Since all human behavior is social, the subject matter of sociology ranges from the intimate family to the hostile mob, from organized crime to religious cults, from executive board rooms to players on the field, from children on the playground to students in the classroom…
Sociologists are people who are constantly observing other people and questioning why they behave the way they do.
Not only are sociologists interested in examining people (and understanding why people behave the way they do), sociologists are also interested in examining social issues and asking important questions about what contributes to those issues…
Unemployment, crime, poverty, inequality, etc…
Take the issue of inequality- What factors might contribute to income inequality?
Do race and sex effect income?
First, we’ll look at race: Who earns more on average, whites, blacks, Asians, or Hispanics?
In 2010, the average weekly earnings of Asian men and White men working full time in management, professional, and related occupations (the highest paying occupations) were well above the earnings of Hispanic men and Black men in the same occupation. To put this into perspective, within the same occupation the average weekly earnings of Asian men was around $1400; white men around $1300; whereas Hispanic men earned on average just $1000 per week; and Black men earned just ($950) per week ….again, for the same occupation (performing the same work)
What does the data tell us? For men, race clearly effects income. In the highest paying occupations, there is an economic disadvantage for Black and Hispanic men.
What about the earnings of women in the same occupation?
Among women in the same occupations, the average weekly earnings of Asian women and white women were considerably higher than the earnings of Black women and Hispanic women. To put this into perspective, Asian women in the highest paying occupations earned, on average, $1,100 per week; white women earned roughly $950 per week, Black women on the other hand earned just $800 per week and Hispanic women earned $780 per week.
Here again, we can see that race effects income. For women too, in the highest paying occupations there is an economic disadvantage to being Black or Hispanic
In fact, in nearly all occupations whites outearn Blacks and Hispanics. But, what else does this data tell us? Specifically, what does this suggest about income inequality between men and women?
Who earns more on average, men or women? Let’s consider the data again:
In the same occupation (performing the same work), Asian men outearn Asian women ($1400; $1100) ; White men outearn White women ($1300; $950); Black men outearn Black women ($950; $800); Hispanic men outearn Hispanic women ($1000; $780)
In fact, across all occupations, men typically outearn women; When looking at all men and women employed full-time across all occupations, we see that women earn just 77 cents for every dollar earned by men
The issue of income inequality between men and women; and income inequality across different races- illustrates the kinds of issues sociologists are interested in….and collecting and analyzing data illustrates how exactly we go about understanding what contributes to those issues
Who earns more on average, men or women?
70% of the worlds people living in absolute poverty are women; women in the US earn just 77 cents for every dollar earned my men
Do race and sex effect life expectancy?
Women outlive men, on average, by about 5 years
Whites have a longer life expectancy than any other racial/ethnic group
A black baby boy born today can expect to live 5.4 fewer years, on average, than his white counterpart, and a black baby girl will die 3.7 years earlier, on average, than her white counterpart.
Among the four race-sex groups, white females continued to have the highest life expectancy at birth (80.9 years), followed by black females (77.2), white males (76.1), and black males (70.6).
These are just a few examples of the kinds of questions sociologists ask
In addition to examining people and important social issues, sociologists also engage in “debunking” commonly held assumptions--- Instead of accepting what people “believe to be the truth”, sociologists conduct research and analyze data in order to find out the actual truth--- in order to determine what is actually going on in society….
Debunking: proving untrue
Let’s take a simple true/false quiz….I’ll make a statement, you tell me whether it’s true or false: ALL OF THE STATEMENTS ARE FALSE
The fastest growing segments of the homeless population are women and families with children
In the US, there are more poor white people than there are poor black people (although blacks are disproportionately poor). In fact, white children comprise the largest group of children living in poverty, even though black and Latino children are disproportionately likely to be poor. So, in terms of raw numbers, there are more poor whites than poor blacks.
Most Americans living in poverty are either too young, too old, or incapable of working due to physical or mental illness or disability. And, among poor families at least one parent usually does work.
The teenage pregnancy rate is actually lower today than it was in the 1980s.
Parents today spend at least as many hours caring for their children each week as parents did four decades ago
Last week, you were asked to listen to an NPR interview where Susan Bianchi spoke about her research on the amount of time parents today spend with their children.
Do you think parents today spend more or less time with their children than parents did in the 1960s and 70s? Probably, most people think that parents today spend less time with their kids….we have a tendency to idealize the past…sensational headlines routinely suggest that the American family is in decline…that we’ve lost something….our family values are in decline….that somehow we were better off back in the day than we are today….You ‘re probably familiar with old TV shows and how they portrayed the family….everything seemed perfect…think about the Andy Griffith Show! Well, how accurate were such portrayals? How much of this notion that the family today is in decline is actually true? This iis something sociologists would be interested in studying….
