Sociology Portfolio

What is Sociology?

Sociology is the systematic study of human society.  
Peter Berger said in his book Invitation to Sociology that Sociological perspectives involves seeing the general in the particular, seeing the strange in the familiar and individuality in social context.  
Seeing the general in the particular is how sociologists look at the patterns of life in people's behaviour.
Seeing the strange in the familiar is recognizing the impact society has on our lives.
Individuality in Social Context
Emile Durkheim, a pioneer in sociology chose suicide as a topic of research.   He was able to demonstrate that social forces figure in the apparently isolated act of self-destruction.   He found that men, protestants, wealthy people and the unmarried each had significantly higher suicide rates compared to women, Roman Catholics and Jews, the poor and married people.

The sociological perspective in everyday life?
Benefits of sociological perspective
The sociological perspective
• Becomes a way of thinking, "a form of consciousness" that challenges familiar understandings of us and of others, so that we can critically assess the truth of commonly held assumptions.
• Enables us to assess both the opportunities and the constraints that characterize our lives.
• Empowers us to be active participants in our society.
• Helps us to recognize human differences and human suffering and to confront the challenges of living in a diverse world.

Problems with the sociological perspective.
• Sociology is part of a changing world.
• Sociologists are part of what they study.
• Sociological knowledge becomes part of society.

Social change and the origins of sociology
Science and Sociology
Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim, and Ferdinand Toennies were three pioneers in sociology whose goal was to understand how society actually operates.   Comte sorted human efforts to comprehend the world into three distinct stages.  
• The first stage was the medieval period in...