The Contents of the Lectures
Lecture № 1
Theme «Sociology as a science»
1.The sociological approach.
2.Sociological theory
3.Durkheim’s Study of Suicide
4.Levels of Analysis in Sociology
5.Sociology and the Social Sciences
Sociology (from Latin: socius, "companion"; and the suffix -ology, "the study of", from Greek λόγος, lógos, "knowledge") is the scientific or systematic study of society, including patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and culture.
Sociology is the systematic and objective study of human society and social interaction. The discipline of sociology enables us to look beyond our limited view of the world to society as a whole – the values and ideas shared by its members, the groups and institutions that compose it, and the forces that change it.
There are many ways of studying society and social interaction. Perhaps the best way to introduce the discipline of sociology, then, is to look first at its approach – its special way of dealing with its subject matter.
Recommended literature:
1. David Popenoe. Sociology, 1977
2.Richard T.Shaefer. Sociology, 1988
3.Jean Stockard. Sociology. Discovering society, 1991
4.Contemporary Society. An introduction to Social science. 6 edition. John A.Perry, Erna K.Perry, 1993
5.Sociology: An introduction. Book by Neil J.Smelser, 1967
6.Sociology: The Basics. Book by Martin Albrow, 1999
Lecture № 2
Theme «Society as the main category of Sociology»
1. The Nature of Human Society
2. The world and society
3. From species to humanity. Humankind and culture
4. Sex and gender
5.Evolution and history of Human Society
6. Money and capital in the development of Human Society
Sociology is the study of human society, or societies. But such a simple initial definition of the subject begs the question ‘What is human society?’ This lecture answers this by setting out its unique properties which make it different from anything else in creation.
We study society not because it is fixed, obvious and permanent, but because it is fluid, elusive and changing. It is this flux which makes living in society a challenge for each of us as individuals. We need to be able to find our bearings in it. This is why sociology, as it charts and documents this shifting basis for our lives, has an ever-renewed fascination.
Ceaseless movement may be daunting but it also offers room for manoeuvre. It means that we can all hope that our lives can make a difference to society however limited our sphere of activities may be. Indeed sociology can help us realise such a hope so far as it sets out the extent and limits of our powers. That’s reason enough for studying Sociology.
Recommended literature:
1. David Popenoe. Sociology, 1977
2.Richard T.Shaefer. Sociology, 1988
3.Jean Stockard. Sociology. Discovering society, 1991
4.Contemporary Society. An introduction to Social science. 6 edition. John A.Perry, Erna K.Perry, 1993
5.Sociology: An introduction. Book by Neil J.Smelser, 1967
6.Sociology: The Basics. Book by Martin Albrow, 1999
Lecture № 3
Theme «Society as the main category of Sociology»
1.Institutions and collectivities
2. Countries and nations
3. The globe
4. Human society in practice. Social relations
5. Types of human association
6. Constructing and performing society
The independence of money from personal control, its widespread acceptance, its continuity beyond your life and mine, the way it penetrates other aspects of human existence, the need for its management and technical control are not unique to it. Rather they make it an example of one of the most important general features of human society: the social institution.
Money as an institution shows too how relations between people are concealed behind calculations of the abstract qualities of material things. In general, institutions embed social relations in material things and technology, in life-spheres—which in the case of money we call ‘the economy’. Institutions are sequences of social practices which are widespread, impersonal, subject to, and yet always resistant to control.
Recommended literature:
1. David Popenoe. Sociology, 1977
2.Richard T.Shaefer. Sociology, 1988
3.Jean Stockard. Sociology. Discovering society, 1991
4.Contemporary Society. An introduction to Social science. 6 edition. John A.Perry, Erna K.Perry, 1993
5.Sociology: An introduction. Book by Neil J.Smelser, 1967
6.Sociology: The Basics. Book by Martin Albrow, 1999
Lecture № 4
Theme «Origins of Sociology»
1. Social ideas of the scientists
2. Paradigms and discourse
Only when a set of research practices and exchange of ideas and results among members of an organised occupation begin to take place can we talk of the arrival of sociology as a discipline. So the invention of the word ‘sociology’ in 1839 by the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857) was only a preliminary first step, though his idea that there was a law of three stages governing the development of society became widely known.
