Answer the following: 1.Which two household cleaners should never be mixed? 2.What is the average oven temperature for baking? 3.What are the two most common types of screwdrivers? 4.Mauve is closest to which color: purple, green, or red? 5.What color is the electrical ground wire? 6.What do the letters LED stand for? 7.What is the proper way to hang a roll of toilet paper? 8.Which statement is correct: In conversation, men touch each other more. In conversation, men make more eye contact.

2 Peter Berger

Aim: What is Sociology?

4 Sociology is the scientific study of human activity.

5... do with, to and for one another Human activity — the things people ….... think and do as a result of others’ influence

6 Social forces Human activity (the way it is organized) Opportunities Disadvantages Sense of self Relationships with others and larger environment How do sociologists think about any human activity?

7 Social forces are anything humans create that influences or pressures people to interact, behave, respond, or think in certain ways. 1

8 Example of an “invention” as a social force: the mobile phone

9 Social Force: Mobile Phone Human activity (the way it is organized)

10 it frees people from being in a specific physical space when they communicate with others.

11 What kinds of human activities have changed as a result of the mobile phone?

12 Human activity (the way it is organized) Opportunities Disadvantages Sense of self Relationships with others and environment

13 What opportunities and disadvantages come with the mobile phone? May not be able to fully engage in an activity Immediate access to others (not present), no matter the setting

14 How is sense of self shaped by the mobile phone?

15 What about relationships with others and the surrounding environment? In a survey of 439 doctors who perform cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) surgery 55.6% reported using their mobile phones while performing surgery to send or check text messages, access , check postings on social networking sites or otherwise use the internet

16 What meaning do you assign to this empty roll of toilet tissue?

17 Which photograph best reflects the meaning you assign to the empty roll of toilet tissue?

18 Cuba U.S.

19 What social forces contribute to different ways of thinking about and responding to empty toilet paper rolls? Resource-rich country Consumption-oriented culture (capitalism) Ability to access resources from foreign sources Resource-poor country Thrift-oriented culture U.S. embargo since 1960 Collapse of Soviet Union

20 How does attitude toward resources and corresponding behavior affect sense of self? Sense of self revolves around consumption Sense of self revolves around ingenuity

Empirical Sociology is an empirical science based on purposeful, objective observations Are these statements objective or subjective? The man in the drugstore fell to the floor clutching his chest and the other customers turned in his direction when he screamed. objective 21

The pigeon had been pecking at the disk was distracted by the sound of the door slamming, and it hesitated while it considered whether to keep pecking or not. Subjective When the dinner with her husband’s parents was over, she was so anxious to leave and go home that she left her coat behind. Subjective He beeped the horn several times in rapid succession, turned into the oncoming lane, and sped around the stalled car. Objective 22

What do sociologists study? Social Institutions: Family, Education, Religion, the Economy, Government, Health and Medicine, the Media, and Sports. Sociologists look at the impact of institutions on the individual, changes in these institutions, and the causes and effects of change.

The Sociological Imagination: The ability to see the link between society and self. Link between history and biography It questions common interpretations of human social behavior. It challenges conventional social wisdom – ideas people assume are true.

Debunking: looking beyond surface level explanations for deeper explanations. Seeking new perspectives to old realities or beliefs.

C. Wright Mills

Who is this guy? Professor – Columbia University Social Critic Public Intellectual

Men and women often feel their private lives are a series of traps...and in this feeling, they often are quite correct

People do not usually define the troubles they endure in terms of historical change and institutional contradiction

The well-being they enjoy they do not usually attribute the big ups and downs to the societies in which they live

The history that now affects every person is world history

The very shaping of history now outpaces the ability of men to orient themselves in accordance with cherished values

People often sense that older ways of feeling and thinking have collapsed and newer beginnings are morally ambiguous

in this Age of Fact; information often dominates their attention and overwhelms their capacities to assimilate it

People need quality of mind that will help them to use information and to develop reason to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within themselves

This is what is called the sociological imagination

individuals can understand their own experience and gauge their own fate only by becoming aware of other individuals in their same circumstances

The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. That is its task and its promise

Those who have been imaginatively aware of the promise of their work have consistently asked three sorts of questions:

a. Structure. What is the structure of a society? What are the essential components and their relation to each other? How is this society’s structure different from others? b. Time/history/process. Where does this society stand historically? What are the mechanisms of change? How are its features affected by the historical period? What are the characteristics of this historical period? c. Individuals/human nature. What kinds of people succeed and fail in this society? Has this changed? What do these individuals tell us about “human nature”?

Within it, What is the meaning of any particular feature for its continuance and for its change? Where does this society stand in human history? What are the mechanics by which it is changing? What is its place within and its meaning for the development of humanity as a whole?

How does any particular feature we are examining affect, and how is it affected by the historical period in which it moves? And this period-what are its essential features? How does it differ from other periods? What are its characteristic ways of history-making? What varieties of men and women now prevail in this society and in this period?

And what varieties are coming to prevail? In what ways are they selected and formed, liberated and repressed, made sensitive and blunted? What kinds of "human nature" are revealed in the conduct and character we observe in this society in this period? And what is the meaning for "human nature" of each and every feature of the society we are examining?

Troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of his immediate relations with others they have to do with his self and with those limited areas of social life of which he is directly and personally aware

Issues have to do with matters that transcend these local environments of the individual and the range of his inner life. They have to do with the organization of many such milieu into the institutions of a historical society as a whole

Examples – Troubles vs. Issues Unemployment War Divorce Homelessness ….