Introduction to Sociology (Chp. 1-10)

George Herbert Mead and the 'I and Me'

"I"= the active, spontaneous, autonomous self. "me"= socialized, sense of self is derived from others.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

(1889-1951), Austrian philosopher, argued that philosophy is only the clarification of thoughts, great philosophical issues are a waste of time because conclusions reflect the opinions of individuals

Culture as a conditioning element of action

- Culture conditions our actions and behaviors and influences how we live our lives - It gives us our taken-for-granted assumptions that our way is the right way - It socializes us...

Culture as a product of action

- Culture systems (material and nonmaterial things) are created by human beings and are therefore products of action - Culture is a product of our actions and interactions - We give meaning to gestures and symbols through our interactions

3 I's

1. Institutional: religion, government, university, etc. 2. Interactional: person-to-person basis 3. Individual: personal history and beliefs

Attributes of Social Institutions

1. Institutions are generally unplanned; they develop gradually. 2. Institutions are inherently conservative; they change, but slowly. 3. A particular society's institutions are interdependent; because of this, change in one institution tends to bring about change in others. 4. The statuses, roles, values, and norms associated with an institution in one society frequently bear little resemblance to those in another society.

Karl Marx (most known conflict theorist)

1818-1883. 19th century philosopher, political economist, sociologist, humanist, political theorist, and revolutionary. Often recognized as the father of communism. Analysis of history led to his belief that communism would replace capitalism as it replaced feudalism. Believed in a classless society. Argued that it was the conflicts between classes that drove social change throughout history rather than ideas.

W.E.B. DuBois

1st black to earn Ph.D. from Harvard, encouraged blacks to resist systems of segregation and discrimination, helped create NAACP in 1910 Implication: 1. Slavery and the growth of capitalism were interrelated 2. Understanding social life requires looking at race relations 3. Economics is not necessarily the dominant value for people. Sometimes people will value their status and receive psychological wages for holding a position above others, regardless of how little they make in wages

Norm violations- sanctions

2 Types of Sanctions: 1- Negative Sanctions: •The seriousness of the sanction depends on the level of norm violated. Violating a folkway might get a nasty look but violating a taboo might get expulsion from group or death. •Formal Negative Sanction: •Official responses from specific social organizations... i.e. governments, universities, churches. •Informal Negative Sanctions: •Come from individuals in the social group... i.e. getting laughed at, given the "cold shoulder" 2- Positive Sanctions: •Rewards for keeping or excelling in a norm. •Formal Positive Sanction: •Rewards given out by official organization... i.e. grades, prizes, •Informal Positive Sanction: •Rewards given out by the social group... i.e. standing ovation, a smile, pat on the back.

Mead's Development of Self

3 Activities develop the self: 1- Language: •Develops the self by allowing people to respond to each other through symbols, gestures, words, and sounds. It conveys others' attitudes and opinions toward a subject or the person. 2- Play: •Develops the self by allowing people to take on different roles, pretend, and express expectation of others. It develops one's self-consciousness through role-playing. A person is able to internalize the perspective of others and develop an understanding of how others feel about themselves and others in different social situations. •Play is an essential part of human development... Meade calls it "simple imitative behaviors". 3- Games: •Develops the self by allowing people to understand and adhere to the rules of the activity. The self is developed by understanding that there are rules in which one must abide by in order to win the game.

Hawthorne Effect

A change in a subject's behavior caused simply by the awareness of being studied

Society

A community of people who share a common culture

Ethnography

A detailed description of a particular culture primarily based on fieldwork; the method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by observing it from the inside, without imposing any preconceived notions they might have

Tyranny

A form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition etc.)

Serial Monogamy

A form of marriage in which a person may have several spouses in his or her lifetime, but only one spouse at a time.

Theocracy

A government controlled by religious leaders

Aristocracy

A government in which power is in the hands of a hereditary ruling class or nobility

Monarchy

A government in which power is in the hands of a single person

Concept

A label applied to things with similar characteristics and/or attributes= seem to belong in the same category

Attributes

A quality or feature regarded as a characteristic or inherent part of someone or something

Matrix Questions

A series of questions that concern a common theme and have the same response choices

Relational Sociology

A sociological perspective that sees individuals as defined by their relationships to others and to institutions such as the economy.

Representative Democracy

A system of government in which citizens elect representatives, or leaders, to make decisions about the laws for all the people.

Bureaucracy

A system of managing government through departments run by appointed officials

Theory

A systematic, generalized model of how some aspect of the world works... more abstract and general than a theory. relationship between facts and suggests causes and effects emerging out of those relationships.

Hypothesis

A testable prediction, often implied by a theory. To propose a relationship between two variables, with directionality

Chaos Theory

A theory that emphasizes systems processes that produce change, even sudden, rapid change; theoretical construct defining the random-appearing yet deterministic characteristics of complex organizations

Independent Variables

A variable that a scientist changes to find out how this change affects other variables in the experiment.

Positivist

An approach to theorizing that emphasizes explanation and prediction.

Ferdinand Tonnies

Analyzed the different types of societies that existed before and after industrialization. Coined the terms Gemeinschaft ( intimate community) and Gesellschaft (impersonal association).

Variables

Any measurable conditions, events, characteristics, or behaviors that are controlled or observed in a study.

Polytheism

Belief in many gods

Monotheism

Belief in one God

Animism

Belief that objects, such as plants and stones, or natural events, like thunderstorms and earthquakes, have a discrete spirit and conscious life.

Emile Durkheim (functionalist)

Believed in functionalism and the scientific method; saw society as a set of independent parts that maintain a system but each separate part has a function. Compared two types of societies: 1. Premodern: low degree DOL 2. Modern societies: high degree of DOL Developed concept of Divisions of Labor (DOL)

What is ethnocentrism?

By William Graham Sumner, it is the belief that norms, values, ideology, customs, and traditions of one's own culture or subculture are superior to those characterizing other cultural settings/groups. Bad for research because it implies that your cultural worldview is the "right" way to view the world. Good: can facilitate cohesion in levels of social organization. Creates high level of appreciation for one's own culture. Bad: can lead to atrocities by governments and the acceptance of atrocities by the masses. See others as immoral, inferior, backwards.

Open-ended vs. Closed-Ended Questions

Closed-ended questions are those which can be answered by a simple "yes" or "no," while open-ended questions are those which require more thought and more than a simple one-word answer.

Popular Culture

Culture found in a large, heterogeneous society that shares certain habits despite differences in other personal characteristics; heavily produced and commercialized goods made for and consumed by a large audience

Durkheim's discoveries

DOL didn't just affect work and productivity but had social and moral consequences. DOL helps to determine its form of social solidarity. The way to understand society was not to focus on psychological/biological attributes of individuals, rather on focus on the nature of society itself. Social phenomena have a unique reality of their own. Anomie: sense of aimlessness or despair one feels when we can no longer reasonably expect life to be predictable; a sense of normlessness resulting from drastic changes in living conditions or arrangements.

What is Normative?

