Chapter 1 – THE SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Sociology defined
Sociology is the study of human society. In
general, Sociology is a course that focuses on
how our social world guide our actions and
life choices.
The Sociological perspective
A sociological perspective is a point of view
about the society. When one thinks
sociologically, they make judgements about
human behavior and choices based on the
fact that society plays an important role in
guiding those actions and choices. The
sociological perspective can be described in
many different ways:
Seeing the general in the particular
Peter Berger described the sociological
perspective as seeing the general in the
particular. By this he meant that sociologists
seek out general patterns in the behavior of
particular people. Any society acts differently
on various categories of people, say, men and
women, the rich and poor.
Lilian Rubin, an American writer and senior
researcher carried out a classical study of
women’s hopes for marriage. She discovered
that what higher-income women expected
was different from lower- income women.
This supported Peter Berger’s idea that social
structures (age, gender, race, social class) play
an important role in shaping our life
experiences.
Seeing the strange in the familiar
Using the sociological perspective amounts to
seeing the strange in the familiar. This means
that thinking sociologically, we challenge the
familiar idea that we live our lives and make
choices the way we want, considering instead
the strange idea that society shapes our life
experiences. This is seen in some of the
choices that we make, for example, choice of
a University is affected by so many factors like
cost and age.
Seeing individuality in social context
Differences in the number of children that
women have is another example that shows
how society shapes our individual choices. In
general, women in poor countries have more
children than women in rich countries. Such
differences show that if you had been born in
another society, life might have been quite
different from what it is right now.
Emile Durkheim’s research on suicide rates
among some categories of people show that
society affects even some of the most
personal choices that we make. In his
research, he discovered that men,
Protestants, wealthy people and the
unmarried had significantly higher suicide
rates as compared to women, Jews and
Catholics, poor people, and married people.
He explained these differences in terms of
social integration. Categories of people with
strong social ties had low suicide rates,
whereas more individualistic categories had
high suicide rates.
The Global perspective
This is an extension of the sociological
perspective that shows how our society’s
place in the larger world system affects us
and the way we live.According to the relative
economic development of the world’s
countries, three categories can be found,
high-income countries,middle-income
countries, and low-income countries.
High-income countries are nations with very
productive economic systems where most
people have high incomes. Individuals in
these countries live well, not because they
are smarter but because they were born in an
affluent region of the world.
Middle-income countries are characterized by
marked social inequality where some people
are extremely rich while many lack safe water
and housing.People’s income are about the
global average.
Low-income countries are nations with less
productive economic systems where most
people are poor.A few people are very rich ,
but the majority struggle with poor housing,
unsafe water, too little food, limited
sanitation, etc.
Applying a global perspective in Sociology
helps us to realise that where we live makes a
great difference in shaping our lives and this
helps us to learn more about ourselves and
other people.
Applying the Sociological perspective
Most of the times, we apply the sociological
perspective when we meet people whose way
of life differ from us. However, two kinmds of
situation also help us to think sociologically:
Social marginality
Being an outsider(not part of the dominant
group) is an experience that helps us to think
sociologically.Foe example, old people and
people with disabilities are usually aware of
social patterns that others rarely think about.
For us to be able to think sociologically, we
should step back from our familiar routines
and look at our lives with new awareness. The
greater people’s social marginality, the better
ab le they are to think sociologically.
Social crisis
Periods of crisis(terrorism, high
unemployment levels, civil wars) prompt us to
use a sociological perspective. During a crisis,
we are all forced to see general social forces
at work in our lives. A social crisis will make us
realise how society affects our choices.
Benefits of the sociological perspective
1. The sociological perspective helps us to
assess the truth of common sense.This
simply means that a sociological approach
encourages us to ask whether commonly
held beliefs are actually true.
2. The sociological perspective empowers us
to be active participants in our society. This
implies that the more we understand our
society, the more active citizens we
become.
