Sociology 102 Final
Bourdieu's Main Concepts:
-4 forms of capital: Things with value within a field of society. Having some of this allows you to generate more of it. -Economic capital (money or property that can be used to produce goods and services); Cultural capital (Educational credentials, knowledge, manners. All the informal education that happens is important for our success in life, can be converted into economic capital and vice versa); Social capital (social connections, network of relations); symbolic capital (prestige and reputation) -Habitus: A set of durable dispositions inside the individual. Ingrained ways of acting and thinking, they are durable and hard to change. Something within us, but structured by position in social space. Includes schemes of perception (ways of thinking/ seeing the world. Habitual ways of seeing the world, below the level of consciousness). Habitual ways of acting, posture, basic mannerisms tend to have certain characteristics. Physicalized male and female taught how to carry their bodies. -Habitus allows Bourdieu to make a link between macro and micro level, connecting broad social structured space to individuals.
Why and how are signs - especially language - important for the reality of everyday life? (Burger and Luckmann)
-A sign is distinguished from other objectivities by its explicit intention to serve as an index of subjective meanings. Serves as the subjective meaning of the person who made it, is also objectively available in the common reality that the person who made it and the person it was intended for share with other people. -The reality of everyday life is organized around the "here" of my body and the "now" of my present. There is a correspondence between your meanings and other people's meanings, and they share a common sense about its reality. As long as everyday life continues without interruption, they are apprehended as unproblematic. -The common objectifications of everyday life are maintained primarily by linguistic significance. Language makes subjectivity more real. Language holds a transcending and integrating power - it is capable of transcending the reality of everyday life.
According to Foucault, what are the two ways that punishment changed since the 18th century?
-Among the many changes, the disappearance of torture as a public spectacle. The ceremonial of punishment declined, and survived only as a new legal or administrative practice. Punishment ceased to be a spectacle, and whatever theatrical elements it still retained were downgraded. -Physical pain is no longer the constituent element of the penalty. Became more privately dealt, with the form of imprisonment rather than death. Punishment was less immediately the physical kind, it is no longer inflicting pain, rather a combination of more subdued sufferings, deprived of their visible display.
What is Bentham's panopticon? What are its effects on prisoners? (Hint: this is about the structure of prisons).
-Architectural figure, where a tower lies in the center with wide windows that open and allows the light to cross the cell from one end to another, a supervisor is in the central tower, and can observe and see constantly and recognize immediately. Prisoners are seen, but they do not see. They are the object of information, never a subject in communication. Don't know whether they are being watched, if at all. -The major effect is to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent in its effects. Gains in efficiently and in the ability to penetrate into men's behavior; knowledge follows the advances of power, discovering new objects of knowledge over all the surfaces on which power is exercised.
Why and how does Crenshaw (1989) critique antiracist politics? How does she think it should be changed?
-Black women are also excluded in antiracist policy, in that antiracist policies only speak and note on the discrimination against black men, and seldom tend to include the differences and experiences of black women. Black women experience different types of discrimination, often times, experiences that both white women and black women don't experience, respectively. -She recommends that both feminist theory and antiracist policy embrace the experiences and concerns of black women, the entire framework that has been used as a basis for translating "women's experience" or "the black experience" into concrete policy demands must be rethought and recast. -Suspicion that white female sexuality was often the pretext for terrorizing the black community, and some fear that anti-rape agendas may undermine antiracist objectives. Black women are caught between ideological and political currents that combine first to create and then bury black women's experiences. -Praxis of both should be centered on the life chances and life situations of people who should be cared about without regard to the source of their difficulties. The goal of this activity should be to facilitate the inclusion of marginalized groups for whom it can be said: "when they enter, we all enter."
Thinking about the last few years, to what extent is 'colorblindness' still a dominant racial ideology? Choose a specific example from American society and/ or politics.
-Blacklivesmatter -Travel ban on muslim countries. -Court system, specifically Trayvon Martin/ George Zimmerman trial. Many people speculated that race and racism had nothing to do with who was arrested, charged, and sentences with crimes. However, ignoring race and taking a color-blind stance reflects and ignores well-documented racial bias in the legal and justice system.
Social Constructionist Theories
-Central claim: Reality is socially constructed. -What is real to us, what we treat as real is socially created. -We create ideas as what is real, and then treat them as facts. -Reality that we experience, of everyday life, that we all accept as being true. -Berger and Luckmann
Historical Origins of Race
-Colonization and slavery --> oppression. -Race created by Europeans as a justification for oppression. To justify a system for some to be treated as humans with rights and others who are not.
What is 'colorblindness'? How do Omi and Winant explain its origins and critique it?
