soc 103 midterm

Class

a group of individuals who share a common relation to the "means of production" Proletariat - Workers: do not own the "means of productions" What do workers own? Their labor - our ability to work, sell their labor Bourgeoisie -Owners -Capitalist class: Own the "means of production", horde the surplus value generated by the workers (Means of production: the things, like equipment, factories, land, resources etc. used to produce material goods)

Racial Classification

a social process, not a scientific one. changes over time and varies from society to society (ex. Brazil vs US)

Social facts

"... Manners of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him" -Emile Durkheim (1895) Examples: income inequality between very rich and very poor are greater today than it was 40 years ago, in 19th century Europe, Protestants killed themselves more than Catholics Durkheim: soc is the study of social facts, there are rules outside of us such as a professor should behave in a certain type of way and students feel/behave differently in class than they do at home or at a party. Social facts are also patterns (ex. Income inequality). Social facts are values, cultural norms, and social structures that transcend the individual and can exercise social control

Capitalism

- Capitalism is an economic order characterized by private ownership of property and the "means of production" (the things - real estate, banks, utilities, factories) and competition in producing goods and services, for profit - The point of capitalism is competition in the pursuit of *profit* - Workers must sell labor to the owners of capital in exchange for a wage - Capitalists make profit off of the things that workers produce

Sered. Suffering in an Age of Personal Responsibility

- Gloria Institutions like homeless shelters, jails, department of children and families, recovery centers, etc. are trying to solve/address social problems (lack of housing and food) In our imagination, prisons and rehabs are really different but Sered says that these different social institutions (that low income women grapple with every day - but can be extended to other institutions) share an institutional script that emphasizes personal responsibility. All these institutions that seem different to us are united in that they share a view that is therapeutic and individualistic "you need to work on yourself before getting better housing" - individual treatment cannot cure structural inequalities

Social networks/they matter

- Individuals (and organizations) connected to each other by different forms of interaction - Can be connected in different ways and we're all in multiple networks matter? Smoking, obesity, divorce - just a few things that have shown to be influenced by social networks -Analysis of three decades of divorce data showed that people were 75% more likely to get divorced if a friend was divorced, and 33% more likely to get divorced if a friend of a friend was divorced

Karl Marx

- Lived during early industrialization - German philosopher, economist, theorist - disapproved of capitalism's exploitation (treating someone unfairly to benefit from their work) of working people (proletariat) by ownership class (bourgeoisie, capitalist class) - wrote Manifesto of the Communist Party, a political pamphlet with co-author Friedrich Engels

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it."

- Marx, Theses on Feuerbach Marx didn't want to just understand or theorize about the world - he wanted to change it He meant his ideas to be for working people, not just academics Marx was the first philosopher to try to look at the world from the point of view of working people He worked at a time when the modern working class was first appearing

Social Network Analysis

- Method of analyzing the *connections* across individuals or institutions - Allows us to examine how actors or institutions are *interrelated* and the effects of these interrelations - Social network analysis focuses on relationships and interaction rather than on individual behavior. - Lots of different behaviors have been shown to be influenced by social connections

there's not a genetic variation btw humans that matches up with racial categories we have

- Since the invention of race, various individuals and institutions (including Thomas Jefferson) have been obsessed with finding the biological basis of race. More recently, humans have tried really hard to find genetic differences between racial categories. None of these efforts have ever worked - mostly, humans are really genetically similar. And the variation that does exist - there is too much variation and too many exceptions, and the categories we have don't have any biological reality. - Remember how fortune cookies aren't really Chinese? It's sort of like that. There IS a little genetic variation between humans. There ARE systems that categorize humans into different races. There is no match up between genetic variation and the racial categories we have. Race wasn't always such a powerful system of categorizing as it is now. Our brains are always unconsciously categorizing people based on race. Our brains didn't do this 400 years ago. - "In less academic terms, race is the product of racism; racism is not the product of race" (Dorothy Roberts 2012: 25)

Cole. Understanding the Sociological Perspective

- Sociologists look at the world by examining relationships btw individuals and the social groups (they might identify/be identified with), their communities, and institutions - connections between the micro and the macro - Asking sociological q's leads to a transformation of consciousness aka the sociological imagination, which allows us to see that personal problems are often public issues. It also points to the aspect that society and all that happens within it is made by people so it is changeable

