4 Weber and Symbolic Interaction, "Hello my name is Max"

While students show up please read "Conventional Wisdom Tells Us...What's in a Name? That which we call a Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet" from sociologists Cerulo and Ruane.

Max Weber and Symbolic Interaction Paradigm

Max Weber's contribution to the development of sociology during the  Industrial Revolution

Max Weber (pronounced VAY-ber) studied the development of capitalism in European countries.  He found that countries that became more Protestant also became more capitalist.  This is peculiar because religion and economics seem to be separate.  But Protestants held shared meaning with each other about their wealth and finance.  They saw living within their means and investing their money as signs that they were living righteously within their Christian beliefs.  This created an economy that was based on investment.  It led to the creation and expansion of capitalism, investing profit to make even more profit.   It might seem strange for religion to be connected to the economy, but in their interaction with each other, it was real for them.  


The development of the symbolic interactionist paradigm 

Building off of Weber's work, two sociologists created a third paradigm for which sociologists view the world.   Weber showed symbolic meaning in the Protestants' lives and in their everyday interaction with other people.  Stemming from Weber's work, George Mead, W. I. Thomas and Herbert Blumer focused on the shared meaning in everyday life between people.  This paradigm became known as symbolic interaction.  It is more focused on face-to-face interaction, or small groups, as opposed to large-scale institutions.  Much of our interaction with each other holds symbolic meaning to us.  The words we use, our body language, our clothes all hold symbolic meaning for us.  They convey an identity we have to the world. 

Let's add Weber and symbolic interaction to the sociology framework graphic organizer:

Revisit the demographic survey that you filled out yesterday, especially part 3.  

Here is the Google Form for this lesson.  Please open it in a new window and fill it out as you continue.

Using Part 3 of the demographic survey you filled out on day 1, answer:

Individually:

1.  Look at your answer for what you are proud of and what your various goals are.  Choose one of these answers and think about the larger meaning behind your answer.  Why are you proud of that or why is it a goal?  What does it symbolize to you and how do you hope others view it? 

Small Group:

2.  Compare your answer above to those in your small group.  What similarities emerge? Do others in your group agree with your answer for number 1 above?  (In other words, do they share the same meaning/understanding as you about those achievements/goals?)

Thinking about Parts 1 and 2 of the demographic survey you filled out on day 1, you all have similar social statuses such as being a child, a student, a member of Stevenson, a Chicago Suburbanite, etc...

3.  What are some of the meanings these statuses hold?  In other words, what are some ways that you relate to one another because of these similarities?

Symbolic Interaction paradigm and names

Another example of Symbolic Interaction can be seen through names.  A name isn’t just a random set of syllables.  Names have symbolic meanings that are shared among people, even strangers, within a society.  For example, see the multiple examples below about the ways that names can have shared meaning. 

Baby Names follow trends

Some students will say that their parents just chose the name because they liked it.  But closer research reveals that for many names that parents seemed to "just like," there was a larger meaning behind why parents liked the name.  A respected sociologist from Harvard named Stanley Lieberson studied trends and fashions.  He used the Social Security Names database to study how names spread in popularity similar to how fashion spreads.  You can read this NY Times article (or download it here) about the details of what Lieberson found, but in short, the naming of new babies is not simply personal:

• Name choices, like clothing choices, reflect the desire to be different, but not too different.
• Names branch off of each other with similar suffixes or prefixes 
• Names reflect societal patterns like immigration patterns
• Names are changing more frequently than they used to reflect a stronger desire to be different.

Try your own research with the SSA Baby Name Database.  

Notice that the data shows that names go in and out of style, even if we don't notice it.  For example, my parents named me Christopher, but they just thought that they liked the name.  Looking at the data, it is now evident that Christopher was the second most popular name that year! 

4.  Try find examples of any of Lieberson's finds in the SSA Baby Name Database?  Give a specific example.

Names hold important meanings that we might realize at first.  

