Hidden#3 – DEPT. TEST

When people ask what sociologists do any response always seems to present itself as a bit complex, but really it isn’t. It’s simply the answering of a question. Introducing sociology begins this answering, this doing. There are so many topical threads, woven in intricate, and today, frequently invisible dynamics that need to be seen in order to grasp the people we are allowed to become and the roads we’re permitted to travel. But wait, a couple of words in there seem out of place, wrong even. And with that, things are suddenly less sanguine. It seems being who we want to be and doing what we want to do and contributing to the world as we hope to isn’t as simple as we were brought up believing. The deal is tainted; fingers were crossed when hands were shaken. To see these systems at play, deviance and crime can come in handy. What makes a behaviour wrong or worse, a crime, isn’t as simple as it looks; and what defines a person as suspect and then criminal certainly isn’t. Helpful here too are political and cultural theory, social movements, social control, the sociology of art and visual sociology. What ways to understand how identities and behaviours are scripted, assembled and imposed on people by others, by our culture, by our society. Then there are the mechanisms we construct, maintain and use everyday to limit, exclude and diminish populations based on how acceptable those identities are judged to be. And things aren’t done yet, oh no, not by a long shot. After that, we turn all this on ourselves. Self imposition; now there’s a neat trick. There’s some pretty pernicious jigging rigging all this together, make no mistake. Through dogged persistence mind you, there’s also a cobbly path to betterment to be found, one that involves small, knobbly steps (for this is how these things always work) towards social justice and equality. But to get on that path is to circle back to the question. What is it that causes hearts to turn cold and create such divisions?





When people ask what sociologists do any response always seems to present itself as a bit complex, but really it isn’t. It’s simply the answering of a question. Introducing sociology begins this answering, this doing. There are so many topical threads, woven in intricate, and today, frequently invisible cultural and structural dynamics that need to be seen in order to grasp the people we are allowed to become and the roads we’re permitted to travel. But wait, a couple of words in there seem out of place, wrong even. And with that, things are suddenly less sanguine. Turns out being who we want to be and doing what we want to do and contributing to the world as we hope to isn’t as straightforward as we were brought up believing. The deal is tainted; fingers were crossed when hands were shaken. To understand how all this works, looking at phenomenon like deviance and crime can come in handy. What makes a behaviour wrong or worse, a crime, isn’t just some inherently pernicious quality of the act; and what defines a person as suspect and then criminal certainly isn’t them being, as the lyric goes, bad to the bone. Being born under a bad sign mind you, well, there’s a song line sociology can work with. Signs are created, maintained and used everyday by all of us; we become signs ourselves, ones that trigger other signs with shades of green, amber or red as we try to roll down the road doing our thing.

That’s a deep, troubling, persistent problem, one that sociology is in the business of fixing.
Of course, there are lots of other areas that can help with all this, too, political and cultural theory, social movements, social control, the sociology of art and visual sociology to name some.

What is it that causes us to turn cold and create such divisions?