1 Chapter 1: What is Sociology? – The Scientific Study of the Human-Shaped Structure

Culture, the human-shaped world, is the broad theme that will run through the rest of the book. As mentioned prior, the social sciences study culture. However, each tends to emphasize one aspect more than the others. For example, economics focuses more on the market, geography on place, political science the state, psychology the individual. Anthropology and sociology are closely related (sometimes even combined into one academic department). While both study culture, sociology tends to focus more on the role of structure than anthropology. However, they all overlap as each is looking at the relationship between people and their environments. For now, though, let us hold off on trying to process all this at once and briefly talk about how the book will proceed – this will help you wrap your head around everything. The title of this book, The Human-Shaped Structure: An Introduction to Sociology, gave away the big surprise already. After inspecting culture in more depth in the next chapter (2), we will take this information and slide into how we all learn culture through socialization (chapter 3). Then we will identify the social structures that determine a lot of culture for you (chapter 4). We are going to outline this in the following few pages, so sit tight. Much of this book is about you, so you will be able to use examples from your own life to quickly understand and move along with the topics as we progress. Social stratification in chapter 5 looks at the various cultural layers of inequality in the world. We close out the first part of the book in chapter 6, touring our home, Earth. Here, we will spend time digging into how we have shaped the planet on which we live.

In the second part of the book, we will observe significant cultural characteristics shaping who we are as individuals. The first chapter (7), deviance and crime, also serves as a mini-theme. We are looking at how culture shapes the people that are deemed good or bad in society. Societies are subcultures within a geographic area. For example, I was socialized in American society and internalized everything that entails. Keep this in mind as we will revisit human migration over the last 300,000 years, where we will view the cultural meaning of skin color in chapter 8. Next, a favorite of many is the cultural construction of gender and the diversity of sexuality (chapter 9). Chapter 10 looks at the role age and the ageing process plays in your life. Coupling this with chapter 11, we will explore the effects of mental and physical ability. Religion and its influence over the world follow this (chapter 12). Depending on these cultural characteristics ascribed to you, where you live in the world, and the time you live, they can make your life easier or harder.

The book’s third and final section explores what I call the Social Imaginative Process. Chapter 13 will examine the numerous cultural roles education plays, from socialization to learning, to serving as a credentialing system for social mobility. Chapter 14 takes all the content and examines where culture needs to be changed. How do we know the who, what, why, when, how, and where requiring the change? Through practicing sociology, the scientific study of the human-shaped structure. The final chapter (15) is on how to do sociology. The first chapter, the one you are reading right now, will introduce the sociological imagination. The last comes full circle and shows the social imaginative process of sociology. The purpose of sociology is to study the human-shaped structure.^[4] Study is a verb, meaning you must take action to analyze and better understand culture. Sociology can explore these human-shaped topics, whether significant conflicts like wars, shopping patterns, and fashion trends. This chapter will guide you through that process. And relating to the previous chapter, you can apply what you have “discovered” to change your culture and world.

The Human-Shaped World: What is it not?

There is not much that is exempt from the human-shaped world. Material culture would not exist without us, but we have also shaped “invisible” aspects that you might not notice or ignore. For example, we can see that we have entirely transformed the Earth’s surface. We have also altered above into the atmosphere and deeper into the oceans, down to rocks and dirt itself. You could argue that humans shape almost everything; therefore, all social sciences should be just one academic discipline. Anthropology, business, law, geography, history, psychology, etc., all overlap with sociology. But remember, we arbitrarily shape these disciplinary boundaries; nothing is natural about them. However, what differentiates them is their approaches to the cultural topics they study. Sociology is distinct in its practice of looking at the human-shaped world in three ways. One is that it focuses more on the human-shaped structure (a part of the human-shaped world). Two, it does so by way of thinking called the sociological imagination. The third is a way of seeing the world called the sociological perspectives.

The sociological imagination and sociological perspectives demonstrate how thinking sociologically is a deliberate process. Not just “common sense.” Because of sociology’s subject matter and the fact that everyone interacts daily with culture, people make assumptions and claims about the human-shaped world based on their own experiences. For example, most people go to school growing up. Therefore, they may feel that this experience qualifies them to critique educational policy based on their individual experience (anecdotal evidence). However, this is not a problem, for example, with physics or chemistry (Bauman and May, 2019, p. 4). Start talking about advanced mathematics or orthopedic surgery. Suddenly, there is not much to say that is “common sense.” Because these topics do not fall within most people’s daily experiences. Even for physicists, chemists, mathematicians, and doctors – “common sense” does not apply to natural laws, mathematical formulas, or biology.

