Background: Introduction to Sociology
This is some background material on Understanding Sociology - it is not a text book or refereed though it draws on some of the work within my book Contemporary Society. It should be used to enhance your knowledge, not as 'gospal'. As a result, do not use it in essays, but do use some of the refernces that I have listed.
The aim of this blog is to answer some questions... so let's go:
What is sociology?
Who we are as individuals is dependent in many ways on our social context. As a result, our social arrangements in which we live our lives shapes our sense of identity, how we live and also relate to the environment around us (be it the urban, rural or 'natural' environments). The study of these social arrangements is sociology.
Sociology is defined by Robert Van Kriekan 'the study of society… a description and analysis of the social forces that shape human behaviour… including the influence of the social, political, economic and cultural creations of social groups on their local, national and global environment' (Van Kriekan et al 2006).
What is meant by the sociological imagination?
For most of us, our understanding of the world is limited to our immediate experience of it – that is, our immediate environment. As a result, we often are unable to imagine the challenges the world faces because we are often focussed on our own concerns.
Sociologist and writer, C. Wright Mills (1966) attempted to deal with this issue by developing the term 'the sociological imagination'. That is, the connections between individual behaviour and the social forces which have shaped it.
C. Wright Mills used the terms: private trouble (factors specific to individual) and public issues (factors which are caused by social forces beyond the power of any single individual to change). It is the public issues that sociology is concerned with. It takes sociological imagination to distinguish between situations caused by individuals or larger social forces that allows us to make an incomprehensible world comprehensible
What is meant by critical thinking?
Central in overcoming the challenge here is the concept of 'critical thinking'. That is, being able to look at the assumptions behind the things in everyday life that are arranged in certain ways and we consider it 'normal'. That is, we need to understand why boys wear blue and girls wear pink – there is nothing 'normal' about this, it is just the way the world is organised. Peter Berger (1966) called it 'debunking'
Consequently, we should come to accept that nothing is 'human nature'. Things are determined by our culture and society rather than being fixed and therefore, things vary between societies.
Often things in life may be seen as fixed because that is what our experience is limited to. Using our sociological imagination involves taking a fresh look at social formations not based on what we consider to be 'commonsense', but having a critical look at the invisible social factors behind them.
Is there one truth? Understanding sociological perspectives
It is important to note that there is no single sociological perspective – but a number of perspectives and theoretical approaches. This follows what philosopher Thomas Kuhn (1962) said about paradigms (the way we see the world or our perspectives), and their construction and reconstruction. A number of paradigms can co-exist, with no undisputed truths, but as a multiple ways of seeing things.
I used the following references in this blog:
- Arvanitakis, J. (2009) Contemporary Society, Oxford University Press, Melbourne
- Berger, P.L. (1966) Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective, Anchor
- Kuhn, T.S. (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London
- Van Krieken et al (2006) Sociology: Themes and perspectives, Pearson Education Australia, Frenches Forest
- Wright Mills, C. (1966) The Sociological Imagination, Oxford University Press
