Understanding Culture, Society and Politics

2. SOCIOLOGY
• The “scientific study of society, including
patterns of social relationships, social
interaction, and culture” (Calhoune,
2002).
• The term was coined by Auguste Compte
in 1830 to refer to a scientific inquiry
that covers human social activities.

3. SOCIOLOGY
• In 1959, C. Wright Mills coined the phrase
“sociological imagination” to refer to the
ability of sociologist to understand society
systematically.
• describe the ability to “think yourself away
from the familiar routines of everyday life”
and look at them from an entirely new
perspective

4. SOCIOLOGICAL
CONCEPTS
• Society
• Social Interaction
• Social Organization
• Social Structure and Agency

5. SOCIETY
• Society can be defined as a product of
human interactions as humans subscribe
to the rules of their culture.
• An organization that caters to human’s
need for belongingness in a group.

6. SOCIOLOGIST PERSPECTIVE ON SOCIETY
August Compte Society as a social organism possessing a harmony of structure and
function.
Emile Durkheim Society as a reality in its own right. Collective consciousness is of key
importance to society, which society cannot survive without.
Talcott Parsons Society is a total complex of human relationships in so far as they grow
out of the action in terms of means-end relationship.
George Herbert
Mead
Society is an exchange of gestures that involves the use of symbols.
Morris Ginsberg Society as a collection of individuals united by certain relations or mode
of behavior that marks individuals off from others who do not enter into
these relations or who differ from them in behavior.
George Douglas
Cole
Society as the complex of organized associations and institutions with a
community.
Robert MacIver
and Charles
Page
Society as a system of usages and procedures of authority and mutual
aid of many groupings and divisions, of controls of human behavior and
liberties.

7. SOCIAL INTERACTION
• This is a compilation of ways and means
by which humans interact with each
other within the confines of a society.

8. Filipinos staging a protest as the anti-riot police force guard the
Chinese consulate building in Makati

9. • First, there is the dialog among protesters
about their stand regarding the issue.
• Second, there is the dialog between the
protesters and the government
representatives (police and politicians).
• Third, there is the dialog among the
protesters, the police, the politicians, and
the media personnel.
• Finally, there is the interaction between
the protesters and the government of
China.

10. POINTS ABOUT SOCIAL INTERACTION
1. Space is not an issue.
2. There can be multiple and simultaneous
interactions.
3. A dialog can have active end and inactive
end.
4. Subject-positionality is present in any
interaction.
5. The meanings we ascribe to the actions of
others are informed by the values and
norms that are upheld in our society.

11. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
• Refers to the interrelationship of parts of
a society.
• Structurally divided into layers of
context and positions that help
perpetuate its existence

12. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
• Group – basic unit of an organization. It
involves at least two individuals who are
in constant interaction based on their
statuses and roles.

13. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
• Roles – a set of accepted behaviors that
define the individual’s responses and
inclinations.

14. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
• Institutions – are the building blocks of a
society, as it through these that norms
are produces from the consistent
exchanges of individuals and groups.
Examples: family, marriage, education,
religion & government

15. SOCIAL STRUCTURE and AGENCY
• Social structure is the foundation of
every society from which emanates the
possible roles, statuses, institutions, and
organizations.
• Determining factor by which every other
part of a society gains its context.

16. SOCIAL STRUCTURE
Building: Society
Pillars/Foundation: Social Structure
Design & Body: Institutions, Statuses, Groups,
Roles

17. AGENCY
the capacity of individuals to
act independently and to make
their own free choices.

18. AGENCY
According to Inden (2000) agency is
the realized capacity of people to act upon their
world and not only to know about or give personal
or intersubjective significance to it… the power of
people to act purposively and reflectively, in more or
less complex relationships with one another, to
reiterate and to remake the world in which they live,
in circumstances where they may consider different
courses of action possible and desirable, though not
necessarily from the same point of view.

19. AGENCY
According to Moore (2007) agency is
defined as individuals or groups reflecting,
acting, modifying, and giving significance to the
teaching of science in purposeful ways, with the aim
of empowering and transforming themselves and/or
the condition of their lives …. Thus agency is action-
oriented.

20. SUBDISCIPLINES of
SOCIOLOGY
• Social Organization
• Social Psychology
• Social Change and Disorganization
• Human Ecology
• Population or Demography
• Applied Sociology

21. SOCIAL
ORGANIZATION
Studies that involve social structures such as
institutions, social groups, social stratification, social
mobility, and ethnic groups falls within the scope of
social organization.

