To get a glimpse of how social forces affect us, consider the lives of two very different pairs of young people: Albert and his wife are migrant workers; Alice and her twin brother Alex are heirs to a New Mexican fortune. They spoke to Robert Coles, a social psychiatrist, who has reported on their lives:
Youth for Albert and his wife was a short-lived time; youth for them was working the way they had done for years as "children." . . . As Albert said, "You stop you die‹that's what we say when we need to remind ourselves about the kind of life we have ahead of us. And if we forget to remind ourselves, the crew leader won't; he won't forget to tell us the score.
"He was the one, the crew leader was, who told me I should pick a girl and stay with her....
"I listened to his advice; I chose my girl, my wife. She is a good woman. She's always been good. She's nice to be with. She loves me. She tries to be a good mother. I love her. I'd die without her. We'll be moving on up to the next farm, and I'll feel sick. I put my head on her shoulder, and I feel better, all of a sudden; it's like there's been a miracle. She says I make her feel good. She says if it wasn't for me and the children, she'd have died a long time ago."
By fifteen, all of [this] had happened to Albert; and by thirteen or fourteen other migrant youths are going through what he described. They are getting ready to surrender a certain exhilaration, a curiosity of mind, a kind of youthful intensity, an inclination to experiment and dream and speak out‹and escape. .
[Albert] tells how he once tried to break away from the crew leader, how he failed to do so. The sheriff came and arrested him for owing money, for disturbing the peace, for drinking too much, for possible thievery.... It was all faked, all trumped up, but the point was made, and he was quickly released‹into the hands of his accuser and longtime "friend," the crew leader. He was at the time "about fourteen."...
If I'd been able to, I would have started on a new life. I would have been my own man and said only what I believed. But maybe you can't have but one kind of life, at least here on this earth‹ especially if you're like us migrant people. I guess those few weeks, when we were dating and figuring out our plan to break away-I guess that was when we were young, when we could hope for a good break."...
His wife, who is his age, remembers all of that.... "My children ask me questions about what we used to do and where we used to live, a lot of questions. I tell them it's always been the same. They stop asking you if you tell them that. If you let them go, let them ask more and more questions, you'll soon get sad; that's the trouble." [Coles, 1967, pp. 544-546]
Some growers, gas station attendants, and local residents describe the migrants as "animals." Sociologists and other social scientists like Coles who study human behavior do not simply accept other people's descriptions. The sociological outlook requires us to look for possible connections between individuals and larger social institutions such as the law and the economic system. It leads us to ask "What else is going on here?" In this case, Coles refused to accept the definition of migrant workers as "animals." Instead, he has shown us the world through the eyes of the migrants themselves.
Coles also gives us a sense of how these individuals are embedded in the world of work, and what their power and resources are. He does the same for two economically privileged young people, Alice and Alex, a girl and a boy who are twins.
Their parents own a large and beautifully maintained ranch in the so-called North Valley of Albuquerque.... The mother collects antiques, the father is a prominent New Mexican... and his father... is one of the richest men in New Mexico. [Alice] knows that both her father and her grandfather have long been involved in various ways with Indians. The Pueblo people have land, and her family has an interest in land; a willingness to buy it, sell it, build on it, divide it up, display it, advertise it, promote its virtues, and, she knows, overlook (at the very least) its deficiencies.... Alex talks of his crusty grandfather's response to Pueblo life: "He said they are nice people, but they don't ever amount to much, because they've got no real fight in them.... [Alex] has asked his father whether he thinks the Indians actually suffer, and has been told no, they don't‹or don't any more than others do. His father's strongly worded views have (but only tentatively) become his. Every once in a while Alexander has a moment or two of disagreement.... Not to his face, however; he tells Alice about his opinions, as against his father's. And she says yes, he ought to stick to his guns, even go speak up to their parents, let them know what one of their children thinks. He has not followed her suggestion, though.
He explains why: "My father knows more about the Indians than the teacher. He says he talks to them face-to-face about business, and the teacher only gets her information from books.... Alice will probably ask to go to a public school one of these days, just because she likes to argue with Daddy. She tells him she thinks he's wrong sometimes! He smiles and says she's young and she will change her mind later on. She asked him last week what would happen if she didn't change her mind. He said nothing for a while, then he said she would, even if she thinks she won't.... [Alice] asked Daddy about Indians: would he mind if she married one? He said she wouldn't. She said yes, but what if she decided she wanted to. He told her to stop asking him a lot of silly questions. She got upset, because he was really angry with her, and she could tell. That's why I don't want to argue about the Indians with my parents or my grandfather. They think the Indians aren't the same as white people, and we should stay away from them, just like they stay away from us. The teachers have a different opinion; they like the Indians. So does my best friend's father. He's a doctor, and he says the Indians have a lot of diseases, and they should go to the hospital, but they have no money, and the government is supposed to have doctors taking care of Indians, but there aren't enough doctors and its bad to be born an Indian, because you might die very young. I told my mother what he said, and she said it's sad, but it can be the fault of an Indian mother: she doesn't keep a clean house, and she doesn't know the right food to feed her kids, so then they get sick. She said my grandfather is right when he says that the Lord helps the people who try to help themselves."