The sociological imagination is a way of thinking and book by the same name I mentioned in the preface, allowing you to understand your life within the larger historical, social structure. Before we demonstrate using the sociological imagination, we need to cover some of its basics first. Most importantly, the social structure. The social structure is the broader public, including the sustaining institutions you interact with personally and individually.^[5] However, the social structure is shaped and created by humans. In other words, “Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both” (Mills, 1959/2000). They are intertwined together. The social structure itself and the filling within is culture, the human-shaped world.

The Social Structure

To understand the social structure, we will interpret it from the view of having a pet. A dinosaur would be exciting, but having a pet Tyrannosaurus rex is impossible because they A) will eat you and B) are extinct. We will have to imagine having a much smaller dinosaur – a bird. Yes, all birds alive today are theropod dinosaurs, just like T. rex! Where does our dinosaur/bird live? In a birdcage, of course. The habitat you built for it. You include colorful ropes, bells, and other toys for it to interact with. You created this environment and its structure to rest, relax, eat, play, and live. However, your bird does not know this. To them, it is just their world. But you have a different view; you can see the habitat you built from outside the cage. You, too, interact with the environment, your structure, much like your bird. For example, you go into buildings such as restaurants, religious institutions, schools, movie theaters, apartments, etc. You and your bird are very much alike in that you are both interacting with your environment zoomed in on a micro-scale. When you look at your bird in its cage, you see its whole environment. You are viewing it zoomed out on a macro scale. Your bird would see its world from this viewpoint, too, if you took it out of the cage. If you were to look out the window of an airplane or a tall building, you would see your environment on a macro scale too. You would see that someone else built your environment for you also! However, a giant person did not create your environment as you did of your bird; many people collectively shaped your social structure throughout history.

The time you live is the primary reason for the version of the social structure you inhabit. For example, you might be reading this right now on a tablet, phone, or computer. These electronic devices are necessities in your life. But why? Did you invent them from scratch because you needed them or because you could? Do you know how they work or how to build them? Or did you happen to be alive at a time in human history when these devices existed, and access to the Internet is so crucial to living, and you adopted them into your lifestyle? Think back to people in the 19th century, the 1800s – the same century sociology developed, and dinosaur fossils were identified! They had none of these technologies, and you might think, “I could not live without electricity, lighting gas lanterns and candles every night to see.” People in the 22nd century (the 2100s) will probably look back at us and think, “wow, they had to read and not just get the information automatically synched to their brain cloud? I could never live like that.” You see the pattern here? It does not matter when you live because we are individuals born into and living in the present shaped by those in the past. This is the social structure.

The social structure was not built instantly but gradually over time. In Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us, he imagines a world where humans just disappeared. Snap your fingers, and almost 8 billion of us are gone. We would leave behind all the physical shaping we have done to the planet, like buildings, but our ideologies would die out too, as there would be no one left to proclaim them. Ideologies are the ideas that justify the social arrangements in the world (we will explore this in a bit). However, as exciting as this thought experiment is (and perhaps future reality), we will return to it later in chapter six. We need to rewind before any of the stuff we could leave behind is even built. We want to know when the first element of the structure was constructed. Or, for those of you keen enough to have picked up on it, what we are asking is when did culture start?

The Birth of Culture

Culture began with the first step that the first human ever took. Much like Neil Armstrong’s boot print embedded into the Moon’s surface in 1969, we initially shaped the world with one small step as well. Whatever dent made in the dirt or leaf that was crunched marks the beginning of the human-shaped world. While the lunar boot impression is still visible five decades later, our terrestrial print has been trampled over and eclipsed in memory by all the other far more exciting things we have done since. For all we know, there could be a McDonald’s restaurant on top of this historic site. The first identifiable or memorable element of culture was probably nonmaterial in symbolic language – like pointing and other simple gestures. This would later evolve into more complex oral and written language, including drawings on cave walls. We will focus more on language and its importance in the next chapter. Physical culture was probably some clothing (and I use that term loosely). Tools for hunting, building shelters, and starting fires appeared along the way.

