The practical skeptic core concepts in sociology 5th edition

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THE PRACTICAL SKEPTIC CORE CONCEPTS IN SOCIOLOGY

Sixth Edit ion

Lisa J. McIntyre Washington State University

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THE PRACTICAL SKEPTIC: CORE CONCEPTS IN SOCIOLOGY, SIXTH EDITION

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McIntyre, Lisa J. The practical skeptic : core concepts in sociology / Lisa J. McIntyre, Washington State University. — Sixth edition. pages cm ISBN 978-0-07-802687-4 (alk. paper) 1. Sociology. I. Title. HM586.M55 2014 301—dc23 2013008264

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www.mhhe.com

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CONTENTS

Preface x

Introduction 1

So, What Is Sociology? 2 The Value of Sociology to Students 3 Tips for Studying Sociology—and an Invitation 4

Chapter 1 Responding to Chaos: A Brief History of Sociology 5

Inquiries into the Physical World 6 Technology, Urbanization, and Social Upheaval 10 The Origins of Modern Sociology in France: Émile Durkheim 13 E xcerpt: É mile D urkheim, From Suicide (1897) and The Rules of the Sociological Method (1904) 14 The Origins of Modern Sociology in Germany: Ferdinand Tönnies, Max Weber, and Karl Marx 16 E xcerpt: F erdinand T önnies, From Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (1887) 17 Karl Marx 20 The Origins of Modern Sociology in England: Herbert Spencer 22 Sociology in the United States 23

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B ox: One Small Step for Sociology 25 The Place of Sociology in Modern Society 26 Chapter Review 26 Stop & Review: Answers and Discussion 27

Chapter 2 The Sociological Eye 29

The Focus on the Social 29 B ox: Agency and Structure 34 Skepticism 35 B ox: Nail Down That Distinction Between Manifest and Latent Functions! 37 Chapter Review 38 Stop & Review: Answers and Discussion 39

Chapter 3 Science and Fuzzy Objects: Specialization in Sociology 40

Dividing Up the Task 42 Topic Area or Subject Matter 43 Theoretical Perspectives (Paradigms): Functionalist, Conflict, and Symbolic Interactionist 43

The Functionalist Paradigm 43 The Conflict Paradigm 44 The Symbolic Interactionist Paradigm 44

Which Paradigm Is Correct? 45 Levels of Analysis: Microsociology and Macrosociology 46 Chapter Review 47 Stop & Review: Answers and Discussion 48

Chapter 4 Who’s Afraid of Sociology? 49

The Empirical World and Inconvenient Facts 50 Ethnocentrism 52 Avoiding Ethnocentrism Can Be Difficult 54 Cultural Relativism 56 Chapter Review 57 Stop & Review: Answers and Discussion 57

Chapter 5 The Vocabulary of Science 58

Concepts and Constructs 58 Variables 59

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Hypotheses 61 Kinds of Variables: Independent Versus Dependent 63 Kinds of Relationships: Directionality 65 Operational Definitions 66 Tables and Figures 68

A Note on Common Statistics 72

Correlation Versus Causation 74 Chapter Review 75 Stop & Review: Answers and Discussion 76

Chapter 6 Doing Social Research 81

Two Traditions: Quantitative and Qualitative Research 81 First Things First: The Lit Review 82 The Survey 84

Types of Survey Questions 85

B ox: Six Guidelines for Crafting Survey Questions 87

The Art of Asking Questions 88

Observation 88 Unobtrusive (Nonreactive) Research 90

Artifacts 90 Use of Existing Statistics 91 Content Analysis 91

The Importance of Triangulation 92 Box: Ethnography 93 Sampling 96 B ox: Ethics and Social Research 97 Chapter Review 98 Stop & Review: Answers and Discussion 99

Chapter 7 Culture 101

Material and Nonmaterial Culture 102 Nonmaterial Culture 102 Symbols 102 Language 103 Norms 104 Types of Norms 105 Sanctions 105

B ox: The Power of Informal Sanctions 106 Values 107

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B ox: What Do Americans Value? 107 B ox: Ideology 108 B ox: Ponder 109 B ox: Statements of Belief 109

