Why do people mock Sociology, especially in the US?

Question

I am in the UK just about to enter my third and final year of my BA degree. I've asked questions here before, but people (usually Americans) seem to think of it as a useless subject. I have noticed that people here people are less critical about it.

Its not as if its easy work for us at all. In fact, this year I have to write 5 papers. 4 of them will amount to 5,000 words each, and one of them will amount to 8,000 words. Altogether that is 28 thousand words. I also have exams to sit. That can't be easy!

So why do people mock the subject? Please don't say its all about common sense, because its not!

Answer 1

Depending on the way Sociology is taught I can understand where most people would think it useless. when taught in the right manner it can be applied to everyday life, at that point when you look beyond the so called "common sense" the field is fascinating, C Wright Mills said that something to the effect that once man saw what was really going on around them it was enlighten yet terrifying. (regarding the Sociological Imagination). No subject is useless, they all intertwine and college actually becomes alot more interesting when you look at it that way !

Answer 2

Americans especially are inundated with the idea of individualism as being the most important thing a person has. We must be unique, we must fight for individual rights and so on. The thing is that this promotes the science of psychology (the science that deals with individualism) and people are too narrowly viewed to see the power of sociology.

The next time a guy say something about soc. ask him why he doesn't wear a dress, or what he thinks girls should shave their pits or any number of other questions that the culture and the society dictates.

Sociology is the power of the masses. Psychology deals with the individual. SO those that ridicule soc are just small minded and cannot see the big picture. BUT do not go the other way and start claiming that psych is useless - both sciences work together and neither is better but both are important.

Answer 3

In my own personal experience of having taken four years of college sociology, I wasn't taught a thing I didn't already know. That being the case, I take a rather dim view of the subject. I found the professors to be totally self absorbed, the curriculum stilted and woefully out of date, and the subject matter was stuff I had picked up in high school for heaven's sake. I had to take the classes to get my degree in Nursing, but I do think, to this day, that they were a huge waste of my time. Perhaps the classes in your country take a different approach, I don't know, but I went to Harvard, and the classes I was subjected to were useless. So, don't take too hard a stance, most educated Americans have been exposed to Sociology, most know what it is about and most sadly, find it useless.

Answer 4

Who mocks sociology? You have to consider the medium that you are communicating with--a lot of people, not I, for one, consider an open forum on internet a plaything or an outlet for foolishness, or to be hostile anonymously and they are not going to take your questions as seriously as would a group of your colleagues and peers, or educated people from any country. You can't allow yourself to let your feelings get hurt when you poll people across the board on a forum such as this. To be honest, I am sick of British people mocking Americans--Americans seem to be an easy target and I hear them being stereotyped as gangsters, trailer trash, serial murderers or whatever. If you were a true scholar of people and took your discipline of study to heart, you would rise above this and realize that human behavior is basically the same throughout the world.

Answer 5

I don't mock sociology; I find it quite interesting (what I've read of it, which is limited).

Probably most people aren't entirely clear on what it is, and what sociologists do.

Others may have had bad classes in college, giving them a bad impression. (I never took it, myself.)

Uh, the number of words you have to write is not at all relevant to the worth of the field. If what you were writing was all just bull, then, well, you haven't made your case. (I'm not saying it IS bull, but just you haven't made the case here that it isn't.)

In general, there's a strong anti-intellectualism in the U.S. (I've lived here all my life, well, nearly, so I know whereof I speak.)

Our educational system is mostly really poor, so people don't understand things academic, and so tend to reject them as meaningless and worthless.

There's also a sort of "Rambo-yness" to the culture.

Answer 6

I think that people don't really understand what the subject is about. They don't seem to understand that the study of sociology is the study of people as group and how they act together. I think that the study of sociology is as important to learning how society works,as psychology is to how people work. Where as people are used to hearing about psychology a lot most people don't hear about Sociology unless it's something that they are interested in.

Answer 7

People mock what they do not know! Chalk it up to stupidity!