Читать книгу Sociology - Anthony Giddens - Страница 27
CONTENTS
Оглавление1 An introduction to sociology
2 The sociological imagination
3 Studying people and societies
4 The development of sociological thinking
5 Theories and theoretical perspectives
7 Three theoretical traditions
8 Levels of analysis: microsociology and macrosociology
10 Public and professional sociology
11 Summary
As the Covid-19 pandemic spread around the world in 2020, many national governments closed their borders or imposed entry restrictions. This had a dramatic effect on global aviation. A majority of the world’s aircraft were grounded and many of the best-known airlines effectively closed down. Flying is one of the more visible examples of globalization and the fabulous opportunities it offers, but the aviation industry also helped to spread the virus and its health risks rapidly across the globe. This example illustrates something of the character of today’s high-opportunity, high-risk world.
Today’s social world offers exciting opportunities for travel, work and leisure that heighten perceptions of individual freedom and choice. Yet, at the same time, many people have anxieties and concerns about the risks inherent in our modern way of life. With widespread use of the internet and social media, communicating and maintaining contact across continents is more immediate and routine than ever before, but there are also violent crime, global terrorism, national conflicts and wars, along with persistent economic and social inequalities. The modern world has many opportunities and possibilities but it is also fraught with high-consequence risks such as global pandemics, rising air pollution, climate change, and the threat posed by nuclear and chemical weapons. We live in ‘high-risk, high reward’ societies which appear to fluctuate wildly between extremes without any overall authority or control.
Most people within the relatively rich nations of the Global North are materially better off than ever before, but in other parts of the world, notably the Global South, many millions live in poverty where children die for the lack of fundamental necessities such as nutritious food, safe water and basic healthcare. How can this be, when humanity as a whole has the capability to control its own destiny to an extent that would have been unimaginable to previous generations? How did this world come about? Why is the human world riven with huge inequalities of wealth and income? Where are today’s societies heading in the future? These large questions are among the central concerns of sociology, a field of study that has a fundamental role to play in modern life.
Sociology can be simply defined as the scientific study of social groups, whole societies and the human world as such. The scope of sociology is extremely broad, ranging from the analysis of passing encounters between individuals in the street to changes in family life, new forms of personal and social identity, and relationships between nation-states. Most of us see the world in terms of the familiar features of our own lives – our families, friendships and working lives, for example. Sociology insists that we take a broader and longer view in order to understand why we act in the ways we do. It teaches us that much of what appears to us as natural, inevitable, good and true may not be so, and that things we take for granted are shaped by historical events and social processes. Understanding the quite subtle but complex and profound ways in which our individual lives reflect the contexts of our social experience is fundamental to the sociologist’s way of seeing.
