Understanding Societies

Sociological Imagination (Lecture 3)

The thoughts of (founding fathers)
Emile Durkheim
Karl Marx
Max Webber
through C.Wright Mills

Term paper
(15%; due on week 11 class)
all of the theories behind an assertion.

- a literature review: a review of

Term paper presentation (15%; week 12 & 13)

scheme to score.

- refer to the term marking

Quizzes
readings.

(5 x 5%; week 4,5,6,9,11 mornings) - ~30 multiple choice, do the

Exam

(30%; 13 Apr 15) - 2h, 2 essays

#1
The study of trending human social behaviour - it must be experienced by a large
population; facilitates generalisations which is a sociologists objective.
Sociologists always study a sample that is representative of the population.
Why does something happen?
The industrial revolution was the context that gave birth to sociology : Born out of
Turmoil
But there were many different impacts (social, economic and political) that
industrialisation had, and different thinkers studied different aspects of these.
Karl Marx was interested in class divide; income inequality - the very rich and very
poor
Durkheim was interested in collective consciousness; culture - the shift from
mechanical to organic solidarity.
Weber was interested in religion; secularisation/rationalisation
Know their dissertations; what was the research focus of each founding
father?
What was the unit of analysis in each of their research? What did they

observe?
What were their conceptual and theoretical contributions?
The sociological perspective is and approach to understanding human behaviour by
placing it within its broader social context. Contextualize these assertions. Who
structured it this way and why?
Every decision is not an individual one; it is cultured socially.
A social fact is anything in an institution/culture of a society that shapes
behaviour and attitudes of individual members of that society. They are laws,
customs and generalised expectations taken collectively.
Examples include, behaviour in public; in the library etc.
A child is shaped by these social facts, represented by parents and teachers.
A child is taught how to behave by parents/teachers. These teachings are based on
the social environment/culture/context that surround the child; which were identical
forces that shaped parents and teachers in the beginning.
The Social Imagination
Enables its possessor to understand the larger historical sense: in terms of its
meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals
The first fruit of this imagination
1) is the idea that the individual can understand his own experience and gauge is
own fate
2) only by locating himself within his period, that he can know his own chances in
life
3) only by becoming aware of those of all individuals in his circumstances.

Two fundamental questions:

1) What is society?
2) How do large-scale social forces shape individuals lives and how do individuals
shape the features of their social world?