Differs from empirical by including value statements, a morally-endorsed ideal. ex: values, norms, morals

Criticisms of Functionalism

Downplays the role of individuals...by doing so it is less likely to recognize how individual actions may alter / influence social institutions Unable to explain social change because its focus is on social order and balance or stability In society Tends to justify the status quo Doesn't encourage individuals to take initiative in changing their social environments

Herbert Spencer (Functionalism)

English philosopher and sociologist who applied the theory of natural selection to human societies (1820-1903) Society was governed by laws in much the same way the physical (natural) world was. His interest was in how societies evolved.

American Sociology

European sociology focused on big social theories regarding social life and change, whereas American sociology started a more "on-the-ground" approach. Carried a more "applied" sociology approach characterized as the "Chicago School."

What are Sociological theories?

Explanations of social phenomena based on certain criteria- how and why certain facts are related. A proposed explanation about social interactions or society at large

Mass Media

Forms of communication that reach millions of people; Television, radio, newspapers, magazines, the Internet, and other means of popular communication.

Max Weber

German sociologist that regarded the development of rational social orders as humanity's greatest achievement. Saw bureaucratization (the process whereby labor is divided into an organized community and individuals acquire a sense of personal identity by finding roles for themselves in large systems) as the driving force in modern society.

Ethnomethodology

Harold Garfinkel's term for the study of the way people make sense of their everyday surroundings; the study of how people use background assumptions to make sense out of life

Emile Durkheim's Modern Society (Organic Solidarity)

Has a high degree of DOL with many highly specialized occupations. As DOL became more specialized and complex, people became more different so they also grew more dependent on each other so society then depended on the proper functioning of a variety of parts, or organs. Forces people to interact and maintain social ties.

Thomas Theorem

If people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences (i.e. fire in a crowded theater, Jan 6th attack on Capitol) If one wants to truly understand why people of the things they do, one must take into account not only what is really going on in a particular situation but also what people think is going on. ex: news reporting. about people being robbed because of its sensationalism even though crime rates drop will still show that people's fear of crime would increase.

Criticisms of Conflict Theory

Its focus is on change and the neglect of social stability Societies are constantly changing, but much of these changes are minor or incremental, not revolutionary

W.I. Thomas

Labeling theory, definitions of the situation, self-fulfilling prophecy

Manifest & Latent Functions

Manifest functions are the recognized and intended consequences of any social pattern, while latent functions are those unrecognized and unintended consequences.

Monogamy

Marriage to only one person at a time

Proletariat

Marx's term for the exploited class, the mass of workers who do not own the means of production

Mechanical & Organic Solidarity

Mechanical Solidarity arises when individuals feel bonded by their similarity (shared values & bonds) Organic Solidarity arises when individuals are bonded through their division of labor

Unobtrusive Methods

Methods in which research respondents do not have to be disturbed for data to be gathered.

Criticisms of Symbolic Interactionalism

Neglects the macro level off social interpretation Rejects the influence of social forces and institutions on individual interactions

Polyandry

One female, several males.

What does McIntyre's definition lack?

Only speaks on analysis on the individual level. Mills on the other hand, emphasized linking the individual along with the broader structural/institutional powers within a contextual framework.

Charles Horton Cooley and the Looking Glass Self

Our understanding of what we are is based on how we think we appear to others 3 steps of social self-development: 1. We imagine how we look to the other person 2. We imagine the judgement of that other person's reaction to our appearance 3. We have some self-feeling such as pride, shame, mortification, etc.

Observations: Complete participant

Participant goes undercover and does not tell the people being observed that they are doing research

Epiphenomenalism (Dualism)

Physical events cause both physical and mental. Mental events are caused by physical events, and cause nothing.

Max Weber's Inconvenient Facts

Pieces of evidence that contradict what you believe, or want to believe about the world around you. ex: post-racial theory, the employment game is a meritocracy

Postmodernism

Post-World War II intellectual movement and cultural attitude focusing on cultural pluralism and release from the confines and ideology of Western high culture; There is no longer one version of history that is correct...everything is interpretable •The notion that shared meanings have eroded. There is no longer one version of history that is correct... Everything is interpretable. •There is no need to view shared meanings as seemingly objective because these meanings are not actually objective. •Posits that things that are seemingly objective are social constructions. •Social Constructions •An entity that exists because people behave as if it exists and whose existence is perpetuated as people and social institutions act in accordance with the widely agreed-on formal rules and informal norms of behavior associated with that entity.

Survival of the Fittest

Process by which individuals that are better suited to their environment survive and reproduce most successfully; also called natural selection

Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Research study conducted by a branch of the U.S. government, lasting for roughly 50 years (ending in the 1970s), in which a sample of African American men diagnosed with syphilis were deliberately left untreated, without their knowledge, to learn about the lifetime course of the disease.

Quantitative Methodology

Research that provides data that can be expressed with numbers, such as ranks or scales. Positivist: concerned with the factors that influence social life. The hypothesis predicts how one form of human behavior influences another. Infers that findings can be generalized to wider population. Procedures are standardized and replication can easily be done. Hard data=numbers Linear path of logic= process is done in a clear, step-by-step and straight-line format. Methods: experiments, surveys/questionnaires, existing statistics, content analysis: interpreting and coding textual material, qualitative material can be turned qualitatively

Economic Structure

Shows the division of a country's economy between primary, secondary and tertiary industries.

Negative Sanctions

Social disapproval for violating a norm, a punishment or threat of a punishment to promote conformity to norms.

Rites of Passage

Social rituals that mark the transition between developmental stages, especially between childhood and adulthood.

McIntyre emphasizes the scientific because...

Sociologists need to follow a methodology for arriving at answers and conclusions. Can reduce researcher bias, emotion, opinion, and preconceptions that can taint conclusions.

Informal Negative Sanctions

Spontaneous displays of disapproval of a person's behavior. Impolite treatment is directed toward the violator of a group norm.

Auguste Comte - Law of Three Stages

Stage 1: Theological Stage: religious leaders were the major sources of knowledge/intellectual authority. Stage 2: Metaphysical Stage: People turned to philosophers for guidance Stage 3: The Scientific Stage: Knowledge would be based on scientific principles- Sociologists would use scientific method to gain knowledge about the social world and then advise people on how life ought to be lived.

Social Darwinism and Herbert Spencer

The belief that only the fittest survive in human political and economic struggle. A form of natural social evolution that will allow society to get better over time. The weak are weeded out through social competition, social philanthropy only stunts the natural process.

Nonmaterial Culture

The beliefs, practices, aesthetics, and values of a group of people.

Bourgeoisie

The group with all the power / money - the 'owners'

Cultural Relativity

The idea that behavior must be judged relative to the values of the culture in which it occurs.

Social Facts

The laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and all of the cultural rules that govern social life and make up a society.

Dependent Variables

The outcome factor; the variable that may change in response to manipulations of the independent variable.

Interpretivist

The philosophy that the social world needs to be explained by those living in it; you must understand their meanings through interpretation. Favoring words and observations.

Sampling

The process of selecting representative units from a total population

Operationalization

The process of transforming variables into precise definitions that are measurable and testable; creating operational definitions such as listing their attributes so that you can count the presence or absence of them in the real world. 2 rules for operationalizing: 1. The attributes must be exhaustive: every thing or person needs to fit in 1 category 2. The attributes must be mutually exclusive: no one person or thing should be able to fit into more than a single category.