The boy wonders whether Indians pray to the same God his parents ask him to beseech before going to sleep. His parents are Presbyterians, attend church with the children every Sunday, and encourage in them prayers at the table and upon retiring.... Alice will ask the Lord's "kindness" to descend to animals she loves‹horses, dogs, cats, a bird‹and to "the poor people." So will Alex. He even specifies who they are‹"the Indians and the Spanish."... The parents say nothing, but the twins know that their concern for the impoverished or the socially and racially "different" is theirs alone at the table. The father has often commented upon how "different" Indians or Spanish-speaking people are. The differences, to him, go quite deep, have to do with what he calls "mentality" as well as social or historical experience, and are ultimately (he has argued) spiritual, hence derived from that hard to comprehend source (for children, certainly, and maybe for grown-ups as well): God's Will....
[Alice] says, "Daddy said he used to worry about the poor Indians and the poor Spanish people, but when you grow up you begin to realize that even if-you gave away every penny you have, there would be no change in the world: the rich and the poor would still be there.... Maybe if the rich people gave some money to the poor people, Maria [their maid] would be better off. But Alex says he doesn't think they will give enough!" [Coles, 1977, pp. 182-205]
These two examples illustrate that people's personal identities are socially rooted. Albert notes the difficulties they face, "especially if you're like us migrant people." Alex and Alice struggle with the social identity their parents and grandfather try to impose: Are they really "different" from Indians and the Spanish, or not? If all human beings are alike, how can the great inequalities between them be justified? The identities of Alex and Alice are maintained by social relationships with their parents, as Albert's is with the crew leader. These people‹ parents and employers‹mold the young people's lives through affection and through superior power and resources. Their power is rooted in larger social structures, so there is a crucial link between personal feelings and those structures.
One part of the sociological outlook examines how social structures (such as economic institutions and relationships, the family, religion, education) and social inequalities influence the feelings and actions of individuals.
The above examples reveal that people struggle to change their social confinements. Albert and his wife tried to run away. Although they failed, they made the attempt. They also have forged a loving, meaningful relationship with each other despite their hardships. Alex and Alice actively question their parents' views of the world. They ponder how to improve the life of their maid rather than assuming that it should be the way it is. Thus, although bosses, parents, and others seek to define things in certain ways, individuals can resist those definitions to some extent. The sociological outlook also stresses that we can play an active role in our lives even in the face of social influences.
Although most of us are neither as rich as Alice and Alex nor as poor as Albert and his wife, social forces work just as actively in our lives as in theirs. These forces touch us and shape us in various ways. How much we are influenced depends upon our other resources, social supports, and individual personalities. Sociology considers how society affects us as individuals. It also explores how we take parts of society into ourselves‹how we may come to believe, feel, think, and act in ways society promotes.
Social forces can be seen as a strong current in an ocean or river. Sometimes such currents are irresistibly strong, and no amount of effort can prevent someone from being pulled out to sea or over a waterfall. At other times, however, swimmers can counteract the force of the current. They can move diagonally across the current rather than directly against it. Or they can decide to flow with the current and use its force to carry them to a better position. Some swimmers are better equipped than others, through training or through natural strength. Others join together to build a raft or boat that can overcome the direction of the current. This comparison illustrates that as conscious, thinking beings, we can make choices or exercise will even in the face of strong social currents.
Clearly our personalities, our styles of life, and the choices available to us would be totally different if we had been born Albert, Alice, or Alex instead of who we are. A major tool sociologists use to see the ways humans create and carry on varied social patterns is the method of comparison. We can compare our society or our subgroup within society with other societies or with other subgroups. This method helps determine analytically what factors lead to similarities or differences ill behavior. For instance, students cheat more in some colleges than in others. (See, for example, Baird, Jr., 1980; Bowers, 1964; Eve and Bromley, 1981; Harp and Taietz, 1966. )
Are the variations due to personality differences among the students or to social and organizational variations? Sociologists seek to answer such questions by making careful comparisons. Comparing different groups or societies can also reveal how beliefs and ideas are related to social organization and may benefit some people in society more than others. The beliefs about Indians that Alice's and Alex's father holds may be bound up with how he uses their land, for instance.
The sociological outlook is fed by curiosity. Why, we wonder, are individuals and societies so varied? What social forces have shaped different existences? Our quest to understand society has an urgency and importance to it, for if we cannot understand the social world, we are more likely to be overwhelmed by it. Although we may survive without understanding the social world, our chances of influencing social processes without such an understanding are slim indeed. To understand society, we need careful observations and good theories about the way things occur.
The quest for understanding has practical as well as intellectual value. Sociology can help us to understand ourselves better, since it examines how the social world influences the way we think, feel, and act. It can also help with decision making, both our own and that of larger organizations. Sociologists can gather systematic information from which to make a decision, provide insights into what is going on in a situation, and present alternatives. In many people, the desire to understand society is also sustained by the wish to change the way things are. Sociologists themselves differ on this issue. Some see understanding and change as intimately linked; others stress that analysis can occur without commitment to change. These different views are rooted in the values of the people holding them. Some people are unhappy with the way things are; others see no need to change them.