Week 4: Test 1

Oh I know
    you have to
        go away.

And I’m no reason
    for you to stay.

But I’ll be waiting here:
A reason to come home.

Love lends no rights,
I can only try my best.

Definitions: Starting Points Ch. 1 – 4

Estimated Reading Time 00:05:27

Chapter 1

Sociology: the systematic study of social behaviour, or the study of society.

Society: the largest-scale human group, whose members interact with one another, share a common geographic territory, and share common institutions.

Macrosociology: the study of social institutions (for example, the Roman Catholic Church or marriage) and large social groups (for example, ethnic minorities or college students).

Microsociology: the study of the processes and patterns of personal interaction that take place among people within groups.

Sociological imagination: an approach to sociology that situates the personal experiences of individuals within the societal context in which these experiences occur.

SOCIAL INSTITUTION: one kind of social structure, made up of a number of relationships (i.e., stable patterns of meaningful orientations to one another). People use institutions to achieve their intended goals, as students use schools, or patients use hospitals.

Role: the expected pattern of interaction with others.

Interaction: the processes by which, and manner in which, social actors — people trying to meet each other’s expectations — relate to each other, especially in fact-to-face encounters.

Expectation: a shared idea about how people should carry out the duties attached to a particular status.

Chapter 2

Demography: the study of human populations — their growth and decline through births, deaths, and migration.

Environmental Geography: the systematic study of the interaction between humans and the surrounding natural world, focusing on the human impact on the environment and vice versa.

Human capital: a skill or skill set, usually including educational attainment or job-related experiences, that enhances a worker’s value on the job; the result of foregone income and a long-term investment in personal improvement.

Population composition: the makeup or mix of different social types in a population; for example, the different numbers of men and women, old and young people.

Population pyramid: a graphic depiction of the age-sex composition of a population.

Cohort: a set of people with a common origin or starting point; birth cohort — a set of people born in the same year or set of years.

Human geography: the systematic study of the location of human enterprises and characteristics; for example, health, education, commerce and trade; closely linked to other social sciences like sociology.

Megacity: a geographic locale with a large concentrated population, sometimes defined as exceeding 5 million people (also, megalopolis or megapolis).

Bedroom suburb: a residential area near a large city that provides housing and services for people who commute each day into the downtown urban area.

Chapter 3

Social script: guidelines that people follow to carry out interactions and fulfill role expectations as seamlessly as possible.

Role: the expected behaviour of an individual in a social position and the duties associated with that position.

Identity: all the ways in which we view and describe ourselves (female/male, friend, student, attractive, unusual, etc.) and in which others perceive us.

Looking-glass self: a process in which people come to see (and value) themselves as others see them.

Role-set: the collection of roles any individual plays.

Role-taking: the process in which we take on existing defined roles.

Symbol: a thing that stands for or represents something else, and provides a means of communication (e.g., through spoken words, written words, facial expressions, or body language).

Role-making: the process of creating new social roles in and through interaction.

Status: a person’s social position, which is associated with a role and its associated scripts.

Status sequence: the array of statuses we occupy over a lifetime, through which we pass in a socially recognizable order.

Role strain: a result of role conflict, when the demands of some roles conflict with the demands of others.

Chapter 4

Culture: our uniquely human environment. It includes all of the objects, artifacts, institutions, organizations, ideas, and beliefs that make up the social environment of human life.

Organizational culture: the way an organization has learned to deal with its environment; it includes norms and values that are subculturally distinct to the organization.

Values: socially shared conceptions of what a group or society considers good, right, and desirable.

Norms: the rules or expectations that serve as common guidelines for behaviour in daily life, telling us what kinds of behaviour are appropriate or inappropriate in specific social situations.

Folkways: norms based on popular habits and traditions, and ordinary usages and conventions of everyday life.

Mores: norms that carry moral significance. People believe that mores contribute to the general welfare and continuity of the group.

Taboos: powerful social beliefs that a particular act, food, place, etc. is totally repulsive and dangerous. Violation of the taboo is supposed to result in immediate punishment.

Material culture: the physical and technological aspects of people’s lives, including all the physical objects that members of a culture create and use.

Non-material culture: people’s values, beliefs, philosophies, conventions, and ideologies: in short, all the aspects of a culture that do not have a physical significance.

Signs: gestures, artifacts, or words that express or meaningfully represent something other than themselves.

Symbol: a sign whose relationship with something else also expresses a value or evokes an emotion.

Ideal culture: that aspect of culture that lives only in people’s minds. It is the set of values people claim to believe in, profess openly, hold up for worship and adoration, and in day-to-day life pay “lip service” to.

Cultural integration: the process whereby parts of a culture (for example, ideal culture and real culture) come to fit together and complement one another.

Ethnocentrism: the tendency to use one’s own culture as a basis for evaluating other cultures.

High culture: the set of preferences, tastes, and norms that are characteristic of, or supported by, high-status groups, including fine arts, classical music, ballet, and other “highbrow” concerns.

Popular (or mass) culture: the culture of ordinary people. It includes those objects, preferences, and tastes that are widespread in a society.

Cultural capital: a body of knowledge and interpersonal skills that helps people to get ahead socially, which often includes learning about and participating in high culture.

Counterculture: a subculture that rejects conventional norms and values and adopts alternative ones.

Subculture: a group that shares the cultural elements of a larger society but which also has its own distinctive values, beliefs, norms, style of dress, and behaviour patterns.

Cultural literacy: a solid knowledge of the traditional culture, which contains the building blocks of all communication and learning.

Real culture: the ways people dress, talk, act, relate, and think in everyday life, as distinct from their idealized proclaimed culture.

Week 3 – Starting Points Ch. 4

Estimated Reading Time 00:22:03

Starting Points

Culture

Animals adapt to nature. We live in a social environment that eventually dominates nature. We change the environment to suit ourselves.

Our social environment is not only material but symbolic. Every human group produces meanings that remain in society’s memory (awwww). So culture is a collective memory of the group.

(Reminds me of a section in One Hundred Years of Solitude where the town Macondo was struck by a plague that induces amnesia – “the quicksand of forgetfulness”. Really interesting exploration on this topic. It is also sadly ironic that the author, G. G. Marquez, now has been diagnosed with dementia ): .)

Back on track: since culture is collective memory, it supports the identity of group or society. So culture is shared, remembered, and symbolic. People who share a culture experience the world and behave similarly. Culture is the societal glue. People from other cultures are viewed as “different”.

So, to understand society we need to understand its culture.

Canada is an immigrant country, so culture matters! Just how significant are the differences? Microsociologically, culture can shape people’s lives. e.g. lovers who decide against marrying because of cultural differences.

But if we dig deeper, other cultures are similar! We’re not so much different. In great cities especially – metropolitan lives are similar across the world as discussed in Chapter 2. Outside of great cities people may be more different, but not that much more. If you study history or anthropology though, you will appreciate how human culture has varied through space and time.

Why focus on differences? Because we are naturally proud and we always think we are right. But sometimes it helps to have a new perspective.

Animal behaviour is largely genetic. Does not vary much. (Constant function: ∇(Ab) = 0 and ∂(Ab)/∂t = 0.) But humans learn. And we have language to pass on knowledge. So both micro and macro structures of society can change.

But is there a limit to this change? George Murdock (his name sounds like Moloch) finds out about cultural universals:
-athletic sports
-bodily adornment
-cooking
-dancing
-funeral ceremonies
-gift giving
-language
-use fire (identified by other researchers)
Each deals with a fundamental social issue. Fire is a good example of how we change nature into culture. If there are universal cultural concerns, then maybe they meet universal human needs? Even then there is a great variety of cultural ways.

The only real universal is culture itself.
Macro: the values of a culture is expressed in its SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS.
Micro: culture shapes personalities through socialization.

CULTURE

Functionalism

Culture is integrative. Functionalists emphasize order, so they look to culture to explain consensus and stability. People with “modern” values tend to be trusting — good for democracy. A “civic culture” — where citizens participate in social and political life daily — is good for democracy.
“A police officer is your best friend!”

Work of Émile Durkheim. Functionalists emphasize order, so they look to culture to explain consensus and stability. Culture is not only economic but reflect shared norms, values, beliefs, etc.
Implication: cultural elements signify consensus. So sociologists can look at cultural elements to determine what society wants (and not what capitalists want).
e.g. Importance of education in modern culture — response to society that needs more educated citizens.

Critical Theory

Critical theorists focus on group differences in power and belief. Strongly stated values actually indicate conflict: one side justifies an action with certain values and the other opposes it with some other values. Sometimes overtly stated “general” values may benefit some people and exploit others.

e.g. legalizing marijuana. Often formal disapproval of an action prove that the behaviour is far more common than people would like to admit so come on just legalize marijuana already and we can all get some and so what we get drunk so what we smoke weed we’re just having fun we don’t care who sees living young and wild and free

Insight of Karl Marx, in response to Hegel. Hegel et al. focused on role of culturally based ideas in shaping society. Marx critiqued these arguments for ignoring role of material (i.e. economic) reasons that shape people’s thoughts and actions.
Marx didn’t focus on ideas or cultures; but on modes of production.

Marx says it’s not culture or ideas, but material relationships, that shape culture. (Hence the term: historical materialism.) So culture itself is already rooted in class struggles. Capitalism gives rise to a dominant ideology, which justifies capitalism and perpetuates it.

Since Marx though critical theorists focused less rigidly on economic relations as foundation of culture, but moved onto other sources of domination. Theorists still believe that dominant ideology is self-perpetuating, but they recognize the role of the state and the ideologies of politicians.
Antonio Gramsci (1992) says that during the Great Depression, intellectuals provided knowledge and advice to general public, subduing revolutions. Many consider this the chief role of academics.

Frankfurt School of Theorists (Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and Walter Benjamin): focused on analyzing ideology, consumerism, especially popular entertainment as capitalist ideals. (Which they are — just look at the amount of sycophancy in the reality TV show “The Apprentice” — who does Donald Trump think he is?).

Symbolic Interactionism

Dramaturgical perspective: culture arises out of interactions of social actors and the symbols they communicate with. Culture is the creative use of values and norms. e.g. In a conversation even if you have a general idea of what you’re gonna say, it’s still a largely spontaneous process.
So values and norms are not something people are programmed to follow, but more like building blocks of a conversation (or an interaction in general).