-Colorblindness: A new, and highly unstable form of racial hegemony. It has become the racial common sense. View that overt forms of racial discrimination are a thing of the past, and that the US is in the midst of a successful transition to a post-racial society. Any hints of race consciousness are tainted by racism. -Ignores ongoing racial inequality, racial violence, disenfranchisement, profiling, quasi-official re-segregation, and anti-immigrant racism; because profiling is ubiquitous and discriminatory practices are often thinly veiled at best. -Emerged from MLK's hope that people would someday be judged by "the content of their characters" rather than "the color of their skin" -Allows people (mainly whites) to indulge in a kind of anti-racism "lite". While explicit forms of racial animus (such as hate speech) are widely condemned, policies and practices that continue to produce racially disparate outcomes are accepted and even encouraged under the guise of moving us "beyond" race and towards a truly colorblind society. -We rely on racial categories in social interaction, in the presentation of self, and to "navigate" in varied social settings. In political life too, the state needs race to rule. -Neoliberal agenda: Overlaps and requires colorblindness, because it wants to dismantle the welfare state, limit taxation, and other forms of regulation of capital, ensure the docility and desperation of "others" (the poor, the workers, who were increasingly people of color). -Even under color blind hegemony, race still operates as a master category. It is something that must be denied. To police the ideological boundaries of colorblindness, you must also be racial conscious. -Invalidates people's identities, and racial experiences; hindering racial disparities and equating color with something negative.
Feminist Theories
-Critique existing gender relations and analyze. -Promote change in gender relations towards equality. -Want greater equality between the sexes. -Critical theory. Trying to change the existing relations. -Notion of patriarchy: This structure of male domination, in which men occupy dominant positions over women. -Gender oppression varies by race, sexual orientation, etc.
Racial Formation Theory
-Developed by Omi and Winant (1986). -A constructionist theory, people create idea of race, not mutually agreed upon. Power conflict. -Influenced by Marxist conflict theories, draw ont hese notions of conflicts and the state. Fighting against the state, conflicts linked to control fo the state. But groups are not classes, rather they are race. Critique for dismissing race. -Hegemony (from Gramsci): in modern capitalist societies, the ruling class dominates by getting other classes to accept this domination and go along with it. Serves the ruling class because it shows that a revolt isn't beneficial. Dominant group secures its rule by incorporating characteristics of opposition so it becomes a part of the system. Challenging the system, colorblindness maintains dominance of whites over non-whites. Everyone has equal opportunity, denies racism is an on-going problem. Closing off the possibility of resistance by convincing people there is no longer a problem. Getting people that would resist it, to accept it.
Critical Race Theories
-Developed by legal scholars. -Kimberle Crenshaw. -Interested in critiquing the legal system and changing it. -Indirect roots in critical theory (Marcuse). -Left wing legal scholars interested in the flaw of the law. Critique of how law and politics is separate, not true, law is not neutral and un-bias. Law is very much deeply rooted in politics. -Dissatisfied with the liberal views of civil rights. Treating racism as something exceptional. Problem of individuals and particular companies. It's systematic. -Seek to challenge racism, especially in the law. Don't see racism about the bias of individuals Racism is institutional and systematic. Baked into structure of society. -Any scholarship/ research is political. Not just about neutral legal system, it can enforce or challenge the existing power structure. -Value the experiences and knowledge of the victims of the legal system. -Going against dominant accounts of how the legal system works. REJECTS colorblindness of the law. Lots of ways the law is bias despite race not being included. The system operates in discriminatory ways, and courts allow no challenge of racial discrimination. -Traditional approach of way to study the law ignores the historical context of the law. Interested in the way the law has contributed to development of white supremacy. Courts decided what race people were, defining people's race for legal purposes and restricting resources. -Goal: End racial oppression. But they are very aware of intersectionality, also interested in all forms of oppression.
How was the growth of the disciplinary society (which we live in today) linked to the historical development of states and capitalism?
-Disciplines are techniques of assuring the ordering of human masses that elaborate tactics of power that operate economically and invisibly. These tactics aim to increase the docility and utility of all elements of the system. Population increase and rise in the numbers to be supervised. -The development of a capitalist economy led to a situation where these techniques could be operated in diverse regimes. The panoptic modality of power is not independent. The disciplines and panopticism are the reverse of a process by which rights are guaranteed. Combination of disciplinary techniques. -It's a way to keep the system going.
Michel Foucault's Theory
-Doing his own thing, common to Mead. -Influenced by, but moves away from: -Marx and Marxist conflict theories: Looking at a lot of areas of societies that Marxists' didn't look at. Like the human sciences. -Rejects the idea that we have truth on one side and ideology on the other side. Ideology that blinds us from the truth. -He thinks all knowledge is created by human beings, no absolute truth that separates from the body of knowledge -Understanding of power, marxists like to think of it in forms of oppression - and top down. This focus of power is missing that there are power relations all over the state. Not just top-down, and power isn't simply repressive, it can also be productive. It can make things, and allows for the production of knowledge.
Feminist Ethnomethodology
-Drawn from Garfinkel. -Key claim: Gender is an accomplishment. It isn't biological fact, not just a social structure or something that exists outside of us, something we accomplish constantly through our actions. -Overlaps with constructionist theories. By producing gender, we do it in a way that seems natural (reification). -West and Zimmerman's Doing Gender influenced by Harold Garfinkel. Relates to gender as something we do and produce. Gender is a social construct. Difference between men and masculinity and female and femininity.
