1.  scientific study of society and human behaivor 

2.  thinking and motivation are largely shaped by life experiences.

3.  exist within social structure:  patters of social interaction and social relationships

4.  social structure has influence on who we are as individuals

social rules  EX  waiting in line

we're heavily influenced by others.  people follow to get the futhest with the least ammount of work 

1.  morrays

2.  taboo

someone will get mad

EX  tackling someone in football is OKAY but tackling someone in class is NOT OKAY

taboo

wrong in every social crowd

EX  incest

1.  ability to grasp relationship between our lives as individulas and the large social forces that help shape them.

2.  human behaivor must be understood in broader social context.

3.  long cultural heritage which encourages independence and self-reliance.  also bound by social structure and history

1.  theory of knowledge that considers how social phenomena develop in particuar social context

2.  nothing has purpose...we have decided the purpose for certain things

EX  credit cards vs licenses

3.  concept or practice my appear to be natural and obvious to those who aaccep it, but in reality is an invention or artifact of a particular culture or society

1.  direct experience and observation

2.  personal inquiry

3.  tradition

4  authority

EX  Lebron James doing sprite commercials--why can't regular person be sponsor?

how we know what we know

REALITY VERSION

1.  to learn about the world are only partly linked to personal inquirty and experience

2.  larger part comes from agreed on knowledge that others give us--things "everyone knows"

3.  this agreement reality both assists adn hinders our attempts to find out for ourselves

1.  future cirumstances aer caused by present ones

2.  patterns of cause adn effect are probablistic in nature

3.  aim to answer what and why by observing and figuring out

inquiry:  ERRORS

1.  inaccurate observation

2.  overgeneralization

3.  selective observation

4.  illogical reasoning

inaccurate observation

SOLUTION

overgeneralization

SOLUTIONS

selective observations

SOLUTION

illogical reasoning

SOLUTION

1.  logic and observation

2.  world must make sense and correspond to waht we observe

3.  three major aspects of social scientific enterprise: 

theory

data collection

data analysis

1.  variety of points of view on any given subject

2.  social facts are many perspectives which are complex and contradictory

3.  sociology is method of organizing your thoughts about society and your place in society

1.  theories prevent our being taken in by lucky accidents

2.  makes sense of observed patterns in ways that can suggest other possibilities

3.  direct research efforts, pointing toward likely discoveries through experience/experiment observation

1.  perspectives---models

2.  makes assumptions about society

3.  integrate various kinds of information about society

4.  focuses on different aspects of society

1.  visualize society as a system where all parts act together even if though each part may be doing a different thing

 EX:  human body

2.  goal of parts is to maintain order in society. 

3.  structures promote integration, stability, consensus, balance in society

1.  see society as an aren of conflict and power struggles

2.  as a result of tension, hostility, competition adn disagreements over goals and values--change is basic feature of society

3.  conflict occurs people want things that are in short supply (power, wealth, prestige)

1.  explore interaction between individuals or groups of individuals.  society occurs as a result of interaction between individuals adn small groups of individuals.

2.  always changing because of mutual interaction amoung individuals

3.  its people who exist and act...all the other structures found in society are nothing but human creations

4.  society is always in a process of being created

EX  friend, you, parent---act differently

1.  test ideas

2.  evidence must be observable

3.  describe how evidence is gathered

4.  theory

5.  hypothesis

others can verify or refute the findings

set of ideas supported by facts