McIntyre's definition of sociology

The scientific study of interactions and relations among human beings. Interactions among people-the realities and the perceived realities Why people do what they do and how they are influenced by one another.

The Sociological Imagination by C. Wright Mills

The vivid awareness of the relationship between individual experience and the wider society. Sociology centered around recognizing how individual experience and worldview are products of both the historical context and the immediate environment in which the individual exists. Emphasized importance of seeing the connections between social structures and individual experience and agency.

Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

Theory that distinguishes between two major types of groups: communities (Gemeinschaften), which share beliefs, ancestry, or geography; and society (Gesellschaften), which work together toward a common goal.

Emile Durkheim's Premodern (Mechanical Solidarity) society

They shared high degrees of likeness that allowed people to have a collective conscience, which were shared values, ideas and beliefs. Value consensus: people have shared goals, roles and norms People were held together because of that likeness

What is empirical?

Things observed through use of physical senses. Empirical data can come from: direct observation, interviews, conversations, etc. Relies on the "what is"- your job is only to document what is present.

What is the point of scientific method?

To find the correlations and causes between and among related variables in the social world. Deductive approach: start with a theory, form a hypothesis, make empirical observations and then analyze data to either confirm, reject or modify original theory. Inductive approach: Start with empirical observations and then work to come up with a theory

Durkheim's Analysis

Two Dimensions That Make up Society: •Integration: •How tied you are, as an individual, to others. •You can have too much integration where you feel trapped by a group and too little where you feel alone. •Regulation: •The idea that all groups have rules, both formal and informal that create expectations for our behavior. •You can have too much and too little regulation. •Anomie: •Having too little regulation, where people do not have clear moral standards or social expectations to guide their behavior. •The less we feel integrated into the community around us, and the faster the rules about acceptable behavior change, the more likely we are to feel anomie. If enough people experience it, societies can crumble.

The Research Mindset

Using sociological imagination to think of relationships between micro and macro levels. Avoiding ethnocentric pitfalls that create false measures of right and wrong. Operating within the framework of cultural relativism to understand other races, groups, cultures, subcultures from their contexts rather than yours. Relying on empirical evidence to answer the "why" questions

Early years of sociological thought in America

W.E.B. DuBois: •Challenged Marx's assumptions: •Marx believed slavery was an old economic form of premodern civilizations and incompatible with capitalism... Du Bois gathered historical and statistical evidence that showed slavery and capitalism mutually reinforced one another. •Argued that economic wages were not the only factor that drives behavior; race matters. •Psychological wages: •In a racial system, whites receive psychological wages, which are wages paid in other things than money. •Slave owners used the myth of racial inferiority to justify slavery. White workers supported this myth because they held the preferred status (a relative social standing) of being white. •3 implications from Du Bois: 1.Slavery and the growth of capitalism were interrelated 2.Understanding social life requires looking at race relations 3.Economics is not necessarily the dominant value for people. Sometimes people will value their status and receive psychological wages for holding a position above others, regardless of how little they make in wages.

Weber's concepts

Weber's Concepts: •Rational Behavior: •This is calculating behavior, to have a goal and plan how to achieve that goal most efficiently... that is being rational... Characteristic of modern society. •People in modern society work to live. One way of behaving that is more fun will be abandoned for one that is more efficient for the completion of a goal. •Weber observed that as society became more modernized, this attribute, rationalization, would increase •Nonrational Behavior: •Behavior not geared to achieving some goal but was simply to be experienced or appreciated for itself... This was characteristic of people in premodern society. •Historically, Weber discovered people were less calculating to achieve certain ends... People farmed and produced crafts because they were ways of life, not because they were ways to live. •

Rationalization of Society

Weber's term for the long-term historical process by which rationality replaced tradition as the basis for organizing social and economic life

Dubois contribution

What was DuBois' Main Sociological Concept? •Double Consciousness: •A mechanism by which African Americans develop 2 behavioral scripts. •One is the script any American would have moving through society. •Second is the script that takes the external opinions of an often racially prejudiced onlooker into consideration. "One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder" • •The risk of operating within the double-consciousness is conforming so closely to others' perceptions that they become fully constrained to the behaviors predicted of them.

Reverse Causality

When you believe that A is causing B, but B is actually causing A. ex: is income causing bad health or is bad health causing lower income?

Where does Capitalism come from?

Where does Capitalism Come From? •Marx and Weber tackled this question from different theoretical frameworks. •Marx: Capitalism emerged out of the previous economic system of feudalism. Economic relations were the most important factor in understanding society. •Weber: Cultural dynamics (values people hold that produce social action) created actions that led to capitalism. The cultural influence was Calvinism that inspired church members to: •Believe in hard work •Value economic success •To invest what they earned rather than spend it on themselves. •Marx believed capitalism caused culture, and Weber believed cultural values guided actions that resulted in capitalism. •

Social Self

Your concept of self as developed through your personal, social interactions with others; the values, beliefs, ideas and decision-making strategies, and the general way in which people live their lives

Operational Definitions

a carefully worded statement of the exact procedures used in a research study

Social Aggregate

a collection of people who happen to be together in a particular place but do not significantly interact or identify with one another

Goal Displacement

a condition that occurs when a decision-making group loses sight of its original goal and a new, less important goal emerges

Ideal Type

a description comprised of the essential characteristics of a feature of society; perspectives or simplified characterizations of theories that emphasize the most important aspects of reality, not all of its intricacies and variations

Spurious Relationship

a false association between two variables that is actually due to the effect of some third variable

Spurious relationship

a false correlation between two variables that is actually caused by a third variable. that third variable is often called a "confounding" or a "lurking" variable.

Convenience Sample

a form of nonprobability sample using respondents who are convenient or readily accessible to the researcher—for example, employees, friends, or relatives

Formal Organization

a group designed for a special purpose and structured for maximum efficiency

Secondary Group

a large and impersonal social group whose members pursue a specific goal or activity

Status Symbol

a material sign that informs others of a person's specific status

Double Consciousness

a mechanism by which African Americans develop two behavioral scripts: 1. The script any American would have moving through society 2. The script that takes the external opinions of an often racially prejudiced onlooker into consideration

Consumerism

a movement advocating greater protection of the interests of consumers •More than just buying stuff, more than just being "materialistic". It has to do with the belief that ones happiness and fulfillment can be achieved through the acquisition of material possessions. •Versace, Gucci, BMW reflect a sense of self-worth and "lifestyle" and belonging to certain "classes" of people.

Status

a person's condition or position in the eyes of the law; relative rank or standing, especially in society; prestige

Workplace

a place where people work, such as an office or factory.

