Abstract
This chapter provides a basic introduction to the way in which sociology explores and makes sense of our behaviour and our society. It attempts to anticipate that the student new to sociology will be more readily inclined towards other explanations of why societies operate and human beings behave in the way they do. While acknowledging that non-social influences are not without importance, the chapter aims to show that the world in which we live is a substantially socially constructed world, and it challenges those accounts of social behaviour that explain it in terms of simply biological, psychological or merely individual dispositions. The chapter emphasises how the social world and our sense of who we are within it are constructed through a combination of the constraints of society, interaction with others, and human beings’ ability to exercise creative thought and action — our capacity for ‘agency’.
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Further Reading
Giddens, A (1984) The Constitution of Society, Polity Press, Cambridge. A difficult text which is certainly not for the beginner and which will prove a formidable read for the first-year undergraduate. A foray into the first chapter will give something of the flavour of Giddens’ ideas about structuration, the links between structure and agency, but the reader who does not fully grasp his arguments immediately should not be discouraged.
McGrew, A. (1992) ‘A Global Society?’ in S. Hall, D. Held and T. McGrew (eds) Modernity and its Futures, Polity Press in association with The Open University Press, Cambridge. An interesting summary of the processes and consequences of increasing globalisation. Not an easy chapter to read without some familiarity with the fundamentals of sociology and its concern with modernity, but a worthwhile read for the more confident A level or first-year undergraduate student. The other three companion volumes, Formations of Modernity, Political and Economic Forms of Modernity and Social and Cultural Forms of Modernity, provide a comprehensive and sophisticated exposition of the development and character of modern societies and of the key debates about modernity and postmodernity.
Mills, C. W. (1970) The Sociological Imagination, Penguin, Harmondsworth. A classic series of essays which provides an accessible sense of the distinctiveness of sociology as an academic discipline, of its place within the social sciences, and of the questions and central concerns which have traditionally driven sociological investigation.
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© 1998 Tony Bilton, Kevin Bonnett, Pip Jones, David Skinner, Michelle Stanworth and Andrew Webster
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Bilton, T., Bonnett, K., Jones, P., Skinner, D., Stanworth, M., Webster, A. (1998). Introduction. In: Introductory Sociology. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14741-0_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14741-0_1
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