We care about your welfare.

DIR. OF WELFARE MKTG DEP. (DOWEL)

Key Topics Covered

Definition and History of Sociology

  • Definition of sociology as the study of human social life, groups, and societies.
  • Micro-level (individual/small group) and macro-level (large groups/societies) analysis.
  • Culture as shared practices, values, and beliefs.
  • Social influence and patterns shaping individual behavior and life chances.
  • Historical development of sociology, including contributions from Auguste Comte, Harriet Martineau, Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and W.E.B. Du Bois.

Sociological Research Methods

  • Scientific method and interpretive framework in research.
  • Quantitative (e.g., surveys) and qualitative (e.g., interviews, ethnography) approaches.
  • Research methods: surveys, interviews, observational research/field work/ethnography, experiments, secondary analysis, content analysis, and historical-sociological methods.
  • Ethical concerns, including the ASA code of ethics, informed consent, participant safety, privacy, and value neutrality.

Sociological Theories and Paradigms

  • Theories and their scope (macro-level vs. micro-level).
  • Major paradigms:
    • Functionalism (Émile Durkheim): Society as an interconnected system maintaining stability.
    • Conflict Theory (Karl Marx): Society as a competition for resources, focusing on class, alienation, and false/class consciousness.
    • Symbolic Interactionism (Max Weber): Focus on symbol-rich individual interactions and constructed meanings.
  • Evolution of sociological theory, including critiques and modern developments (e.g., critical theory, feminist theory, critical race theory).

The Sociological Imagination

  • C. Wright Mills’ concept connecting personal troubles to public issues.
  • Interplay of biography (individual experiences) and history (societal context).
  • Example: Obesity as a personal trouble linked to industrialized food systems.

Culture and Socialization

  • Culture: Material and nonmaterial elements, subcultures, and countercultures.
  • Socialization: Primary and secondary processes, agents (family, schools, peers, media, etc.), and socialization across the life course.

Social Structure

  • Components: groups (primary and secondary), formal organizations (utilitarian, normative, coercive), social networks, social institutions (e.g., family, education, economy), and societies.
  • Functionalist and conflict perspectives on institutions and their inequalities.

Social Stratification

  • Definition: Systemic hierarchy with unequal access to resources.
  • Class stratification: Upper, middle, and lower classes; wealth, income, education, and occupation.
  • Social mobility: Intragenerational, intergenerational, upward, downward, and structural.
  • Racial and ethnic stratification: Social construction of race/ethnicity, stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, institutional racism, and white privilege.
  • Sex, gender, and sexuality stratification: Gender as cultural, sex as biological, sexual orientation as a continuum, sexism, heterosexism, and homophobia.

Social Change

  • Macro-level changes: Agricultural Revolution, Industrial Revolution, and postindustrial/Information Age societies.
  • Causes of social change:
    • Social institutions (e.g., globalization, cultural diffusion, cultural hybridity).
    • Technology (e.g., technological diffusion, digital divide).
    • Population (e.g., demography, fertility, mortality, migration).
    • Social movements (e.g., reform, revolutionary, redemptive, alternative, resistance; life cycle stages).
    • Environment (e.g., environmental sociology, carrying capacity, commons, climate change).

We care about your welfare.

DIR. OF WELFARE MKTG DEP. (DOWEL)