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Introduction to Sociology
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0:08
The sociologist is intensely, endlessly and shamelessly fascinated by the doings of individuals.
0:17
The excitement of sociology lies in more than revealing the unknown. It's in finding the familiar world transformed in its meaning - in exposing and confronting aspects of social reality that contradict supposedly obvious, 'common sense' knowledge.
0:37
When we view the world sociologically, we quickly realise that things are not quite what they seem. We find familiar patterns in strange contexts, and bizarre occurrences in spaces that otherwise seem normal and uninteresting.
0:55
Sociology is a discipline that can be, quite literally, applied to anything - from widespread social structures and institutions, to the experience of the self, and even to the very nature of reality.
1:10
The goal of this video is welcome viewers into the wonderful world of Sociology.
1:18
Look at this man. Who is he? What's he doing? Let's describe him, his behaviour, and the context he's engaged in.
1:29
The most obvious answer is that he's a police officer. He's doing his job of policing. And the context is that he's employed by the British government to police a local area.
1:42
This is all quite obvious and uninteresting. But does his job really define who he is? Is he the same man when he returns home to his family, changes out of his uniform, and plays with his children?
1:57
Does your own job, or perhaps lack of a job, define you?
2:02
If so, does it define the totality of what and who you are?
2:13
The sociologist Erving Goffman (1959) used the metaphor of the stage to frame how our sense of self is constructed through social interaction.
2:24
The social setting, our demeanor, mannerisms, and social roles, along with the response we receive from those we interact with, combine to inform us and those around us of who we are.
2:40
The self, from a sociological perspective, is not a fixed, unchanging reality. It is fluid and malleable. It can change from one moment to the next.
2:54
For our police officer, we can say then that he is indeed a police officer. But what does that mean to him? How does he understand his role and what is his experience of being a police officer?
3:10
To answer these questions, we'd have to ask him. And to identify similarities between his experience and the experience of other officers, we'd have to ask a few.
3:24
And if we found we received many similar responses, we’d have to use (or produce) theory in order to frame and understand how and why those experiences were so common.
3:46
Sociology is a science. We work in similar ways to scientists in other fields. We identify a question about the social world, conduct research to collect data about the problem, and then produce theories to understand and explain the data we collect.
4:06
Sociology is often referred to as a soft science. This is because the data we collect is more difficult to isolate and operationalize compared to the hard sciences such as physics and chemistry.
4:21
Sociology is sometimes criticized for this. However, it's not so much a choice, but a discipline-specific demand of our subject matter.
4:32
While experiments are sometimes used in sociology, they're often not a practical, ethical, or effective method for collecting data about the way people experience the world.
4:45
Human beings are subjective creatures, and our behaviour does not always reflect our subjective experience.
4:54
Even if it did, keeping individuals in controlled environments and meticulously documenting their behavior over long periods of time would become impossible.
5:05
For this reason, methods such as interviews, questionnaires, observations, and statistical analysis are much more common in sociology.
5:16
Regardless of the method used, there's an expectation to produce data to support theories, just as there is in any other science.
5:31
Let's return to our police officer. Here he is. This police officer does not act alone. He's part of an organisation - 'the police'.
5:42
The police are an interesting group because they possess a level of formal power that almost no other member of society holds.
5:52
The police have a right, indeed an obligation, to use physical force against other members of society.
6:00
They have the power to physically restrain individuals and lock them in a prison cell.
6:06
The police operate under a philosophy known as 'policing by consent'. This means that a majority of the public must consent to the police holding and using such power for the organisation to operate effectively.
6:24
The public considerably outnumber the police. If the majority of the public withdrew consent, the police would not be able to function.
6:35
Regardless of mainstream consent, the fact the police hold such power inevitably leads to social conflict.
6:43
A majority may consent, but a majority is not the same as a totality. In any other context, the force used by the police would be labelled as violence. Indeed, it is violence. It's violence that is consented to and defined as legitimate force.
7:09
Notions of consensus and conflict underpin some of the most foundational work in sociology.
7:17
Émile Durkheim, often referred to as the 'Father of Sociology', theorized that consensus is necessary in all functional societies. Societies require it in order to remain stable.
