[MUSIC] Hi. In this lecture I'm going to be introducing the discipline of sociology. Sociology is the study of society and the social entities that interact together to form a society. By social entities, I mean units like families, firms, religions, organizations, entire societies, or ethnic groups. We think of these as having distinct identities of their own and we seek to uncover the rules by which these entities operate and persist. So the assumption is that they do have rules of their own, which are general and which can be discovered. So to give an example of the sort of discovery, in which we seek to engage, within the area of the sociology of medicine, people study the healthcare and medicine, there's a lot of interest in understanding how people who study medicine are actually turned into doctors by the institutions that train them. We know that medical schools give medical students a lot of knowledge, a lot of scientific knowledge. They also give them experience in practice, in terms of dealing with patients. But sociologists who have studied medical schools, the profession of medicine, have also looked at how medical schools and the broader profession of medicine shape the behavior of new students and inculcate them with the norms and values and beliefs of the profession. So that by the end of that process, they have gone through a great deal of informal training that came about as a result of their interactions with these institutions like the medical school that turn them into doctors in the way that they behave, the way that they interact with each other, and the way that they think of themselves. The discipline of sociology is highly diverse in terms of topic, theory, and method. And I'm going to introduce some of the important early figures in sociology to you, to give you some example of just how diverse the field is and has been. So one of the first sociologists was Auguste Comte in France. And he was actually the one how invented the term sociology to refer to the systematic study of society. Inspired by the Enlightenment and inspired by the idea of the scientific method, he sought to turn the study of society into a science. Another important early figure, a name that's familiar to many of you, is Karl Marx. He sought to explain political and social change and indeed, he proposed laws of history based on what he thought was a process of conflict generated by economic modes of production. His ideas remained influential today, especially as we consider the rising inequality in many parts of the world and the increasing conflict across economic lines. Another important early figure was Emile Durkheim. He studied suicide in one of his classic studies and he sought to link patterns of suicide to broader social factors. Overall, he was interested in trying to understand how modern society could hold itself together in the face of the challenges associated with modernization and industrialization, both of which contributed to breaking down earlier forms of social organization. Another important early figure, Max Weber studied differences between societies. And in particular in one of his most famous works, sought to explain differences in economic development of Northern and Southern Europe in terms of their differences in social and cultural organization. He attributed the more rapid economic development of Northern Europe versus Southern Europe to the prevalence of Protestantism in Northern Europe versus the prevalence of Catholicism in Southern Europe. He believed that these different religions, by shaping people's beliefs and their behaviors, influence people's attitudes towards work or education, all of which ended influencing economic development. Now as time went on, sociology spread around the world. And sociology in China developed as a field in the early 20th century. This is partly because promising young Chinese social scientists went abroad for study. In other cases, famous social scientists from the United States came to visit Chinese universities, where they interacted with and taught some of the most promising young students of time. One of the best known Chinese sociologists was Fei Xiaotong. He conducted early and very influential studies of social relationships in the Chinese context and focusing in particular on rural society. So he took many of the themes, the concerns, of Western sociology and begin to adapt them and adjust them for the Chinese context. Another major figure early in the 20th century was CK Yang, who conducted early pioneering studies of family and village life and religion in Chinese society. I'll mention a few other major figures. Li Ching-han was one of China's first survey researchers. Chen Da was one of China's first demographers and Wu Ching-chao was one of China's first urban sociologists. Sociology as a field has developed over time and I'll now try to summarize that trajectory of development. Essentially, and you might have gotten the sense from the examples of the early figures that I mentioned earlier, people like Marx and Weber, early sociology focus heavily on explaining or understanding societies in their entirety. So Weber contrasted Northern and Southern Europe. Marx talked about entire countries and how modes of economic production within countries generated conflict that produced social and political change. Later on, people began to think about how these broader social contexts influenced individual behavior. And people looked at how social context, society, shaped norms and behavior of individuals. As time went on over the course of the 20th century, sociologist began to move from the focused in societies in their entirety to look at the constituent parts, the social entities that I talked about earlier, firms, families, religious groups that constituted society. And sociologist began to try to understand their internal dynamics, their rules, the mechanisms by which they formed and persisted and interacted with each other. Essentially, over time, sociology became steadily more micro, focusing on smaller and smaller units of organization, individuals, firms, and families and then, trying to understand how their interactions shaped and formed society as we understand it. Now, I'd like to introduce some of the major sub-disciplines that make up the field of sociology. I can't be exhaustive, in terms of introducing the various sub-disciplines to you because there are so many. But I'll at least try to introduce some of the most important ones. One of the oldest is historical and comparative sociology. In some ways, this was sociology for much of the 18th and 19th centuries, when you think about people like Marx and then later Weber. This was the effort to understand societies and differences between societies, in terms of their social and political development. So for example, Weber, through comparative studies, tried to understand the differing trajectories of economic growth in Northern and Southern Europe as a function of difference in religion, in particular, Protestantism in the North and Catholicism in the South. Similarly, Marx was a historical sociologist. He sought, through the examination of history, to understand the laws of history and the ways in which conflicts associated with or produced by economic modes of production led to social and political change. Another very important area within sociology is the study of stratification and inequality. Basically, how does inequality arise within a society and how does it persist? Why do patterns of inequality differ across societies or across time within the same society? A classic example of a typical study in stratification in inequality is understanding how family background, the characteristics of parents, and then also ascribed characteristics like race and so forth, combine to shape people's economic and social outcomes in life. They combine to shape choice of occupation, social class, income, wages and so forth. Another very important area or set of areas within sociology is race, ethnicity, and gender. All societies are cleaved along lines of race and ethnicity and gender. This is especially apparent in the modern world, where we see many societies where there are pronounced divisions and conflicts based along the lines of race or ethnicity. And there are certainly pronounced differences in opportunities and in outcomes according to gender. So broadly speaking, race, ethnicity, and gender, this area within sociology tries to understand how boundaries along these dimensions form, how they are preserved, and what the implications of these distinctions are for the people in these different groups. Another big area within sociology is social movements. That is the study of and the examination of efforts to bring about social and political change. So there have been many classic studies of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, gay rights movement, the movement for women's rights, labor rights and so forth. Broadly speaking, there's a lot of work here to try to understand why some movements are immediately successful, why some, perhaps, take much longer to have an effect. This is always a classic area within sociology and an area where there's even now a lot of activity. Another big area within sociology is economic sociology. This is basically the effort to understand the social underpinnings of the economic institutions that make up our economy. While economists assume that perhaps the market is governed by an invisible hand that acts autonomously without feeling to drive the economy, in fact, we recognize that all of the institutions, the different units that interact to shape the economy are made up of people. People have norms, beliefs, knowledge, and values which affect their actual behavior. So an example of study of economics sociology is the study for example of stock market traders and how their interactions with each other, their absorption into the culture of stock market traders, shapes their norms, their values, and their beliefs in ways that affected the decisions that they make out on the trading floor. And a lot of this work shows that, in fact, people when they're out engaging in the economic world, they are still social beings shaped by their background, shaped by their context. Finally, there is organizational sociology. This is the study of organizations, firms, government agencies, large entities with lots of people that have rules according to which they operate. That they make decisions about promoting certain kinds of people or releasing certain kinds of people. They have different ways of making decisions. Organizational sociology seeks to understand these processes. As you might have imagine it's been very influential in the study of business, because of the relevance to understanding the behavior of firms and of companies. Again, sociology is a very diverse field. There are many more sub-disciplines. And if you pursue post-graduate training in sociology, you'll certainly not only learn about these major sub-disciplines, but many of the other sub-disciplines as well.
