Sociology Unit 3

Homelessness

- 2018: 552,820 estimated homeless on any given night - causes of homelesness: unemployment, low wages, reduction in social services, rent increases, escaping domestic violence, substance abuse

Sexual Orientation

- A person's sexual orientation is their physical, mental, emotional, and sexual attraction to a particular sex (male and/or female). - Sexual orientation is typically divided into several categories: heterosexuality, the attraction to individuals of the other sex; homosexuality, the attraction to individuals of the same sex; bisexuality, the attraction to individuals of either sex; asexuality, a lack of sexual attraction or desire for sexual contact; pansexuality, an attraction to people regardless of sex, gender, gender identity, or gender expression; and queer, an umbrella term used to describe sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. - The United States is a heteronormative society, meaning many people assume heterosexual orientation is biologically determined and unambiguous. - Alfred Kinsey was among the first to conceptualize sexuality as a continuum rather than a strict dichotomy of gay or straight. - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick expanded on Kinsey's notions. She coined the term "homosocial" to oppose "homosexual," describing nonsexual same-sex relations. - heterosexism, which Herek (1990) suggests is both an ideology and a set of institutional practices that privilege heterosexuals and heterosexuality over other sexual orientations. - Homophobia, an extreme or irrational aversion to homosexuals, accounts for further stereotyping and discrimination. -Transphobia is a fear, hatred or dislike of transgender people, and/or prejudice and discrimination against them by individuals or institutions. - In 1996, The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was passed, explicitly limiting the definition of "marriage" to a union between one man and one woman.

Systems of Stratification

- Closed systems accommodate little change in social position. They do not allow people to shift levels and do not permit social relationships between levels. - Open systems, which are based on achievement, allow movement and interaction between layers and classes. - A caste system is one in which people are born into their social standing and will remain in it their whole lives. (closed) - Caste systems promote beliefs in fate, destiny, and the will of a higher power, rather than promoting individual freedom as a value. - A class system is based on both social factors and individual achievement. A class consists of a set of people who share similar status with regard to factors like wealth, income, education, and occupation. (open) - In class systems, people have the option to form exogamous marriages, unions of spouses from different social categories. - Marriage to a partner from the same social background is an endogamous union. - Estate: form of social hierarchy in which a peasent or serf must work a piece of land owned by the noble class, clergy on top - Slavery: ownership of people by other people - Meritocracy is an ideal system based on the belief that social stratification is the result of personal effort—or merit—that determines social standing. High levels of effort will lead to a high social position, and vice versa. - Sociologists use the term status consistency to describe the consistency, or lack thereof, of an individual's rank across these factors. - three things: income, occupation, and ?? - Caste systems correlate with high status consistency, whereas the more flexible class system has lower status consistency. - primogeniture, a law stating that all property would be inherited by the firstborn son.

Theoretical Perspectives of race and ethnicity

- Functionalism: in the view of functionalism, racial and ethnic inequalities must have served an important function in order to exist as long as they have. - Another way to apply the functionalist perspective to racism is to discuss the way racism can contribute positively to the functioning of society by strengthening bonds between in-group members through the ostracism of out-group members - Conflict Theory: conflict theories are often applied to inequalities of gender, social class, education, race, and ethnicity. - Feminist sociologist Patricia Hill Collins (1990) further developed intersection theory, originally articulated in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, which suggests we cannot separate the effects of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other attributes. - Interactionism For symbolic interactionists, race and ethnicity provide strong symbols as sources of identity. In fact, some interactionists propose that the symbols of race, not race itself, are what lead to racism. Famed Interactionist Herbert Blumer (1958) suggested that racial prejudice is formed through interactions between members of the dominant group: Without these interactions, individuals in the dominant group would not hold racist views. - Culture of prejudice refers to the theory that prejudice is embedded in our culture.

Gender Idenity

- Gender identity is a person's deeply held internal perception of one's gender. - Individuals who identify with a gender that is the different from their biological sex are called transgender. - transsexual: anyone that has gone through a physical altercation to reflect their gender - transvestite: dresses as the opposite sex - Gender Dysphoria is a condition of people whose gender at birth is contrary to the one they identify with.

Intergroup relationships

- Genocide: the deliberate annihilation of a targeted (usually subordinate) group, is the most toxic intergroup relationship. - Expulsion refers to a subordinate group being forced, by a dominant group, to leave a certain area or country. - Segregation refers to the physical separation of two groups, particularly in residence, but also in workplace and social functions. - between de jure segregation (segregation that is enforced by law) and de facto segregation (segregation that occurs without laws but because of other factors). - Pluralism is represented by the ideal of the United States as a "salad bowl": a great mixture of different cultures where each culture retains its own identity and yet adds to the flavor of the whole. - Assimilation describes the process by which a minority individual or group gives up its own identity by taking on the characteristics of the dominant culture. - Amalgamation is the process by which a minority group and a majority group combine to form a new group. - miscegenation: biological reproduction by people of different racial categories

Global stratification

- Global stratification compares the wealth, economic stability, status, and power of countries across the world. Global stratification highlights worldwide patterns of social inequality. - Various models of global stratification all have one thing in common: they rank countries according to their relative economic status, or gross national product (GNP). - First and second world described industrialized nations, while third world referred to "undeveloped" countries (Henslin 2004). - The GDP is calculated (usually annually) one of two ways: by totaling either the income of all citizens or the value of all goods and services produced in the country during the year. It also includes government spending. - The Population Reference Bureau (PRB) publishes an annual report that measures the relative economic well-being of all the world's countries. It's called the Gross National Income (GNI) and Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).