Ridley. Why the UK Isn't Having Problems with Vaping

- in the UK vaping is used by previous smokers and has helped 70,000 people, no deaths and few illnesses, in the US 33 people died and thousands have illnesses due to THC - in the UK there's a 2% limit on nicotine concentrations under the EU's Tobacco Product Directive... a typical juul in the US is 3x stronger - the UK has strong product-safety regulations, the US only has a few public health and safety are best served when the gov treats harmful habits as problems to regulate, not evils to ban.

neoliberalism - cultural and social aspects

- individuals are responsible for ourselves - market *logic* to more institutional spheres (efficiency, rationality, competitiveness, profitability) - healthy body: way to convey our moral worth and our responsibility and competence as citizens - citizens encouraged/require to be self-regulating and self-governing

Emile Durkheim on soc

- one of the founding fathers of soc, saw soc as the science of social facts - worried that in modernity, bonds that hold us together break down - saw soc as a scientific solution for societies threatened by disintegration or breakdown; saw it the way we see medicine: society is a body that's changing and breaking down and diagnosing society

Rank. Rethinking American Poverty

- poverty is seen as the result of individual inadequacies and failings - more than half of all American adults will spend at least one year below the poverty line - uses the analogy of the game musical chairs to illustrate the mismatch btw the availability of well-paying jobs and the number of people looking for them in the US - poverty affects us all, it is largely the result of failings at the economic and political levels (not providing enough decent opportunities/supports for the whole of society), and the moral ground on which we view poverty must change

Sherman. What the Rich Won't Tell You

- there's a stigma associated with wealth in the US, and that many people try to kind of cover it up - wealthy people try to be "normal" and the silence allows for them to hide their advantages and their conflicts about these advantages, this can make Americans feel that class shouldn't matter and inequality doesn't change

How do sociologists measure social class?

- typically compile information on measurable factors such as income, accumulated wealth, occupation and educational attainment - Different ways of measuring class, sociologists don't always agree on the number of social classes in the US - virtually all agree on (upper, middle, working, poor), may be variations that distinguish further

Kramer etc. Black Lives and Police Tactics Matter

- use historical analysis of NYPD civilian stop records to address how NYPD police use more force against black individuals than white individuals - NYPD stop more black pedestrians than they do white pedestrians, and there is a difference between races in the likeliness that they will use force

Participant Observation/Ethnography In depth interview Survey

-Researchers directly observes the social world they are studying -Get detailed info about how people act in a certain context -Personal understanding of what it feels like to take part in that social world -Time consuming, can only study small numbers of people In depth interviewing: going to talk to people in an in-depth way, recording what they have to say What's a Survey? Systematic method for gathering information from (a sample of) entities for the purposes of constructing quantitative descriptors of the attributes of the larger population of which the entities are members

upper class in the US

1% - heirs of "old money" "old rich": wealthy for generations, wealth in billion, often very private - new money: executives/CEOs/ some celebs, worked for wealth rather than inherited (ex. Oprah, Jeff Bezos), dominate upper levels of business and finance, shape economy and politics in many ways, influence far beyond their numbers

Hari. The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered 1. What is the dominant theory about addiction in 2020 in the US? 2. According to Hari, what's wrong about this theory (midterm Q)? 3. Is Hari suggesting that chemical addiction isn't real? 4. Why does Hari end his piece with the quote: "For a century now, we've been singing war songs about addicts. It occurred to me as I wiped his brow, we should've been singing love songs to them all along."

1. It's something that happens chemically in our brain, it's an illness/disease (sin/moral failing, crime, disease) 2. Good thing about an addiction model is that it gives us hope for a cure and takes away the stigma of weakness. But this theory was 1st established with rats in a cage but when the rats were put in a diff environment with other rats and toys they didn't choose the drug water ... Addiction doesn't happen the same way in diff social context. - A criminal model is putting the rat in the cage. A medical model shows that people who use these drugs in the hospital don't get addicted to it when they leave because they're well connected in their lives (to jobs, family, friends). Putting people into a criminal or disease model makes them be labeled as "different." - Connection is so important so putting them into categories of criminal or diseased severs their connections 3. the cause of addiction lying with chemical hooks is real but only a minor part of a much bigger picture 4. This quote captures that we use war language on addiction and instead that war language helps create boundaries between them and us that makes addiction more likely/worse. CONNECTION is the opposite of addiction.