Read "Conventional Wisdom Tells Us...What's in a Name? That which we call a Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet" from sociologists Cerulo and Ruane.

5.  According to the authors of Conventional Wisdom Tells Us..., what are some examples of the different meanings that names hold?  

6.  What are some ways that Cerulo and Ruane show these meanings affect people?

Names also hold shared meaning because culture assigns meanings to ideas

For more on names and symbolic meanings, you can listen to the Freakonomics podcast episode by Wells, Katharine.  How Much Does Your Name Matter? Freakonomics Radio Podcast. April 8, 2013.

The episode draws from a Freakonomics chapter called “A Roshanda By Any Other Name”and includes a good bit of new research on the power of names. It opens with a conversation with NYU sociologist Dalton Conley and his two children, E and Yo. Their names are a bit of an experiment.  Indeed, there is some evidence that a name can influence how a child performs in school and even her career opportunities. There’s also the fact that different groups of parents — blacks and whites, for instance — have different naming preferences. Stephen Dubner talks to Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney about a mysterious discrepancy in Google ads for Instant Checkmate, a company that sells public records. Sweeney found that searching for people with distinctively black names was 25% more likely to produce an ad suggesting the person had an arrest record – regardless of whether that person had ever been arrested.  Names do, however, reveal a lot about the people doing the naming. Eric Oliver, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, talks about his new research (with co-authors Thomas Wood and Alexandra Bass) that looks at how children’s names are influenced by their parents’ political ideology.

If names do affect their bearers' chance of success, it may not always be because of the reactions they cause in other people (the "looking-glass self"), they might also be because of "implicit egotism", the positive feelings we each have about ourselves.  Brett Pelham cites the concept in explaining his finding that individuals called Virginia, Mildred, Jack and Philip proliferate in Virginia, Milwaukee, Jacksonville and Philadelphia - he believes they are drawn to live there.  

Another intriguing 2007 paper, entitled Moniker Maladies, found that people's fondness for the initials of their names could get in the way of success. Leif Nelson and Joseph Simmons analysed almost a century of baseball strikeouts and found that hitters with the initial K had a higher strike-out rate ("K" denotes a strike-out in baseball). They also found that graduate students with the initials C and D had a slightly lower grade point average than A and B students, and A and B applicants to law school were more likely to go to better colleges.

Branding as Shared Meaning

Think about the meaning that people share about the things below.  What meaning do they hold? Who shares the meaning? How does that meaning influence our reactions?  How does the meaning get re-inforced and/or re-interpreted by society?

What do these mean?

How did this meaning come to be?

From Business Insider How Nike Defined Cool 

MJ and Nike

Pop Culture and Nike

Nelly's Airforce Ones music video.

EXTRA

Parent-teen conflicts and Weber's symbolic interaction paradigm

Think about the teen-parent conflict reading.  

7.  What are the meanings that the label "teen" might hold for parents?  For society?  

8.  How might the label of "teen" affect the face-to-face interactions between teens and parents, teachers, peers?   How did this meaning come about?


9. Do you understand how sociologists view the world through a symbolic interaction perspective?  Any questions about that paradigm?

3 Marx's Conflict Perspective; "Hello My Name is Karl"

Karl Marx's Conflict Paradigm

The second paradigm that emerged from a scholar studying the changes of the industrial revolution is called conflict paradigm which developed out of the influence of Karl Marx.  He studied the inequalities in industrial Europe and how those inequalities affected individuals.  For example, Marx found that a working-class person lived an average of 25 years less than a wealthy person.  Like Durkheim, Marx concluded that his findings were not just the result of individual choices.  Instead, people were forced to work in unhealthy conditions and forced to yield to the demands of the wealthy owners of the factories.  

