An introduction to the discipline of Sociology

welcome to the macat multimedia series and to my cat's introduction to sociology sociology is the study of human societies if you've ever wondered why crime occurs why some people live in poverty while others have plenty or even why humans do the most mundane things then you are thinking like a sociologists sociology teaches us that seemingly natural events or actions may really have social causes so instead of trying to understand human behavior by studying the individual sociologists look at the wider context at the historical events and the social processes the channel individual behavior being a sociologist means using what the american sociologists see right mills called your sociological imagination it means thinking yourself away from everyday experiences and discovering that many apparently purely personal events are the products of something vastly more substantial the sociologists task Mills wrote is often to make public issues of what are presented as mere personal troubles following Mills advice means understanding the relationship between the individual and society this has been one of sociologies key tasks ever since its founding around 1850 it was a goose Taccone to inventor of the term sociology who first argued that it was possible to study society scientifically and to attempt to uncover the laws that direct individual behavior another Frenchman Emile Durkheim argued that sociologists should focus on discovering social facts which he defined as rules the channel behavior and exist independently of the individual in suicide a study in sociology yochem tried to show that suicide was a social fact not an individual act using quantitative data to compare suicide rates to religion and marriage rates in different countries he argued that external factors could account for even the most deeply personal of Acts for much of its history from dear CEM to the work of Talcott Parsons the American developer of the general theory of action and Robert Merton the first writer on the sociology of science the discipline was concerned with understanding how social cohesion can exist despite conflicting interests it focused on how institutions and norms regulated individual behavior to achieve a functioning society but later sociologists such as George Herbert Mead and Herbert Bulmer studied the interactions between individuals a strategy that Erving Goffman pursued in his the presentation of self in everyday life to argue that social life consists of the management of impressions to the extent that society can be likened to a play in which individuals are both actors and audience members sociology also studies deviations from the norm Howard s Becker studied marijuana users and dance musicians to understand how some behaviors come to be labeled as deviant and Stanley Cohen in folk Devils and moral panics looked at 1960s beachfront riots between mods and rockers to show how sensationalized media coverage creates exaggerated moral panics reflecting the fear that the whole country is losing its way the French theoretician Michel Foucault made radical contributions to the same field during the 1970s arguing in madness and civilization that our understandings of mental illness are shaped by the medicalised language that doctors used to talk about it anin discipline and punish he traced the ways in which criminals understood as a group with specific characteristics emerged alongside the development of the modern prison for fuku power and knowledge are intimately linked and the prison influences other institutions such as hospitals and schools in which subjects are controlled by both surveillance and categorization his ideas have proved enduringly influential and have been extended to help us understand the fundamentals of the world we live in Edward Sayid developed fuku thinking to argue that the West constructs the East portraying it as both different and inferior and that this in turn both enabled and justified European colonialism two individuals have the power to control their lives or are they constrained by societal forces is conflict normal or pathological and where does our knowledge of society come from Mehcad helps you to understand not only the world that we have built and live in but also sociologists the scientists of society come inside to find out more maquette better think smarter aim higher you

Channel: Macat

Views: 140,075

Rating: 4.891963 out of 5

Keywords: Sociology

Id: 32KG_ba_NJc

Length: 5min 31sec (331 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 14 2016