Queer theory

- Queer Theory is an interdisciplinary approach to sexuality studies that identifies Western society's rigid splitting of gender into male and female roles and questions the manner in which we have been taught to think about sexual orientation. - The perspective highlights the need for a more flexible and fluid conceptualization of sexuality—one that allows for change, negotiation, and freedom.

Sex and gender

- Sex refers to physical or physiological differences between males and females, including both primary sex characteristics (the reproductive system) and secondary characteristics such as height and muscularity. - Gender refers to behaviors, personal traits, and social positions that society attributes to being female or male.

gender and socialization

- Sexism refers to prejudiced beliefs that value one sex over another. - Many sociologists focus on discrimination that is built into the social structure; this type of discrimination is known as institutional discrimination - Gender socialization occurs through four major agents of socialization: family, education, peer groups, and mass media. - Stratification refers to a system in which groups of people experience unequal access to basic, yet highly valuable, social resources. The United States is characterized by gender stratification (as well as stratification of race, income, occupation, and the like). Evidence of gender stratification is especially keen within the economic realm. - When people perform tasks or possess characteristics based on the gender role assigned to them, they are said to be doing gender - The social construction of sexuality refers to the way in which socially created definitions about the cultural appropriateness of sex-linked behavior shape the way people see and experience sexuality. - This is in marked contrast to theories of sex, gender, and sexuality that link male and female behavior to biological determinism, or the belief that men and women behave differently due to differences in their biology.

sexual attitudes and practices

- Sexuality is viewed as a person's capacity for sexual feelings. - The incest taboo is present in every society, though which relative is deemed unacceptable for sex varies widely from culture to culture. - Historically, religion has been the greatest influence on sexual behavior in most societies, but in more recent years, peers and the media have emerged as two of the strongest influences, particularly among U.S. teens

Social Mobility

- Social mobility refers to the ability to change positions within a social stratification system - Upward mobility refers to an increase—or upward shift—in social class. - downward mobility indicates a lowering of one's social class. - intergenerational mobility: It is not uncommon for different generations of a family to belong to varying social classes. - Similarly, intragenerational mobility refers to changes in a person's social mobility over the course of his or her lifetime. - Structural mobility happens when societal changes enable a whole group of people to move up or down the social class ladder.

Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination

- Stereotypes are oversimplified generalizations about groups of people. - Prejudice refers to the beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and attitudes someone holds about a group. - originating outside actual experience. - racism is a stronger type of prejudice used to justify the belief that one racial category is somehow superior or inferior to others; it is also a set of practices used by a racial majority to disadvantage a racial minority. - Institutional racism refers to the way in which racism is embedded in the fabric of society. - Colorism is another kind of prejudice, in which someone believes one type of skin tone is superior or inferior to another within a racial group. - While prejudice refers to biased thinking, discrimination consists of actions against a group of people. - Sociologist Émile Durkheim calls racism a social fact, meaning that it does not require the action of individuals to continue. - racist practices is racial steering, in which real estate agents direct prospective homeowners toward or away from certain neighborhoods based on their race. - Institutional discrimination occurs when a societal system has developed with embedded disenfranchisement of a group - white privilege, which is the benefits people receive simply by being part of the dominant group.

Native Americans

- The only nonimmigrant ethnic group in the United States, Native Americans once numbered in the millions but by 2010 made up only 0.9 percent of U.S. populace;

gender roles

- The term gender role refers to society's concept of how men and women are expected to look and how they should behave. - In U.S. culture, masculine roles are usually associated with strength, aggression, and dominance, while feminine roles are usually associated with passivity, nurturing, and subordination. Role

Three levels of classification in US

- Wealth is the most significant way of distinguishing classes, because wealth can be transferred to one's children and perpetuate the class structure. - The upper class not only have power and control over their own lives but also their social status gives them power and control over others' lives. - upper-upper: wealth is very important, old money, do not fully interact with the lower classes - lower-upper: made their money by working, invention, talent - The middle class doesn't generally control other strata of society, but its members do exert control over their own lives. (largest social class in US) - In contrast, the lower class has little control over their work or lives. - U.S. society has historically distinguished between "old money" (inherited wealth passed from one generation to the next) and "new money" (wealth you have earned and built yourself). - Upper-middle-class people tend to hold bachelor's and postgraduate degrees. - Lower(average)-middle-class members hold bachelor's degrees from four-year colleges or associate's degrees from two-year community or technical colleges. - Middle-class people work hard and live fairly comfortable lives. - the lower class can be divided into subsets: the working class, the working poor, and the underclass. - Class traits, also called class markers, are the typical behaviors, customs, and norms that define each class.