Herbert Spencer, a railway engineer from Derby, England, was even more successful as a publicist. His visit to the United States in 1882, travelling by rail, the new revolutionary means of transport, gelled with the American fervour for social improvement, popular education and philanthropy, and the ‘sociological movement’ took root in colleges and universities. William Graham Sumner, who had given the first lecture course in the subject in Yale University in 1876 addressed a farewell banquet to Spencer saying ‘we look upon his work in sociology as a grand step in the history of science’.
Recommended literature:
1. David Popenoe. Sociology, 1977
2.Richard T.Shaefer. Sociology, 1988
3.Jean Stockard. Sociology. Discovering society, 1991
4.Contemporary Society. An introduction to Social science. 6 edition. John A.Perry, Erna K.Perry, 1993
5.Sociology: An introduction. Book by Neil J.Smelser, 1967
6.Sociology: The Basics. Book by Martin Albrow, 1999
Lecture №5
Theme «Methods of research in Sociology»
1. Theory and metaphor
2. Concepts in research
No research can work without theory, even when it denies it has any. For theory simply means the connection of ideas. Even counting is theory. It requires us to connect ideas of unity, identity, repetition and sequence, which is why it takes some time to learn. Occasionally people write research reports and claim they contain no theory. This could mean that they are incredibly naive, but normally it signals a rejection of a particular kind of theory. They want to let the reporting and writing and making sense of the world, the ‘natural attitude’, confront some preconceived set of ideas. Both quantitative and qualitative research in sociology have their advocates of this kind of approach. One version argues that what emerges is ‘grounded theory’. This challenges theories which base accounts of society on ideas of system, structure, market, rational choice, coding or some other frame of thinking drawn usually from other disciplines. The point is that the theories of other disciplines reflect their concerns with the particular aspect of reality they study. Applied to society they immediately become metaphors or analogies. As one early critic of this approach said, ‘social theorists, instead of finding and employing a method and a terminology proper to their subject,…on the analogy of the physical sciences they have striven to analyse Society as a mechanism, on the analogy of biology they have insisted on regarding it as an organism’. Mechanism is not a metaphor in engineering and organism is not a metaphor for the body in biology. The market is not a metaphor for the economy in economics, nor is code a metaphor for language in linguistics. In each case the theoretical idea is a powerful method for analysing the reality. Grounded theory in sociology, even just fact gathering, often called empiricism, has a point if it challenges undue reliance on the metaphorical use of theory from other disciplines.
Recommended literature:
1. David Popenoe. Sociology, 1977
2.Richard T.Shaefer. Sociology, 1988
3.Jean Stockard. Sociology. Discovering society, 1991
4.Contemporary Society. An introduction to Social science. 6 edition. John A.Perry, Erna K.Perry, 1993
5.Sociology: An introduction. Book by Neil J.Smelser, 1967
6.Sociology: The Basics. Book by Martin Albrow, 1999
Lecture №6
Theme « Methods of research in Sociology »
1. Professional practice. Ideology and objectivity
2. Freedom for values
3. Professionalism
4. Lifelong learning
By now we can appreciate what a stir it made when British prime minister Margaret Thatcher said that society did not exist. This actually made a lot of people think hard about society, so sociologists should be grateful to her. Thinking often leads to study, and she gave sociology quite a boost, which certainly was contrary to her intention.
Challenging society’s existence makes us think, not just about society but also about ‘existence’. After all people think about and study a lot of other things which don’t ‘exist’ in the way material things like, say, our bodies exist. For instance, love, values, or God are not material. But not many of us would make sense of our lives without one, two or, many would say, all three of them.
They are not material objects. But then neither are most of the things which interest us about human beings. Consider a speech, meeting or anniversary. They exist in and through what we do. If no one turns up to a meeting which was advertised it doesn’t take place. But we don’t normally question the possibility of the existence of meetings as a result.
