Essentials of Sociology notes

Lecture Notes
Chapter 1: An Introduction to Sociology in the Global Age
Learning Objectives
1.1: Identify major social changes since the 1880s studied by sociologists.
1.2: Explain why sociologists today focus on globalization, consumption, and the digital world.
1.3: Describe how sociologists understand continuity and change, particularly in the context of the sociological imagination and the social construction of reality.
1.4: Differentiate between sociology’s two possible purposes, science and social reform.
1.5: Evaluate how sociology relates to other social sciences and how sociological knowled-ge differs from common sense.
Chapter Summary
Sociology is the systematic examination of the ways in which people are affected by and affect the social structures and social processes associated with the groups, organizations, cultures, so-cieties, and world in which they exist. Social changes in the last few centuries, including the In-dustrial Revolution, the growth of the service sector, and the arrival of the information age, have strongly influenced the field of sociology. This book deals with innumerable social issues, but it focuses especially on three powerful structural forces in the social world that have drawn the attention of contemporary sociologists: globalization, consumption, and digital technology.
As the world has become more globalized, it has become more fluid as people, products, and information flow more quickly and easily across national borders. The role of consumption in our daily lives over the past few decades has resulted in the increasing use of credit cards and the growing popularity of online shopping. Digital technology is changing how and when we in-teract with others, including the near ubiquitous use of smartphones and social media. The pro-cess of McDonaldization, or an emphasis on efficiency, calculability, predictability, and techno-logical control, characterizes many aspects of globalization, consumption, and digital technolo-gy.
Social changes such as globalization, consumption, and digital technology can be understood using C. Wright Mills’s “sociological imagination,” which calls on us to look at social phenom-ena not just from a personal perspective but also from the outside, from a distinctively sociolog-ical perspective. In addition, recognizing that much of our reality is socially constructed can help us comprehend how the agency of individuals can bring about social change; at the same time, these changes become structures that both enable and constrain social action. These social structures become enduring and slow to change, while social processes represent the more dy-namic aspects of society.
Sociologists study many issues, sometimes to understand them through scientific research and sometimes to help generate change and reform. The goal of sociology as a pure science is to collect large quantities of data about the social world to build knowledge, while the goal of so-ciology as a means of social reform aims to use this knowledge for social change.
Sociology, like other social sciences, distinguishes itself from commonsense opinions about the social world by developing rigorous theories and engaging in systematic research to study social phenomena. Sociology, the least specialized of the social sciences, encompasses aspects of anthropology, political science, psychology, economics, and communications.
Annotated Chapter Outline
I. The Changing Nature of the Social World--and Sociology
A. Sociology: The systematic study of the ways in which people are affected by, and affect, the social structures and social processes that are associated with the groups, organizations, cultures, societies, and world in which they exist; thus, the scientific study of social behavior and human groups.
B. Sociology stresses the broader social context of behavior and provides a fra-mework for understanding the legitimacy of societal change, the motives asso-ciated with human behavior, the emergence and maintenance of social pheno-menon and social structures, and the globalization of society.
C. The butterfly effect--The idea is that a relatively small change in a specific lo-cation can have far-ranging, even global, effects over both time and distance.
1. Individuals not only affect larger events but are also capable to some degree of having an impact on large-scale structures and processes.
D. 18th and 19th centuries--the Industrial Revolution: Sociologists focused on fac-tories, production, and blue-collar workers.
E. Mid-20th century--the Post–Industrial Age: Sociologists focused on offices, bu-reaucracies, white-collar, and service sector workers.
F. Present day--the Information Age: Sociologists focus on knowledge, informa-tion, and technologies, with an emphasis on efficiency, productivity, and alter-native ways to work and manufacture goods.
II. Central Concerns for a Twenty-First-Century Sociology
A. Despite changes in the social world, sociologists continue to focus on many of its traditional concerns including work, industry, and inequality.
1. This text also focuses on nontraditional and contemporary issues, particularly globalization.
B. Globalization
1. The social process of increasingly fluid global flows and the structures that expedite and impede those flows.
2. Globalization provides opportunities for people to move between societies and initiate population shifts and to have greater access to goods, services, and information.
3. Negative issues such as disease, global warming, pollution, and deviant be-haviors (terrorism, drugs, human/sex trafficking) flow more easily around the world under globalization.
4. Globalization is a central issue in sociology as well as the social world.
5. Society--a complex pattern of social relationships that is bounded in space and persists over time.
a. The society has traditionally been the largest unit of analysis in socio-logy.
b. Social processes, like social structures, exist not only at the societal le-vel but also at the global level.