7:32
A lack of consensus would lead to what Durkheim calls 'anomie' (or normlessness). Societies would become chaotic, people would be incapable of working together, and their basic needs would cease to be met.
7:48
For this reason, all societies naturally develop and maintain social institutions which socialize individuals into the norms and values of their culture.
8:02
Building on this idea, Talcott Parsons (1951) introduced the concept of 'functional prerequisites'. These are the basic functions all societies must fulfil in order to remain stable.
8:17
All societies require an economy to distribute resources, a political system to identify shared social goals, a legal system to set standards, and social institutions to reinforce value consensus.
8:34
According to Parsons, all societies must fulfill these functional prerequisites as a basic minimum and cannot survive or develop without them.
8:47
A police force is one way societies maintain stability. It enforces social rules and regulations, identifies offenders, regulates behaviour, and so on.
9:01
It's surely not the only way to fulfil these functions, but from a functionalist sociological perspective, it's one of the ways contemporary societies do so.
9:27
But societies are complicated and messy. People are subjective beings and they do not always consent equally. So consensus is only one part of the story.
9:40
The imbalance of power inherent in an institution like the police (or any other institution of social control) results in social conflict. Policing is not a simple, objective task. It requires interpretation, discretion, and decision-making. Police officers are human beings. They make mistakes, misinterpret situations, and have as much potential as any other actor to hold prejudices and act unfairly.
10:11
All of this combines to result in unequal and disproportionate policing.
10:17
Some people are policed more than others. The police may target groups based on race, gender or social class, even if they do this unconsciously.
10:29
We can see this disproportionality in statistics about outcomes.
10:34
In the United Kingdom, for example, statistics show that black individuals are disproportionately more likely to be stopped and searched, arrested and convicted than those who are white.
10:47
This naturally leads to questions about police behaviour, crime rates, institutional racism, and so on.
10:54
The job of sociology is to conduct research and produce theories about why this is the case.
11:01
Sociologists also attempt to understand how these outcomes are related to wider social issues, how they're framed and understood by people, and how they could be addressed.
11:13
All this is to say that both consensus and conflict are persistent factors in the underlying fabric of society. Both are ever-present and sociologists, in one way or another, often focus on how consensus and conflict present in social settings. Policing is one example among many. Other obvious contexts include religion, education systems, the workplace, subcultures, and so on.
11:49
Sociology often requires us to look at social life and social structure across time.
11:56
Societies develop, adapt, and change. They do not remain in place. Keeping our focus on policing, we can see that the police today do not operate in the same way as they did in the past. The Metropolitan Police Force was established in 1829. This was the first professional, centrally organized police force.
12:21
Before this, forms of social control were very different, and policing has changed drastically since then. Indeed, it's changed noticeably within my own (and probably your own) lifetime.
12:35
Sociologists are interested in how societies change over time.
12:41
A topic currently under intense study is the shift from the modern into the postmodern, (sometimes called the 'late modern' or 'liquid modern') era.
12:52
Modernity, which developed across the 16th to the 20th century, was characterized by a belief in reason and science, and in meta-narratives and grand theories that could explain the totality of the human experience.
13:08
It replaced the previous dominance of dogma and superstition.
13:14
As modernity progressed, industrialization and capitalist free market economics dominated.
13:21
Towns and cities became shaped by industry and urbanisation, and human labour became commodified.
13:30
Modernity saw the rise of the individual.
13:34
We moved away from inherited social roles that were previously ascribed, through family status and religion, towards notions of personal freedom and individual achievement.
13:48
These characteristics can be seen in many aspects of the era. It's in the way people thought about themselves and society, in the politics, the science.
13:59
It can be observed in the architecture, in the writings, and in the art produced by individuals of that era.
14:09
The shift towards post-modernity becomes apparent towards the end of the 20th century. We now live in an era of fragmentation, relativity, and consumerism. Identities are fragmented. Morality is relativistic. Boundaries have become blurred. Zygmunt Bauman (2000) defines this as the era of 'liquid modernity'.
14:35
The modern era can be described as solid, immovable, and permanent. But in our liquid modern era, those structures have melted.
