Overview of These Notes

• What is sociology and the sociological imagination

• A Social Riddle– Why do Western

Societies dominate other Societies throughout the World?

Chapter One: The Sociological Perspective and Research Process• Sociology is the systematic study of human

society and social interaction• Why Study Sociology?

– Sociology helps us see connections between our lives and the larger recurring patterns of the society and world

– Sociology often reveals limitations of myths associated with commonsense knowledge that guides ordinary conduct in everyday life

Chapter One: The Sociological Perspective and Research Process• Society is a large grouping that shares

the same territory and is subject to the same political authority dominant cultural expectations

C. Wright Mills “The Promise”•

1916-1962Published in 1959

Mills was Considered a Radical

• His Personal Behavior

• His Academic Work

What is the Sociological Imagination?

The intersection of Biography and History

• Biography– Experiences and Attributes

• History– Society in its Historical Context

What is the Sociological Imagination?

Three Questions Relevant to the Sociological Imagination

• How are activities patterned in a society?

• Where does this society stand in human history?

• What varieties of people are produced in this society?

What is the Sociological Imagination?

Personal Troubles and Public Issues• Troubles are private matters limited

to the aspects of daily life of which people are directly aware

• Public Issues are forces outside of the control of most people– Business cycles– National policy– Values and religious traditions

Mills was fascinated by the process in which “personal troubles” became recognized as “public issues.”

• He wondered how do people define their personal conditions – Realization of impersonal forces– Losing the feeling of inadequacy?– False Consciousness

• Mills thought that this process was important for societies in generating social change

The Sociological Imagination

• The distinction between personal troubles (biography) and public issues (history)

• Developing our own sociological imagination means we have to account for perspectives of people from diverse backgrounds– The world’s high income countries have developed

industrialized and advanced economies – low income countries are still agrarian

– We have to think about other countries because our future is intertwined with other nations

Jared Diamond “The Fate of Human Societies”

Guns, Germs, and Steel• Western Societies become dominate because

– They have more natural materials to work with in the domestication of wild grains

– The latitude of Western Societies means domesticated grains and animals can easily be transferred over large areas

– Domestication of animals leads to human exposure to disease and through natural selection, disease resistance

– Western Societies explore and colonize other societies because of technology advances – due to earlier starts with agriculture and related developments

– Non-Western Societies are decimated by diseases the people in Western Societies carry, but have developed resistance to over hundreds of years.