Culture is a process of cumulative and collective learning. For example, when an animal dies, say our beloved pet bird/dinosaur takes everything it learned and acquired in its lifetime with it. However, being social animals, we humans can transcribe our knowledge and experiences via language and share this information. Years ago, someone ate a poisonous mushroom and died, but we could learn from that experience so that no one else does the same – we can teach each other. In other words, we are not reinventing the wheel with every new person born. We are building culture together, but also dependent on others and shaped by them too. This unintended vulnerability is known as a latent function. The fragmenting of the world and our roles within it means we are only responsible for a small part (the flip side being a lot of pressure is taken off us). As individuals, that means we rely on an awful lot of people and institutions out of our control to maintain the social structure. Get lost in the woods and see how long you last or how much stuff you can create. Did you recreate the tablet, phone, or computer that you might be using right now? My guess is no because the knowledge required and access to the necessary resources go beyond one person’s reasonable expectations and capabilities. We are helpless without the aid of others to support us.

Culture trickled into development rather than flooded. However, one significant innovation that occurred about 10,000 years ago would create the conditions for a surge in cultural creativity and the construction of our social structure. The most significant influencer of all future culture was a byproduct of nature, forcing us to adapt because of the ice age – agriculture. At least 12,000 years ago, three-fourths of all the land on Earth was occupied and being physically transformed by humans (Ellis et al., 2021). At the same time, most of the Earth was covered by glaciers. This has not ended (technically, we are in an interglacial period), as you can still see the glacial remains year-round in Greenland and Antarctica. However, by the end of the 21st century, more than 200 million people on land may be displaced from the accelerated melting of the Earth’s glaciers (Hugonnet et al., 2021). With scarce vegetation and a slowdown in migration due to the climate, we began to grow and harvest food in an organized way on a mass scale. Having a reliable energy source through farming and domestication of animals allowed us to settle down, be more sedentary, and another theme that keeps appearing, have sex. A sharp increase in the human population is an outgrowth of agriculture and this excess in spare time. This breakthrough long ago takes the pressure off you today from having to forge fruits and vegetables or raise livestock for slaughter. We rely on farmers to provide these necessities; this frees up your time to do other things. However, you were also born long after the crossing of this agricultural threshold. The leisure time that may have existed then has been filled with other time-consuming obligations developed into the social structure over that time.

Much of the significant institutions of the social structure were formed in prehistory. That is anything that happened before written language was developed to document their origins. For example, systems of numerical counting with clay tokens appeared simultaneously in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) and agriculture to keep track of things like grains produced and animals in a region. Trading with neighboring Egypt leads to pictographic languages as early as 5400 years ago (Fischer, 2018, p. 97-98). We know about the timeline for agriculture and written language because there is physical evidence. The rest requires us to engage in conjectural history and speculate. For example, the why part about how any of this came into existence is an educated guess. However, at the risk of sounding like I am throwing out some “grand theory,” most of the institutions of the social structure probably developed after the advent of agriculture. In other words, within the last 10,000 years.

Institutions of the Social Structure

The social structure consists of sustaining institutions in which you interact. A big one was the cultural conception we all know and love called money. No one knows for sure when money first originated or why, for that matter (Hansen, 2019). However, the idea of money probably developed with increasing trade. It was not an invention or discovery that had a use after the fact. Instead, it formed in unison as a necessity to simplify the trading process (Karimzadi, 2012, p. 54). The more objects or services available make it increasingly difficult to determine values. Are two bear furs equivalent to five clay pots? How many clay pots to dig a hole of a certain depth? At least 4,000 years ago, bronze rings and axe blades of similar weights were used as commodity money (Maikel & Popa, 2021).

Coins that resemble the kinds we are used to having clank in our pockets have been discovered in Turkey with mint dates as early as 2,600 years ago (Curtis, 1906). Whatever the origins, we eventually inherited the institution known as the economy, and now it dominates our lives. Now, much of the world must work to earn money. It is compulsory to purchase food, water, shelter, and other survival necessities (and recreation). There went your free time. The more money you have, the more freedom of choice and opportunities that you have. Less money equals fewer opportunities and less freedom of choice (Simmel, 1900/2004, p. 219). However, you are never free from the need for money. It is a requirement to exist in the current social structure.