Deductive Approach

a research approach that starts with a theory, forms a hypothesis, makes empirical observations, and then analyzes the data to confirm, reject, or modify the original theory

Inductive Approach

a research approach that starts with empirical observations and then works to form a theory

Participant Observation

a research method in which investigators systematically observe people while joining them in their routine activities

Triangulation

a research strategy that helps zero in on social phenomena using multiple methods

Positive Sanctions

a reward or positive reaction for following norms, ranging from a smile to a material reward

Random Sample

a sample that fairly represents a population because each member has an equal chance of inclusion

Role

a set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave

Self-Administered Questionnaire

a set of questions given to respondents who read the instructions and fill in the answers themselves

Reverse Causality

a situation in which the researcher believes that A results in a change in B, but B, in fact, is causing A

Primary Group

a small social group whose members share personal and lasting relationships; interact on a direct and personal basis

Master Status

a status that has special importance for social identity, often shaping a person's entire life

Culture Jamming

a strategy to disrupt efforts by the corporate world to dominate our cultural landscape; the radical transformation of an intended message in popular culture, especially one associated with the mass media, to protest underlying realities of which consumers may be unaware •The act of turning media against itself. Part of a movement against consumer culture and consumerism. •Based on the presumption that advertising is propaganda.

Content Analysis

a systematic analysis of the content rather than the structure of a communication, such as a written work, speech, or film; applying a systematic approach to record and value information gleaned from secondary data as it relates to the study at hand

Survey

a technique for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes or behaviors of a particular group, usually by questioning a representative, random sample of the group

Degradation Ceremony

a term coined by Harold Garfinkel to refer to a ritual whose goal is to remake someone's self by stripping away that individual's self-identity and stamping a new identity in its place

Feminist Theory

a theoretical approach that looks at gender inequities in society and the way that gender structures the social world; looking at work from macro perspective, focusing on stratifications/inequalities in society, particularly women's social roles in education, family, and workforce. Women face DISCRIMINATION, OBJECTIFICATION, OPPRESSION, AND STEREOTYPING. NOT an attempt to replace men.

Midrange Theory

a theory that attempts to predict how certain social institutions tend to function

Literature Review

a thorough search through previously published studies relevant to a particular topic

Stereotypes

a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. •Oversimplified generalizations about groups of people without taking into account individual differences within that group. •Oversimplified generalizations of the character of groups of people from various communities (racial, ethnic, religious, LGBTQ...). •Stereotypes can be positive or negative.

Achieved vs. Ascribed Status

achieved - acquires on basis of merit or effort/action, changeable ascribed - by birth, unchangeable, unearned, lifelong, assigned to people or groups based on traits beyond control

Observations: Participant observer

admits to participants that they are researchers and may involve self with the group

Habitualized Action

an action that is repeated frequently and becomes cast into a pattern

Domination

an approach to dealing with conflict in which one party satisfies its desires and objectives at the expense of the other party's desires and objectives

Total Institution

an institution in which one is totally immersed and that controls all the basics of day-to-day life; no barriers exist between the usual spheres of daily life, and all activity occurs in the same place and under the same single authority; a setting in which people are isolated from the rest of society and manipulated by an administrative staff

Generalized Other

an internalized sense of the total expectations of others in a variety of settings - regardless of whether we've encountered those people or places before

Macrosociology

analysis of social life that focuses on broad features of society, such as social class and the relationships of groups to one another; usually used by functionalists and conflict theorists. Broader social phenomena, how changes in institutions create impacts on people

Microsociology

analysis of social life that focuses on social interaction; typically used by symbolic interactionists. Interactions of individuals and context of those interactions. Questions about the context of roles

IRB (Institutional Review Board)

any academic research needs to be proposed to their IRB, review for ethical violations and/or procedural errors

Cultural Leveling

as cultural diffusion increases and more cultural norms are spread to other societies, the difference between cultures decreases

'Iron Cage'

become trapped in a prison of rules and regulations that denies humanity, creativity, and autonomy

Role Taking

children's play that involves assuming adult roles, thus enabling the child to experience different points of view

High Culture

classical music, opera, ballet, live theater, and other activities usually patronized by elite audiences

Auguste Comte (Functionalist)

coined the term sociology. Brought Positivism too

Conflict Theory (second paradigm)

conflict between competing interests is the basic, animating driving force for social change and characteristic of society in general. Society as competition for limited resources, macro-level approach. Social institutions reflect this competition in their inherent inequalities and help maintain the unequal social structure. The "winners" with more resources use their power to maintain institutions.

Correlation vs. Causation

correlation - just a relationship, each one could effect the other. The relationship between 2 sets of variables used to describe or predict data or events causation - one factor causes the other. when an observed event or action appears to have caused a second event or action

Normative

differs from the empirical by including value statements, including a morally-endorsed ideal

Ethnocentrism

evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one's own culture.

Robert K. Merton

expanded our understanding of the concept of social function by pointing out that any social structure probably has many functions. He distinguished between manifest functions and latent functions.

Field Research

gathering data from a natural environment without doing a lab experiment or a survey

Values

general or abstract ideas about what is good and desirable, as opposed to what is bad and undesirable in a society

Individualism

giving priority to one's own goals over group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications; a social theory favoring freedom of action for individuals over collective or state control.

Peer Groups

groups of people who are similar in age and stage of life

Subculture

groups whose shared values, norms, beliefs, or use of material culture sets them apart from other people in that society

Division of Labor

has social and moral consequences; helps to define social solidarity

Psychological Wages

in a racial system, whites receive psychological wages, which are wage paid in other things than money

Ethics in Research

informed consent protection from harm/discomfort maintain confidentiality debriefing

Observational Research

involves gathering primary data by observing relevant people, actions, and situations

Napoleon Chagnon

is best known for his long-term ethnographic field work among the Yanomamö, his contributions to evolutionary theory in cultural anthropology, and to the study of warfare. The Yanomamo are a society of indigenous tribal amazonians that live in the border area between Venezuela and Brazil.

Hegemony

leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over others. •A condition by which a dominant group uses its power to elicit the voluntary consent of the masses. •Usually achieved through social institutions and allows those in power to strongly influence the values, norms, ideas, worldviews and behaviors of people in society. •Frames the worldview of the ruling class, and the social and economic structures as just and legitimate and designed for the benefit of society. Even though these structures serve to benefit the ruling class exclusively. •This domination is different from ruling by force because it allows the ruling class to maintain authority using the "peaceful" means of ideology and culture in exercising moral and intellectual leadership.

Polgyny

marriage between one man and two or more women

Domination

means getting people to do what you want them to do through force.... Hegemony is getting them to go along with the status quo because it seems like the best course or the natural order of things.

Taboos

mores so strong that their violation is considered to be extremely offensive and even unmentionable

Accretion Measures

nonreactive measures of the residue of the activity of people or what they leave behind

Folkways

norms that are not strictly enforced

Cultural Relativism

not judging a culture but trying to understand it on its own terms. If we want to understand a culture, we have to understand it by their own cultural contexts. Nobody has a perfectly neutral position, best to acknowledge our assumptions than pretend they're not there.