Ideas and Beliefs 109

How It Adds Up 109 Culture as a Product of Action 110 Culture as a Conditioning Element of Further Action 111 B ox: Problems Identified and Resolved in All Known Cultures 112 B ox: Varieties of Cultural Wisdom 112 Social Institutions 113 Social Change: Cultural Diffusion and Leveling 114 Subcultures and Countercultures 114 Idiocultures 116 Chapter Review 118 Stop & Review: Answers and Discussion 119

Chapter 8 Social Structure 121

Statuses 121 Roles 123

Tricky Situation 1: Role Strain 124 Tricky Situation 2: Status Inconsistency 124 Tricky Situation 3: Role Conflict 125

Master Status 126 Groups 127

Primary and Secondary Groups 128 Formal Organizations and Bureaucracies 130 Ideal-Type Bureaucracies 130

Chapter Review 133 Stop & Review: Answers and Discussion 134

Chapter 9 Society and Social Institutions 136

Societal Needs 139 The Nature of Social Institutions 142

Institutions Are Generally Unplanned; They Develop Gradually 142 Institutions Are Inherently Conservative; They Change, but Slowly 144

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A Particular Society’s Institutions Are Interdependent; Because of This, Change in One Institution Tends to Bring About Change in Others 147 The Statuses, Roles, Values, and Norms Associated with an Institution in One Society Frequently Bear Little Resemblance to Those in Another Society 148

B ox: Polygamy and Monogamy 149

Social Change: The Trend Toward Increasing Specialization 149

Chapter Review 150

Stop & Review: Answers and Discussion 150

Chapter 10 Socialization 152

Nature and Nurture: Biological and Social Processes 152 How Socialization Works 154

The Looking-Glass Self: Charles Horton Cooley 155 The “I” and the “Me”: George Herbert Mead 157 Family 160 School 161 Mass Media 162 Peer Groups 163 The Workplace 164

B ox: Rites of Passage 165

Resocialization and Total Institutions 166

B ox: Ponder 167

Chapter Review 167

Stop & Review: Answers and Discussion 168

Chapter 11 Deviance and Social Control 169

The Relativity of Deviance (What We Already Know) 169

Nonsociological Theories of Deviance 171

Sociological Theories of Deviance: Émile Durkheim and Suicide 173

The Collective Conscience and Structural Strain 173 Egoism and Anomie 174

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More Structural Strain: Robert Merton and Anomie 176

Anomie and Modern Social Structure 176 Responses to Anomie 177 Legitimate Versus Illegitimate Means 179

Learning to Be Deviant: Howard Becker’s Study of Marijuana Use 179

Learning to Smoke 180 Learning to Perceive the Effects 181 Learning to Enjoy the Effects 182

The Societal Reaction Perspective: Labeling Theory 183 The Functions of Deviance: Maintenance of the Status Quo and Social Change 187 B ox: Ponder 187

A Caution About Crime Data 188

Deviance Is Not Immutable 189 Gays in the Military 191 Chapter Review 192 Stop & Review: Answers and Discussion 193

Chapter 12 Stratification and Inequality 195

Caste Systems 196 Estate Systems 199 B ox: A Year in the Life of the Peasant 200 Class Systems 202 Theoretical Conceptions of Class 203 B ox: Ponder 204 Some Words About Slavery 207 Social Mobility and Open Versus Closed Systems 209 Chapter Review 210 Stop & Review: Answers and Discussion 212

Chapter 13 Inequality and Achievement: Social Class 213

B ox: The Matthew Effect 217 Explaining Social Stratification 218

Cultural Explanations 219 Structural Explanations 220

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B ox: Beyond Academics 223 The Pygmalion Effect: The Power of Expectations 227 The Fallacy of Hard Work 228 B ox: Ponder 229 Social Mobility, Social Structure, and Social Change 230 B ox: Measuring Inequality 231 Chapter Review 232 Stop & Review: Answers and Discussion 234

Chapter 14 Inequality and Ascription: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 237

