Introduction
Welcome to sociology! I’ve written this book to introduce you to one of the biggest and most fascinating disciplines in all of science. Yes, you read that right: Sociology is a science. Sociologists don’t use beakers and test
tubes, but like natural scientists, they do seek to learn about the world by creating theories and testing them with systematic observations.
What makes sociology both so interesting and so challenging is its subject: the social world. Society is huge, and hugely complex: there are answers to sociological questions, but there usually aren’t any easy answers. In addition to the challenge of answering sociological questions, there’s the challenge of asking them — that is, of thinking about society as a subject of objective, scientific study. Your grandpa and your minister and the guy who works at your local coffee shop probably don’t have any opinions about how atoms should and shouldn’t bond with one another, but they certainly all have opinions about how society should be organized. Studying society scientifically means setting aside — temporarily — your thoughts about how society should work.
After you do that, though, you can learn some amazing things about the world. The achievements of sociologists are among the great achievements of the human race because in sociology, people from all different walks of life come together to understand society objectively — so that, in the long run, it can perhaps be made to work better for everyone. However you’ve come to sociology, I hope this book leaves you with a greater respect not just for sociologists wearing lab coats (yes, some of them actually do) but for your entire species, the first species on Earth capable of conscious self-analysis. What sociologists see when they look at society isn’t always pretty, but that fact makes sociology all the more important: Just like you need to know how a car works before you can fix it, you need to understand how society works before you can change it.
About This Book
I’ve written this book to introduce you to sociology as a body of knowledge about society, but much more importantly to introduce you to sociology as a way of thinking about the world.
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With a subject as vast and as frequently-changing as human society, it would be foolish to try to write a “user’s manual” — it would be outdated before the ink was dry. If this book makes you curious about a specific aspect of society — say, the job market in the United States or the changing class system — that’s great. Your local library and the Internet are full of specific studies on these subjects, written by sociologists and other scholars, and I hope this book makes that information more accessible to you.
What I aim to do in this book is to introduce you to sociology as a discipline so you have the tools and understanding you need to succeed in a sociology class or to apply sociological concepts in your professional or personal life.
The book is organized to take you from general questions (what is sociology? where did it come from? who does it, and how?) to more specific topics (how do sociologists study culture and socialization? how do sociologists define “class” and “race”?) to applications of those ideas (how can you use sociology in your everyday life?).
Sociologists study a lot of things — in fact, they study just about everything that has anything to do with people interacting — which means that most things studied by sociologists are also studied by people who don’t consider themselves sociologists. What is special about sociology is precisely the fact that it involves the study of all those things together, not just some of them in isolation. The fact that sociologists consider all aspects of the social world together means that they are able to see connections that people who study only part of the social world cannot. Throughout this book, I emphasize what is unique about the sociological view of the world.
Conventions Used in This Book
Obviously, I can’t possibly know each and every person who reads this book, but I can reasonably guess that you’re living in the early 21st century, that you have some reason for being curious about sociology, and that you’re likely — but not necessarily — living in an English-speaking country. I have not written this book under any further assumptions about who you might be or why you might be reading it.
I’ve drawn examples and illustrations from a wide array of social situations, but you may notice that there are especially frequent examples from the contemporary United States. In part that’s because it’s where I live, so that’s what I know best. I’ve written the book in the first person, and often refer to
Introduction 3
my own life and personal history. Sociology is an objective science, but any given sociologist is a particular person with a unique set of interests and experiences; I hope that as you read this book and see how sociological concepts relate to my life, you’ll think about how they relate to your life, too.
I explain terms as I go, so I let you plunge right in without taking too much space going into specifics here in the introduction, but there are a couple of distinctions it may be helpful to mention right here at the outset.
For one, there’s the distinction between society and sociology. They’re not the same thing. Society is what sociologists study; sociology is the study of society. The term “social” refers to society, people interacting in groups; the term “sociological” refers to sociology, the study of people interacting in groups.
If this seems confusing to you, you’re not alone: Right on up to the New York Times, writers often make the mistake of using the term “sociological” when they ought to use the term “social.” If there is increasing crime in your community, that is a social problem, not a “sociological” problem. If you’re trying to study that crime rises but are having a problem with missing data, then you have a genuinely sociological problem.
