Answer the following:

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Answer the following

• 1. Which two household cleaners should never be
  mixed?
• 2. What is the average oven temperature for
  baking?
• 3. What are the two most common types of
  screwdrivers?
• 4. Mauve is closest to which color purple,
  green, or red?
• 5. What color is the electrical ground wire?
• 6. What do the letters LED stand for?
• 7. What is the proper way to hang a roll of
  toilet paper?
• 8. Which statement is correct
• In conversation, men touch each other more.
• In conversation, men make more eye contact.

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"The first wisdom of sociology is this
things are not what they seem."
Peter Berger
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Aim What is Sociology?
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Sociology is the scientific study of human
activity.
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Human activitythe things people .

• . . . do with, to and for one another

• . . . think and do as a result of others
  influence

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How do sociologists think about any human
activity?
Social forces
Human activity (the way it is organized)

• Opportunities
• Disadvantages
• Sense of self
• Relationships with others and larger environment

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1
Social forces are anything humans create that
influences or pressures people to interact,
behave, respond, or think in certain ways.
Language
Laws
Inventions
Ideas
Meanings
Social Structure
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Example of an invention as a social force the
mobile phone
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Social Force Mobile Phone
Human activity (the way it is organized)
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it frees people from being in a specific physical
space when they communicate with others.
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What kinds of human activities have changed as
a result of the mobile phone?
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Human activity (the way it is organized)

• Opportunities
• Disadvantages
• Sense of self
• Relationships with others and environment

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What opportunities and disadvantages come with
the mobile phone?
May not be able to fully engage in an activity
Immediate access to others (not present), no
matter the setting
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How is sense of self shaped by the mobile phone?
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What about relationships with others and the
surrounding environment?
In a survey of 439 doctors who perform
cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) surgery 55.6
reported using their mobile phones while
performing surgery to send or check text
messages, access e-mail, check postings on social
networking sites or otherwise use the internet
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What meaning do you assign to this empty roll of
toilet tissue?
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Which photograph best reflects the meaning you
assign to the empty roll of toilet tissue?
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Cuba
U.S.
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What social forces contribute to different ways
of thinking about and responding to empty toilet
paper rolls?
Resource-rich country Consumption-oriented
culture (capitalism) Ability to access resources
from foreign sources

• Resource-poor country
• Thrift-oriented culture
• U.S. embargo since 1960
• Collapse of Soviet Union

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How does attitude toward resources and
corresponding behavior affect sense of self?
Sense of self revolves around consumption
Sense of self revolves around ingenuity
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Empirical

• Sociology is an empirical science based on
  purposeful, objective observations
• Are these statements objective or subjective?
• The man in the drugstore fell to the floor
  clutching his chest and the other customers
  turned in his direction when he screamed.
• objective

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• The pigeon had been pecking at the disk was
  distracted by the sound of the door slamming, and
  it hesitated while it considered whether to keep
  pecking or not.
• Subjective
• When the dinner with her husbands parents was
  over, she was so anxious to leave and go home
  that she left her coat behind.
• Subjective
• He beeped the horn several times in rapid
  succession, turned into the oncoming lane, and
  sped around the stalled car.
• Objective

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What do sociologists study?

• Social Institutions Family, Education, Religion,
  the Economy, Government, Health and Medicine, the
  Media, and Sports.
• Sociologists look at the impact of institutions
  on the individual, changes in these institutions,
  and the causes and effects of change.

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• The Sociological Imagination The ability to see
  the link between society and self.
• Link between history and biography
• It questions common interpretations of human
  social behavior.
• It challenges conventional social wisdom ideas
  people assume are true.

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• Debunking looking beyond surface level
  explanations for deeper explanations.
• Seeking new perspectives to old realities or
  beliefs.

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C. Wright Mills
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Who is this guy?

• Professor Columbia University
• Social Critic
• Public Intellectual

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Men and women often feel their private lives are
a series of traps

• ...and in this feeling, they often are quite
  correct

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People do not usually define

• the troubles they endure in terms of historical
  change and institutional contradiction

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The well-being they enjoy

• they do not usually attribute the big ups and
  downs to the societies in which they live

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The history that now affects every person is
world history
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The very shaping of history now outpaces the
ability of men

• to orient themselves in accordance with
  cherished values

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People often sense

• that older ways of feeling and thinking have
  collapsed and newer beginnings are morally
  ambiguous

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• in this Age of Fact information often dominates
  their attention and overwhelms their capacities
  to assimilate it

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• People need quality of mind that will help them
  to use information and to develop reason
• to achieve lucid summations of what is going on
  in the world
• and of what may be happening within themselves

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This is what is called the sociological
imagination
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• individuals can understand their own experience
  and gauge their own fate
• only by becoming aware of other individuals in
  their same circumstances

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The sociological imagination

• enables us to grasp history and biography and
  the relations between the two within society.
• That is its task and its promise

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Those who have been imaginatively aware of the
promise of their work have consistently asked
three sorts of questions
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• a. Structure. What is the structure of a society?
  What are the essential components and their
  relation to each other? How is this societys
  structure different from others?
• b. Time/history/process. Where does this society
  stand historically? What are the mechanisms of
  change? How are its features affected by the
  historical period? What are the characteristics
  of this historical period?
• c. Individuals/human nature. What kinds of people
  succeed and fail in this society? Has this
  changed? What do these individuals tell us about
  human nature?

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Within it,

• What is the meaning of any particular feature
  for its continuance and for its change?
• Where does this society stand in human history?
• What are the mechanics by which it is changing?
• What is its place within and its meaning for the
  development of humanity as a whole?

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• How does any particular feature we are examining
  affect, and how is it affected by the historical
  period in which it moves?
• And this period-what are its essential features?
• How does it differ from other periods? What are
  its characteristic ways of history-making?
• What varieties of men and women now prevail in
  this society and in this period?

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• And what varieties are coming to prevail? In what
  ways are they selected and formed, liberated and
  repressed, made sensitive and blunted?
• What kinds of "human nature" are revealed in the
  conduct and character we observe in this society
  in this period?
• And what is the meaning for "human nature" of
  each and every feature of the society we are
  examining?

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Troubles

• occur within the character of the individual and
  within the range of his immediate relations with
  others
• they have to do with his self and with those
  limited areas of social life of which he is
  directly and personally aware

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Issues

• have to do with matters that transcend these
  local environments of the individual and the
  range of his inner life.
• They have to do with the organization of many
  such milieu into the institutions of a historical
  society as a whole

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Examples Troubles vs. Issues

• Unemployment
• War
• Divorce
• Homelessness
• .