SOC 776
WRITING SOCIOLOGY
B. Nadya Jaworsky
Room 3.59
Consultation Hours:
Tuesdays 14.00-15.00
or by appointment

3 TRUTHS AND 1 LIE
•Please write down 4 statements; 3 of the statements are truths about yourself or some aspect of
your life, and 1 of the statements is a lie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6OaSzoSpHE
•I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced
within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in
intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is
not that. [Emphasis added.]
•—Justice Potter Stewart, concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 U.S. 184 (1964), regarding
possible obscenity in The Lovers.
•




•What is a fair salary for a sociology major a few years out of school? by Rob Q: I have a few
years of experience in HR with a sociology major? Any idea on a fair salary? Any ideas on what are
some good positions to pursue with Sociology major?
•
•A: If you have a sociology degree,
•and you don't say, "Would you like
•to upsize (supersize) that for only
•$.49 more?" 1000 times a day,
•consider yourself lucky ;-)







C. Wright Mills
The sociological imagination
• Sociology is the intersection between biography and history, between individual private
experience and the patterns and relationships on the larger scale of society.
•
•Example: unemployment

Peter L. Berger
“Invitation to Sociology”
•Sociologist as “value free” (Weber)
•Sociologist as social reformer
•Sociologist as collector of statistics
•Sociologist as a “man” mainly concerned in developing a scientific methodology that he can then
impose on human phenomena •Sociologist as a type of being that is a detached sardonic observer and
a cold manipulator. •Sociologist as endlessly, intensively, shameless interested in the doings of
people – without respect for the usual lines of demarcation. But for the grace of her academic
title, she is the one who is tempted to look through keyhole, to read other people’s mail, to open
closed cabinets.

Emile Durkheim
“Social Facts”
•
•“A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an
external constraint; or every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at
the same the existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations.”
•

FRAMING QUESTIONS
•Remember the “history” and the “biography” parts of the sociological imagination •Ask a question
concerning differences between individuals, groups, role, relationships, societies or time periods.
•Ask a question that requires more than a simple yes or no answer.
•Ask a question that has more than one plausible answer.
•Ask a question that draws relationships between two or more concepts •Make sure you have access to
the information to answer your question
•Make sure you question is answerable in the space allowed.

Are you old enough to remember who this is?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otCpCn0l4Wo