ClassInfo

Social theory has two sides, the analytical and the normative. The analytical seeks to define the principles by which the social world works. The normative seeks to criticize society for its faults and indicate how to correct them, so as to better fulfill human needs and potentials. Sometimes the two sides work well together; other times they draw apart with hopes running faster than evidence. In any case, no matter how much theorists and students may come to sociology out of a desire to fix social problems, their ideas still have to be held to the standard of evidence. That's why sociology is a science and not a set of ethics. If you want to improve society, it helps to first know how society works. But this is not so easy. Society is often pretty confusing and complicated. Even an idea about how society works is basically a theory. To state a problem, why have many societies confined women to household work? Some people might theorize that its due to biological differences from men, but others would counter that its due to cultural norms created by male desire for power. Here are two theories. Which is correct? We would have to look at detailed studies to find the answer. Testing theories is not so much the job of this course. Rather, the job is getting to know the range of theoretical ideas and how they have evolved over time. These ideas have provided the starting points for many long courses of research.