Week 1 — The Sociological Imagination & Doing Sociology

Welcome to your Week 1 Start Here page.

Why this matters

A nursing student noticing which neighborhoods fill the clinic and a future teacher asking why some students feel at home in a classroom are both linking one person's story to a wider pattern.

In plain language

Sociology is the study of the patterns that show up when you look at many people's lives at once. This week you will learn to see your own life as part of those patterns, a skill called the sociological imagination (the ability to connect one person's private problem to the way a whole society is built). You will meet the people who started the field and the three main lenses sociologists use, each called a theoretical perspective (a broad way of looking at social life that tells you which questions to ask). You will also read your first statistic and learn why a rate (a count divided by the number of people it comes from) is fairer than a raw count. Those habits, looking past one story and checking the numbers, are what make sociology a science of social life.

• This week: the sociological imagination, the founders, macro and micro, the three perspectives, and a first statistic.
• How they connect: this is the foundation; every later week uses these lenses and the four questions.
• Where we're going next: Week 2, Sociological Research Methods, shows how sociologists gather evidence.

Focus

How can one person's private problem also be part of a public pattern, and how do you read a number fairly?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] sort a problem into a personal trouble or a public issue
• [ ] match each founder to an idea and a work
• [ ] run one situation through three perspectives
• [ ] compare two places by rate, not count

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 1 (about 35 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
3. Do the Sociology in Action Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: turn two towns' counts into rates per 100,000 and say what the rates do and do not show.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor if a step snags.

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