Emerging possibly simultaneously during the rise of money is another institution, the state. The state is the organization of a society that enforces its ideologies through political control. Cities began to spring up, borderlines slowly drawn, and countries formed. Empires have come and gone; countries have disappeared, been renamed, merged, and split. Even the flags change over time. Throughout all this, measures to protect and maintain these ideologies and geographic territories have been implemented. For example, citizens’ taxation and violence or threat of violence through armies, militias, and police forces are two forms of social control. As one of the disciplinary founders, Max Weber, famously said, “a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” (1918/2013, p. 78).

Governments serve the will of the state. For example, the War in Afghanistan has been ongoing through four different American Presidents. Even though the representatives of a government change, the state’s ideology prevails regardless of the people in charge. From 1817-2020, the United States has been engaged in a period of war 66% of the time (Torreon, 2020). America relies on military spending to fuel and support its economy, called the military-industrial complex. In other words, if you hypothetically got rid of the military overnight, it would create millions of unemployed people, and trillions of dollars would disappear. The state is a sustaining institution; it lives on longer than the individuals that uphold it. This reification is maintained because of ideology.

Religion, more preciously, religious artifacts appear at the same time as agriculture. What is believed to be the world’s first religious temple of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey was under construction when we experimented with the plow (Culotta, 2009). The existence of a god(s) or some other supernatural being is a long going debate, but religion itself is very much human-shaped. The ceremonies, places of worship, customs, and the values they hold and represent are all our own doing. Religion, spirituality, and the belief in some higher power probably go back hundreds of thousands of years as an explanatory force. To provide an answer to the question of why we are here (it brings people together). We were burying our dead as early as 78,000 years ago (Martinón-Torres et al., 2021). However, the theme with all these institutions is that they did not just appear overnight or were “constructed simply by force of thought” (Durkheim, 1915, p. 4). To quote another founder of sociology, Émile Durkheim, in his The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, “Like every human institution, religion did not commence anywhere” (p. 9). However, this is not to be confused as if we did not create these institutions. We very much did; without us humans, they would all disappear. Religion can serve as a governing system too, but so can governments via the state. Both can shape laws to form limits on what is acceptable in a particular society or group. Religion appears to have been around as long as we have.

Other significant institutions include education and the family. Early systems of education taught religion. Whether the temple schools of ancient Egypt, priests were teaching students in India. Buddhist doctrines from India spread east into Asia. Students in ancient China learned about Confucius and Lao-tzu (“Education, History of,” 2018). Education serves to pass on knowledge, but also a society’s culture. The family, as we will see in chapter 3, serves as the primary agent of socialization. Whether through blood relations or external relationships (e.g., marriage), families allow individuals to be a part of a group. Economic institutions, the state, religion, education, and families exist in every society on Earth. Healthcare, mass media, legal, and other institutions are also prevalent around the globe. Chapter 4 will look at different components such as roles and groups that shape how we interact with these institutions, the social structure. However, the thing to remember is that these institutions, which you spend so much of your life interacting with, predate your existence and will continue after your presence on Earth (sorry to break it to you). We are living during the growth of possibly the newest major institution, the Internet. It was in a little over 50% of households in the United States by 2003 (A Nation online, 2004, p. 5). By the end of 2019, that same percentage applied to the rest of the world (Measuring Digital Development, 2020, p. 7). It is growing in influence, but will it become a sustaining institution? Only the future will know.

A Different Social Structure?

The social structure is a product of history, but it is not “historical fate” (Mills, 1959/2000). You might have noticed how often the word shape and its derivatives keep appearing, but this is intentional to remind you that the world is malleable and changeable. What if that chunk of the comet never hit Earth? What if it hit a different part of Earth? What if the dinosaurs never disappeared because of it? It is estimated that over 2.5 billion Tyrannosaurus rex had lived by the time the Earth blew up on that fateful day (Marshall, 2021). Would we humans have survived amongst all these dinosaurs? Would we have even evolved into existence if that never happened? Our pathway to today, much of the natural world, and even the universe’s history is full of randomness, errors, and just the right thing happening at the right time. Sometimes referred to as the Goldilocks principle or conditions. It would be arrogant to think that we humans are the exception to the rule. None of this was predetermined, in outer space or on Earth. It was shaped by us (the on-Earth part), which means our world can differ from the one that exists now.