So, according to Bianchi’s research and the interview I asked you to listen to….do parents today spend less time with their kids than parents did in the 60s and 70s?
Not according to the data…..In fact, Bianchi’s research suggests the opposite is true…parents today actually spend more time with their kids than parents did in the 60s and 70s….How’s that even possible? Don’t we have fewer stay at home moms today than we did in the past? Well, yes. That’s true, but parents todtook at the past as
Debunking PROVING UNTRUE
Women outlive men, on average, by about 5 years
Whites have a longer life expectancy than any other racial/ethnic group
A black baby boy born today can expect to live 5.4 fewer years, on average, than his white counterpart, and a black baby girl will die 3.7 years earlier, on average, than her white counterpart.
70% of the worlds people living in absolute poverty are women; women in the US earn just 77 cents for every dollar earned my men
Among the four race-sex groups, white females continued to have the highest life expectancy at birth (80.9 years), followed by black females (77.2), white males (76.1), and black males (70.6).
The risk of homicide is greater in infancy than in any other year of childhood before age 17.
Poverty is far more severe in the poorest regions of the world…the poor in the US live a life that many poor in other parts of the world could only dream of….
Does it mean the same thing to be a woman in the US as it does in Afghanistan (one of the poorest countries in the world)?
Difference b/w sex and gender= sex is a biological distinction, gender is a cultural distinctions- social positions of men and women, the privileges and opportunities that men and women have…
Do women in Afghanistan have the same privileges and opportunities as women in the US? NO---This refers to a difference in gender….
Do you behave the same way in each relationship?
How do your interactions change if the social context changes?
How do our statuses and roles shape our interactions?
Do you behave the same way among your friends as you would in front of your grandparents or in front of your boss? Why? What explains this? Aren’t you the same person in each situation? Then, what changes?
Perhaps more than anything else, sociology focuses on how social forces shape and control our lives….
SOCIAL FORCES – everything that makes up the environment we live in….(physical, social, political, cultural context) etc…everything external to the individual that shapes our lives--including the beliefs, values, norms/laws of our society
Understanding how social forces shape and control our lives is central to the discipline of sociology….In fact, this ability to understand how we are shaped and controlled by society has a name--- we call it the sociological perspective…..this perspective is at the heart of our discipline
So, what exactly is the sociological perspective?
Sociological perspective---a way of looking at the world…using the sociological perspective allows us to do two very remarkable things:
This perspective allows us to see the general in the particular
It allows us to see the strange in the familiar
Are the lives of the young and the old different? Are the lives of men and women different?
This perspective allows us to see the general in the particular
“Seeing the general in the particular” allows us to understand how the categories we may belong to shape our life experiences
What general patterns could explain why particular people are more likely than others to have poor health?
Is someone who is wealthy more likely than someone who is poor to have good health? Why?
What are some general patterns we might see among the wealthy that could explain why a particular wealthy person might have better health than someone who is poor?
More income, less stress, more leisure time, better access to health care, etc….
What general patterns could explain why particular people are more likely than others to commit suicide?
Who’s more likely to commit suicide: men, the wealthy, more likely than women or the poor to commit suicide?
What general patterns might we see among the men and the wealthy that could explain why they may be more likely than women or the poor to commit suicide?
Social integration- social bonds (strong social bonds among women and the poor) (higher social integration makes women and the poor less likely to commit suicide than men and the wealthy…)
A culture where people take razor sharp utensils, place them on their skin, and scrape them down their bodies…..
Engagement & wedding bands; Shaving, going to the dentist, the Super Bowl, Religion, Football, basketball, (slapping butts and bumping chests); shaving
NACIREMA….SHAVING/RAZORS
Kissing (Nigerians hardly kiss at all)
Our highway system (driving 60 mph directly toward another speeding car, separated only by about a foot of yellow line..
Shaking hands upon greeting someone
Shaving
The way we treat our pets!
****Every 10 minutes, 100 people sick and weakened by hunger will die.
The way we waste food and water--- playing in the water in the summer time….swimming pools, throwing out our leftovers and letting food expire in our refrigerators and pantries….
Our highway system (driving 60 mph directly toward another speeding car, separated only by about a foot of yellow line..
Kissing (Nigerians hardly kiss at all)
Engagement & wedding bands; Shaving, going to the dentist, the Super Bowl, Religion, Football, basketball, (slapping butts and bumping chests); shaving
NACIREMA….
Shaking hands upon greeting someone
Shaving
Every 10 minutes, 100 people die b/c they are sick and weakened by hunger_ In some societies people die every day from lack of access to clean drinking water
The way we treat our pets!
The way we waste food and water (flush it down the drain- toilets, showers, brushing out teeth,
Is human behavior the product of free will? Do people behave the way they do, simply because that’s their individual choice of how to behave?