Black Feminist Theories
-Emerge as a response to feminism. How it is very racially exclusive. -Challenge other feminist theories for focusing on white women, and treating experience and oppression of white women as universal. -Patricia Hill Collins: Shaped by own experiences, our theories aren't neutral, they reflect the ideas of the theorist. We are located in a "matrix of domination", all these different dimensions of oppression based on a combination of things. Women are oppressed because they are women, but also based on race and sexual orientation. Multiple dimensions and it's a combination of it all. We aren't simply the oppressor and the oppressed. Not a neat division. Some people can be oppressed in some ways but advantaged to other groups and people. -Kimberle Crenshaw: Critical Race theorist as well. Critique of others for ignoring oppression of black women that is qualitatively different from white women and black men. The legal system in particular, as well as white feminists', and anti-race/ racism theories. Intersectionality: The joint influence of multiple social positions and identities on individuals' lives (such as gender AND race). The combination matters. Not just women oppression and black oppression. There is a difference between the two separately, and the two as a combination.
According to Bourdieu (2001:63), why and how do women, under masculine experience their bodies as a "body-for-others"?
-Everything in the genesis of the female habitus and in the social conditions of its actualization combines to make the female experience of the body the limiting case of the universal experience of the body-for-others, constantly exposed to the objectification performed by the gaze and the discourse of others. Which is largely built up from the objective representation of the body, descriptive or normative 'feedback' supplied by others. A reaction is produced on the basis of the oppositions. -Thus, the perceived body is socially doubled determined. On the one hand, in even its seemingly most natural aspects, it is a social product that depends on its social conditions of production through various mediations, such as working conditions and eating habits. Physique and the way it is 'carried', is assumed to express the 'deep being' the true 'nature of the person'. -The probability of experiencing the body with embarrassment, malaise, timidity or shame rises with the discrepancy between the socially demanded body and the practical relation to the body that is imposed by the gazes and reactions of others. It varies very strongly according to sex and positions in the social space. -Femininity is often nothing other than a form of indulgence towards real or supposed male expectations, particularly as regards the aggrandizement of the ego. Masculine domination, which constitutes women as symbolic objects whose being is a being-perceived, has the effect of keeping them in a permanent state of bodily insecurity, or more precisely of symbolic dependence. They exist first through and for the gaze of others, that is, as welcoming, attractive and available objects. -Women are condemned constantly to experience the discrepancy between the real body to which they are bound and the ideal body towards which they endlessly strive. -Women see their body from male perspective, exposed to objectification from the gaze of others.
Marxian Feminist Theories
-Expand Marxism and include oppression of women. -Key claim: women are exploited both in the home and in the workplace. -Patriarchy and capitalism are linked because capitalism relies on exploitation of workers. Labor that goes on in family must happen in order for capitalists to keep exploiting. -Labor that goes on in home - women more so, unpaid work. Women are exploited at home and in workplace and it benefits capitalists.
How can the panopticon be applied to other contexts?
-Factor and work places often have surveillance cameras. -Schools
Why and how does Crenshaw (1989) critique feminist theories? How does she think it should be changed?
-Feminist theory (and antiracist politics) have been organized around the equation of racism with what happens to the Black middle-class or to Black men, and the equation of sexism with what happens to white women. -Ex: Sojourner Truth showed that because black women were something less than real women, their experiences had no bearing on true womanhood. White feminists wished to embrace black women's history to relinquish their vestedness in whiteness. -Feminist theory and politics tend to not include or speak to black women, nor reflect on Black women's experiences. The value of it to black women is diminished because it evolves from a white racial context that is seldom acknowledged. They ignore how their own race functions to mitigate some aspects of sexism, and moreover, how it often privileges them over and contributes to the domination of other women. It remains white, and its potential to broaden and deepen its analysis by addressing non-privileged women remains unrealized. -They hold a belief that sexism or racism can be meaningfully discussed without paying attention to the lives of those other than the race, gender, or class-privileged. -Sexist expectations of chastity and racist assumptions of sexual promiscuity combined to create a distinct set of issues confronting black women are seldom explored. -Feminism must include an analysis of race if it hopes to express the aspirations of non-white women. Can't ignore the intersectional experiences of those whom the movements claim as their respective constituents. Both movements must distance themselves from earlier approaches in which experiences are relevant only when they are related to certain clearly identifiable causes.
Feminist theories critique of functionalist theories
-Focused on the structure of different institutions. When writing about family, it was written on a very heterosexual male pov. Women play an expressive role, men play a breadwinner role. -Critique: Reflects a patriarchal viewpoint. Not accurate representation of social institutions. -Ignores the power inequality in the heterosexual patriarchal family structure. Functions as males are favored over women.