Marx's Focus   

Marx's focus led sociologists to examine who had power in society and who did not.  The natural extension of that became the effects of power on groups of individuals and how those in power gained and maintained that power.  Initially, Marx's focus was on social class, especially in Europe, but early sociologists in the U.S. like W.E.B. Dubois applied the conflict paradigm to race, while others like Alice Paul applied it to gender in the U.S.   Oftentimes, the study of inequality and the fight for equal rights led to overlapping movements such as social class and gender led by Chicago's Jane Addams and other overlapping movements such as race and gender which was led by Chicago's Ida B. Wells.  In fact, the University of Chicago was the first sociology department in North America (1892) and Chicago was a leader in sociology for the next 50 years leading to what became known as "the Chicago school" of sociology.

Using the Demographic Survey, please answer individually:

1.  What are some of your responses (esp. from part 2) that might result in you being treated differently?

2.  How might that treatment differ?  Are there ways you might be limited or obstacles that you might face because of your identity?

Discuss as small group:

Are there similarities within your group about how some of you may be limited by your identity?

Applying conflict paradigm to names

3. Hypothesize:  What are some ways that names might create power or inequality?


Small group discussion (based on this lesson from Rabow, et al...):
4.  Has your name ever been mispronounced?  By who? When? How often?


5.  Has anyone had their name changed or taken on a  nickname because of mispronunciation?  If so, were there any benefits to the new name?  Were there any negative consequences?


Names and Power/Opportunity
These articles provide research-based evidence of the importance of conflict perspective in examining names and power:

Emily and Greg v. Lakisha and Jamal

In a study from 2003, called Are Emily And Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan sent nearly 5,000 CVs in response to job advertisements in Chicago and Boston newspapers. The CVs were the same, but half were given fake names that sounded like they belonged to white people, like Emily Walsh or Greg Baker, and the other half were given names that sounded African American, like Lakisha Washington or Jamal Jones. The call-back rate from employers was 50% higher on the "white" names then the "black" names. The effects were noted even for federal contractors with "affirmative action" policies, and companies boasting they were "equal opportunities" employers.  The researchers inferred that employers were using first names to discriminate unfairly against black candidates, perhaps at an unconscious level. Those same prejudices might also come into play at the interviewing stage, but a black applicant called Greg Baker, who receives an invitation to an interview, has at least got his foot in the door.

Drew to Dwayne to Damarcus to Da'Quan

There is also striking evidence of names triggering different outcomes for schoolchildren.

David Figlio, now at Northwestern University, analyzed the scores of some 55,000 children in a school district of Florida. Instead of just distinguishing between "white" and "black" names, he codified what aspects of names meant that they were more likely to belong to black children and children from low-income families. This allowed him to create a sliding scale, which went, for example, from Drew to Dwayne to Damarcus to Da'Quan. Figlio found that the further along this scale he went, the worse the school test scores and the less likely the student was to be recommended for the schools' program for "gifted" students. Strikingly, this held true for brothers within a family, and even - although the sample size was small - for twins. Figlio believes that the fault lies with the expectations of schoolteachers and administrators - at schools with more black teachers, the effects were less marked.  In separate research, Figlio used the Florida school data to show that black boys who are given names more common among girls are more likely to develop behavioral problems when they reach puberty. The problems increase significantly when there are girls in the same year group with the same name.

Both of the above is an example of how conflict sociologists view society and how inequality is created and maintained.  Read the following and look for how studying names can be viewed through a conflict paradigm.

Ethnicity, immigration and names

From American Immigrants and the Dilemma of the White Sounding Name in the Atlantic (2019),

A lot of research on immigration and names examines the subject from an economic perspective. A 2016 paper in the American Sociological Review looked at the first names given to the generation that came after the wave of immigration to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. “Native-born sons of Irish, Italian, German, and Polish immigrant fathers who were given very ethnic names ended up in occupations that earned, on average, $50 to $100 less per year than sons who were given very ‘American’ names,” the researchers wrote. “This represented 2 to 5 percent of annual earnings.” (They determined the “ethnic-ness” or “American-ness” of a name based on how frequently it was given in each immigrant and native-born population at the time.) 

