Allen Fendi Kevin

1. Sociology
• Scientific study of society
• Empirical investigation & critical analysis
• Focuses: social class, culture, law, health,
and deviance…etc.
By: Allen Wang, Fendi Shih, Kevin Lo

2. Objectives / Goals
 Understand human social activities
 Determine laws governing human behaviors
 Human behaviors vs. Social processes

3. History & Main Contributors
Main contributors:
1. Plato – early social analysis
2. Auguste Comte – defined “sociology”
3. Karl Marx – Marxism
4. Emile Durkheim – formal academic sociology
History:
1780: coined by the French
Auguste Comte
1875: 1st sociology course in Yale
1895: 1st sociology department
1897: the book Suicide  structural functionalism

4. Methods of Inquiry
1. Quantitative: Popular Designs:
 Ex: Experiments
1. Cross-sectional:
2. Qualitative: participants of different
 Ex: Survey, Observation ages
2. Longitudinal: same
individuals repeatedly
3. Cross-sequential: tests
cross-sectional sample
more than once

5. Major Problems
 Humans & society:
 Subjectivity
 Inconsistency
 Individual differences
 In qualitative researches:
 Distortion
 Generalization difficulties

6. Outsiders (1963) –
Chicago Dance Musicians
 Howard Saul Becker (1963)
 Labeling Theory
 Aim: examine the formation of deviant cultures to
support his Labeling Theory

7. Design
 Participant observation
 Participants: Chicago dance musicians (30~40 yrs
old)
 Variables: N/A
 Materials: N/A
 Procedures: (direct overt observation)
 Day: family life
 Night: musician

8. Findings
 Dance musicians consider themselves as "outsiders”
 Conform to the subculture
 Isolated themselves as a deviant culture

9. Significance
 Contributes to the labeling theory
 Recognized as a prevailing social approach
 Today’s study of deviance
 One of the first Bbooks supporting the labeling theory

10. Critical Evaluation/Critique
 Participant observation:
 Researcher bias
 Subjectivity
 Unethical:
 Labeled as a deviant subculture
 Culturally biased
 Difficulty in generalization
 Labeling Theory:
 Untestable (Ridlon 1988)