Feminist theories critique of Marxist Conflict Theories
-Gender isn't a big issue, they focus on class, and class structure. Women are treated as property of men. -When gender relations are considered, they are considered in class structure/ relations. -Women are subordinated, helps capitalists make money. -Surplus population of people that are looking for work, adds extra pressure and helps hold down wages because it shows workers are replaceable. -Keeps women as part of the surplus population to hold wages down for male workers. -NOt just about class or property, it's about more than that.
How do the authors define gender? How is it related to and/or distinct from sex category?
-Gender: Activity of managing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for one's sex category. Emerge from and bolster claims to membership in a sex category. -Sex categorization and gender accomplishment are not the same. Women can be seen as unfeminine, but that does not make them "unfemale". -Doing gender consists of managing such occasions so that, whatever the particulars, the outcome is seen and seeable in context as gender-appropriate or, as the case may be, gender-inappropriate, that is accountable. -If sex category is omni-relevant, than any occasion, conflicted or not, offers the resources for doing gender.
Constructionist Theories of Race
-General argument: Race is socially constructed. Created by people, but defined as real... -Not natural nor rooted in nature. Race implies that we can make distinctions based on people's appearance. -Continuum and racial features we see, are not clear-cut across the board. They vary in non-correlated ways. But people believe there are, these features are "natural". Categories and meanings change and vary in time and societies, and thus there are real consequences because social groups strongly maintain this belief.
Neglect of Race and Ethnicities
-Historically, sociological theories have ignored the experiences of non-white individuals. Underlying assumption that non-white experience is a-typical, aren't as important to theorize about. Neglected analyzing race and ethnicity. Little consideration that race was important in social situations. Whiteness is ignored of being shaped/ disappeared of how it shapes their opportunities.
Interpret the following quote: "Doing gender means creating differences between girls and boys and women and men that are not natural, essential, or biological. Once the differences have been constructed, they are used to reinforce the 'essentialness' of gender" (West and Zimmerman 1987, pg. 137)
-In order for someone to do gender, there must be a set criteria for each category. In order for you to do something, you meet those guidelines. In order to do gender, guidelines have to be made, and people have to define what it means to do each category. People use guidelines and criteria to label others. You wouldn't be able to categorize people if you didn't create these definitions. These set qualities are created by people, forgotten (reification), and come to be thought of as a natural distinction between people. People forget that gender roles have been created in order to maintain the two-way system of society.
How do Omi and Winant define the terms racial formation and race?
-In the US, race is a way of "making up people, and can be understood as a process of 'othering'". Race is a master category - a fundamental concept that has profoundly shaped, and continuous to shape, the history, polity, economic structure, and culture. It has become the template of both difference and inequality. Master category of race profoundly shaped gender oppression. While race is a template for the subordination and oppression of different social groups, we emphasize that it is also a template for resistance to many forms of marginalization and domination. Race is a concept, a representation or signification of identity that refers to different types of human bodies, to the perceived corporeal and phenotypic markers of difference and the meanings and social practices that are ascribed to these differences. -Racial formation: Sociohistorical process by which racial identities are created, lived out, transformed, and destroyed. Emphasize how the phenomic, corporeal dimensions of human bodies, acquires in social life.
Pierre Bourdieu Influences
-Influenced by Marx and French structuralism, but also critical of both. -Focuses on social class, atoned to conflict between them, and not favorable of capitalism (Marx) -Underlying structures that shape the society that we see in terms of how humans behave (french structuralism), this set of rules and system, a symbolic system/ order to language. How symbolic structures/ underlying structures shape social life. -Criticism: These theories are too structural. Don't have enough agency to individuals. people don't always go along with people in the same class. Too structural. Not enough room for individual agency. -Critical of interactionism (Garfinkel, Schutz, and Goffman): Tend to bracket off any sort of underlying structure, that actions only are based off of individuals' perspectives. Objective structures matter.
Bourdieu's Theory of Class
-Influenced by Marxist conflict theories. -Differences: Classes are just potential bases for groups. Sociologists like to come up with classes, dividing up society into different groups. Says there is a tendency to treat this "map" as a real thing. -The classes we come up with aren't actually true, sociologists' create the schemes of perceptions which aren't very different to how others carry their perceptions. Can't treat these theories as real, something like the working class is objective. There is a constructive notion that they are in the same group. Potential sets of individuals that might come together. -Multiple forms of capital: Cultural, social, economic, symbolic. -Links class, taste, and lifestyles. The social class we're in, shapes our tastes, desires, and behaviors. Different lifestyles in terms of what they like. Tastes (what we like and dislike) lifestyle reflects our tastes. Raised in different social conditions that lead us to develop deeply rooted habitus. -Social conditions leads to our likes and lifestyles, which is not directly because of affordability. We perceive taste and lifestyles in terms of a hierarchy. -Taste of poor is limited by their necessity. People develop the taste for what is affordable to them. Develop taste for heavier, heartier foods. Aggressive sports. -Taste of rich is reflected by their distance from necessity. Belief that aggressive sports are barbaric reflects in their desire to work in an office and avoid physical labor. -↑cultural, ↓ economic: Lots of knowledge. Tend to prefer natural and healthy foods. Knowledge guides you to natural foods, demonstrates their knowledge. Provides a sense of superiority. -↑economic, ↓ cultural: Lots of money, not a lot of education. Tastes are similar to the working class but different because they have money.