Even if we choose not to interact, that itself is a manifestation of culture. (Parallelism with Sartre: ‘not choosing’ itself is a choice.) In interactions we learn culture, and through interaction we add to culture.

Symbolic interactionists allow more room for social factors in shaping and impacted culture. Functionalists and Critical Theorists think of culture as imposed and regulating, but symbolic interactionists think of culture at the same time as dynamic and evolving.

“Cultural Studies” Perspective

Arose at Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at University of Birmingham in 1970s.
Sociology + literary scholarship = cultural studies.
Marginalized subcultural groups: how do they lay claims to the dominant culture and put a twist to it?

Borrowed claims from critical theorists — dominant ideologies. Culture is shaped by dominant groups to maintain status quo. Class relations is only contributing factor, among others like relations of gender, race, ethnicity, and geography.

Like symbolic interactionism — focuses on role of meaning in culture. Stuart Hall (1980) says all communication requires encoding and decoding. (Just like how you’d put signals on LEDs.) But they are subtle! Encoded in a reality TV show, for example, lies assumptions about normality and social values.
While dominant group encodes this material, other factions decode it based on their social and cultural position.
So: culture originates from dominant group, but its effects depend on characteristics of individuals. Culture is both unifying and fragmenting.

“The Production of Culture” Perspective

“Cultural Studies” isn’t really interested in the origin of culture so much as the fact that culture serves dominant classes, because of its Marxist, critical roots.
“The Production of Culture” perspective sees origin of culture in material culture (i.e. mass media, technology, art, other symbolic materials, etc.). It’s interested in social action around this material base.

This perspective looks at how culture is produced, instead of accepting that it just pops out of class relations. Someone has to create culture. Plays, symphonies, advertisements, etc. all has to come from somewhere. “Production of culture” theorists dismiss “cultural studies” approach as too vague.

e.g.
Other theorists on modern art: product of the times, the values in societies where this art movement arose, role of political and social atmospheres;
Cultural production perspective: labour process by which art is communicated and perpetuated.
Better understanding of cultural content — where it comes from and how it changes.

Canvases and Careers by Harrison White and Cynthia White (1965). Studied Impressionism in 19th century France. Highlights role of “l’artiste” and his/her need to make a living — i.e. to have a career.
Breakdown of Royal Academy system (of the classical style) left room for a new system. Dealers and critics organized markets toward middle-class art buyers, who are less grandiose and even experimental.
Today fine arts are supported by government. And artists eke out a living with sales, commissions, fellowships, teaching, and day jobs.

Fine arts is a particular form of culture, because it requires 1) specialized culture producers and 2) market for their wares (dealers/critics).
Language is a general form of culture, since everyone uses it.
But even language requires a market!

Language: A Key Cultural Realm

Language is interesting to symbolic interactionists and feminists. Other theorists are interested too though: e.g. structural functionalists (group-particular language used as social bond — ghetto talk, etc); critical theorists (language used as part of dominant ideology).

Stemming from critical perspective, feminists says that culture (through language) shapes our perception of reality. Androcentric and sexist language perpetuates inequality. e.g. mankind, policeman, chairman.
If we don’t switch to gender-neutral words such as humankind or chairperson we’re implying that women should be absent from these roles. We are discouraging women! (every step you take, they remind you you ghetto)

Language goes deeper than that though. It structures the way we perceive reality. Language is communicated through sounds, signs, and gestures — the tools of memory. But words are ambiguous or even confusing, with intended and unintended meanings. We learn through observation and through trial and error. Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf (1929) says that language expresses our thoughts and structures them. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis — androcentric language is the norm. Different languages organize reality differently.

Usually:
“Instinctive” gestures — e.g. raising an eyebrow — means the same everywhere.
“Coded” gestures — developed in social contexts — prone to misinterpretation.

Assumptions pervade any language. E.g. the Slave (a Native group) of Northwest Territories and Alberta has a complex vocabulary related to ice conditions. (Because they travel and fish on ice).
So language is needed to make social life possible. Globalization may contribute in the decline of language and diversity. But no one knows for sure.

Classic Studies: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Max Weber studies how cultural values influence people’s behaviour in 1905. Began as a series of essays in German, but today it is considered a founding text in sociology. Especially economic sociology. First translated into English by Parsons in 1930. Documents the growing importance of “the non-rational” in sociology.

Argument in this book: religion serves as dominant ideology but can also motivate material progress. Capitalism evolved when Protestant (esp. Calvinist) ethic urged people to work in “this world”. Protestantism downplayed other-worldliness and asked people to work their asses off instead. (If I had an orchard I’d work till I’m sore). So protestantism is the force behind a largely uncoordinated development of capitalism.

That being said, WEBER’s theory was not deterministic. This idea is known as “the Weber thesis” — but it’s not rigid, and Weber himself rejected deterministic approaches. Weber instead presented Protestantism as one element of several leading to modern capitalism. Or in other words, Protestantism has an “elective affinity” with capitalism.

WEBER develops upon a previously identified link between Protestant Christianity and capitalism of the time. Demonstrated a correlation between Protestantism and business, esp. in 16th century northwestern Europe. Maybe religion is a cause? I mean, Hinduism, Confucianism, or ancient Judaism didn’t produce capitalistic societies!

What was Weber’s proof?

1. Outline nature of capitalism: this-worldliness.
2. Identify source of this belief system: Protestantism.
3. Link the rise of capitalism with rise of Protestant beliefs.

QED.

1.Nature of capitalism is characterized by the view of profit as an end in itself. Pursuit of profit is righteous. Embraces investment and risk-taking. Requires diligence, thrift, and sobriety, but more importantly this-worldliness.

2.Protestantism is concerned with the ultimate question: am I saved or am I damned? How can I know what God has planned for me? What is the most moral way to live?
Because religion asks these fundamental questions, it is able to transform society and have wide variety of consequences.

3.Economic behaviour that we see in “modern life” would’ve been impossible without a major shift in religious and economic values. In medieval times, wealth is immoral. And so for people to change their economic behaviour, they must first embrace money.

Note on Protestantism:
Developed by John Calvin and Martin Luther, who believed everyone in the world has a “calling”. A task given by God. It’s his/her holy duty to work hard for the glory of God. Especially late Calvinists developed a sense of predestination, and unwittingly helped create capitalism.
Calvinists believed that all people are predestined to go to either heaven or hell. Since everything’s already set for you, why worry about the afterlife? Take advantage of what you have at the moment is the right way to go! Calvinists emphasized the individual’s freedom on Earth.

Such autonomy sure helped the rise of capitalism. But capitalism isn’t just about the money. Instead, it’s about renewable money. The pursuit of endlessly renewable profit. Calvinists searched for signs that they are the “elect” (i.e. heaven people). What are the signs? — that they are doing well in this world, of course!

WEBER’s thesis has been attacked on many grounds though. There may have certainly been other more important factors. e.g. rise of international commerce, invention of mechanized production, development of European nation-states, etc. So the theory’s good, but incomplete. (Kind of like what Einstein said of quantum mechanics.) Even Weber himself said so. Furthermore, the causal relationship may be reversed to an extent; capitalism also helped development of religious theories (i.e. dominant ideology). So it’s kind of like a positive feedback!

The book is a good illustration of WEBER’s approach though. Changes in one cultural element — religion — can contribute to changes in another cultural element — economy. This link is important because it shows that:

1. social and economic development are tied to culture.
2. every society is a complex system.
3. culture is not static, not always a hindrance to change. As cultures change, they cushion the psychological hardships of social and economic change.
4. religious values can change the course of world history.

The Importance of Values: The Case of Religion

Religion is not the only source of values in Canada anymore. First, it went through secularization. Second, sociologists argue over importance of religion as source of values. e.g. Marxists see source of values rising from dominant ideologies; feminists see source of values rising from “patriarchal relations”. Religion is but a mask, to these people.

But other sociologists do think religion’s important too! Some (like WEBER) say religion is any set of coherent answers to “the questions”. While others (like DURKHEIM) define religion as based upon the idea of the sacred. According to them, religion binds people together.

In both definitions (Weber ∩ Durkheim), religion includes thoughts and practices that connect people with the supernatural or the transcendent. Some think that there is “Tao” in nature. Some think of humanoids (devils, angels, etc.). etc. etc.

How does religion contribute to the way society works? We’ve talked about Weber’s point of view. Durkheim says beliefs and rituals create social bonding. (A certain cannon from a certain engineering school in a certain university comes to mind.)

Cultural Integration, Ethnocentricism, and the Mass Media

DURKHEIM says that values serve to forge social bonds. But his theory is based on small-scale, tight-knit, interrelated, traditional communities. So changes are more easily felt in these communities.

Modern communities are different. Specialization, isolation, and rapid pace prevent integration. Technology and marketplace changes culture. New goods and services change people’s lives even if they don’t square with the ideal culture.

So people have wide variation and differences between what people say they want (stated values) and what they really want. Cultural integration and ethnocentrism are also important.
Ethnocentrism: my culture’s so good, everything else is sh–.

Some would argue that cultural relativism can be taken too far. e.g. cultures that promote racism, sexism, violence cannot be condoned. Why? Because it’s 1) self-evidently inferior, 2) violating first principles of human rights. But this is another version of ethnocentrism. Whenever a conflict like this happens, we must re-examine our own rules and ask whether they are good.

Mass media is important for cultural integration. It communicates to large audiences without being personal. It started with Gutenberg. He spread literacy! (And since people can read the Bible for themselves, they don’t need the priests as much and that started the Reformation).

Explosion of information technology made cultural integration and political rebellion equally possible. e.g. “fall of communism” in 1989.

Classic studies: Theory of the Leisure Class

Thorstein Veblen addresses shift from society based on raw materials to one based on information, as well as distinction between upper and lower classes in 1899.

Critique of modem society, esp. “conspicuous consumption” of upper-class bourgeoisie. Living as though every day were a holiday. Veblen argues that symbolic nature of social prestige (e.g. fashion) encourages a wasteful, even barbaric consumption of time and goods. But this wasteful consumption serves a purpose: to reaffirm the status and power of those who can afford to live like this.

Though published in 1899, the book foreshadows the growing culture of consumption. e.g. 1920s and now. Veblen was one of the first to work on this topic, and provided foundation for many other works on consumerism. Underpins critical analysis of advertising industry and the mass media, both of which are interested in fostering conspicuous consumption.