Why a Dollar Is Not Always a Dollar 238 ”Racial Surtax” on Mortgages 242

Prejudice 245 Discrimination 246 Discrimination and “Isms” 249 The Social Construction of Minority Groups 254 Gender 257 B ox: Sex or Gender? 259 What to Do with What You’ve Learned? 260 Chapter Review 262 Stop & Review: Answers and Discussion 263

Afterword 266 References 268 Credits 278 Glossary/Index 279

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PREFACE

I t wasn’t until I was about halfway through my first decade of teaching that I finally had the opportunity to teach Introduction to Sociology. Did I want to teach Intro? You bet! I was ecstatic. I had been teaching various upper-division classes—research methods, social theory, criminology, law and society—but I wanted to be the one who introduced sociology to students. I wanted to share with students the enthusiasm that I felt for the entire sociologi- cal enterprise and to expose them to the power of sociological thought.

I tried to create an introductory course that would speak to the typical first-year student who isn’t planning on majoring in soci- ology and, indeed, may not even know what sociology is. Even among sociology majors, very few plan on becoming sociologists. Each semester, I ask my beginning students, “Why are you here? What is it about sociology that interests you?” The very charitable say, “I don’t know what sociology is, but I am sure that it will be interesting.” Mostly, students are honest: “I’m here to fulfill my general education requirements.” A few are more specific: “I have to take a social science class and my advisor said that sociology is easier than economics or political science.”

I knew that once these students discovered sociology, they would find merit in it. Even if they didn’t major in sociology, they would come away from the class with some important life knowl- edge. I quote Robert Bierstedt in my syllabus: “Sociology owns a proper place not only among the sciences, but also among the arts that liberate the human mind” (1960, 3). I paraphrase Peter Berger to suggest that students will find one of the most impor- tant lessons of sociology to be that “things are not what they

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seem” (1963, 23)—that sociological training encourages people to look beyond the surface and to be suspicious of what “every- body knows.” I tell them that it hardly matters what sort of career they are working toward: learning how to be skeptical and how to think like a sociologist will help them understand and resolve complex and abstract problems on the job.

So, I knew how I wanted to structure the course—we would learn the basic concepts and then talk and read about how these worked in the real world. But I couldn’t find a textbook whose author had anticipated my wishes. I wanted a book that would introduce students to sociology’s foundational concepts—the sci- entific method, culture, social structure, socialization, deviance, inequality. I wanted a book that would not bury those concepts inside tons of empirical information but would present them in such a way that students could gain enough understanding to apply them to what they read elsewhere and what they encoun- tered in life. It was the sociological perspective I wanted these students to come away with, not the details.

I was encouraged to pursue this vision by something I read in an article by Frederick Campbell, a sociologist from the Uni- versity of Washington. In the book he co-edited with Hubert Blalock and Reece McGee, Campbell wrote that undergraduate courses in sociology ought to focus on principles rather than facts: “The mastery of sociology has a different meaning in the con- text of undergraduate education than in vocational training or a graduate program. A baccalaureate degree in sociology seldom prepares a student for a specific occupation or to pursue inde- pendent research. Emphasis on the subject matter, then, has lit- tle value if it means memorizing material that will soon go out of date for a job that does not exist. Mastery should move away from factual material and focus instead on the development of the mind” (1985, 13).

The longer I taught introductory sociology, however, the greater became my frustration with the available instructional material. So, one summer, I sat down to write some introductory and background materials for my students. My idea was that I would introduce them to the concepts that sociologists use, and we would then apply these to what we read in a variety of sociological articles and to what we encountered in real life (and in the media). My goal was to provide my students with the tools they needed to understand the social world through the eyes of sociologists. As everyone who has taught introductory courses probably knows, the foundational concepts of our dis- cipline are not simple ones, and many students resist them. My goal was not to simplify the concepts but to make them acces- sible to students.