Marx's Core Ideas about Capitalism

1. it's inherently exploitative --> it's the labor power of workers that produces the products sold by the businesses, who take the profits for themselves, while workers' wages hover near subsistence levels 2. tends toward monopolies --> while competition may lead to greater levels of productivity, it also results in a concentration of wealth in fewer hands, more bourgeoisie fall into proletariat over time (there's billions of phones but only 4 or 5 brands that dominate so only a small amount of people benefit from these profits) 3. is chaotic, leads to crises --> ongoing crises fuel class struggle and sharpen class consciousness (awareness on the part of the working class of its common relation to the means of production) 4. encourages a "reserve army of labor" --> holds wages down and workers are replaceable

how we define a social problem shapes:

1. the q's we ask about it 2. where we locate responsibility 3. how we identify solutions

lower class/poor in US

25% - Working Poor (15%, ~10.5 million) Those who work at least half time but wages below poverty line Women much more likely to be working poor than men and families headed by women are more likely to be poor than those headed by men. Black and Latinos more than *twice* as likely as white and Asians to be working poor Fast food work, housekeepers, healthcare aides - Poor (10%) Persistently poor, residentially segregated, relatively isolated from rest of population May work erratically, part time, or not Physical or mental disabilities, sometimes Often dependent on Social Security or other government programs for survival

working class in US

30% Vaguely defined in the US, and not many people self-identify Skilled and semi-skilled laborers (construction, truck workers) Clerks, most retail jobs For the most part, jobs that do not require a college degree are those that are defined as working class

middle class in US

40-50% Many Americans identify themselves as middle class (richer and poorer) Sociologists sometimes distinguish between upper and lower: - Upper middle class (14%) "Comfortable" Advanced professional degrees, upper level managers, medium sized business owners, doctors, lawyers - Lower middle class (30%) Usually require some education past high school Professional occupations that require a college degree: teachers, social workers, nurses, skilled/unionized tradespeople (ex. electricians) Often need two incomes to achieve economic comfort/stability

construction of social problems

A constructionist perspective assumes social problems are: 1. Historical - change over time 2. Cultural - problems and their meanings are not fixed, different in different contexts/cultures 3. Political most important aspect - involve power struggles among social groups Social problems: about drawing lines, defining conditions, defining categories of people (ex. Drinking)

What is sociology? Other ways of defining sociology

A discipline that tries to understand the relationship between the individual and the social → things outside of individuals that affect us, focuses on how people and their lives are shaped by social things that they (often) don't see - Sociology is a state of mind/lens that helps us to see how people are shaped by social things they (often) don't see - Sociologists sometimes call this having a "sociological imagination" - Sociology is the systematic study of social things

Neoliberalism

A strategy for economic development that calls for free markets, balanced budgets, privatization, free trade, and minimal government intervention in the economy. - approach to gov and political movement that rose to dominance since 1970s - economic growth best stimulated by private companies, individuals, unhindered markets - skepticism regarding gov, moves to reduce power of gov - markets believed to be the best ways to provide services typically provided by gov (like health care, edu, postal services) - declining public health and safety infrastructure - privatization of realms of life and services that used to be public (water, edu, utilities, prisons)

The Nacirema: Denaturalization Miner. Body Ritual Among the Nacirema

AMERICAN spelled backwards - Published in 1956 in American Anthropologist - Satire = a parody, making fun of something sarcastically to try to make a point - Denaturalize: make the familiar strange, a lot of times we don't see social things and have to force us to see them. Miner does this by tricking us. - Importance of stepping back and examining our own culture and society from outsider's perspective - When Miner was talking about women putting their head in ovens he was talking about hair dryers, he critiques American culture such as not being able to fall asleep if our mouth doesn't taste like mint, he pokes fun at our rituals and beliefs such as our diet culture, people are socialized into these cultural beliefs (children see through and don't care about our rules and belief systems)

Robert Bellah

American sociologist, published with colleagues Habits of the Heart, 1985 - influential interpretation of American culture and individualism (it's dominant even though all Americans don't share it)

institutional scripts

An institution's dominant way of understanding, talking about, and "doing" something or addressing a social problem (ex. Sered argues that prisons, welfare, hospitals, and schools share an institutional script emphasizing personal responsibility) - Institutions too often fail to help Gloria and others gain health, security or financial self-sufficiency. Instead, they give them simple language to explain why they suffer. Such as they put the blame on individuals in order to not put blame on themselves - adhering to institutional logics of personal responsibility comes with rewards though (help, care, custody of children)

Mosher and Gould. How Likely are Foreign Terrorists to Kill Americans?