Raising the question of existence brings into the open the fact that different things exist in different ways. Not everything exists on the same plane. Society (meetings included) has its own peculiar mode of being. Mrs Thatcher went on to declare that men and women and their families did exist.
Recommended Readings:
1.Ashley, David and David Michael Orenstein, Sociological Theory: Classical Statements, third edition, Boston, Allyn and Bacon, 1995.
2.Cuff, E. C., W. W. Sharrock and D. W. Francis, Perspectives in Sociology, third edition, London, Routledge, 1992.
3.Gerth, Hans and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York, Oxford University Press, 1958.
4.Grabb, Edward G., Theories of Social Inequality: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives, second edition, Toronto, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1990.
5.Peter Knapp, One World -- Many Worlds: Contemporary Sociological Theory, New York, Harper-Collins, 1994.
6.Hadden, Richard W., Sociological Theory: An Introduction to the Classical Tradition, Peterborough, Ontario, Broadview Press, 1997.
7.Ritzer, George, Sociological Theory, third edition, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1992.
8.Weber, Max, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, New York, Bedminster Press, 1968.
Lecture №7
Theme «Sociological Theory. Old and new directions»
1. The old theoretical agenda
2. The contemporary problem for theory
3. The unit of analysis
4. Identity
5. Trust
The balance between theory and research in scientific disciplines varies both within and between them over time. There is a division of labour within disciplines between those who concentrate on theory and those who test it out or apply it.
Theory comes first because it needs fewer resources and because it guides the work of the researcher. Historically in sociology it long predates the systematic gathering of data. The origins of the Western theory of society go back to Plato and Aristotle in Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ. These origins have had far reaching, not to say fateful, consequences.
The Greek philosophers lived in city-states in which the main problem was how to bond a definite group of people into a territorially based community. As a result the long tradition of Western social theory has largely focused on the relation between the citizen and the agency which controls the territory—the state. This has been the core issue even when generalised as the relation of individual to society.
Recommended Readings:
1.Ashley, David and David Michael Orenstein, Sociological Theory: Classical Statements, third edition, Boston, Allyn and Bacon, 1995.
2.Cuff, E. C., W. W. Sharrock and D. W. Francis, Perspectives in Sociology, third edition, London, Routledge, 1992.
3.Gerth, Hans and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York, Oxford University Press, 1958.
4.Grabb, Edward G., Theories of Social Inequality: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives, second edition, Toronto, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1990.
5.Peter Knapp, One World -- Many Worlds: Contemporary Sociological Theory, New York, Harper-Collins, 1994.
Lecture №8
Theme «Sociological Theory. Old and new directions»
1. Power and critique
2. Constituting society. Ideal types
3. Mediation
The problem about social relations is that they don’t work just as any one person would like, not even when we are of one will with each other. Sociology has dwelt on many of the paradoxes of these unintended consequences of collective action. The most famous is probably Robert Michels’ account of how a political party dedicated to equality and justice like the German Social Democratic Party at the beginning of the century should have generated a powerful oligarchy at the centre.
A cynic might say that it is because people are deceitful and self-seeking. Michels illustrates how with the best will in the world large organisations involve the concentration of power in a few hands. We may want one thing and yet it is another which prevails. In fact we may have a better chance of fruitful change if we disagree with each other, or at the least allow one another to go our own way. Social relations persist and they are embedded in the world so that we tend to reproduce them. Marx’s social relations of production in industrial society depended on capital, which in turn reflected the level of development of technology at the time.
Recommended Readings:
1.Ashley, David and David Michael Orenstein, Sociological Theory: Classical Statements, third edition, Boston, Allyn and Bacon, 1995.
2.Cuff, E. C., W. W. Sharrock and D. W. Francis, Perspectives in Sociology, third edition, London, Routledge, 1992.
3.Gerth, Hans and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York, Oxford University Press, 1958.
4.Grabb, Edward G., Theories of Social Inequality: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives, second edition, Toronto, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1990.
5.Peter Knapp, One World -- Many Worlds: Contemporary Sociological Theory, New York, Harper-Collins, 1994.