Interpret the following quote: "... institutions, as historical and objective facticities, confront the individual as undeniable facts. The institutions are there, external to him, persistent in their reality, whether he likes it or not. He cannot wish them away" (Berger and Luckmann 1996, pg. 60)
-Institutions are taken for granted background information of the social world processes of habitualization. The knowledge gets passed on to others, and it becomes institutionalized, and later, just thought of as fundamental human behavior. -As they are passed from generation to generation, they become external to the individual, and their coercive power over individuals increase. Whether individuals like it or not, society views institutionalized thoughts as "the way things are done". There is no room for confrontation of resist. -The institutions themselves "resist to change or evade them". -They will continue to exist as long as we want them to exist.
How do Berger and Luckmann define the terms institutions and roles? How are they related? (Note: They are using the concept of roles in a different way than functionalist theories)
-Institutions occur whenever there is a reciprocal typification of habitualized actions by types of actors. The reciprocity of institutionalized typifications and the typicality of not only the actions but also the actors in the institutions. Institutions, also, control human conduct by setting up predefined patterns of conduct which channel it in one direction as against the many other directions that would theoretically be possible. Are experienced as objective reality and the individual must go out and learn about them, just as he must do to learn about nature. -Roles are types of actors in the context of when typification occurs in the context of an objectified stock of knowledge is common to a collectivity of actors. Institutions are embodied in individual experience by means of roles. By playing roles, the individual participates in a social world. By internalizing these roles, the same world becomes subjectively real to him. Roles share in the controlling character of institutionalization. Roles represent the institutional order, performance of the roles itself and the role represents an entire institutional nexus of conduct. Roles represent institutions, they make it possible for institutions to exist as a real presence in the experience of living individuals.
Foucault's (1978) Discipline and Punishment
-Interested in rise of prison and criminal justice system. -Discipline is everywhere across society as a whole. -Transformation of punishment: Big contrast in the way punishments are portrayed from public punishment - physical and brutal, to behind closed doors. Change in the way we treat those who have committed crime. -Development of discipline: All these techniques to control the human body. Rise of the disciplinary society. Everyone is being subjected to them. Copying across different organization and spreading. -Surveillance over population as a whole linked to police agencies. -Disciplinary mechanisms/ techniques: Methods for achieving meticulous control over groups of people. Particular arrangement of places to put people in particular places. Confining/ controlling people. Not just about punishment, but to control the minute or routine everyday level. -Disciplinary institutions (enclosed disciplines): Institutions in which people are separated from wider society and subjected to disciplinary mechanisms. -The panopticon: Disciplinary mechanism that involves surveillance and spatial separation of people. It's an "eye that see's everything/ an all seeing eye." Particular way of designing a prison so that prisoners don't know if they are being watched. Very clear example of linkage between power and knowledge. Knowledge is gained, and then used to treat the prisoners.
"A racial project is simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial identities and meanings, and an effort to organize and distribute resources (economic, political, cultural) along particular racial lines" Omi and Winant, pg. 125
-Interpreting the world and our experiences in terms of race. Representation of different groups, stereotypes, offering explanation for why people are the way they are. The symbolic/ inter-subjective level. -"the effort to organize..' is about the objective side of society. Who has more vs. who has less. of organizing and distributing resources among racial lines. -The objective and subjective ways we interpret race are connected. Representations of different people shape the development of social life. The ways social world is organized also shapes the way we think about race and racial groups. -Ex. Black lives matter: no legal protection for blacks compared to whites. Works on symbolic way, argues that race still matters, just because there is no race in law, there is still racist practices. About redefining/ reconfiguring black people in society.
Interpret the following quote: "Race is not something rooted in nature, something that reflects clear and discrete variations in human identity. but race is also not an illusion. While it may not be "real" in a biological sense, race is indeed real as a social category with definite social consequences" (Omi and Winant 2015, page 110).
-It means that although race is not something that is biologically real, there is no scientific reasoning behind it, it must still be treated as real, because it is sociologically created and believed. There are real consequences associated with race, and those are the factors and situations that we must consider. It is not important whether or not the interpretation is correct - if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences. Although race invokes something that is seemingly biological, the selection of said phenotypes and human features for purposes of racial signification is always and necessarily a social and historical process. -Race is a concept that signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies. -Racialization as the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice, or group. the process of selection, or imparting social and symbolic meaning to perceived phenotypical differences, is the core. Depends on the meanings and associations that permit phenotypic distinction among human bodies.
Why and how does Crenshaw (1989) critique anti-discrimination law? How does the law ignore the intersection of race and sex?
