Revision summary
Common sense is everyday maxims; sociology is disciplined comparison and test. Durkheim, Marx, Weber, and Merton break prenotions, appearances, and manifest reasons. Mead and Schutz keep the life-world as the object to interpret. Gender standpoint and official surveys often overturn household proverb. Argument: not the same; overlapping object, different method.
Model answer
Introduction
Common sense is the stock of everyday maxims in a group. Sociology uses that world as data and then breaks its self-evidence. The argument is that sociology is not common sense, though it must start from it.
Body
Why it is not the same
- Emile Durkheim demanded that prenotions be discarded and social facts treated as things. Suicide rates contradict the maxim that only personal despair matters.
- Karl Marx treated appearances of the market as ideology. Common sense of a “fair wage” can hide surplus value.
- Max Weber’s ideal types and value-discipline are method, not proverb.
- Robert K. Merton distinguished manifest common reasons from latent functions the actor may not name.
How common sense still enters
- Alfred Schutz and George Herbert Mead: the life-world is already interpreted. Sociology is second-order, not from nowhere.
- Peter Berger called sociology a school of suspicion toward the obvious, not a replacement of living.
Reasons for the argument
- Common sense is local, contradictory, and tied to a standpoint, as Sandra Harding and Ann Oakley show for gender.
- Sociology compares, historicises, and tests. Census and NFHS often overturn household common sense about work and nutrition.
- Talcott Parsons’s systems language is remote from proverb, for better and worse.
- When sociology merely restates proverb with jargon, it has failed, which proves the standard, not the identity.
Argument in one line
- Object: overlapping. Method and accountability: not common sense.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD CS[Common sense] --> DATA[Starting meanings] SOC[Sociology] --> BRK[Compare test historicise] DATA --> SOC BRK --> KNOW[Checked account]
Conclusion
- Sociology is not common sense. Durkheim, Marx, Weber, and Merton give reasons: facts, critique, types, and latent functions. It must still understand common sense as the actors’ world, which Mead and Schutz insist on. The discipline begins where the proverb stops being enough.
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If findings sound obvious, is the study worthless?
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Should sociologists speak plainly?
Yes, after the concept is clear. Plain speech is not the same as remaining inside common sense.
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