Study Questions: Chapter 1
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1. What is sociology?
Answer: Sociology is broadly defined as “the social science that studies the development, structure, and functioning of human society.” But giving a precise, all-encompassing explanation of what sociology is proves more difficult (and probably less useful) than explaining what sociology does. Sociology involves looking for and looking at patterns in social variables, such as age, gender, “race,” ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation; in social institutions, such as education, religion, and the family; and in social interactions. (pp. 7–8)
2. How do the sociological contributions of Karl Marx and differ from those of Max Weber?
Answer: For Karl Marx, conflict was all about class: the division of society into a hierarchy of groups, with each group’s position determined by its role in the production of wealth. Marx saw class conflict as the driving force behind all major socio-historical change. One of Max Weber’s most important and well-known contributions to sociology was his identification of a set of values embodied in early Protestantism that he believed led to the development of modern capitalism. He called this set of values the Protestant (work) ethic. (pp. 13–15)
3. Who was Carl Addington Dawson (1887–1964)?
Answer: Carl Addington Dawson was the first professional, institutionalized sociologist in Canada. His work reflected two elements of early Canadian sociology: the social gospel movement and hands-on social work. The social gospel movement developed as an attempt by people trained for the ministry to apply Christian principles of human welfare to the treatment of social, medical, and psychological ills brought on by industrialization and unregulated capitalism in Canada. (pp. 16–17)
4. What is the significance of John Porter’s work?
Answer: John Porter coined the term “vertical mosaic” to describe the situation he observed in Canadian society, in which systemic discrimination produces a hierarchy of racial, ethnic, and religious groups. To stay within the metaphor of the mosaic, we can say that Porter’s study found that the different tiles were stacked and not placed evenly. (pp. 19–20)
5. What is the sociological imagination and how does apply it apply to the issue of unemployment?
Answer: C. Wright Mills calls the sociological imagination “the capacity to shift from one perspective to another—from the political to the psychological; from examination of a single family to comparative assessment of the national budgets of the world … It is the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self—and to see the relationship between the two.” If we apply the sociological imagination to unemployment, then the latter idea suddenly assumes the quality of a large scale problem that exists at the intersection of economics, politics etc. (pp. 9–11)