-It's failure to embrace intersectionality, but also the centrality of white female experiences in the conceptualization of gender discrimination. A claim of discrimination "against females" is that discrimination against Black females is something less than discrimination against females. Preference for "against females" rather than against "black females" reveals implicit grounding of white female experiences in the doctrinal conceptualization of sex discrimination. Discrimination against a white female is the standard sex discrimination claim. -Forces black women to choose between specifically articulating the intersectional aspects of their subordination, thereby risking their ability to represent Black men, or ignoring intersectionality in order to state a claim that would not lead to the exclusion of black men. -Even though a challenged policy or practice may clearly discriminate against all females, the fact that it has particularly harsh consequences for Black females places Black female plaintiffs more at odds with white females. -Black women are distinct from white women, while in other cases, the interests of black women are harmed because black women's claims were viewed as so distinct from the claims of either white women or black men, that the court denied to black females representation of the larger class. Black women experience discrimination in ways that are both similar to and different from those experience by white women and black men, and sometimes experience them in similar ways as white women and black men.
How does their theory fit into the broader theoretical distinctions in sociology: Macro vs. Micro, objective vs. subjective, and agency vs. structure?
-Macro vs. Micro: West and Zimmerman focus on the micro level. Attention shifts from internal to external. They focus on individuals doing gender. -Objective vs. Subjective: Objective, because although individuals create and do gender, the enterprise is fundamentally interactional and institutional in character. Society is partitioned by "essential" differences between men and women and placement in a sex category is both relevant and enforced. Doing gender is unavoidable. -Structure vs. Agency: Structure, gender is a powerful ideological device, which produces, reproduces, and legitimates the choices and limits that are predicted on sex category. Gender is an individual feature of social structure.
French Structuralists
-Main claim: Underlying structures that shape visible phenomenon. -When we think about language, there is what we are saying and then the underlying rules for what we can say (grammar). You don't see them, but we know they are there. -Interested in systems of knowledge in terms of the underlying structures/ notions that determine and shape this knowledge. -Interested in power shaping knowledge
Bourdieu's Masculine Domination
-Main question: Why has inequality between men and women persisted throughout western history? -Persistence of male domination over women, even after the fact that there has been feminist movements. -Taking his broader theory and applying it to gender equality. -Draws on his research on kabyle society, have not changed by western movements, but shares a lot in common with them. This domination is socially constructed and produced.
What is manliness? What is its effect on men?
-Manliness is understood as sexual or social reproductive capacity, but also as the capacity to fight and to exercise violence, it first and foremost is a duty. A 'real' man is someone who feels the need to rise to the challenge of the opportunities available to him to increase his honor by pursuing glory and distinction in the public sphere. A dark negative side in the fears and anxiety aroused by femininity - because it holds sources of weakness and vulnerability of honor. -"courage" is thus rooted in cowardice, to make men dominate, exploit, or oppress relies on the 'manly' fear of being excluded from the world of 'men' without weakness. -Must be validated by other men, in its reality as actual or potential violence, and certified by recognition of membership of the group of 'real men'. Men have to prove to other men their virility in its violent reality. -Manliness, it can be seen, is an eminently relational notion, constructed in front of and for other men and against femininity, in a kind of fear of the female, firstly in oneself.
Interpret the following quote: "The movement from... a schema of exceptional discipline to one of generalized surveillance, rests on a historical transformation: the gradual extension of the mechanisms of discipline throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, their spread throughout the whole social body, the formation of what might be called in general the disciplinary society" (Foucault 1978, pg. 209)
-Mechanisms get extended throughout society, and to stop this kind of surveillance is to know that it is happening. -The general disciplinary society came into existence through a gradual transition. Before the transition, disciplines were focused on few individuals and given hard and exceptional notice. Since the transition, society resembles a panopticon in the way that all people feel they are under surveillance.
How do Omi and Winant (2015) conceptualize racism and anti-racism? Keep in mind how their definition of racism may be different from the everyday use of the term.
-Our ability to interpret racial meanings depend on preconceived notions of a racialized social structure. -What is considered racist is often defined very narrowly, in ways that obscure rather than reveal the pervasiveness and persistence of racial inequality. In the US, racism has been popularly and narrowly conceived as racial hate. -A racial project can be defined as racist if it creates or reproduces structures of domination based on racial significations and identities. Powerful as racism is, it does not exhaust race. It does not crowd out anti-racism or eliminate the emancipatory dimensions of racial identity, racial solidarity, or racially conscious agency, both individual and collective. -Race, is more than racism; it is a fully fledged "social fact" like sex/ gender or class, race shapes racism as much as racism shapes race. -Anti-racist projects are those that undo or resist structures of domination based on racial significations and identities. They act to resist institutionalized racist practices, and educate and organize against racism. -If racism is not merely a matter of explicit beliefs or attitudes - significations or identities - but also and necessarily involves the production and maintenance of social structures of domination, then the denial of invidious intent is clearly insufficient to undo it. -Anti-racism affirms the goal of achieving greater social jsutice.
Foucault's Theory
-Overall argument: Power and knowledge are intertwined. Power on a structural or network level. Power NOT in terms of individual. Constant tension from different points of the network. Not centralized by upper class or state. -Power produces knowledge.
