Have you ever talked about "role models" or "self-fulfilling
prophecies?" Have you ever said to someone "it's not what you
know, it's who you know?" Have you ever talked about "glass
ceilings?" If you've used any of these ideas, you've used
sociology. These are all concepts that originated in empirical
sociological research and have since seeped into popular
consciousness. Sociology is one of the great fields of inquiry
of the modern era. The idea of social relations or social
forces, the idea that much of life is causally shaped by
specific relations between large groups of people, belongs
alongside the theory of gravity, evolution, the unconscious, and
other seminal ideas that have transformed human life and
consciousness in the last few centuries. The Sociology
Department of UVM carries on this field of inquiry. Keeping up a
tradition that goes back to the nineteenth century at UVM, UVM's
Sociology faculty apply the sociological lens to everything from
social class to sexuality, from crime to the mass medi