Veblen recommends a simpler and more austere lifestyle oriented toward civic mindedness and conservation culture. He didn’t base his analysis in either Marx or Weber, which accounted for his book’s failure to attract readers or to generate follow-up research (contradiction: read paragraph above). The textbook says that Veblen failed but I disagree. Ain’t nothing wrong just trying to be yourself.

PIERRE BOURDIEU
Researched the way dominant culture maintains its power and privilege. e.g. French education system — “learning of class”. Learned expertise and competent practices are the means by which social domination is transmitted or reproduced from on generation to the next. e.g. symbols and practices and styles and tastes all embody interests and function to enhance social distinctions.

Bourdieu notes that social class is distinctive because of their differing tastes. (Wow, what a French thing to do.) Cultural capital gets passed along. The dominant class defines what tastes are excellent. Differences in cultural capital mark the differences in classes. Criticized Marx for focusing too much on economics. Social and cultural symbols are more important.

Bourdieu’s theme is how cultural and social values are passed down, and the influence of socio-cultural capital. Key concepts include habitus and social field (and social agent).

Habitus: habituation gained through lifelong learning and socialization within a particular context. Can be seen as “cultural competency”. It’s something that “goes without saying”. e.g. You don’t put your elbow on the table as you eat. You don’t wear a tuxedo out the door before 6 pm. You don’t button the last button of your suit, etc.

Social field: social setting, domain, or institution within which habitus is to be exercised. e.g. politics, education, or economics. These are sites of competition where social agents struggle for power and control.

Glastra and Vedder (2010) use field to explain the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees in Netherlands. Catlaw and Hu (2009) use field to analyze construction of bureaucracy in the United States. Wright (2009) says that cricket becomes restricted to those who lack the cultural capital. Kerr and Robinson (2009) use cultural capital and habitus to look at domination in British corporation in Ukraine. Pollmann (2009) draws on habitus and cultural capital to understand how people’s attachment to their country would contribute to “intercultural capital”.

Criticisms for Bourdieu:

1. Too much focus on high culture. (Well, he’s French, what can you do?)
2. Is there even a class-based difference in knowledge of fine arts? (Don’t discriminate against the bourgeoisie!)
3. Didn’t consider the full importance of social capital. (Ok, give the man a break. He invented the whole thing! I’m sure Newton didn’t consider the full importance of calculus/Newtonian mechanics).

Kim (2009) says Bourdieu is right about fields and is empirically accurate. Ignatow (2009) uses Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to develop a theory of morality.

Bourdieu’s book Distinction was named one of the 20th century’s most important sociological works by the International Sociological Association.

Cultural Variation

Unlike high culture, popular culture is fragmented. e.g. Grunge, funk, rock, pop, R&B, etc. But popular culture also reflects the influence of high culture. e.g. ads borrow from classical paintings.

Mass media and modern popular culture have developed together. But trends in high culture reflect growth of new audiences too. Middle class wants to catch up to upper class. Upper class wants to distinguish itself.
Familiarity with high culture is one form of cultural capital. Young people with more cultural capital tend to do better according to a research by DiMaggie.
(So, to schmooze up to Bill Gates, learn to play bridge first.)

Cultural capital includes a variety of skills. e.g. how to speak interestingly, what topics to discuss, how to order food and eat graciously, etc. etc.
Few people learn them in public school. You really need a wide variety of personal experiences, indulging and knowledgeable parents, devoted teachers, and time and money.

People are encouraged to conform. If they conform they can move up the social ladder, if not they slide down. People at bottom have “nothing to lose but their chains”. And so they can form countercultures. People at top gain nothing by conforming, and so they form subcultures — often equally grotesque!

For poorer people, cultural literacy is often the critical issue. Unlike cultural capital, it is a necessity. E.D. Hirsch (1988) says that schools ought to provide students with a store of cultural knowledge instead of abstract thinking skills. Implication: knowledge is more important than creativity, experience more important than “ability”. e.g. A chess grandmaster is better at identifying traditional (optimized) game strategies and responding to them.

So creativity and problem-solving abilities depend on solid knowledge.
(You know it’s true when you’ve tried to pick up object-oriented programming with nothing but self-help tutorials on the Internet.)
So before people can learn anything else, or solve any problems, they need to master a body of information.
(Sounds like something my bio prof would say.)

Cultural Change

All cultures change. e.g. fashion; baby names.

Canadian Culture

How is the Canadian society unique? American Seymour Martin Lipset (1990) says we are elitist, traditional, and collectivistic (group-focused). The difference from US results in birth of Canada in counter-revolution and compromise.

Some survey data say otherwise. A lot of times Canada and US are indistinguishable. In fact Canadians are less traditional and less elitist than Americans. e.g. medicare. (Maybe) Canadians prefer order more than liberty, and Americans vice versa.

Some say Canadian culture does not exist at all. It’s just a collection. “A tossed salad” — cultural mosaic. In reality the findings gave just about everyone some ammunition.

A Global Culture?

Yes. No. Maybe.

New Insights

Who Authors the Authors?
Agger (2001) says that cultural “texts” must be viewed with author’s social context and personal subjectivity in mind.

Let’s Roll
Arvidsson (2001) analyzes root of postmodern consumer culture. Case study of marketing strategies of Italian motor scooters called Piaggio. The company used popularity of its vehicles to create a lifestyle image to invoke a “mod subculture” (or kitsch).

A Neon God They Made
Bishop (2001) analyzed the “changing nature of professional sports logos, using semiotics and work of postmodern writers”. Before logos were worn as signs of loyalty. Now they show social rapport. In essence, sentiment has turned into material consumption.

A Place Like This
Till (2007) studied link between popular culture and religion through club music. Till says that club music actually incorporates many elements of mainstream Christian religion and spirituality. e.g. Nine-O’clock Service (NOS).

Embracing Chaos
Boggs and Pollard(2001) focused on postmodern cinema, which included “class polarization, social atomization, urban chaos and violence, etc etc etc.” Though “dark” and seemingly unmainstream, these elements are popular in today’s society.

Back Street’s Back
Critical theorists have much to say about culture. Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Walter Benjamin from the Frankfurt School critiqued modern pop culture and mass consumption. Critical theory assumes that both reality and science are socially created, so understanding culture, the social basis, is important! Today, Castro-Gomez argues that critical theory is useful for understanding culture.

One Is Whole, and Whole Is One
Modern critical theory, as informed by feminist approaches, say that cultural elements like gender, race, ethnicity, class, etc, are socially constructed and culturally bound. We can’t consider such elements without considering cultural and social, political, and historical contexts.

The End of Art?
Kirkpatrick (2007) applied critical theory on computer games. Basically what he’s saying is that the design of computer games requires art. But this art is easily reproducible (through screenshots, etc.) and so loses its uniqueness. Since computer games are recreational, they lose their purely expressive value.
(I beg to differ. Anyone who’s played Heavy Rain or Shadow of the Colossus will know what I’m talking about. Those games are real pieces of art.)

What’s Computer Games Gotta Do with This?
Rief (2008) sees computer games as another form of consumption in modern society. But he says consumption is simply a cultural and social practice, not evidence of social decay. Consumption is not psychopathology but rather is connected to different social and cultural contexts.

Some Distinctions
Goldfarb(2005) claims that modern sociology is not yet developed enough from critical theory perspective. We need to distinguish between: culture and ideology, high culture and autonomous culture, and power and knowledge. Calls for consideration of links between arts and sciences and everyday life and politics.

SOC103 Notes by digitalhardhat is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Week 2 – Starting Points Ch. 3

Estimated Reading Time 00:18:37

Starting Points

Social Structures

Previously we discussed non-human factors. Now we’ll discuss social scripts and social forms.

Social scripts – culturally constructed, socially enforced we’re all expected to follow when we interact. Learned through years of observation and practice. e.g. Women act differently from men. Adults act differently from children. If violated may lost respect. Conscious.

Social forms – social arrangements that arise below people’s consciousness. e.g. fashion, tweeting, Facebook posting styles. Can’t be idiosyncratic: unique to one individual. Not socially enforced but appear everywhere and influence our behaviour. Theorized by Georg Simmel. Unconscious.

Almost exclusively on symbolic interactionist point of view.

Even when we’re not getting high, when we see a police officer we cringe. Why? We do this because we follow social scripts – guidelines that people follow to carry out interactions and fulfill role expectations as seamlessly as possible.

Roles and identities shape our behaviour, but so does the groups we belong to. e.g. development of only child vs. child with siblings.
Bureaucracies may alienate people. e.g. U of T ?!?!??!

Classic Studies: Outsiders

Howard Becker from Chicago School of sociology studied classic work Outsiders (1963). Groundwork for labelling theory. Deviance is the result of a group expelling a subgroup (through labelling). e.g. jazz musicians and marijuana users.

People learn deviant behaviour just like they would anything else. But once labelled deviant people set themselves apart and develop distinct patterns of behaviour. e.g. jazz musicians.

Becker’s model for deviance is sequential, because there is learning and group formation. Deviance is a process. Different factors in people’s lives become relevant at different stages. Overtime the deviant gains community identity within a deviant subgroup.

Main argument: who accuses who? Instead of punishing deviant, why do we consider the deviant bad?
Criticism: ignores personal motivation, focuses on effects but not causes. It’s difficult to understand deviance without reference to personal motives, and so many question this approach. But still influential.

Identity, Roles, and Role-Sets

Social scripts associated with dramaturgical approach of symbolism and interactionism.
Erving Goffman in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) showed we can understand and think about social life in terms of a theatrical production – with costumes, scripts, audiences, and roles. e.g. The term social role is borrowed from theatre.
(Shakespeare – “All the world’s a stage.”)

But life is not scripted! We have freedom (in a sense). No social script covers any social situation, so we’d always need to improvise. So Goffman’s theatre is a metaphor. Helps explain social structure though. And also makeup and different dress codes.

“Costume malfunction” – if sometimes script isn’t followed or someone’s bad at improvising we feel embarrassed. And we try to get everything back on track.

Social scripts are imperfect as we only have general outlines. We need social skills and insight. Fulfillment of roles promotes effective interaction. Breach of expectations, on the other hand, can get ugly.

Roles we play are related to identity. Dramaturgically, social roles are the source, not the expression, of identities. It goes from outside-in. Symbolic interactionist argue that roles shape identities.

