CHAPTER 1
What is Sociology?

Sarah Earle

KEY ISSUES IN THIS CHAPTER:

• The nature of sociological inquiry.
• Sociology, 'common sense' and lay reasoning.
• The role of sociology in society and in nursing.
• An introduction to sociological theory.
• Theorizing mental health and illness.

BY THE END OF THIS CHAPTER YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO:

• Understand the nature of sociological inquiry.
• Recognize the distinction between sociology, 'common sense' and lay reasoning.
• Engage in some of the debates concerning the role of sociology within society and nursing.
• Discuss different sociological theories.
• Apply sociological theories to the issue of mental health and illness.

1 Introduction

Sociology is concerned, in the broadest sense, with the study of human society. As this implies, its scope is almost limitless: it is possible, in principle, to have a sociology of any activity in which human beings engage. Inevitably the sorts of activities that have concerned sociologists have changed somewhat over time. The principal concerns of sociologists writing in the nineteenth century, when sociology was just beginning as an academic discipline, were the major social, political and economic changes which had taken place across Europe since the late Middle Ages. Early sociological writing was dominated, for example, by attempts to chart and explain the rise of industrial capitalism and the changing nature and role of religion in society, and to understand the new forms which social and political institutions had taken since the Industrial Revolution (Giddens 2001); this period of time is known as modernity. Today, the changed concerns of sociologists largely reflect the changing nature of society. A shift in sexual attitudes and behaviours, gender relations, globalization and new communications technologies, as well as changing patterns of criminality and social aspects of health and illness - the subject of this book - have all loomed large in recent sociological literature (see, for example, Letherby et al. 2008; Earle and Sharp 2007; Sassen 2007; and Nettleton 2006). Most recently, attention has turned to the subject of happiness. For instance, some of the debates have focused on the individual and social benefits of being happy, such as improved mental health and well-being, as well as on the more controversial economic and political benefits for society generally (such as increased productivity and less frequent use of health services).

modernity:

a focus on achieving progress, synonymous with industrialization

Activity 1.1 The benefits of happiness

David Cameron's 2006 speech to Google Zeitgeist can be found at: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/may/22/conservatives.davidcameron.co.uk/politics/2006/may/22/conservatives.davidcameron>. When you have read this, answer the questions below.

1. What is happiness? Can you define it?
2. Can you make patients happy? If so, how?
3. Is happiness important in nursing?
4. Why do you think happiness is a sociological concern?

Figure 1.1 'It's time we admitted that there's more to life than money and it's time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB - general well-being.' David Cameron, British Prime Minister

There are a number of key questions and issues which lie at the heart of sociological inquiry, whatever the specific topic to which it is directed. The aim of this chapter is to introduce the most important of these. Before doing so, it is important to make a few general points about the nature of sociological inquiry and how it may differ from other disciplines. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to a discussion of the main theoretical debates in sociology.

In particular, the chapter will consider the main competing theoretical positions adopted by sociologists, and illustrate the implications of these different positions for the ways in which sociology can shed light on the nature of society and its institutions. An appreciation of these debates will be helpful in understanding many of the chapters that follow and in evaluating the contribution that sociology can make to nursing practice.

2 The nature of sociological inquiry

The first thing to note about the discipline of sociology is that it is characterized by diversity. While in any discipline we will find a certain amount of disagreement between practitioners, this is especially marked in the case of sociology. Unlike disciplines such as chemistry or biology, sociologists disagree even about the most fundamental principles of their methods of working. Some of these disagreements will be examined later in this chapter. What this means is that sociology cannot, in general, be used to 'solve' technical problems in the way that knowledge from other 'scientific' disciplines may be able to.

Sociology and other disciplines

A second point worth noting about sociology is that many of the topics with which it is concerned are also of interest to researchers from other disciplines. It is therefore prone to 'boundary disputes'. A good example of this is the relationship between sociology and psychology. In broad terms it is possible to say that while sociology is concerned with understanding societies, psychology is concerned with understanding individuals. But very quickly the value of this distinction starts to break down. Rather obviously, societies are made up of individuals, so cannot be understood entirely without reference to individuals. Let us take a concrete example. Sociologists often like to use the term socialization. However, it seems clear that the processes by which individuals are socialized fall within the domain of psychology, and the whole subfield of learning has a great deal to say about this. Unfortunately, sociologists rarely seem to take much notice of the wealth of psychological literature which details the complexity of the socialization process; similarly, psychologists are often accused of failing to give proper attention to the insights of sociologists on the complex effects of wider social processes on individual learning.

socialization:

processes by which individuals acquire the roles, norms and cultures of society

The role of sociology within society

Finally, it is worth noting that sociology must confront a particularly wide range of ethical issues. Not only must sociologists deal with the sorts of issues around the avoidance of individual harm in the course of conducting their research, which any human scientist must confront (and this is discussed in Chapter 5), but there is also a wider set of ethical concerns about the role of sociology in society. Is it the role of sociology, for example, to make recommendations about the kinds of social arrangements that are most desirable? Or should it, as the sociologist Max Weber argued, avoid such essentially political questions and focus instead on developing a neutral understanding of the social world, leaving questions of how society should be organized to politicians? As you will see from Part II of this book, sociology has been particularly influential in identifying social inequalities in health. Is it the role of sociology to comment on the extent to which such inequalities should be eradicated (bearing in mind that even beginning to do so would entail massive costs which would have to be funded somehow), or should sociologists be content merely to describe and explain the extent of the inequality that exists? Some sociologists argue that sociology should offer solutions to social problems. For instance, Widdance Twine (2011), who writes about gestational surrogacy, argues that sociology has always been dedicated to analysing social problems, offering diagnoses as well as solutions. Others, such as Bruce (2000), are quite against this idea, suggesting that sociologists should focus on issues that are sociologically interesting, rather than issues that might be socially problematic. In doing so, Bruce argues, sociologists can discover some quite interesting and unexpected findings.

Sociology versus 'common sense'

An often voiced criticism of sociology is that it is just 'common sense', and that sociologists do little more than state the obvious. So it is important to explain why sociology is, and must be, more than just common sense (see also Chapter 2). The first point to make about this is that there is often more than one 'common-sense' view on any given issue. One viewpoint is that it is just 'common sense' that people are poor because they are lazy, stupid and work-shy. From another perspective, it is just common sense that poverty results from historical inequalities in society, and hence has nothing to do with individual attributes. Clearly both views cannot be correct, and so little will be gained in this case by relying on common sense. In fact, the explanation of poverty is a highly complex example, which requires sophisticated sociological research and analysis (see Chapter 11).

Similarly, 'common sense' often conceals positions of self-interest - or partisanship. It might be common sense for the rich to regard the poor as lazy, stupid and work-shy, but...