Unit 1 Introduction to Sociology
Overview
Welcome to Unit 1 of Sociology 101, an introduction to the study of how the social world influences the way people behave and vise versa. In this first unit, we begin the course by discussing the basics of sociology. You will be introduced to main concepts including the idea of a sociological imagination. That will be followed up with the main theories that are used to guide sociologist’s study of the world around them. Finally, we will look at the tool of social research that allows social scientists to study and report on what the find in their research.
Topics
This unit is divided into the following topics:
- The Sociological Imagination
- Key Sociological Concepts
- Theories to Guide Us
- How We Do Social Research
Learning Outcomes
When you have completed this unit, you should be able to:
- Describe how sociology forms a picture of society
- Explain the history and development of sociology as a social scientific discipline
- Explain the three key processes in sociology
- Compare the four main approaches of sociological analysis and how they will apply to all the remaining topics covered in this course
- Create a research study from its design inception to execution, including the write up and dissemination of findings
- Identify in depth the ethical dimensions relevant to setting up a research study
- Consider how sociology can improve your skills necessary for employment
Activity Checklist
Here is a checklist of learning activities you will benefit from in completing this unit. You may find it useful for planning your work.
Learning Activities
- Watch the video on Sociological Imagination (6 minutes).
- Read Chapter 1 of your textbook. Next, take the Timeline Quiz (ungraded).
- Begin a Reflective Journal.
- Watch the video on Social Norms (3 minutes).
- Review the flashcards for Key Sociology Terms.
- Explore the Global Social Theory website.
- Complete The Research Process activity and then consider a social topic you are interested in.
- Take the Research Sequence activity to review the research process.
- Watch the Stanford Prison Experiment (30 minutes).
Note
The course units follow topics in the textbook, Real-Life Sociology: A Canadian Approach by Anabel Quan-Haase and Lorne Tepperman (2nd Edition). For each unit, please read the pertinent chapter(s) before completing the assessment for the unit.
Assessment
- In this course you demonstrate your understanding of the course learning outcomes in different ways, including papers, projects, discussions and quizzes. Please see the Assessment section in Moodle for assignment details and due dates.
1.1 The Sociological Imagination
We begin Unit 1 with an introduction to the academic discipline of sociology. Sociology latterly means the “study of companion”. As a social science, sociology seeks to understand and explain human behaviour. All sociologists understand that our actions are the result of a complex set of influences, including our biological makeup and the environment in which we are raised and interact. Sociologists are interested in how personal choice is influenced by external social forces. These forces are often invisible and can be attributed to large institutions as well as interactions with family, friends or even a random stranger.
Sociologists see the world in a unique way. C Wright Mills used the expression, ”sociological Imagination” to describe the relationship between a person’s experience and the wider society in which the person exists. Mills was referring to the idea that what we see as something that is just happening to us, is in fact part of a broader social world. Can you imagine being in a large crowd but feeling very lonely?
Image by Grae Dickason from Pixabay
Or how about thinking everyone is having fun but you?
Image by StockSnap from Pixabay
As we continue with the unit, consider the ways in which your daily experiences relate to the broader social world.
Activity: Sociological Imagination
Watch the video below to get an overview of the concept of sociological imagination.
Watch: Sociological Imagination
Sociology, as a discipline, is relatively new. It tends to trace it roots back to the Enlightenment of Western Europe in the 17th to 19th centuries. Sociologists today understand that many non-Europeans have thought sociologically down through history but its formal roots are primarily European and tied to the rise of science, technology and democracy. Key players associated with the formal development of sociology include Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx and Max Weber. These were men who were trying to make sense of the social upheaval they saw connected to technological advancement, the rise of urbanization, social inequality and the power of the individual in a democratic political system. They were limited by their gender, race and place in history but they did move the discipline forward. As a result a more diverse set of scholars were able to build on their work.
Activity: Timeline of Important Sociological Developments
After reading Chapter 1 of your textbook, do the timeline quiz listed below to give you a better understanding of the historical development of sociology as an academic discipline.
