SCLG1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Social Forces, Symbolic Interactionism, Postcolonialism
26 Jul 2018
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WEEK 2: WHAT IS SOCIOLOGY?
Learning objectives. This week you will be able to:
Summarize the following sociological perspectives: sociology as science, politics or
interpretation, feminist theory, and postmodernity.
Discuss the historical development of sociology within changing social contexts, from its origins
in mid-18th century Europe to current debate on the concepts of public sociology and of
internationalising sociology
Explain how Australian sociology relates to sociology in other parts of the world.
Video lectures and other videos
Located in the Week 2 Content folder.
Reading
Ch.1 ‘What is Sociology?’, pp. 10-23
Online Quiz
Located in Week 2 content folder on Blackboard. Must be completed by 10am Monday 7
March.
Define/take notes on the key concepts/terms.
Perspectives
-Achieve a critical and systematic understanding of society
-Cannot, like any science provide the truth
-In Thomas Kuhn's book he argued that scientific activity operates in a paradigm, setting
problems before they go about solving them, type of problem, way it is defined.
-It constitutes a 'way of seeing' the world that effects what is seen and how.
-Kuhn's scientific revolution emerges when evidence does not fit previous understandings
-A number of these paradigms or perspectives coexist. Sociology is not a single set of
undisputed truths but a set of multiple 'ways of seeing'
-A threefold distinction is often made in sociology textbooks between consensus or
functionalist, conflict, and interactionist approaches.
Michael Burawoy highlighted four different orientations to the production of sociological
knowledge, Professional, policy, critical and public sociology
-Cuff, Sharrock and Francis distinguished between two umbrella perspectives;
structuralism and sociological theories; structuralism divided into (conflict, consensus
and critical theories) and the second into two (symbolic interactionism and
ethnomethodology)
-Peter Hamilton distinguishes between three sociological traditions: A rational-scientific
tradition, in which sociology is seen as a science of society and an intellectual practice
designed to elicit objective information open to scrutiny and debate. A political tradition,
in which sociology is seen as "inherently political" because it deals with the organisation of
society, and the validity of the knowledge produced by sociologists can be established only
in practise. An expressionistic or interpretive tradition, adopting a position detached from
both science and politics, taking a more literary or humanities-based approach towards
grasping the meaning of human social life, without an appeal to validity or to its political
effects
Sociology as science
-A sociological analysis of any issue or problem is scientific to the extent that it is
systematic, by which we mean based on the collection and analysis of information and
data, observations that are recorded and compared, the dev of theories and generalisations
and to relate sociological perspectives to another
-Although sociologists have values and normative preferences they need to appeal to
different sorts of ligitimisation.
A strong emphasis is placed on providing support for analysis with empirical evidence.
-A core aim in this perspective is value-freedom where the meaning can range from pure
objectivity and complete detachment from any conceptual constraints arising from one’s
social positions or value orientation, in which according to Weber “little more then that the
sociologists should not openly proclaim there personal views on matters of social fact.
…as politics
-The critique of the idea of value-freedom is essentially that it simply is not possible , in
which social scientists cannot avoid their value orientations structuring the kinds of
questions they ask, the topics they choose to research...eg: to research social life and social
history only in terms of the experiences of men
-deals with the organizations of society
…as interpretation
-According to Max Weber "All knowledge of cultural reality…is always knowledge from
particular points of view."
-Sociology is an ongoing debate between different perspectives
-
Interpretive sociology
Functionalism
Conflict theory
Feminist theory
-Before feminist theory in the 1960s, sociology focused on the male-dominated public
world of work and politics
-This gender bias was reflected in sociological thought itself; until the 1970s when
sociologists referred to people they were referring only to men. eg: studies of class focused
exclusively on men
-The position of women was presumed to be determined by their male partner so
stratification studies dealt only with the partner’s occupation
-The sociology of work and industry ignored the contribution of women’s work both in the
workforce and in the home
-The 1960s saw the re-emergence of the women’s movement and a new generation of
female sociologists. They examined the position of women in society, their experiences
and the issues that concerned them.
Feminist sociology has contributed to sociological theory, methods, research:
-In explaining how gender is socially constructed, challenging assumptions that women are
natural carers, primary role as wife
-Dev theories that explain the position of women in society, how this intersects with class
and race
-Identifying and explaining some of the effects of male regulation and control of women
eg: family violence, womens labour market experiences, concepts of class ceiling and how
and why eomen dominated the casual part-time sector
-understanding cultural aspects of women’s experience eg: role of the media
-challenging binary assumptions of human sexual idenity and the diversity of sexual
Document Summary
Summarize the following sociological perspectives: sociology as science, politics or interpretation, feminist theory, and postmodernity. Discuss the historical development of sociology within changing social contexts, from its origins in mid-18th century europe to current debate on the concepts of public sociology and of internationalising sociology. Explain how australian sociology relates to sociology in other parts of the world. Located in week 2 content folder on blackboard. Achieve a critical and systematic understanding of society. In thomas kuhn"s book he argued that scientific activity operates in a paradigm, setting problems before they go about solving them, type of problem, way it is defined. It constitutes a "way of seeing" the world that effects what is seen and how. Kuhn"s scientific revolution emerges when evidence does not fit previous understandings. A number of these paradigms or perspectives coexist. Sociology is not a single set of undisputed truths but a set of multiple "ways of seeing"
