that seem mundane and revealing them to be beautifully complex.

So take coffee for example.

For a lot of us coffee is a steady part of our routine that goes

completely unexamined on a daily basis.

But if we look at our coffee sociologically we can actually use

it as a window into our society and into ourselves.

So to begin with, coffee's a drug.

And the fact that I can stand here and take this drug and not lose my

credibility reflects the fact that, in our culture, some drugs

are accepted while others are stigmatized.

Yet also within our culture there are subcultural groups in which

this drug is actually outside the norms.

It would be stigmatized.

So for example in Mormon culture to consume coffee is to transgress

the social norm.

So if I look at my coffee hard enough, I can actually see

patterns of deviance and of norms.

But it's not just norms and deviance.

Coffee is connected with a lot more than that.

So for example, coffee is connected to cultural rituals.

For a long time I went without drinking coffee at all in my life,

and I would still find myself frequently asking people around me

if they wanted to go out to coffee.

And the thing was I wasn't just inviting them to go

out and drink coffee.

I was really inviting them to sit down and have a

conversation with me.

Because in our culture, drinking coffee is a ritual of

interpersonal cohesion.

Coffee's also a symbol.

So for example, when we walk around with a coffee cup, we're

sort of telling the people around us a story about who we are, about

our social location.

Whether we drink out of a 7-Eleven hand-me-down plastic mug or

whether we drink out of a very hip Stumptown labeled cup speaks a lot

to where we are situated within this deeply,

deeply unequal society.

It also speaks to our individual politics, into our values.

For example I know people who wouldn't be caught dead with a

Starbucks cup in their hand.

So what's especially interesting about this is that this prop that

we use to tell people a story about who we are, is

simultaneously a prop that we use to tell ourselves a story about

who we are.

So within this deeply consumer oriented society, we're constantly

encouraged by advertisers to achieve our identity.

And express this identity to ourselves and to others by way of

the commodities that we buy, by way of the

commodities that we consume.

So there might be Starbucks people and Stumptown people and that's an

element of their identity.

I'm a Mac versus I'm a PC.

And so it's not just coffee.

I grew up drinking English breakfast tea all the time.

My parents haven't gone 35 years-- probably one day in 35 years,

without drinking tea.

So tea, like coffee, is all tied up in identity.

English cultural rituals, English identity, is all tied up in tea.

What I find to be especially fascinating about this is that

never in the history of England has there been a tea

tree grown in England.

You can't grow tea there.

It's much too cold.

You grow tea in the tropics--

in India, in Africa, in Asia.

So the question arises why is tea so quintessentially English?

And I think the answer is because colonialism is.

So tea is grown in the former colonized world.

England adopted the cultural practices of tea drinking as a

result of colonizing tea drinking peoples.

So there's really no English identity today without India.

And vice versa.

Importantly many of the economic relationships of colonialism are

actually mimicked today within the global economy.

So tea and coffee are still grown in the tropics by the rural poor

and consumed largely in the former colonial powers.

And like before, this massive tea and coffee industry mostly

benefits the large companies and corporations that rule it and not

so much the farmers and the laborers who do the work.

So when I drink my coffee I'm actually participating in the

global economy in a very powerful way.

And this global economy wields incredible influence

all around the world.

So for example, coffee's the second largest import into the

United States after oil.

When I buy and consume this coffee I'm participating in very powerful

institutions within the global economy.

And I'm also participating in thousands of personal

relationships of which I am almost always completely unaware.

So somebody grew my coffee-- somebody with a name, and a life,

and all the personal complexities that you have and that I have.

But I don't know that person.

Even though I don't know them, I think I can make some educated

guesses about them.

For example, they're poor, they live in a rural area, they live in

the global south.

My coffee today's from Guatemala.

Say the guy who grew my coffee was named Miguel.

Or one of the people who grew my coffee and

harvested it is named Miguel.

Miguel works a lot--

too much actually.

He has a family.

He's trying to make ends meet.

His son's getting older and thinking about moving north to try

to find work.

And that worries Miguel.

He knows that there are two very dangerous borders between here and

there, and he also knows that if his son was able to make that,

that would help.

That would help around home.

Miguel also has these in-laws.

They drive him crazy, but he tries hard to do well by them.

So one day Miguel is out working in the fields and it's hot.

It's Guatemala so the chances are good that it's hot.

Miguel bends over to pick up a crate of beans and a little bead

of sweat wells up on his nose and it drops and lands

on one of the beans.

Now before long the heat evaporates the water of his sweat

but the salt lingers.

Those beans go to processing.

They're packaged and they're sent north to a distributor.

And then they're roasted where they're repackaged and sent to a

grocery store that's a couple of blocks from my apartment.

And I go and I buy those beans and I take them home.

And I grind them and I pour water over them, and I rehydrate

Miguel's sweat.

And when I drink it, I'm drinking a little bit of Miguel.

I'm consuming a little bit of his labor-- a little bit

of his body, actually.

And so quietly his salt mingles with my salt until there's really

no distinction between the two.

Now whether or not I see this relationship, it exists and it's

real and it's intimate.

So if I look at my coffee hard enough, I can

see norms and deviants.

I can see identity in politics.

I can see the gun powder of the colonizer, and I can see the

inequality of the global economy.

So coffee is complicated.

And so is everything else.

This is sociology.

Sociology is about seeing and understanding connections.

It is a study of relationships, of relatedness, of inter

connectivity.

C. Wright Mills, the 20th century sociologist, coined a term to

describe this perspective that sociology lends to its

practitioners.

He called it the Sociological Imagination.

The sociological imagination is the ability of an individual to

understand her own lived experience within the larger

social and historical forces that she inhabits.

It's the perspective that places our own lives within the larger

social context in which we live.

So sociology as a study of society is about connecting the dots.

It's about understanding the relationships between you, and me,

and Miguel.

So in a sense, it's like seeing the forest through the trees.

But it's also about recognizing that in this

analogy, you're a tree.

And your treeness is partly the product of the

forest that you inhabit.