Introducing Sociology: A Graphic Guide (Graphic Guides)

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Gender norms and stereotypes, a visual representation – students might like to consider the extent to which these stereotypes still exist today and, if so, the extent to which people conform to them. As Eyes Wide Shut closes, this final exchange between Bill and Alice suggests that all the dark adventures they’ve confessed (“whether they were real or only dreams”), and the crimes in which they may be complicit, have occasioned nothing more than another kinky turn-on, no more enlightening than the flirtations at the ball that inflamed their lovemaking when they got home. For all their talk about being “awake” now, their eyes are still wide shut. Reconciled, they plan to forget all this unpleasantness soon in the blissful oblivion of orgasm. (Try keeping your eyes open during orgasm.) Maybe, in the end, it is a film about sexual obsession after all: about sex as an all-consuming distraction from the ugly realities of wealth and power all around us; about audiences who strain their eyes for a glimpse of skin while the skull is staring them in the face. Maybe the customer is always wrong. Schnitzler, Arthur. Dream Story. Translated from the German by Otto P. Schinnerer. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1995, p. 128. The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty, and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all which is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind (Marx and Engels 1848).

The Effect of Poverty on Life Chances – this post outlines the ways in which poverty restricts life-chances, using a range of official statistics. For example, poor kids are twice as likely to fail their GCSEs as non-poor kids. There is a moment in Eyes Wide Shut, as Bill Harford is lying to his wife over a cellphone from a prostitute's apartment, when we see a textbook in the foreground titled Introducing Sociology. The book's title is a dry caption to the action onscreen (like the slogan PEACE IS OUR PROFESSION looming over the battle at Burpelson Air Force Base in Dr. Strangelove), telling us that prostitution is the basic, defining transaction of our society. It is also, more importantly, a key to understanding the film, suggesting that we ought to interpret it sociologically--not as most reviewers insisted on doing, psychologically. An introduction to social action theory – social action theorists try to understand human action by looking at how people interpret their world and the act ions of others. This post offers a brief introduction to some of the key ideas associated with this perspective including the importance of self-concept and the basics of labelling theory. Sociology is a fascinating field that explores human society in a holistic way. It seeks to understand the social relationships, patterns, and structures that shape our lives, our communities, and the world around us. At its core, sociology is the scientific study of society, its institutions, and its functioning. Understand the similarities and differences between structural functionalism, critical sociology, and symbolic interactionismAn Introduction to Sociological Perspectives – introducing the difference between structural and action perspectives, conflict and consensus perspectives and modern and postmodern perspectives on society. It was a testament to her abilities that after she became impoverished at the age of 24 with the death of her father, brother, and fiancé, she was able to earn her own income as the first woman journalist in Britain to write under her own name. From the age of 12, she suffered from severe hearing loss and was obliged to use a large ear trumpet to converse. She impressed a wide audience with a series of articles on political economy in 1832. In 1834 she left England to engage in two years of study of the new republic of the United States and its emerging institutions: prisons, insane asylums, factories, farms, Southern plantations, universities, hospitals, and churches. On the basis of extensive research, interviews and observations, she published Society in America and worked with abolitionists on the social reform of slavery (Zeitlin 1997). She also worked for social reform in the situation of women: the right to vote, have an education, pursue an occupation, and enjoy the same legal rights as men. Together with Florence Nightingale, she worked on the development of public health care, which led to early formulations of the welfare system in Britain (McDonald 1998). The problem for sociologists is that these concepts of the individual and society and the relationship between them are thought of in terms established by a very common moral framework in modern democratic societies, namely that of individual responsibility and individual choice. Often in this framework, any suggestion that an individual’s behaviour needs to be understood in terms of that person’s social context is dismissed as “letting the individual off” of taking personal responsibility for their actions.

