We begin this book by inviting you to look at<br > the World around you through the eyes of a<br > sociologist. The sociological perspective is<br > unique both because of the kinds of knowledge<br > sociologists seek (described in Chapter 1) and<br > because of the ways they go about acquiring<br > that knowledge (the subject of Chapter 2).<br > Chapter 1 compares the images of social<br > reality that we get from television news and our<br > own commonsense understanding of events<br >with the insights you will gain through sociol-<br >ogy. Emile Durkheim s classic study of suicide<br >illustrates what is unique about the sociological<br >perspective.<br > The mass media often report what sociolo-<br >gists or other scientists have learned about fam-<br >ily violence， for example， but rarely tell you<br >how they arrived at these conclusions. Chapter<br >2 goes "behind the scenes" to show how sociol-<br >ogists approach a subject， how they go about<br >establishing the facts of a situation， and how<br >theory and research work together.<br >