14:45
Nothing stays in place. Instead, it merges, blends and flows.
14:53
Identity is in constant development, the result of the things we consume - of the things we buy and show off to the world on social media.
15:03
Capital has become detached from physical space. It's now grounded in technology and demands flexibility from workers.
15:12
Communities fragment. People are individuals first and foremost. They feel less committed to ideals and responsibilities towards their neighbours and communities.
15:25
Beliefs have become hugely varied. We no longer collectively agree with notions of objectivity and scientific truth.
15:35
Scientific findings are viewed with scepticism, and the news media no longer commands authority over the telling of events - unless of course, it conforms with your own individual outlook of the world.
15:51
Jean Baudrillard (1981) gives an even more profound view of the postmodern era. In Simulacra and Simulation, he argues that contemporary society constructs a simulated reality that no longer has any objective reference.
16:09
If we consider the way a map is shaped by the territory it represents, Baudrillard argues that the map now precedes the territory. The map now comes first, and the world (our social reality) is produced from that.
16:26
Baudrillard's theories are particularly useful for understanding how media and politics shape our perceptions of reality.
16:37
If we're to understand contemporary society, it's necessary for us to recognise its history - to appreciate where it came from and how it developed. There are many aspects of modernity still present in society today. Indeed, post-modernity is understood as simply the next phase of modernity.
17:00
Returning to our police officer, we must recognise him as working within an institution with a history. Understanding what our contemporary police force is, and how it operates, requires us to consider what came before it and how it developed out of that. Similarly, the way our police officer views himself, his colleagues and those he polices is inevitably shaped by the dominant themes, ideas and practices of his time.
17:32
It's therefore also inextricably attached to history and the past.
17:58
Through this discussion naturally arises a question of autonomy, individuality and free will.
18:06
If people are a product of their time and wider social forces, does that mean they do not possess free will?
18:13
Sociology gives us a range of perspectives to approach this problem.
18:19
Functionalism is the oldest formal sociological perspective and is based on, among others, the ideas of Émile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons, both discussed earlier.
18:32
Functionalist theory situates the individual as always and forever a member of society. From this perspective, individuals are a product of their societies. Our knowledge of the world, our attitudes, beliefs, and desires are developed through a process of socialisation.
18:54
Individuals are members of their communities. We attend schools, consume media, work, and worship together. Through engaging with these institutions, we become members of society. From this perspective, there's little to be found about free will, autonomy and individuality. This does not mean necessarily that individuals do not possess such qualities, but rather that functionalism is not a particularly useful tool to explore such a question.
19:30
Symbolic interactionism might be a better perspective to explore this.
19:36
For symbolic interactionists such as Herbert Blumer, Erving Goffman, and Howard Becker, social institutions exist because people engage with them. The education system is a product of people interacting with each other. The same can be said of the family, government, religion, or any other social institution. There is little conflict with the functionalist perspective here.
20:02
The symbolic interactionists simply have a different focus. Yes, individuals are the products of their environments! But they also produce those environments! Society cannot exist unless individuals interact with each other.
20:22
Every society is a product of its participants.
20:26
This perspective suggests the potential for a degree of individual autonomy. People have the power to change social structures. We're not simply trapped within them.
20:39
That said, the focus of sociology is squarely on the way societies operate.
20:46
It should come as no surprise then that its findings tend to lean towards social processes over individual free will and autonomy.
20:57
Society impacts on the opportunities and restraints of its members.
21:03
In 'The Sociological Imagination', one of the most influential books in sociology, C. Wright Mills (1959) argues that the task of the sociologist is to relate the private troubles of individuals with public issues. For Mills, the lives of individuals cannot be detached from wider social forces. However, it is important to recognize that individuals do exist and they do experience the world as individuals. Sociologists must recognize the existence of the individual.
21:40
But as a discipline, our focus is mainly on the way social forces impact upon individual people.
21:59
An example of this could be found in Pierre Bourdieu's theories of social class. Bourdieu (1986) argued that there are three primary dimensions that dictate an individual's class status.