Based on data collected over the past 45 years, the chances of dying on American soil from foreign terrorism are much lower than most Americans believe. - Americans are more likely to win the lottery

Sociological Imagination (1959) book

C. Wright Mills wrote in the middle of the 20th century, he was a radical, and wanted to reach the people not just sociologists - he wrote at a time of national anxiety (sort of like today) - worried about nuclear war and the rise of fascism which provided the context for his book - soc imagination helps sees the link btw biography and history (our bio is connected to history bc history shapes the choices we make ex. college in 2020 vs 1993) - helps to distinguish between personal troubles and public issues - soc imagination is a new quality of mind - we're not unique individuals and we are touched by the world around us, Mills points us in the direction of distinguishing between individuals and social problems

wealth

Calculated by adding all financial assets (stocks, bounds, property, savings, investments) and subtracting debts (mortgages, loans) - Net worth ($ amount) can be 0, or negative Wealth is cumulative - increases over time, especially through investments Can be passed onto the next generation (purchase college education without debt, help in buying a home or starting a business, gifts, inheritance) Wealth in different kinds of capital tend to go together - economic capital (money and other assets), cultural capital (advanced degrees, tastes, style of speech, manners), social capital (networks of influential people) Differential access to these different kinds of capital reproduces and reinforces existing class structure and economic inequality

social movements

Collective attempts in pursuit of social change Collections of individuals or organizations attempting to prevent or reverse social change. Can be progressive, or radical, or conservative. Ex: Black lives matter

Culture

Culture can be defined as public and shared knowledge, symbols, meanings, beliefs, and ways of thinking webs of meaning It is often invisible; "just the way things are" - the way we make sense of the world Embedded in our institutions (schools, economy, media...) Shapes individuals and our behavior

economic inequality

Differences in wealth, income, power, political voice, educational opportunities or other valued resources. Two major measures of economic inequality: income inequality and wealth inequality

Durkheim's main findings: suicide (1897)

Durkheim found that suicide rates (# of suicides/# of population): - Were higher among Protestants than they were among Catholics or Jews - Protestants are a newer religion and less established, they also wanted more freedom and could talk to God at all times when you're alone. Catholics and Jews are very ritual based which involves making you feel like you're part of something and they interact a lot so they form connections. - Were higher among people who were childless than they were among parents - you have a person dependent on you -Were higher among single people than married people - you have a connection with someone and have more social ties - Were higher in times of peace than in times of war - societies are more integrated during times of war than times of peace, you know you're part of something bigger than yourself and something greater is going on so you're less occupied with yourself. War tends to increase feelings of solidarity, uniting against a common enemy

Suicide (1897)/patterns

Durkheim's roommate committed suicide, which caused him to look into it. Most people during this time thought suicide was a sign of weakness, sin, and moral failure but Durkheim was unwilling to accept this. - One of the most influential sociological studies ever. Regarded as brilliant demonstration of relationship between individuals and social life - Comparative method: compares across groups to discover or test a theory about a social phenomenon he compared suicide by comparing death records from different nations in Europe Durkheim Found Patterns: - Something more than individual loneliness and desperation or moral failing is going on here, said Durkheim. Patterns like this couldn't be explained with biology or psychology - If suicide was only an act of individual desperation, or a moral failing, or a random thing sometimes people do because they feel like they have no alternative - there wouldn't be such clear patterns

The Effects of Gender, Race, and Education

Gender: Men have higher incomes than women even when they attain the same level of education Race: Black and Latino Americans almost always make less than white Americans and Asian Americans, even when they have the same level of education.

