) own life, inevitably, is part of the subject matter.” (4) • “It can be said that the first wisdom of sociology is this—things are not what they seem.” (5)

10. Sociology: a way of seeing • Society is patterned (social structure) • “what society makes of us and what we make of ourselves.” (Giddens: 7) • Sociology provides a way of seeing all these things

11. social structure • underlying regularities or patterns in how people behave and in their relationships with one another (glossary: A12) • not static: social change • “what society makes of us and what we make of ourselves”: structuration • globalization

12. Two more themes in Giddens • Globalization • Ex.: 9/11 • Social change • Ex.: Romantic love