22. SOCIAL
PSYCHOLOGY
The study of the impact of group
life to a person’s nature and
personality.

23. SOCIAL CHANGE and
DISORGANIZATION
Branch of sociology that inquires
on the shift in social and cultural
interactions and the interruption of
its process through delinquency,
deviance and conflicts.

24. HUMAN ECOLOGY
Pursues studies that relate human
behavior to existing social institutions.
This is different from social psychology
and social organization in that the social
institutions in which human subjects
belong to are treated in the context of an
ecological/ environmental element that
defines human behavior.

25. POPULATION or
DEMOGRAPHY
Inquires on the interrelationship
between population characteristics
and dynamics with that of a
political, economic, and social
system.

26. APPLIED SOCIOLOGY
Uses sociological research and
methods to solve contemporary
problems. It often uses an
interdisciplinary approach to better
address social problems.

27. METHODS in SOCIOLOGY
There are two primary
methodological perspective in sociology:
- Positivist
- Anti-positivist

28. POSITIVIST ORIENTATION
• Perceives society as a quantifiable subject
from which objective conclusions can be
made.
• Uses methods employed by the natural
sciences to understand social phenomenon.
• Auguste Compte takes into consideration that
society is like an organism that could be
measured through logic and mathematics.

29. POSITIVIST ORIENTATION
• This orientation is predisposed to statistical
analysis, quantitative methods such as surveys
are employed by sociologists to map a social
phenomenon.
• The relationships of the variables of the topics
are tested through formulas of correlation,
regression, and the like.
• Allows for a macro-level analysis of society.

30. POSITIVIST ORIENTATION
An example of a work that uses positivism is that
of Durkheim (1951) on suicide, wherein he
identified four types of suicide
NORM
Many Rules
Fatalistic
INTEGRATION
Weak Ties Strong Ties
Egoistic Altruistic
No Rules
Anomic
Durkheim’s schema on suicide

31. According to Durkheim (1951),
individuals who fall into the extremes of
their society are bound to commit
suicide.

32. 4 TYPES OF SUICIDE
According to Durkheim
• Altruistic
• Egoistic
• Anomic
• Fatalistic

33. ALTRUISTIC SUICIDE
Altruistic suicide was a concept
first identified by Emile Durkheim
and is when a person
commits suicide in order to benefit
others. Altruistic suicide is sometimes
viewed as a courageous act such as
self-sacrifice during times of war.

34. Japanese women showing gratitude
and support for kamikaze pilots
ALTRUISTIC SUICIDE
The Japanese kamikaze
pilots purposely crashed their
planes into American ships and
landed based-positions to
inflict heavy casualty on the
Americans. Their actions were
an ultimate sacrifice and
contribution to their country’s
campaign to win WWII.

36. EGOISTIC SUICIDE
This type of suicide occurs when the
degree of social integration is low.
When a person commits this type of
suicide they are not well supported in a
social group. They feel like they are an
outsider or loner and the only people
they have in this world are themselves.
They often feel very isolated and
helpless during times in their lives
when they are under stress.

37. ANOMIC SUICIDE
This kind of suicide is related to too
low of a degree of regulation. This type
of suicide is committed during times of
great stress or change. Without
regulation, a person cannot set
reachable goals and in turn people get
extremely frustrated. Life is too much
for them to handle and it becomes
meaningless to them.

38. FATALISTIC SUICIDE
People commit this suicide when
their lives are kept under tight
regulation. They often live their lives
under extreme rules and high
expectations. These types of people
are left feeling like they’ve lost their
sense of self.

39. ANTI-POSITIVIST ORIENTATION
• Promotes a subjective approach wherein
social phenomena are understood through
individual experiences.
• Requires qualitative methods in gathering
data such as interviews, participant-
observations, and other tools of ethnography.

40. ANTI-POSITIVIST ORIENTATION
The work on suicide by Pearson and Lui (2011)
presents the suicide of a village woman in China
named Ling.
 Pearson and Lui concluded that typical Western
orientation towards suicide is not the same
among rural Chinese women.
 Western – depression and other mental health-
related factors
 Rural Chinese – social and economic structural
conditions

41. ANTI-POSITIVIST ORIENTATION
• Through the life of Ling, the authors saw that
women’s status in society, which generally
renders them powerless and voiceless, leads them
to choose suicide as a form of either a statement
or an escape.
• Allows for a micro-level analysis of society.

42. VALUE of SOCIOLOGY
for the 21st CENTURY
Sociology finds its value today in providing us
with a conceptual tool in understanding the
plight of humans as they adapt to their varying
environments and social conditions.