Sociology / Social Sciences Ressources

[Cireeric]

Hey, I dont know if this should belong here, but im going to study Sociology/Social Sciences soon. I wanted to ask if someone can recommend me high quality or "must read" Ressources on this topic. Would be also interesting to know if someone else study or studied Sociology too. 

[Matt23]

Love sociology.  

• Spiral Dynamics is a great place to start probably.
• Rene Girard's memetic theory
• Game theory
• Michele Foucault is a popular post-modern (I think) thinker studied a lot in universities
• Gerard Bouchard's Collective Imaginaries 
  • I haven't studied this one much at all.  
  • Collective Imaginaries are like ideologies for society, but they're deeper than ideologies.  The example I heard was the difference between the concepts of water and money; we can get together as a society and say "We don't want money" and we'll still live.  Not the same with water.  But often, though the collective imaginaries are socially constructed, they can often feel extremely real and are also very unconscious assumptions we just take for granted.
  • Rebel Wisdom did an interview with Tomas Bjorkma who talked about this, as well as the idea of deep sociology here:

[Cireeric]

@Matt23 Thank you for your answer, I will research the stuff. Im already studying Spiral Dynamics

[Milos Uzelac]

I am currently a still a second-year sociology student, but I have kinda neglected to study it consistently and comprehensively these past two semester's passing only one exam (it was Advanced English for reading expert literature from the field, basic academic papers and basic scientific papers and wasn't even directly connected or necessary for the field of study of sociology). So even though I have basically almost entirely failed this year (though there are still some exams left, that I plan on to pass), I can perhaps give you useful advice on what we focused on from mandatory literature on my faculties sociological department first-year student program. This how the program is conducted on state-funded faculties in Belgrade, Serbia. I am not sure, to what extent, if these first-year sociological study programs are universal and to what extent differ from one another in their literature or subjects they allocate most time to focus on studying, from one country to another country - kinda clueless on that department because I haven't bothered to research much about it and to compare and contrast them with the study program schedule I had on the first year. But I will try to give you here a generalized overview, of what the subjects that we most focused on studying where on my first semester and the expert literature that was most recommended that is used to have a better grasp of what sociology actually as a scientific field focuses on studying:

1.) Social histories of different European countries (and partially America) in the wake of the 18th-century political revolutions and 18th to 19th-century industrialization of those countries. In short, studying the shift in organizing of society from pre-modern and pre-industrial societies to modern and industrial societies.

2.) We had a history of political and social philosophies and philosophers (mostly in Ancient Classical Greek and Roman times, Medieval times and Renaissance times in Europe) and what society and politics were understood to be about then and how they functioned in pre-modern and pre-industrial times before the political and industrial revolutions in the 18th and 19th century.

3.) We had Introduction to 1.) What Sociology is about as Scientific Discipline, 2.) What is its field of study and what is interested in studying and about (you will see mostly it's an intersection between politics, economics, history, and other social science disciplines) and 3.) The first basic concepts used in society that sociology determines what they are and studies further (poverty, wealth, class, gender, sex, family, jobs (aka social roles), social status, power, history, modern, times and world, culture, ideology, nationality, crime, religion, language, communication, and media, etc.) concepts taken mostly from excerpts from a large sociology study book written by Mike Haralambos and other authors, intended for first-year graduate students.

Literature (that I haven't read all), but recommend to you by way of other people who recommended it to me to read it first when I was a first-year graduate to get a solid grasp and connect the dots of what sociology is about and how does it approach it's a field of study, early on, are:

1.) Wright, Mills- Sociological Imagination (gives basic guidelines (and critiques regarding other approaches to these questions) of what is the purpose of a sociologist, what sociologist are looking to do with sociology as scientific field and discipline, what sociology ought to be and how sociology is conducted and what role did have earlier/and does now in modern times)

2.) Ralf Dahrendorf - Homo sociologicus (gives a philosophical background and his approach of how human beings, society and the relationship between them, mostly understood from a sociological perspective in contemporary sociological literature)

3.) Karl Marx - the lightest and easiest work  - Communist Manifesto, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Civil War in France, The German Ideology, The Gotha Programme, etc. + some stuff from Engels - like for the start his own study on family called the - The Holy Family(I haven't read all of this, but I am listing it because it is more interesting to read than other authors have written drier (more scientifically and conceptually, and not with a lot of passion and vigor - as Marx did) and than more expertly and scientifically terminological filled and written work later on in higher years - Marx, on the other hand, is read more like an interesting history book or a novel in some instances - in a good way - and I will think get you interested in reading other sociological work (because a lot of other's classical sociological author's work was written also as an indirect response because of an impact of his theories).

(I am listing him because he is the (in my opinion, and in sociology when first studying him, he is rarely studied because of politics and ideology, but because he introduced some key scientific and social concepts (class, ideology, etc.) that are the bread and butter when studying sociological literature, works and in sociological studies) the most easily understood and easily readable classical author and founding father of sociology and of the main theoretical approaches within in it (among the three (four, depending on the perspective) him (conflict theories in sociological thought), Emil Durkheim (functionalist theories), Max Weber (Interpretative, nominalist, subjectivist and actor theories)(Auguste Comte - as the proto- founding father and the beginner of positivist scientific theoretical approach (natural sciences approach = social sciences approach - when studying a subject matter) on social sciences))

This is my own view from some personal experiences, bad decisions and missed opportunities, of what is best to read (as a part of your studies or at the side as an added reading material to get you more interested and motivated in what you are studying) to understand of what sociology is and is about and pique your interest in the question of what is the purpose and subject matter of sociology in general.

Hope this is some useful advice for you (from my first-year experience POV) to get a good start and to motivate and interest you in the matter from the beginning.

Edited August 24, 2020 by Milos Uzelac

[Cireeric]

@Milos Uzelac I really appreciate your detailed Answer. Thank You! Books that make me interested in the topic are exactly what im looking for. I want to start my Study with already an solid understanding what sociology is about and with passion and interest.