1.2 What Is Sociology?
We will start our exploration of sociological concepts by asking the question: What is sociology? Have you ever looked around and noticed patterns in social behavior? Have you wondered why some things are labeled normal and some are not? Have you thought about why some groups of people treat each other differently? Or do you wonder why toy advertisements appeal to either one gender or another but rarely to multiple genders? Asking those questions is a crucial part of sociology. We can study everything we see around us related to people and institutions through the lens of sociology.
The person jumping on the trampoline in figure 1.2 seems to be having a great time, don’t they? It must take some skill and courage to stay upright like that when tossed so high in the air. However, our jumper’s success is also dependent on the people around them. They are supported by all the people holding the trampoline. If one of the people holding the trampoline gets tired or injured, plenty of others will step in and help. The jumper and the trampoline holders are not the only ones having fun either. The crowd who are witnessing the jump are part of the event, as is the photographer who made the photo, everyone who has looked at it in the last hundred years, and the generations of people who turned nalakatuk into a traditional community ritual. The people who made the trampoline, who hunted the walrus and prepared the skin, even the walrus itself, and maybe the dogs who pulled the hunting sled, are a part of this event.
We could go on for a long time tracing the interconnected social relationships and meanings represented in this old photo of a person being tossed on a trampoline. Like walruses and dogs, we humans and many other animals are social creatures. Even though we think of ourselves as individuals, we are deeply connected to and dependent on our social world.
If we imagine that we are on the trampoline, then we can think of our social world as the people holding our trampoline and those watching us jump. If we were to arrange our social connections in concentric circles, with family and closest friends in the inner circle, our community in the middle circle, and our society is the outer circle. Society refers to a group of people who live in a defined geographic area, who interact with one another, and who share a common culture (Conerly et al. 2021). Sociology is the scientific and systematic study of groups, societies, and social interactions. This study ranges from observing small and personal groups to large groups and institutions.
Each society has a culture, and many complex societies are composed of multiple cultures that sometimes struggle to coexist. Culture refers to a group’s shared practices, values, beliefs, and norms. Culture encompasses a group’s way of life, from daily routines to everyday interactions to the most essential aspects of group members’ lives. It includes everything produced by a society, including social rules. Sociologists study culture to understand how social interactions create and reproduce shared meaning.
Sociological Perspectives
How do sociologists “do” sociology? The first step is to develop your sociological perspective so that you can examine the world around you in a new way. A sociological perspective is a lens that allows you to recognize the long-lasting social relationships, practices, and large-scale social arrangements that keep a society stable and predictable.
To illustrate these concepts, imagine walking through the toy aisle at your local department store. Having begun to think about sociology, you observe that the toys are divided into toys for boys, toys for girls, and toys for children of any gender (figure 1.3). What is your opinion about toys and gender? Does it seem totally silly, because you know boys who play with dolls and girls who play with trucks? Or does it seem normal because it seems like everyone knows that boys and girls play differently?
Since your sociology course requires that you engage in some research activities, you decide that toys and gender are good topics. To approach the topic with a sociological perspective, we might draw from some of the following concepts: beginner’s mind (McGrane 1994), culture shock (Berger 1963), sociological imagination (Mills 1959), and sociological mindfulness (Schwalbe 1998). We will discuss each of these approaches in the next sections.
Beginner’s Mind
Rather than approaching the world from the position of the expert, one strategy for developing the sociological perspective involves using the beginner’s mind. To understand the world around us, we approach the world without knowing in advance what to expect. Unlearning what we think we know, we become more open and receptive to the experience of seeing things through a new perspective (McGrane 1994). This concept draws on the Buddhist practices outlined by Shunryu Suzuki (he/him), a Sōtō Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States. At the core of the beginner’s mind is the idea that there are many possibilities, but an expert may only see a few possibilities (Suzuki 1970).
To approach research about gender and toys with a beginner’s mind, start by imagining that you don’t know anything at all about gender or toys. Even people who have a high degree of expertise benefit from letting go of assumptions and starting with an open mind. Don’t worry. Our hard-earned expertise will still be there for us when we need it.