6. Migration and population movements
a. Globalization has removed obstacles on the movement of products and allowed for the flow of people
C. Consumption
1. Consumption: the process by which people obtain and utilize goods and ser-vices.
2. Consumption has become increasingly important for many while work and production have diminished in significance.
3. Consumption is fueled by affluence
a. Many will consume despite their resources leading to record high cre-dit card debt in the United States.
i. Credit card debt in the United States increased by almost 3% from 2016 to 2017 to an average of $6,375 per household.
ii. Total credit card debt in the United States reached a record of over $1 trillion in 2017
4. Culture is very much shaped by consumption.
5. Consumption and globalization are also deeply intertwined.
a. Much of what we consume in the developed world comes from other countries.
i. In 2017, the United States imported more than $505 billion worth of goods from China; the comparable figure in 1985 was only $4 million in goods.
6. Sociologists are interested in developments regarding consumption.
7. McDonaldization
a. McDonaldization: The process by which the rational principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of society and more societies throughout the world.
b. McDonaldization leads to the creation of rational systems that have four defining characteristics:
i. Efficiency: An emphasis on the quickest and least costly means to whatever end is desired.
ii. Calculability: Includes a focus on quantity as representing quali-ty, and that tasks are done under pressure, where the quality of the job is measured not in the way it is done but in how quickly it is done.
iii. Predictability: The consuming experience is identical from one geographic setting to another. Accomplished through highly pre-dictable rituals.
iv. Control: Control of both employees and of consumers is ensured by replacing unpredictable humans with machines that are sim-ply monitored by people.
8. Comparisons between McDonald’s and Amazon.com from the point of view of the McDonaldization thesis demonstrate that Amazon.com is far more McDonaldized than McDonald’s.
a. The main irrationality of rationality associated with Amazon.com is its tendency to lead to excessive consumption.
9. Critiquing consumption
a. Sociologists are interested in how consumers use shopping malls and e-tailers in ways that were not anticipated by their designers.
b. Sociologists are also interested in how consumption changes.
c. What social forces influence patterns of consumption?
d. Are we entering a “post consumption age”?
D. The digital world
1. Technology--the interplay of machines, tools, skills, and procedures for the accomplishment of tasks.
a. The digital world refers to the emergence of new technologies, particu-larly communication technologies.
i. Sociologists have tracked the evolution of technology from as-sembly lines to automated factories to the digital world.
ii. Sociologists are presently interested in social networking as it is conducted in the virtual environments.
2. Sociologists study the differences and similarities between mediated and nonmediated (e.g., face-to-face) interactions.
a. In technologically mediated interaction, technology such as the Inter-net and the smartphone comes between the people who are communi-cating.
b. Young people between the ages of 13 and 18 spend on average 9 hr per day on entertainment or screen media.
c. Adults are also absorbed in technology.
i. Studies suggest this impacts interactions with children and limits parental interventions/supervision.
d. Technology affects the nature of consumption.
e. The Internet has changed how, what, where, and why we consume.
E. Globalization, consumption, the digital world, and you
1. Globalization, consumption and the digital world both collectively and indi-vidually impact everyone.
III. Sociology: Continuity and Change
A. The sociological imagination
1. The sociological imagination: A unique perspective that gives sociologists a distinctive way of looking at data and reflecting on the world around them.
2. American sociologist C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) described this type of creative thinking as the ability to view one’s own society as an outsider.
3. It demonstrates the connection between history and biography, connects per-sonal experiences--“troubles”--to larger social patterns--“social issues.”
4. The sociological imagination allows us to look beyond a limited understan-ding of things and people in the world and allows for a broader vision of so-ciety.
B. Private troubles and public issues
1. The sociological imagination may be most useful in helping sociologists see the linkage between private troubles and public issues. Examples include:
a. ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) can be seen as a priva-te trouble, but now that it is clear that millions of people suffer from it, it has become a larger problem for schools, employers, and society in general.
b. In another example, a 2016 Census report details the fact that women are more likely than men to be concentrated in lower paying jobs (see Figure 1.5). This creates personal troubles for many women (e.g., ina-dequate income and job dissatisfaction) but also a public issue, not only because the discrepancy between the sexes is unfair to women as a whole but also because society is not benefiting from the many con-tributions women could be making.
C. The micro–macro relationship
1. Micro--small scale--individuals and their thoughts and actions. Also small group interactions.
2. Macro--large scale--social phenomena such as groups, organizations, cultu-res, societies, and the world, as well as the relationships between them.
