SOCI 210: Sociological perspectives

Thinking sociologically

  1. Administrative
  2. Making sense of the social world
  3. Discussion

Administrative

Persuall

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Group sign up

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Checking in

  • Lingering questions from last week?
    Readings?
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Making sense of the
social world

19th century watercolor painging. A crowned fairy king seated on a hedgehog drawn by a girl holding a giant daisy, accompanied by dancing fairies. Watercolour by C.A. Doyle.

Thinking sociologically

There is a sociology of everything. You can turn on your sociological eye no matter where you are or what you are doing. Stuck in a boring committee meeting … you can check the pattern of who is sitting next to whom, who gets the floor, who makes eye contact, and what is the rhythm of laughter (forced or spontaneous) or of pompous speechmaking. Walking down the street, or out for a run, you can scan the class and ethnic pattern of the neighborhood, look for lines of age segregation, or for little pockets of solidarity. Waiting for a medical appointment, you can read the professions and the bureaucracy instead of old copies of National Geographic. Caught in a traffic jam, you can study the correlation of car models with bumper stickers or with the types of music blaring from radios. There is literally nothing you can't see in a fresh way if you turn your sociological eye to it. Being a sociologist means never having to be bored.

Collins, Randall. 1998. “The Sociological Eye and Its
Blinders.” Contemporary Sociology 27(1):2–7

View from the 14th floor

Aerial photo of two crosswalks intersecting at non-right angle. A small crowd of people are walking in various directions, all of them holding umbrellas

‘Sociological’ questions

  • Kai Erikson’s uses the analogy of looking down from a tall building to view human behavior as “a mass of humanity in motion, a swarm of particles that weave in and out as if moving along invisible tracks.” (13)
  • “When sociologists speak of the social, then, they tend to be speaking of tides, forces, currents, pulls—something in the nature of social life that induces people to behave in fairly predictable ways at least part of the time.” (14)

Thinking sociologically

Sociological questions and answers

  • Sociologists often prefer explanations based on social forces
  • From this perspective, sociological explanation aims to generalize, finding regularities across apparently unrelated situations

Social forces as things

  • Emphasis on the durability and substance of the forces patterning society

Finding the strange

  • Framing the commonplace as surprising through generalization and juxtaposition
Arial vido of a flock of sheep moving through a small hole in a fense. The distance creates a sense of flowing water.

An example

Oil and gas extraction

aerial photo of oil sands extraction site
Alberta oil sands
construction workers laying a blue oil pipeline through tree-covered mountains
Trans-mountain pipeline

Raises many good non-sociological questions

  • What are the costs, subsidies, and profits associated with the industry?
  • Which communities will be harmed by extraction and transport?
  • What are the effects on the climate?
  • How should the industry be regulated?

Also raises sociological questions

  • How is this similar to other events in the history of Indigenous–settler relations?
  • How does socio-economic class influence people’s stance on the debates around oil and gas?
  • How are locals’ reactions examples of more general social processes?
  • How do Canadians understand ‘undeveloped’ land?

Group discussion

COVID-19 through the “sociologist’s eye”

Small-group discussion

  • Form groups of 3–5. This can be your discussion group (if you’ve signup and know how to find your group-mates) or a group just for today
  • Discuss the readings and your own experiences and thoughts to generate a sociological question relating to COVID-19 and the pandemic (2-4 sentences is a good length)
  • Select one group member to post your group’s question to the “COVID Questions” channel on Teams
    https://kutt.it/covidquestions
  • Each student: look at other group’s questions and upvote (👍 or ❤) 2–3 of your favorites
A police "Wanted" notice for a man sneezing without a handkerchief. Colour lithograph after Keith Monk.

Image credit

19th century watercolor painging. A crowned fairy king seated on a hedgehog drawn by a girl holding a giant daisy, accompanied by dancing fairies. Watercolour by C.A. Doyle.

Painting by Charles Altamont Doyle, via Wellcome Collection

Aerial photo of two crosswalks intersecting at non-right angle. A small crowd of people are walking in various directions, all of them holding umbrellas

Photo by Yiran Ding on Unsplash

Arial vido of a flock of sheep moving through a small hole in a fense. The distance creates a sense of flowing water.

Video from Caters Clips; GIF via Casey Chan

aerial photo of oil sands extraction site

Photo by Ryan Jackson

construction workers laying a blue oil pipeline through tree-covered mountains

Photo from alberta.ca

A police "Wanted" notice for a man sneezing without a handkerchief. Colour lithograph after Keith Monk.

Image via Wellcome collection