Inspiring the
1 Sociological
Imagination
Introduction
• Science, Technology, and the Sociological Imagination
• Basic Concepts of Sociology
• Knowing What We Know
• Ways of Looking at Sociology
• Skills Gained from Studying Sociology
Science, Technology, and the
Sociological Imagination
Technology and Society
• Ashley Madison (summer 2015)
• Website created by a Toronto entrepreneur to
help people cheat on their spouses
• Consequences:
Technology and Society
Ashley Madison
• Consequences:
• Shock and fear amongst the public
• Ashley Madison stocks plummeted
• ResignaEon of company founder
• Sociologically speaking:
C. Wright Mills and the Sociological
Imagination
• Sociological imagination: The ability to perceive the
underlying societal causes of individual experiences and
issues; and to think outside the accepted wisdom and
common routines of daily life
C. Wright Mills and the Sociological
Imagination, cont’d
• Our actions are the product of invisible norms and
values…
• Norms: The rules or expectations of behaviour people
consider acceptable in their group or society
• Like values, they vary from one society to another and change
over time
• Values: Shared understanding of what a group or
society deems good, right, and desirable.
How Sociology Relates to
Science and Technology
• Science: The systematic study of the structure and
behaviour of the physical and natural world through
observation and experiment
• Technology: Objects developed to serve a particular
purpose
• E.g., social, political, cultural, or personal
How Sociology Relates to
Science and Technology, cont’d
• The most socially transformative technology have grown
out of scientific research
• E.g., television, computers, plastics, and modern medicines
• With the development of industrial technology, societies
have also had to reorganize themselves
• Create new kinds of families, workplaces, and governments
How Sociology Relates to
Science and Technology, cont’d
• The society of science and technology has not
been wholly beneficial
• It has also created new troubling social
problems: environmental issues, warfare and
mass exterminaEon, mindless consumerism
How Sociology Relates to
Science and Technology
Think, Pair, Share
• What technological innovaEon has happened
during your lifeEme?
• How has this changed your social
expectaEons?
Basic Concepts of Sociology
Basic Concepts of Sociology
• Sociology: The study of the interrelationships among
individuals and groups
• Social structure: Any enduring, predictable pattern of
social relations among people in society that constrains and
shapes people’s behaviour
• Culture: the lens, values and beliefs through which we view
our reality
• The study of sociology requires a high degree of cultural
relativism – judging another culture based on their own
values and beliefs and not through our own lens
Basic Concepts of Sociology, cont’d
• Constraining power: The ability of a social institution
to control people’s behaviour and increase their
obedience to social norms
• E.g., marriage; parenthood
• Transformative power: The tendency of social
institutions and social experiences to radically change
people’s routine behaviour
Basic Concepts of Sociology, cont’d
• Dyad: A two-person set of people who interact and communicate
with each other
• Society: A group of people who occupy a particular territorial
area, feel themselves to constitute (or are viewed as) a unified and
distinct entity, and in many respects, share a common set of
assumptions about reality
Basic Concepts of Sociology, cont’d
• Social institution: Governed by established, or
standardizing patterns of, rule-governed behaviour
• Social relationship: A pattern of ongoing contact and
communication between two or more people that
follows an expected pattern
Basic Concepts of Sociology, cont’d
• Status: The relative rank that an individual holds, with
attendant rights, duties, and lifestyle, in a social hierarchy
based upon honour or prestige
• Role: A set of connected behaviours, rights, obligations,
beliefs, and norms as conceptualized by people in a
social situation
Basic Concepts of Sociology, cont’d
• Interaction: A pattern exchange of information,
support, and/or emotions between at least two people in
a social setting
• Negotiation: A type of interaction whose goal is to
define the expectations or boundaries of a relationship
Knowing What We Know
Knowing What We Know
• For sociologists in the empirical (especially, quantitative)
tradition: the goal of sociological research is to propose
and examine theories
• For other sociologists, the goal is to propose and
examine explanations of reality
Knowing What We Know, cont’d
• The research process:
• Develop new concepts
• Measure new relationships between them
• Develop plausible new explanations of the observed relations
• Derive new hypotheses
• Collect new data, and so on
Knowing What We Know, cont’d
• Social circumstances largely control the outcomes of
people’s lives
• E.g. unequal opportunity, the result of being born into a
particular social class. Usually, unequal opportunity passes
down from one generation to the next
• (poor families remain poor/ wealthy families remain
wealthy)
• Differences in opportunities and life experiences are
rarely a simple result of higher intelligence, harder work,
better values and other personal characteristics
• Common sense is likely to misinform us about society
Figure 1.1
Health is Related to Wealth
Ways of Looking at Sociology
Ways of Looking at Sociology
• Today, sociologists highlight five schools of thought
(paradigms):
• Conflict theory
• Functional theory
• Symbolic interactionism
• Postmodernism
• Feminist theory
Conflict Theory
• Concerned with the unequal distribution of power and
the domination of one group by another
• Theorists view society as a collection of groups that
constantly struggle with each other to dominate society
and its institutions, or to achieve equal access
• Draws inspiration from Marx and Weber
• Weber proposed that ideas can be transformative forces
in human history
• Marx proposed economic relations share society
Functional Theory
• Views society as a set of interconnected parts that work
together to preserve the overall stability and efficiency of
the whole
• Assumes that each part plays a necessary and
complementary role
• Manifest and latent functions are important because they
help us understand how every social institution has a
purpose
• Social problems are the failure of institutions to adapt
during rapid social and economic shifts
Symbolic Interactionism
• Focuses on how people interact with one another, and
the meanings, definitions, and interpretations behind
these interactions
• It is through face-to-face, symbol-using interaction that
people “construct” reality together
• Culture is fluid, not static
Feminist Theory
• They are interested in how gender inequality makes
women’s lives different from men’s
• Rejection of the female role is far more costly to women
than is men’s rejection of the male role
• The subordination of women is not a result of
biological determinism, but of socioeconomic and
ideological factors
Postmodernism
• Denies the validity of universal, sweeping statements
about the world or groups of people within the world,
and analyzes the motives behind such statements and
the consequences of people’s believing them
Skills Gained from Studying
Sociology
Skills Gained from Studying Sociology
• Research capabilities
• Cross-cultural awareness and understanding
• Problem solving and critical thinking skills
• Communication, reading, and writing skills
• Recognition of trends and patterns
Figure 1.3
Conclusion
• Sociology is the systematic study of social institutions,
societies, inequality, and different types of people,
relationships, and groups
• It has always been oriented toward problem solving
• Four main approaches to sociological thinking: conflict
theory, feminist theory, functionalism, symbolic
interactionism
CriEcal Thought
Think, Pair, Share
• Why do people have trouble understanding
their own (and other people’s) everyday lives?
How does sociology overcome this difficulty?