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xii PREFACE

The set of essays I wrote that summer—on the history of soci- ology and the vocabulary of science, culture, social structure, socialization, deviance, and inequality—seemed to serve my students well. After students read them, we moved on with our shared vocabulary to other works by sociologists and to discus- sions of how these concepts applied to the real world. It worked. It was as Peter Berger had promised in his Invitation to Sociology: “It is not the excitement of coming upon the totally unfamiliar, but rather the excitement of finding the familiar becoming trans- formed in its meaning. The fascination of sociology lies in the fact that its perspective makes us see in a new light the very world in which we have lived all our lives” (1963, 21). Although I omit- ted much that is found in the typical sociology text (there are no chapters on family, religion, or politics), the concepts I did focus on (institutions, roles, values, and so on) allowed us to have rela- tively sophisticated discussions of those topics.

Be warned: I am not one of those sociologists who write in what Peter Berger called “a barbaric dialect.” I’ve taken C. Wright Mills’s caution to heart: “To get beyond sociological prose we must get beyond the sociologist’s pose” (1959). Notwithstanding the fact that I once had a book rejected by a noted university press because it was “too much of a good read,” I’ve persisted in my casual style and, whenever I couldn’t help it, have indulged my odd sense of humor. Many sociological concepts are very com- plex, and I think I have done justice to that complexity, but I have tried to do it in ways that are accessible to students.

NEW TO THIS EDITION

This edition uses updated statistics from the most recent census and other agencies. In response to suggestions from my readers, I continue to augment the discussions of topics that many students find difficult. In this edition, you will find new sections on the relationship between correlation and causation, ethnography, the mutability of deviance and the relationship between gender and income.

The goal of the book remains the same: to introduce students to sociology in a way that makes the core concepts of our discipline accessible without losing the crucial complexity of these concepts in translation. Along the way, I hope that I have managed as well to convey my enthusiasm for sociology.

SUPPLEMENTS

Visit our Online Learning Center Web site at http://www.mhhe .com/mcintyre6e for student and instructor resources. This is a

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combined Web site for both The Practical Skeptic: Core Concepts in Sociology, and its companion reader, The Practical Skeptic: Readings in Sociology.

For Students Student resources include comprehensive self-quizzes for both the text and reader.

For Instructors The password-protected instructor portion of the Web site in- cludes the instructor’s manual (written by the author), contain- ing discussion questions and activities, examples of lectures, tips specifically targeting new instructors, a comprehensive test bank, and all the tools available to students. Also included is a sepa- rate test bank for the reader with multiple choice, true/false, and essay questions for each reading.

THE COMPANION READER

Created to serve as a companion to the text, The Practical Skeptic: Core Concepts in Sociology, this reader, The Practical Skeptic: Read- ings in Sociology, includes classic sociological writings as well as recent writings on fascinating topics of interest to students. Cor- responding to the conceptual organization of the text, each of the readings serves to illustrate key sociological concepts and ideas.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My largest thanks go to the hundreds of students who have read The Practical Skeptic and shared their views of the text with me.

Many thanks to the following reviewers whose comments and suggestions shaped the sixth edition: Peter Adler, University of Denver; Mitch Berbrier, University of Alabama in Huntsville; Joslyn Brenton, North Carolina State University; Margaret Dele- hanty Kelly, University of Minnesota; Stacy Evans, Berkshire Community College; Susan Eichenberger, Seton Hill University; Catherine Leone, University of Wisconsin-Manitowoc; Pamela McMullin-Messier, Central Washington University; Janice L. Milner, Century College; Megan Peterson, William Rainey Harper College; Carly Sebastian, Mount Wachusett Community College.

Thank you to the following reviewers whose helpful comments and suggestions helped us in our preparation of the fifth edition: Elizabeth Larsen, California University of Pennsylvania; Lynda Dickson, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs; Kiren Ghei, Delta College; Thomas B. Gold, University of California at Berkeley; Patti Guiffre, Texas State University; Michael Collins,

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xiv PREFACE

UW Fox Valley in Menasha; Linda C. Evans, Drake University; Carolyn Kapinus, Ball State University; Carla Norris-Raynbird, Bemidji State University, C. Stephen Glennon, Iowa Western Community College; Doug Degher, North Arizona University; Kim Hennessee, Ball State University.

