just how deeply embedded we are in our social relationships in the social world that we take for granted. “It couldn’t happen in the United States,” read typical world newspaper accounts. “This is something you see in the Middle East, Central Africa, and other war-torn areas. . . . It’s hard to imagine this happening in the economic center of the United States.” Yet on September 11, 2001, shortly after 9 a.m., a commercial airliner crashed into New York City’s World Trade Center, followed a short while later by another pummeling into the paired tower. This mighty symbol of financial wealth collapsed. After the dust settled and the rescue crews finished their gruesome work, nearly 3,000 people were dead and many others injured. The world as we knew it changed forever that day. This event taught U.S. citizens how integrally connected they are with the international community.
Such terrorist acts horrify people because they are unpredictable and unexpected in a normally predictable world. They violate the rules that support our connections to one another. They also bring attention to the discontent and disconnectedness that lie under the surface in many societies—discontent that can come to the surface and express itself in hateful violence. Such discontent and hostility are likely to continue until the root causes are addressed.
Terrorist acts represent a rejection of the modern civil society we know. The terrorists themselves see their acts as justifiable, as a way they can strike out against injustices and threats to their way of life. Few outside the terrorists’ inner circle understand their thinking and behavior. The events of 9/11 forced U.S. citizens to realize that, although they may see a great diversity among themselves, people in other parts of the world view U.S. citizens as all the same; they are despised by some for what they represent—consumerism, individualism, freedom of religion, and tolerance of other perspectives. The United States is a world power, yet its values challenge and threaten the views of many people around the world. For many U.S. citizens, a sense of loyalty to the nation was deeply stirred by the events of 9/11. Patriotism abounded. The nation’s people became more connected to one another as a reaction to an act against the United States.
A similar sense of patriotism and connectedness arose in the United States immediately after the radical Islamic bombings and shootings at the Boston Marathon in 2013, Chattanooga in 2015, San Bernardino in 2015, and Orlando in 2016. First responders were held up as heroes and symbols of U.S. pride and perseverance in the face of terrorist attacks. However, most mass killings in the United States have not involved Islamic terrorists (Bump 2016). As Émile Durkheim, one of the founders of sociology, first pointed out, acts that break normal rules of behavior, as terrorism does, can unite the rule-following members of society (Durkheim [1895] 1982).
▲ The terrorist bombing of the 2013 Boston Marathon inspired residents in the Boston area and marathon runners to stand strong in the face of terrorism. The 2014 Boston Marathon attracted even more participants and spectators.
©AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty
Most of the time, we live with social patterns that we take for granted as routine, ordinary, and expected. These social patterns help us to understand what is happening and to know what to expect. Unlike our innate drives, social expectations come from those around us and guide (or constrain) our behaviors and thoughts. Without shared expectations among humans about proper patterns of behavior, life would be chaotic. Our social interactions require some basic rules, and these rules create routine and normalcy in everyday interaction. It is strange if someone breaks the expected patterns. For the people in and around the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the Boston Marathon finish line on April 15, 2013, Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012, and Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018, the social rules governing everyday life were brutally violated.
This chapter examines the social ties that make up our social world, as well as sociology’s focus on those connections. You will learn what sociology is, what sociologists do, how sociology can be used to improve your life and society, and how the social world model helps us understand society and our social world work.
What Is Sociology?
Sociology is the scientific study of social life, social change, and social causes and consequences of human behavior. Sociologists examine how society both shapes and is shaped by individuals, small groups of people, organizations, national societies, and global social networks. For you this means learning how what you do affects other people—and how they affect your life.
Unlike the discipline of psychology, which focuses on the attributes, motivations, and behaviors of individuals, sociology focuses on group patterns. Whereas a psychologist might try to explain behavior by examining the personality traits of individuals, a sociologist would examine the positions or tasks of different people within the group and how these positions influence what individuals think and do. Sociologists seek to analyze and explain why people interact with others and belong to groups, how groups like the family or you and your friends work together, why some groups have more power than other groups, how decisions in groups are made, and how groups deal with conflict and change. Sociologists also examine the causes of social problems, such as delinquency, child abuse, crime, poverty, and war, and ways they can be addressed.
▲ Here children experience ordered interaction in the competitive environment of a soccer game. What values, skills, attitudes, and assumptions about life and social interaction do you think these kids are learning?
© Moodboard/Cultura/Getty Images
Two-person interactions—dyads—are the smallest units studied by sociologists. Examples of dyads include roommates discussing their classes, a professor and student going over an assignment, a husband and wife negotiating their budget, and two children playing. Next in size are small groups consisting of three or more interacting people who know each other—a family, a neighborhood or peer group, a classroom, a work group, or a street gang. Then come increasingly larger groups—organizations such as sports or scouting clubs, neighborhood associations, and local religious congregations. Among the largest groups contained within nations are ethnic groups and national organizations or institutions, such as Google or Facebook, the Republican and Democratic national political parties, and national religious organizations like the Southern Baptists. Nations themselves are still larger and can sometimes involve hundreds of millions of people. In the past several decades, social scientists have increasingly focused on globalization, the process by which the entire world is becoming a single interdependent entity. Of particular interest to sociologists is how these various groups are organized, how they function, how they influence one another, and why they can come into conflict.
Thinking Sociologically
Identify several dyads, small groups, and large organizations to which you belong. Did you choose to belong, or were you born into membership in these groups? How does each group influence who you are and the decisions you make? How do you influence each of the groups?
Ideas Underlying Sociology
The idea that one action can cause or result in something else is a core idea in all science. Sociologists also share several ideas that they take for granted about the social world. These ideas about humans and social life are supported by considerable evidence, and they are no longer matters of debate or controversy. They are considered to be true. Understanding these core assumptions helps us see how sociologists approach the study of people in groups.
