Post #3: Intro to Sociology

The online course that I chose to do is introduction to Sociology. The reason why I chose this course is because this is what I will be studying next year in university. This course is taught by Harvey Molotch a professor at New York University.

The very first lecture, Harvey begins by telling his students all these areas of learning and how they emerged and or are born from sociology. Areas include communications, demography and various versions of history. 

Due to all these areas emerging and or being born from sociology a philosopher by the name of August Comte expressed sociology to be the queen of social sciences.

Harvey later gets into C.Wright Mills who is a professor at Columbia University and his idea of sociology. Harvey introduces us with a term “Sociological Imagination” which is an idea that it matters who is around, and he begins his lesson from there.

He asks his students a simple question, why are we here? He explains how there are various ways of answering this questions and how each answer differs from another. He says that we have to look beyond the individual and their own sense of how they got to be where they are. He then goes into how all factors and forces shape our choices.

 An example he gives is of a motor boat. He says that we don’t move forward like a motor boat, however as we go forward all of these other forces are shaping, buffering, and determining that course of our existence, and only getting a handle of those forces will we understand where we are and why we are there.

He then goes into how society has been emerged and he gives us an example of doctors. Doctors from one specific country of which majority are women get paid less than doctors in countries of which majority are men and he explains that this is how the society has been emerged and shaped.

Harvey also tells us that if sociologists nowadays follows sociological imaginations than they would have full force. Sociological imagination calls for political action and it’s about being engaged in the world not just understand the world but change it.

His second lecture pretty much continues with the previous lecture and he introduces us with Max Weber’s famous phrase “what we need is a value free social science”. What he was basically trying to say was that if we manage to do this (what Weber said) is the only time when we will successfully  know what is going on around the world. Then he goes into how sociologist do surveys and samples and what they end up doing is manipulating those statistically so that we can see some sort of a connection/a cause and effect relationship. An example he gives us is the early death of children and the high rate of poverty.

Later he gets to a critical point in sociology which is the fact that sociologists do for society what medicine does for human health. They protect society and solve their problems by knowing the social body.