Nicole Sweene 00:00:00
Hello, my name is Nicole Sweeney, and I'm here to ask you a question: Have you ever questioned how the world operates? I'm referring to the world of people, not atoms, molecules, wave functions, or chemical reactions. Have you ever wondered, for instance, who attends college and why? What inspires people to march through the streets? How do you know when to raise your hand in math class versus when to keep it down at the dinner table? Why do some people enjoy both hip-hop and Broadway musicals, while others prefer neither? We'll learn about all of that and a whole lot more, I suppose. Particularly you! Because of this, you'll discover more about yourself and your place in the world.
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In the 1800s, a French philosopher by the name of Auguste Comte gave sociology its foundation. He desired the development of a methodical science to examine and address society's fundamental issues. Even though contemporary sociology differs greatly from Comte's original vision, that is still a fair description. The scientific study of society and human behavior is known as sociology. However, isn't society a really big thing? Societies encompass entire cities, the economy, and politics, for example. And what does raising your hand at the dinner table have to do with any of that? It turns out, a lot. A society is simply a group of people who live in the same area and have a common culture. Culture permeates everything, including the
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Imagine yourself alone in your room, belting out the lyrics to your favorite Broadway production. There is no other person nearby. Nowhere is society to be found. Nevertheless, it is. You can still enjoy the song you're singing and the accompanying music even if you don't pay attention to the house you're in or the parents, siblings, or roommates you're probably annoying while doing so. All of those items, as well as practically every other thing in the room that wasn't made by you, are works of society. And even though you might be singing Hamilton by yourself, you weren't alone when a friend first showed you the play and its songs. Additionally, consider your musical preferences.
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As a result, sociology is incredibly broad when we define it as the study of society and human behavior. It may even be the most comprehensive of what we refer to as the social sciences. The social sciences include fields like economics and psychology, and despite having various goals and viewpoints, they all aim to comprehend society through systematic and repeated observation. What distinguishes sociology from these other social sciences, then? Sociology, like the other disciplines, seeks out recurring themes—characters or events. But it searches everywhere for different patterns. Sociology examines all facets of society on all scales, from interpersonal interactions to inter-national differences. This is it.
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By placing social behavior in its larger social context, sociology can better understand it by "seeing the general in the particular." To return to you singing Broadway songs in your room, a sociologist who hears you from the sidewalk might also take note of how your class, neighborhood, race, gender, and age may have influenced your choice of songs to sing. For another illustration, a sociologist might not be concerned about whether or not you, in particular, decide to get married, but she might be interested in finding out more about a declining marriage rate in your society—and, say, what's causing it and whether it's having any societal impacts, or maybe she's more interested in learning about the relationship between marriage and economic success.
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The sociologist is interested in a general pattern in both of these situations—what people say or who they marry—a pattern made up of a huge number of specific individual choices. Each person contributes to the pattern, and by analyzing each person's decisions, a sociologist can see pieces of the overall pattern, much like how a single stone fits into a mosaic. The second aspect of the sociological perspective is seeing the strange in the familiar, and it may be trickier to do. To approach the everyday world as if you were seeing it for the first time, as if you were from another world, is to approach the strange in the familiar. This is challenging, but it's also very crucial and kind of
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However, if sociology is to study society, it must have the ability to view these things as strange and foreign in order to fully comprehend how they function and identify recurring patterns of behavior in a culture. Although sociology must know what is true, common sense must simply get us through the world. And this is significant because common sense in a society extends beyond simple rituals like handshakes. In the United States, it was widely believed that only white men were capable of contributing to society 200 years ago. It was obvious that women shouldn't be allowed to vote and that slavery was morally correct. In the same way that their opposites are taken as common sense, these things made sense.
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