“Category” and “Community” embed roles and identities.

“Community”: group of people who interact and communicate often and share common interests, values, and goals. They identify themselves as members of a community and one another as members. Membership is important. Shame by gossip. Despite individual differences (demographic categories like age, sex, etc.) there’s conformity in a community.

“Category”: people in the same category do not necessarily communicate with one another. People are less likely to identify with the category than a community. So sociologists are less interested in categories until they mobilize and become a community.
So category mobilization is what social movement is about. e.g. Women’s movement, gay rights movement, etc.

Central concern of sociology: what is the connection between roles and identities? Related to: where does social conformity originate? From within? or from without?

The answer is “both”. Sometimes we want to leave/voice disapproval, but we still obey. We come to tolerate, even embrace, social rules.

Labelling theory: we gain knowledge or understanding of who we are by seeing how other people view or treat us. Founded by Charles Horton Cooley (1902), with concept looking-glass self. The way others see you influences how you see yourself. Good theory but limited. We don’t absorb all the outside opinions.

Goffman (1963) notes that roles and identities overlap.

• Role embracement: willing acceptation of identities associated with role. e.g. pretty much all successful (and happy) people in life.
• Role distance: accepts role but not identity. e.g. Roy Mustang and Edward Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist – becoming “Millitary’s Dog” in pursuit of their own goals.
• Role exit: leaving a role. Rejection and loss of activities, rights, responsibilities, and identity. e.g. break up.

Symbolic interactionist perspective: identities are socially determined, based on social roles, unlike “personality”. When you take on a new role it’s common to feel uneasy because you’ve never done it before.

Your roles structure your life. When you become a dad you also take on related roles, such as soccer coach, moral guide, etc. This collection is called role-set. Some roles are clearly defined especially when paired. e.g. parent-child or husband-wife. They are well defined because we know how people are supposed to act.

How do roles change over time? Social roles are not predetermined. Individuals can furthermore choose their own roles.

George Herbert Mead argues that people adopt roles through role-taking. People learn from people around them and from society at large. To enter one role you must enter some other roles beforehand. So people adopt these roles at their own volition. Central to this process is the learning and use of symbols. Especially language.

Ralph Turner (1962) introduced concept of role-making. People invent new roles with cooperation from others. This concept identifies a major flaw in interactionist approach and a major different between interactionism and functionalism.

(Detour into functionalism)

Let me explain: if you and another person makes a role it doesn’t automatically make it valid. People have to accept it. New roles may not have accompanying status (resource for role-play). Status are components in a complex social system. We can’t introduce roles without establishing how they fit in society.

As explained by Ralph Linton, people play roles but occupy statuses. Statuses are characterized by qualities, duties, privileges, responsibilities and rights. Hierarchical in nature.

In a functionalist image of society, order is all-important. Without an orderly hierarchy there is no stability.
Talcott Parsons (1949) views statuses as central to social order. When socialization is incomplete, people neglect their duties and disorder follows. Society resists breakdown by using embarrassment and shame to restore social equilibrium.
We learn how to live in society through socialization.

Role Conflicts and Role Strains

When roles conflict (appropriately termed role conflict) with each other people undergo role strain, reveals itself as stress. (Contrary to the engineering definition σ = Εε). Despite these strains society continues to function well. People find ways of managing stress associated with role strain, through appropriate social mechanisms.

1. Prioritizing. e.g. dump your girlfriend for school.
2. Have a master status. The most distinct characteristic. e.g. I’m better than anyone else at coding so an elite hacker is my most important role.
3. Compartmentalization. Division of activities. Keeping your groups separate. By keeping groups separate it’s easier to keep the roles separate too.
4. Secrecy, as discussed below.

Classic Studies: The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies

Everyone feels the need to deviate at times. But how do we do this with impunity? Georg Simmel (1906) is the first to study secrecy. Our “second” (secret) world is constructed from our “first” (real) world.
“First world”: world of socially acceptably behaviours.
“Second world”: world of hidden deviance.

Social life is like a game of hide-and-seek. One person tries to hide something and another tries to find out what’s hidden. Secrecy is functionally necessary, and cities are especially useful.

According to Simmel, lies are dangerous because people base decisions based on assumptions they can’t easily confirm. Sometimes relationships benefit from concealment. But every relationship has its own tolerable limit of deviation and secrecy.

Secret societies then hold a particular importance in religion and politics. A secret society is “an interactional unit characterized in its totality by the fact that reciprocal relations among its members are governed by the protective functions of secrecy”. So, in English, their member’s actions and relationships are protected by secrecy.

Two components to this definition. 1. members of a group want to protect ideas, activities, etc. 2. They defend these ideas by controlling information.

Through social scripts we gain understanding of what society requires. But social forms are more remarkable and less obvious.

Dyads, Triads, and Small Groups

Social forms does not direct our behaviour but are descriptions. They emerge without people’s intention or awareness. In 1908 essay by Georg Simmel he divided sociology into form (mode of interaction) and content (motive, purpose of an action).

e.g. Two people discussing about movie vs. three people discussing about movie. Content is same but form is different. Dyads act differently than triads.

Binary groups either agree easily or fall into hard-to-resolve conflict. Odd-numbered groups takes a longer time but usually able to eventually resolve conflict. May have peacemaker, etc. unavailable to a dyad.
(O_O Parity matters? Statistically as n approaches infinity the behaviour of odd-numbered and even-numbered groups should become indistinguishable! I guess he’s only talking about small groups)

The idea of social forms opposes voluntarist position. Voluntarism, socio-psychological, argues that our social behaviour is a clear reflection of our goals, etc. But sociologists believe that we often do what we do to gain social acceptance. We try to fit into the social form confronting us and tailor our actions.

Robert Bales (functionalist) did a study at Harvard. By creepily watching people doing teamwork in a one-way mirror, he observed three social forms: the task leader, the emotional leader (often the peacemaker), and the joker.

In order for groups to survive some of their members need to perform special roles. In every group people step forward to fill these roles, or break up. — a small scale functionalist model as put forth by Parsons and Robert Bales.

There are many overlaps between functionalism and interactionism. But at their extremes they lead to different directions.
Symbolic Interactionism: we are always creating and invigorating “the social structure” which would not survive without our intentional cooperative efforts.
(So like, you need to continuously supply electricity to keep a machine going.)
Functionalism: “social systems” persist outside the efforts and intentions of individuals. They force us to conform whether we are willing or not.
(More like osmosis.)
So functionalists far more easily explain social forms.

Teams, Bands, and Gangs (TBGs)

TBGs operate similarly despite very different goals and activities. People join them because they want to be members, not as means for another end. People are not born into it.

TBGs have distinct membership, goals, and activities. They have hierarchies with leaders to set goals, mobilize and motivate. There are clear differences between individual T/B/G though.
All TBGs must address issues of leadership, recruitment, communication, and control. Must master “teamwork”.

Cliques, Networks, and Small Worlds

The social network is different. e.g. 20 people connected to each other. If n = 20 there can be 190 paired different direct connections according to [n(n-1)/2]. Grows quadratically.

Indirect connections are interesting too. Mark Granovetter (1974) argues that weakly tied networks are more useful than strongly tied networks.

Reason is mathematically shown by Anatol Rapoport (1953). Information that only passes through strong links will cycle repeatedly. But information that passes through weak links spread much more quickly.

But then a network is only as strong as its connections, or dyadic relationships (i.e. the edges that connect nodes). Stable dyadic relationships are based on social exchange. So people enter and leave a network.

Nodes can be people but also gouts, institutions, cities, countries, etc. In cyberspace people are setting up virtual networks as well as real ones (in the real world).

Social networking: “small world” property. Aka “six degrees of separation”. But some are sociometric stars. (I think I read this in a Malcolm Gladwell book). These stars can serve as leaders to bring people together. So leadership is integrating people from top down, which is far easier than bottom up.

Integrative role of leaders is important because many of us belong to cliques, groups characterized by friendship, similarity, interaction, exclusion, and the flow of resources. No practical goals but raises status of clique members. Also hierarchical with a leader.

Cohesion of cliques is based as much on exclusion as on inclusion.

Time for generalization!

Michael Foucault
Focused on “the critical history of the present” and then adopted a “genealogical” approach. Claims that knowledge and power control people by creating and enforcing social norms for human behaviour. Foucault maintains that these norms are not derived from evidence or rational argument but are produced by historical circumstance.
Publishes Discipline and Punish: The Origin of the Prison. Examines how power-knowledge relationship uses coercion and surveillance to exert direct, physical control in enforcing standards of behaviour. Similar to schools!!! D:
Also has works on sexuality regarding “bio-power” that influences through policies of reproduction, health, and mortality.

To understand Foucault: our social forms and social scripts are historically specific, arbitrary, but compelling. All of these are part of our notions of “normality” and thus control us. No source of surveillance or of social rules is as powerful as the state. So social order is fundamentally a structure of power relations.

Notion of “governmentality”: regulation of people’s behaviour (self-regulated and state-regulated). Lemke said that in governmentality autonomous individuals as well as the sovereign determine each other’s emergence. So in a sense the growth of individualism is part of the same process that produces large inhuman institutions.

By what means is governmentality achieved? Why? How do individuals make space for themselves then? How do states preserve control when surveillance is imperfect?

Debrix and Barder (2009) say that decentralization of far and power in modern society encourage the use of danger, threat, insecurity, or hostility to control behaviour. Referred to as “mobilization of fear”, involves use of terrifying mechanisms.

Fear of aging: Castle (2009) notes that professional power in gerontology makes seniors dependent on the governing system through assessment and surveillance. McDaniel says that many of those who care for the elderly are themselves disadvantaged: women of a visible minority.

Svihula says that through Foucault’s analysis we can identify relations of power and state governmentality at local level within gerontology. But “power at the macro level” (i.e. the “market ethos”) needs to be examined.

Foucauldian notions applied on plastic surgery: “normality” is relevant. Heyes (2009) says that surgeons exercise discipline to attempt to draw a line between normal and abnormal needs. This distinction legitimizes plastic surgery. But ultimately Heyes argues that these surgeons merely ensure profitability of their practice by claiming that negative results must be caused by a patient’s disorder.

Evans and Colls (2009) applies Foucault analysis to obesity. Used Foucault’s notions of bio-power and governmentality that BMI measurement does not take into account the whole body and experiences of the people being measured. These measurements provides a way of drawing lines between “normal” and “abnormal”, for control.