Some of this effect, the researchers estimated, was due to class differences among parents (which remain a strong determinant of a child’s future job prospects), but most of it had to do with the symbolism of the name itself. Interestingly, the economic advantage that came with having a “more American” name still applied to people with surnames that clearly indicated their parents’ foreign origins. The researchers surmised that American-sounding first names, then, functioned more as a signal of “an effort to assimilate” than a means of “hiding one’s origins.” 

Immigrants in that era frequently felt pressured to change their own first name. A separate study, also from 2016, found that “at any given time between 1900 and 1930,” about 77 percent of immigrants had an American-sounding first name, and it was the norm for them to have dropped their original name within a year of entering the U.S. There were economic overtones here too: Male immigrants were more likely to change their name if they lived in counties where other immigrants had trouble getting jobs.

School and Conflict Paradigm

From PBS's, Why Getting a Student's Name Right Matters

For more info, you might want to visit the My Name, My Identity website[vi].

For students, especially the children of immigrants or those who are English-language learners, a teacher who knows their name and can pronounce it correctly signals respect and marks a critical step in helping them adjust to school.  But for many ELLs, a mispronounced name is often the first of many slights they experience in classrooms; they’re already unlikely to see educators who are like them, teachers who speak their language, or a curriculum that reflects their culture.

It can also hinder academic progress.

...the dropout rate for foreign-born and immigrant students remains above 30 percent, three times that of U.S.-born white students.

• Mispronunciation can hinder academic progress, and make students feel invisible.

...the dropout rate for foreign-born and immigrant students remains above 30 percent, three times that of U.S.-born white students.

Carmen Fariña, a native-Spanish speaker, had a teacher who marked her absent every day for weeks because she didn’t raise her hand during roll call. The teacher assumed Fariña was being defiant, but the future New York City schools chancellor never heard her name called; the teacher had repeatedly failed to pronounce it correctly, including rolling the r’s.

Mispronouncing a student’s name essentially renders that student invisible, Fariña said Teachers Please Learn Our Names! Racial Microaggressions and the K-12 Classroom, is littered with stories of students who endured shame, anxiety, or embarrassment, and sometimes a mix of all three, when their names were called in class.

There’s the tale of a Portland, Oregon-area student with a traditional Chinese name who had her name garbled by a vice principal during an honors ceremony. Set to present the student with an award, the principal laughed at his mistake, drawing chuckles from the audience.  To avoid embarrassment, the student slumped in her seat, refusing to rise to receive the prestigious award. She later skipped her graduation.  The mispronunciation wasn’t an isolated event. Having endured years of slights, she felt the need to become invisible long before the principal’s laughter marked the tipping point.  The woman, who went on to become an educator, changed her first name to ‘Anita.’ “If someone mispronounces your name once as a high school student, you might correct them,” said Kohli, whose parents immigrated to the United States from India. “But if this has been your entire existence in education, what do you do?”  Kohli’s own brother had a teacher mispronounce his traditional South Asian name, Sharad (‘shu-rudth’) as Sharub during a ninth grade class. The teacher and the students decided it was easier to call him Shrub, and it stuck for the rest of high school. The nickname forced him to check part of his identity at the door.

While the diversity of the nation’s public school student body has exploded in the last few decades, the number of African-American, Latino, and Asian teachers hasn’t kept pace. Gonzalez, a former teacher in school districts in Kentucky and Maryland, said she often observed a ‘these people’ attitude from her mostly white female colleagues. “They approached it like, ‘It’s your fault for having a weird name,'” Gonzalez said. To some degree, Gonzalez understands the struggle students face. She grew up with a Russian surname, Yurkosky, that befuddled teachers and classmates. She said it rhymes with “her-pots-ski,” minus the “t” sound in pots. “But I did not experience all the other stuff and other ways that a person can feel discriminated against,” said Gonzalez, who is white.

