Jay Gabler - Sociology for Dummies

Sociology For Dummies, 2nd Edition

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021931517

ISBN: 978-1-119-77281-1 (pbk); ISBN: 978-1-119-77282-8 (ebk); ISBN: 978-1-119-77283-5 (ebk)

1. Chapter 13

Welcome to sociology! Ive written this book to introduce you to one of the biggest and most fascinating disciplines in all of science. Yes, you read that right: Sociology is a science. Sociologists dont use beakers and test tubes, but like natural scientists, they do seek to learn about the world by creating theories and testing them with systematic observations.

I wrote the first edition of this book in 2009. Since then, sociologists have made many fascinating new discoveries, and youll find lots of them in these pages. The biggest change in the world since that first edition was published, though, is the extraordinary new intensity with which people across the planet are asking questions about our social world.

• Why are problems like racism and sexism so persistent? Will they ever go away?
• Why does it increasingly seem like people on two sides of the political spectrum arent even speaking the same language?
• Is it possible to understand the patterns of human activity that cause climate change, and to prepare for life on a warmer Earth?
• How are smartphones and social media changing our economy, our governments, and our daily life?

Spoiler alert: Sociologists can tell you a lot about society, but they cant solve every social problem or tell you what your society ought to look like. You still have to decide for yourself what kind of world you want to live in, and learn how to communicate with people whose views differ from yours. The better you understand your social world, though, the better equipped youll be to act responsibly and effectively in these changing, challenging times. Sociologists have been studying society for over 100 years, and they have a lot to teach us about how (and why) things change and how (and why) they stay the same.

Sociology can answer a lot of your questions about the social world, but its most important as a tool for learning how to ask the right questions in the first place.

The achievements of sociologists are among the great achievements of the human race because in sociology, people from all different walks of life come together to understand society objectively so that, in the long run, it can perhaps be made to work better for everyone. However youve come to sociology, I hope this book leaves you with a greater respect not just for sociologists wearing lab coats (yes, some of them actually do) but for your entire species, the first species on Earth capable of conscious self-analysis. What sociologists see when they look at society isnt always pretty, but that fact makes sociology all the more important: Just like you need to know how a car works before you can fix it, you need to understand how society works before you can change it.

Ive written this book to introduce you to sociology as a body of knowledge about society, but much more importantly to introduce you to sociology as a way of thinking about the world.

With a subject as vast and as frequently changing as human society, it would be foolish to try to write a users manual it would be outdated before the ink was dry. If this book makes you curious about a specific aspect of society say, the job market in the United States or the changing class system thats great. Your local library and the Internet are full of specific studies on these subjects, written by sociologists and other scholars, and I hope this book makes that information more accessible to you.

What I aim to do in this book is to introduce you to sociology as a discipline so you have the tools and understanding you need to succeed in a sociology class or to apply sociological concepts in your professional or personal life. The book is organized to take you from general questions (what is sociology? where did it come from? who does it, and how?) to more specific topics (how do sociologists study culture and socialization? how do sociologists define class and race?) to applications of those ideas (how can you use sociology in your everyday life?).