Note: You will need to log in to the online textbook . We will often use this resource in this course, so please reach out for support if you are having any access issues.
Questions to Consider
After completing the activities above, answer the following questions:
- Why is it important to acknowledge the work of Harriet Martineau, Dorothy E. Smith, Ibn Khaldun, Frantz Fanon, and W.E.B. Du Bois, in addition to the work of Max Weber, Karl Marx, and Émile Durkheim? Why is it especially important in sociology to consider all of these works?
- Discuss the importance of technology and science to sociology, both past and present. In what way is sociology important when we explore current issues around technology and science?
Activity: Reflective Journal
Feel free to answer the questions above in your notes or Reflective Learning Journal.
Introduction to the Reflective Journaling
A reflective journal is simply a record of your thoughts. It is a reflection of the way you think and the manner in which you respond to your learning. Journals can consist of traditional note taking, mind maps, pictures, stream-of-consciousness writing, recordings, quotes, sketches, or drawings: whatever you choose to include. Experiment and have fun. The purpose of journaling is to make you an active participant in your learning experiences as you engage in the various activities throughout the course’s readings, activities, and discussions with your instructor and your fellow students. Reflecting upon these learning events will help you gain a deeper understanding of the course materials and help integrate your learning into applied practice in your everyday life and work. Throughout the course, we will remind you to write in your journal, as we want to be sure you are actively learning the material. To assist you, we have provided you with questions you can ask yourself in order to get your creative energies flowing. Reflective journaling is an activity you can and should complete on a regular or daily basis, even outside of our scheduled course activities.
Common Questions Used for Reflective Journaling - Click to expand
- In your view, what were the most important points in the readings, videoclips, or discussions with your peers?
- What information did you already know?
- What new knowledge, ideas, or perspectives have you gained?
- What information was easy to remember or learn? Why?
- What concepts did you find more difficult? Why?
- How can you apply this knowledge to your work or current experience?
- How has this knowledge helped you to make sense of your current or previous experience?
- Has your understanding of a personal or work-related situation changed after studying these concepts?
- Did you agree or disagree with any of the material? If yes, how did you react and why?
- If you could have the opportunity to engage in further learning, what would it be?
- What further questions would like to ask the author of your readings?
- What other articles, books or discussions would be of interest?
For any journal assignments in your courses, please refer to the specific questions and/or grading criteria to help you in your writing.
Note: The learning activities in this course are ungraded, unless specified. They are designed to help you succeed in your assessments in this course, so you are strongly encouraged to complete them.
1.2 Key Sociological Concepts
Sociological imagination is one of the key terms you will come across in your study of sociology. Throughout this course you will learn many more. Two more key terms are norms and values. Norms are beliefs and behaviours that shape our everyday interactions. If you meet someone for the first time and they extend their hand to you, you will automatically extend yours to shake hands. This is a social norm at work. In some social settings, rather than extend a hand, both individuals might bow to one another. This shows that norms are culturally sensitive. This means that what might be considered a norm in one society, might be considered offensive behaviour in another.
Activity: Social Norms
Watch the following video about offensive social norms. (3 minutes)
Watch: What are Norms or Social Norms?
Questions to Consider
After watching the video, consider the following:
- Think of some behaviour you do all the time and consider normal but visitors from another country may not.
Social norms influence our behaviour and have their basis in what we value as a group. If our social group values hard work, then it may influence how many hours a week we work at our job or whether we take a vacation or not. Values will influence what we consider to be important in life. They may affect the way we view the roles of men and women, whether we go on to university or stop after high school.
Key to understanding the sociological imagination is to understand how social structures work in our society. Imagine a talk skyscraper being built. First a lot of work goes on underground. It doesn’t look like much is happening but then all of a sudden, the foundation and infrastructure is completed and the tower begins to rise rapidly. Social structures are similar in that they have a foundation that is hard to see but represent much of the building strength and capability.