Artifacts

object made by human beings, either hand-made or mass-produced

Formative Negative Sanctions

official responses from specific social organizations (i.e. government, universities, churches)

Group Aggregate

one or more other individuals with whom we share some sense of identity or common goals and with whom we interact within a specific social structure

Social Constructions

parts of the social world that are created by people as they interact with one another under particular social, political, and economic conditions

Institutional Racism

patterns of discrimination based on ethnicity that have become structured into existing social institutions

Beliefs and Ideology

people's ideas about what is real and what is not real

Inconvenient Facts

pieces of evidence that contradict what you have always believed and/or want to believe about the social world

Play and Games

play - develops the self by allowing people to take on different roles, pretend, and express expectation of others. It develops one's self-consciousness thorugh role-playing. A person is able to internalize the perspective of others and develop an understanding of how others feel about themselves and others in different social situations games - develops the self by allowing people to understand and adhere to the rules of the activity. The self is developed by understanding that there are rules in which one must abide by in order to win the game

Back Stage Behavior

private behavior

Formal Positive Sanctions

public affairs, rituals, or ceremonies that express social approval of a person's behavior

Status Inconsistency

ranking high on some dimensions of social status and low on others; also called status discrepancy

Rational & Nonrational Behavior

rational: this is calculating behavior, to have a goal and plan how to achieve that goal most efficiently...characteristic of modern society nonrational: behavior not geared to achieving some goal but was simply to be experiences or appreciated for itself...characteristic of premodern society

Qualitative Methodology

research that relies on what is seen in field or naturalistic settings more than on statistical data; informal research methods, including observation, following social media sites, in-depth interviews, focus groups, and projective techniques. Interpretivist: concerned with meanings attached to behaviors of social actors, seeks to understand social worlds from the point of view of participants, leading to in-depth knowledge. Find ways to get closer to informant's lived experience and perceptions. Not converted to numeric forms. Nonlinear path, hard data is collected through words, symbols, actions, lived experiences

Informal Positive Sanctions

rewards given out by the social group (ie. Standing ovation, a smile)

Norms

rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its members

Functions & Dysfunctions

social arrangements that contribute to society overall that have consequences that are harmful or disruptive to society are dysfunctions

Agents of Socialization

social institutions, including families and schools, that help to shape individuals' basic political beliefs and values

Functionalism

society is viewed as a system of interconnected and interdependent parts that work together harmoniously to maintain a state of balance and social equilibrium for the whole each institution (family, government, economy) is designed to fill different needs and each institution has effects for the form and shape of society; the parts all depend on each other. Herbert Spencer: proposed that these parts of society are like "organs" that work toward the proper functioning of the "body" as a whole.

Sanctions

something that forces obedience with a law or rule

Variables

something that is of interest in a particular piece of research. 2 values: 1. something that is of interest in a particular piece of research 2. it has variation or difference in it- not a constant.

Mores / Mos

strictly enforced because they are believed to be essential to core values; reflect deeply-held cultural ideas about how people ought to behave

Depersonalization

subjective experience of the partial or total disruption of one's ego and the disintegration and disorganization of one's self-concept

5 categories of nonmaterial culture

symbols, language, norms, values, and beliefs

Sociology

systematic study of the evolution, development, and functioning of human society

Social Institutions

systems and structures within society that shape the activities of groups and individuals

C.W. Mills - "The Sociological Imagination"

the ability to connect impersonal and remote historical forces to the most basic incidents of an individual's life. The sociological imagination enables people to distinguish between personal troubles and public issues.

Self-Sufficiency

the act of supplying one's own needs without assistance; the act of having extreme confidence in one's own resources or powers.

Mean

the arithmetic average of a distribution, obtained by adding the scores and then dividing by the number of scores

Material Culture

the art, housing, clothing, sports, dances, foods, and other similar items constructed or created by a group of people

Reactive Effects

the changes in an individual or group behavior that result from being observed or otherwise studied

Demographics

the characteristics of a population with respect to age, race, and gender, etc.

Idioculture

the customs, practices, and values expressed in a particular place by the people who interact there; every group has within it a culture of its own...can be viewed as group culture (eg. family, sports teams, fan bases, etc.)

Genocide

the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.

Culture

the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next

Validity

the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to

Reliability

the extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting

Validity:

the extent to which an instrument measures what it is intended to measure

Generalizability

the extent to which we can claim our findings inform us about a group larger than the one we studied

Culture Shock

the feelings of anxiety and/or disorientation that people experience when they come in contact with a fundamentally different culture and can no longer depend on their taken-for-granted assumptions about life

Jane Addams

the founder of Hull House, which provided English lessons for immigrants, daycares, and child care classes

Reliability

the likelihood of obtaining consistent results using the same measure

Median

the middle score in a distribution; half the scores are above it and half are below it

Mode

the most frequently occurring score(s) in a distribution

Hidden Curriculum

the nonacademic and less overt socialization functions of schooling; the informal and unofficial aspects of culture that children are taught in school that socializes children to societal norms

Debriefing

the post-experimental explanation of a study, including its purpose and any deceptions, to its participants

Socialization

the process by which individuals internalize the values, beliefs, and norms of a given society and learn to function as members of that society; the process by which society molds its members into properly social beings and by which people acquire cultural competency and through which society perpetuates the fundamental nature of existing social structures

Resocialization

the process of learning new norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors

Collective Conscience

the shared morals and beliefs that are common to a group and which foster social solidarity

Cultural Diffusion

the spreading of one society's culture to another. More specifically, it is the adopting of others culture...this can be material and / or nonmaterial culture

Alienation

the state or experience of being isolated from a group or an activity to which one should belong or in which one should be involved.

Cultural Capital

the symbolic and interactional resources that people use to their advantage in various situations; acquired and traded

Role Conflict

the tension caused by competing demands between two or more roles pertaining to different statuses

Means of Production

the tools, factories, land, and investment capital used to produce wealth

Industrial Revolution

the transformation from an agricultural to an industrial nation. Changed economies, the way labor was performed, people's roles, created more specializations and reorganized many aspects of society. Division of labor: economic arrangement where workers and communities, specialize in particular tasks or products, rather than producing everything they need themselves.

Triangulation

the use of multiple research methods as a way of producing more reliable empirical data than are available from any single method

Heterogeneity

the variability of the inputs and outputs of services, which causes services to tend to be less standardized and uniform than goods

Dramaturgical Theory

the view of social life as essentially a theatrical performance, in which we are all actors on metaphorical stages, with roles, scripts, costumes, and sets

Anticipatory Socialization

the voluntary process of preparing to accept new norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors; processes of socialization in which a person rehearses for future positions, occupations, and social relationships

Construct

the words used to describe things that exist analytically but are not directly observable. ex: currency, masculinity/femininity, race/racism

A sociological theoretical paradigm (perspective)

theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and the inquires performed in support of them: lenses to view the social world The 3 main sociological paradigms: 1. Functionalism (Structural-Functionalism) 2.