Society

Group of people who share geographical location, common institutions and (sort of) rules for behavior Ex: US shares territory, capitalist economic system, government, military, education system

Social categories

Groupings of individuals based on characteristics - Human-made - The boundaries between categories can change Ex: race, religion, age, gender, class, sexual identity, ability

Social Institutions

Groups, systems, and ways of doing things that provide the foundation for behavior in some major areas of social life - Stable and enduring (often hard to change, although definitely not impossible) Ex: marriage, the family, prisons, education, the media, religion, the military, corporations

concentrated neighborhood poverty child poverty

High-poverty neighborhoods are Census tracts where at least 40% of the population is poor Poor black people are much more likely to live in high-poverty neighborhoods than are white people However, white Americans have experienced increases in concentrated poverty child poverty has remained high since 1970s. in 2017, 12.8 million children (under 18) lived in poverty

Characteristics of the Poverty in the US

Household type: those in households headed by single mothers are much more likely to be poor than in married-couple or single-father families Education: in the US, there's a high rate of poverty for adults who have not completed high school Disability status: for people aged 18-64 with a disability, the 2017 poverty rate was 24.9% or 3.8 million people living in poverty Race: the poverty rate is approximately two times higher for black, latinos, and native americans than it is for white or asians Region: the South has the highest poverty rate. The poverty rate is lowest in the Northeast.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

Intergovernmental economic organization Founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade 36 member counties "committed to democracy and market economy" Capitalist economies, mostly high income/rich countries "developed countries" Allows for comparison between countries that share characteristics

welfare capitalism

Many countries, including the US have this. It combines features of capitalism with gov regulation of many programs and services Most industry private, but gov owns or operates some of the largest industries and services (education, transportation, postal services) that benefit entire population. The welfare side of capitalism is like not having children work until they're 16 because it would be bad for children in society - there would be really young children working for $1 but it's not okay. Another example is companies giving health insurance or people not being able to work 20 hours a day. In the US the welfare part is weaker (it exists) and the capitalism part is stronger.

social problems and race

Many social problems in the US are shaped by race/intersect with race and racial inequality Economic inequality, mass incarceration, education inequality, who is affected by toxic waste dumps and environmental pollution, illness and premature death, to name just a few To be able to analyze how and why race and social problems are so intertwined we need to understand what race is

race is constructed over time

Mid-1700s: Carolus Linnaeus, Swedish taxonomist: split humans into four sub-species Late 1700s: German naturalist Johann Blumenbach - five racial categories, American (red), Caucasoid (white), Malay (brown), Mongoloid (yellow), Ethiopian (black) Late 1700s: Benjamin Rush, founding father of US and physician: being black was a hereditary skin disease he called negrodism - claimed it could be cured

racial formation (omi and winant)

Process by which a group comes to be defined as a race, supported through social institutions such as law and science Race comes to be a central axis of social relations which cannot be subsumed under or reduced to another category "Racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed" Focused particularly on importance of social institutions in producing and maintaining the meaning of race *Exam q*: there's been huge increases in both interracial relationships and children being born from them, in the last 20 years. You have more people with complicated racial backgrounds who look different and they're hard to categorize and their existence against the systems of race is the erosion of social life. They don't fit any of these groups, which helps racial categories transform.

Different ways of defining social problems - objectivist - subjectivist

Objectivist: Social Problems are Problems - Social problems are conditions that harm society - Bases the definition on objectively measurable characteristics Subjectivist: Social Problems are Constructed - Takes collective definitions and meaning into account - takes seriously - what do we pay attention to, as individuals, groups, institutions - Both are important but we are going to spend more time considering the second

racial categories are institutionalized

Pic: Trying to discover racial differences through skull shapes and sizes, this was the tone of science for centuries Video: "the story we tell," the episode is claiming that race is a story/set of ideas. Makes the argument that as a system of ideas race emerged as a contradiction at the beginning of the founding of this country. The country is proclaiming radical new ideas, democracy, and freedom while being built on slave labor. The story of race has been → "yeah but you know, I think there's something different about those people"

medicalization

Process by which more areas of life (things that used to be thought of as other kinds of problems or not really thought of at all) come to be defined and treated as medical conditions (ex. domestic abuse, bad/rowdy kid = adhd, feministic tendencies = pms) Framework for thinking about social problems, suffering, annoyances: increasingly medical 1. Conditions are given medical meanings (diagnoses) 2. Medical practice/other industries - see to eliminate or lessen experiences defined as problematic medicine has authority of areas of social life not previously considered medical

therapeutic culture

Psychology/therapy as a worldview Psychological meanings and explanations and approaches in all institutions and culture Emphasizes introspection, insight, analysis of mental processes, and attention to emotion as the way to uncover truths about both the self and about social life

Omi and Winant on race

Race is a modern invention (1600s) Racial categories have an origin around the same time as slavery and colonialism Race has, for centuries, been thought of as a biological concept, even though science has not discovered biological markers for race