Lecture №9
Theme «Sociation»
1. Defining sociation
2. The ways of sociation
We now come to the pure modes of social relation, remembering that they never can appear in pure form but are always mediated. Two of the most discussed are co-operation and conflict, partly because they are dilemmas in everyday life but also because they are universal in human society, and arguably in animal society too. Coercion and exchange are closely linked with them, which brings in questions of power and authority. We will stay with this limited set of pure modes in this section. They sharpen our focus on the question of equality.
The word ‘sociation’ conveys the processual nature of these relations. They never stay still. They apply to couples or to sets of relations, or indeed to whole organisations. Social relations are multiplex, that is they operate for different contexts simultaneously.
If we take an exchange between two people we can consider it in terms of their interaction at the time, whether it is in good faith, in terms of their relationship (that is, the past history of their interactions), in terms of the positions they occupy, as buyers or sellers, or as agents for an organisation, as well as in terms of the widest scope of society as man and woman or citizens of the world.
Recommended literature:
1. David Popenoe. Sociology, 1977
2.Richard T.Shaefer. Sociology, 1988
3.Jean Stockard. Sociology. Discovering society, 1991
4.Contemporary Society. An introduction to Social science. 6 edition. John A.Perry, Erna K.Perry, 1993
5.Sociology: An introduction. Book by Neil J.Smelser, 1967
Lecture №10
Theme «Structuration»
1. Defining structuration
2. The ways of structuration
The word ‘structure’ has often been used for the factors which divide people in society as opposed to relations which link them. Occupations, class, gender, age, place, can all structure the likelihood of people entering relations with each other. For any society these appear as regularities over time. Moreover, while they divide people, none the less the processes of division require the active engagement of people in their reproduction. ‘Structuration’ as a term has been promoted by Anthony Giddens to convey the sense of continuous construction, of change as well as of stability.
Recommended literature:
1. David Popenoe. Sociology, 1977
2.Richard T.Shaefer. Sociology, 1988
3.Jean Stockard. Sociology. Discovering society, 1991
4.Contemporary Society. An introduction to Social science. 6 edition. John A.Perry, Erna K.Perry, 1993
Lecture №11
Theme «Identity and Trust»
1. Defining identity
2. Trust as a category of Sociology
If we recount history as a grand narrative of peoples and their achievements, as Herodotus began it, then your place and my place in this story as individuals is infinitesimally small. Yet it appears to matter to other people where we belong in it. Most people we meet will try to place us in a country and having a nationality. This is a main aspect of what we refer to when we talk about ‘identity’.
For a sociologist the key fact is that it is other people who do the placing. They do it by finding a place for us in frames of reference which are widely shared, where outsiders and insiders regularly agree who belongs where at any one time. But belonging to a people, being from a country, is not straightforward because over time they move. Identity depends on your biography, the way you and others tell it and who you are with, and then it depends also on the grand narrative of peoples and countries.
Recommended literature:
1. David Popenoe. Sociology, 1977
2.Richard T.Shaefer. Sociology, 1988
3.Jean Stockard. Sociology. Discovering society, 1991
4.Contemporary Society. An introduction to Social science. 6 edition. John A.Perry, Erna K.Perry, 1993
Lecture №12
Theme «Social Institutions: from functions to practices»
Sociology makes its most direct contribution to public life in its analysis of social institutions. This is because institutions normally work with public knowledge and support, and in our time draw on such wide expertise. As we saw in our previous lectures, social institutions involve standardised practices. They are widespread activities following norms about how things ought to be done. Norms are rules which are shared among a number of people who make an effort to ensure they are observed, especially through sanctions exerted on each other, these varying from mild disapproval to death. When norms are flouted then sociologists talk of deviance, without conveying their personal approval or disapproval of either norms or deviant acts.
Institutions are observed across collectivities and associations. They are social in that they contribute to collective life and receive widespread support even if it is only a minority of individuals who derive the benefits. Contracts, lotteries, elections, mourning, holidays, taxation are examples of institutions from different spheres of life whose existence depends on their being recognised even by those who are bystanders, or by participants who do not benefit, as well as by those who do.