A society is made up of many such structures: political, religious, economic, legal, family and educational, to mention a few. These social structures shape the way we live on a daily basis. We go to work, we go to school, we have families, we respect the law, we pay our bills, we worship our god. These activities are all the result of the structures mentioned above. Sociologists are interested in how these structures shape human behaviour, influence each other and are shaped by human choices and actions.
Photo by SpotsOfLight on Pixabay
These social structures influence people’s behaviour through power. That power may be to constrain behaviour or it may be to change or transform people. Power can also be exerted personally such as through intimidation or threats. Power is the ability to get someone to do something they don’t really want to do and that can happen at various levels in society. When the “government” makes us do something, that is quite different than when our friends dare us to do something we know we shouldn’t do. These two examples represent different levels of analysis. A dyad is a social interaction between two people, where a society is collection of people sharing the same space and generally the same beliefs about how life should work. The dyad is at the micro of small level and the society represents the macro or large level of social interaction. Within each social relationship there are different expectations that people have for each other that are often based on the role one occupies.
A police officer fulfills a certain role in society regardless of who they are. A parent, or a doctor or a king fulfil a role in society regardless of the personal traits of the person occupying the role. Each of these roles has a rank in comparison to the other roles, so a garbage collected does not have the same status as a judge or a professor. The different roles and different status people interact with one another and those interactions must then be negotiated in order to make a society work.
Photo by InformedMag on Flickr
Activity: Key Sociology Terms
Work through the Key Sociology Terms flashcards from Chapter 1 to see if you have grasped the key concepts so far.
Note: You will be assessed on your understanding of key terms throughout the course, so make it a habit to study with flashcards or another tool to learn the material.
1.3 Theories to Guide Us
Every day we are inundated with new pieces of information. What do we do with them? How to make sense of all the information? How do you know what words to type into a search engine to find the information you are looking for? How do you become a good student? What is the pathway to life success? All of these questions are answered through the guidance of the theories we hold about these issues. Theories allow us to process new pieces of information. They help us to simplify the increasingly complex world that we live in and have to navigate on a daily basis.
Consider the question of how you get from where you are to some exciting destination a distance away. How do you get there? You could pull up a website such as Google maps and type in your destination and see where the algorithm leads you. But wait, how do you want to get there? Car, bike, walk or transit? Do you want to get there very quickly or do you want to have the opportunity to enjoy the scenery? What do you value? Exercise? Then maybe you ride your bike. Time? Then the most direct route. Your values shape your behaviour and how to deal with new pieces of information.
What about your theory of finding a life partner? How does that happen? Do you date a lot of people? Do you look to your family to find you a suitable partner? Good sociology is always guided by theory. Good theories explain more of what we are trying to understand than poor theories and they help us to make sense of what might happen in the future.
This course will focus on three main theories (although there are many other important ones as well). We will be looking at Conflict theory, Functional theory and a theory called Symbolic Interactionism. Table 1 below provides a simplified summary of the three main theories that will provide the structure for looking at all the social issues in the rest of the course.
Table 1
Summary of three main sociological theories.
| Sociological Perspective | Level of Analysis | Focus | Key People | Key Concepts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Symbolic Interactionism | Micro | Use of symbols; face to face interactions | Max Weber, Herbert Mead | verstehen, understanding, interpretation |
| Functionalism | Macro | Relationship between the parts of a society; how aspects of society are functional (adaptive) | Emile Durkheim, Robert Merton | Social facts, stability, function |
| Conflict theory | Macro | Competition for scarce resources; how the elite control | Karl Marx | Inequality, power, economics |
These three theories come from three male Europeans in the 19th and early 20th century, they represent the foundation of modern sociology but do not convey the breadth and diversity of sociological theories that have developed since then. Look at the Global Social Theories Link to get a taste of the diversity of scholars and topics that are being applied today sociological research.
