Many of us who teach sociology, use media to portray our concepts to our students. With the advent of you-tube and many television shows being available on the internet, this has become a common place. Some great instructors I know have also used songs to “set the mood” in classes or to teach social movements. But, there are so many songs I hear that engage my sociological imagination that I forget about until I listen to them again. And some of these songs are more general, but in both my procrastination of writing my dissertation and what I call my writing warm up exercises, let me begin a list. Feel free to add!
The Kinks: Picture Book: A telling song about how we want to present reality. Particularity meaningful is a phrase regarding pictures of your mom and dad showing they were happy. I would use this song for marraige and the family to talk about the nostalgic ideals of the 50’s families that hid many “problems” of the era. Also, this would be a good song to discuss the idea that thoughts and action do not always link.
The Cure: Boys Don’t Cry: the obvious in relation to the social construction of gender.
The Who: Teenage Wasteland: can be used to exemplify the concept of anime.
I will add to this list, but I do want to add to the point that I believe sometimes as social scientists, who are academics, we become presumptuous in our abilities to analyze the world. We are the ones who did this through theory and empirical studies. And though I am an empiricist in many ways as i believe this presents us from saying things that are not reality, we also have to take a step back at times. Life is life and its complicated. But coming from a background with many friends who are musicians, music is an important element to our social fabric in providing many things.Many musicians write songs about society and sometimes we can utilize the songs as a way to help explain what we are saying to our students.