Healy. Suicide Rates for US Teens and Young Adults are the Highest on Record

Researcher Miron and his colleagues suggest factors that have contributed to the increase in reported youth suicides (specially boys), including high rates of depression and anxiety, unprecedented levels of social media use, and a greater willingness of families and officials to acknowledge suicide as a cause of death.

social norms

Shared rules, guidelines, expectations for behavior - Not stable, change over time and place: rules for being a college student have changed over time, norms for being a student at Smith or different than norms for being a student at UMass Sometimes, in popular language, people use "norm" to mean what is just common or normal. While this is related to the definition of norms in sociology, sociologists really stress how norms are *rules and expectations* - they tell us how to act, and what to do - There are often rewards for following norms, and punishments for breaking them

distribution of wealth in the US

Since 1987, the average CEO has seen his compensation increase 1,000%. The compensation of an average worker has barely increased at all. In 1987, the average yearly salary was a little more than $18,000. If a worker making that salary in 1987 enjoyed the 1,000% increase that the typical CEO has enjoyed, the worker would make $1.8 million dollars a year now. Instead, the typical worker today makes just under $50,000, the equivalent of about $24,000 in 1987. When you adjust for inflation, there has been hardly any growth in worker pay

influential constructionist definition

Social problems are "the activities of individuals or groups making assertions of grievance and claims with respect to some putative (Assumed) conditions."

Social things

Sociologist Charles Lemert uses the term "social things" to refer to what it is we mean when we are talking about those larger things that shape individuals - Basically means the same thing as Durkheim Means things, created by people, that are outside of individuals Ex: social institutions, social networks, interactions, culture, ideas, social movements, social norms

What do sociologists do? Why do they need methods?

Sociologists study "social things" by using research methods (surveys, interviews, observations, historical research, social network analysis), also use concepts and develop theories - Method is a study design that allows them to study the social world and ensures they're collecting data in a systematic way

Mills. The Promise

Sociologists tend to ask 3 types of q's: what's the structure of society (how diff groups are related)? What's the place of society in history (how societies change across time and how they relate)? What kinds of people does society produce (people's personalities/moods due to the social world lived in)? The promise of the sociological imagination is important today because it can relate personal troubles and public issues, connecting biography and history, in order to give a complete sense of the specific anxieties and crises in our society. But before sociology can accomplish this great task, Mills says, we first have to consider some of the ways in which sociology has failed to do so.

Suicide

Suicide is not just a personal fact but a social fact - Not private distress and pain.. if it were, we would expect people to kill themselves at similar or random rates Social factors cause suicide Suicide most likely to occur when social ties are too weak or too strong (ex. Cults) Differences in suicide rates can be attributed to a difference in social integration

contemporary examples of individualism

TV shows, the news, the media, the way we talk to each other, popular songs (destiny's child), the way we learn American history, children's shows and movies that emphasize a "hero" who saves the day - these all almost always emphasize the importance of individuals and the qualities of individuals Individualism is a big part of US culture. But the forms and kinds of individualism have changed over time. One development over the past 70 years or so has been the intersection of individualism with a new way of thinking about individuals provided by medicine, psychiatry, and psychology.

wealth inequality

The extent to which wealth is unevenly distributed among a population Multiplies over generations and has also been steadily increasing in the US since 1970s (over the last 4 decades, wealth inequality has gotten very extreme) *1% of US population owns 40% of wealth* **** exam question Most stark/extreme socioeconomic measure As drastic as the inequality is in the US, it's nothing compared to the inequality that exists in the global context. One example: the world's 8 richest men have the same amount of wealth as the bottom 50% of the world's population.

racial wealth gap

The gap between the rich and poor is even more pronounced when race is added to the mix The average white family has accumulated much more wealth than Black (7x more) and Latino families (5x more). This isn't random or accidental Slavery → Violence of post-Civil War → Discriminatory housing policies, exclusion from New Deal policies, segregation of 20th century The history of institutional racism of the US like slavery, federal housing policies of the 20th century, and institutional discrimination are thought of as racial inequality and are the reason for this racial wealth gap

race is invented, it did not always exist

There were categories of difference and inequality, they just weren't race. Ancient societies did not divide people according to physical characteristics but according to religion, social class, language (it isn't that hierarchy didn't exist, or that inequality didn't exist, or that people didn't sort themselves into superior/inferior groups - they did, but not in terms of racial categories) Race is an important category organizing the world and its resources today