1.4 How We Do Social Research
Sociologists are social scientists who do social research. Some scholars think that social entities can be studied just like inanimate objects and others would say they can’t. Both groups seek to better understand and explain social behavior but they use different approaches and techniques. The process of research is essentially the same for both groups. Where they differ is in the research design and the way they collect and analyze data. See Figure 2.1 for process of research.
Consider the idea of collecting information (or data) about the topic you are interested in researching. How will you go about doing it? Will you interview people and ask them specific questions? Will you observe their behaviour from afar but not let them know you are studying them? Maybe you will look at information the government has collected or re-examine the data other have collected. The type of research question you have will often dictate the type of approach you will use to collect information. Sociologists talk about two primary approaches to collecting information.
Quantitative Research
Quantitative methods rely on counting things. If you want to know how many do something, then quantitative methods are the way to go. A quantitative approach to a research question begins with a theory that leads to questions that the theory should be able to help answer. This approach is also referred to as deduction. Deduction starts with a big idea (theory) and then goes out to find information that supports or disproves that idea. In the previous section we talked about how theories guide us in how make sense of new pieces of information. If my theory leads me to believe that religious people divorce less, then I can use that theory to guide my research. I might count the number of times a person goes to a church, synagogue, temple or mosques and then compare that to the number of divorces in a group of people. If people who go to a religious service more often, have less divorce, then my research adds support to my theory. Quantitative research is concerned about making sure that you get consistent information (reliability) and accurate information (validity). If I count the number of divorces in a group of people, the number I come up with should be the number someone else who counts the same group comes up with (reliability). When I say that I am counting divorces, I want to make sure I am not counting people who are just ending a relationship with someone who they were not married too (validity). Remember, quantitative methods are all about numbers and counting. It uses mathematical techniques, called statistics, to find out if the information they uncover is significant or just a fluke.
Qualitative Research
Qualitative research is less interested in numbers and more interested in the detailed stories behind what is going on. If we use the same example of religion and divorce from above, we can see the difference. Where quantitative methods start with a big idea, qualitative methods are like explorers making notes about all the things they see. They may have no big idea guiding them at all. Grounded theory is an approach that tries to start research gathering without big ideas. This approach is inductive in that it starts with small data points or observation and then begins to build a theory of who things work. Deduction and induction are both important approaches to research and can often be used together in the form of mixed-methods. This approach tries to bring together the best of both quantitative and qualitative research. Research methods are often aligned with the big theories we have learned about. Quantitative methods are typically used with macro theories, like conflict theory and structural functionalism, while qualitative methods are more often used when allowing symbolic interactionism to guide your research.
Activity: Research Methods
First, complete the following activity in which you will order the tasks that comprise the research process.
Then, take a few moments to consider a social topic you are interested in.
Questions to Consider
- Think of a project you would like to undertake, or a research question that interests you. What approach – quantitative, qualitative, or mixed – would suit your study best?
Methods of social research are varied. Think of research methodologies as tools that can be used to build. Each tool is unique and can perform a special function. When you use the right tool for the job, it is much more likely to give you the outcome you want. Some methodologies are better suited for quantitative research and others for qualitative research. Your research conclusions will only be as good as the information you have gathered and the analysis of that information. You should know the difference between types of survey questionnaires and the importance of getting a good sample of responses. Interviews can be valuable ways to gather information but don’t be naïve and think you can ask a question any way you want. Remember who asks the question, where the question is asked, when the questioned is asked, how the question is asks can all affect the answer that is given. This can impact both the reliability and validity of our data. Another way to get good information about a group you want to study is to join them. You can observe a group from afar or you can participate with the group. Both extremes have advantages and disadvantages. You will need to decide which approach is best for your research.
An important element of social research is the ethical component of studying human beings. Your textbook provides a variety of examples of the harm that can be done to the subjects being studied and in many cases, without giving consent. The Milgram experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment are two high profile examples of this. Social research conducted today must go through a thorough review in order to be approved. This review process is in place to protect the participants being examined. Research that involves direct contact with human beings must involve informed consent and the opportunity to debrief after the research has been completed.
