Week 5: The Sociological Imagination

The Problem of Social Order- what is social order and how is it possible?

Garfinkel and Giddens (following Weber on routinisation): social order depends on routine. The psychological and social dimensions.
Giddens: routine is the basis of social structure
ACTION> ROUTINE> ACTION (path of influence)

Lockwood : social structure is about the relationship between formal institutions e.g. schools, welfare systems and the economy

Comte: Understanding society as a system and as a process. Statics and dynamics.
Parsons: The self-regulating social system (central heating system analogy)

Society and Social Science
Scientific method: statistical correlations, experiments, laws, causality. For example: laws of supply and demand, urban development, housing markets, suicide and social integration (Durkheim).
Deduction, inductive method. Detachment, objectivity, the Stranger (participant observation)

Some Models
Simmel : urban life
Emotional intensity, diversity, detachment, standardisation, money, punctuality, timetables. The body and social space. The spatial divsionof labour, urban space- the quarter (quartier)

Weber: rationalisation- society as bureaucracy

Marx: the mode of production- base and superstructure (economy as ‘real foundation’)

Durkheim: Society as an organism- functioning parts and the whole. Pathology of dysfunctions. The body as an analogy.