Hay (2009) says that employee conversations with managers focused around employee development. Such conversations aim to adjust personal competences to corporate visions, missions, and goals. Foucaultian view: these conversations are hidden technologies of power.

Foucault’s “technologies of the self” includes:

• self-examination
• identification of inner impurities
• disclosure of the self
• renunciation of the self

In framework of freedom and choice (modern rationale of control), technologies of the self with formal relations of domination form a specific type of governmentally. e.g. employee is transformed in an endless striving for perfection as an employee. So people are implication in their own self-criticism and institutional subjection.
(Personal comment: there’s nothing wrong with striving for perfection. It’s an age-old human pursuit. And it’s noble.)

“Neo-liberalism”: political philosophy that, under guise of liberation, undermines collective efforts to redistribute wealth and power. Lazzarato (2009) draws on Foucault and argues that by emphasizing the important of the individual and market competition, Foucault’s ideology transformed society into an ever less equal “enterprise society”. The emphasis on individuals is to create social insecurity and to weaken the role of the state, to depoliticize social issues. Undermines planning and redistribution of welfare.
(Basically he’s saying that Foucault’s ideology implies that inequality is inherent and inevitable, and as a Marxist he isn’t happy about that.)

So then from this point of view, neo-liberalism means the restoration of capitalist power over redistribution of wealth. Complete antithesis of a Marxist stance.

Blain (2009) looks at American “war on terrorism” through Foucault’s viewpoint. Origins of the notion “terrorism” from English response to French Revolution. Thereafter government labelled some activism as illegitimate and some as legitimate. So it’s the government’s perception of the act is evil.
(Evil is in the eye of the beholder.)

So Foucault is really controversial and there’s still a lot of heated debate. But the general idea is that Foucault has helped us understand the nature of power in present-day societies, and that such power is often exercised without our awareness by obliging us to conform to “normality”. These notions are nested in social scripts we perform and the social forms we inhabit. So the powerful use modern methods and institutions to control the rest of us.

New Insights

Sociological Notions of Community.

Virtuality
Adler and Adler (2008) look at people who injure themselves. Sociologically, is self-injury a social, communal activity? Many self-injurers who feel lonely and isolated from society were able to form online communities. This research is social constructionist and shed new light on the creation of virtual communities made possible by technology. Deviant group can avoid isolation, stigma, and exclusion.

Activism
Communities can take various forms. Purcell (2009) criticized Old Left theories of protest. Not every social movement needs to be based on classes, or be organized the same way. Present day political movements are different in form by similar in intent. Formation of “networks of equivalence”.

Misuse of Terminology
There are political ramifications by using the term community. Merrill Singer (2006) says that it’s difficult to assess drug addicts as a community. The use of word “community” in drug addition literature may influence policy makers. Community is hard to define to suit various contexts.
(Moral: choose your words carefully)

Consumerism as a religion
Antonowiez and Wrzesinski (2009) relate Thomas Lukmann’s notion of invisible religion to sports fans’ devotion to their teams as a form of community. This requires participation and faith, just like traditional religions, but is more complex because of commercialization. Does this represent a true community? Or a true religion (it’s a clothing brand name!)?

Transcendence in Markets
Thompson and Coskuner-Balli (2007) examine community supported agriculture (CSA). Consumers agree to buy “shares” in local farms and are supplied with local produces. People usually do this out of ideological stance or idealized romanticism. Thompson and Coskuner-Balli remind us that in a “disenchanted” modern age (when, as Nietzsche puts it, God is dead), people continue to look for transcendence. Even in a market-driven world.

A World of Dreamers
Rabot (2007) says that even shared fantasies have social value. What others see as alienation Rabot sees as “vector of socialities”. It is through broadcasting of images that human communion is created and heightened. So in the images around us we see the signs of a committed tribal membership in an otherwise fragmented, disenchanted, and rootless society. We need technology to “re-mythologize” our lives.

Postmodern Angst
Conroy (2007) says that anxiety has social value. Conroy shows how postmodern understandings of uncertainty are linked to social causes of anxiety. (Existential angst.) Globalization fuels anxieties and attachment disorders. e.g. chronic job insecurity from exporting good jobs overseas. So we can see anxiety as normal and basis for generational unity.

(I don’t understand. How does describing why anxiety occur make it normal and basis for unity?)

Resurgence of tribalism
Yeygel (2006) says postmodernism causes social class to lose its importance for people. Postmodern concepts are more tribal. e.g. Modern marketing is built on mass culture. Postmodern marketing is built on one-to-one communication with consumers.

The Marxists Strike Back
Rehmann (2007) claims: 1) postmodernism “de-materializes social relations”, focusing mainly on signs and symbols. 2) Postmodernism doesn’t try hard enough to examine contradictions and antagonisms in our social relations.
So Rehmann says that Marxists must continue to critique neo-liberalism and dominant (capitalist) ideology. Consumerism is exploitive. But Marxists should interpret postmodernism in a historical materialistic framework. It has to reinsert labouring bodies into the analysis of capitalism.

Still Not Good Enough
Salerno (2006) says “American ambivalence” towards community (social engagement vs. individual hedonism) reflects alienation. Utopia vs. social paranoia have led to gated communities and barred windows (I guess that’s why they call it window pain). Sense of community is unattainable in capitalistic communities where market forces alienate.

You Ain’t Got Nuthin’
Modern neighbourhoods are less communities than commodities. They are owned by financial institutions, but residents (à la subprime crisis). People have about as much real connection with their community as they do with their local Walmart; their community becomes something they use that belongs to someone else. The locus of control and planning lies elsewhere. Result of alienation: superficiality of place.
(Fun fact: in China you may buy a property, but you are not allowed to own land. All land is owned by the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”. Isn’t it kind of the same idea here? Is the author trying to establish a contrast between capitalism and idealized communism? Practically, “Chinese” communism and capitalism may not be all that different.)

SOC103 Notes by digitalhardhat is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Week 1 – Starting Points Ch. 2

Estimated Reading Time 00:16:46

Starting Points

Chapter 2
Question: How does environment affect us?

Importance of technology in our lives. (E4TW) The babyboomers’ aging issue. Climate change. So it’s important to answer this question above.

Urban life is different from rural life, specifically:

1. Cities have more people
2. Technologies in cities are unlikely to be found rurally
3. Built environment of cities conflicts with the environment more than that of a rural area

LOOKING AT POPULATION

Sociologists try to address questions of urbanization. Two main approaches are macroanalytical: functional and critical.

Functionalism

Thomas Malthus (1766-1864) said population issues (environment, food supply, etc) may pose a serious problem for humanity. Earth might be overpopulated. First functional analysis predating DURKHEIM.

Malthus’s argument: food supply increases linearly while population increases exponentially. So unsustainable for large t. Food per capita will approach 0. Everyone’s gonna die.

“Checks” will regulate population. Think about it. If you wanna decrease population, what can you do?

• Positive Checks: increase death rate. (like war, famine, epidemic)
• Preventive Checks: limit births. (like abortion, condoms, celibacy, infanticide)

(Like the logistic growth model in differential equations)

This is functional analysis, because it involves social equilibrium, ways to maintain equilibrium, and dangers of losing equilibrium. Unless humankind takes initiative through preventive checks, nature will reassert equilibrium through positive checks. Ignoring this problem isn’t gonna make it better. (So if you don’t want war, kill infants. Okay no not really. I was joking! Bad joke.)

Was Malthus right? Difficult to quantify carrying capacity of the world. As technology improves carrying capacity increases. But is it enough? Lester Brown says no. Food supply will not last and so we are all gonna die.

Critical Theory’s Approach to Malthus

Critical theorists deny that there’s ever an attainable equilibrium. All factions of society are constantly at war and peace and reconciliation are impossible. So then, overpopulation is an unfortunate consequence resulting from exploitation. Those filthy rich. Those 1% that control everything. It’s not natural! (with the implicant accusation that Malthus is championing the dominant ideology discussed in Week 0)

So then famines at overpopulated regions are due to improper land use, wars, and other sociopolitical factors. Poverty cycle. Things like that.

Some studies (historical records) show that famine has not been a significant “positive check”. The assumption that plagues and epidemics are positive checks may not be valid either. So suck on that Malthus.

Poverty and inequality may contribute to overpopulation. Only gradually after modernization does growth slow down. Society enters “demographic transition” towards lower death and birth rates.

Zero population growth (ZPG, like RPG, but not really) may be a temporary solution. When births are exactly balanced by deaths. (Sounds pretty sinister.)

LOOKING AT URBAN LIFE

Functionalism

• View 1: social problems in the city arise naturally out of growth and specialization. More wealth implies more theft, etc.
• View 2: tendencies of the city (size, variety, fluidity) promote social problems. Crime, etc. are foreseeable consequences, and are the price to pay for city life. You can solve the problem by finding new equilibrium.

Pre-industrial communities: small settlements where members share same experience. Referred to as common conscience by DURKHEIM. People were tight – mechanical solidarity. Urban society is based on interdependent but not really intimate relationships – organic solidarity.

Functionalists look for universal laws of social development and how to move to a newer and better equilibrium.

Critical Theory

Urban problems due to negligence of ruling class. To solve this problem you need more than housing. It’s fundamentally an inequality problem.
e.g. well-off residents live in “inner cities”; ghetto neighbourhoods – this segregation signifies a satisfaction with prevailing economic inequality.

Symbolic Interactionism

Interested in how people experience the city daily. George Simmel says that cities are so stimulating that people get numb to adapt.

Not everyone in a city has the same experience though. Herbert Gans (1982) says manning of city life varies among subcultures. Subcultures are great because people form connections.
Subculture: group of people who share cultural traits of larger society but also have own distinctive values, etc. Like how {2, 3, 5, 7} are not only integers but also prime.

LOOKING AT ENVIRONMENT

Functionalism

Everyone is to blame for pollution. Some more than others. We go too far (morally) for pleasure, consumerist as we are. In fact we even developed ideologies to justify our pleasure-seeking.

• Cornucopia view of nature: nature is meant to be consumed by humans so don’t worry.
• Growth ethic & Materialism: technology alone will solve everything everything will work out so don’t worry.
• Individualism: tragedy of the commons. Prisoner’s dilemma. Too much Ayn Rand is bad!

