Summary
Pal Repstad: What is sociology?
What questions are sociologists trying to find answers to and why? What is their working procedure? Sociology attempts to describe and understand how people relate to each other, how people create society, and how the organization of society ultimately shapes them. "What is sociology?" is an interesting and, above all, useful introduction to contemporary sociology and its many directions. The last chapter of this book is devoted to a critical review of the role that sociology plays in contemporary society and its scientific challenges in an increasingly complex society.
"In the 1970s, Marxist class analysis occupied a key position in a large part of European sociology, partly in very hard-line ways. There had to be a reaction, but my opinion is that one part of sociology over the last twenty years or so has overemphasized the extent to which people in our society of the socially liberated type. It is undoubtedly true that many people today have an individualistic ideology, but they have not necessarily broken away from the guidelines and frameworks given to them by the class structures. These guidelines and frameworks are far more subtle than sociologists thought, but one of the challenges of sociology in the future will be the establishment of nuanced class analyzes that also relate to gender and ethnicity, and which try to illuminate the dynamics that exist between these social force.
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