Week 1 post - "What is sociology?" / So Jeong Yeon (연소정)

1. Introduction

The subject of this post is “What is sociology?” I’ll talk about the definition of sociology and why the sociological imagination is important. In this regard, I want to review some questions that we debated in class. 

  

2. Body 

 

◾ Summary of the lecture and text

 

We began with the definition of sociology in the first lecture. There are four typical definitions. Sociology is the study of society, social relations, human behavior and social life(the social change and the social cause). And there are many other definitions. All of them are correct. Sociological imagination is the ability to see through the social structure and to apply it to personal experience. This is so useful when we deal with personal troubles and when we ask and answer sociological questions. 
 

 

  

C. Wright Mills defined sociological imagination as “the vivid awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society.”

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociological_imagination)

 

According to the reading material assigned for the first week, there are micro-sociology which involves the study of interactions and macro-sociology that deals with the study of social processes. The reading also mentions the attitude of sociologists. Sociologists also have values and preconceived notions like all humans. But they have to try to see without their hopes or interests.

 

◾ Interesting items & what I learned

 

I was interested in the “sociological imagination.” The term is related to “sociological perspective.” We ask question about why people do what they do. The point is that we need to think about the social phenomenon with sociological perspective. I felt the importance of the sociological imagination when we debated about some questions in class. There are six questions in the lecture. 1)why does fashion change? 2)why do people work? 3)why are boys louder than girls? 4)why does korea top plastic surgery popularity charts? 5)why is Starcraft so popular in Korea? 6)why some countries have more driving accidents? I think the three questions(1~3) are related to almost all countries and the other three(4~6) are related to the social structure of a certain country.

  

Anyway, I debated on two questions with my group members in class. The one question is “Why does fashion change?” I thought it is because the values of people change. The fashion reflects the thought of contemporaries. As time goes by, the idea of people who lives in a particular era changes and so the fashion is also changes. For instance, the fashion of Hanbok, Korean traditional clothes, has been changed as the pursuit of values changes. In the past, people lays greater stress on the decency but nowadays we put more emphasis on practicality and convenience. Therefore, the form of Hanbok became more simple and unique. Fusion Hanbok as we know.
The second question is “Why is Starcraft so popular in Korea?” It is not easy for us to answer the question. We just thought that many young Koreans have the stress of study and pressure of entrance examination so they get rid of stress by playing games such as Starcraft. “Then why Starcraft?” Let’s be more specific. In my personal opinion, it is because Korea promotes e-sports(Electronic Sports-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_sports) and Starcraft(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft) is one of them. Starcraft is the real-time strategy video game in which players make their own military and battle with counterpart to occupy military in online. Korean players participate in professional competitions, get sponsorships, and compete in televised tournaments. (http://tvpot.daum.net/clip/ClipView.do?clipid=58082252)
 
In addition, after seeing Dal Yong Jin’s opinion that the popularity of Starcraft in Korea is related to Korea’s unemployment, I felt that we also have to consider about the social structure of Korea and that the sociological imagination is important when we answer the question that we ask.

  

3. Conclusion

 

Sociology is different from philosophy. It is not an abstract discipline. It’s a branch of the social sciences that are based on empirical methods and systematic analysis. Sociology is the study of human behavior and social relations, not of the specific individual behavior. So it is significant to be aware of society and social context. I’ll keep in mind this in the future. In addition, I realized that almost everything can be a sociological question but not all the answers can be an appropriate response sociologically. This r​ealization will be my turning point in learning sociology.

 

 

 

(Image from Google, video clip from Naver)