22:12
'Economic capital' refers to an individual's financial resources - to their income and their physical assets. For many people, wealth is the primary factor they consider when they think about social class. However, Bourdieu showed the equal importance of both 'cultural' and 'social capital'.
22:35
'Cultural capital' is developed through educational qualifications, through patterns of speech and familiarity with high culture such as art, literature and music.
22:48
'Social capital' is obtained through social networks and connections, which can then be leveraged for an advantage in a wide range of social settings.
22:59
These forms of capital are ingrained in the way we think and behave. They influence the habits, dispositions, and tastes we develop as individuals, and they affect the way we perceive the world, the way we walk, talk, and eat, and our taste in music, entertainment, and food.
23:20
Bourdieu called this set of dispositions 'habitus'. They're influenced by our upbringing, opportunities, and experiences of the world, and they have a major impact on the opportunities available to us throughout our lives.
23:59
Both gender and race are also dominant issues in sociology. This is because it's been shown to an undeniable extent that these characteristics strongly affect the way we experience the social world.
24:13
Let's look again at our police officer. He's white and he's male. This is not surprising considering the historical context he exists in.
24:25
Prior to the 1970s, female police officers were segregated. They were paid less and had separate ranks which restricted their duties mainly to working with women and children.
24:38
Complete integration and equal pay were mandated by the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 and the Equal Pay Act of 1970. However, research demonstrates that 'canteen culture' and gender discrimination still exist today.
24:57
The first black officer to join the Met Police was in 1967 and the first black female officer joined in 1968.
25:07
Although officers from ethnic minorities began joining around the late 1960s, systemic racism and barriers to promotion persisted for several decades.
25:18
Anti-discrimination legislation did not apply to police officers until the recommendations of the Macpherson Report in 1999.
25:28
Again, research indicates that racism still persists within the contemporary police force.
25:36
With this in mind, it should become clear why questions of gender and race arise in sociological research about the police. And it should hopefully be clear that such issues apply across social contexts and institutions.
25:52
These issues are not isolated to the police. Research demonstrates they exist across society and permeate into almost all aspects of it. Being male, female or transgender inevitably impacts on our experience of the world, as does the colour of our skin, our heritage and our culture.
26:19
Our police officer naturally engages in what is termed 'emotion work'.
26:25
Police officers inevitably encounter emotionally charged situations and this will impact on his daily experience of being a police officer.
26:36
The sociologist Arlie Hochschild (1983) wrote a wonderful book on emotion work entitled 'The Managed Heart'.
26:43
In it, she theorizes that emotion involves a profoundly social element. Society places expectations, defined as 'feeling rules', about how we're supposed to feel in a given situation.
26:59
For example, we're expected to feel, and therefore display, sadness at a funeral and joy at a wedding.
27:09
Sometimes individuals do not experience the expected emotion and are forced to use a range of strategies to maintain and conform to social expectations.
27:22
Hochschild collected data by interviewing and observing flight attendants and debt collectors to show the effects of emotion work and the strategies individuals use to manage it.
27:35
She showed that emotional labour can become exhausting and alienating, and that emotion work is becoming an increasingly large part of the contemporary economy.
28:10
In his book, Thinking Sociologically, Zygmunt Bauman (2001) defines sociology as being in conflict with what he calls 'common sense'. Common sense arises from our everyday experience of the world. It serves as the obvious, taken-for-granted explanations we use to explain the world around us.
28:33
Individuals must form common sense explanations in order to go about their lives. Forming common sense assumptions is a normal and necessary part of being human. However, sociology must move beyond common sense explanations of the world.
28:53
It is a science and it must conform to the standards and conventions of science in order to produce valid understandings of the world.
29:03
To think sociologically is to think critically, to inquire about difficult questions, and to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions.
29:13
As a discipline, it provides a loose framework that allows us to do this.
29:19
Doing sociology will consistently surprise you. It will challenge your most basic assumptions, and it will, at times, make you feel uncomfortable. It is an imperfect science, but for good reason. Studying people and society is complicated. It requires compromises because our subject matter is people. We do not have the same basic tools at our disposal as physicists and chemists.
29:51
Our subjects think, feel and act.
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