One of the smallest majors in both course offerings and student enrollment will only be listed on one diploma at this spring’s commencement: sociology.
Senior Cal Abbo, the only senior in the sociology major graduating this semester, entered the major late. Beginning with the intention of studying politics, Abbo first declared a psychology major before choosing to add sociology as an additional area of study.
Abbo said he finds his knowledge of sociology interesting and relevant in his everyday life.
“It’s basically studying human social interaction at different levels of abstraction. For example, you can have individual interactions like us, then you can study the family, then you can study neighborhoods, schools, then you can study Haitians and other people groups,” Abbo said. “So you can kind of traverse the ladder of abstraction up and down to literally this conversation. Researchers will analyze conversations like this one.”
Due to his understanding of sociology, Abbo said he’s capable of more fully grasping what’s going on around him, including his Hillsdale College experience. One can’t understand the college as a whole by solely understanding the people or the things that are involved in it, Abbo asserts. One must study how the people and things manifest on a different social level, in what is considered to be society.
“It penetrates that level of life that we weren’t able to fully understand before without studying society as a real thing itself, and a real thing that people interact with. I’m actually interacting with groups, societies, organizations, and institutions, right,” Abbo said. “That’s why it adds another dimension to the liberal arts that we really needed to have by analyzing social life.”
Senior Emma Alberts, who will be graduating next fall, also entered the major after toying with other options. Alberts originally came to Hillsdale to study politics, but after taking the core sociology course she completely changed direction.
“I realized that the sociology reading was the only reading I looked forward to doing,” she said. “I was excited to talk about it in class. Even if I didn’t fully understand it I really wanted to discuss it.”
Class style is in part what attracts some students to sociology. The major is uniquely situated to be adapted to what students want, Professor of Philosophy and Culture, as well as Director of Sociology and Social Thought Peter Blum said. Blum commonly offers courses that are relevant to what the few sociology students are interested in. For example, this fall Blum offered a course on the social behavior during pandemics and other catastrophes.
“Blum ties courses to political events I see in everyday life,” Alberts said. “So sociology seems more relevant than politics to me.”
Alberts said many famous political figures were students of sociology, such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Ronald Reagan. When combined with another area of study such as psychology, philosophy, or economics, Alberts said sociology provides insightful experience into world events.
Described by Alberts as a combination of psychology and philosophy, the study of sociology runs the gamut of different types of students who may be interested because of the vast amount of social classes offered on family and kinship, popular culture, and personal relationships. Often courses are dual-listed with psychology classes. According to Alberts, the more “cerebral” courses that focus on the emergence of sociological thought are very philosophical.
Sociology students regularly take courses with a total of three to five students, which Blum said makes it possible to tailor course material to students’ needs and interests. And just as the field of sociology is largely considered unique to the college, the sociology major is distinguishable from other programs across the country in its style.
According to Blum, sociology classes at Hillsdale take a humanistic approach, or an approach that is well suited as part of the humanities.
“I’m not the kind of sociologist who tends to want to wear a white lab coat and emphasize to everybody that what I’m doing is science. I think there’s a lot of stuff that goes on in sociology that is scientific, but not everything is,” he said. “Some classes that I teach in philosophy are relevant, and there are a couple of our classes listed under religion, but their perspective is sociological.”
Blum said the sociology program aims to familiarize students with the scientific mainstream as part of sociology, but leans more in the “interpretive or meaning-based direction.”
“Understanding interaction and social structure may be a specialized science, but it’s important to emphasize the connections with the other liberal arts disciplines.”