Sociological Theoretical Paradigm

theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and the inquiries performed in support of them...they serve as lenses to view the social world

Law of Three Stages

theory created by Auguste Comte that paved the way for the creation of Sociology that claimed the history of mankind could be broken down into three stages- theological stage (religious leaders were the major sources of knowledge / intellectual authority), metaphysical stage (people turned to philosophers for guidance), and the scientific stage (knowledge would be based on scientific principles)

Empirical

things that can be observed through the use of the physical senses - sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell

Sui Generis

unique, of its own kind, in a class by itself

Negative Relations

variables that vary in the opposite direction

Positive Relations

variables that vary in the same direction

Observations: complete observer

views things from a distance, remains unknown to the participants

Front Stage Behavior

what we do when we know that others are watching or aware of us

Cultural Appropriation

when members from a dominant culture adopt the cultural goods (ideas, symbols, skills, expressions, vernacular, intellectual property) of other groups for profit

Cunterculture

when members of a subculture hold values, share norms, or utilize material culture in ways that set them apart from the larger culture, and are perceived as threatening to the parent culture (eg. KKK)

Symbolic Interactionism (third paradigm)

where shared meanings, orientations and assumptions form the basic motivations behind people's actions •Focuses on the relationships among individuals within a society... A micro-level theory. •Communication is viewed as the exchange of meaning through language and symbols and is believed to be the way in which people make sense of their social worlds. •The idea that people act in response to the meanings that signs and social signals hold for them. By acting on perceptions of the social world in this way and regarding these meanings as created by the society (sui generis), we then collectively make their meanings so.

3 types of norms

•1- Folkways: •They are casual norms. Violations are not taken seriously... i.e. standing in opposite direction in an elevator •2- Mores: •Reflect important rules, such as norms against assaulting others. •Informal unwritten rules that, when violated, result in punishments and social sanctions •They deal with morality - rights and wrongs. •3- Taboos: •Norms that are so deeply held that the thought of their violations upset people... i.e. eating a pet dog.

Status Group

•A collection of people who share similar characteristics that a community has given a certain level of prestige - a greater or lesser value when compared to other groups. •Example: High School - Popular kids who wore certain style of clothes (high-status) and the kids who listened to a particular type of music (low-status).

Social Institution

•A complex and interlocking set of social norms and systems organized for the purpose of supporting society's survival. •Any structure or mechanism of social order and cooperation that governs the behavior of a set of individuals within a given society.

Agent of socialization: Workplace

•A major area of adult socialization •Involves various steps: •Step 1: Decide what you want to be when you grow up •Step 2: "Anticipatory Socialization" - Learning about and/or playing at a work role before entering it. For instance, children playing storekeeper or doctor. High school/college students may volunteer, take on internships or research a specific job/field. These are essentially a rehearsal for the future and a way the individual learns about its expectations and rewards. •Step 3: Finds the job and learns the reality of the job - the good and the bad. •On the job socialization then, is not just learning to do "work" but learning to cope with doing the work.

Counterculture

•A special form of subculture. •When members of a subculture hold values, share norms, or utilize material culture in ways that set them apart from the larger culture, and are perceived as threatening to the parent culture... i.e. KKK, gangs, militia groups, terrorist organizations.

material culture

•All the things that humans make or adapt from nature... ie computers, houses, paintings, jewelry, cell phones... •The items that are used in making material culture have meaning to them. A walking stick is part of material culture because it was picked up and used for a purpose, the other sticks were not, and so they are just sticks. •Material culture is made up of artifacts, which are byproducts of human behavior.

Feminist Theory

•An emphasis on women's experiences and a belief that sociology and society in general subordinate women •Emphasizes equality between men and women and wants to see women's lives and experiences represented in sociological study. •Focuses on defining concepts like sex and gender, and questions meanings assigned to these concepts. •Focuses on inequalities based on gender categories... Inequalities in the home/workplace/schools and government. •Focuses on how power relationships are defined, shaped, reified and reproduced on the basis of gender differences.

Language

•An organized set of symbols made up of spoken words and nonverbal gestures. •Language is the bedrock of culture because speech and meaning are conveyed through this mechanism.

Symbols

•Anything that represents something else to more than one person... $, %, are all symbols. •Objects can be symbols if they have meanings for more than one person, because of that, symbols are social things. A rose has a meaning beyond just being a flower. •Symbols are powerful because we react to them as if they are the real thing, they don't simply convey information, they evoke our emotions as well.

Cultural Leveling

•As cultural diffusion increases and more cultural norms are spread to other societies, the difference between cultures decreases.

The Chicago School

•Basic Premise of The Chicago School: •Human's behaviors and personalities are shaped by their social and physical environments, which came to be known as social ecology. •The Landscape •In a generation, Chicago grew from a midsize to a major metropolitan city because of industrialization, immigration and the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural south to the urban north. This growth created a real-life sociology laboratory. •Areas of study: •Immigration, race and ethnicity, politics and family life. •Methods •Involvement in communities, interviews •

Dramaturgical theory concepts

•Because we are all actors, we all need scripts, costumes and sets. •Setting: •The physical layout or background where the social interactions occur - this includes the props and costumes. •Stage: •The makeup of the situation; the location where a performance unfolds •Scripts: •Our internalized categories and "labels" that we project when interacting; this can be very explicit like when your job expects you to literally say specific lines... or when in a relationship and your partner says "I love you," you're expected to reply, "I love you, too." •Face: •The esteem in which an individual is held by others •Breach: •Mistakes - these are parts of the game where there is a break down in the scripts. Example: On the first day of class, you knew your role was student, the professor handed out materials (props) and talked about class expectations (script) and gave a lecture (performance).

The Looking Glass Self

•Charles Horton Cooley: •Developed the concept of the looking glass self, and a premier symbolic-interactionist sociologist. •The Looking-glass self: •Based on our perception of how others view/see us, we develop our reflected (looking-glass) selves. •This process raises questions on our behaviors, self-esteem, identity... •3 Steps of Social Self Development: •1- We imagine how we look to the other person •2- We imagine the judgement of that other person's reaction to our appearance •3- We have some self-feeling such as pride, shame, mortification, etc. •We essentially develop our self (identity) through the perceived judgements of others •We learn to use this looking glass (our sense of identity/self) in the intimacy of primary groups (primarily family) and often early on in life. •

Culture and Inequality

•Cultural Capital: •Cultural goods (material and symbolic) are acquired and traded. •Non-economic resources are composed of knowledge, skills, behaviors that are useful in a particular sphere in social life. •Kinds of Cultural Capital: •Institutional: Degree from a particular university. •Embodied: Your manners, style, ways of acting. •Objectified: Your clothes or other material objects. •Cultural capital is like money. Cultural goods aren't necessarily valuable everywhere, or in the same way. Just like the dollar isn't valued the same in every country. •Fields: •Contexts where a particular kind of cultural capital is exchanged, like a community, profession or class of people. This is the field of play that has its own rules. •Habitus: •Our ability to know how capital works; using the right kind of knowledge in the right way that can lead to rewards. •Our learned dispositions and sets of tendencies organizing how we see the world and act within it. A sort of social second nature. •

High culture

•Cultural goods made for and enjoyed by elite groups. •Includes: paintings, ballet, opera, fancy cuisine.

How does culture move?

•Culture as Product of Action: •Culture systems (material and nonmaterial things) are created by human beings and are therefore products of action. •Culture is a product of our actions and interactions. •We give meaning to gestures and symbols through our interactions. •Culture as a Conditioning Element of Further Action: •Culture conditions our actions and behaviors and influences how we live our lives. •It gives us our taken-for-granted assumptions that our way is the right way. •It socializes us....