The social structure that exists today could have and can be shaped differently. Much like you could have built your pet bird/dinosaur’s habitat in another way too. There is no finite, linear path of culture – it is all changeable. For example, the assumption that robots will eventually take over the jobs of people is incorrect. The prediction might be correct, but the actual replacement is because people decide to implement these changes. Why does the economy function the way it does now and not like a barter system? Where goods and services are earned through the repayment of other goods and services? There is no reason it cannot. However, as Mills (1959/2000) points out, “institutions have taken a long time to evolve, and accordingly, they are not to be tampered with hastily.” Culture tends to change incrementally (but not for everyone, as we will see later). The economy or any other institution could have been shaped differently early on. Now though, they are so firmly established that drastic change would be rather challenging to get everyone on the same page. But why?

Influences of Power and Authority

Humans are responsible for everything related to culture. That includes the social structure. We shape all of it, including the harmful elements of culture (e.g., poverty, world hunger, racism, sexism, etc.). However, we do not all have the same level of influence in shaping it. Those with more power and authority generally have more ability to shape culture and the social structure. We can borrow the definition of power from Max Weber’s often cited book, Economy and Society. He says power “is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance” (1922/1978, p. 53). For example, parents exert a lot of power over their children. When they tell them it is time to go to bed, even though they protest, the children still go to sleep (or at least pretend to). But power can also be wielded not just by individuals but by the social structure too. For example, no one person is forcing you to earn money. Still, you also have to because the institution of the economy dictates that you need it to survive. However, since humans shaped this social arrangement, that means humans must be maintaining this ideology. To continue this arrangement, we need to look at the dance partner of power, authority.

It takes two to tango, and with power is authority: “power justified by the beliefs of the voluntarily obedient” (Mills, 1959/2000). In a famous experiment involving humans, social psychologist Stanley Milgram wanted to know how killing millions of people in the Holocaust could have happened. In his book about the experiment, Obedience to Authority, he says this “could only have been carried out on a massive scale if a very large number of people obeyed orders” (1974, p. 1). In the experiment, he leveraged the persuasive powers of authority. For example, 65% of participants administered a seemingly lethal shock of electricity to a stranger in another room simply because a man in a white lab coat was ordering them to do so. People need to see authority as legitimate, a scientist, a position of high prestige and social status compared to other occupations, in this case, to obey the commands. Power says to do this, and the authority says because I know better. Again, authority can be from an individual(s) or structural, institutional. Any government agency qualifies. For example, those who collect your tax money and you accept this rule because they have the power to penalize you (e.g., fines, imprisonment) if you disobey. Go against your parent’s demands, and they might temporarily take away some of your privileges, like seeing friends or your video games.

Culture stays static because those with the power to change it choose not to (or only in their favor). This is usually because the current social arrangements are benefiting them, so why change. Those with more power are a minority of the population (e.g., the wealthiest people on Earth) not acting to change the culture for a majority (e.g., most of the world is poor). For example, the richest 2,153 people or 0.00003% of the world population of 7.7 billion, have more wealth than 4.6 billion people or 60% of the population (Coffey et al., 2020)! Those with little power are a majority (e.g., poor people) not acting to change the culture for a majority (e.g., the same poor people). This inaction leads to no change in culture or their situation (i.e., they stay poor). This passivity helps maintain the existing structure and continues to be shaped and controlled by those with more power. However, several reasons can explain this inaction. Having little power also means a lack of resources like available time, money, the ability to organize, domination (through punishment or its threat), coercion, and manipulation tricks people into not doing anything. For example, X person is wealthy (power). However, you are not wealthy and work hard to try to be but cannot, and you know from firsthand experience how hard it is to become rich. That must mean that wealthy people know what they are talking about and should listen to them (authority) because they are wealthy and successful. However, you are unaware of how they acquired this wealth in the first place if they even did (e.g., they could just have inherited it).

