Sociology can seem a bit dense, partly from the terminology & partly because it deals with a way of thinking most of us aren’t used to. We’re used to explaining stuff based on individual actions & simple processes. If you’re interested in understanding people, or how our society got to be the way it is or even where to begin untangling the problems besetting it, you may well be glad you stuck through the learning curve at the beginning!
You’ll probably be introduced to the major theoretical perspectives used in sociology. Each perspective is a like a lens, which can be picked up & used to better examine different aspects of society. They each have their own framework of understanding, and their own strengths & weaknesses for coming to an understanding of the dynamics of human societies; if you find a particular perspective not to your taste, just remember that they aren’t meant to present a complete understanding of everything, but are hopefully the best we currently have for intensively analysing certain aspects of societies.
They’ll also probably cover methodology, which is the different forms of studies & statistical analysis that are used to gather the data sociologists work with (this didn’t appeal to me personally, but I found the rest of the class fascinating). This might relate to psychology/social psychology, if you find either of those interesting, as sociologists in the field must be aware of and actively compensate for the ways our viewpoints tend to be affected/biased by our social settings.
Someone mentioned the sociological imagination; this is much more than a definition you’ll have to spew back out for tests if you really want to get a lot out of your class. The sociological imagination is being able to look at your own experiences & observations of the world right around you and notice how it has been shaped by much broader social forces. For some things it can be relatively simple, like seeing how your shoes are connected to globalism. (Others are harder, as it involves realizing how your inner self has been affected much more deeply by your culture, class, race & gender than most people would like to acknowledge, but I doubt this will be covered by an intro class.) I find developing a sociological imagination has made my life much richer, and made sociology seem much less dry.
Socialization is how people are molded by the society they live in to fit its values & needs. It’s the process that’s behind a child who, for instance, grows up in Japan, becomes a native participant in Japanese culture rather than Southwestern American culture. Society can’t exist without people, and its specific forms need to have a way to transmit themselves amongst everyone who participates in it.
Stratification deals with the many hierarchies that have developed in societies, most especially our own. You’ll probably begin with hearing lots of statistics about economics, race & gender, & these are important… but I find it’s more important to grasp something else they’re saying; that the society you know & grew up in would probably seem like a strange parallel universe to someone else who was situated at different points along the hierarchies as you. Just like numbers might help sketch out the bare bones of your own life, but would fall horribly short to grasp the world you inhabit, the statistics you’ll probably come across will just show the bare bones that shape the realities of others.
I think there’s all this possibly-intimidating stuff to cover because it’s very easy to apply thinking like “the sky is blue because the sky is blue” to how humans live together, & our thinking needs to shift a bit if we’re to begin to figure out the answers to questions we might not normally wonder about. And all answers are working answers, so you could easily end up coming up with a more comprehensive explanation that the one your teacher gives you!
{Feel more than welcome to ask questions or clarifications about anything, whether or not it was something mentioned here! And if not, have tons of fun in your class! :) }
Composing members:
0
Composing members:
0