Socialization

•Culture's affect on us... it is our internalization of society's values, beliefs and norms as we learn to function as members of society. •The process by which society molds its members into properly social beings. •The process by which people acquire cultural competency and through which society perpetuates the fundamental nature of existing social structures •It is a learning process that involves itself with developing and shaping our sense of self.

Dramaturgical Theory

•Developed by Erving Goffman in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) •Dramaturgical Theory: •The view of social life as essentially a theoretical performance (a play), in which we are all actors on metaphorical stages, with roles, scripts, costumes, and sets. •The moral of this play is "impression management", which is that all of us actors are struggling to make a good impression on our audience (who also happen to be actors as well). •The goal is not to just make the best impression on others, but also to actively work to ensure that others will believe they are making a good impression as well.

Ethnometodology

•Developed by Harold Garfinkle (1950's&1960's) •The methods of the people - an approach to studying human interaction that focuses on the ways in which we make sense of our world, convey this understanding to others, and produce a shared social order. •How we use social interaction to maintain a continuing sense of reality within the situation. •For example, interactions include verbal/nonverbal speech and actions, if these cues aren't used correctly and a breach occurs, another social situation comes forth. •Garfinkle created "Breaching Experiments". •Experiments where he would send his students out to the public to breach social norms and see what happens. These experiments included facing backwards in an elevator, asking people on the subway for their seat without giving a reason.

midrange theory

•Developed by Robert Merton •It is neither microsociology or macrosociology. It attempts to predict how certain social institutions tend to function. •An attempt to bridge the gap between grand theory and hard empiricism and integrate them •It generates falsifiable hypotheses for theory construction

Idioculture

•Every group has within it a culture of its own... can be viewed as group culture. •As people interact on a regular basis they develop their own shared beliefs, knowledge and customs that are important in shaping their future interactions. •Example: family, sports teams, fan bases.

Agent of Socialization: Family

•Family is the first socializing agent because it gets the first crack at you. •Family not only provides you with your learned cultural competency, but also helps society perpetuate its existing social structure by reproducing existing social arrangements. •The ascribed social status of parents, they place different expectations on their children that translate to real-world social placements of the children when they grow up. •For Example: •Low income parents might expect and value obedience from their children over creative thinking/intellectual curiosity, which is valued more by higher income parents. These socialized behaviors translate to placements within an economic structure in terms of employment. Parents tend to pass on to their children the outlooks that are suited to their own experiences in the world.

Dramaturgical theory cont.

•Front Stage: •The behavior you engage in when you know others are watching. •Reflects internalized norms and expectations for behavior partly shaped by the setting and your role. •Performance can be intentional and/or habitual. •This behavior typically follows routinized and learned social scripts shaped by cultural norms. •Examples: Waiting in line, making appointments, job interviews... •Back Stage: •You are free from the expectations of others •Space where you let your hair down, and reflect your true self... You are free to reflect the real you. •Example: Your clothes, ways of speaking, ways of behaving may all change. •Front Stage/Back Stage Example: Wait staff at a restaurant.

Criticism of Paradigms

•Functionalism: •Downplays the role of individuals... By doing so it is less likely to recognize how individual actions may alter/influence social institutions. •Unable to explain social change because its focus is on social order and balance or stability in society. •Tends to justify status quo. •Does not encourage individuals to take initiative in changing their social environments. •Conflict Theory: •Its focus on change and the neglect of social stability. •Societies are constantly changing, but much of the change is minor or incremental, not revolutionary. •Symbolic Interactionism •Neglects the macro level of social interpretation •Rejects the influence of social forces and institutions on individual interactions •

Values

•General or abstract ideas about what is good and desirable, as opposed to what is bad and undesirable in a society. •A culture's standard for distinguishing what is good and just in society. •They are deeply embedded and are central for transmitting and teaching a culture's beliefs through the generations. •The handing out of sanctions is societies way of expressing norms and asserting values.

Subculture

•Groups whose shared values, norms, beliefs, or use of material culture sets them apart from other people in that society. •Their shared sets of concepts, values, symbols and meanings are specific to that particular group. •Offer alternative outlets and ways of life; they can offer freedoms to explore other behaviors, break norms and taboos in ways the dominant culture does not. •They have historically been viewed as vulgar and deviant and often marginalized by the mainstream. •How do they emerge? •From occupations - Police, religious members, regional differences, shared ethnic or racial heritage. •How do they disappear? •Aspects of their beliefs, values or use of material culture gets adopted by members of the mainstream larger culture... This creates cultural leveling.

Early american sociology

•Harriet Martineau: •Translated the works of Auguste Comte •Considered the first feminist social scientists •She addressed topics that included the ways we educate children to the relationship between federal and state governments. •Authored How to Observe Morals and Manners - A book about marriage that claims the institution was based on the assumption of the inferiority of women. •Jane Addams: •From the Chicago School •Founded the Hull House - A community center that linked the ideas of the university to the poor through various social, educational and financial services. It was staffed by students and professionals. •The ideas of the Chicago school were put into practice and tested at the Hull House

Popular culture

•Heavily produced and commercialized goods made for and consumed by a large audience. •High culture is produced for elite and upper-middle class tastes and has an aura of exceptional quality, popular culture is commonly associated with pleasure, mundane, and the masses. •These lines are becoming more blurred with new media and technologies.

Agent of socialization: School

•Is usually the first place where kids learn that everyone can expect to be treating in the same relatively impersonal manner. •Manifest Function of School: •Provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary for success in the adult world. •Latent Function of School: •"The hidden curriculum" - To prepare students to accept what teachers and administrators believe will be the student's places in the social structure. In some schools, students are "tracked" into special programs (ie vocational versus college prep programs).

nonmaterial culture

•Made up of intangible things... Example, ideas about beauty, truth, happiness, what is funny, right and wrong and the words we use to express these ideas.

Belief

•People's ideas about what is real and what is not real. •Tenets or convictions that people hold to be true... What people accept to be factual. •Beliefs and Values can conflict: •People in society value the preservation of human life, but many (often the same people) don't value innocent deaths from wars or police killings because of their belief of the way "law and order" should look/operate. •People in society value the freedom of expression, but don't value other people's overt religious expressions because they don't believe in their same deity/way of life.

Marx's Analysis

•Relational Sociology: •Instead of focusing on the properties/characteristics of individuals, you focus on the relationships individuals have with others and with social institutions... In Marx's case, the economy. •Culture of Capitalist Society: •Alienation: •The feeling of being disconnected from others, from work and even from one's own sense of humanity. •Marx believed workers are alienated because of 3 reasons: 1.Alienation from each other because they have to compete against each other for jobs 2.Capitalists tell workers how to work, which alienates workers from the labor process itself. 3.Workers have little to no control over what they make, which alienates them from the things they produce. •Because of these reasons, Marx believed workers are alienated from their very humanity.

Norms

•Rules as they relate to our behavior •They are agreed-upon modes and rules of behavior that are enforced and reinforced within a society

How does socialization work?

•Socialization is a give-and-take between people and the others in their environment. It is a reflective process. •***People do not receive their social selves passively*** People are active participants in the creation of their selves within the socialization process.

