A rather standard definition of sociology might note that sociology is the systematic study of society and social interaction. But what does this really tell us? It seems the object of study is something called “society and social interaction” and that sociologists study this in a “systematic”, or as we will later argue, a ‘scientific’ way.

While a useful start, we will soon see that understanding what sociology is and what sociologists do is rather complex. While most of us have an understanding of the world rooted in our individual life history and the views of those we are closest to, taking a sociological perspective often reveals a very different, broader and more complex idea of social life and our place in it. Sociological investigation reveals how as members of a society we both shape and are shaped by the social world we inhabit. A sociological perspective, by examining the way society is organised, allows us to make connections between the everyday life of individuals and structure of opportunities and problems in society. Moreover, by focusing on historical trends and developments and by comparing societies across the globe, sociology demonstrates that there is nothing inevitable about the present ways of doing things – that social change is possible.

Are you still a bit confused? Don’t worry, the goal of an introductory course in sociology is to thoroughly explain what sociology is and why it is important. In the following pages you will encounter many well-known sociologists and their findings about how the social world operates and the theories and concepts sociologists use. Sociology however, is not just for sociologists. Taking a sociological perspective can help each and every one of us in our jobs, as members of families and neighbours navigate a complex world.

What are Society and Culture?  Micro, Macro and Global Perspectives

Sociologists study all aspects and levels of society. A society is a group of people whose members interact, reside in a definable area, and share a culture. A culture includes the group’s shared practices, values, beliefs, norms, and artifacts. One sociologist might analyze people as they carry on everyday conversations to study how the rules of polite conversation differ by social class or cultural group. Another sociologist might study how a shift to working from home changes the way organizations are run. Yet another sociologist might study how access to daycare affects the national poverty rate. A fourth sociologist might study how the increasing economic importance of China, India and Brazil has altered the politics and economics of African nations.

These examples illustrate the ways in which society and culture can be studied at different levels of analysis, from the detailed study of face-to-face interactions to the examination of large-scale historical processes affecting entire civilizations.  As discussed in later chapters, sociologists break the study of society down into four separate levels of analysis: micro, meso, macro, and global. The basic distinctions, however, are between micro-level sociology, macro-level sociology and global-level sociology.

The study of cultural rules of politeness in conversation is an example of micro-level sociology. At the micro-level of analysis, the focus is on the social dynamics of intimate, face-to-face interactions. Research is conducted with a specific set of individuals such as conversational partners, family members, work associates, or friendship groups. Other examples of micro-level research include the study of how informal mentorship helps or hinders advancement of women in high tech startups, or how loyalty to criminal gangs is established.

Macro-level sociology focuses on the properties of large-scale, society-wide phenomenon that extend beyond individual interaction. The example above of the influence of child care policies on poverty rates is a macro-level phenomenon.  A sociologist might study how access to public childcare has a different effect on families depending on their income, their place of residence (rural or urban), their family type (single or two-parent), or their ethnic and racial background. Other examples of macro-level research include examining which racial and ethnic groups are under-represented in positions of power in society, or why fundamentalist Christian religious movements play a more prominent role in American politics than they do in Canadian politics. In each case, the site of the analysis shifts away from the nuances and detail of micro-level interpersonal life to the broader, macro-level systematic patterns in society.

In global-level sociology, the focus is on structures and processes that extend beyond the boundaries of states or specific societies. As Ulrich Beck (2000) has pointed out, in many respects we no longer “live and act in the self-enclosed spaces of national states and their respective national societies.” Issues of climate change, pandemics, the introduction of new technologies and popular culture increasingly by-pass traditional borders. With the boom and bust of petroleum or other export commodity economies, it is clear to someone living in Fort McMurray, Alberta, that their daily life is affected by global markets that determine the price of oil, the global flows of capital investment and increasingly the global response to a building climate emergency.

The relationship between the micro, macro, and global remains one of the key conceptual problems confronting sociology. What is the relationship between an individual’s life and social life at the national and global level? On the one hand, macro-level phenomena like class structures, racial inequality, health care systems, and gender roles and urbanization clearly affect our everyday lives.  When our health care system cannot provide necessary services we may die prematurely, gender stereotypes make it difficult for us to enter certain types of work, and transportation systems in cities might make our commutes long and unhealthy (stuck in a car in traffic) or short and active (a brisk walk to school).  On the other hand, these macro-level phenomenon do not explain the specific nuances of everyday interaction very well. They do not explain how strangers interact on the bus, how we navigate cliques in school, or how everyday racism is expressed and affects us in the streets.  Macro-level structures constrain the daily interactions of the intimate circles in which we move, but they are also filtered through localized perceptions and “lived” in a myriad of inventive and unpredictable ways.

