Sociology For Dummies

Introduction 1 About This Book 2 Foolish Assumptions 4 Icons Used In This Book 5 Beyond the Book 6 Where To Go From Here 6 Part 1: Getting the Basic Basics 7 Chapter 1: Getting Your Head around Sociology 9 Focusing Your Sociological Lens 10 Defining sociology 10 Knowing the history of sociology 10 Doing sociology 11 The Nuts and Bolts of Society 12 Understanding culture 13 Microsociology 13 Understanding Differences Among People and Groups 14 Social stratification 14 Race and ethnicity 15 Sex and gender 15 Religion 16 Crime, deviance, and social control 16 How People Get Organized (Or At Least Try To) 17 Organizations and networks 17 Social movements and political sociology 17 Urban and rural sociology 18 Changes In Your Life, Changes In Your Society 18 The life course 19 Social change 19 Sociology For Dummies, for Dummies 20 Chapter 2: Knowing Why Sociology Matters 21 Figuring Out What Sociology is 22 Defining sociology 22 Studying society scientifically 22 Asking and answering sociological questions 25 Discovering Where Sociology is “Done” 27 Colleges and universities 27 Think tanks and research institutes 27 Nonprofit organizations 28 Government 29 Journalism and reporting 29 Business and consulting 30 Everyday life 31 Recognizing How Sociology Affects Your Life and Your World 31 Thinking about the social world in an objective, value-free way 32 Visualizing connections across times and places 33 Uncovering what really matters and what doesn’t 34 Informing social policy 35 Keeping a unique perspective for everyday problems 36 Chapter 3: Conflict and Cooperation: The History of Sociology 37 So Who Cares about History? 38 Thinking about Society before There Was Sociology 39 People are the same everywhere you go except when they aren’t 39 Pre-sociologists: People with ideas about society 40 Political and industrial revolution: Ready or not, here it comes 41 The Development of “Sociology” 43 Figuring out life with positivism 43 Common themes of early sociologists 43 Sociology: The most ambitious science 44 Sociology’s Power Trio 46 Karl Marx 47 Emile Durkheim 49 Max Weber 51 Sociology in the 20th Century 53 Sociology in America: W.E.B Du Bois and the Chicago School 53 Mass society: Are we, or are we not, sheep? 54 The Power Elite: Marx’s revenge 56 Sociology Today 58 Chapter 4: Understanding the Research Methods: You Can’t Put Society in a Test Tube 59 Performing Sociological Research 60 Asking your question 60 Checking the literature 62 Operationalizing your question and find your data 63 Analyzing your data 65 Step 5: Interpreting your results 65 Getting to Know the Research Methods 67 Getting quantitative data 68 Gathering qualitative data 72 Choosing hybrid methods 73 Preparing For Potential Pitfalls 75 Using inappropriate data 75 Getting overzealous 75 Overlooking relevant information 78 Misusing statistics 79 Making mistakes just plain oops! 80 Part 2: Seeing Society Like a Sociologist 83 Chapter 5: Getting Some Culture: How Socialization Works 85 Understanding What Culture is — and Isn’t 86 Defining “culture” 86 Breaking down structure 87 Does culture matter? 89 Studying Culture: Makin’ It and Takin’ It 91 Other angles on culture 91 The production and reception of culture 93 Culture, information, and the news 94 Paddling the “Mainstream” 95 Subculture 96 Microcultures 97 Socialization: Where You Connect in Culture 99 Nature vs nurture: Social psychology 100 You are who other people think you are 101 Culture Paradox: Pulling Us Together and Pushing Us Apart 103 Uniting through culture 103 Dividing because of culture 104 Chapter 6: Studying Sociology at Its Smallest: Microsociology 105 Grasping the Paradox of Society 106 Social facts: What your society says about you 106 Adaptation and frustration 109 Understanding Why People Make Rational — and Irrational — Choices 110 Making rational choices — or, at least, trying 111 Making bad decisions (we’ve all been there) 114 Getting How Symbolic Interactionism Works 119 Play ball! The rules of the game 120 Stop frontin’: Switching roles, changing frames 122 Part 3: Equality and Inequality in Our Diverse World 125 Chapter 7: Social Stratification: We’re All Equal, But Some of Us Are More Equal Than Others 127 Excavating the Social Strata 128 Understanding social inequality 128 Grappling with the perennial debate: Is inequality necessary? 131 Recognizing the Many Means of Inequality 134 Income and wealth: Making money (or inheriting it) 134 Occupation: Landing in the labor force 135 Innate ability: Capitalizing on your skills 137 Motivation: Getting out of bed in the morning 137 Social connections: Knowing the right people 139 Credentials: Carrying the right cards 140 Education: Learning the ropes 141 Specialized knowledge: Knowing what others don’t 142 Bias and discrimination: Being limited by others’ lack of imagination 143 Considering Global Inequality 144 Chapter 8: Race and Ethnicity: What Others See, Who We Are 147 Race: Real in Its Consequences 148 Knowing the difference between race and ethnicity 148 Grasping the complexities of life in color 152 Debunking the myth of the “model minority” 154 Putting whiteness in the spotlight 155 Considering Individuals and Institutions 158 Racial discrimination: Conscious and unconscious 158 How racism becomes institutionalized 160 Understanding Immigration in a Changing World 161 Crossing borders, keeping ties 162 Immigration today 163 Chapter 9: Sex and Gender: Beyond the Binary 167 Biology is Not Destiny 168 Distinguishing between sex and gender 168 Understanding the sex and gender spectrum 169 Changing Ideas of Femininity and Masculinity 171 The history of feminism 172 Rethinking masculinity 175 #MeToo and a new reckoning 177 Intersectionality: Race and Gender 180 Chapter 10: Getting Religion: Faith in the Modern World 183 Understanding Religion in History 184 Karl Marx on religion: Opium of the people 184 Émile Durkheim on religion: Progressing from specific rules to common principles 185 Weber on religion: A switchman on the tracks 188 Religion in Theory and in Practice 189 Religious ideas, ideology, and values 189 The important role of religious organizations 191 Faith and Freedom in the World Today 194 Shopping for God 194 Belief, action, and everything in between 197 Chapter 11: Crime and Deviance: Who’s in Control? 