What is the
Sociological Imagination?
The sociological imagination is the ability to recognize the impact of complex social forces on our private lives.
Distinction between private troubles and public issues:
Troubles occur with the character of the individual and within the range of his or her immediate relations with others; the resolution of which exists within the individual as a biographical entity.
Issues are matters that transcend the local environment of the individual and that organize many milieu into the institutions of a historical society as a whole.
The distinction lies in the role of social structure in the production of problems. Issues are social structural; troubles are not.
The Social Mind
The social mind is the capacity of human beings, in the context of social interaction with others, to become reflective about themselves and the on going interaction process.
Where does the social mind come from?
a) The mind is developed socially.
b) Language: the basis of experience.
c) Reflection and thoughts toward future possibilities are the functions of the mind.
The social mind allows the human agent to:
a) Reflect upon themselves and engage in dialogues with themselves and with others:
b) Take the roles of others within various social situations.
Microsociology –
one on one interaction of society
Mesosociology – large
groups
Macrosociology – culture,
countries, media
What are the three major theoretical backgrounds?
a) Structural Functionalism - analyze how the society works together
Manifest functions – intended obvious consequences of activities designed to help some part of the social system. Ex. Going to college to get education
Latent functions – the unrecognized and unintended consequences of any social interaction. Ex. Going to college to meet friends
Dysfunctions – negative consequences of social structures (Ex. Drug Trade with kids)
b) Conflict – how the society could conflict with each other
c) Symbolism – analyze society in a micro-level; gestures, language, posture…ect.
AGIL Model:
1) Adaptation to the environment. Ex. Economics
2) Goal attainment of a society. Ex. Political system
3) Integration of the systems parts. Ex. Government
4)
Latent
– pattern maintenance.
Functionalism Core Questions:
1) How is society integrated?
2) What are the major parts of society?
3) How are these parts interrelated?
4) How does each part contribute to the overall operation of society?
Conflict Theory Core Questions:
1) How is society divided?
2) What are the major patterns of social inequality?
3) How do some categories of people attempt to protect their privileges?
4) How do other categories of people challenge the status quo?
Three Components of symbolic interactionism:
1) meaning
2) interactions
3)
interpretation
Tasks of a Sociologist:
1) Find the strange and familiar
2) Identify patterns
3) Interpret individual within social context
What historic events led
to the development of sociology?
Gemeinschaft:
Individual – self
Form of Wealth – Land
Law – Family Law
Institutions – Family Life, village life, town life
Social Control – Folkways, mores, religion
Gesellschaft:
Individual – person
Form of Wealth – money
Law – Law of Contracts
Institutions – City Life, Rational life, Cosmopolitan life
Social Control – Legislation, public opinion
Urbanization:
1) Brought different people together
2) Lead to different ideas to clash
History:
1) Enlightenment: 18th century
a) Philosophical movement that privileged reason and individuality
b) Traditional rationality declined.
c) Created modern science with an emphasis on controlling risk.
2) Industrial Revolution: 18th to 19th centuries
a) Production based on the use of machines to produce finished goods.
b) Began replacing agricultural production with industrial production.
c)
Originated in
d) Profoundly changed the nature of societal structure and social life.
3) Together, these formed the basis of the current period called modernity.
Auguste Comte 1789-1857
1) Commonly called the father of sociology.
2) Comte believed that societies evolved through a series of predictable stages ruled by societal laws and culminating in a superior form of social life.
3) Applied idea of science to the study of society
4) Reaction to the historical context: maintain order through social organization.
Friederich Engels 1820-1895 and Karl Marx 1818-1883
1) Believed that organization of economic life influenced every other aspect of social life. (Materialism)
2) In examining the development of capitalism out of feudalism, they saw the development of a new split in society that positioned the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.
3) A primary concern was alienation
4) Reaction to historical context: challenge the current social order by more change.
Emile Durkheim 1858-1917
1) Conscience collective: the external normative order.
2) Concerned with anonme, a condition in which society provides little moral or social guidance to individuals
3) Methodological innovation: to study society through social facts
4) Study of suicide
Max Weber 1881-1916
1) Utilitarian rationality, trend of modernization
a. Rationalization was becoming an increasingly powerful principle under industrial capitalism as cost, profit and efficiency grew in social importance.
b. He was the first to analyze bureaucracy as a persuasive social form that embodied the value of utilitarian rationality.
c. Every aspect of human action because subject to calculation, measurement and control.
d. He believed that the rational structure of society and the notable use of bureaucratic structures created an “iron cage” of bureaucratic systems (such as the government, the work place, economic organizations) that increasingly held people in its grip.
2) Protestant work ethic
How does Culture Influence
Society?
Four Essential components of culture:
1) Symbols and language
2) Knowledge
3) Norms: the rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of it’s members
a. Folkways: the usual conventions of everyday life for which people allow one another considerable personal discretion.
b.
Mores: norms that are widely observed and taken
very seriously by members of society. (
c. Laws: formalized or codified mores.
d. Sanctions: a social response that punishes or otherwise discourages violations of a social norm
4) Values culturally defined standards of desirability, goodness and beauty that serve as broad guidelines for social living.