Critical Theory

Environmental problems hurt the poor more than they do the rich. Poorer countries unable to respond to catastrophic events.
90% of disaster related deaths occur in poor countries.
75% of disaster related economic damage affects rich countries.

Capitalistic exploitation is bad! The “marginalization of the poor” is bad!
And so problem is mainly social, not technical or natural.

Symbolic Interactionism

How do meanings and thought affect people’s perception of problems?

Social constructionist framework: how do problems enter public consciousness? What kinds of claims are more eye-catching for the public? Why greenhouse effect one year and AIDS another?

Insights into how polluters use the rhetoric of environmental advocates to protect themselves. “Greenwashing” – corporate PR strategy to boost image; often involves redesigning and repackaging.

Feminist Theory

Questions growth, unlimited resource, unregulated commerce. Ecofeminism: links exploitation of marginal groups with degradation of nature in Western values.

Women have the potential to bring an “ecological revolution”. A “feminine” way of dealing with the environment will be good.
Domination over women is similar to domination over nature (what?). i.e. “Rape of the wild”.

Classic Studies: the Limits to Growth
Published by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers (fancy name), and William W. Behrens III (fancy name) in 1972. International experts at MIT Sloan School of Management, commissioned by Club of Rome. Analyzed five trends:

• accelerating industrialization
• rapid population growth
• widespread malnutrition
• depletion of non-renewable resources
• deteriorating environment

Assumed each of these variables increases exponentially, but capacity of technology only increases linearly. The results of the simulation shocked the world — they analyzed 12 scenarios and showed that within 100 years the world’s natural resources would be either exhausted or too precious.

(This whole simulation seems kind of silly to me. If you assume that consumption rates increase exponentially and production rates increase linearly, then of course you would get this result! Exponentials eventually overtakes linear functions — that’s a simple mathematical property. I don’t need a simulation to tell me that! The textbook though did not provide justification for their assumption. In logic if the premise is wrong, the whole argument is invalid. And these “Club of Rome” “scholars” “from MIT” doesn’t seem to focus on justifying their premises at all. Why should anyone care about a model — albeit elegant — built on false premises?)

Conclusion: Humanity will reach limit of growth within the next 100 years. But it’s okay! It’s still possible to change the growth patterns. It’s just that, we can’t afford to live like North Americans anymore.

Nothing in the past 40 years invalidated the book. In 2004 the authors published an update: Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. They said that humanity is seriously close to “global overshoot” and within 70 years, the system collapse will no longer be evitable (funny, there exists a similar prediction about the global monetary system collapse).

Still, the book remains largely unread and the message ignored.

Why Demography?

Why study population at all? Well all people live in populations. (No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe.)

Demographers’ questions:
Does it matter if populations are:

1. big vs. small?
2. dense vs. sparse?
3. (mainly) young vs. old?
4. (mainly) healthy vs. unhealthy?
5. migrating a lot or very little? Live long or shortly?

Yes it matters. So study demography. Thanks for your tuition and see you next year!

… Kay fine I’ll explain a bit more. Population is the basis for society, like how cement is the basis for concrete. So obviously changes in one will affect the other. We just wanna know how, why, and to what extent.

Size and density
Size matters! Because:
1. Larger population induces more stress on environment.

2. Larger population more likely to innovate, else break up
neolithic -> agriculture
Larger population needs systematic food production (agriculture)
agriculture -> industrialization
Industrial societies though want quality over quantity. Growth rate shrinks.
Large populations are dense and mainly urban. More crowding.

3. Larger populations tend to invent new social and economic roles.
Division of labour and specialization.
Social roles distinguished not only by age and gender but skill, aptitude, etc.

Composition
Composition matters. When you have 19 men for every woman, you get trouble. When you have 1 man for every woman, then it’s settled.

Age also matters. Young population needs education. Old population needs health care.

Health
A healthy population is likely to contain a higher human capital. Which implies higher productivity and increased prosperity. If you live longer you also have a lower “population turnover” (make sense, though it refers to people as if they were objects for sale). People have stronger loyalties and bonding. More stable.

Older society needs immigration, etc., to inject “new blood”. So turnover can be positive as well. Sudden changes can cause huge effects. (Like how a unity step function can change a coupled resonating system dramatically with lots of transient effects)

Population Trends Reveal a Society’s History

Patterns in population composition reflect epidemic, war, baby boom, etc. Population pyramids are useful. e.g. baby boom increases number of people born in a cohort (fancy word for year). Also reflects epidemic and war and gendercide if you think about it. Also gendercide is bad. Men grow up to be without women. War is a kind of gendercide if you think about it. Sigh why can’t we just be friends.

So yeah pyramids are cool. Examples are in the textbook.

World Population

It increased. Like by a lot over the last 300 years.

American demographer Ansley Coale (1974):
Stone age to 1750 CE (and the textbook has to use CE to confuse you; it basically means AD): almost no growth.
1750+ : exponential growth

Exponential growth means growing really quickly. But worldwide fertility decline spotted. May top at 9 billion according to UN. Childbearing decreased.

More than 80% of people live in less developed countries. (Ahh, it’s the 80-20 rule!) May have implications in world power. China has lowest fertility but highest rate of population growth because there’s so many people. Population growth may affect the environment. Carrying capacity and all those things.

Classic Studies: Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity

Ulrich Beck labelled contemporary society a “risk society” in his book in 1986. Beck claims that Western society has transformed from a safe and organizad industrial society into a uniquely chaotic and dangerous society.

In this era of advanced modernity, societies are dominated by manmade risks. Core concept: “reflexive modernization“. (Basically a “meta” way of modernizing.)

Modern era: unlimited confidence in benefits of technology and assumed technology would forever improve. But of course technology is a double-edged sword.
Postmodern society: look to science and rational expertise to manage risk. e.g. Copenhagen climate conference in 2009. But today reflexive modernization also called into doubt of science. That it could bring about only happiness and progress is doubted.

Beck says risks are inevitable. Risks are not catastrophe, in that it hasn’t happened yet, but there’s a probability that it will happen. Thus, risk is dubious, insidious, would-be, fictitious, allusive, existent and non-existent, present and absent, doubtful and real. (Like the quantum mechanical wave function.)

Criticism: natural risks and social risks are always interconnected.

The Natural Environment

We are more aware, thanks to Suzuki! (I love that old man. He’s so cute and happy and cuddly.) Oh and Rachel Carson and Ulrich Beck are also mentioned. Greenpeace have raised awareness too. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.
Also consider International Earth Day. and WWF’s Earth Hour.

Humans have competed for survival and are now getting pretty good at it. We even controlled biochemical interactions through fertilizers and pesticides. So right now we got nature under control. Until SARS or swine flu then we QQ.

We need natural resources. Water is one valuable example. And a lot of resources are non-renewable. So we need to recycle; find alternative energy sources; find another planet; or stop living so well.

Location 3x

Where people live matters. So you need to study human geography. Water is important. Coastal regions encourage trade, fishing; mountains encourage isolationism, mining; etc. Other than type, climate matters too.

People near water: tolerant, cosmopolitan, and changing culture.
People near mountains: few contact with outside, traditional, insular, warlike, suspicious.
Note: Alps residents cannot be described as “insular”. So can’t be geological determinists.

Buildings and Cityscapes

Cities as planned human ecosystems. Centre of commerce, admin, trade, government. Needs basic technologies (plowing, irrigation, etc.) to exist.

Depends on rural areas. But troubled cultural relations with rural areas. Different activities, morals, wealth. Rich and more powerful: superiority complex. This friction always exists.

Urbanization

More and more people live in cities. In 2008 global population half rural and half urban.

Developed countries cities more evenly distributed. Developing countries have megacities. Most urban growth occur in smaller sized cities though (< 500 000).

Entire reach of city: Greater Metropolitan Area (urban, semi-urban, suburban). Majority live in bedroom suburbs and commute to work every day.

Built Environments

Technological innovation in the past few centuries are largely driven by the needs of living and working in a vertical urban environment. Energy demand puts strain on the environment though.

Manuel Castells
Castells advocates “disposable theory”, because he hates abstract theorizing that periodically enters social sciences.
In 1970s Castells focused on urban social movements and changing post-industrial urban life. In 1980s he focused on relationship between information and communications technology and economics and the role of information networks.
In Information Age, he says that social movements and other means by which people create meaning for themselves are distinct from the dominant economic and social organizations or networks.

Castells’ Marxist urban sociology shows how social movements can effect radical transformation in a post-industrial city, where political entities control public transportation and housing — areas of “collective consumption”.

Arantes (2009) notes that political circumstances led Brazilian sociologists in the 70s to examine the notion of the city. According to them, city life combined collective consumption and collective production, making it central to the working class experience of capitalism.
So: to change the city is to change capitalist class relations and to limit capitalist power.

For movements to be considered effective by sociologists, local activism must produce profound, class-related change. Serbulo (2009) describes how urban protesters in Portland, Oregon, Seattle, changed “existing social relations”. By changing city life they changed lives of billions (and thereby changed class relations).

Castells wondered what “urban” really meant. (e.g. How large a settlement is “urban”?) So we need to synthesize research on settlements of various size. Combine research into cities, greater urban areas, villages, towns, etc. And maybe even communities in cyberspace. Castells thinks that collective action should be understood as discrete and inter-related entities. (Like quantum mechanics!)

Johnson (2009) used Castells’s “typology of identities” (huh?) and showed how “identity practices” of different factions in labour unions may bring about racially inclusive strategies.
(Basically, if a union has black people and Asians in it, then it will have strategies that would benefit black people and Asians, etc.)
Johnson also considers how social networks affect people’s experiences.

(RANT: I’m getting tired of the textbook using words like “consider”, “examine”, etc. Well of course that’s what sociologists do! What were their opinions? What was the consequence? How did they contribute to the field of sociology? These words tell us nothing. Terrible words to put on a resume.)

Castells is concerned with “people in places” but he looks at their movement between places too. Knox et al. (2009) used Castells’s notion of “space of flows” (described below) to study movement of people, baggage, and airplanes in an airport.

On turnover and flow of people: Baumann (2000) calls it “liquid” modernity. Airports are prime exemplars. They promote flow. They combine global economy and “glocal” (global + local) culture. Knox et al. showed how flow processes are controlled by “modes of ordering” to simplify global exchange and interaction.
(Like how people are sorted according to their destinations and assembled before loading onto a plane.)