3. The sociological perspective helps us see
the opportunities and constraints in our
lives. Sociology helps us “size up” our
world so we can pursue our goals more
effectively.
4. The sociological perspective helps us live in
a diverse world.Thinking sociologically
helps us to think critically about the
relative strengths and weaknesses of all
ways of life, including our own.
The origins of sociology
Three changes were especially important in
the development of sociology: the rise of a
factory based industrial economy, the
explosive growth of cities, and new ideas
about democracy and political rights.
A new industrial economy
During the Middle Ages in Europe most
people engaged in farming and small-scale
manufacturing. However, by the end of the
18th century, new sources of energy were now
used to operate large machines in factories
and mills. This change in the system of
production caused workers to shift from
farming to working in factories.
The growth of cities
As factories grew, landowners fenced off
more and more ground into grazing land for
sheep which was the main source of wool in
textile mills. This pushed most tenant farmers
to leave the countryside in search of work in
the new factories. As a result cities grew as
more and more people moved to cities. Social
problems such as pollution, crime, and
homelessness also increased.
Political change
During the Middle Ages people viewed
society as an expression of God’s will. Royalty
claimed to rule by “divine right «and each
person up and down the social ladder played
a part in the holy plan. Economic
development and the rapid growth of cities
brought new political ideas. People shifted
from their moral obligations to God and their
rulers to the idea that people should pursue
their own self-interest.
This new spirit of individualism made people
to be aware of their surroundings, and a new
discipline of Sociology was born in England,
France, and Germany.
Science and Sociology
It was the French social thinker Auguste
Comte who coined the term Sociology in 1838
to describe a new way of looking at society.
Comte and other pioneers of Sociology were
more interested in understanding how society
actually operates. Comte saw sociology as the
product of a three-stage historical
development, beginning with the theological
stage where people took a religious view of
society, seeing it as an expression of God’s
will. This changed to what Comte called the
metaphysical stage, where people
understood society as a natural rather than a
supernatural phenomenon. What Comte
called the scientific stage of history began
with the work of early scientists such as
Copernicus, Galileo, and Isaac Newton. Comte
applied the scientific approach to the study of
society. He favored positivism (understanding
based on science), and he believed that
society conforms to invariable laws, much as
the physical world operates according to
gravity and other laws of nature.
At the beginning of the twentieth century
Sociology emerged as an academic discipline
in the United States, strongly influenced by
Comte’s ideas. Today, most sociologists still
consider science a crucial part of Sociology,
but now realize that human behavior is far
more complex than the movement of planets
or actions of other living things. Because
humans are creatures of imagination and
spontaneity, our behavior can never be fully
explained by any rigid “laws of society”.

Critical evaluation
The social-conflict paradigm has gained a
large following in recent decades, but it has
come in for its share of criticism. Because the
paradigm focuses on inequality, it largely
ignores how shared values and mutual
interdependence unify members of a society.
Both the structural-functional and social-
conflict paradigms share a macro-level
orientation (a broad focus on social
structures that shape society as a whole)
which has given rise to a third paradigm that
has a micro-level orientation ( a close-up
focus on social interaction in specific
situations).
The symbolic-interaction paradigm
The symbolic-interaction paradigm depicts
society less in terms of broad social structures
and more as everyday experiences. It is a
framework for building theory that sees
society as the product of everyday interaction
of individuals. Sociologists who use this
approach argue that society is nothing more
than the shared reality that people construct
as they interact with one another. This
paradigm has roots in the thinking of Max
Weber, a German sociologist who
emphasized the need to understand a setting
from the point of view of the people in it.
Critical evaluation
Without denying the existence of macro-level
social structures such as the family and social
class, the symbolic-interaction paradigm
reminds us that society basically amounts to
people interacting. However, by focusing on
day-to-day interactions, the symbolic-
interaction paradigm ignores larger social
structures, the effects of culture, and factors
such as class, gender, and race.