Welcome

Hello DeAnza students. Welcome to sociology. Get ready for some surprises! First and foremost, most students soon find out that sociology is not quite what they thought it was and this should become obvious in the very first class.

What you will need in approaching this course is an open mind and an attitude that helps you 'step out-side of the box.’ That doesn’t mean you are expected to give up that box; we all need our boxes. In fact, it would be difficult to survive without them. Sociologists refer to these boxes as cultures and social systems, and what we often refer to as ‘common sense.’ But you will soon discover that cultures and systems come with their own version of common sense, i.e., common to their particular world view. Discovering just how we obtain our own perspective is just one of the questions we will approach in this course. This is an important question, for it will provide a window with a very different view.