The social construction of reality

•Something is real, meaningful, or valuable when society tells us it is. •Less about what is real and what is fake... Rather, it is about an explanation of how we give meanings to things or ideas through social interactions. •Two ways to understand how we socially construct our reality: •To compare one society over different time periods •Example: Children in the US, their roles/expectations/responsibilities in early society was different than it is now. •To compare two contemporary societies •Example: What constitutes food? In many nations insects are viewed as food, whereas the US has different impressions of insects as food... So, who's right?

Agent of Socialization: Mass Media

•Television viewing shapes viewer's conceptions of social reality. The more television exposure, the more likely one's interpretation of the social reality will reflect that of the TV world rather than the real observable world.

The Social Process

•The Social Self: •The values, beliefs, ideas and decision-making strategies, and the general way in which people live their lives. •These are not biologically explained, but are the areas where the society directs the human being. •To form the social self, social interaction is a necessity, not a luxury or option. •Without social interaction you cannot organize your complex attitudes of beliefs, values or behaviors. •The Other: •Someone or something outside of oneself. •The Generalized Other: •An internalized sense of the total expectations of others in a variety of settings - regardless of whether we've encountered those people or places before. •In this way we are able to function with complete strangers in a wide range of social settings.

The "I" and the "Me"- George Herbert Mead

•The Social self arises out of the social act of communication, which is the basis for socialization. •The social self is the product of an ongoing interaction between the I and the Me. •What is the "Me"? •The part of the self that is based on how you see others seeing you. •What you see when you put yourself in the shoes of someone else looking at you. •The organized set of attitudes of others which you assume •learned behaviors, attitudes, and expectations of others and of society (AKA the Generalized other) •The Me has been developed by the knowledge of society and social interactions the person has gained. •What is the "I"? •The part of you that is uniquely you - your personal reactions to a situation. •Your response to the attitudes of others •Represents the person's identity based on response to the "me". •The "I" would say... Society wants (expects) me to behave and interact in this way, and so I either will or won't. •The self is then built up through the interaction of the I and me... the interaction between my own impulses (the I) and my understanding of other people's reactions to those impulses (the me).

Karl Marx's Central Conflict

•The economic structure: •The economic system, or the modes of production and distribution of goods, is the most crucial aspect of society. •People of any society can be funneled into 2 major classes: the owners of the means of production (bourgeoisie) and the worker who sell their labor to the owners (proletariat). •The conflict is that there are a small number of owners and a large number of workers that had opposing interests. •Owners want to accumulate more wealth for themselves, so they organize work in a way where workers receive lower wages for labor and put workers in competition against each other. •Workers want higher wages, more control over the labor process and the ability to decide how they work. •Ideas, values, social conventions, morals, law and religion were secondary to the economic system and were only in the service of the economic realities of social life

Examples of I and Me

•The me, is the internalization of other's perspectives on ourselves, it is the perspective we get of ourselves from how others treat us... So, it's the cumulative perspective I have of myself if I'm treated as a man or as a troubled youth for example. •The I, is the part of us that responds to these internalized attitudes - how I act based on others' perspective of me as a man or troubled youth. •Another example: •The me is the expected "masculine"/"feminine" behavior of a woman or man... the I is the part of you that responds to those expectations. •The I are your actions to conform or not... It is your unique you. •Me = The expectations and attitudes of others and the organized set of attitudes of others assumed by the individual. •I = The individual's response to the "me"

Agent of socialization: Peer Group

•The peer group socializes children to become independent from adult authority. •Much of children's peer group socialization reinforces standard cultural conventions of statuses and roles... Peer groups can act as a means of reinforcing existing social structures/arrangements. •Examples: •Boys' and girls' play is policed by peer groups to reinforce social roles of "masculinity" and "femininity". Girls are put down for displaying independent behavior or being overly aggressive, whereas boys are put down for being "wimps" if they don't behave aggressively or tough.

Symbolic Interactionism

•The process by which things - ideas, concepts and values are socially constructed. •3 Theories of Symbolic Interactionism: 1.Human beings act toward ideas, concepts, and values based on the meaning that those things have for them. 2.These meanings are the products of social interaction in human society. 3.These meanings are modified and filtered through an interpretive process that each individual uses in dealing with outward signs. •SI is useful to really understanding cultural differences in styles of social interaction. •SI is a useful tool for understanding the meanings of symbols and signs and the way shared meanings, or lack of shared meanings, facilitate or impede routine interaction.

Cultural Diffusion

•The spreading of one society's culture to another. More specifically, it is the adopting of others culture... this can be material and/or nonmaterial culture. •Much of this diffusion has to do with the level of communication between the two (or more) societies. How much easier is this now with technology?

Symbolic boundaries

•The ways people separate each other into groups through traditions, styles, tastes and classifications. •A way of organizing ourselves through the mechanism of culture. •Creates cultural bridges and fences. •Bridges: Generates feelings of belonging, group membership, and binds people together. •Fences: Nurtures a sense of "us vs. them", creates social distance amongst people. •Boundary Work - Creating and maintaining distinctions and limiting membership and access to resources.

Chicago School Theoretical Paradigm

•Theoretical Paradigm: •The "Social Self"... emerged from Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead. •How the social environment affects meaning and shapes the individual - a rural environment has different messages than a city environment. •Charles Cooley: •The "Looking-Glass Self" - The process where people base their sense of self on how they believe others view them. Social interaction is a "mirror" where people use the judgments they receive from others to measure their own worth, values, and behavior. So, we are in constant interaction with the surrounding social world. •George Herbert Mead: •Theory of the Social Self - the self emerges from social interactions like observing and interacting with others, responding to others' opinions and internalizing external opinions and internal feelings about oneself. The "Self" is not a biologically-inherited trait... It was not there since birth... Rather, it is developed over time through social experiences. •

Agents of Socialization: Total institutions and resocialization

•Total Institutions (Erving Goffman): •A place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life.... Examples?? •People are cut off from the rest of society and stripped of their individuality. •Goal of the total institutions is to take away the individual's self and give them a new one, more keeping with the needs of the total institution. •Resocialization: •Process where old behaviors that were helpful in a previous role are removed because they are no longer of use. •Radically changing someone's personality by carefully controlling their environment. •The systematic attempt to build a different personality or self.

Max Weber and Symbolic Interactionism

•Very influenced by Marx but differed with Marx in his view that the economic system was the driving force of all social outcomes. •Emphasized that to truly understand why people act the way they do, a sociologist must understand the meanings people attach to their actions. •Took it beyond looking at social structures, or class conflicts. •Emphasized Methodological Individualism: •In order to make sense of the world, it is necessary to focus on the individual. •Weber's Definition of Sociology: •A science concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences. •Social Action: •The behaviors that produce structures. •Interpretive: •If you want to understand someone's behavior, you can't just say there is an objective universal law guiding it. You need to make sense of the meaning individuals get from and assign to particular behaviors. •

cultural appropriation

•When members from a dominant culture adopt the cultural goods (ideas, symbols, skills, expressions, vernacular, intellectual property) of other groups for profit.