Also — to get a little ahead of myself and preview something I explain more in Chapter 2 — you should know that sociology is not just something that happens in colleges and universities. Sociology is a way of looking at the social world and a tool to use in understanding society; but it’s also an academic discipline, and most people who actually call themselves “sociologists” work at colleges, universities, and research institutes. Chances are good that you’re reading this book because you’re taking — or are thinking about taking — a sociology class in high school or college; but if you’re not, don’t stop reading! This book is for you, too. You’ll find all kinds of information that may help you understand your place of business, your neighborhood, your city, and even some of your family members!
Sociology is Controversial:
Brace Yourself!
As I mention earlier, sociology is the study of the entire social world. That means that among the subjects studied by sociologists are some very controversial subjects. If sociologists avoided controversial subjects, that would defeat the whole point of the discipline; and the same goes for this book.
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It’s part of a sociologist’s job to deal with hot topics, and some sociologists have made highly controversial arguments. In delving into sociology, you need to be prepared to encounter some ideas that you may disagree — may very strongly disagree — with. Among the ideas you’ll encounter in this book:
Religion is a way of getting people to give you money, and serves no other constructive purpose.
The most effective kind of government is a dictatorship where the smartest person rules.
Society works best when women stay home to cook and clean while men go out and earn money.
You don’t need to agree with all of those arguments — I certainly don’t — to study sociology, but you do need to be willing to consider arguments that you don’t agree with. If you don’t agree with one or more of those statements, why don’t you? Each of the statements above makes an empirical argument. That means that those statements can be tested with objective facts. How could you test them? What data would you gather? How would you analyze those data? If you think the truth is not reflected in those statements, how can you prove it? That willingness to think about the social world as a scientist — that is, objectively — is the very foundation of sociology.
I am 100 percent certain that in this book, you will encounter ideas and arguments you don’t agree with. When you come across something you don’t agree with, think about why you don’t agree with it and what you would say in a debate with the people who advanced that idea. That’s how to think like a sociologist.
How This Book Is Organized
This book is divided into six parts. In this section, I explain what content you’ll find in each part.
Part I: The Basic Basics
This part gives you the what/who/how: what sociology is (the scientific study of society), where it came from (the tumultuous 19th century), who does it (sociologists in academia as well as people outside academia who can benefit from its tools and insights), and how it’s done (with a range of complementary methods, none of which are perfect but all of which have value). Reading this part will help you wrap your mind around what this thing called “sociology” really is.
Introduction 5
Part II: Seeing Society Like a Sociologist
No matter what aspect of social life you’re interested in, there are some key sociological insights that will help you on your way. In this part, I explain how sociologists understand culture (what it is, and what it’s not), the micromacro link (what does “society” have to do with individual people interacting face to face), and the importance of social networks (what’s the difference between your “society” and the people you actually know and interact with?). These fundamental insights are of value across all of sociology.
Part III: Divided — er, United — We Stand: Equality and Inequality in Our Diverse World
Just about everyone who studies society is in some way or another concerned about social inequality. Inequality doesn’t have to mean stratification — that is, just because two people are different doesn’t mean one is in a better or more powerful position than the other — but very often, it does.
This part is devoted to that subject in all its various forms. I begin by explaining the general idea of social stratification (who’s up, who’s down?), then I go into some of the specific lines that divide social groups: race, ethnicity, sex, gender, religion, and the law (in the sense of being on “the wrong side” or “the right side” of the law).
Part IV: All Together Now: The Ins and Outs of Social Organization
People are always interacting, all the time — but as any parent of young children knows, “interacting” is not necessarily the same thing as “being productive.” Corporations, nonprofit organizations, governments, social movements, and other social organizations represent people’s deliberate attempts to band together to accomplish tasks, and in this part I explain what sociologists know about when those attempts work and when they don’t. Cities are a slightly different form of social organization, but people who live together in a city are together in a social organization whether they like it or not; at the conclusion of this part, I look at urban (as well as suburban and exurban) life.