Material Culture –
the physical artifacts that shape the lives of members of a particular society:
distinctive clothing, buildings, inventions, food….ect
Nonmaterial Culture – all nonphysical products of society that are created over time and shared: knowledge, beliefs, customs, values, morals, symbols…ect
Subculture – the cultural patterns of a societal subgroup that can serve to distinguish the subgroup from the rest of the society’s population
Counterculture – subculture whose cultural patterns reject or oppose significant elements of the dominant culture of which it is a part
Incorrigible propositions – belief that cannot be proved wrong and has become so much a part of common sense that one continues to believe it even in the face of contradictory evidence. (Quarter disappearance)
Ethnocentrism – the practice of judging another culture by the standards of ones own culture, hence the native culture is often seen as best.
Ethnomethodology – deals with codes and conventions that underlie everyday social interactions and activities. (Understood gestures, how we can tell someone’s gay)
How do we learn culture?
Socialization is the lifelong social experience by which individuals:
1) Learn a basic set of knowledge that all members of a society are expected to know.
2) Learn how to act according to the rules and expectations of the particular culture.
3) Create a social self and sense of attachment to social systems.
Four Agents of Socialization:
1) Family
2) School
a. Publicized curriculum defines what students are supposed to study and learn in school.
b. Hidden curriculum: the often unarticulated and unacknowledged things that students are taught in school. Knowledge such as values.
3) Peer Groups
a. Definitions a group of people whose members use as a standard of comparison for themselves.
b. Peer groups can serve as a standard against which we evaluate the relative worth of our appearance, thoughts, feelings, behavior, and it serves as a model that we imitate.
4) Mass media
Types of Socialization:
1) Primary socialization is the initial forms of socialization that provide forms of knowledge considered elementary in the culture and that begin the process of establishing values and identity.
2) Anticipatory socialization involves social learning directed toward gaining a desired position.
3) Resocialization is the deliberate socialization intended to radically alter an individual’s personality.
Nature vs. nurture debate:
Nature: are we the way we are because we were just born that way?
Nurture: are we the way we are because we were raised that way?
Dramaturgical Approach:
a. People in their daily routines, take on a performance, a set of scripted activities that a expected of them when they play a specified part in society
b. When we play a role in relation to an audience, that is when we are conscious of being watched by others, that role is on front stage.
c. Back stage behavior occurs when people presume that they are not being observed by others and terminate their performances.
Status: the recognized social position that the individual occupies
1) Types:
a. Ascribed status: a social position that a person involuntary receives, usually at birth.
b. Achieved status: a social position that a person earns or acquires over time.
2) Multiple Statuses:
a. Manifest status: statuses that are actually relevant and indicate the individual’s current situation through relevancy in social interactions.
b. Latent status: statuses that in a particular context, do not have a recognized effect on the social interactions
c. Master status: a social position with exceptional importance for identity, enduring throughout the person’s life and contributing markedly to their life experiences. (race in civil war times)
Role: set of rights, obligations, behaviors and duties associated with a particular status.
1) Roles and Incompatibility:
a. Role Strain: incompatibility among the roles corresponding to a single, complex status (Mother turning in son on Montel)
b. Role Conflict: incompatibility among roles corresponding to two or more statuses.
2) Responses to Role Incompatibility:
a. The person chooses which role is more important and then violates the expectations associated with the other role.
b. Role exit: the persona may abandon one of the statuses involved in the role conflict.
c. Role Segregation: the person may resort to manipulating the social setting, effectively separating the elements causing the role incompatibility.
d. Role Distancing: the person may act in such a way as to diminish importance of the role incompatibility within the social setting.
Spoiled Identity: when a persona’s performance is discredited – shown to be nothing more than a performance or demonstrated to be badly fulfilled – the person has spoiled identity. (Wanna be French friend)
A Spoiled identity results in:
1) Embarrassment: the short-term emotional reaction to occasions when the identity someone is presenting is suddenly and unexpectedly discredited in front of others.
2) Stigma: an insurmountable discrediting of a person’s identity that persists for an extended time period
Remedies for spoiled identities:
1) Disclaimer: a verbal statement intending to forestall the discrediting of a person’s identity given prior to the questionable behavior.
2) Account: a verbal statement designed to defend a person from a spoiled identity by offering an explanation that reframes discrediting the behavior of social situation.
Thomas theorem: situations defined as real become reality. (Ex. Stock market crashing because people think it will crash)
Looking glass-self: sense of who we are that is defined by incorporating the reflected appraisals of others.
Generalized Other: the perspective of society and its constituent values and attitudes. (If a mother tells son to quit picking his nose in the restaurant, he will stop picking his nose in the general public)
What is deviance and from where does it come?
Deviance: individual’s or group’s behavior, ideas, or attributes that some people in society find offensive.
Three elements of deviance:
1) Expectation: some sort of behavioral expectation must exist, a norm that defines appropriate, acceptable behavior, ideas or characteristics. The expectations may be implicit or explicit, formal or informal, and more or less widely shared.
2) Violation: deviance implies some violation of normative expectations. The violation may be real or alleged; that is, an accusation of wrongdoing may be enough to give someone the reputation of deviance.
3) Reaction: An individual, group or society must react to the deviance, The reaction is likely to lead
Absolutism: belief that there are only two fundamental types of human behavior: that which is inherently proper and good and that which is obviously improper, immoral, evil and bad.
Relativism: perspective that states that deviance is not a property inherent in any particular act, belief, or condition; instead, it is socially constructed, a creation of collective human judgments and ideas. Like “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”
Four Micro sociological theories of deviance:
1) Attachment
2) Commitment
3) Involvement
4)
Belief