socio;ogy notes

Ch1: The Sociological Perspective
Learning Objectives
1.
Understand what is meant by the broader social contexts that underlie human behavior, and how and why sociologists study these broader social contexts.

2.
Explain the sociological perspective: what it is, what it offers, and why C. Wright Mills referred to it as “the intersection of biography (the individual) and history (the social factors that influence the individual).”

3.
Define and discuss science as application (the systematic methods used to obtain knowledge) and product (the knowledge and/or information that are obtained by those methods).

4.
Identify, understand, and make distinctions between the natural sciences and the social sciences.

5.
Understand how sociology views and studies human behavior, and how its particular areas of focus are similar to and different from each of the other social sciences.

6.
Discuss the social changes and the changing social conditions that fostered the development of sociology as a distinct academic discipline in the middle of the nineteenth century.

7.
Identify and critique the sociological contributions of the following mid-to-late nineteenth and early twentieth century European thinkers: Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber.

8.
Understand how and why levels of social integration affect rates of suicide and how Emile Durkheim’s nineteenth century study of suicide helped to demonstrate the ways in which social integration affects people’s behaviors.

9.
Explain the role of values in social research as prescribed by Max Weber and the ensuing controversies over whether sociological research can be and/or should be value free.

10.
Distinguish between Verstehen, as envisioned by Max Weber, and “social facts,” as defined by Emile Durkheim; explain how, despite their differences, both approaches can be combined when conducting social research.

11.
Trace the history of sociology in North America from the late 1800s to the present while identifying the sociological contributions of the following American sociologists: Albion Small, George Herbert Mead, Ernest Burgess, Robert E. Park, Talcott Parsons, W.E.B. Du Bois, and C. Wright Mills.

12.
Discuss the current state of American sociology as it relates to the debate between social reform and social analysis, and the role applied sociology plays in this debate.

13.
Define the word “theory” and explain why theory is an important part of sociology.

14.
Identify the three major theoretical perspectives in sociology—symbolic interactionism, functional analysis, and conflict theory—and describe the particular level of analysis, characteristics, viewpoints, and concerns associated with each.

15.
Discuss “public sociology.” Do you think that social reform, rather than social science, has become the more dominant goal of sociology?