An introduction to thinking sociologically
“Perhaps the most fruitful distinction with which the sociological imagination works is between the personal troubles of milieu and the public issues of social structure.”
C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (1959)
The American sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote these words in 1959, in a book that is still read by sociology students today. He was trying to explain what makes sociology different from simply having an opinion about the world. The sociology pages of histpology.co.uk examines that way of thinking, along with the basic vocabulary every sociologist uses: society, culture, norms, values, socialisation and social control.
This page and the links below assume no prior study of sociology at all, and it builds the foundations that every topic later in the course, whether that is education, the media or crime, will keep coming back to. It also gives a first, brief glimpse of the idea that sociologists disagree with each other about how society works, which is developed properly across the rest of the course you have chosen to follow at A Level.
Contents
The main sections of this section are set out below.
- What Is Sociology?
- Thinking Sociologically: The Sociological Imagination
- Society, Culture, Norms and Values
- Socialisation: Becoming a Member of Society
- Social Order and Social Control
- Different Ways of Seeing Society: A First Look at Perspectives
