Introduction to Sociology

1. Introduction to Sociology Kathy Edwards Lecture Two/Three

2. Values • Ideals of a society • standards of good/bad; right/wrong • the goals we try to attain • what is important in a society

3. Core American Values • These are the values shared by the majority of people in the U.S. • American society is a pluralistic society, made up of many varying groups of people.

4. Core American Values • Achievement/success, individualism, activity/work, efficiency/practicality, science/technology, progress, material comfort, humanitarianism, freedom, democracy, equality, group superiority, education, religiosity, love/monogamy

5. Core American Values • Physical fitness • self fulfillment • environmentalism • leisure • youth

6. Core American Values • People become threatened by changes of values or creation of new values, or when values contradict. • Group superiority threatens the value of freedom, equality, democracy.

7. Values • Values may be dynamic, in process and change. • Value contradictions are when values contradict one another; to follow one value means to come into conflict with another value; value contractions create social change.

8. Value Clusters • Series of inter-related values that together form a larger whole: work, education, efficiency, material comfort, individualism create the cluster of “success”. • The emergence in the 90’s of leisure, self-fulfillment, physical fitness, youth creates a new value cluster.

9. Values • Values do not change without resistance. • Ideal culture: a society’s ideal values, glorifies • Real culture: everyday life, the values we follow daily • Sometimes basic survival prevents us from meeting our ideal values: such as death, accidents, physical/mental illness, loss of job