Introduction to Sociology

Sociology is the study of human societies and human behavior in social settings.
Sociology is the systematic study of human social relationships.
Social relationships or interactions:
Social organization- why groups stay together.
Social disorganization- why groups fall apart (conflict).
Sociology punctures social myths.
Sociology influences public policy and public attitudes as well as other displines.
Sociology gives a better understanding of yourself and other people.
Origins of sociology:
Social dynamics- science of change.
Social statics- science of order (those parts of society that produce order).
Organic model- order is possible because of interdependent parts of society.
Ferdinand Toennies (1855-1936) worte Gemeinschaft Und Gesellschaft.
Structural functionalism vs. Conflict theory

Symbolic interaction theory:
  1. Two parts of the personality:
  2. Generalized other- general impression about what other people will respond to our behavior.
  3. Significant other- people who are emotionally close to us.
  4. The only theory that embraces free will. The theory that says the individual acts on the group, and the group on the individual (reciprocity).
  5. It strongly emphasizes that definitions of the situation strongly determine the outcome of the situation. WI Thomas theorem.
Ethnomethodology- studies the assumptions that underlie everyday interaction.
  1. Founder: H. Garfinkel.
  2. Breaching experiments- to discover what's taken for granted in everyday interaction.
  3. People experience much confusion when they confront how much they assume about social life.
  4. Macrotheories ignore civil liberties.
  5. Sociologists must study microlevel human behavior.
  6. Norms- socially accepted forms of behavior.
  7. Norms make interaction predictable.
The life of the individual is interconnected with the history of the society.
Sociological imagination.

Four rules for doing social research:
  1. Insist upon academic freedom. Whatever agency is funding the sociologist it shouldn't influence his/her findings. If you don't have academic freedom, then your research might not be objective.
  2. The sociologist should protect the privacy (not to publish the names) and respect the informents.
  3. Sociologist should use respresentative samples. They interview a small number of samples. The best type of representative is a random sample. A sample is random if every unit in the population has an equal chance of being chosen.
  4. Should always consider numerous social variables.
Studying culture:
  1. All social behavior is related to culture.
  2. Culture- all the customs, beliefs, knowledge, and skills that guide a persons behavior along shared paths.
  3. Parts of culture:
  4. Norms- specific roles that define expected and accepted behavior.
  5. Values- general social beliefs about what is good, right, and acceptable. They also imply what is bad, wrong and unacceptable. The value is the general belief that is translated into the norm.
  6. Norms persist after the value is gone.
  7. Cultural integration- consisty that exists within the values of a nation.
  8. Symbols- objects, jestures, sounds, colors, or designs which stand for something other than themselves.
  9. Language- a system of verbal and sometimes written symbols with rules that structure use. Language strongly affects how you look at reality.
  10. Ethnocentrism- the tendency to see the behaviors, beliefs, values, and norms of one's own group as the only right way of living, and to judge others by those standards.
  11. Cultural relativity- the notion that the elements of a culture should be viewed on their own terms rather than in terms of some assumed universal standard that holds across cultures.
Social structure- organizations of social positions, and the distribution of people in them.
  1. A social structure makes society stable.
  2. Every society has a social structure. 
  3. Society- comprehensive grouping of people who share the same territory and participating in a common culture. 
  4. Society is not the same as nation. 
  5. Components:
Socialization- the process of being made social or learning appropriate behavior for appropriate roles.
  1. Agent- social force that affects the entire society.
  2. Feral child- a child that is raised in isolation without parents or social contacts.
Bureaucracy:
  1. Authority or legitimate power- your ability to get other people to do what you want.
  2. Seven characteristics of bureaucracy.
  3. Iron law of oligarchy- every bureacracy becomes undemocratic over a period of time.
  4. Structuralist approach in studying bureaucracies.
  5. Compliance- how the organization motivates people to do what it wants them to do. 
  6. The Peter principle- in a hierarchy each post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.
Social stratification- the study of social classes.
  1. Karl Marx's theories.
  2. Max Weber- German sociologist. 
  3. Power- the ability to realize your will against the resistance of others.
  4. People who are inconsistent with regard to class, status and power have higher stress than people who are consistent.
  5. Four social classes.
Family and marriage:
  1. Functions of the family.
  2. Types of marriage.
  3. Family relationships.
  4. Mate selection.
  5. Two rules for courtship.
  6. Variables for a happy marriage (staying together).
  7. Recipes for divorce: The wife is considerably higher on all three variables above. 
  8. Changes in marriage and family.
Religion:
  1. The basic elements.
  2. Functions.
  3. Types of religious institutions.
  4. Conversion.
  5. Three choices religions have when they face modernization.
  6. Varieties of religious expressions.
  7. The conflict perspective.
Magic:
  1. The postulates of magic.
  2. The seven provinces of magic.
  3. The lesser provinces.
  4. Crowley's four basic assumptions of magic.
Urban life:
  1. Cities- relatively large, dense, and permanent settlements of socially diverse people who don't produce their own food.
  2. Megapolises- huge urban areas including two or more cities and their outlying suberbs.  
  3. Concentric zone model.
  4. Sector model. 
Social effects of computers:
  1. Distribution of social power. Those with access to central data banks gain enormous power.
  2. Privacy and individual rights.
  3. Social relationships. 
  4. Removes decision making from the human sphere.
  5. Electronic sweatshops.
  6. New images of humankind.
  7. Society finds itself more vulnerable to computer failures and errors. 
Criminology and deviance:
  1. Terms.
  2. Three schools of criminology.
  3. Biological- tries to explain criminal behavior by examining psychological and mental aspects of criminals to distinguish them from non-criminals.