Strangechord

I get asked a lot, “What is sociology exactly?” (Or more often, “What do you do with a Sociology degree?”, but that’s a question for another time.) The definition of sociology that I work with the most in my classes is, “the study of the impact that social structures have on individuals”. That sums it up. Of course, in there is exploration of issues like class, race, gender, culture, media, deviance, globalization, activism/movements, etc.

Why would someone be motivated to study sociology? In my Sociological Inquiry class we’re reading an anthology and I want to quote from Peter L. Berger’s “The Craft of Sociology”. (I’ve changed “men” to [people]; please mentally insert /her after all the “his”-es):

We would say then that the sociologist … is a person intensively, endlessly, shamelessly interested in the doings of [people]. His natural habitat is all the human gathering places of the world, wherever [people] come together … He will know reverence, but this reverence will not prevent him from wanting to see and to understand. He may sometimes feel revulsion or contempt. But this also will not deter him from wanting to have his questions answered. The sociologist, in his quest for understanding, moves through the world of [people] without respect for the usual lines of demarcation. Nobility and degradation, power and obscurity, intelligence and folly - these are equally interesting to him, however unequal they may be in his personal values or tastes.