Sociological Imagination
● Sociology: the study of how societies are organized and how that
organization and affects the behavior of the people who live in them
● The sociological imagination: interplay between self and society
○ make the familiar unfamiliar and the unfamiliar familiar
○ History and biography: situating the stages of one’s life within
particular historical moments
○ Personal troubles, public issues: many issues have both personal
and social dimensions
● Readings/authors to know:
○ C. Wright Mills. 1959. “The Promise.” Mapping the Social Landscape.
■ The sociological imagination compels us to look at our
world like an outsider – as though it already does not make
sense to us
■ Asks us to see the two relationships above
○ David Foster Wallace. 2005. “This is Water.”
Research Methods
● How do sociologists conduct research scientifically? develop probabilistic
theories of social action
○ Describe theories that are likely but not inevitable and that we can
explain and foresee given the particular social conditions people
find themselves in
● Sociological theory: Analysis of data to develop systematic
understandings and propositions about social processes
○ Explanations of social phenomena are scientific insofar they are
falsifiable (make predictions that can be proven wrong)
○ Bring new data on existing understandings to further elaborate social
processes or the conditions under which particular phenomena occur
○ Let us interpret facts or explain why things happen the way they do
○ Help us make predictions about what might happen in the future
● Empirical research: gathering and analyzing data to answer questions
about our social world
● Research questions: queries about the world that can be answered
empirically
● Quantitative vs. qualitative research methods
○ Quantitative (who and what): tools of sociological inquiry that involve
examining numerical data with mathematics
○ Qualitative (why and how): tools of sociological inquiry that
involve careful consideration of the meaning of non-numerical
data
● Independent and dependent variables
○ Independent (x): causes a change
○ Dependent (y): the item we are trying to explain, this is
impacted by the independent variable
● 5 common types of sociological research methods (know whether they are
quantitative vs. qualitative, be able to determine their
strengths/weaknesses, and apply them to different scenarios)
○ Experiments: control the environment to isolate the effects of one item
, ■ Quantitative
■ Ie. Devah Pager’ field experiment
■ Strengths: Make casual claims
■ Weaknesses: behavior in lab vs real world, in reality we are
never influenced by one social factor at a time, can’t ethically
study some topics experimentally
○ Surveys: set of questions subjects respond to
■ Quantitative
■ Strengths: relatively quick and cheap, can be done through a
variety of remote sources, get lots of data from many people
■ Weaknesses: may be hard to get people to respond, wording
issues
○ In-depth interviews: eliciting information through semi-structured,
open-ended, probing conversations
■ Qualitative
■ Strengths: detailed accounts of people’s feelings,
understandings, and recollections of how and why things
happened
■ Weaknesses: researchers only get access to individual
respondent’s POV, difference between what people say vs.
what they do, can be time-consuming and expensive
○ Participant observation (ethnography): researcher directly
observes and participates in the social world they’re studying
■ Qualitative
■ Strengths: get detailed information how people act in a certain
context, develop a personal understanding of what it feels like
to take part in that social world
■ Weaknesses: can be time-consuming and expensive, can
only study a small number of people so it is possible findings
would only apply to one field site
○ Historical and content analysis: using existing artifacts produced by
people
■ Qualitative
■ Strengths: show how a topic is present in our culture, study
issues in the past through historical records
■ Weaknesses: can’t control the nature or quality of the data
available, difficult to know the intentions of creators or how
content was received by audiences
● Generalizability: the extent to which data is applicable to the entire
population from which the sample is drawn, not just the sample itself
○ Random samples
● Readings/authors to know: Lisa Wade. 2021. “A Guide to Sociological
Research.” Appendix B in Terrible Magnificent Sociology.
○ Theories are “empirically based explanations and predictions about
relationships between social facts”
Social Structure and the Individual
● Sociology: the study of how societies are organized and how that
organization and affects the behavior of the people who live in them
● The sociological imagination: interplay between self and society
○ make the familiar unfamiliar and the unfamiliar familiar
○ History and biography: situating the stages of one’s life within
particular historical moments
○ Personal troubles, public issues: many issues have both personal
and social dimensions
● Readings/authors to know:
○ C. Wright Mills. 1959. “The Promise.” Mapping the Social Landscape.
■ The sociological imagination compels us to look at our
world like an outsider – as though it already does not make
sense to us
■ Asks us to see the two relationships above
○ David Foster Wallace. 2005. “This is Water.”
Research Methods
● How do sociologists conduct research scientifically? develop probabilistic
theories of social action
○ Describe theories that are likely but not inevitable and that we can
explain and foresee given the particular social conditions people
find themselves in
● Sociological theory: Analysis of data to develop systematic
understandings and propositions about social processes
○ Explanations of social phenomena are scientific insofar they are
falsifiable (make predictions that can be proven wrong)
○ Bring new data on existing understandings to further elaborate social
processes or the conditions under which particular phenomena occur
○ Let us interpret facts or explain why things happen the way they do
○ Help us make predictions about what might happen in the future
● Empirical research: gathering and analyzing data to answer questions
about our social world
● Research questions: queries about the world that can be answered
empirically
● Quantitative vs. qualitative research methods
○ Quantitative (who and what): tools of sociological inquiry that involve
examining numerical data with mathematics
○ Qualitative (why and how): tools of sociological inquiry that
involve careful consideration of the meaning of non-numerical
data
● Independent and dependent variables
○ Independent (x): causes a change
○ Dependent (y): the item we are trying to explain, this is
impacted by the independent variable
● 5 common types of sociological research methods (know whether they are
quantitative vs. qualitative, be able to determine their
strengths/weaknesses, and apply them to different scenarios)
○ Experiments: control the environment to isolate the effects of one item
, ■ Quantitative
■ Ie. Devah Pager’ field experiment
■ Strengths: Make casual claims
■ Weaknesses: behavior in lab vs real world, in reality we are
never influenced by one social factor at a time, can’t ethically
study some topics experimentally
○ Surveys: set of questions subjects respond to
■ Quantitative
■ Strengths: relatively quick and cheap, can be done through a
variety of remote sources, get lots of data from many people
■ Weaknesses: may be hard to get people to respond, wording
issues
○ In-depth interviews: eliciting information through semi-structured,
open-ended, probing conversations
■ Qualitative
■ Strengths: detailed accounts of people’s feelings,
understandings, and recollections of how and why things
happened
■ Weaknesses: researchers only get access to individual
respondent’s POV, difference between what people say vs.
what they do, can be time-consuming and expensive
○ Participant observation (ethnography): researcher directly
observes and participates in the social world they’re studying
■ Qualitative
■ Strengths: get detailed information how people act in a certain
context, develop a personal understanding of what it feels like
to take part in that social world
■ Weaknesses: can be time-consuming and expensive, can
only study a small number of people so it is possible findings
would only apply to one field site
○ Historical and content analysis: using existing artifacts produced by
people
■ Qualitative
■ Strengths: show how a topic is present in our culture, study
issues in the past through historical records
■ Weaknesses: can’t control the nature or quality of the data
available, difficult to know the intentions of creators or how
content was received by audiences
● Generalizability: the extent to which data is applicable to the entire
population from which the sample is drawn, not just the sample itself
○ Random samples
● Readings/authors to know: Lisa Wade. 2021. “A Guide to Sociological
Research.” Appendix B in Terrible Magnificent Sociology.
○ Theories are “empirically based explanations and predictions about
relationships between social facts”
Social Structure and the Individual