Culture Shock
Another strategy for developing a sociological perspective is to create a sense of culture shock. Culture shock refers to the experience of disorientation that occurs when someone enters a radically new environment (Ferris & Stein 2018). We can experience new social or cultural environments by examining our own culture from an outsider’s perspective. Even the most familiar things can be made strange when we look at them in new ways. One way to make a familiar object strange is to describe it in minute detail as if the audience has never seen it.
For example, how would a researcher describe a baby doll without saying “baby” or “doll” to someone who has never seen or played with a doll? What does the baby doll look like? What is a baby doll for? Who plays with dolls? How would someone play with a baby doll? Can you see how a researcher might observe doll play differently after this exercise? What new research questions might come up?
Sociological Imagination
A third approach to developing a sociological perspective is what sociologist C. Wright Mills (he/him) calls the sociological imagination, an awareness of the relationship between a person’s behavior, experience, and the wider culture that shapes the person’s choices and perceptions. He described the sociological imagination as the intersection between biography and history. It’s a way of seeing behavior in relationship to history and social structures (Mills 1959).
The sociological imagination allows us to understand the relationship between how society influences us and how we can influence society. The sociological imagination points to how what we are experiencing is connected to larger social patterns and contexts.
The sociological imagination might inspire a researcher to question how socialization impacts individual choices about what kinds of toys to play with or how children react when a masculine-presenting child chooses to play with dolls. Socialization is the process of learning culture through social interactions. This book will pay special attention to how to learn about gender through socialization. Stay tuned for more.
Sociological Mindfulness
Finally, another way to develop your sociological perspective is through sociological mindfulness. Author and sociology professor Michael Schwalbe (he/him) uses the term sociological mindfulness to refer to a cultivated awareness of the interconnected social world (Schwalbe 1998). Sociological mindfulness helps us to look beyond an individualistic perspective towards an intrinsic interconnectedness of shared human experience.
For example, sociological mindfulness can help us look beyond a single interaction between children at play, or people participating in nalakatuk, to consider how the social impact of a single interaction is intertwined with a multitude of other interactions and reverberates across and beyond the social lives of each child to impact people that they may never meet.
Identifying Patterns
A vital component of the sociological perspective is the idea that the individual and society are inseparable. It is impossible to study one without the other. German sociologist Norbert Elias (he/him) called it figuration—the process of looking at the behavior of individuals and the society that shapes that behavior (Elias et.al. 1979). In simpler terms, figuration means that as we study social institutions, the individuals using that institution must also be “figured” into the analysis. A social institution is a large-scale social arrangement that is stable and predictable, created and maintained to serve the needs of society (Bell 2013). Chapter Two will discuss gender as a social institution.
Sociologists also are interested in how interactions with social groups and society shape the lived experience of individuals. To a sociologist, an individual’s private decisions do not exist in a vacuum. Cultural patterns, social forces, and influences exert pressure on people to make one choice over another. Sociologists try to identify these general patterns by examining the behavior of large groups of people living in the same society and experiencing the same societal pressures.
Consider the changes in U.S. families over time. The traditional U.S. family is considered as heterosexual, monogamous, and married parents living in a home with unmarried children. Within these homes, traditionally gendered parenting roles typically rely on traditional conceptions of gender-divided parenting into things fathers do and things mothers do. Even if all families in the U.S. have only sometimes conformed to this pattern, it has been the privileged standard against which all other families are measured and evaluated.
Today, the percentage of unmarried couples, same-gender couples, blended families, and single-parent or single-adult households is increasing. Extended family members such as grandparents, cousins, or adult children living together in the family home are also on the rise (Hurst 2022). In addition to highlighting the impacts of changes in the economy and other social institutions, these changes reflect changing norms about gender and parenting.
In keeping with the social norms that oblige women to bear and raise children and give men more options about how involved they choose to be in their children’s lives, 80% of single parents are mothers. However, 20% of parents who raise their children alone are fathers (U.S. Census Bureau 2023). Increasingly, single people and unmarried couples choose to raise children outside of marriage through surrogacy or adoption, while more couples are choosing to remain childless. A 2021 Pew Research Center survey found that “44% of non-parents ages 18 to 49 say it is not too or not at all likely that they will have children someday, an increase of 7 percentage points from the 37% who said the same in a 2018 survey.” Only 38% of heterosexual couples have one or more children, and nearly 15% of all same-sex couples have children (figure 1.5). In 2019, 292,000 children in the U.S. had parents living with a same-sex partner or spouse (Brown 2021).