Recommended literature:
1. David Popenoe. Sociology, 1977
2.Richard T.Shaefer. Sociology, 1988
3.Jean Stockard. Sociology. Discovering society, 1991
4.Contemporary Society. An introduction to Social science. 6 edition. John A.Perry, Erna K.Perry, 1993
Lecture №13
Theme « Social organization of a work »
Work has always been the life-sphere where visionaries have thought it possible for social relations to develop beyond the control of the state. It is the modern counterweight to the nation-state for radical thinkers. This was true for the political economy of Adam Smith and the historical materialism of Karl Marx. Both believed the source of value was work. For Smith the exchange of products depended on the prior social division of labour. For Marx production depended on the social relations of capital and labour. Each minimised the role of the state, to be the watchdog in the first case and to be the instrument of class rule in the second. Both believed that in work society revealed its nature: as exchange for Smith, as co-operation for Marx.
For both work placed human beings in relation to nature, both their own and what was outside them. Any collective activity, whether in exchange or co-operation, therefore served to realise human nature. Political economy, later to be called economics, began as a modern theory of society distinct from both Christian and classical theories. It came to be known as the theory of civil society.
Recommended literature:
1. David Popenoe. Sociology, 1977
2.Richard T.Shaefer. Sociology, 1988
3.Jean Stockard. Sociology. Discovering society, 1991
4.Contemporary Society. An introduction to Social science. 6 edition. John A.Perry, Erna K.Perry, 1993
Lecture №14
In a famous definition of culture the nineteenth-century anthropologist E.B. Tylor proposed that culture is:
that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.
This doesn’t leave much which is not either mentioned or implied. It speaks of society and, since it talks of capabilities and habits acquired in it, presumably will also include politics, economics, religion, and so on.
And yet there is a special slant to this definition. We may note it refers to a ‘complex whole’, to what is ‘acquired in society’ and so seems to allow that not all is acquired in society. ‘Capabilities and habits’ is not quite as comprehensive as might appear at first sight either. We have often spoken of social space, position and status. They are occupied by people to be sure, but are not exactly capabilities, more facilities or resources. So society and culture are not the same.
Recommended literature:
1. David Popenoe. Sociology, 1977
2.Richard T.Shaefer. Sociology, 1988
3.Jean Stockard. Sociology. Discovering society, 1991
4.Contemporary Society. An introduction to Social science. 6 edition. John A.Perry, Erna K.Perry, 1993
Lecture №15
The future of capitalism
Capitalist society
The best way in the late 1990s to clarify what society will be like in an open future is to tackle the issue of capitalism. That hasn’t always been the case, but very often these days society’s future is treated as identical with the future of capitalism, sometimes even as capitalist society without end.
This ought to make us wary. In human history this idea is relatively new. Before the latter part of the nineteenth century it never occurred to anyone that there was such a thing as ‘capitalism’ or that it could mark a distinctive type of society. So the novelty of the idea should make us sit up. At the same time we need to recognise that all kinds of ‘new’ society have withered away, even as society in general has continued. On past experience we might then expect that society will outlive capitalism, or, at least, that a time will come when we think of capitalist society as belonging to the past, which is not quite the same thing.
Recommended literature:
1.Cartwright D., ed., Studies in Social Power ( Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1959).
2.Festinger L., Schachter S., and Back K., Social Pressures in Informal Groups ( New York: Harper, 1950).
3.Goffman E., The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life ( Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959).
4.Golombiewski R. T., The Small Group ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
5.Hare A. P., Borgatta E. F., and Bales R. F., eds., Small Groups: Studies in Social Interaction ( New York: Knopf, 1955).
6.Hare A. P., Handbook of Small Group Research ( New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1962).
7.Heider F., The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations ( New York: Wiley, 1958).
8.Hollander E. P., Leaders, Groups, and Influence ( New York: Oxford, 1964).
9.Homans G. C., The Human Group ( New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1950).
10.Homans G. C., Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms ( New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1961).
Practicals