“Let’s use our sociological imagination to take a fresh look at our everyday lives!”

A sociological perspective forces us to step back and look at things in relation to their social context, rather than taking things for granted.
Then things that were invisible become visible.
(…) As a result, it gives us a clear understanding of the basis of our lives and the context in which our actions take place.
It also shows that a significant portion of what we thought was common sense was distorted.
Sociology is like a ladder that helps a frog in a well get out of the well.
I hope that this kind of sociology and sociological imagination will enrich all of our lives.
- From the closing remarks

The history and characteristics of sociology, as well as the main research methods
Even current sociological issues such as inequality, family, and gender issues are highlighted!
Let's use our sociological imagination to take a fresh look at our everyday lives!

Just as economics studies the 'economy' and political science studies 'politics', sociology is the study of 'society'.
However, economics and politics are also major elements that make up our society.
The same goes for journalism, management, communication, and statistics.
In that case, ‘society’, the subject of sociology’s study, becomes too broad.
So, what exactly is the "society" that sociology studies? Is there a separate "society" that is the subject of sociology's study?

To those outside of sociology, sociology is a mysterious discipline.
"Studying Sociology for Beginners" is a book that clearly organizes, in the form of one keyword per day, what sociology is, what it studies, how it began, and where it is now.
It also briefly covers current 'hot' issues in sociology, such as changes in family structure, urbanization, inequality, globalization, and gender issues, and their sociological interpretations.
Above all, we will gain a new perspective on our society through the fascinating tool of ‘sociological imagination.’
The 30 topics covered in this book were selected based on a comprehensive consideration of topics that well reflect the academic characteristics of sociology, are relevant to our daily lives, and are of interest.
Readers will discover the unique charm of 'sociology' as they lightly read through this book.

Of the two perspectives on traffic accidents mentioned above, sociology takes the latter.
The position is that although the parties involved in traffic accidents are individuals, there are other factors that influence the behavior of those individuals, that is, cause traffic accidents.
These factors are beyond the control of the driver.
These are conditions that already exist in a society, and the individual act of driving is carried out within these conditions.
Sociology is interested in precisely these conditions.
When people point out, "It's because you drove badly," sociology examines whether there might be social factors, in addition to the person's negligence, that made driving that way inevitable.

--- pp.5~6

“Graduates entering society.”
“That person is good at socializing.”
“Return to society.”
The first expression is a common phrase heard in university graduation speeches.
The second is an expression often used to describe someone who adapts well to the company.
The third refers to cases where one is discharged or released from the military or prison.
Looking at these expressions, we see that there is a distinct entity called society, distinct from schools, homes, the military, and prisons.
However, schools, families, homes, the military, prisons, etc. are also part of the institutions and systems that make up society.
Even though these institutions are also part of society, we insist on calling the places we go after leaving school, leaving family, leaving the military, leaving prison, "society."
It can be said that within a broad society, there is a narrow society.

--- p.17

The representative concept that refers to these social forces studied in sociology is 'social structure'.
In everyday life, we often come across the expression “the structure is solid.”
Here, structure refers to something that has a frame, a skeleton.
A building is a representative structure that is constructed sturdily by combining various materials.
People entering a building are guided through the building's doors, hallways, etc.
Therefore, within the same building, people only walk along a certain path determined by the structure.
A kind of regularity emerges.

--- pp.29~30

The first step toward exercising sociological imagination is social distancing.
Familiar routines usually don't require explanation.
But even things that seem so familiar that they seem natural, actions that seem clearly the result of personal choices, when we step back and look at them from a distance, we see a larger social context that was previously invisible, and we realize that enormous forces outside of the individual are influencing our choices.
--- p.33

Sociology is a relatively young discipline.
The term "sociology" itself was first used in the 1830s, so its history is only about 200 years.
The scholar who coined the term sociology is known to be the Frenchman Auguste Comte (1798-1857), and the honor of being the first sociologist naturally goes to him.

--- p.37

However, if suicide were entirely a personal act, it would be difficult to find consistency in the suicide rate of a society, with rates fluctuating over time and being higher in some years and lower in others compared to other societies.
In this regard, Durkheim showed in his book “Suicide” published in 1897 that suicide is a social phenomenon caused by not only individual factors but also social factors.

--- pp.51~52

Weber's sociology is also called the 'sociology of understanding', and in this respect he shows characteristics that are different from those of the earlier sociologists.
For him, understanding social behavior was not enough to simply observe the outward appearance of the behavior.
Comte, Marx, Durkheim, and others, to varying degrees, made empirical and positive analysis of observable phenomena the core of their research methodology.
However, in Weber's sociology, observation of the action itself is not sufficient.
This is because social actions have a ‘subjective meaning’ in relation to other people.
Even if an action appears to be the same on the surface, the subjective meaning of the action may be different, so in order to understand social action, the action must be related to the actor's experience.

--- pp.67~68

Ultimately, we project the unbroken family that never existed into the past in the form of the Confucian traditional family, compare that image to the current family, and talk about the family's disintegration.
If the families of the past were less harmonious and less structurally sound than the families of today, then the hypothesis of family collapse or dissolution is difficult to establish.
It is reasonable to view the family not as collapsing but as changing.

--- p.140

Director Bong Joon-ho of the film “Parasite,” novelist Park Hyun-wook of “My Wife Got Married,” and singer Jang Ki-ha all majored in sociology in college.
They may humbly say that they did not study hard in college, but their work reveals deep sociological insight and reflection on society.
In particular, Park Hyun-wook's "My Wife Got Married" cleverly unfolds the story of a woman pursuing a polyandrous relationship by mobilizing key concepts and theories of family sociology.
The study of sociology has exerted a unique power in the field of literature.

--- p.201