Sometimes those with little power, a majority, act to change the culture for a majority. This can be categorized as collective behavior or even a social movement. These actively seek to change the culture and the social structure (we will expand on this in chapter 14). However, even then, this “majority” is usually just an oppressed minority of a specific group of people (like any of the cultural characteristics in part two of the book will cover). Hopefully, your brain has warmed up and shifted in thinking since this section started. Suppose I explained things as well as I hope I have. In that case, you should be dreaming up alternatives, different versions of the social structure and how you are affected by it. If so, congratulations. You are using your sociological imagination.

The Sociological Imagination

We cannot separate our individual lives from the world around us.^[6] Many personal troubles an individual might go through requires looking beyond them at the more significant public issues affecting an individual. For example, if you are unemployed, that might be an individual problem. Still, suppose there are lots of people unemployed. In that case, this hints at something more prominent than the individual causing this problem of unemployment. Does an individual soldier start a war, or does the larger structure of the state in the country they live start the war, and they are sent into battle? Does a marriage that ends in divorce mean a failure of two people, or do many divorces happening in society point towards more significant issues with the institution of marriage? If you get a bad grade in a school course, does it mean that you are stupid, or could external forces affect your performance (e.g., problems at home, distractions in your social life, etc.)? To further explore this intersection of the individual and society, we will look at the intentional causing of death in suicide and the influence the social structure has on this decision.

There are a variety of reasons why someone would commit suicide. Suicide is seen as a highly personal, individual, private act. However, certain types of suicide might be aided by some force in their social environment putting pressure on them (Durkheim, 1897/2002, p. 269). In his book, Suicide: A Study in Sociology, Émile Durkheim investigated these types, and found rates of suicide varied among demographic groups (e.g., men commit suicide at a higher rate than women, differences between religions, people in and out of relationships, etc.). In other words, there are external forces related to their “social condition” that vary the rates of suicide. Meaning there is more than just a problem of “personal temperament” at work here. That means a significant disruption to the social structure; for example, a global pandemic like the current COVID crisis would predict a massive increase in suicides. However, the opposite has happened (Wise, 2021; Pirkis et al., 2021). Most of the world, whether they knew it or not, was using their sociological imagination. They recognized the pressures that would be put on people, not of their own doing. They (e.g., governments, employers) increased the social safety net. They offered more mental health support, financial subsidies, and the “all in this together” mantra helped unite everyone under the same struggle. As a result, suicide rates are essentially the same as in the pre-pandemic world, and some countries have even seen a decrease. However, there are variations in different demographic groups, a lack of information from poorer countries, pandemic fatigue kicking in, and other reasons leading to increases in certain countries (Tanaka & Okamoto, 2021).

The sociological imagination is a way of thinking about the intersections between the individual, history, and the social structure that allows you to understand better how the world works and how they shape your life. In effect, you should continually be translating any personal troubles you might be having into public issues. Often social problems masquerade as individual problems. For example, if you are stressed or having self-esteem issues because you think you are unattractive or not attractive enough. Is that a problem, or are the expectations of beauty in society so high and unrealistically achievable thanks to plastic surgery and photo editing that you feel bad about yourself by comparison. If you are underweight, is it because of a societal obsession with thinness? If you are overweight, is it because of the prevalence of cheap, unhealthy foods versus plentiful, nutritious, calorie-conscious options? Do you work at a sedentary job that provides little exercise or one with so little fulfillment or is so exhausting that you eat as an enjoyable reward to look forward to? Or perhaps a global pandemic has led to weight gain because of the stress of being isolated and unsure of the future? The list of examples can go on and on but remember these personal troubles are fueled by structural, public issues beyond the control of the individual. Culture is collective, meaning we are only responsible for a fraction of its shaping and maintaining. Ease the pressure off yourself by constantly using your sociological imagination to decode this interplay between your biography (personal troubles), history (public issues), the social structure, and the culture maintaining it.

