WHAT IS Marshall High School Sociology Mr. Cline Unit One- Slides - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

WHAT IS

Marshall High School Sociology

• Mr. Cline

Unit One- Slides C

The History of Sociology

• The rise of scientific thinking was itself one of the major social changes in Europe.
• The early Sociologists were both a part of the scientific tide that was sweeping

Europe, and observers of it.

• Adapting ideas and methods from the physical sciences, they gathered empirical

data and constructed theories that are still influential today.

• Using the social data they collected, and their developed theories, early

Sociologists identified and developed five key concepts that have come to define the study of Sociology.

• These five key concepts are:
• Social Structure
• Social Action
• Functional Integration
• Power, and
• Culture

The History of Sociology

• Social Structure
• This concept refers to patterns of social relationships we develop

throughout our lives as humans (i.e. marriage, employment)

• It also includes our social positions (teacher, priest, carpenter, President),
• And of numbers of people (statistical compilations such as numbers of

people over 60 in the U.S., population of China)

• Social Structures do change, but are rarely affected by the individual unless

it is on a small scale, otherwise people normally adapt to these changes, making choices within the framework of the existing and current social structure

The History of Sociology

• Social Action
• Is behavior which is shaped by a person’s understandings, interpretations, and

intentions and which is in response to, coordinated with, or oriented toward the actions of others.

• In other, and simpler, terms, it is basically the choices you or I make as a result of the

actions and choices of others.

• Social Action can involve the large scale coordination of thousands of people, such as

in forming a church or organizing a government, or can involve the formation of interpersonal relationships such as making a new friend at school.

• It is difficult to separate any action you take as an individual from that of a social
• action. Let’s take for example the choice of whether to have a turkey or a ham

sandwich for lunch some Saturday.

• Making a ham sandwich instead of a turkey sandwich is an action, but not a social

action, unless you plan on sharing it with someone.

The History of Sociology

• Social Action
• However the act of buying the ham and bread is a social action because your choice

affects the person at the store who sells it, the pork farmer who raised the pig from which the ham came from, the farmer who raised the wheat the flour that made the bread came from, etc.

• Functional Integration
• Is the ways in which the different parts of a social system are often so closely

interrelated that what happens in one affects the others, and is influenced by them in turn.

• For example, the military depends on manufacturers for equipment, the

manufacturers depend on school for good employees, schools depend on the government for financial help, and the government depends on the military for its defense.

• Functionally integrated systems can also produce dysfunctions, which are side effects

that are not good for the system.

• Such as pollution being a dysfunctional consequence of modern industry

The History of Sociology

• Power
• Is the capacity of one social actor such as a person, or a group or
• rganization, to get others to do its will, or to ensure that it will benefit

from the actions of others.

• For example, businesses in America have made a social system where it is

impossible to get a high paying job without a college degree.

• This requirement ensures that they will have highly educated and capable

employees performing key functions, so it benefits from your action in choosing a college education, and in turn partly forces you to choose such an education.

• Other situations of power occur everyday.
• Why are you sitting in a classroom Monday through Friday not doing

necessarily what you desire, but rather sitting quietly and listening to a teacher talk about subjects that may not even interest you?

The History of Sociology

• Culture
• Is the language, norms, values, beliefs, knowledge, and symbols that make up a

way of life. It is the understanding of how to act that people share with one another in any stable, self reproducing group. The concept of culture is used to describe the distinctive way of life of a nation or people

• Without culture, there would be no language for example
• If we look at the broad descriptor “western culture” we can see these

characteristics in that most of what comprises the culture;

• Speaks a heavily Latin influenced language
• Have a strong belief in the worth of the individual over the state
• Value hard work
• Have beliefs rooted in Christianity and the Christian tradition

The History of Sociology

• Culture
• Possess the basic knowledge necessary for scientific reasoning
• Understand that the line through the picture of an action means “DO NOT DO

THIS!”

• Someone from an eastern culture, like the Chinese, however, find most of these

concepts, and practices, foreign to them, as we would find their language, beliefs and practices foreign to us.

• The development of these five key principles and how they are shown to affect our

everyday lives is varied.

• Many of the early influential founders of the science of Sociology disagreed with each
• ther about the impacts and importance of each of the five key concepts, though they

all, in theory, agreed that each existed and was vital.

• Since Sociological theory builds on previous theory, it is important to understand the

foundations laid by some of the early great thinkers in the field.

