Studying Society Today
Chapter 1  Summary

This chapter provides a basic introduction to the way in which sociology explores the 'puzzle of social life' and makes sense of our behaviour and our society. It starts from the idea that the student new to sociology will be more inclined towards other explanations of human behaviour. While acknowledging that non-social influences are important, the chapter uses the example of BSE to demonstrate that the world we live in is a substantially socially constructed world, and it challenges those accounts that explain social behaviour simply in terms of biological, psychological or individual dispositions. In doing so, the influence on the discipline of early sociological thinkers is discussed briefly, along with some of the basic concepts they employed to explore the societies in which they lived.

The chapter concludes by showing how the social world and our sense of who we are within it are constructed through a combination of the constraints of society, interaction with others, and human beings' ability to exercise creative thought and action - our capacity for 'agency'. As a result of these tensions, social life is seen as both enabling and constraining at the same time.