Day 1: 3 Big Concepts

Day 1: Three Big Concepts: definition of the situation, social construction of reality, and sociological imagination:

I. Thomas theorem (also known as the “definition of the situation”:

“if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas & Thomas, 1928:572).

II. Social Construction of Reality

Society[i] (the “human environment”) is created by people. A society, by definition, involves more than one person. The human environment includes physical things that we create and use (buildings, roads, clothing, etc) and non-physical things; ideas. People create ideas, just as they create buildings. The concept of the social construction of reality refers to sociologists Berger and Luckmann’s answer to the question of how “social order,” some degree of which is necessary to a society to endure, arises.

For convenience, we will refer to the non-physical (untangible) things that peole create using the word meanings. Some things that we can call meanings include values (ideas about what is desirable and undesirable, right and wrong), norms (rules for behavior, whether formal or informal), ideas about what is fashionable and what is not, ideas about how governments should function, about how children should be raised, how we interpret a smile or a frown in different situations, etc.

Starting from the assumption that people create and communicate meanings, Berger and Luckmann argues that certain meanings become habitualized. In other words, certain meanings come to guide our lives in a habitual way. This saves us from having to think deeply about each thing we do, each choice we make, each word we say; it saves us time and energy and is efficient. (Of course there could be a down side to this – can you think of one?) Now – keep in mind – just because some people are guided by a particular set of meanings, it doesn’t mean that is the only possible, useful set – its just the set someone is using, for one reason or another (a point to which we will return).

When people communicate particular meanings widely, they become part of culture – knowledge that is widely shared. You don’t have to agree with each meaning for it to be part of culture; as long as meaning is known widely, that’s enough (Berger and Luckmann refer to this as the knowledge being available to all the members of a social group). However, communication of meanings, and sufficient acceptance of them, is needed for creating social order. According to Berger and Luckmann,

“[i]nstitutionalization occurs whenever there is a reciprocal typification of habitualized actions by types of actors” (1966, p. 60).

In other words, when many people habitually act according to particular meanings, those meanings become institutionalized – they become taken for granted knowledge of how to behave, what to value, understandings of how things work, whatever – they become a characteristic of society. And, when many people share meanings – values, norms, etc – their behaviors and attitudes take on enough consistency to create social order.

Of course since people created these meanings to begin with, people may also change them. This doesn’t usually happen quickly or easily, however, because:

“[i]nstitutions further imply historicity and control. Reciprocal typifications of actions are built up in the course of a shared history. They cannot be created instantaneously. Institutions always have a history, of which they are the products. It is impossible to understand an institution adequately without an understanding of the historical process in which it was produced. Institutions also, by the very fact of their existence, control human conduct by setting up predefined patterns of conduct, which channel it in one direction as against the many other directions that would theoretically be possible” (p. 60).

In other words, once meanings become widely known and shared, there is a sort of inertia – they are difficult to change. This is because as new people are born into the society, the existing meanings are transmitted to the new generation:

“[t]he objectivity of the institutional world "thickens" and "hardens," not only for the children, but (by a mirror effect) for the parents as well. The "There we go again" now becomes "This is how these things are done." A world so regarded attains a firmness in consciousness; it becomes real in an ever more massive way and it can no longer be changed so readily” (p. 61).

And,

“[a]n institutional world, then, is experienced as an objective reality. It has a history that antedates the individual's birth and is not accessible to his biographical recollection. It was there before he was born, and it will be there after his death. This history itself, as the tradition of the existing institutions, has the character of objectivity … The institutions are there, external to him, persistent in their reality, whether he likes it or not. He cannot wish them away. They resist his attempts to change or evade them. They have coercive power over him, both in themselves, by the sheer force of their facticity, and through the control mechanisms that are usually attached to the most important of them. The objective reality of institutions is not diminished if the individual does not understand their purpose or their mode of operation. He may experience large sectors of the social world as incomprehensible, perhaps oppressive in their opaqueness, but real nonetheless” (p. 61).

So, if meanings, built up into social institutions (defined simply as patterned solutions to recurring problems related to maintaining a society), how does social change occur? The concept of the sociological imagination will come in handy as we think about the relationship between “society” and “individual,” and the circumstances under which individuals’ behavior may provide an engine for social change:

III. Sociological imagination (note: this reading is in the MSL text!)

Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both. Yet men do not usually define the troubles they endure in terms of historical change and institutional contradiction. ... The sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals. ... The first fruit of this imagination--and the first lesson of the social science that embodies it--is the idea that the individual can understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only by locating himself within this period, that he can know his own chances in life only by becoming aware of those of all individuals in his circumstances. ...We have come to know that every individual lives, from one generation to the next, in some society; that he lives out a biography, and that he lives it out within some historical sequence (The Sociological Imagination, 1959:3-10).

References:

Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise its the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor Books.

Thomas, W.I. and Dorothy Swaine Thomas. 1928. The Child in America: Behavior Problems and Programs. New York: Knopf.

Mills, C. Wright. 1959 [1976] The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.

Homework for Day 2

Read your assignment. Then, review the definition of sociology in the text:

1. Our book defines sociology as:

“…the scientific study of interactions and relations among human beings” (p. 2).

2. Sociology is defined by the American Sociological Association (ASA) on this link:

http://www.asanet.org/public/what.html

3. You can get other definitions from the internet using Google ( http://www.google.com ). Type in “definition of sociology.” The first link will be called

Web definitions for sociology. Click on it.

Click on that link, and you will get four definitions (you may get more than that, if more were added between the time I wrote this and the time you did your search). I think two of them are pretty good. Note that you can get a pretty good array of definitions for concepts by typing in “definition of” followed by the word or phrase. We will be doing this again.

Print out, or copy into your notebook, the definitions of sociology (from your text, from the ASA, and from Google. Read them all, think about them, and bring them to class.