SOCI 210: Sociological Perspectives Sept. 15 1. Administrative 2. - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

SOCI 210: Sociological Perspectives

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• Sept. 15
• 1. Administrative
• 2. Methods of inquiry
• 3. Three theoretical lenses

Administrative

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⦙ If you have a group or partial group

• rganized, you may pick a group on

MyCourses to join ⦙ Otherwise, I will randomly assign students to groups on Thursday morning

Groups

⦙ Starting Thursday (Sept 17), all lectures will be pre-recorded ⦙ Class period will be used strictly to facilitate group work (Zoom breakout rooms) ⦙ If you will be using class for group work, you must log in to Zoom with your McGill email

Classes

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Methods of Inquiry

Citation Data

Methods of inquiry

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Surveys Experiments Field research Secondary analysis

Most sociological research incorporates at least one of:

Images from https://thenounproject.com users
 Rockicon, Adnen Kadri, Blake Thompson, and Symbolon

Methods of inquiry

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A survey is a list of questions

• Targeted


Specific population, usually with some form of sampling

• Uniform


Typically same survey is sent to every participant

Format

• Various forms of dissemination


Mail; telephone; in-person; online; …

• Various forms of questions


Yes/no; scale; multiple choice; free response; interview; …

Surveys

Advantages

• Can have large

samples

• Generalizable
• Structured for charts

and statistical analysis

Challenges

• Often time consuming

and expensive

• Non-response
• Format can yield

unreliable artifacts (results that reflect the survey structure rather than respondents’ beliefs)

Methods of inquiry

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Surveys

Experiments

Methods of inquiry

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Experiments for causal analysis

• Isolate one potential factor that might be causing

an outcome

• As much as possible, let nothing else vary
• Assume that the remaining factors vary

unpredictably

Common laboratory setup

• Treatment and control group
• Double-blind


Researchers do not know group assignment

• Compare outcomes

Experiments

Methods of inquiry

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Non-laboratory experiments

• Vary potential causal factor “in the wild”


Intervetion or “natural experiment”

• Less reliable than controlled experiment


Outside factors can confound results

Ethical concerns of experiments

• Consequences of treatment
• Consequences of withholding treatment

Experiments

Methods of inquiry

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Advantages

• Causal inference
• Clear analysis
• Again:


causal inference

Challenges

• Narrow scope
• Artificial context
• Ethical concerns
• “Hawthorne effect”

Field research

Methods of inquiry

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Interact with research subjects directly

• Unstructured or minimally structured
• Observe behavior
• Participate in activities

Aims

• Gather in-depth information about community,

institution, or place

• Understand how the people that participate in the

case make sense of their own experience

• Employ flexible theories and hypotheses, subject to

change as researchers learn more about the people involved

Field research

Methods of inquiry

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Ethnography

• Systematic observation of an entire community
• “Thick description” (Geertz)
• Often extend over months, years, or even decades

Participant observation

• Participate in the community under study
• Take on roles and responsibilities, form relationships
• Sometimes “under cover”

Case study

• Single organization, event, or person
• May use ethnography and secondary data

Field research

Methods of inquiry

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Advantages

• Detailed, accurate,

real-life information

• Brings individual

accounts to foreground

• Prioritizes adaptive

research frames

Challenges

• Very time consuming
• Often not generalizable
• Especially sensitive to

researcher expectation

• Messy data (?)

Secondary data analysis

Methods of inquiry

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Use data that already exists

• “Found data”
• Not designed to answer the researcher’s question

Characteristics

• Often (but not always!) easy to obtain
• Rarely well structured for the research question—
• ften requires extensive coding/processing
• Ubiquitous

Secondary data analysis

Methods of inquiry

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Repurposed research data

• Re-use data from another research project to

answer a new question

• Meta-analysis of existing published research
• General-purpose data (e.g. Statistics Canada)

Data “in the wild”

• Anything recorded without scholarly intent

Literature Meeting minutes Recorded conversations / correspondence Social media posts and interactions

• Very unstructured—variety of methods used to

transform into usable data (e.g. content analysis, coding)

Secondary data analysis

Methods of inquiry

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Advantages

• Often inexpensive and

fast to obtain

• No threat of researcher

taint

• Often the only option

for historical cases

Challenges

• Data not focussed on

current research question

• Must take into account

the social processes that created data

• Context may be

unavailable

• Processing may

introduce hidden biases

Methods of inquiry

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Field research Surveys Experiments Secondary analysis

Research rarely falls cleanly into

• ne methodological bin

Methods of inquiry (summary)

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Questionnaire Random sample Quantitative Controlled intervention Causal analysis Narrow scope Within community Participant perspective Deep description Found data Repurposed Extensively processed

Surveys Experiments Field research Secondary
 analysis

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Overview of Sociological Theory

Citation Data

Sociological theory

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What do we mean by “theory”?

