Lesson One: Understanding the Sociological Imagination

Question 1

Sociology

Answer 1

Sociologyis the systematic study of human groups and their interactions.

Question 2

The Sociological Perspective

Answer 2

the ability to understand the dynamic relationship between individual lives and larger society

Question 3

C. W. Mills

Answer 3

Mills suggested that people who do not, or cannot, recognize the social origins and character of their problems may be unable to respond to them effectively. For Mills, the individual and the social are inextricably linked and we cannot fully understand one without the other.

Question 4

personal troubles

Answer 4

results from individual challenges

Question 5

social issues

Answer 5

caused by larger social factors

Question 6

Quality of Mind

Answer 6

For Mills, not seeing such failure as partially, or entirely, the result of social forces is to lack what he called thequality of mind

Question 7

sociological imagination

Answer 7

which is the ability to understand the dynamic relationship between individual lives and the larger society.

Question 8

Mills view on personal troubles and social issues

Answer 8

According to Mills, many personal troubles never become social issues because people rarely equate what is happening to them with the larger social worlds in which they exist. Mills would suggest that people who judge others without understanding all of the issues involved may lack the quality of mind and thus view the world in black-and-white terms.

Question 9

Peter Berger

Answer 9

defines the sociological perspective as the ability to view the world from two distinct yet complementary perspectives: seeing the general in the particular and seeing the strange in the familiar. According to Berger, sociologists also need to tune their sociological perspective by thinking about what isfamiliarand seeing it asstrange.

Question 10

agency

Answer 10

the assumption that individuals have the ability to alter their socially constructed lives

Question 11

structure

Answer 11

Sociologists use the termstructureto refer to opportunities and constraints that exist within a network of roles, relationships, and patterns that are relatively stable and persistent over time.

Question 12

Social factors that play a role in the person we become

Answer 12

• Minority Status
• Gender
• Socioeconomic Status
• Family structure
• Urban-Rural Differences

Question 13

Ascribed status

Answer 13

a situation in which a person is assigned advantage or disadvantage simply through birth

Question 14

Achieved status

Answer 14

the status a person has been able to gain through personal attributes and qualities.

Question 15

The Sophists

Answer 15

The Sophists were the first thinkers to focus their efforts on the human being

Question 16

Plato and Socrates

Answer 16

Socrates (469–399BCE) and his student Plato (427–347BCE), challenged the virtue of being paid for one’s knowledge and advocated the necessity of deeper reflection on the human social condition.

Question 17

Ibn Khaldun

Answer 17

Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) is recognized as the first social philosopher working from the sociological perspective

Question 18

Auguste Comte

Answer 18

the termsociologywas coined by Auguste Comte. For his naming of the discipline, Comte is often referred to as the father of sociology. He believed that to really understand the inner workings of society, one needed to understand how human thinking has changed through time.

Question 19

The Scientific Revolution

Answer 19

The development of the scientific method during the Enlightenment period that followed (circa 1650–1800) facilitated the pace of social change.

Question 20

Comte’s Law of Three Stages

Answer 20

defines how advances of the mind created three different types of societies. consists of the theological stage, the metaphysical stage, and the positive stage

Question 21

theological stage

Answer 21

This stage is characterized by a religious outlook that explains the world and human society as an expression of God’s will and views science as a means to discover God’s intentions.

Question 22

Metaphysical Stage

Answer 22

a period during which people began to question everything and to challenge the power and teachings of the Church. It was characterized by the assumption that people could understand and explain their universe through their own insight and reflection.

Question 23

Positive Stage

Answer 23

the world would be interpreted through a scientific lens—that society would be guided by the rules of observation, experimentation, and logic.

Question 24

Positivism

Answer 24

a theoretical approach that considers all understanding to be based on science.

Question 25

Anti-Positivism

Answer 25

a theoretical approach that considers knowledge and understanding to be the result of human subjectivity.

Question 26

Quantitative sociology

Answer 26

focuses on behaviours that can be measured

Question 27

 Qualitative sociology

Answer 27

the study of behaviours that cannot be counted so readily but still teach us a great deal about ourselves

Question 28

The Political Revolution

Answer 28

a new view of the world as separate from the teachings of the Church, society evolved to endorse democratic principles, social responsibility, equality of opportunity, and individual rights.

Question 29

Machiavelli

Answer 29

suggests that human behaviour is motivated by self-interest and an insatiable desire for material gain

Question 30

René Descartes

Answer 30

René Descartes is most famous for his commitment to the idea that we are thinking beings, as captured in his famous phrase Cogito ergo sum, or “I think, therefore I am.” The idea that we are the masters of our own destiny was inherently revolutionary.

Question 31

Thomas Hobbes

Answer 31

believed that people were driven by two primary passions: fear of death and the desire for power.

Question 32

John Locke

Answer 32

The belief that people are born as blank slates is one of the defining features of the sociological perspective.

Question 33

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Answer 33

Rousseau suggested that, prior to organized society, human beings existed in a natural state whereby an individual’s desire was solitary and self-centred.  As society developed, these early beings began to see the benefits they could achieve when they agreed to work together

Question 34

the social contract

Answer 34

the acknowledgment that we achieve more by working together than apart

Question 35

The Industrial Revolution

Answer 35

the Industrial Revolution saw industry replace agriculture as our dominant means of supporting ourselves and our families, it changed family structures, how people made a living, and peoples thoughts. the change led to child labour, poverty, malnourishment, and crime rates.

Question 36

Macrosociology

Answer 36

looking at the big picture first and at individuals second and it defined early European sociology

Question 37

Microsociology

Answer 37

investigates individual or small-group dynamics (i.e., looking at individuals first and at society as a whole second) and it defined early American sociology.

Question 38

Karl Marx

Answer 38

Early European Macro theorists who believed all human relationships in capitalist economies have power imbalances.

Question 39

Émile Durkheim

Answer 39

Early European Macro theorists who believed that people wanted to work together for collective benefit. Durkheim believed that the new urban and industrial society presented many challenges to both the individual and the collective. He argued that low levels of social integration and regulation were a source of various social problems, including rising deviance and suicide rates. 

Question 40

Max Weber

Answer 40

Weber’s contributions to sociology centre on his analysis of how the social world is becoming increasingly rationalized over time, by which he meant that people are becoming more focused on selecting the most efficient means to accomplish any particular end.

Question 41

Mead

Answer 41

micro theorist who believed we become ourselves through social interaction. Mead’s approach, which became known as symbolic interactionism,

Question 42

Cooley

Answer 42

micro theorist that suggested that people define themselves, at least in part, by how others view them.

Question 43

Blumer

Answer 43

his analysis of meaning, language, and thought formed the foundation of how people create their sense of self within the larger social world.

Question 44

four defining features that distinguish Canadian sociology from American tradition

Answer 44

- geography and regionalism - focus on political economy - canadianization movement (hiring more Canadian sociologists) - radical nature (more radial because of a greater focus on macrosociology as well as support for feminists ideas, and social change)

Question 45

globalization

Answer 45

a process involving the production, distribution, and consumption of technological, political, economic, and sociocultural goods and services on a global basis.

Question 46

global village

Answer 46

term coined by Marshall McLuhan that explains how media collapses space and time and enable people everywhere to interact and experience life on a global scale.