Learn Sociology
Sociology, from first principles.
A free, ground-up course in the discipline — the sociological imagination, the master questions, and the vocabulary you need to think like a sociologist. Written to be understood, one clear lesson at a time.
51 lessons and growing · search, filter by part, or read straight through.
51 lessons in the course
Part 01 - Seeing (What Sociology Is)
1.1 The Sociological Imagination
- 1.1.1 · The Central Flip - Troubles vs Issues→Why your most private pain is often a public fact
- 1.1.2 · The Three Habits of the Sociological Eye→How to actually spot invisible forces on an ordinary afternoon
- 1.1.3 · Society Is Partly Inside You→How your tastes, disgusts and ambitions arrived from outside
1.2 The Three Master Questions
1.3 The Permanent Tensions
- 1.3.1 · Structure vs Agency→Are we shaped by society, or do we choose freely?
- 1.3.2 · Micro vs Macro (and the Meso in Between)→At what scale should we look - the handshake or the labour market?
- 1.3.3 · Objective vs Subjective→How shared beliefs harden into hard facts
- 1.3.4 · Consensus vs Conflict→Is society glued by shared agreement, or held together by who won?
- 1.3.5 · Individual vs Society→Where does one stop and the other begin?
- 1.3.6 · Material vs Ideal→Do economic conditions or ideas drive history?
1.4 What Makes Sociology Distinct
- 1.4.1 · Sociology vs Psychology→The mind, or the situation the mind is standing in?
- 1.4.2 · Sociology vs Economics→Why nobody gives cash as a birthday present
- 1.4.3 · Sociology vs Anthropology→A boundary drawn by empire, and why it is dissolving
- 1.4.4 · Sociology vs Political Science→All power, not just the state
- 1.4.5 · Sociology vs History→The particular event, or the pattern it belongs to?
- 1.4.6 · Sociology vs Common Sense→Why "everyone knows" is not evidence
1.5 What Sociology Is For
Part 02 - The Vocabulary (Building Blocks)
2.1 Culture
- 2.1.1 · What Culture Is - Material and Non-Material→Everything humans make, mean, and pass on
- 2.1.2 · Values→A group's deep ideas about what is worth wanting
- 2.1.3 · Norms - Folkways, Mores, Taboos, Laws→The actual rules, and how to tell them apart by what breaking them costs
- 2.1.4 · Sanctions→Why a raised eyebrow can outperform a law
- 2.1.5 · Symbols and Language→How cloth becomes worth dying for - and whether words shape thought
- 2.1.6 · Beliefs, Ideologies, Worldviews→How a set of ideas becomes a lens you cannot see because you see with it
- 2.1.7 · Subcultures and Countercultures→Worlds inside a world - and what the reaction reveals
- 2.1.8 · Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism→Judging others by your yardstick - and the trap on the other side
- 2.1.9 · Culture Shock and Xenocentrism→What happens to a person moved between cultural worlds
- 2.1.10 · Cultural Universals and Particulars→What every society has - and what varies without limit
- 2.1.11 · High, Popular, Mass and Folk Culture→Four categories that look like content and work like status
- 2.1.12 · Dominant Culture and Cultural Hegemony→How one group's way of life becomes the unmarked standard
- 2.1.13 · Cultural Capital and Taste→How knowing how to speak to a doctor turns into money
- 2.1.14 · Culture as Constraint vs Culture as Toolkit→Does culture push you, or do you reach for it?
- 2.1.15 · Cultural Lag, Change and Diffusion→How culture moves - and why the etiquette always arrives late
2.2 Society, Structure and the Individual
- 2.2.1 · Status - Ascribed, Achieved, Master Status→The positions you occupy, and the one that speaks over the others
- 2.2.2 · Status Set and Status Inconsistency→When your positions don't agree with each other
- 2.2.3 · Role - Role Set, Role Strain, Role Conflict, Role Exit→What a position requires you to do, and what happens when it requires too much
- 2.2.4 · Groups - Primary and Secondary→The circle that made you, and the organisation that pays you
- 2.2.5 · In-Groups, Out-Groups, Reference Groups, Peer Groups→Us, them, and the people you secretly measure yourself against
- 2.2.6 · Group Size - Dyad and Triad→Why adding one person changes everything
- 2.2.7 · Social Networks - Ties, Hubs, Weak and Strong Ties→Why the people most useful to you are not the ones closest to you
- 2.2.8 · Social Institutions→The durable machinery that outlasts everyone in it
- 2.2.9 · Social Structure, System and Organisation→Describing a whole social world without naming a single person
2.3 Socialisation and Becoming a Self
- 2.3.1 · Nature vs Nurture - Feral and Isolated Children→What is left of a human being who was never socialised?
- 2.3.2 · Cooley - The Looking-Glass Self→You cannot see yourself, so you use other people as mirrors
- 2.3.3 · Mead - The I, the Me and the Generalised Other→How a person becomes able to be their own audience
- 2.3.4 · Borrowed Theories - Freud, Piaget, Kohlberg and Gilligan→What sociology took from psychology, and what it should not have
- 2.3.5 · Agents of Socialisation→Who does the teaching, what they teach, and what happens when they disagree
- 2.3.6 · Types of Socialisation - Primary, Secondary, Anticipatory, Resocialisation→Learning to speak, learning a trade, and being remade
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