The Sociological Imagination

While we will learn that there are many different ‘kinds’ of sociology and many different methods that sociologists use, sociologists all have something in common. Each of them looks at society using what C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) called the sociological imagination, sometimes also referred to as the “sociological lens” or “sociological perspective.”  Mills defined a sociological imagination as the capacity to see an individual’s private troubles in the context of the broader social processes that structure them. This enables the sociologist to examine what Mills called “personal troubles of milieu” as “public issues of social structure,” and vice versa.

Mills reasoned that private troubles like being overweight, being unemployed, having marital difficulties, or feeling purposeless or depressed appear to most people as purely personal in nature. When faced with such troubles we tend to focus on how they are unique to our personal selves, our psychological circumstance, or our moral character:  “I have an addictive personality;” “I didn’t get the right education,” “My husband is unsupportive,” etc. However, if private troubles are widely shared with others, they indicate that there is a common social problem that has its source in the way social life is structured. At this level, the issues are not adequately understood as simply private troubles. They are best addressed as public issues that require a collective response to resolve.

Obesity, for example, has been increasingly recognized as a growing problem for both children and adults in North America. Michael Pollan cites statistics that three out of five Americans are overweight and one out of five is obese (2006). In Canada in 2012, just under one in five adults (18.4%) were obese, up from 16% of men and 14.5% of women in 2003 (Statistics Canada, 2013). Because the rate of  obesity has changed over time we know it is is not simply a private concern related to individual genetics, medical issues, dietary practices, or exercise habits. This change in the incidence of obesity can only be accounted for by changing social conditions that that puts people at risk for chronic diseases like hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease and creates significant costs for the medical system. Rather than simply a personal trouble, obesity is also a social issue.

What are the social changes that can account for changing obesity rates? Polan is particularly interested in the role of the industrialization of the food chain, which since the 1970s has produced increasingly cheap and abundant food with significantly more calories due to processing. Cheap ingredients from industrial farms like corn syrup and mass produced potatoes and beef, led to the trend of super-sized fast foods and soft drinks in the 1980s. As Pollan argues, trying to find a processed food in the supermarket without a cheap, calorie-rich, corn-based sugar additive is a challenge. Pollan also agrees with health researchers and urban planners such as the University of British Columbia’s, Lawrence Frank that obesity rates are, in part, a product of the increasingly sedentary and stressful lifestyles of modern, capitalist society. These academics argue that obesity, like many of the pressing health issues, is influenced by the type and amount of work we do,and the way our cities and neighbourhoods are organized. Others would note that gender stereotypes and racial and economic inequalities place some people more at risk than others.

The sociological imagination in this example is the capacity to see the connection between the private trouble of being overweight and the social issues of the industrialization of the food chain, the profit motive of fast food restaurants, social norms about the types of food we eat, the transportation we use and to the way that some social groups have better access to healthy food and exercise.  A sociological imagination allows us to see the social arrangements and contexts that influence behaviour, attitudes, and culture. By applying systematic and scientific methods to this process, they try to do so without letting their own biases and preconceived ideas influence their conclusions.

Studying Patterns: How Sociologists View the Relationship between Society and the Individual

To a sociologist, the personal decisions an individual makes do not exist in a vacuum. Cultural patterns and social forces put pressure on people to select one choice over another. Sociologists try to identify these general patterns by examining the behaviour of large groups of people living in the same society and experiencing the same societal pressures. When general patterns persist through time and become routine forms of micro-level (interpersonal) interaction, or institutionalized at macro or global levels of interaction (i.e. into class structures, legal systems, or economic activities), they are referred to as social structures.

A key basis of the sociological perspective is the concept that the individual and society are inseparable. It is impossible to study one without the other. German sociologist Norbert Elias (1887-1990) called the process of simultaneously analyzing the behaviour of individuals and the society that shapes that behaviour figuration. He described it through a metaphor of dancing. There can be no dance without the dancers, but there can be no dancers without the dance. Without the dancers, a dance is just an idea about motions in a choreographer’s head. Without a dance, there is just a group of people moving around a floor. Similarly, there is no society without the individuals that make it up, and there are also no individuals who are not affected by the society in which they live (Elias, 1978).

