“Social Work is just applied sociology”: Discuss
Sociology : the study of social (rather than individual) behaviour, or society; including its origins, development, organization, networks, and institutions.
Change is intrinsic to social life, and this drives sociology’s dynamic character.
There is a lasting concern for a number of overarching issues, though these are themselves subject to change. These include:
- the relationship between individuals and groups
- social action and social structure
- biography and history
- social institutions and culture
- the underpinnings of social order
- social inequality and conflict
- diverse cultural practices, and the
- causes and consequences of social change.
Sociological knowledge provides a basis for examining and evaluating social, public, and civic policy.
Sociology covers a vast range of topics, and we only have a few weeks to develop a working knowledge of the discipline of sociology, and apply it to the field of social work, so I will be focussing in on a few very important ideas (threshold concepts) and exploring some aspects of sociology in the context of a case-study (expressed in the radio play Mogadishu).
I have three threshold concepts for us to get to grips with- social structure (contrasted with psychological influences or behaviours), the sociological imagination and intersectionality.
Social Structure: the structure of social network ties and relationships (including flows of information, resources and power) between individuals or organizations and the ways these create norms that further shape the behaviour of individuals within the social system.
Sociological Imagination: C Wright Mills calls this “the vivid awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society.” (Crossman, 2012). Anthony Giddens (2006) is more dry: “The application of imaginative thought to the asking and answering of sociological questions. Someone using the sociological imagination “thinks himself away” from the familiar routines of daily life”. To have a sociological imagination, a person must be able to pull away from the situation and think from an alternative point of view. It requires us to “think ourselves away from our daily routines and look at them anew”.
Click here to read C Wright Mills himself writing about the sociological imagination
Intersectionality: the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.
Watch this video. I love this video, the way in which it expresses these three primary sociological concepts together
References
Giddens, Anthony (2006). Sociology (fifth edition). Cambridge: Polity
Crossman, A. (2012). An Overview of the Book by C. Wright Mills, Retrieved October 8, 2012 from http://sociology.about.com/od/Works/a/Sociological-Imagination.htm
