My Adventures in Sociology 2021

University of Calgary 2021

Spring, Summer, and Fall

* SOCI 201: Introduction to Sociology
* SOCI 313: Introductory Social Research Methods
* SOCI 307: Sociology of Indigenous People in Canada
* SOCI 311: Introductory Social Statistics I
* SOCI 371: Sociology Of Families

## SOCI 201: Introduction to Sociology

are the theories actually theories?

suspicious gossip-level trashing of "functionalism", with no explanation of what is wrong with it

## SOCI 313: Introductory Social Research Methods

said "knowledge does not exist". but then what are we doing in this course? if the "methods" are not "methods to acquire knowledge", what are they? if the lectures from our education institution are not teaching us knowledge, what are they doing?

some flippant characterization of something as just assuming what we will find and then lo and behold we find it. maybe this could have been a criticism of lack of falsifiability, i don't know.

is ethnography a method?

## What is Science?

is it being "systematic"? does science only exist if people believe the scientific consensus on a particular issue?

See the page What is Science?

## What is Sociology?

figuring out how society works. presumably in order to make a good society [eutopia], but science is usually considered to not be the same as engineering, so sociology could be considered different from applied sociology (also, even engineering is not usually intended to be about creating the one ultimate technology, so comparisons to eutopia might not be apt). social work is one of the main applications of sociology. other applications might be stuff like management courses (mostly in business school, though i did take project management in engineering, and it included at least some content related to social dynamics, conflicts, norms)[or perhaps that would be more comparable to a "technologist" than an "engineer"].

## Goal Theory

you cannot have a function without a goal, and you cannot have conflict until there is an obstacle to a goal. conflict can be the function of a technology or institution [weapons, the military], and particular functions can be what is being fought against [environmentalists VS pipelines, for example]. symbolic interaction seems scarcely different from ideas/memetics/philosophy/ideology (and sometimes examples of "symbols" were basically goals), so of course that's involved.

is "goal" maybe too much of a top-down of a conception? see thinking skills, ends first VS means-first approach of building means-ends chains. but i'm not sure about a better term to use

Why is such an obvious solution not mainstream? My speculation:

* some sociologists are communists. goal theory sounds a bit like rational actor theory, and the capitalist "human nature" argument, which communists disagree with
* some sociologists are postmodernists, which i think are basically the antithesis of goal theorists. postmodernists likely consider goals to be just as non-existent as (i think?) they consider beliefs to be

but...that can't be everyone, right? so, i'll have to ask around, what's up

maybe:

* every academic who thinks like a goal-theorist just gets sucked into either the economics department or the psychology department, separated from the sociologist
* symbolic interactionism is close enough to goal theory