Castells says that horizontal networks — networks across distance — began to emerge before Internet. The development of these networks challenged hierarchies. (Internet’s all about open-source, man!) e.g. Wikileaks.

Global transformation of information: new questions about education. Pregowski notes a need for “netiquettes” and studied it. (Reddit would be a prime example with very developed codes of conduct.)

As we are connect to more people virtually, we begin to feel rootless. Caldarovic and Sarinic (2009) used “flow of spaces” (a different concept , presumably, than “space of flows”?!) to try to solve this problem. Obviously we can’t go live in tribes and hunt tigers and eat BBQ all day ever again, but maybe we can still root ourselves in human relationships even in a global world.

Globalization = mobility, openness, and fluidity. Devadas (2008) (his name sounds like Las Vegas, Nevada) says that present day flows are NOT “borders, differentiated zones, immobility”.
(Such a confusing way of saying things! He’ll make a great con man. Gamblers usually are. Ahh Vegas.)

Castells notes a “fourth world”, comprised of hunter-gatherers, nomads, etc. Who are socially excluded from globalization.

New Insights

Life and death are viewed in a new light.

The Hungry Iraq
Gazdar (2002) says that international trade with Iraq stopped in 1990, resulting in famine that killed people. But Iraq is not to blame entirely. There are non-food crises–shocks to health and welfare systems. So shocks in global macroeconomy can affect a country in Iraq. Like butterfly theory. (Good movie! :3)

Turks Are Having Fun!
Erol (2008) says that people in Turkey live longer than they did, so population gets old. Turks are consuming more and spending more on leisure. So Turkey – a newly modernized country, takes on foreign notions of leisure quickly.
(Yeah it’s always easier to become lazy. Always difficult to become industrious and hardworking like the German people always are. Ahh the German people. :3)

Let’s Make Babies
Miranda and de Oliveira Moreira (2006) notes concern of “correcting” infertility. Is wanting to have children a traditional notion or post-modernist fulfillment of personal desire?

We’re One Big Family
Marin (2002) says that exile stories tell us about the struggle between cultural identity and adjustment. Maybe probably in a hundred years people will have diverse ancestors and live anywhere! e.g. President Obama

Joseph Brodsky, famous Soviet exile, says that exile is a central postmodern condition.

Human, All Too Human
Postmodern approach: Rosewarne (2004) says that radical leftist critique of globalization has transformed migrants into disembodied subjects and removed their human agency. (i.e. the view is too reductionistic, you don’t see migrants as humans anymore). We need to see migrants as subjects and active members of the world.

Anthropology RULEZ
Antweiler (2004) calls for anthropological approach to study cities. (Why isn’t it used already?!) In a city there’s:
-diverse people
-fixed public spaces
-nexus for movement of goods & info
City people have much interaction but their relationships are often superficial. Interactions based socially rather than personally. Ethnography may fail. Network analysis may win.

Role of public policy in creating excellent “global” cities. Change from traditional urban planning. e.g. Singapore in 70s and 80s. Made affordable housing available and preserved harmony. Policy revised in 90s to “globalize”.

SOC103 Notes by digitalhardhat is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Week 0 – Starting Points Ch. 1

Starting Points:

Estimated Reading Time 00:16:59

Chapter 1
Question: How did sociology come about?

• Auguste Comte – sociology in early 19th century
• Plato through The Republic
• Enlightenment

General opinion: sociology emerged in response to modernization, need new ideas about the MOST RATIONAL way to organize society

Emerged after Industrial revolution and the French revolution. You know.

The sociological triumvirate:
Karl MARX, Emile DURKHEIM, and Max WEBER
Multiple paradigms but too confusing so this book is a fusion.

Sociology due to its social nature will inevitably be plagued by inherent bias “determined by [the observer’s] position in society”
“No one can be a perfect reader of the outside world.”
This is a sort of “elephant in the room” in sociological discussions.

SOME DEFINITIONS
Sociology: a systematic study of social behaviour or society
Society: the largest-scale human group whose members interact with one another, share a common geographic territory, and share common institutions.

Functions of sociology:

1. Understand other cultures (Herodotus, Voltaire)
2. Find better ways to live together (i.e. consequences of industrialization and how to deal with it)

When doing sociology, don’t blame. It’s easy to blame. But don’t. You’re better than that.
In fact, everyone is to blame for something. By simply living in the first world we are contributing to problems in the third world as we fuel demands for industrial exploitation, etc.

Unlike general population sociologists find “common sense” not enough. Study and research is the scientific method. For example do you know school bullies are often victims?

But sociologists avoid psychological explanations for a widespread social phenomenon.
Psychology – case by case. Sociology – societal causes for mass behaviour.
Many psychological problems have social origins.

Another topic of study of sociology: distribution of social rewards.

The average person thinks that people get what they deserve. But sociologists note that people may lead bad lives due to situation beyond their control. E.g. caste system, etc.

MACROSOCIOLOGY

study of social institutions and large social groups

Functional Theory

Views society as a set of interconnected parts that work together to preserve the overall stability and efficiency of the whole. Like, an ant hive. Or an RLC circuit. Or homeostasis. Or Gaia theory. Or Zerg.
Textbook examples: families, economy, government, education, etc.

Robert Merton – Social Theory and Social Structure (1957): social institutions perform both manifest (obvious) and latent (unobvious) functions.
e.g. Education:
manifest – knowledge, skills, “leaders of tomorrow”
latent – babysitting services so that parents can actually go away and work; matchmaking so that you may meet your significant other
e.g. by DURKHEIM: crime.
manifest – benefits the lawbreaker
latent – benefits society by enhancing solidarity

Latent functions are considered latent because they aren’t intended (or typically admitted).

This distinction helps us understand how every social institution has a purpose. With this you can do analysis in system dynamics to determine cause and effect and predict systemic behaviours and consequences.

Functionalists explain social problems by focusing on failure of institutions. DURKHEIM introduces term anomie (normlessness) to reflect tumultuous times.

Critical Theory

Arises out of conflicts between “haves” and “have-nots”. Unequal distribution.
Views society as a collection of groups (especially social classes) that are constantly involved in a power struggle. Like Prometheus with that falcon that eats away at his liver but then his liver grows back again immediately, you know? Or Sisyphus and the cruel laughing gods described by the Greeks then echoed by Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus? Good book by the way. I think every well-educated person should read it.

Originated from MARX. Class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat. Economic inequality. Capitalistic exploitation. Alienation (in the Marxist sense; it’s really well depicted in Chaplin’s movie Modern Times; good movie).

Marxist solution? Abolish the bourgeoisie (by forcible overthrowing).

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Proletarier aller Länder vereinigt Euch! Proletariats of the world, unite!

WEBER on the other hand wasn’t so extreme and so just described status groups instead.

Symbolic Interactionism

Focuses on small-group interactions – the “glue” that holds people together in social relationships. Shared meanings, definitions, interpretations.

Labelling theory – any given social problem is viewed as a problem because influential people say so.
e.g. Howard Becker, 1963 – Marijuana isn’t intrinsically harmful, but “moral entrepreneurs” make a big deal out of it geez I mean come on let’s all get high already forget school partay partay partay #yolo

Herbert Blumer, 1971 – social problems develop like this:
social recognition, social legitimating, mobilization for action, development and implementation of official plan.

Also interested in what happens when people gets labelled as criminals, etc. Role of “stigma” as forms of social control.
(Reputation can make or break a man.)

Feminist Theories

Branch of critical theory concerned with inequality (and power struggle) between man and woman. Socially predefined gender roles. Except women’s role is more costly and dangerous than men’s role. (O_O traditionally men go to war! Also do you know how expensive a three-piece suit is?)
(Actually I rectify my statement. Women give birth. That’s a pretty darn important biological function exclusive to the feminine sex. I suppose they should enjoy some prerogatives.)

Domination of women result of socio-economics and ideology. Closure and usurpation by WEBER. Divorce is unfair to women. Women are vulnerable. Women are victimized. Women are disadvantaged. Both in the private sphere and in the public sphere. Patriarchal values in society. Husband raping his wife?! A man that doesn’t respect women is unfit to be called a man.

Postmodern Theories

A form of critical theory but more than that.

Modernism – only one truth. Can change society through social engineering. Postmodernism – rationality is neither sure nor clear, and our knowledge is always limited. Denial of objectivity, but that itself is a paradox. Reality is fragmentary. No universal, knowable truth (gee, so pessimistic). In fact if you look for truth you are a self-deluding snob brainwashed by propaganda. It is the sacred duty of postmodernists to “expose the flaws” of universalizing accounts. There is no normality. There is nothing you can rely on. Everything is an illusion.

Michael Foucault – Discipline and Punish, 1975: modern society is a prison, a panopticon, in which unseen guards are watching your every move. (Speaking of which, check out The Peep Diaries, good book.) This modern prison can lead to super-effective control.

(RANT: Come on, these postmodernists are in too much denial. It’s dangerous. It leads to nihilism. As a human being you need something to live for. A human being without a sense of purpose or fulfillment is a despicable thing.)

Classic Studies: Suicide

Suicide (1897) laid foundation for quantitative methods in modern sociology, and established sociology as a distinct science. Durkheim says that sociology must become more than a new philosophical literature. He based his analysis on “sociological method” – quantitative, systematic analysis on suicide statistics.
“Social facts must be studied as things, as realities external to the individual.”
So group suicide is not merely individual but reflects something about society.

Suicide not purely psychological (which categorizes suicide into maniacal, melancholic, obsessional, and impulsive). But if it were true then there’d be no social patterns, contrary to the case.

Durkheim’s categorization: egoistic, altruistic, and anomic.
Egoistic: when people fall out of social groups, or when group is individualistic.
e.g. Protestants vs. Catholics. So families are important. If you are married you’re less likely to kill yourself. Especially if you are a man. Strong independent women can live alone and resist impulses to kill themselves, men can’t.

Altruistic: suicide as a sense of societal duty.
e.g. Soldiers. Japanese Kamikaze pilots. Suicide bombers.
Reflects too much social integration; motivated by self abnegation (for glory).

Anomic: suicide resulting from absence of social regulation and norms.
e.g. Financial crisis. Natural disasters in New Orleans or Haïti.
People kill themselves because they are confused. They are in distress. They are in pain, and the society isn’t telling them how to live.
(How cowardly.)