The fourth edition manuscript was reviewed by the following people, who responded with suggestions and pointed out neces- sary revisions, for which I am deeply grateful: Diane C. Bates, The College of New Jersey; Gretchen DeHart, Community College of Vermont; Esther Horrocks, Villa Julie College; Michael C. Maher, Spoon River College; Lida V. Nedilsky, North Park University; Deborah Thorne, Ohio University; and Craig Tollini, Western Illi- nois University.

I also appreciate the help of the third edition reviewers who offered many helpful comments and suggestions: Deborah A. Abowitz, Bucknell; Cheryl Albers, Buffalo State; Sue Cox, Belle- vue Community College; Derek Greenfield, Highline Community College; Tiffany Hayes, Green River Community College; Barbara Karcher, Kennesaw; Susan Ross, Lycoming College; and Ann S. Stein, College of Charleston.

I thank the reviewers of the second edition for their thoughtful reading: Jerry Barrish, Bellevue Community College; Debra Cornelius, Shippensburg University; Jamie Dangler, SUNY Cortland; Laurel R. Davis, Springfield College; Gloria Y. Gadsden, Fairleigh Dickinson University; Alan G. Hill, Delta College; Susan E. Humphers-Ginther, Moorhead State University; Katherine Johnson, Niagara County Com- munity College; Barbara Karcher, Kennesaw State University; Debra C. Lemke, Western Maryland College; Patricia A. Masters, George Mason University; Susan McWilliams, University of Southern Maine; Dan Pence, Southern Utah University; Marcella Thompson, Univer- sity of Arkansas; Georgeanna M. Tryban, Indiana State University; and Brenda S. Zicha, Charles Stewart Mott Community College.

I would also like to thank the reviewers of the first edition: Peter Adler, University of Denver; Sheila M. Cordray, Oregon State University; Mary Patrice Erdmans, University of North Carolina–Greensboro; Valerie Jenness, University of California– Irvine; Frances V. Moulder, Three Rivers Community–Technical College; Karl T. Pfeiffer, University of Alaska; Martha L. Shockey, St. Ambrose University; Lisa Troyer, University of Iowa; and Georgeanna M. Tryban, Indiana State University.

Lisa J. McIntyre

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INTRODUCTION

H ave you ever caught yourself thinking about things that people do? Have you ever asked yourself, for example, questions about everyday things like these:

Why do some students always sit in the back of the classroom while others always sit in the front?

Why do African Americans on predominantly white college campuses frequently say “hi” to other African Americans, even if they don’t know them?

Why do we dress baby girls in pink and baby boys in blue?

Why do people generally not look at one another in elevators—and always face front?

Why do young men, but not young women, spit?

Why do we go to such lengths to pretend we aren’t embar- rassed when we have to get naked in front of a doctor?

Why do people from small towns tend to act differently from people from big cities?

Why are most people less willing to seek professional help for mental or emotional problems than for physical problems?

Sociologists are trained to find answers to questions about people’s behavior. We are especially interested in understanding the effects that people have on one another.

Sociologists are convinced that much of people’s behavior is a result of what other people do. A sociologist reviewing the ques- tions just listed would likely say that many of these behaviors result from how people are influenced by others.

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This sociological conviction might offend you. Certainly, I like to think of myself as independent minded; you, too, may like to think that your behaviors are the results of choices you have made of your own free will. But allow me to persuade you that to under- stand people’s behavior and the choices they make, it is important to take into account the influence of others in their environment.

Even when you think you are making your own choices, often you are picking only from the fairly limited range of options that others allow you. The simple fact is that, depending on your position in society—your age, gender, race, social class, and so on—people expect and allow you to act in various ways. Society places restric- tions on your behavior with very little regard for your preferences.

Of course, you can choose not to live up to society’s expectations, but if you decide to be contrary, you will pay a price. And, depending on the seriousness of your infraction, that price can range from end- less nagging by your parents to a prison sentence and even to death!

