Sociology For Dummies

As I noted earlier in this chapter, your race is something others decide for you, whether you like it or not. It mainly describes your physical features. Your ethnicity, on the other hand, refers to the cultural group with which you consciously identify.

Historical and sociological evidence from the past century suggests that as technology makes communication easier, what happens is that there’s simply more communication . . . with everyone.

The next time you’re out and about in a big city, watch to see how people gather and use spaces. Even people who are “alone” really aren’t: They’re relating to all the people around them in ways that fit the circumstances of the city.

Even in the crowded city, Whyte and his team found many urban spaces were usually deserted; people flocked to a few busy plazas even when they were planning to sit alone. Why? Because the most common activity among people observed by Whyte’s team turned out to be — that’s right — watching other people. And, it turned out, people liked to be watched!

To “succeed” or to “fail” can mean different things in different contexts.

If relative deprivation theory still seems confusing, think about a child whose father spontaneously decides to buy him a one-scoop ice cream cone; now, think about a child who is given the same one-scoop cone while his sibling is given a two-scoop cone. Which child is more likely to get upset?

Why was there no major suffrage movement in the 18th century, or in the early 19th century? Certainly there were plenty of women who were unhappy about their lot during those times, but they didn’t form a major suffrage movement until later.
Relative deprivation theory would say that women didn’t organize a mass suffrage movement until they felt relatively deprived of the right to vote.

Parsons pointed out that there simply has to be someone in charge, or society would descend into chaos and nothing would get done. If no one has the power to make decisions, then no decisions get made. When society is effectively organized, choosing one person or group of people to give power to actually gives everybody more power over their collective situation.
To understand how this works, think about a coxswain on a rowing team. The “cox” doesn’t row at all; they just sit at the end of the boat and coordinate the rowing by calling out to the rest of the team. In a sense, the cox has “power” over the rest of the team in that they can tell the rowers what to do and when to do it — but everyone on the team understands that without a cox, the team’s rowing would be uncoordinated and they would be wasting a lot of effort. By giving power to the cox, all the team members gain power over their opponents; if each team member kept for themselves the “power” over when and how to row, the whole team would lose.

Both the rational-system and the natural-system perspectives attend to life inside of organizations; but over time, sociologists came to realize that it’s impossible to really understand any organization without understanding its environment: all the social conditions surrounding the organization

“Soft skills” is a management term used to describe what you might call “people skills”: the ability to get along with others and win their trust.