SOCI 210: Sociological perspectives

Agenda

Thinking sociologically

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

Administrative

Persuall

  • Scores are released after deadline
  • Aim for ~7 annotations on "scholarly" readings
  • Textbook readings can be a bit sparser

Synthesis essays

  • Adjusted word count:
    now 800–1,000 words

Checking in

  • Lingering questions from last week?
    Readings?
    Exams?
    Online tools?
    Course content?

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?

Discussion

2024 Canadian postal strike through the “sociologist’s eye”

Form groups of 3–5

  • You can move around if needed

Generate a question

  • Discuss the readings and your own experiences and thoughts to generate a sociological question relating to the 2024 Canadian postal strike
    (2-4 sentences is a good length)

Post

Individually

  • Read through other group’s questions and upvote (♥️) 2–3 of your favorites
Photograph of STTP Local de Montreal workers picketing in front of a Canada Post sign CBC headline from Nov 24 2024 reading "Canada Post back-to-work bill passes during late night Commons sitting" CBC headline from Nov 24 2024 reading "Canada Post back-to-work bill passes during late night Commons sitting"

Next class

Lecture topics:

  • Structuring social inquiry (theory)
  • Theoretical perspectives part 1: structural functionalism

Readings:

  • * Erikson (2017), Coming to Terms with Social Life
  • Conerly, Holmes, and Tamang (2021), chapter 1 (optional)

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

Photograph of STTP Local de Montreal workers picketing in front of a Canada Post sign

Photo from Montreal Gazette

CBC headline from Nov 24 2024 reading "Canada Post back-to-work bill passes during late night Commons sitting"

CBC: Nov 24, 2024

High-level examples - Durkheim's _Suicide_ - Marx and ideology (raised by Erikson) Lower-level - socialization of disgust (differs across cultures, but can be discussed generally) (durability and finding the strange) -