Sociological imagination: making the strange familiar and the familiar strange
Institutions:
● Institutions are the primary engines for socially constructing reality
● We are already born into this world, they are not
...
Sociological imagination: making the strange familiar and the familiar strange
Institutions:
● Institutions are the primary engines for socially constructing reality
● We are already born into this world, they are not necessarily natural/good.
○ The family= institution, your family is not
○ Not all cultures organize institutions the same
○ There is no “normal” just the continuation of practice
○ Institutions are the basis for our reality
● Sociology is an institutions itself
○ We have a set of positions with social relations oriented to the role of creating
knowledge.
● Not much sociology in agrarian empires
○ Individual thinkers and wise men
○ Historians
● Social though needs a community to carry it down to preserve it, and build upon it.
● Sociology of the Sociology:
○ Other institutions needed to be in place before sociology could happen.
○ Societies needed to become “disenchanted”
■ Matter of fact attitude
■ No longer sacred roles that couldn't be questioned
○ Rise of intellectual specialists and academic freedom
■ Intellectual competition and specialization in 19th century
■ The development is really about the development of a community of
thought with internal structures.
● Rise of Social Science
○ Social Sciences were slower to develop than natural sciences
○ Politics, education and religion had to align to allow for the social scientific
community to emerge.
■ The sociology of sociology makes sense, allows for new things to emerge.
● The importance of theory:
○ Early sociologists were heirs of Enlightenment philosophers and much of what
they did was highly theoretical.
○ Does society gives us freedom or does it take our freedom away?
○ Grand theories
● Big Divisions
○ The sociological imagination lead us to study the causes and consequences of the
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