Historical & Content Analysis

Use existing sources (historical records, newspaper stories, TV shows, transcripts of political testimony, etc.) - Can look for patterns or themes that might not be evident otherwise - Show how a topic is presented in the media - Study issues in the past - Can't control quality of data

Construction of Disability

We socially construct people, creating categories and ideas about what people in those categories are like (ex. Alcoholics, people with cancer, people with depression) "Social arrangements can make a biological condition more or less relevant to almost any situation" (Wendell 40) - if there's accommodations for a disability, it doesn't need to be a big deal, making a decision to build ramps

income

amount of $ brought into a household from various sources during a given period (hour, week, month, year), includes wages, salaries, interest, rent, profits, retirement, etc.

dorothy roberts compared race to:

citizenship. "Like citizenship, race is a political system that governs people by sorting them into social groupings based on invented biological demarcations. Race is not only interpreted according to invented rules, but more importantly, race itself is an invented political grouping. Race is not a biological category that is politically charged. It is a political category that has been disguised as a biological one." (Roberts 2012: 4) Race came after racism.

how is poverty defined and measured (absolute/relative)

diff ways to define and measure poverty - absolute poverty: people who cannot afford basic necessities like food, shelter, and clothing defines what the basics are - what you need to get by and survive Ex: US Census Bureau - official poverty threshold (poverty line) in 2018 was $25,100 for a family of two adults and two children - minimum income level federal government says is required to buy the basics (in 2017: 39.7 million Americans in poverty) - relative: looks at income distribution, lowest income brackets considered poor

Wendell. The Social Construction of Disability

disability is socially constructed by such factors as social conditions that cause or fail to prevent damage to people's bodies; expectations of performance; the physical and social organization of societies on the basis of a young, non-disabled, "ideally shaped;' healthy adult male paradigm of citizens; the failure or unwillingness to create ability among citizens who do not fit the paradigm; and cultural representations, failures of representation, and expectations. - social factors that cause disability include malnutrition, lack of basic resources (like water), high-risk working conditions, abuse/neglect of children - culture contributes to disability by stereotyping and stigmatization, no cultural representation, cultural meanings attached to diff disabilities and illnesses, and exclusion of people with disabilities from activities they can't perform

Social Integration

how connected people are to each other and to shared ways of thinking and acting (to prevent suicide you need to have a good balance of connection) Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose -Janice Joplin "Me and Bobby McGee": There's these things (going to class, church, marriage) that we think are really bad for us and we want our freedom we don't want to be connected but in reality these things are good for us in some ways * Durkheim uses the concept of social integration to understand suicide

Industrialization

increased use of machinery and mass production, and the development of a class society (changed everything, sort of like the internet) Industrial Revolution began in England with harnessing of water and steam power to run machines such as looms (equipment to make fabric) Spread of factories, the hallmark of industrial society Rapid, dramatic economic and social change spread throughout Europe, the US and then most of the rest of the world

social mobility in US

more upward mobility in US than in other countries - increased 1940s to 1970s but has decreased since then - moves up and down are more likely to be short moves than big moves - less upward mobility in the US than in other rich countries, and in some other poor countries too (2013 study found US ranked 15/22 of high income countries and it had less upward mobility than some developing countries)

social mobility (groups/individuals)

movement up or down the social class structure groups: most middle-class Americans have experienced downward mobility since 1970s individuals: can experience upward social mobility when they can use educational credentials or social networks to achieve a higher class standing than the one they were born into (ex. Oprah)

therapeutic individualism

new (psychological) version of individualism concerned with self knowledge, self management, emotion, personal trauma, working on oneself, inner psychological selves one of the most dominant forms of contemporary American individualism - means that when we want to understand problems we look inward - emphasize self help and personal responsibility - the suffering of individuals is thought to stem from things inside individuals (private trauma, biochemical imbalances, personal flaws, poor choices)

intersectionality

often credited to sociologist Kimberle Crenshaw (1989), although also very associated with both Margaret Andersen and Patricia Hill Collins Analyzes the connections between different social categories such as gender, race, class, disability, and others as they structure inequality. These systems are interlocking and help to create and uphold one another

social problems as a process: how/why things become constructed as social problems and how/why people decide something needs to be done about those conditions

