Sociology 101: How Social Forces Shape Our Lives

By: Alicia Simmons

Narrated by: Alicia Simmons

Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

Across the nation, Americans are undergoing an intense period of self-examination. How are our identities and behaviors shaped by the groups to which we belong? How can we reach past our own biases to better understand others? The study of sociology can help us answer these questions, making us better citizens in the process.

In 21 engrossing lectures, sociology Professor Alicia Simmons (PhD, Stanford), shows you how to use scientific theories and methods to understand the social world. Later, you’ll learn how culture, socialization, social structures, patterns of interaction, and consequences of social deviance inform our decisions and actions.

You’ll also explore the structures of inequality that shape American society. How are categories such as class, gender, sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity created and reproduced by society, and how do these designations correspond with people’s life chances? You’ll look at social institutions, focusing on large-scale social systems that profoundly impact individuals’ lives. Last, a section on social change describes how social landscapes shift, as well as how they stay the same.

Throughout, Professor Simmons encourages you to investigate your own social boundaries, discovering the degree to which social forces impact your own behavior.

This course is part of the Learn25 collection.

©2020 Now You Know Media, Inc. (P)2020 Now You Know Media, Inc.

Excellent basics of sociology in our culture

A read for all. Well written, applicable to our daily life. Insightful. Well narrated. Especially in our world today and how we are divided. Highly recommend

A+

Professor Simmons hit it out of the park with this treatise . A well written, easy to understand overview of Sociology.

Short, textbook like read

Good overview, if you need the basics this will set you up nicely. Some anecdotes, but mostly just learning the simple definitions and concepts surrounding the field.

Great Flow

I think the narration is great, doesn’t feel like a lecture, but feels more educational than a podcast. I think it covers most major sociology topics but there a few more that I would have liked to hear about from this specific title.

An essential course for our times

This presenter is simply terrific. She is brilliant, engaging, and clearly in love with her topic. The key metaphor of the plaza works well to demonstrate how much social expectations dictate our behavior. This course is also hugely important for how it makes visible all the hidden ways that social systems privilege certain groups in US society above others. The approach offers hope that by fostering a better collective understanding of the degree to which we are ALL affected by unconscious biases, we can work to level the playing field in the US.

Good Presentation, Though...

Though sociology took a nose dive in importance in my eyes, since it only makes observations and offers no solutions, leaving us scratching our heads there, and that is because the solution, at the deepest and broadest level (anything less is inadequate) is philosophical (the author admits that).

A side note, since academic philosophers haved failed us (and continue to do so), a new philosophy has arisen outside of academia that does adequately answer the deepest, broadest questions, and that philosophy is the Philosophy of Broader Survival (read it).

So this book clearly presents Sociology, but in all of its flaws (weak classification systems, incorrect interpretations of numbers, being a pliable tool for twisted agendas).

So sociology is a field of study of 'What is happening at the surface' and not a field of study of 'Why it is happening at the deepest and broadest level'', and definitely not as a 'And here is the correct solution' field (which philosophy should be, though again, academic philosophers have failed us and continue to fail us, enter the Philosophy of Broader Survival. The professor offers advice at the end, but in trite, clueless (read the philosophy) platitudinal form.

Loved this course

I came into this course with very little sociology experience. I was really surprised by how much I ended up learning. Prof. Simmons is obviously a leading researcher and teacher in her field, and provides countless interesting tidbits about how human groups functions and why they do what they do. Always backed up by data, Simmons is the perfect guide to introduce you to the foundational concepts of Sociology.