201 Knowing the Difference between Deviance and Crime 202 Understanding Why People Commit Crimes 204 Theory one: Are criminals bad people? 204 Theory two: Are criminals driven to it? 205 Accepting crime as normal 206 Breaking Down the Social Construction of Crime 208 Writing laws that make sense to a society 208 Enforcing the law 210 Looking Beyond Crime and Punishment 212 Rethinking policing 213 Examining the effects of America’s high incarceration rate 216 Considering whether punishment works 216 Tallying the high costs of incarceration 217 Part 4: All Together Now: The Ins and Outs of Social Organization 219 Chapter 12: Knowing What Works (and Doesn’t): Sociology and Organizations 221 Recognizing the Corporate Conundrum 222 Understanding Weber’s Big Idea About Organizations 224 Getting That People Are More Than Cogs in a Machine 226 Rational systems: Bureaucracy at its purest 227 Natural systems: We’re only human 229 Open systems: The whole wide world of work 231 Seeing Society as a Network 234 Connecting individuals to their society 234 The strength of weak ties 235 Gathering insights from network analysis 237 Exploring the New World of Work 238 Chapter 13: Getting into It: Political Sociology 241 Government: Governing and Being Governed 242 Understanding government as a social institution 242 Knowing what causes political revolution 244 Sharing (or Not Sharing) Power in Society 247 Conflict models: Everyone for themselves 247 Pluralist models: Fair is fair 250 Social Movements: Working for Change 253 Getting off the ground 253 Mobilizing supporters 256 Understanding why social movements succeed — or fizzle 259 Going Viral: How Social Media Transforms Social Movements 261 Chapter 14: Recognizing Why Density and Demographics Matter 263 Studying Sociology in the City 264 Feeling lonely in a crowd: The paradox of social life 264 Observing street corner society 267 Changing Neighborhoods Through History 269 Recognizing the relevance of neighborhoods 269 Understanding how and why neighborhoods change 271 Studying the rise of the suburbs 274 The upper class, the lower class, and the underclass 276 Considering City and Country 279 Who are cities for? 279 Small towns, high hopes 281 Part 5: Sociology and Your Life 285 Chapter 15: Exploring Family and the Life Course as Social Constructs 287 The Social Construction of Age 288 The “invention” of childhood 288 The new senior citizens — and the new young adults 290 Running the Course of Life 292 Demographics and life transitions 292 The changing role of education 294 Taking Care: Health Care and Society 296 Deciding what counts as “healthy” 296 Organizing and distributing health care 299 Families Past and Present 301 The way we never were 301 The family today 304 Chapter 16: Understanding Social Change 307 Understanding How and Why Societies Change 308 Marx: If it’s not one revolution, it’s another 308 Durkheim: Increasing diversity 310 Weber: Into the iron cage 312 Forecasting the Future of Society 314 Globalization: Does the future hold cooperation or conflict? 314 Digital communication: Protecting privacy and freedom in an always-online era 316 Climate change: The unequal effects of a warming world 318 Exploring Sociology of the Future! 320 Social science will be more important than ever 320 Too much information? A good problem to have if you’re a sociologist 322 Will sociology continue to exist? 323 Part 6: The Part of Tens 325 Chapter 17: Ten Sociology Books That Don’t Feel Like Homework 327 W.E.B Du Bois: The Souls of Black Folk (1903) 328 Erving Goffman: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) 328 Randall Collins: Sociological Insight (1982) 329 Arlie Hochschild: The Second Shift (1989) 329 Patricia Hill Collins: Black Feminist Thought (1990) 330 Evelyn Nakano Glenn (editor): Shades of Difference (2009) 330 Annette Lareau: Unequal Childhoods (2003) 331 Lorena Garcia: Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself: Latina Girls and Sexual Identity (2012) 332 Matthew Desmond: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016) 332 Suk-Young Kim: K-pop Live (2018) 333 Chapter 18: Ten Ways to Use Sociological Insight in Everyday Life 335 Thinking Critically About Claims That “Research Proves” One Thing or Another 336 Being Aware of Unprovable Assertions About Society 336 Understanding Barriers to Effective Communication 337 Knowing the Difference Between the Identity You Choose and the Identities Others Choose For You 338 Understanding Art: If It Seems Confusing, That’s Exactly the Point 339 Being Smart About Relationship-Building 340 Staying Safer in a Pandemic 341 Learning How to Mobilize a Social Movement 342 Running Your Company Effectively 342 Thinking Critically About What You Read and Hear 343 Chapter 19: Ten Myths About Society Busted by Sociology 345 With Hard Work and Determination, Anyone Can Get What They Deserve 346 Our Actions Reflect Our Values 347 We’re Being Brainwashed by the Media 348 Understanding Society is Just a Matter of “Common Sense” 348 Race Doesn’t Matter Any More 349 Immigration Equals Invasion 350 Bureaucracy is Dehumanizing 351 People Who Make Bad Choices Are Just Getting the Wrong Messages 351 Society Prevents Us From Being Our “True Selves” 352 There is Such a Thing as a Perfect Society 353 Index 355