Butchered names are not just a problem for English learners and immigrants; students from a number of cultural backgrounds have their names garbled or ridiculed. Hawaiian and African-American students, with names that link to their ancestry, also shared stories of how constant mispronunciations made them feel uncomfortable with their names.

• Names can even lead to direct mocking of a student:

In an extreme case, a teacher in Wayne Township, New Jersey, lost her tenure status and job in 2015 for mocking a student’s name on Facebook. Several letters in the student’s name spelled out a profane word, legal documents show. More often, the mocking is more direct and reflexive: laughing off pronunciation, asking the student to take on a nickname, or making a spectacle of their name, Kohli said. “It matters what you do when you’re in front of a child and struggling with their name,” Kohli said. “Is it framed as my inability to say someone’s name or is it framed as the student doing something to make your life more difficult?”

The episode called "Substitute Teacher" from Key and Peele is a funny take on how student names can be messed up by a teacher and how that can affect students.

HW (optional):  Read "Conventional Wisdom Tells Us...What's in a Name? That which we call a Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet" from Cerulo and Ruane.

2 Durkheim's Structural Functional Paradigm; "Hello, My Name is Emile"

As we wait for students to join class, please read the following:

Note:  Sociology can be emotional (and today's lesson involves the topic of suicide)

Sociology as an academic discipline examines all parts of society - to be clear, 

sociology is the study of how society/social groups influence the individuals within them.  

This makes the discipline a very relevant subject.   Students will find just about any topic that interests them has sociological research about it.  However, some topics of everyday life can be emotional.  Just watching the evening news reveals many topics in everyday life that might create a visceral response: murder, environmental pollution, racism, sexual assault and sexism are just to name a few.  All of these are an emotional part of everyday American society.  Sociology as a discipline examines all of these areas.  The researchers studying these topics do not want to be morbid or grotesquely critical of our society out of spite.  Instead, they want to shed light on aspects of society that we might not like to talk about;  with proper academic attention, we can understand these emotional events better and perhaps even improve our society.  I know that talking about suicide or racism or sexual assault all can be emotionally wrought experiences.  But in the end, sociology will help us all understand these and other social ills better and hopefully, help us to strengthen society against them so that we all may live in a more peaceful and content society and be true to ourselves.   

1. Do you think you will be okay discussing these difficult topics?

Please open this Google Form in a new tab and answer question 1 above.  Then, leave the window open and answer the rest of the questions when prompted as we move along in the lesson.

Yesterday's introduction explained that sociology is the scientific study of the ways that individuals are influenced by those whom they interact with (their society).   Three scholars were very influential in the studying of industrial society during the 1800s.  Each scholar created a paradigm that became a foundation for the discipline of sociology.

Emile Durkheim and Structural-Functional Paradigm

The first paradigm we will consider is called Structural-functional.  This paradigm was created by Emile Durkheim.  Durkheim studied suicide and found that within industrial Europe, the rate of suicide varied from country to country but it also stayed stable within each country.   So, something that seemed like an individual choice, such as suicide, was really a product of the country a person lived in.  Someone living in Britain was much more likely to commit suicide than someone living in Italy.  In other words, something was happening in British society that was creating a problem for the individuals living there.  Suicide was not an individual problem, it was a social one.  Durkheim called these social problems dysfunctions.  

Durkheim said that societies have a structure made up of different systems that function to keep order in society.  Just like a body has different systems such as a respiratory, circulatory, digestive and nervous system, a society has different systems like family, education, economy, religion and government etc…  These systems serve a function of keeping order in society by creating a structure for stability and continuity.  Therefore, Durkheim's paradigm becomes known as structural-functional.  Durkheim says that when the structures help to make life healthy for individuals, the structures are functional, whereas structures that are not healthy for individuals are called dysfunctional.

In sum, The institutions/structures provide stability and continuity for individuals - like helping individuals survive and thrive. The structures help us understand what is expected of us and provide an identity and a purpose. This is functional.

Dysfunctions are when these institutions do not meet those needs and instead individuals are harmed by the institutions.