Sociological Perspectives

The sociological perspectives are ways of viewing interactions from a specific point of view. Remember your pet bird/dinosaur cage that you built earlier? Using different perspectives of looking at the habitat you made, we might come to different conclusions. For example, why you included the stuff that you did. One perspective is called structural functionalism or often just functionalism. The name hints at what structures exist in society and their functions – in this case, for stability. Like the organs of the human body, functionalism looks at the world with the idea that everything must be serving a purpose. As you might think and use your sociological imagination to deduce, then how do societies change? Or why would they then? Or that something like poverty must serve a purpose? These questions open functionalism to criticism that there must be a “benefit” to poverty that would justify its existence (Gans, 1971, 1972, 1995). Of course, your bird does not live in a world of advanced culture, so it does not need to worry about poverty-sustaining ideologies. Still, all the stuff, like the toys and other objects it interacts with, serves a purpose. They have a specific function; otherwise, why include them? A functionalist perspective looks at society in the same way. Why would something exist if it did not have a specific function too? Or you might flip it and look at the world through the conflict perspective.

The conflict perspective looks at the world from the eyes of competition for resources. Functionalism is positive; conflict perspective is negative. Why does your cage have lavish accessories, and another does not? Many of the works by Karl Marx, most famously The Communist Manifesto, sought to illuminate the exploitation of workers (“the proletariat”) by the owners (“the bourgeoisie”). Marx was German but used these Latin words to describe the two classes. This short booklet ended with a call to action in its final words. Insisting a need to overthrow this system by saying, “WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!” (Engels & Marx, 1848/2017, p. 33). Economics and the resources money entails, from this perspective, is the driving force behind much of our interactions and conflict in society. This can overlap and even expand with issues such as “race” (e.g., critical race theory), gender (e.g., queer theory), or even ideas (e.g., postmodernism) to name a few. Wherever there is a power imbalance and inequality, conflict theory can provide a lens to observe the struggle. This constant conflict explains why societies change, unlike functionalism. Still, since it is always looking for conflict, it tends to overlook stabilizing factors in society. For example, religion can both be a source of conflict and uniting factor. Another area of contention is sex, so much so that there is an entire perspective devoted to it.

The feminist perspective seeks to analyze the world from a female standpoint. Most of the world is patriarchal, meaning men are in most power, authority, and prestigious positions. With that said, most medical research has primarily been conducted by men, on men, and for men. For example, in the United States, women were not required to be included as participants in nationally funded medical trials until 1993 (Liu & Dipietro Mager, 2016, p. 3)! More recently, this discrepancy of sex and gender is still an ongoing problem globally in research (Hankivsky et al., 2018). Perhaps usurpingly then that this lack of representation is seen in the current rollout of COVID vaccines worldwide. Only one study so far has looked at the adverse effect infection from COVID-19 had on women’s hormones and menstruation (Li et al., 2021). And surveys are just now being created to ask women if they have had menstrual cycle changes since receiving vaccines. After one billion vaccines have already been administered worldwide (Kreier, 2021)! A feminist perspective looks for these blind spots (intentional or not) in society. Inequality exists for women in numerous facets of life like education, the workplace, and politics compared to men. However, not all women experience this unequal treatment the same. Intersectionality looks at the multiple layers of being a woman and how these cultural characteristics might open them up to more or less the possibility of discrimination. For example, in American society, while penalized for being a woman, a rich white woman has more privilege than a poor black woman. But what if we want specifics of what it is like to be a woman or an intimate look at an individual’s experience? For that, we need to leave these big picture macro perspectives and go micro.

The symbolic interactionist perspective looks at how we communicate through symbols like language and the objects we interact with. This perspective gets into the detailed interpretations of the people behind the statistics or quantitative data that you see reported daily. Even down to one-on-one interactions, which the more prominent macro perspectives do not touch upon. For example, your nation’s flag is a symbol. This symbol represents pride, patriotism, and a sense of home to you and the people from your country. Or it might express resentment with someone dissatisfied from living there or even labelled as the enemy by another nation. All those sustaining institutions of the social structure change a little over time. Still, you are making changes, sometimes significant, daily, based on the experiences you have. You change a lot over your lifetime. For example, your attitude, hobbies, relationships, hairstyles, jobs, and places you live. These are fluid, not static. We are demonstrating agency here or making decisions in our “little” world (micro), even though the larger world (macro) does not change. For example, no individual has that much power in the world that not buying a cup of coffee stops the economy from functioning or existing. There is even an influential sociology book called The Social Construction of Reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1967) about how everything is constructed to reflect your interactions with your environment. Even the very idea of gender and its expression is something we “do,” perform, to identify (or not) with a particular biological sex. This perspective will get more attention in chapter 3, socialization.