Feminist theories critique of male-dominated sociology
-Overwhelming focus on men, women tend to be ignored in theory and research. -Usually spoken/ mentioned in family theory. Doing so in ways that are distorting. Reflect gender of those who made them - white men. Focus theories on men and ignore women's experiences and ignoring gender relations. -Ignoring the ways that gender matters, masculinity is a social construct that shapes what is going on. -Rare instances that they do engage in gender, they do so in the point of view of men.
Berger and Luckmann's (1966) Theory:
-People construct an objective reality: We establish typifications that includes institutions (marriage, school, etc). that become objectified, shapes how we act, existing external to us. People created them and hand it down from generation to generation, and there is a pressure to goa long with it. Seen as things we didn't create. Ex. Time. -Objective realities become subjective realities (Mead influence). We are raised in a social environment, learning things that get presented to us, what individuals perceive lines up with the world everyone perceives. -All of our knowledge is socially constructed. We know things because we constructed it/ produced it, then transmitted to others. -Potential for reification. More specific meaning, the idea we created is treated as something that humans didn't create.
How are power and knowledge? (Hint: Look for the answer in both).
-Power and knowledge directly imply one another. -Circular nature of power and knowledge. They reinforce each other. Power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or applying by it because it is useful); that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations. -The power relations give rise to a possible corpus of knowledge, and knowledge extends and reinforces the effects of this power.
What is an example of something that is "socially constructed" that is relevant to your own life experiences, or is relevant to current events/ issues? In what way (or ways) is it socially constructed?
-Race, gender, class system, significant ages. -Created by humans and given meaning by humans. They exist because humans agree they exist. -Creating them allows people to typify easier, and to categorize people. It makes it easier for those that are seen as the "ideal" to thrive in the society, and those that are seen as "non-ideal" to suffer. Inequalities and social boundaries are built in societies where socially constructed ideals are idolized and taken for word.
"What is reifications (as Burger and Luckmann) define it? How does the concept fit into their overall argument?
-Reification is the apprehension of human phenomena as if they were things, that is, in non-human or possibly supra-human terms. The apprehension of the product of human activity as if they were something else than human products. -Implies that man is capable of forgetting his own authorship of the human world. -A reified world is a dehumanzied world. -Through reification, the world of institutions appears to merge with the world of nature. It becomes necessity and fate, and is lived through as such, happily or unhappily as the case may be. Roles can be reified in the same manner. -Even while apprehending the world in reified terms, man continues to produce it.
Historically, what roles have science and politics (and conflicts within them) play in racial formation?
-Religion --> Race: Invocation of scientific criteria to demonstrate the "natural" basis of racial hierarchy was both a logical consequence of the rise of knowledge, and an attempt to provide a more subtle and nuanced account of human complexity. Race was conceived as a biological concept, a matter of species. However, despite efforts to define race scientifically, the concept of race has defied biological precision. Walking a fine line between using biology and allowing it to be abused. Racial tendencies do not only inform our conscious understanding of the social world; they also permeate our conscious understanding of the social world, they also permeate our unconscious minds - shaping our perceptions and attitudes, and influencing our actions. Scientific racism provided the rationale for the subordination, if not the elimination, of what are seen as undesirable, and threatening racially identified groups. -Science --> politics: Racial politics, the notion of racial formation foregrounds the ongoing political contestation that takes place between the state and civil society - across the political spectrum - to define and redefine the very meaning of race. The state wields enormous power in defining what race is. The state fundamentally shapes one's social status, access to economic opportunities, political rights, and indeed one's identity itself. Census categories have played a pivotal role in the emergence and sustaining of pan-ethnic forms of social organization and consciousness. Multiracial people have been forced to pick one or the other. -The theory of racial formation suggests that society is suffused with racial projects, large and small, to which all are subjected. Race becomes "common sense"
How do the authors define the concepts of sex and sex category? How are they related and/ or distinct? (West and Zimmerman)
-Sex: determination made through socially agreed upon biological criteria for classifying persons as females or males. "Essential" biological criteria that unequivocally distinguish females from males. -Sex Category: Achieved through application of the sex criteria, presumes one's sex and stands as proxy for it in many situations, but they can vary independently. It is the presumption that essential criteria exist and would or should be there if looked for; that provides the basis for sex categorization. It is possible to claim membership in a sex category even when the sex criteria are lacking.
