Overview of These Notes

1. Overview of These Notes • What is sociology and the sociological imagination • A Social Riddle • Why do Western Societies dominate other Societies throughout the World?

2. Chapter One: The Sociological Perspective and Research Process • Sociology is the systematic study of human society and social interaction • Why Study Sociology? • Sociology helps us see connections between our lives and the larger recurring patterns of the society and world • Sociology often reveals limitations of myths associated with commonsense knowledge that guides ordinary conduct in everyday life

3. Chapter One: The Sociological Perspective and Research Process • Society is a large grouping that shares the same territory and is subject to the same political authority dominant cultural expectations

4. C. Wright Mills “The Promise” Published in 1959 1916-1962

5. Mills was Considered a Radical • His Personal Behavior • His Academic Work

6. What is the Sociological Imagination? The intersection of Biography and History • Biography • Experiences and Attributes • History • Society in its Historical Context

7. What is the Sociological Imagination? Three Questions Relevant to the Sociological Imagination • How are activities patterned in a society? • Where does this society stand in human history? • What varieties of people are produced in this society?

8. What is the Sociological Imagination? Personal Troubles and Public Issues • Troubles are private matters limited to the aspects of daily life of which people are directly aware • Public Issues are forces outside of the control of most people • Business cycles • National policy • Values and religious traditions

9. Mills was fascinated by the process in which “personal troubles” became recognized as “public issues.” • He wondered how do people define their personal conditions • Realization of impersonal forces • Losing the feeling of inadequacy? • False Consciousness • Mills thought that this process was important for societies in generating social change

10. The Sociological Imagination • The distinction between personal troubles (biography) and public issues (history) • Developing our own sociological imagination means we have to account for perspectives of people from diverse backgrounds • The world’s high income countries have developed industrialized and advanced economies – low income countries are still agrarian • We have to think about other countries because our future is intertwined with other nations

16. Jared Diamond “The Fate of Human Societies”

22. Guns, Germs, and Steel • Western Societies become dominate because • They have more natural materials to work with in the domestication of wild grains • The latitude of Western Societies means domesticated grains and animals can easily be transferred over large areas • Domestication of animals leads to human exposure to disease and through natural selection, disease resistance • Western Societies explore and colonize other societies because of technology advances – due to earlier starts with agriculture and related developments • Non-Western Societies are decimated by diseases the people in Western Societies carry, but have developed resistance to over hundreds of years.