process involves interaction, social institutions, social movements involved in claimsmaking Claim: attempts to convince an audience what or how to think or feel about a topic (ex. addiction comes from the environment, climate change is a ticking time bomb, abortion stops a heart beat) Claimsmaking: bringing topic to the attention of others by making a claim that there is a condition that should be recognized as troubling and addressed Claimsmakers: people or groups who make the claim What do social problems have in common? According to constructionists = claimsmaking, something doesn't become a social problem without people, social movements, and institutions making claims about these things

race vs ethnicity

race = categories of people who share physical characteristics (skin, hair, facial features, that members of society consider important) ethnicity = people who share a common national origin or *cultural* heritage such as language, geographic roots, food, customs, traditions, religion (ex. Puerto Ricans, Jews, Arabs), treated as something everyone has (everybody's ethnic), multicultural fairs/ethnic food festivals

race

race is a system to classify (put into groups/organize) and stratify (rank) groups of people based mostly on skin tone (although also other physical characteristics: facial features, eye color, hair texture) racial categories are social constructions/human inventions. these constructions include all the ideas we have about people of diff races. one major idea we have is that it's natural and biological

poverty rate

ratio of the number of people (in a given population or age group) whose income falls below the poverty line, taken as half the median household income in the population (relative poverty) Childhood poverty (0-17), elderly poverty (66 and older)

Individualism/meritocracy

sees personal troubles, successes, choices, experiences as the result of individual action. 1st cultural language - our first impulse is to see and talk about the self and about society in individualistic terms (we have other cultural languages but we're not as fluent or comfortable using them) enduring part of American culture ... American dream: if we work hard, we'll be rewarded - Meritocracy: a system that rewards talent and hard work de-emphasizes focus on institutions, collective responsibility (ex. individualism in US elections, newspaper titles like "Biden still well-liked by Americans")

Thomas. Medicalizing Racism

some medical knowledge is psychiatric - medicalizing racism is not a good thing and we will not be able to abolish racism with psychiatric treatment - in the "new racism" of the new millennium, racism is classified as abnormal behavior which deserves psychological treatment, which makes the continued significance of covert and structural racism even more invisible

Egoistic suicide

suicide that results from low social integration, excessive individualism and isolation; committed by people who are not strongly bound to social group (not egoistic meaning ego)

income inequality

the extent to which income is distributed in an uneven way among a population, has steadily increased in the US over the past 40 years

Desmond. Americans Want to Believe Jobs are the Solution to Poverty

the jobs available to people without much education don't pay enough to live on

Social Construction

the ways we *create meanings and categories* through social interactions with others, collectively-held beliefs - the meanings and understandings aren't always that connected to historical or objective reality (fortune cookies/duck sauce being "chinese", gun violence), (ex. Pink is for girls and blue is for boys, the word CAT represents a cat animal, what types of food should be eaten when) - social constructions are often *institutionalized*, such that institutions play a huge role in keeping these meanings in place (ex. school lockdowns)

Meyer. A Major but Little-Known Supporter of Climate Denial: Freight Railroads

ties the freight rail industry's history in climate change denial to their interest in coal, which accounts for approx 1/3 of what freight trains transport in the US - rail companies carbon footprint is enormous

Roberts. The Invention of Race

too long

social construction of social problems

when we talk about the social construction of social problems, we are focused on culture - how these are social things and have a lot of power in shaping our lives. - related to opportunities and constraints for groups of people and justify inequality - *very powerful* socially constructed ideas about the world sometimes *change* due to social movements

Morris and Robinson. Forced and Coerced Cesarean Sections in the US

women report doctors use the following coercive practices to push women into unwanted c-sections: - refusing to admit patients who don't offer prior consent - threatening court orders - threatening to call child protective services - threatening that the state will remove the baby after birth c-sections don't lead to better outcomes but physicians have learned through medical-legal conferences and court proceedings that they're less likely to be sued for malpractice if the baby is born by cesarean

Horatio Alger

wrote novels and stories in the 1800s about the prototypical example of the tradition of the American dream-type individualism - written for teenagers and boys who through hard work pulled themselves out of poverty into comfort and middle class security

unemployment quote

you have to understand the problem and have the correct statement of it in order to find the solution that matches up and might fix the problem. - If there is one person whose unemployed then maybe it makes sense to look at the person and see what's wrong with them but if its millions of unemployed people then it makes no sense to look at the individuals and ask what's wrong with all of them - How many people is this affecting? Answering this question is telling of whether something is a social problem rather than individual.