Graphic Organizer for the sociological perspective
Download this framework for understanding sociology.  This will be a graphic organizer to help you quickly recall the lessons from this unit and see the connections between them.  After you download the document, find the top of the pyramid as indicated in the picture below:

Then, add the notes for Emile Durkheim's paradigm:

2.  Any questions so far about the beginnings of sociology and Durkheim and his structural-functional paradigm?


Applying Structural-functional to your life

Revisit the demographic survey that you filled out yesterday. Look at the structures of society that you wrote about in part 1 (especially family, school, work)

3.  How do they provide stability or structure in your life?  

4.  What function do the structures provide - in other words, what purposes do they serve in your life?

5.  What are some ways that these structures interact or depend on each other?

6.  Realize that the individual way that you personally are influenced by these structures is not sociology - instead, the ways that these structures affect unrelated individuals similarly are sociological.  With that in mind, are these similar to the other students at your table?


Names as an example of Durkheim's structural-functional paradigm

As an example of the structural-functional paradigm,  names, like people, seem individual and unique.  For example, when someone calls your name, you probably look up automatically and assume they are talking about you.  And, indeed, for many of us, we are the only person who we know with our exact name.  I don’t know anyone named Christopher Joseph Salituro other than myself.  

However, names are not a unique trait unto ourselves.  Instead, names are our first connection to community.  Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop of South Africa once said, “A solitary individual is not possible.  We come into being because a community of people came together.”  That community of people gives you a name and sees to it that you survive.  We would not be alive if it wasn’t for their influence and nurture.  So, names are a great way to examine how sociologists look at the world.  Many aspects of our lives that seem like individual choices or individual traits are actually guided by social forces that are larger than us.  Our families, schools, religions, governments and other social institutions all influence who we are, including in ways that we don’t even realize.  The sociological perspective examines these influences from different perspectives.

7.  List any ways that your name: 

• connects to family 
• connects to religion 
• represents morals or values 
• transmits cultural preferences and popular ideas

8.  Do you see how your name reflects the influences that come from families, schools/peers, religions, popular culture?  

And do you understand that when people are given a name it can impart values or traditions that connect you to family, religion, or other social structures?  

If you don't understand either of these, please indicate what is confusing.

9.  The structural-functional paradigm is one perspective that sociologists use.  Can you explain it?  Can you use it to examine your own life?

1 Introducing...You! And, Sociology...

Introducing...

YOU! (and Sociology!)

As students enter, please follow the instructions below:

1.  iPad and Blog

Take out your iPad, open  http://sociologysal.blogspot.com/ and bookmark it.  I will post lessons on the blog each day.  If you miss a class or, if you are simply not sure what the lesson was about, go to my blog page to review the lesson from that day.  

2.  Student Demographics Survey 

I want to get to know each of you better as an individual, so please answer this demographic survey.  Please share as much info as you are comfortable sharing.  

3. Syllabus

If you finished 1 and 2 above, please begin reading the syllabus which is one of your homework assignments.

----------PAUSE----------

Ready to go?

Fired Up.

I had you fill out the survey above because I wanted to get to know you as an individual.  My question now is, are you, in fact, an individual?  What makes you an individual?  Please answer individually for all of the numbered boldface questions below.  I will do this for each lesson of ours.  Click on the link below and open the Google Form in a new window.  Then read along with the blog and answer questions in the order that they come up.  

Here is the Google Form for today's lesson.  Please open it in a new window.  Answer numbers 1 and 2 and then return to this blog page.

Introducing You...

1.  Do you think you are an individual?  Why or why not?  What makes you unique?

2.  What do you think it means to be an individual?

Big Group Discussion:  1 and 2.

At first glance, it might seem like you are unique.  In my case, I am a Loyola University graduate and a Chicagoan;  I like basketball, the Cubs, skiing, mountain biking, golfing, gardening, and cooking.  I am married and I have three daughters.  All of this might make me sound unique, but all of it also is a result of my connection to others and at the same time, it connects me to others.  We are intimately shaped by other people and society at large, but our culture's fascination with individuality often hides this connection.  Sociology will help us explore this reality.

