Sociology: My Worldview

A problem that faces many college students face is college debt. This social problem is a continual problem with more students registering at colleges and universities. A social problem is defined as “any condition or behavior that has negative consequences for large numbers of people and that is generally recognized as a condition or behavior that needs to be addressed (Barkin 6).” Members of the Seton Hall University community along with other students worldwide experience this. Based on people I know, they use loans to pay for school because they can’t afford to pay for it themselves or their parents can’t afford it. Along with that, I know from personal experiences, I have two very close friends who are paying for school

1. Can you think of a common stereotype of sociologists? What is it? After reading this box, do you still think it is valid?

In the film, Inside Out directed by Pete Docter and Ronnie del Carmen it talks

There was this girl who was studying 4th grade students. The teacher held an object and asked “what is this?” These students were shouting out answers. Some answered a “sail of a sailboat, A block, etc. “ These answers are correct and incorrect. The true answer was the answer that should be given now. The answer was a triangle.

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (2010), Sociology is referred to as “.the systematic study of the development, structure, interaction, and collective behavior of organized groups of human beings” (para. 1); however, the transformable qualities of this science are not represented by this definition, as they should be. To best understand these changes, we must first consider changes within people as study objects; for as previously stated, Sociology changes in ways which are commensurate to changes in the world around it.

After a careful study and a deeper research on an introduction to sociology, I have come to understand that no problem can be solved well enough if one does not have the sociological perspective which is defined as a way of looking at the world through a sociological lens. In fact, there is the need of the lens that will help one to view situations and have the eye to emerge through different views to solve that problem. This mirror has become a doorway that will help one to have a beginner’s mind to approach problems.

There are many things that have influenced who I am and in developing my perspective on different sociological ideas. My sister has impacted my life because she hasn’t made the best decisions and they have had negatives effects on her life and relationships with her friends and family. The decisions that she has made and the lifestyle that she has created have made me realize that I don’t want to end up like my sister. I plan to accomplish this goal by setting high standards for myself, making decisions that will benefit me in the end, choose the people I hang out with wisely, and many other things that will benefit me. Religion is also very important to me because it has allowed me to set standards for myself to live by. I grew up in the Mormon

Routinization is the way people go about doing something. It’s a method to organize chaos and when practiced it accomplishes the goal quickly and effectively. There are different methods used, but ultimately routinization produces the desired result.

For this final reflection for Intro to Sociology, I will cover several topics that I learned throughout the course of this class. I will cover topics that I can relate to as well as those that I can’t. Part of the reason this class is so important for students to take is so that we can take the outlook of others and allow it to possibly change the views that we have on certain topics. Topics such as culture, race and ethnicity, gender stratification, and education are a part of our daily life, but we get in such a rut of living day to day life without taking in the opinion and outlook of others that we don’t know what we truly feel because we are only one sided. By learning these different ideas and beliefs, we may not feel the way

In today’s tumultuous world, a person can benefit from different ways to make sense of all the things that happen around them to add perspective and reason. One of these ways is to use a sociological perspective to achieve a greater understanding of both cause and effect. The three major sociological perspectives include: the functionalist perspective, the conflict perspective, and the symbolic interactionist perspective. In response to the news article NYC Police Officers Turn Their Backs on Mayor, each of the sociological perspectives will be discussed in relationship to the civil unrest between the New York City police department and mayor’s office in the shooting deaths of two officers during protests.

Sociologists use one or more theoretical perspective approaches to make different assumptions about society three of the most common theoretical perspectives is the conflict, functionalist, and interactionist. Each one of these three major sociological perspectives have similarities and differences among each other.

Sociology is the scientific study of how humans and groups behave socially and how they, as a whole, change over time. Through the examination of the scientific side of sociology, the understanding of the social world can be shown more clearly. Within the study of sociology, there are two main branches: micro and macro. Micro sociology is looking at the individual and social interaction. Macro sociology focuses beyond social interaction and seeks to examine systems as a whole (Larkin, 2015).

If a parent has a low socioeconomic status and a low level of educational attainment, will their child likely have a low grade point average? Can a parent’s involvement in their child’s education and school improve that student’s grades? Does being a minority and a teacher affect a teacher’s experiences in the workplace? Questions like these are ones that sociologists attempt to answer by means of multiple paradigms. The five major paradigms that sociologists utilize are symbolic-interactionism, exchange theory, structural-functionalism, conflict theory, and feminist theory. Symbolic-interactionism looks at symbols within a society to understand how individuals interact with one another. Exchange theory explains how people make decisions, through the premise that individuals aim to risk the least and gain the most.

Theories in sociology gives people different perspectives to look at the world as we know it. A perspective is simply a way of looking at the world. A theory is a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained. ; this is what provides us with a perspective. Sociological theories help us to explain and predict the world in which we live.

Studying Sociology for nearly two years has taught me how society is continually changing and