3. Karl Marx (1818–1883) was interested in what workers thought and did (micro) and the capitalist economic system (macro) in which workers exi-sted.
4. Randall Collins (2009) has sought to develop a theory of violence that links individuals skilled in violent interactions (micro) with the material resources needed by violent organizations (macro).
5. There is a continuum that runs from the most microscopic to the most ma-croscopic of social realities.
a. Phenomena at roughly the midpoint of this continuum are best thought of as meso (middle or intermediate) realities.
D. The agency–structure relationship
1. A complex continuum that resembles the micro–macro comparison.
2. While Americans tend to think in terms of micro–macro relationships, in Eu-rope, sociologists are more oriented to the agency–structure relationship.
3. The utility of the agency–structure terminology is that it highlights several important social realities and aspects of the field of sociology.
a. Agency--individual social power and capacity for creativity.
i. Agency is the micro level.
ii. Agency gives priority to the agent having power and a capacity for creativity.
iii. Agents both create and are constrained by social and cultural structures.
b. Structure--places greater emphasis on “structures” that are autono-mous and able to sustain themselves over a long period of time without disruptions from individuals.
i. Structures are long-term, often, society-wide patterns of relation-ships, norms, values, and other social phenomena that are cente-red on fundamental social tasks and include the family, educa-tion, media, the state, and the economy.
c. Goffman’s “dangerous giants” are individuals who have the potential to disrupt and destroy structures but often do not realize they have the potential to disrupt and/or destroy the structures they are a part of.
i. Student protests
E. The social construction of reality
1. The social construction of reality: This approach argues that agents (people at the micro level) create social reality through their thoughts and actions.
2. An individual’s reality takes on a life of its own and becomes a structure wi-thin which those who create the structure exist.
3. Social construction is a process of human creation that becomes invisible and relatively unquestioned the deeper it is embedded in peoples’ social practi-ces.
a. For example, designers (agents) create the world of fashion, which is then taken up by corporate interests, produced in factories around the world, and sold in outlets that have both a local effect and a global ef-fect--such as Walmart. Very few people question fashion norms--such as men wearing pants--although they choose incidental features such as pants in particular fabrics and styles.
F. Social structures and processes
1. Social structures are enduring and regular social arrangements such as the family and the state. These change very slowly.
2. Social processes are the dynamic and ever-changing aspects of the social world, such as the patterns of consumption demonstrated at a specific histo-rical moment. These change rapidly.
3. Globalization can be divided into structures (such as the United Nations) and a variety of specific social processes (such as the migration of people across national borders).
G. Sociology’s purpose: Science or social reform?
1. A long-standing debate within sociology is whether the discipline is best de-scribed using scientific principles.
2. Comte believed that society was governed by laws and it was sociology’s task to uncover these laws (positivism).
a. He also believed it was sociology’s task to instigate social reform, ar-guing reform could be achieved through the implementation of scienti-fic principles, which led to this debate.
3. The scientific view states that examining the relationship between structure and process should be a purely scientific endeavor.
4. Those supporting sociology as a science suggest it is best to understand how the social world operates before it can be changed.
5. The social reform view states that as these relationships are discovered, this knowledge should be used to solve social problems.
a. Those supporting social reform argue that sociology is best served by pointing out social problems, then proposing ways to fix those pro-blems through subjective analysis.
IV. Sociology, the Other Sciences, and Common Sense
A. Sociology, with its emphasis on studying various aspects of the social world, is one of the social sciences.
B. Sociology, generally speaking, is the broadest of these fields--it is multifaceted as a discipline and encompasses elements from the following disciplines:
1. Anthropology: Studies cultural aspects of societies around the world.
2. Communications: Studies mediated and nonmediated communication across the globe.
3. Economics: Examines production, distribution, and consumption of resour-ces through markets across the globe.
4. Geography: Mapping of spatial relationships on a global scale.
5. Political science: Focus on nation-states, particularly the ways they relate to one another around the world and have grown increasingly unable to control global flows.
6. Psychology: Ways in which individual identities are shaped by awareness of the rest of the world.
C. It is important to understand how sociology deals with the gap between common sense and social scientific knowledge, especially when analyzing the perceptions that are widely held, such as the association between the rich and the poor in the United States.
1. Consider this example:
a. There is strong consensus in the scientific community that global war-ming is occurring and that it is caused primarily by human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels. However, data from a recent sur-vey, illustrated in Figure 1.6, show that only 70% of Americans believe that global warming in happening and just 53% believe that it is caused by human activity. Furthermore, 28% think that there is a lot of disa-greement among scientists about the causes of global warming (Howe et al. 2015).