Small groups:  Brainstorm the people who made it possible for you to be here today, in this school and in this classroom.

2A.  Now think about how you arrived at this moment in this class.  How did you get here?  Who are all the people that helped you get here today?

Mindfulness

How many different people did you come up with? Did you think of your parents or the person who drove you to school today?  Probably.  But, how about your grandparents or great-grandparents who made it possible for your parents to be living in our district now?  How about the people who built the roads or the engineers who designed them; The architects who built the building you are sitting in;  The doctors who helped you stay healthy until you reached this age or the dozens of teachers who have taught you over the years.  There are so many people who have affected your ability to be here and now.  Sociology will make us aware of our connections to other people.  This awareness of our connection to others is sometimes called sociological mindfulness.  Throughout our class, you will see that sociological mindfulness is woven into the lessons and assessments.  

The bell and meditation

Mindfulness is an awareness of yourself.  To start each class, I use a mindfulness meditation.  I will ring a bell to signal that you are starting class and you should center your thoughts and limit distractions.  I want you to be in the moment.  I will also give you a thought to meditate on and help you develop your own personal mindfulness.

Introducing Sociology...

Background:  The Creation of Sociology as an Academic Discipline

Sociology was a reaction to the extreme individualism that emerged from the Enlightenment. 

During the late 1600s, European scholars Sociology doted on the idea that each individual person is unique and each person is free to choose whoever they want to be.  These ideas fueled a radical individualism that especially took root in the United States.  This has led the Western world in general (especially the United States) to embrace individuality to an extreme that over-minimizes our social connection to others.  But our discussion of the demographic form above reveals that we are connected to others in myriad ways.  The term sociology comes from the latin socius which means "friendship, neighborliness, companionship." 

Sociology is rooted in scientific study, a product of the Scientific Revolution. 

Sociology was also a product of the Scientific Revolution.  The Scientific Revolution established the scientific method as a standard for understanding the world.  As we will learn in our second unit, sociology uses research and the scientific method to understand our social connection.  This is the -ology in sociology which means the "study, science."  The term sociology was first used in French (sociologie) by Auguste Comte in 1830.

The Industrial Revolution created just drastic changes that it inspired scholars to study society's influence on individuals.

But sociology was not simply created because of the changes in scholarship as a result of the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution.  The individual ideals of the Enlightenment were questioned using the scientific method because of the salient changes of the industrial revolution.  The industrial revolution changed the way people lived.  

The industrial revolution brought about changes from:

      Pre-industrial Society                                 to  Post-industrial Society

• an agricultural                                                       to an industrial economy
• rural                                                                      to urban living
• a cottage system                                                    to a factory system method of production
• group identity (tribe, religion, nation, family)        to a belief in individualism

So, sociology began as a scientific study of how individuals are influenced by those around them in contrast to the individualism of the Enlightenment era.  This became salient during the industrial revolution when changes in society were so rapid and extreme that they were noticed by scholars.  These scholars studied society's influence on individuals and that was the beginning of sociology as a discipline.  Simply put,

Sociology is the study of how society/social groups influence the individuals within them.  

3.  Any questions about what sociology is?

Syllabus

Here is a link to the syllabus.  Please read it thoroughly.  This is a good habit to get into because in college, your professors will refer to the syllabus often and they will expect that you read it thoroughly and understand it.  

PRO TIP:  ALWAYS read your syllabus for college.  When asking your professors a question about the class, be sure to mention (and demonstrate) that you read the syllabus before asking them.

4.  Any questions about the syllabus?

HW:   Name Survey

For homework, please survey your family about why you were named the legal name that you have.  If you have a nickname, please ask about that as well.  How and why did you get these names?  Is there a symbolic meaning to your name or why you were named that?