On February 28, 2010, Sydney Crosby scored the winning goal against the United States team in the gold medal hockey game at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. At a rock concert, for example, some may enjoy singing along, others may prefer to sit and observe, while still others may join in a mosh pit or try crowd surfing.
You may not know what to do or how to behave.Įven within one type of crowd, different groups exist and different behaviours are on display. Is it safe in this crowd, or should you try to extract yourself? How can you find out what is going on? Although you are in it, you may not feel like you are part of this crowd.
Is the crowd just the usual morning rush, or is it a political protest of some kind? Perhaps there was some sort of accident or disaster.
You may have trouble figuring out what is happening. It can be a very different experience if you are travelling in a foreign country and find yourself in a crowd moving down the street. You know how to behave in this kind of crowd. You move out of the way when someone needs to get by, and you say “excuse me” when you need to leave. You cheer and applaud when everyone else does. Yet you may experience a feeling of connection to the group. When you attend one of these events, you may know only the people you came with. Identify ways sociology is applied in the real worldĬoncerts, sports games, and political rallies can have very large crowds.Explain why it is worthwhile to study sociology.Understand the similarities and differences between structural functionalism, critical sociology, and symbolic interactionism.Describe sociology as a multi-perspectival social science, which is divided into positivist, interpretive and critical paradigms.Explain what sociological theories are and how they are used.Describe how sociology became a separate academic discipline.Describe the central ideas of the founders of sociology.Explain why sociology emerged when it did.Understand how different sociological perspectives have developed.Describe the different levels of analysis in sociology: micro-sociology and macro-sociology.