Sociology Now, Census Update

Sociology as a Way of Seeing

If you’re like most people, you know that sociology is “the study of society.” But we

don’t typically know much more than that. What is society? And how do we study it?

Unlike other social sciences, the field of sociology is not immediately evident from

just its name, like economics or political science. Nor are there many TV or movie

characters who are sociologists, as there are psychologists (like Dr. Phil), psychiatrists

(Frasier), or anthropologists (Indiana Jones or Lara Croft). In the popular movie

Animal House(1979), the protagonist encounters two sorority girls at a party. The

writers wanted to portray these girls as gum-chomping, air-headed idiots. So what

are they majoring in? Right—sociology.

Those who don’t know about sociology also tend to dismiss it as not worth know-

ing about. “Sociology only makes a science out of common sense,” was the way it was

presented to us when we were students. But, as you will soon see, sociology is far more

than that. In fact, what common sense tells us is true often turns out not to be. Soci-

ology may be the field that overturns what we already “know” because of “common

sense.” It helps us comprehend our world—and understand our place in it.

Sociology sets for itself the task of trying to answer certain basic questions about

our lives: the nature of identity, the relationship of the individual to society, our rela-

tionships with others. Sociologists try to explain the paradoxes that we daily observe

in the world around us: for example, how globalization brings us closer and closer,

and, at the same time, seems to drive us further and further apart into smaller reli-

gious, tribal, or ethnic enclaves. Or we observe that society is divided into different

unequal groups based on class, race, ethnicity, and gender, and yet, at the same time,

everyone’s values are remarkably similar.

Sociology is both a field of study and a way of seeing. As a field, perhaps the pithi-

est definition was written 50 years ago, by C. Wright Mills (1959), a professor at

4 CHAPTER 1WHAT IS SOCIOLOGY?

coming apart at the seams. If every single individual is simply doing what is best for him-

or herself, why is there any social order at all? Why are we not constantly at war with each

other? And how is order maintained? How is society possible in the first place?

On the other hand, why does it often seem that society is falling apart? Why do so many

people in society disobey its laws, disagree about its values, and differ about the political

and social goals of the society? Why is there so much crime and delinquency? Why is there

so much inequality? Why does society keep changing?

These sorts of giant questions are what sociology sets out to answer. Sociologists ana-

lyze the ways that institutions like family, marketplace, military, and government serve to

sustain social order and how problems like inequality, poverty, and racial or gender discrimi-

nation make it feel as if it is falling apart. And it turns out that most of the answers aren’t

so obvious or commonsensical after all.