Sometimes these perspectives are referred to as sociological approaches or theories. In any case, they are all reductionists, looking at the world through one particular lens or aspect. None can explain all. The reality is that we are trying to apply arbitrary boundaries to view some human-shaped phenomenon to help us see things differently or for the first time. There is great potential for overlap with all these perspectives and even more alternative viewing methods (e.g., rational choice theory). All of these are tools you can adopt to help “see the strange in the familiar.” Suppose you can grasp the essential topics discussed in this chapter. In that case, I can promise you that the hard part (although I hope I made it easy and enjoyable for you) is over. The information here will flow through the rest of the book through the theme of culture. As long as you keep these significant points in mind throughout (summarized on the following pages), you are fully equipped to handle understanding the rest of this book. Sociology, and more importantly, the reality of the human-shaped world in which you live.

Chapter Summary

Sociology is the scientific study of the human-shaped structure. The human-shaped world is culture, and the structure is the specific aspect sociology focuses on. Individuals both shape and are shaped by the structure. People are a product of the structure in which they live, determined mainly by the time in which they live. This is the social structure. Elements of the social structure (e.g., institutions) can outlast an individual’s life and endure into the future (e.g., religion). Those with more power and the persuasive abilities that accompany power (e.g., authority) influence culture and thus people to a greater extent than those with less power. Using the sociological imagination, you can see the effect that the social structure and associated elements of culture have in shaping you. The sociological perspectives are a tool to see how culture is functioning, why it is functioning in a particular way. And when paired with the sociological imagination, opportunities to think about where changes in culture might be needed.

Major Points of the Chapter

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

• Explain what sociology is.
• Contrast what culture is and is not.
• Identify the sustaining institutions of the social structure.
• Recognize the varying influences of power.
• Describe and practice using the sociological imagination.
• Distinguish how the sociological perspectives interpret culture.

Study Questions

1. What is sociology? Think about this concerning the social sciences. What makes sociology stand out from the others?
2. What is culture? What is culture not? Can you think of some examples of nonmaterial and material culture?
3. Identify some of the significant sustaining institutions of the social structure? Why do you think they are called sustaining institutions? What are they sustaining? (This is a bit of a trick question).
4. What are some of the influences of power? What about not having power? Imagine two people, one with a lot of power, one with very little. How are their lives different?
5. What is the sociological imagination? Think of how your life relates to the social structure. What is one positive and negative thing that has occurred in your life beyond your influence and control?
6. How do the sociological perspectives interpret culture? Think of an essential holiday in your country. How might each of the four perspectives covered interpret the role this holiday plays?

Attributions

Figure 1.1 “solar system and Oort Cloud with distances (Sun …. α-Centauri) painted in decadic logarithmic units.” by quapan is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Figure 1.2 “File:Purgatorius BW.jpg” by Nobu Tamura is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Figure 1.3 “Fossil Hominid Skull Display at The Museum of Osteology” by Sklmsta is licensed under CC0 1.0

Figure 1.4 “File:Human migration out of Africa.png” by Ephert is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Figure 1.5 Original from author.

Figure 1.6 “The bird cage” by Toufik Medjahed is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Figure 1.7 “T-Rex Dinosaur” by Scott Kinmartin is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Figure 1.8 “Desert agriculture – outside Zagora, Morocco” by Richard Allaway is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Figure 1.9 “Dollars & Rupees” by Wen-Yan King is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Figure 1.10 “Mausoleum of Mao Zedong” by Jorge Lascar is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Figure 1.11 “Göbekli Tepe” by tonynetone is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Figure 1.12 “Man and Shopping Cart” by lavocado@sbcglobal.net is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Figure 1.13 “File:Milgram experiment v2.svg” by Fred the Oyster is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Figure 1.14 “Stop Looking! Fashion Runway 2011” by henryjose is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Figure 1.15 “Meridian Charts (detail), Office, Wu Hsing Tao School, Traditional Five Element Acupuncture & Psychology, Seattle, Washington, USA” by Wonderlane is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Figure 1.16 “People on streets, Beijing” by Yoshimai is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0