Consider marriage. Surely, the decisions whether to get mar- ried, whom to marry, and when are very personal decisions. Actu- ally, they are not. Examine this matter carefully and you will find that your marital choices are rather restricted. For example, in the United States, you can be married to only one person at a time. And (at least for the time being) you can marry only a person of the opposite sex—unless you live in one of the several states that allow same-sex marriage. Until the late 1960s, many states even had laws requiring people to marry within their own racial group—if you broke these laws, you could be sent to prison or exiled from the state. 1

Chances are, your family places even more restrictions on your marriage choices. Have you noticed that there are, in effect, family “rules” about whom you can marry? These rules may be unspoken but clear: Your parents may wish you to wed someone of your own race and religion and from the same educational and social-class back- ground. Of course, there is no law that says family rules must be fol- lowed, but we all know that families have ways of making us suffer.

Even your friends may restrict your marriage (and dating) choices. Consider how they would make you suffer if you started to date some seriously weird geek.

You really have to wonder, why does everyone care so much about whom we marry? Now that is a sociological question!

So, What Is Sociology?

Here is a technical definition of sociology: Sociology is the scientific study of interactions and relations among human beings.

1 Some states have never rescinded these laws, but because such racial restrictions were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967, even where they do exist, they do not have the force of law.

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The Value of Sociology to Students 3

I hope the word scientific caught your attention. Including that word in the definition is a reminder that sociologists try to be very careful about how they find answers to their questions.

While the questions they ask are certainly influenced by their own interests and even their biases, they do not want their answers to be contaminated by bias or emotion or faulty logic—after all, they want their research to be persuasive to others. Therefore, as much as possible, they strive to be systematic in gathering data.

The Value of Sociology to Students

The goal of this book, and this course, is not so much to introduce you to new worlds as it is to inspire you to take a long hard look at familiar ones. And, I promise you, the reward for doing that will be much greater than the simple gratification of intellectual curiosity. There will be many practical rewards.

The practical value of taking a sociology course is that what you learn, by definition, never will be irrelevant to your life —present and future. Each of us lives in the social world; each of us is influ- enced by others and, to some extent, hopes to influence others. Studying sociology will strengthen your ability to understand how the social world operates and what your place is in it. More- over, studying sociology will enhance your ability to act effec- tively in the social world.

Just to whet your appetite, let me share with you one of the most basic sociological truths as it was put into words in 1928 by the sociologist W. I. Thomas: “If people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” The Thomas theorem articu- lated the sociological finding that had escaped many nonsocio- logical observers. If one truly wants to understand why people do the things they do, one must take into account not only what is really going on in a particular situation but also what people think is going on. For example, if moviegoers believe the theater is on fire, they will react to the threat as if it were real, even if there is no fire. A consequence could be a panic in which people are trampled to death, even though the threat was never “real.”

Thomas’s insight helps us to understand how people live their everyday lives, too. Suppose the local newspaper runs a series of articles on how people are being victimized by crimes. The reporters pick the most interesting and most gruesome of crimi- nal events on which to focus. Even if the reality is that these are uncommon events and that the actual rate of crime is going down, we would predict that people’s fear of crime would increase, which would have important consequences. For example, more people might purchase handguns for protection just at the point when things really are becoming safer. The increase in handgun

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4 INTRODUCTION

ownership might result in an increase in handgun deaths—kids playing with guns, panicked homeowners shooting neighbors stumbling around in the middle of the night, and so on.

Certainly, reality is important, because even when people do not define things as real, they can have real consequences. Thus, even if people do not know that the theater is on fire, they will die if they don’t escape. But reality is only one factor that we must take into account to understand how people act and interact.

Sociology, then, is the discipline that studies the interactions and relationships among people—the realities and the perceived realities. Even given the seemingly countless variations in people’s possible behaviors, sociologists are remarkably successful in shed- ding light on questions about why people do what they do and how they are influenced by one another.

My goal in this book has been to select the most important concepts that sociologists use and share them with you. My hope is that you, too, might apply these concepts as you work to move about in the social world more effectively and to understand it more thoroughly.

