People are social by nature.
This means that humans seek contact with other humans, interact with one another, and influence and are influenced by the behaviors of others. Furthermore, humans need groups to survive. Although a few individuals may become socially isolated as adults, they could not have reached adulthood without sustained interactions with others. The central point here is that we become who we are because other people and groups constantly influence us.
People live much of their lives belonging to social groups.
It is in social groups that we interact with family, friends, and fellow workers; learn to share goals and to cooperate with others in our groups; develop identities that are influenced by our group affiliations; obtain power over others—or are relatively powerless; and have conflicts with others over resources we all want. Our individual beliefs and behaviors, our experiences, our observations, and the problems we face are derived from connections to our social groups.
Interaction between the individual and the group is a two-way process in which each influences the other.
In our family or on a sports team, we can influence the shape and direction of our group, just as the group provides the rules and decides the expected behaviors for individuals.
Recurrent social patterns, ordered behavior, shared expectations, and common understandings among people characterize groups.
Consider the earlier examples of the chaos created by 9/11 and other bombings and mass shootings. These events were so troubling because they were unexpected, even though such events are becoming more common. Normally, a degree of continuity and recurrent behavior is present in human interactions, whether in small groups, large organizations, or society.
The processes of conflict and change are natural and inevitable features of groups and societies.
No group can remain unchanged and hope to perpetuate itself. To survive, groups must adapt to changes in the social and physical environment, yet rapid change often comes at a price. It can lead to conflict within a society—between traditional and new ideas and between groups that have vested interests in particular ways of doing things. Rapid change can give rise to protest activities; changing in a controversial direction or failing to change fast enough can spark conflict, including revolution. Governments in several Latin American countries have been challenged or overthrown, springing from citizens’ discontent with corrupt or authoritarian rule. The problem is finding acceptable replacement governments to take over what has been overthrown.
The previous ideas underlying sociology will be relevant in each of the topics we discuss. As you read this book, keep in mind these basic ideas that form the foundation of sociological analysis: People are social; they live and carry out activities largely in groups; interaction influences both individual and group behavior; people share common behavior patterns and expectations; and processes such as change and conflict are always present. Thus, in several important ways, sociological understandings provide new lenses for looking at our social world.
Thinking Sociologically
Try this throughout the book: Apply the core ideas underlying sociology, just discussed, to understand the groups to which you belong—a class, team, religious organization, work group, or other. You can better understand these groups by applying these ideas to examples you can relate to rather than memorizing abstract ideas.
Sociological Findings and Commonsense Beliefs
Through research, sociologists have shown that many commonly held beliefs are not actually true, and some “commonsense” ideas have been discredited by sociological research. Here are three examples.
Belief: Most of the differences in the behaviors of women and men are based on “human nature”; men and women are just different from each other.
Research shows that biological factors certainly play a part in the behaviors of men and women, but the culture (beliefs, values, rules, and way of life) that people learn as they grow up determines who does what and how biological tendencies are played out. A unique example illustrates this: In the nomadic Wodaabe tribe in Africa, women do most of the heavy work, whereas men adorn themselves with makeup, sip tea, and gossip (Cultural Survival 2010; Drury 2015; Zaidi 2017). Each year, the group holds a festival where men adorn makeup and fancy hairstyles, and show their white teeth and the whites of their eyes to attract a marriage partner. Such dramatic variations in the behavior of men and women around the world are so great that it is impossible to attribute behavior to biology or human nature alone; learned behavior patterns enter in.
Belief: Racial groupings are based on biological differences among people.
Actually, racial categorizations are socially constructed (created by members of society), and beliefs vary among societies and over time within societies. A person can be seen as one race in Brazil and another in the United States. Even within the United States, racial categories have changed many times. All one has to do is look at old U.S. Census records to see how racial categories change over time—even within the same nation (Chappell 2017)! We discuss construction of the concept of race in Chapter 8.
▲ In the early 20th century, immigrants to the United States of Irish and Italian ancestry were not considered “White” in Virginia and several other states. In some cases where parochial schools were not an option, Irish and Italian children were forced to go to racially segregated public schools with Black students.
© Getty Images/Oliver Strewe
Belief: Most marriages in the United States do not last.
There is not a simple answer to this belief! Marriage and divorce rates differ by age, education level, income, location, and other variables. Those who marry at age 18 or before, have less education, and have lower levels of income than the average person have the highest divorce rates (Kennedy and Ruggles 2014). Those who are middle class or higher tend to have more stable marriages, and most of their marriages do not end in divorce. Overall, noted researcher Paul Amato predicts that the lifetime risk of divorce is from 42% to 45%; “throw in permanent separations that don’t end in divorce, then the overall likelihood of marital disruption is pushing 50 percent” (DePaulo 2017; Pew Research Center 2018a; Stanton 2018). Thus, research shows that divorce rates average below 45% depending on demographic variables.
As these examples illustrate, the discipline of sociology provides a method to assess the accuracy of our commonsense assumptions about the social world. To improve the lives of individuals in our communities and in societies around the world, decision makers must have accurate information. Sociological research can be the basis for more rational and just social policies—policies that better meet the needs of all groups in the social world. The sociological imagination, discussed next, helps us gain an understanding of social problems.
The Sociological Imagination
Events in our social world affect our individual lives. If we are unemployed or lack funds for a college education, we may say this