Furthermore, advances in both gender-affirming medical care and reproductive technology have driven an emerging pattern of more transgender, nonbinary, gender-expansive people and some intersex people creating families. 2021 research evaluated the reproductive histories of 1,694 transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive respondents and found that 210 (12%) had been pregnant at least once, and of those pregnancies. Of those, 169 (39%) resulted in a live birth (Moseseson, fix, et.al. 2021).
By studying patterns, we find trends and norms within a society. We can examine how societal expectations impact the family institution. Sociological research shows us examples of how these social norms and patterns change over time. It can also reveal inconsistencies between gendered norms and individual lived experiences, like families with men who stay home and take care of children while moms provide the primary source of income.
For example, Noelle Chelsley (she/her) conducted 42 in-depth interviews with 21 heterosexual couples in which women earned 80-100% of the household income. She found that these “breadwinner mothers” experience the same sorts of financial pressures that breadwinner fathers report, and they also reported conflicted feelings about “undermining their husband’s masculinity” along with internal conflicts between being a good mother and doing well at their jobs. She concludes that “Overall, while adopting gender-atypical roles may promote change in the direction of greater equality, as when mothers get more serious about paid work or feel accomplishment as a breadwinner, this process is constricted by embedded cultural ideals of mothering and masculinity” (Chesley 2016).
Finding these patterns requires using sociological perspectives to compare current social patterns with past research to identify what has or has not changed, describe those changes, and draw logical conclusions about the reasons for these changes. Sociologists look for patterns in social structures and lived experiences of individuals. This textbook uses sociological perspectives to explore the relationships between these patterns and gender. As you work through each chapter, look for social patterns that reveal differences between gender norms and individual lived experiences.
Let’s Review
Licenses and Attributions for What Is Sociology?
Open Content, Original
“What is Sociology?” by Nora Karena is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
“What is Sociology? Question Set” was created by ChatGPT and is not subject to copyright. Edits for relevance, alignment, and meaningful answer feedback by Colleen Sanders are licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Open Content, Shared Previously
“Sociological Perspectives” is adapted from “Sociological Perspective” by Jennifer Puentes, Introduction to Sociology, which is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Lightly edited and remixed with examples added for context by Nora Karena.
“Society” definition by Tonja R. Conerly, Kathleen Holmes, and Asha Lal Tamang, Introduction to Sociology 3e, Openstax, which is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
“Social institution” definition by Kenton Bell from the Open Education Sociology Dictionary, which is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Figure 1.2. “Nalakatuk, or blanket toss using a walrus skin trampoline, Nome, Alaska” is in the Public Domain.
Figure 1.3. Photo by Екатерина Мясоед is shared under the Pexels License.
Figure 1.4. Photo by Kampus Production is licensed under the Pexels License.
Figure 1.5. “A stay-at-home dad taking care of children in the American Midwest c. 2000” by BCantrall is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
All Rights Reserved Content
“Sociological imagination” definition by Mills (1959) is included under fair use.
the meanings, attitudes, behaviors, norms, and roles that a society or culture ascribes to sexual differences (Adapted from Conerly et.al. 2021a).
a group of people who live in a defined geographic area, who interact with one another, and who share a common culture (Conerly et al. 2021).
a group’s shared practices, values, beliefs, and norms. Culture encompasses a group’s way of life, from daily routines and everyday interactions to the most essential aspects of group members’ lives. It includes everything produced by a society, including social rules.
a systematic approach that involves asking questions, identifying possible answers to your question, collecting, and evaluating evidence—not always in that order—before drawing logical, testable conclusions based on the best available evidence.
an awareness of the relationship between a person’s behavior, experience, and the wider culture that shapes the person’s choices and perceptions. (Mills 1959)
the process of learning culture through social interactions.
a large-scale social arrangement that is stable and predictable, created and maintained to serve the needs of society (Bell 2013).
describes people who identify as a gender that is different from the gender they were assigned at birth.
refers to gender identities beyond binary identifications of man or woman/masculine or feminine.
people with differences in sexual development (DSD) sometimes identify as intersex.