What Sociology Offers

A sociological look at the world provides a number of unique benefits and perspectives.

Sociology provides an understanding of social issues and patterns of It helps us identify the social rules that govern our lives. Sociologists study how these rules are created, maintained, changed, passed between generations, and shared between people living in various parts of the world. They also study what happens when these rules are broken.

Sociology helps us understand the workings of the social systems within which we live our lives. Sociologists put our interactions with others into a social context. This means they look not only at behaviors and relationships, but also how the larger world we live in influences these things. Social structures (the way society is organized around the regulated ways people interrelate and organize social life) and social processes (the way society operates) are at work shaping our lives in ways that often go unrecognized. Because of this perspective, sociologists will often say that, as individuals, we are social products.

Even though we recognize their existence, these structures and processes may “appear to people in the course of daily life as through a mysterious fog” (Lemert 2001, 6). Sociologists strive to bring these things out of the fog, to reveal and study them, and to examine and explain their interrelationships and their impacts on individuals and groups. By describing and explaining these social arrangements and how they shape our lives, sociologists help us to make sense of the world around us and better understand ourselves.

Sociology helps us understand why we perceive the world the way we do. We are inundated with messages in a variety of forms about how we, and the world around us, both are and should be. These messages come in forms as diverse as guidance from parents and teachers, laws handed down by religious and political entities, and advertisements ranging from pitches for athletic shoes to feeding hungry children. Sociology helps us examine the types of messages we are constantly receiving, their source, how and why they influence us, and our own roles in producing, perpetuating, and changing them.

Sociology helps us identify what we have in common within, and between, cultures and societies. Sociologists know that, although people in different parts of the city, country, or world dress differently, speak differently, and have many different beliefs and customs, many of the same types of social forces are at work shaping their lives. This is an especially important perspective in a world where media headlines are often accused of focusing on divisive issues.

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What Sociology Can Offer

Sociology helps us understand why and how society changes. Obviously, the social world is constantly changing. This change has been a major interest to sociologists from the beginning of the discipline. However, many sociologists believe that sociology should not stop with only explaining society and how and why the world changes. They argue that sociologists also have an obligation to act, using their unique skills and perspectives to work to improve the world. Sociology, they argue, is a “field of inquiry simultaneously concerned with understanding, explaining, criticizing, and improving (italics mine) the human condition” (Restivo 1991, 4). Armed with a sociological perspective, we can more effectively take action if we don’t like what is happening. We can better participate in shaping the future for ourselves and for others.

Sociology provides us theoretical perspectives within which to frame these understandings and research methods that allow us to study social life scientifically. Sociology is a social science. That means sociologists work to understand society in very structured, disciplined ways. Like scientists who study the physical world, sociologists follow scientific guidelines that incorporate an assortment of theories and methods that provide for accuracy in gathering, processing, and making sense of information.

In the case of sociology, theories focus on how social relationships operate. They provide a way of explaining these relationships. Scientific methods provide ways of generating accurate research results.

Sociology is not just common sense. Results of sociological research may be unexpected. They often show that things are not always, or even usually, what they initially seem. “People who like to avoid shocking discoveries, who prefer to believe that society is just what they were taught in Sunday School, who like the safety of the rules and maxims of what Alfred Schultz... has called ‘the world-taken-for-granted’, should stay away from sociology” (Berger 1963, 24).

This challenge means that sociological findings are often at odds with so-called common sense (здравый смысл), or those things that “everybody knows.” What we think of as common sense, or something that everybody knows, is actually based on our own experiences and the ideas and stereotypes we hold. This gives us a very limited view of how the larger world actually is. Taking a sociological perspective requires that we look beyond our individual experiences to better understand everyday life (Straus 1994). It allows us to look for the social forces that impact our lives and form those experiences. Once we have a solid understanding of these forces, we can better address them.

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Sociology Today

Although sociology emerged in Comte's vision of sociology eventually subsuming all other areas of scientific inquiry, sociology did not replace the other sciences. Instead, sociology has developed a particular niche in the study of social life.

In the past, sociological research focused on the organization of complex, industrial societies and their influence on individuals. Today, sociologists study a broad range of topics. For instance, some sociologists research macro-structures that organize society, such as race or ethnicity, social class, gender roles, and institutions such as the family. Other sociologists study social processes that represent the breakdown of macro-structures, including deviance, crime, and divorce. Additionally, some sociologists study micro-processes such as interpersonal interactions and the socialization of individuals. It should also be noted that recent sociologists, taking cues from anthropologists, have realized the Western emphasis of the discipline. In response, many sociology departments around the world are now encouraging multi-cultural research.

Changes in our social world have required sociologists to focus attention in new ways. Among these changes are the growth of internationally connected systems and the technologies that increasingly allow our interactions to be conducted in ways other than face to face (e.g., the Internet and e-mail). Although more than 6 billion people now live on Earth, many sociologists and others have argued that the advent of jet airliners, telephones, the Internet, and around-the-clock news services beamed by satellite around the world have made the world a smaller place, at least in a social sense.

They often argue that a process of globalization is at work. With globalization, geographical constraints on social and cultural patterns are diminishing, and people are becoming increasingly aware of those changes (M. Waters 2001). Globalization is demonstrated through events as diverse as the growing popularity of soccer in the United States—a sport largely imported from outside—the demand for American movies, blue jeans, and athletic shoes around the world, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and even the attacks of September 11, 2001. Other terms that refer to forms of globalization include the world-economy, world-market, and world-system. These terms are often used to refer to the economic aspects of globalization. Sociologists have been studying these networks at least since the early 1970s (Chase- Dunn and Grimes 1995, 387–88).

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