SOC101Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Symbolic Interactionism, Social Inequality, Nomothetic
Document Summary
Can help us figure out where you fit into society and how you can make society fit you. Babbie: sociology is the study of our rules for living together, what they are, how they arise, and how they change. Recursive quality to human life that makes anything we know tentative (things are always dynamic, in motion) Use casual and probabilistic reasoning, most of our knowledge comes from tradition and sources of authority because of trust. Tradition and authority provide us with stating points, but should not be the end. Errors in inquiry: inaccurate observations, overgeneralization, selective observation, illogical reasoning. Science is about meticulously controlling for these errors and go beyond tradition and authority. Sociology, unlike common sense, makes an effort to subordinate itself to the rigorous rules of responsible speech. There is the size of the field from which the material for sociological thinking is drawn.