Activity: Stanford Prison Experiment
Watch the Stanford Prison experiment video below and try to identify ways in which the subjects being studied were at the risk of harmed.
Watch: The Stanford Prison Experiment
Summary
In this first unit, you have had the opportunity to learn about the sociological imagination and other key concepts related to the discipline. The sociological imagination provides a framework for understanding how social forces and individual choices, or agency, come together to shape out behavior. This and other terms will aid you in understanding how sociologists view the social phenomenon around them.
You have also learned about how to measure, and study the social world. It is not the same as studying rocks or other physical objects. You have to treat people ethically. You need to know what it is you want to research and decide if you want to start with a big idea and test it or to just go into the social world and document what you see, drawing conclusions after you have collected your information. Regardless of which approach you take, you are now more equipped to make sense of the social world around you.
Assessment
Quizzes 1 & 2
After completing this unit, including the learning activities, you are asked to complete the two online quizzes reviewing material from chapters 1 and 2.
These quizzes are meant to be formative, and a tool to help you measure your own understanding of the course material.
Go to Quizzes in the main Assessment tab for access to Quiz 1 and Quiz 2.
To prepare for these quizzes, take the practice quizzes from our online textbook.
Assignment: Reflective Journal
The Reflective Journal assignment is a chance to present your understanding and application of the course material, ask questions, and clarify issues. We are looking for evidence that you are engaging the course material. Examine the learning outcomes for each unit and ensure that your journal addresses each outcome. Include your thoughts from the learning activities and how you apply the concepts to your life and current events.
For more information on Reflective JournalingClick to Open
Introduction to the Reflective Journal
A reflective journal is simply a record of your thoughts. It is a reflection of the way you think and the manner in which you respond to your learning.
Journals can consist of traditional note taking, mind maps, pictures, stream-of-consciousness writing, recordings, quotes, sketches, or drawings: whatever you choose to include. Experiment and have fun.
The purpose of journaling is to make you an active participant in your learning experiences as you engage in the various activities throughout the course’s readings, activities, and discussions with your instructor and your fellow students. Reflecting upon these learning events will help you gain a deeper understanding of the course materials and help integrate your learning into applied practice in your everyday life and work.
Throughout the course, we will remind you to write in your journal, as we want to be sure you are actively learning the material. To assist you, we have provided you with questions you can ask yourself in order to get your creative energies flowing. Reflective journaling is an activity you can and should complete on a regular or daily basis, even outside of our scheduled course activities.
Common Questions Used for Reflective Journaling
In your view, what were the most important points in the readings, videoclips, or instructor commentary?
What information did you already know?
What new knowledge, ideas, or perspectives have you gained?
What information was easy to remember or learn? Why?
What concepts did you find more difficult? Why?
How can you apply this knowledge to your work or current experience?
How has this knowledge helped you to make sense of your current or previous experience?
Has your understanding of a personal or work-related situation changed after studying these concepts?
Did you agree or disagree with any of the material? If yes, how did you react and why?
If you could have the opportunity to engage in further learning, what would it be?
What further questions would like to ask the author of your readings?
What other articles, books or discussions would be of interest?
For any journal assignments in your courses, please refer to the specific questions and/or grading criteria to help you in your writing.
Also see the following resources for additional tips in writing Reflective Journals:
Refer to the Assessment section in Moodle for all other assignment details and due dates.
Checking your Learning
Before you move on to the next unit, you may want to check to make sure that you are able to:
- Describe how sociology forms a picture of society
- Explain the history and development of sociology as a social scientific discipline
- Explain the three key processes in sociology
- Compare the four main approaches of sociological analysis and how they will apply to all the remaining topics covered in this course
- Create a research study from its design inception to execution,including the write up and dissemination of findings
- Identify in depth the ethical dimensions relevant to setting up a research study
- Consider how sociology can improve your skills necessary for employment