Today’s lesson was all about encouraging you all to embrace a sociological consciousness and imagination. Peter Berger argues that Sociologists should always question and challenge the common sense -things are not always as they seem. Hopefully the task today proved that. Here is the conclusion to the task:
Conclusion.
1. The main point of the little test you have just done is not to ridicule commonsense explanations. Rather it is to demonstrate that:
a. The purpose of sociology is to add to the sum total of human knowledge about our behaviour.
b. Knowledge that is produced through testing and examination helps us to explain more than knowledge that is simply based on faith, assertion or opinion.
c. Knowledge that “everyone knows” is not by definition false. The objective of all social science is to produce valid knowledge – knowledge that paints an accurate picture of human behaviour, meanings and motives (thereby adding to the sum total of what “everyone knows” to be true in a society).
2. In the next section of the course we can start to develop some of the ideas discussed in the first part of the course. In particular, we can start to develop the idea of a sociological perspective in more depth, concentrating on two main ideas:
a. Firstly, the way in which sociologists have developed an understanding of the way human societies are organised. This will involve a discussion of the concept of “society”, as well as concepts such as culture and socialisation (how we learn how to be members of a culture and society.
b. Secondly, an initial outline of the way the general sociological perspective can be further refined by looking at differences of perspective and interpretation within Sociology
See on Scoop.it – A2 Sociology
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