Introduction to Sociology

Ray Brannon

A long time ago in a distant galaxy ……I began to program with IBM cards on very big computers that didn’t have the power of your smart phone.

The Syllabushttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o

Trapped!! Psycho –Social Interweave

• Personal destinies are linked to societal structures

• PA Study of Care for the Elderly

• Blinding pace of transformational change

Retired President & CEO of Retired President & CEO of Choice TechnologiesChoice Technologies

The Challenge:To become a critical thinker on sociologic

issues because …..your personal history matters!!

• Locating yourself in the period in which you live- how you are shaped by society and how you can shape society

• Link history and biography – three generations

• My grandfather, father, me, son, grandson

What is Epistemology?

\What is a Paradigm?

Paradigm Shift: The destruction an old theory by new facts and its

replacement as a new theory that fits the new facts.

Thomas Kuhn

What is a Paradigm Shift?

Changing Sociological Paradigms

Trapped by Self Deception and Assumptions

Developing Self and Social Consciousness

• Distinguishing personal problems from public issues resulting from social structure

• Troubles versus issues: personal/ societal

• One mans death is a tragedy 45 people killed by a terrorist blast is a statistic.

Did You Know?We Are a Piece of the Social Puzzle

Sociology is the study of human society.

What Is Sociology?

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Thinking like a sociologist means

looking at the worldlooking at the worldaround you in a new way. around you in a new way.

Challenge conventional wisdomand question what most people take for granted.

Coined by C. Wright Mills, this tool helps us to:• connect our personal experiences to society at large and

greater historical forces.

• “make the familiar strange,” or to question habits or customs that seem “natural” to us.

The Sociological Imagination

Imagine – John LennonImagine there's no heavenIt's easy if you tryNo hell below usAbove us only skyImagine all the peopleLiving for today...Imagine there's no countriesIt isn't hard to doNothing to kill or die forAnd no religion tooImagine all the peopleLiving life in peace...You may say I'm a dreamerBut I'm not the only oneI hope someday you'll join usAnd the world will be as one

Imagine no possessionsI wonder if you canNo need for greed or hungerA brotherhood of manImagine all the peopleSharing all the world...You may say I'm a dreamerBut I'm not the only oneI hope someday you'll join usAnd the world will live as one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRhq-yO1KN8

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUEGHdQO7WA

http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_richards_a_radical_experiment_in_empathy.html

Outrospection - Empathyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG46IwVfSu8&feature=youtu.be

The way individuals define themselves in relationship to groups they are a part of (or in relationship to groups they choose not to be a part of).

What groups are you in? Or not in? Write down a list of

groups that you define you.

What Is Social Identity?

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Social institutions are networks of structures in society that work to socialize the groups of people within them.

Examples include: the legal systemthe labor marketthe educational systemthe militarythe family

What Is a Social Institution?

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Microsociology understands local interactional contexts, focusing on face-to-face encounters and gathering data through participant observations and in-depth interviews.

Macrosociology looks at social dynamics across whole societies or large parts of them and often relies on statistical analysis to do so.

Divisions within Sociology

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Think about you own backgrounds, including their race, gender, religion, and economic class.

How larger social forces—the economy, civil rights, religious movements, and so on—have shaped what it means to be a person

“like you”someone with the same list of traits—in society today.

Functionalism, conflict theory, feminist theory, symbolic interactionism, postmodernism, and midrange theory are all

modern sociological theories.

Theories of Sociology

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Macro Theories

Symbolic InteractionismMicro Theories

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caIlwCi6JCc

Sociology focuses on making comparisons across cases to find patterns and create hypotheses about how

societies work now or how they worked in the past.

Sociology looks at how individuals interact with one another as well as at how groups, small and large, interact with one another.

Sociology and Its Cousins

• Macro-sociology: Where You meet society at large.

• Micro-sociology: Where the YOU meet the Group

What bothers you?

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