C. Wright Mills
(1959)
- Sociological Imagination:
Imagining what another society is like from an outsider looking in
Sociological Imagination
Problems are not on a personal level, but more so a social level
August Comte
(1798-1857)
- Father of Sociology
- Wanted Sociology to improve people’s lives
- Saw it as a science
Emile Durkheim
(1858-1917)
- Studied Comte, viewed it as a science, studied Social Facts
- Viewed society as a body, where all moving parts needed to function
Karl Marx
(1818-1883)
- Looked at the economy to define social change
- Focused on theills of capitalism and how they lead to the class system
- Predicted that the class division would come from a capitalistic system
Materialistic conception of history
Only the economy can drive social change
Max Weber
(1864-1920)
- Similar to Marx
- Believed that personal values also affected the social changes
- Talked a bunch about Christianity, Christianity changed the protestant work ethic
Harriet Martineau
(1802-1876)
- Introduced Sociology to England
- Wanted to study domestic life.
- Against slavery and child labor, fought for women’s rights
W.E.B. Du Bois
(1868-1963)
- First significant African American Sociologist
- Studied Double consciousness and the color line
- Ph. D from Harvard.
- Denounced his citizenship and became a communist
- Founded the NAACP
Double consciousness
Viewing society through different categories of your life, such as being an African American and also a American
Personal Troubles
Largely private issues, only to be experienced by the individual, not by society
(sexuality, depression, etc)
Public issues
Problems to be experienced by the public and not the individual
Structuration
Life is not random, but rather, our lives are dynamic, and will constantly be based upon social cause and effect. Structured and patterned. Societies are always changing.
Global Perspective
Thinking about the world through connections in a worldful piece of mind
Theory
System of ideas to likely prove something as true
Social Facts
Aspects of society that shape your life such as economy, politics, religion, etc.
Organic Solidarity
(Durkheim)
Various parts of society working together as a whole
Social Constraint
conditioning influenced by our known societies
Anomie
Places in society where norms are loosely held, where you can be weird
Insane asylum?
Capitalism
Private ownership of wealth to gain profit
Dysfunction
Undesirable consequences of a social activity
Seeing family at a wedding
Manifest Function
Desirable consequences of a social activity
Supporting your family at a wedding
Latent Function
Unaware consequences of a social activity to the user
Spending money and gaining weight from food
Robert Merton
Founder of the Three Functions, dysfunction, manifest function, and Latent Function
Power
Ability of an individual to achieve the aims or further their own interests
Ideology
Shared ideas or beliefs that serve to justify the means of dominant groups. Connected to power.
Ideologies legitimize power.
Feminism
Women are equal to men in everything.
Feminist Theory
Emphasizes centrality of gender in analyzing the social world