Explaining Poverty

- blame the poor: the poor are primarily responsible for their own poverty, culture of poverty - blame society: societ is primarily responsible for poverty , primary cause=lack of jobs in inner cities

Racical, Ethnic, and Minority Groups

- racial profiling—the use by law enforcement of race alone to determine whether to stop and detain someone - Over time, the typology of race that developed during early racial science has fallen into disuse, and the social construction of race is a more sociological way of understanding racial categories. - In modern society, some people who consider themselves "white" actually have more melanin (a pigment that determines skin color) in their skin than other people who identify as "black." - The social construction of race is also reflected in the way names for racial categories change with changing times. - Ethnicity is a term that describes shared culture—the practices, values, and beliefs of a group. - Sociologist Louis Wirth (1945) defined a minority group as "any group of people who, because of their physical or cultural characteristics, are singled out from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treatment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination." - subordinate group can be used interchangeably with the term minority, while the term dominant group is often substituted for the group that's in the majority. -According to Charles Wagley and Marvin Harris (1958), a minority group is distinguished by five characteristics: (1) unequal treatment and less power over their lives, (2) distinguishing physical or cultural traits like skin color or language, (3) involuntary membership in the group, (4) awareness of subordination, and (5) high rate of in-group marriage. - Scapegoat theory, developed initially from Dollard's (1939) Frustration-Aggression theory, suggests that the dominant group will displace its unfocused aggression onto a subordinate group.

Standard of living

- standard of living: the level of wealth available to a certain socioeconomic class in order to acquire the material necessities and comforts to maintain its lifestyle. - is based on factors such as income, employment, class, poverty rates, and housing affordability. - "feminization of poverty"—which acknowledges that women disproportionately make up the majority of individuals in poverty across the globe. - The size, income, and wealth of the middle class have all been declining since the 1970s. - absolute poverty is deprivation so severe that it puts survival in jeopardy - relative poverty the deprivation of some in relation to those who have more. - extreme poverty: $1.90/day

Income vs Weath

- wealth: the net value of money and assets a person has, takes into account heritable money, debt - income: a person's wages or investment dividends.

Social stratification

-a society's categorization of its people into rankings of socioeconomic tiers based on factors like wealth, income, race, education, and power. - a system in which categories of people are ranked in a social hierarchy - basic principles: 1) trait of society 2) carries from generation to generation 3) universal but variable 4)involves inequality

Racial Tensions in the United States

-sedimentation of racial inequality: the intergenerational impact of de facto and de jure racism that limits the abilities of black people to accumulate wealth - redlining: the practice of routinely refusing mortgages for households and business located in predominately minority communities - The model minority stereotype is applied to a minority group that is seen as reaching significant educational, professional, and socioeconomic levels without challenging the existing establishment.

Kinsey Scale

A 6-point rating system that evaluates a person's sexual orientation

Theoretical Perspectives on Social Stratification

Functionalism - In 1945, sociologists Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore published the Davis-Moore thesis, which argued that the greater the functional importance of a social role, the greater must be the reward. The theory posits that social stratification represents the inherently unequal value of different work. - Without the incentive of higher pay and better benefits, why would someone be willing to rush into burning buildings? - In 1953, Melvin Tumin countered the Davis-Moore thesis in "Some Principles of Stratification: A Critical Analysis." Tumin questioned what determined a job's degree of importance. The Davis-Moore thesis does not explain, he argued, why a media personality with little education, skill, or talent becomes famous and rich on a reality show or a campaign trail. - Tumin believed social stratification prevented qualified people from attempting to fill roles Conflict - Conflict theorists are deeply critical of social stratification, asserting that it benefits only some people, not all of society - Marx would likely have argued that the recession resulted from the greed of capitalists, satisfied at the expense of working people. Symbolic Interactionism - Symbolic interactionism is a theory that uses everyday interactions of individuals to explain society as a whole. Symbolic interactionism examines stratification from a micro-level perspective. This analysis strives to explain how people's social standing affects their everyday interactions. - In most communities, people interact primarily with others who share the same social standing. - Symbolic interactionists also note that people's appearance reflects their perceived social standing - conspicuous consumption: which is the purchase and use of certain products to make a social statement about status.

Theoretical Perspectives on Gender

Structural functionalism - Functionalists argue that gender roles were established well before the pre-industrial era when men typically took care of responsibilities outside of the home, such as hunting, and women typically took care of the domestic responsibilities in or around the home. conflict theory - society is a struggle for dominance among social groups (like women versus men) that compete for scarce resources. Symbolic interactionism aims to understand human behavior by analyzing the critical role of symbols in human interaction.