Pollan argues that obesity is in part a product of the increasingly sedentary and stressful lifestyle of modern, capitalist society, but more importantly it is a product of the industrialization of the food chain, which since the 1970s has produced increasingly cheap and abundant food with significantly more calories due to processing. Additives like corn syrup, which are much cheaper to produce than natural sugars, led to the trend of super-sized fast foods and soft drinks in the 1980s. As Pollan argues, trying to find a processed food in the supermarket without a cheap, calorie-rich, corn-based additive is a challenge. The sociological imagination in this example is the capacity to see the private troubles and attitudes associated with being overweight as an issue of how the industrialization of the food chain has altered the human/environment relationship, in particular with respect to the types of food we eat and the way we eat them.

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We all belong to many groups; you’re a member of your sociology class, and you're a member of your family; you may belong to a political party, sports team, or the crowd watching a sporting event; you’re a citizen of your country, and you're a part of a generation. You may have a somewhat different role in each group and feel differently in each. Though sociology draws on the Western tradition of rational inquiry established by the ancient Greeks, it is specifically the offspring of 18th- and 19th-century philosophy and has been viewed, along with economics and political science, as a reaction against speculative philosophy and folklore. Consequently, sociology separated from moral philosophy to become a specialized discipline. While he is not credited with the founding of the discipline of sociology, French philosopher Auguste Comte is recognized for having coined the term sociology. Durkheim, another foundational figure in sociology, defined sociology as “the study of social facts,” which he defined as “ways of acting, thinking, and feeling, external to the individual, and endowed with a power of coercion, by reason of which they control him.” How Equal are Men and Women in the UK? A few statistical ‘facts’ about gender inequality in the UK – limited to inequalities between men and women. Race and Ethnicity

Things changed when they moved to the small town for her partner’s job. For the first time, Ashley found herself experiencing direct discrimination because of her sexual orientation. Some of it was particularly hurtful. Landlords would not rent to them. Ashley, who is a highly trained professional, had a great deal of difficulty finding a new job. All sociologists are interested in the experiences of individuals and how those experiences are shaped by interactions with social groups and society. To a sociologist, the personal decisions an individual makes do not exist in a vacuum. Cultural patterns, social forces and influences put pressure on people to select one choice over another. Sociologists try to identify these general patterns by examining the behavior of large groups of people living in the same society and experiencing the same societal pressures. The field of social anthropology has been historically quite close to sociology. Until about the first quarter of the 20th century, the two subjects were usually combined in one department (especially in Britain), differentiated mainly by anthropology’s emphasis on the sociology of preliterate peoples. Recently, however, this distinction has faded, as social anthropologists have turned their interests toward the study of modern culture. Being beautiful is Alice’s job, as much as it is the ex-beauty queen/call girl Mandy’s or the hooker Domino’s. During the quotidian-life-of-the-Harfordsmontage in which her husband examines patients at the office, we only see Alice tending to her toilette: brushing her daughter’s hair, regally hooking on a brassiere, applying deodorant in front of the bathroom mirror. Hers is the daytime regimen of a courtesan (or an actress), devoted to the rigorous maintenance of her looks. She’s associated, more than any other character, with mirrors; we see her giving herself a critical once-over before leaving for the party, and look of frank self-assessment in the medicine cabinet when she decides to get stoned. Her expression in the mirror as she watches her husband making love to her (the film’s iconic image) begins as bemusement, giving way to fondness and arousal, but in the last seconds before the fade-out it becomes something more ambiguous, distracted and self-conscious; this is her moment of clearest self-recognition, an uncomfortable glimpse of what she really is.The term culture refers to the group’s shared practices, values, and beliefs. Culture encompasses a group’s way of life, from routine, everyday interactions to the most important parts of group members’ lives. It includes everything produced by a society, including all the social rules. According to Max Weber, one of the founding figures of sociology, “Sociology is a science concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences.” An introduction to culture, socialisation and social norms – these three key concepts form the basis for sociology – introducing the basic sociological idea that behaviour is learnt through culture, rather than determined by biology.