Briefly Outline the Distinctive Features of the Sociological Approach to Understanding Human Life and the Illustrate How You Would Use Sociology to Make Sense of Globalisation.
Sociology is the systematic, sceptical and critical study of the way that people do things together .It’s not a science that simply lists facts and figures about society. Instead it becomes a form of consciousness, a way of thinking, a critical way of seeing the world. It welcomes you to challenge the obvious, to question the world as it is taken for granted and to de-familiarising the familiar. This is what empowers critical thinking which triggers the development of the understanding of the human life. The aim of this essay is to outline the sociological approach to understanding human life , to explore the different sociological perspectives , to question the reliability of the different forms of research and to emphasise the key elements that make sociology different to other ways of exploring the human life. Finally I shall be illustrating its approach with regards to my biography. Peter Berger distinctive approach to understanding human life was characterised by seeing the general as the particular. This meant that sociologist can identify general patterns of social life by looking at concrete examples of social life. The genesis of this approach is when we realise how the general categories into which we happen to fall shape our particular life experiences. Berger feels that the general impact of society on the actions, thoughts and feelings of particular people are made evident in the way that societies view change over time. For example the views on inequality have changed since the start of the 21st century. Another sociological approach to sociology is seeing the strange in the familiar, “the first wisdom of sociology is this , things are not what they seem “, Bauman. This is the approach where you have to “de- familiarise the familiar” , which means that when your approaching to understand human life you have to look at it with a sense that people do not decide what to do but instead society guides their thoughts and deeds. So in essence sociology
Bibliography: ‘The first wisdom of sociology is this: things are not what they seem (sociology global intro p.5) C.Wright Mills.1959. ‘The promise’ in The Sociological Imagination New York: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Wright_Mills Macionis, 5th edition , chapter 1 Berger, Peter Invitation to sociology . New York , 1963