• Unifying framework
• Allows different topics to be seen as examples
• f a larger pattern
• Gives us tools to think about new situations and

events

• Can offer a new perspective on topics we

already understand

Generalization

• Lend weight to a specific case by framing it as

an illustration of a broader social reality

Sociological theory

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Scope

• General theory aims to explain society as a

whole

• Narrow theory limits itself to explaining a tightly

bounded domain of social reality

Theory of organizational influence Theory of occupational mobility

• Narrow theories often utilize framework of

general theory

Micro- vs macro-level

• Micro-level theories start from the behavior and

interactions of individuals, explaining larger structures in terms of these small-scale subjects

• Macro-level theories start from a view of society

as a whole, explaining individual experiences through the broad, society-wide forces

Sociological theory

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Social theory Today’s lecture

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Structural Functionalism

Citation Data

Structural functionalism

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Society

Industry Government Religion Labor Education Media

Structural functionalism

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Society

Brain Skeleton Liver Blood Stomach Skin Intestine

Structural functionalism

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Social cohesion

⦙ Mutually dependent components of society foster a sense of unity that holds society together ⦙ Émile Durkheim theorized a historical shift from mechanical (pre-modern) to

• rganic (modern) forms of solidarity

Social roles

⦙ The roles that people occupy (mother, banker, leader) are built socially ⦙ Talcott Parsons theorized that roles are necessary for society to function, and become institutionalized over time

Function and dysfunction

⦙ If an institution exists, it exists to fulfill a purpose for society ⦙ Robert Merton: manifest vs implicit function

Some major themes from structural functionalism:

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Conflict
 Theory

Citation Data

Conflict theory

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Society

Conflict theory

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Conflict theory

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Society

Capital Capital Capital Capital Capital Labor Labor Labor Labor Labor

Conflict theory

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Alienation (Karl Marx)

⦙ Humans relate to the products of their work in a very real way ⦙ Capitalism disconnects workers from the goods they produce ⦙ This necessarily yields feelings of alienation, dehumanizing workers

Ideology (Karl Marx)

⦙ The ideology of the oppressors is adopted by oppressed ⦙ Ownership of means of production yields material and ideological power ⦙ Unified ideology of a culture is not due to a sense of collective belonging (as in Durkheim) but the imposition of that ideology by those in power

Some major themes from conflict theory:

Conflict theory

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Some major themes from conflict theory:

Authority (Max Weber)

⦙ Domination does not always come from a direct use of force ⦙ Government authority based on monopoly on “legitimate” means of force ⦙ Authority is given as much as taken


Rational-legal, traditional, and charismatic authority

Multi-faceted (Weber, Du Bois, …)

⦙ Conflict is not just about capital versus labor ⦙ Many dimensions of society are defined by conflict within and between them


Class, status, party stratification (Weber)
 Race, “Double consciousness” (Du Bois)

⦙ Many contemporary theoretical approaches can be thought of in the tradition of conflict theory (or critical theory)

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Symbolic Interactionism

Citation Data

Symbolic interactionism

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Society

Symbolic interactionism

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Focus on symbolic meaning

⦙ Explains institutions, behavior, social structure through the meanings people ascribe to

• bjects in the social world

Micro-level explanation of society

Focus on interaction

⦙ Interactions (rather than classes, roles, or institutions) are basic building block ⦙ Examines behavior—social psychology

Symbolic interactionism

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Interaction as basis of self


(George Herbert Mead, Charles Cooley)

⦙ Social world based on mental images

• f one an other and our interactions

⦙ Interaction involves imagining viewpoint of other person
 “Looking-glass self” ⦙ Concept of self is same process, internalized

Multiple selves


(George Herbert Mead, Erving Goffman)

⦙ Self is built through interactions with

• thers

⦙ Therefore different conceptions of who we are depending on the social situation we are in

Some major themes from symbolic interactionism:

Symbolic interactionism

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Some major themes from symbolic interactionism:

Negotiation of social order


(Herbert Blumer, Erving Goffman)

⦙ Institutions, norms, hierarchies, structures are negotiated through interactions ⦙ Roles are created and recreated in situational contexts


Mutual work of defining the situation

⦙ Regularity of social roles from repeated interaction and expectations

Small-scale structure


(Georg Simmel)

⦙ Small-scale structures of groups (as small as three) have large-scale consequences ⦙ Interactions are not in a vacuum ⦙ (More on this when we talk about relational sociology and network theory later in the term)