One problem for sociologists is that such a perspective is often discouraged by the moral framework of the contemporary capitalist societies we live in. Such societies emphasize the importance of individual responsibility and individual choice. This moral framework insists that the individual is responsible for their behaviours and decisions and suggests that explanations of behaviour that address social context are “letting the individual off the hook” for their actions. Talking about the social roots of individual problems is seen to be morally soft or lenient.

Sociology, as a social science, remains neutral on these types of moral questions. For sociologists, the individual and society relationship is complex and needs to be examined through evidence-based, rather than morality-based, research. Sociology encourages us to acknowledge that our behaviours and decisions are shaped by the society and social groups we belong to while also acknowledging that within these contexts we do make individual decisions and endure the consequences of these decisions.  Our lives are profoundly shaped by our social context and through living our lives we come to influence, change or reinforce these social arrangements. In the end, a society is nothing but the ongoing social relationships and activities of specific individuals, but we are never entirely free of our social ties.

Making Connections: Sociology in the Real World

The Individual in Society: Choices of Indigenous Gang Members

 

In 2010, the CBC program The Current aired a report about several young Indigenous men who were serving time in prison in Saskatchewan for gang-related activities (CBC,2010). They all expressed desires to be able to deal with their drug addiction issues, return to their families, and assume their responsibilities when their sentences were complete. They wanted to have their own places with nice things in them. However, according to the CBC report, 80% of the prison population in the Saskatchewan Correctional Centre were Indigenous and 20% of those were gang members. This is consistent with national statistics on Indigenous incarceration. While Indigenous people account for about 5% of the Canadian population, in 2020 they made up 30% of the federal penitentiary population. In 2001, they made up only 17.6% of the penitentiary population. Overrepresentation of Indigenous people in prisons has continued to grow substantially (Office of the Correctional Investigator, 2020).

The outcomes of Indigenous incarceration are also bleak. The federal Office of the Correctional Investigator summarized the situation as follows. Indigenous inmates are:

• Routinely classified as higher risk and higher need in categories such as employment, community reintegration, and family supports.
• Released later in their sentence (lower parole grant rates); most leave prison at Statutory Release or Warrant Expiry dates.
• Overrepresented in segregation and maximum security populations.
• Disproportionately involved in use-of-force interventions and incidents of prison self-injury.
• More likely to return to prison on revocation of parole, often for administrative reasons, not criminal violations (Office of the Correctional Investigator, 2013).

The federal report notes that “the high rate of incarceration for Aboriginal peoples has been linked to systemic discrimination and attitudes based on racial or cultural prejudice, as well as economic and social disadvantage, substance abuse, and intergenerational loss, violence and trauma” (Office of the Correctional Investigator, 2013).

This is clearly a case in which the situation of the incarcerated inmates interviewed on the CBC program has been structured by historical social patterns and power relationships that confront Indigenous people in Canada generally. How do sociologists understand it at the individual level, however — at the level of personal decision making and individual responsibilities? One young inmate described how, at the age of 13, he began to hang around with his cousins who were part of a gang. He had not grown up with “the best life”; he had family members suffering from addiction issues and traumas. The appeal of what appeared as a fast and exciting lifestyle — the sense of freedom and of being able to make one’s own life, instead of enduring poverty — was compelling. He began to earn money by “running dope” but also began to develop addictions. He was expelled from school for recruiting gang members. The only job he ever had was selling drugs. The circumstances in which he and the other inmates had entered the gang life, and the difficulties getting out of it they knew awaited them when they left prison, reflect a set of decision-making parameters fundamentally different than those facing most non-Indigenous people in Canada.

Media Attributions

• Figure 1.3 America Face To Face With Itself by Tom Waterhouse, via Flickr, is used under a CC BY-NC 2.0 licence.
• Figure 1.4 Kim Musser’s Moleskine (Blackwing) by Mike Kline, via Flickr, is used under a CC BY 2.0 licence.
  
• Figure 1.5 Up against the fence — An American Indian by Fiore Poer is used under a CC BY 2.0 licence.