Tips for Studying Sociology— and an Invitation

To get the most out of your study of sociology, you will need to do more than simply read the book. Your goal should be to “own” the concepts—that is, not only to read, but to think about the concepts as well so that you can use them to understand social life. To help you achieve this goal, I have scattered Stop and Review questions throughout the book. I urge you to answer these questions. Many of my own students have told me that doing so makes it much easier to understand (and remember) sociological concepts. Several of my students tell me that they learn even more by making a list of the concepts for each chapter along with the definitions given in the book, and then writing their own definitions and examples.

Finally, I enjoy hearing from students (and their teachers, of course). If you have a question, comment, sociological example, or suggestion that you would like to share with me, please do so! I might use your example in the next edition of the book. (If I do that, I will be sure to give you credit—and I will make sure that you receive a copy of the book so that you can see your name in print.)

You can contact me via “snail mail” at Department of Sociology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-4020, or e-mail at ljmcint@wsu.edu . Please include your mail or e-mail address so that I can respond.

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1 RESPONDING TO CHAOS

A Brief History of Sociology “He who watches a thing grow has the best view of it.”

— Heraclitus 1

I have always suspected that what people choose to study is a result of something other than mere accident. It seems to me that people study what they feel they most need to understand, and frequently, these are things that frighten them.

To the first peoples of the world, nature was overwhelmingly powerful and fear inspiring; the physical environment domi- nated the lives of men and women. The time of year dictated daily tasks—planting, reaping, hunting. The available vegetation and game dictated what people ate. Even after plants and animals were domesticated, menus were limited by climate—if you lived in the Northern Hemisphere, probably you would die without ever having tasted a mango or a banana.

It is easy to understand, then, why the earliest people focused their intellectual efforts on gaining an understanding of the phys- ical world. Theirs were pressing questions: Why did the sun rise each morning and set each evening? Would it continue to do so? What made it rain? Why did the wind blow?

Obviously, humankind has never “conquered” nature, yet by the beginning of the nineteenth century, humanity had succeeded in making the natural world seem more predictable. But then, just as Westerners seemed to be getting a handle on the natu- ral, their social world became frighteningly chaotic. People were accustomed to wars with foreigners, but in the eighteenth century nearly every European nation faced internal war in the form of revolution. By the time the nineteenth century rolled around, the political, economic, and religious foundations of society appeared

1 Heraclitus (hera-KLI-tus) was an ancient Greek philosopher (c. 540–480 B.C.E. ).

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6 CHAPTER 1 RESPONDING TO CHAOS

to be on the verge of crumbling. Things were in chaos. People were frightened.

Inquiries into the Physical World

Although the most dramatic social upheavals occurred in the eighteenth century, rumblings had been heard as far back as the sixteenth century. It was during the sixteenth century that people started to question the validity of long-held beliefs about the fundamental nature of the world.

At first, these questions had to do with the physical world. In the second century of the common era, 2 Greek/Egyptian astron- omer Claudius Ptolemy had determined that the earth was the center of the universe. (Actually this idea had been around at least since the fourth century B.C.E., but Ptolemy mathematically “proved” the theory using geometry.) More than a thousand years later, leaders of the Western Church still embraced Ptolemy’s view because it meshed with other ideas they held: Of course, the earth is at the center of things—“man” was God’s most important creation, and where else would God place man’s world but at the center of the universe? Anyway, if things were otherwise—if the earth were not the center of things but revolved around the sun— wouldn’t we feel the earth move?

In 1543, a Pole named Mikolaj Kopernik (better known now as Nicolaus Copernicus) in Frauenberg (a town in East Prussia)

2 We are so accustomed to thinking that our ways of accounting for time are natural, that it comes as a shock to realize that these systems are very much human creations. For example, many people in Western societies distinguish between B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. for Anno Domini (or “in the year of our Lord,” and not “after death”). The B.C. – A.D. distinction did not appear spontaneously but was devised in 523 C.E. by the abbot of a Roman monastery, Dionysis Exiguus (also known as Peter the Little). Until then, the Church had followed the Roman tradition of dating events from the purported year of Rome’s creation ( Anno urbia conditae, or year of the establishment of the city). Dionysis Exiguus calculated that Jesus was born in 753 A.U.C. and designated that year as 1 A.D.