Ex: Love/Marriage –Is our decision who to marry shaped by society?
--Homogamy (social class, age, race, education, etc)
--Other norms - even height in heterosexual relationships
How does your decision to attend college reflect larger social forces at work?
Do laws effect some people’s choice of who they can marry? Same-sex marriage, first cousin marriages, etc…?
Was the decision to attend college yours alone, or were there other factors that played a role in this decision? Your family, the emphasis of material comfort & consumerism in our culture? the current economy and the rising costs of having a family and raising children?
Sociological imagination is a tool used by sociologists to help better understand human behavior and why people behave the way they do.....
The intersection of history & biography
Socio/cultural (historical) circumstances & individual (biographical) circumstances
A quality of mind that allows us to connect public issues with personal troubles
Take the topic of unemployment. Let’s try to view unemployment through a sociological lens—using our sociological imagination.
Question: How many college students today do you think will have a difficult time finding a job when they graduate? Most of you said yes. WHY?
Let’s think about the kinds of answers you’ve given.
Is unemployment just a personal problem then? Is it just a public issue? No, it’s both. That’s the sociological imagination. The understanding that we cannot separate out personal problems from public issues. The realization that SOMETIIMES WE AREN’T THE PRIMARY CONTRIBUTORS TO THE PROBLEMS THAT WE EXPERIENCE EVERYDAY. SOMETIMES THE PROBLEMS WE HAVE ARE STRUCTURAL
Just as today (in the current economic climate) we can see how our ability to get a job will be profoundly shaped by state of the economy– we can see how our lives are being shaped by larger social forces –if we look back at the period of the great depression
Unemployment rate at 25% during Great Depression;
Do laws effect some people’s choice of who they can marry? Same-sex marriage, first cousin marriages, etc…?
Was the decision to attend college yours alone, or were there other factors that played a role in this decision? Your family, the emphasis of material comfort & consumerism in our culture? the current economy and the rising costs of having a family and raising children?
Unemployment rate at 25% during Great Depression; Hoovervilles Bread lines and Hoovervilles as people moved from place to place in search of food and work
Tent cities—moving from place to place in search of work
Periods of change or crisis encourage the use of the sociological perspective, or the “sociological imagination”
During these times, people are better able to see how social forces are at work in their particular lives.
How did the Great Depression (1930s) spark sociological thinking?
Were people able to see how social forces largely beyond their own control were shaping their lives?
The sociological perspective- the ability to see the strange in the familiar & the ability to “see the general in the particular”- The ability to use our sociological imaginations allows us to see things “sociologically”
Which isn’t always an easy thing to do. Although, - as you can see from our previous example --there are certain times, periods in our lives that it may be easier to see things using the sociological perspective
Think about the great depression. How might it have sparked sociological thinking.
Unemployment rate at 25% during Great Depression; Hoovervilles Bread lines and Hoovervilles as people moved from place to place in search of food and work
1838_August comte coins term “sociology” ----
The industrial revolution gained momentum in England in about 1850 and soon spread throughout Europe and then to the US; ; feature of industrial revolution was mechanization: external sources of power such as oil or steam and hand tools; Industrialization transformed individual workshops into factories, craftspeople into machine operators, and hand production into machine production; products previously designed as unique entities and assembled by a few people were now standardized and assembled by many workers, each person performing only one function in the overall production; No one person could say, “I made this; this is a unique product of my labor.” people’s unique skills were rendered obsolete by machines. People will little or no skill could now do the work, and at a faster pace.
Agricultural revolution 5000 years ago; industrial revolution (1700s); information/post-industrial revolution; 5000 years ago, the agricultural revolution began to take place (harnessing animals to the plow) ; latter part of 1700s development of steam engine and other sources of energy
Late 1700s- early 1800s---Idustrial Rev was under way…..
The industrial revolution gained momentum in England in about 1850 and soon spread throughout Europe and then to the US; ; feature of industrial revolution was mechanization: external sources of power such as oil or steam and hand tools;
Industrialization transformed individual workshops into factories, craftspeople into machine operators, and hand production into machine production; products previously designed as unique entities and assembled by a few people were now standardized and assembled by many workers on an assembly line, each person performing only one function in the overall production;
No one person could say, “I made this; this is a unique product of my labor.” people’s unique skills were rendered obsolete by machines. People will little or no skill could now do the work, and at a faster pace.
Agricultural revolution 5000 years ago; industrial revolution (1700s); information/post-industrial revolution; 5000 years ago, the agricultural revolution began to take place (harnessing animals to the plow) ; latter part of 1700s development of steam engine and other sources of energy
Latter part of 1700s- American Revolution- & French Revolution (