The History of Sociology

• To understand how these early thinkers in the field organized their thoughts, we have

to understand the importance of theory to social scientific thought and study.

• The Importance of Theory
• When you were in junior high or high school and you ate lunch, did certain types
• f people sit at certain tables every day?
• Why do you think people tend to sort themselves into groups and stay with

people they see as similar to themselves?

• If you have a guess as to why this happens, you could say that you have a

theory regarding how social groups function.

• A theory is a statement of how and why processes work or the world operates.
• Within sociology, theories attempt to explain why groups of people choose to

perform certain actions and how societies function or change in a certain way.

The History of Sociology

• It's important for social sciences, like psychology, economics, and sociology,

to follow theoretical perspectives as a framework for understanding phenomena, such as the ways people form groups.

• Without theories, we'd just have a huge list of individual tendencies, or

decisions people make, or types of people, but we wouldn't have any way of

• rganizing the field.
• Theories help us see overall themes across many specific types of behaviors
• r decisions in the social world.
• Each of the social science perspectives, in of themselves, are grand, over

arching theories.

• But, even within each social science field there are rationalities that attempt

to explain various types of human behaviors, and tie them and connect them together into a broader understanding.

• So, with that knowledge, let us begin looking at some of the more

predominant theories within Sociology, beginning with the earliest foundational ones

The History of Sociology

• The first of these we will examine is Adam Smith. Though not a Sociologist

himself, his theories dealt a great deal with, and were influential upon other Sociologist’s views of social action.

• Adam Smith is considered the founder of the science of Economics
• His most famous work was a book called “The Wealth of Nations,” which laid
• ut the basic fundamental concepts of modern economic science.
• This book was concerned with how individual decisions-

social action- could add up to the beneficial organization

• f the whole society
• He posited that people make choices on the basis of very

rational cost to benefit analyses. These choices are individual choices where the individual considers mainly the consequences to themselves, and not to others.

• Smith’s theory was that economic choices motivated purely by self interest

were good for an economy in the aggregate (each individual part which in total constitutes a whole) by leading to the efficient production of the goods consumers want, and as such society became wealthier.

The History of Sociology

• This occurs because competition works like an “invisible hand” to streamline

production, maximize profits, and guide labor and investment into areas where demand is greatest.

• This is a manifestation of Rational Choice Theory
• Smith helped found rational choice theory as his method of analysis was not just to

study the actual choices people made, but to construct models of what a rational actor, or those people who consider the costs and benefits of an action prior to choosing one, would do, given certain interests, abilities and conditions

• This theory uses the concept of functional integration as well as social action
• In that he saw society as a self regulating system in which many different parts,

all acting in their own interests, are meshed together through market forces to form an integrated whole that functions for the common good.

• His model allowed him to evaluate cultural patterns to see whether they led

people astray by obscuring their true interests or were in accord with what unbiased rational actors would choose.

The History of Sociology

• Most of Smith’s influence on Sociology has been the development of theories

by other Sociologists to counter and oppose his own, rather than the direct use

• f his rational choice theory to describe human actions.
• Perhaps no theoretical philosopher has influenced Sociology, or the other social

sciences, as much as Karl Marx.

• Marx’s theories rested on a construct of the

concept of power that had to do with collective struggle.

• To Marx, the interests of the proletariat (workers)

and the bourgeoisie (capitalists, business owners) are inherently contradictory and lead to a power struggle.

• According to Marx, capitalists are driven to

maximize profits by exploiting workers and holding their wages at the lowest possible levels.

The History of Sociology

• Workers suffered, and were therefore driven to overthrow the capitalist

system, seize the means of production, and establish a classless society in which wealth would be distributed evenly.

• The capitalists and the governments they supported would use all of the

power they could to stop workers from changing the social order.

• Workers would then have to rely on the power of their numbers, or their

collective power, through joining unions or political parties where they would

• utnumber the bourgeoisie, and overthrow their oppressors in a revolution.
• According to Marx, class conflict is built into a capitalist system, not just

through the organizations that employed people’s labor, but also into government, and society as a whole.

• Thus, social structure is rooted in economic production and class relations,

and has always shaped social action and even culture.

• To Marx, collective struggle was a kind of social action, because by

themselves workers had little power, but if they joined together in unions and political parties they could gain the power. This meant you would not only need action, but a change in the culture.

The History of Sociology

• Individual members would have to develop class consciousness, or the ability to

identify their own selfish interests to be the same in the long term as those of all

• ther workers and members of the proletariat, and therefore give up selfish

short term needs in order to focus on the long term needs of the working class in total.