General conclusion: rates of suicide inversely proportional to degree of integration. In fact this can be generalized to other deviant behaviour. Mental health needs “stake in conformity”. So Suicide is an important work and a good Starting Point (ha ha! see what I did there?).

Modern Functionalism

Builds on DURKHEIM’s macrosociological view. Sense of equilibrium.

Solution to anomie is to strengthen social norms and slow pace of social change. (How vague, but that brings to mind a reading I did on the Amish society.)

Insufficient social control results in suicide. Functionalists emphasize interconnectedness.

Deviance and Conformity

Foucault – social institutions and groups continuously impose rules on us.
DURKHEIM – without rules we will perish.
Question: when are people likely to break rules? When are people likely to obey them?

All societies allow a margin of deviance. (e.g. you don’t get jailed up if you chewed gum and just spat it out on the floor when you’re done, except maybe in Singapore.) Conformity is easier if we know we can break rules occasionally.

People conform when they gain rewards from conforming. Else they break rules. Functionalist tradition. Social Control Theory. People develop a “stake in conformity” to avoid punishment. (Like that experiment that Milgram did where he made his subjects believe they were actually electrocuting someone, but they were actually not, and he had a good time watching his subjects squirm?) Feeling secure and socially connected, people are unmotivated to deviate.
(Brings to mind The Social Contract by Rousseau. Another essential read indeed.)

Now some people conform to a new set of rules while breaking an old set of rules. Like in revolution. Or when you join a gang.

Rational Choice Theory. People are competing for resources. If they believe that they won’t get caught or punished then they’d break rules. Like cheating in heads up 7-up or something. An interesting commentary can be made about politicians but I’ll shut up now.

DURKHEIM notes that deviance and crime are universal. Is it possible then that deviance and crime are necessary for the well-being of society? Like forest fires?

Functions of Conflict

Deviance and conflict may be normal and universal and healthy.
(It’s true when you think about husband-and-wife relationships. Is it possible to never argue with your spouse and live happily? Perhaps. But in American Beauty the husband and the wife never argued and the wife took a pistol home and husband got shot in the head by the end of the movie. Quite sobering if you think about it.)

DURKHEIM elaborates on mutual dependency and the division of labour in this book The Division of Labor in Society (1893).

Critical Theory

Conflicts focuses attention. Like demonstrations and stuff. Ideology of the dominant social class is dominant ideology, which justifies that class’s power and wealth and prevents lesser classes from rebellion. (Like how some animals are more equal than others.) WEBER and MARX. WEBER interested in “status”, a more general classification than classes. Frankfurt school of sociology to distinguish academic Marxism from political Marxism.

Conflicts over Power and Authority

Power: ability to get your own way or get others to do what you want.

Authority: “legitimate power”.

• Traditional: this is what we’ve always done, so do it
• Rational-legal: this is fair, so do it
• Charismatic: I’m so attractive, oh won’t you do it for me darling (well more like Jesus, Gandhi, Hitler)

Marxian class conflict is a subset of Weber’s conflict?!

Classic Studies: The Vertical Mosaic

Canadian critical theorist: John Porter. Best known for his The Vertical Mosaic (1965). Landmark study that proves Canada is a class-based society (unlike popular belief). But Canada, unlike U. S., is also a cultural mosaic of unassimilated groups. He uses sociological theory that draws on Marx and Weber.

Canada is socially stratified with an elite economic oligarchy. (Quite true, when I think about the ridiculous rates Rogers offers). Also an ethnic division. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) tend to fare better. Native American and Inuit tend to do worse.

In Canada, ethnic differences reinforce social inequality. Low-status groups meekly accept their inferior position. “Charter groups” (i.e. English and French Canadians) maintain their historial advantage in part by monopolizing higher education.

Porter calls for opening up of educational system. (Affirmative action!??!) Also calls for cultural assimilation. Widely influential and inspired studies on Canadian elites. e.g. Wallace Clements’s The Canadian Corporate Elite: An Analysis of Economic Power (1975) and Dennis Olsen’s The State and Power (1980). Which showed that the problem Porter identified is getting worse.

Criticism: findings are dated by now; findings are inaccurate. Ethnic origins pose little obstacle, though racial minorities continue to suffer a disadvantage.

This book is significant.

Modern Critical Theories

Dominance and subordination. From Marx – vertical oppression of workers by ruling class.
From Weber, horizontal power struggles where groups compete to seize (usurp) and protect their resources. To protect their resources groups practice closure and exclusivity. To keep dominance groups usurp and raid for resources. Crime and deviance may result as part of struggle.

Classic Studies: Stigma

Let’s talk about Erving Goffman. He was interested in people’s interactions (micro) instead of large social structures (macro). He wrote a book called Stigma (1963). He 1) examined people who are stigmatized and 2) considers how this stigmatization affects their social interactions and sense of self. Back then norm was “young, white, urban, northern, heterosexual, Protestant father of college education, fully employed, of good complexion, weight and height, and a recent record in sports“. But there are of course people who don’t fit this norm.

Assumption: people don’t wanna make waves or be subject for ridicule. In social interactions people present themselves as “normal” and follow scripts. But that means they have to hide their dirty little secrets through passing and covering.

Passing: effort to hide discreditable facts about one’s identity.
e.g. making up stories about his past, denying discreditable stories. Ex-convicts. Blind people make an effort to look towards speaking voice.
But what if your features are visible? Passing is not always feasible.

Covering: for visible stigma. Manages tension in interaction, and diverts attention away from visible stigma.
e.g. wearing large dark glasses for disfigurement around eyes. Artificial limbs. Name-changing to fit the majority.

What if these techniques don’t work? People devise strategies for dealing with pains — to spend time only with people like themselves. e.g. segregation.

Criticism: little firsthand interview data. Mostly qualitative analysis. Goffman had little contact with people he wrote about. Unrigourous.
But still, this work is considered “seminal” to many.

Key Ideas of Symbolic Interactionism

Society as a product of face-to-face interaction between people using symbols. Language is a symbol, etc. Studies how social structures arise out of processes by which people understand each other. Georg Simmel studied urbanization and its alienating effects in 1950s. Culture in modern societies is fluid and not static.

“Definition of the Situation” – shared understanding of norms and meanings that govern a social situation. e.g. you kiss under mistletoes. This definition emerges out of negotiations. May be formal but often less tangible.

The impressions we give one another affects how people interact with us. Especially first impressions. They matter. So don’t go on interviews with a black turtleneck and blue jeans unless you’re equivalent or greater than Steve Jobs.

Social Constructionism

Examines how people interact to create a shared social reality. Berger and Luckmann (mnemonic: lucky burger man) claim that all knowledge are created socially. (Which is true! Science is largely a social activity which is why the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is now the most popular, because everyone else who didn’t believe in it all died out.)

So an idea is just an invention of a particular culture or society. Shared meanings is the basis of social order. Erving Goffman (1959) echoed Shakespeare saying that all the life is a stage and we are acting out self-composed scripts.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
-Shakespeare, Macbeth

Why is rose pretty and a cabbage ugly? Because the society as a whole thinks so. Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?

Anthony Giddens

Interpreter of ideas of Durkheim, Weber, and Marx. Structuration theory.
In New Rules of Sociological Method (1976), sets out some principles:

• Sociology is not about objects; people are producing it.
• (Re)production of society is a skilled performance.
• Humans are limited (by history, etc.) in what they can produce.
• Social structures are constraints, but also enablers.
• Structuration involves interaction between meanings, norms, and power.
• Sociological observers cannot be fully bias-free. Framings exist.
• Immersion, not abstraction, is the way to study society.
• All sociological theories obey a “double hermeneutic”: they reveal both organization of society and organization of its viewer.
• Task of sociological analysis: reveal structures of society in conceptual language of social science; specifically, explain how human actors manage to produce and reproduce society under constraints.

He revived and refined the sociological goal of positivism, a goal enunciated by Auguste Comte.
Positivism: scientific study conducted in hope of finding “it”. Finding “The Way”. Finding the general principles that apply everywhere. Positivism is polar opposite of postmodernism.

Yet Giddens recognizes the contingency and conditionality of social life. Social structure is not a visible thing, but result of ongoing performances. It has rules but regularities are (subtly) ever-changing.

No diametric opposition between Giddens and postmodernists. His theory still leaves ample room for notion of cultural discourse.

Criticism: providing “grand narratives” of late modernity (huh?). Implication that modernity leads to highly individualized social order which according to Elchardus is not true.

New Insights

Sociologists everywhere are struggling with traditional notions — starting points (I can’t agree more). The scientific/positivistic model is under attack.

Let’s Hear A Story
Erdmans (2007) says “the art of life-story telling” has begun to supplant traditional (scientific) methods in feminism, culture, history of ethnic groups, etc. This method of research incorporates “oral histories, life stories, etc.” in analysis. Story telling allows for the subjects to speak for themselves, instead of being described by some pompous academic.

Which inequalities are more unequal than others? Look at critical race theory (CRT). Race is a fundamental cause of inequality.

Putting Words in a Dead Man’s Mouth
Mills (2009) likens CRT to feminism. They both have many types and subtypes. There may even be Marxist version of CRT though Marx himself had nothing to say about it.

Go On and Add Some Colour
Preston (2008) links civil defence concerns and whiteness. He said that “civil defence pedagogies” focus only to protect white people (esp. middle class).

Marx Would be Proud
Cole (2009) says class relations form the most fundamental inequality. Cole said that Marxist analysis can be used to show awareness of race and gender. Marxist version of CRT is possible. He sees 4 problems with what the CRT call “white supremacy”:

1. Diverts attention away from modes of production;
2. Homogenizes all white people;
3. Fails to consider “non-colour coded racism” (huh?);
4. Counter-productive as a political unifier against racism (well, duh).

Babay, Babay, Babay, Ohh
Brown (2009) studied how performance of karaoke might reveal about construction of identity. Used karaoke is a “microscopic analysis” of how identity is constructed through performance in everyday life.

Shortest Distance Between Two Points
Slattery (2008) notes that new tram system to Dublin links both working-class and middle-class to centre of city, but not to each other.

Fur Trade in the 21st Century
Sangster (2007) analyzed the Canadian fur industry. Showed how gender, race, and labour interest intersect in creating a fur coat. Takes feminist approach and materialist view.

SOC103 Notes by digitalhardhat is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.