• Workers had to break free of the capitalist ideal of individuality and develop class

consciousness, or a shared sense of their interests and problems as workers.

• Until that time, capitalists would use their power to shape the workers’ religious

beliefs, leisure activities, and consumer preferences, and create in them a false consciousness that would stop them from realizing they were being exploited.

• It was culture then that reinforced the power of elites in capitalism’s class based

social structure, and only revolution would allow for the workers to use the power of government to change the social structure.

• Only class consciousness and the subsequent revolution that would come from

it, would allow for the workers to use the power of the government to change the social structure.

• Hence, the communist slogan “WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!” and the calls

from communist organizations throughout history for revolution.

The History of Sociology

• While Marx’s focus was on what divided people, Emile

Durkheim was more concerned with the forces that bind people together, or what he called social solidarity, the key to which was functional integration.

• To Durkheim, there are two basic forms of social

solidarity

• Mechanical Solidarity which is based on strongly

shared beliefs, values, and customs is what holds together small, simple, tribal societies and traditional agricultural villages where everyone views the world in much the same way and engage in the same activities .

• Organic Solidarity in turn is what holds large,

complex, modern societies together, and is based

• n a complex division of labor. People are

interconnected because differences in their skills and roles make them need each other to survive.

The History of Sociology

• If we examine the role of the baker in each of these forms of social solidarity, we can

more easily see what Durkheim means

• The baker in a society held together through mechanical solidarity would most

likely have been the son of the local baker

• He would know what farmers bring in his grain, and would most likely mill it

himself

• He would know what breads the community prefers, and when the local

festivals and events that would require him to bake more product.

• On the other hand, his counterpart in a society held together by organic solidarity

would most likely know the ins and outs of the bread making process., but only the baking portion, as he was most likely not brought up in a family of bakers.

• He would depend on independent grain sellers who know where to get the

best prices and top quality grains

• An independent mill that turns large quantities of this grain into flour

• And on advanced customer orders in order to understand the demand for

more or less of his product, and what types of breads his customers enjoy more.

• So, he would therefore need a management expert to quantify how to judge

this demand.

• In other words, in an organically solidified society, the baker would depend

much more on experts in particular fields in the process, rather than just on his own knowledge of the process as a whole.

• As you can probably tell, functional integration is greatest in modern societies that are

based on organic solidarity.

• Durkheim emphasized the ways in which different social activities and institutions (like

families, corporations, courts, schools and clubs) fit together and support one another, even when no one plans the whole thing. The History of Sociology

• Durkheim argued that shared values and practices derived from culture also play

a role in knitting society together by providing people with a sense of rules, limits and ideas about what they can reasonably expect.

• When expectations deviate too far from realities, society suffers from anomie, a

state in which breakdowns of social norms or rules make it difficult for people to maintain a clear sense of who they are, where their lives will take them, and what it all means.

• A good example of this is the recent public debate over homosexual marriage.
• For centuries there has been a common understanding of what marriage
• means. The more homosexual marriage becomes accepted, the more

confusion it causes in several segments of our society.

• Does this mean, since we allow people to marry only because they love one

another, that I can then love more than one person, and so have multiple spouses?

• What if I am in love with my sister, is it then acceptable for us to marry

now? The History of Sociology

• These are issues where the expectation of this societal change is unknown, and

until we clearly redefine what marriage is will cause confusion, and anger in some segments of society, as well as a great deal of debate, or what Durkheim would call anomie.

• Durkheim also coined the term social fact. A social fact is the enduring properties of

social life that shape or constrain the actions individuals can take, and because they are properties of social life, they cannot be located in the isolated individual, but appear as external even though individuals participate in them.

• For example, the economy, which no one person or group designed or created,

nor controls, or rates of social phenomena, such as suicide

• For Durkheim, Sociology was the science of social facts.
• The task of the Sociologist was to search for correlations between social facts in
• rder to reveal laws of social structure.
• Having discovered these, the Sociologist could then determine whether a given

society is “healthy” or “pathological” and prescribe appropriate remedies. The History of Sociology

The History of Sociology

• Within social facts Durkheim distinguished material and nonmaterial social facts.
• Material social facts have to do with the physical social structures which

influence the individual.

• Non Material social facts are values, norms, and conceptually held beliefs.
• Initially Durkheim’s discovery of social facts was seen as significant because it

promised to make it possible to study the behavior of entire societies, rather than just of particular individuals.