Bourdieu's overview of Masculine Domination
-Social construction of sex and sexuality. No distinction between sex and gender. -Sex is a social construct that society created to divide people into two categories. -There is a difference, but people have to decide that there is a distinction in order to separate by category. We made this social distinction that seems to be based on fact. Anatomy is used as a justification, we believe that men are different from women because of biological fact, but Bourdieu believes it is socially depicted. -Act of sex is filtered already through this masculine world view. So men are exposed to this view of sex as a conquest, masculine worldview in which men dominate women. and women learn to be submissive to the male sexuality. -Fundamental notion of active male vs. passive female. Ideas of sex and sexuality are created by humans, but come to be "reified" to be a part of nature. -The idea of anatomy of the body is socially constructed and allows for the natural gender order. Legitimates and justifies the inequality. -Gender becomes embodied in the habitus. This view of male domination. Ways in which people carry their body. Process of socialization involves training the body to move certain ways to effect the shape of your body and make it distinct to how they "should" be. -Symbolic violence: Imposition of the schemes of perception of the dominant group onto the dominated group. Schemes of perception: ways we see the world. Operates on a mental level. Comes from internalization of masculine domination. Ways in which women, through socialization - uphold this masculine domination/ subordination that makes it seem natural. Women internalize this masculine world view that objectifies them, and comes to enjoy objectifying and supporting it. -NOT victim blaming, trying to say that the system of domination works through this deep internalization and women become complacent. Social order embeds the ideas in ways to hold women down. Through the minds and bodies of women, it "comes naturally" -The act in accordance of women, reproduce the structure. -Gender habitus leads to reproduction of social structure. Justifies it to seem normal. Proving the truth of masculine domination. Circular relationship. Because those were the things that created the idea and it is reinforced by people living it. Link between gender and symbolic capital. Women are seen as symbolic goods that are exchanged to gain status and honor. Arranged marriages, etc. -Women in western society are still treated/ viewed/ displayed as objects. But they are just not literally exchanged. Women have negative symbolic capital. They have an inferior status opposed to men, not an asset that allows them to accumulate capital, it is actually a handicap that reduces their opportunities. Change and permanence in gender relations.
What is an example of disciplinary mechanisms (or the panopticon more specifically) in your own life or 21st - century societies? How is it an example?
-Social media. You as the user, and everything you do on it can be seen by whoever you choose, and even though you can have control of the privacy settings, you still don't know if anyone really is seeing what you're posting or who is seeing what you're posting. And although it's up to you to decide what to share and how much you use social media, there isn't a guarantee that you are 100% invisible. You can lurk on people's profiles without anyone knowing, and you, yourself doesn't really know who is exactly looking at your profiles. In a way, the observer becomes the observed, and the observed are the observers. -NSA, FBI, CSI. Possibility of them watching us through cell phones, text messages, google searches, etc.
Why is the social stock of knowledge important for the reality of everyday life? (Berger and Luckmann)
-Social stock of knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation and is available to the individual in everyday life. Include's knowledge of one's situation and its limits. -Participation in the social stock of knowledge allows the "location" of individuals in society and the "handling" of them in the appropriate manner. Differentiates reality by degrees of familiarity. -Provides individuals with typification schemes that are required for major routines of everyday life, for all sorts of events and experiences, in both social and natural world. -This knowledge is not shared equally with all people you meet, and there may be some knowledge that is shared with no one. -Social distribution of knowledge, the stock of knowledge in a society is structured in terms of what is generally relevant and what is relevant only to specific roles.
What is the relationship between socialization and the habitus of men and women? (Bourdieu)
-Socialization imposes limits for women. -Continuous socialization that the distinctive identities instituted by the cultural arbitrary are embodied in habitus that are clearly differentiated according to the dominated principle of division and capable of perceiving the world according to this principle. -Because women are constituted as a negative entity, defined only by default, even her virtues can only be affirmed by a double negation, as vice denied or overcome, or as lesser evils. All the work of socialization therefore tends to impose limits on her, which all concern the body, thus defined as sacred, and which have to be inscribed in the dispositions of the body. -For men, aims to de-feminize them, by labelling women as a vice to overcome, sexualize, and dominate.
How do Berger and Luckmann define socialization? What are the two stages of it? How does the concept of socialization fit into their overall argument?
-Socialization: The comprehensive and consistent induction of an individual into the objective world of a society or a sector of it. -An individual is not born a member of society; however, he becomes a member of society and is predisposed toward sociality. Only when the individual has achieved the degree of internalization is he a member of society. -Primary socialization: First socialization an individual undergoes in childhood; through which he becomes a member of society. Takes place under cognitive learning as well as circumstances that are highly charged emotionally. Formation of the generalized other within consciousness (What is real "outside" corresponds to what is real "within"), learning sequences that are socially defined; Ends when the concept of the generalized other has been established in the consciousness of the individual. At this point, he is a member of society, and in subjective possession of a self and a world. -Secondary socialization: Any subsequent process that inducts an already socialized individual into new sectors of the objective world of his society. -*Process of internalizing such a world as reality has similarities in both primary and secondary socialization.
Bourdieu's Structural Constructionist THeory
-Talks about society like a social space to physical space. We are in it, can move through it, can only be limited to one place at a time. When you move around the physical space as individuals, we carry around this information and understanding of what the social space looks like. Objective social structure relies on the subjective representations. That social space shapes our perceptions. Perceptions shape how we act, then effect the objective social structure. Objective structures also shape what we do. Guide and constrain how individuals think and act. -Individuals are agents in the social world. They can reproduce or change the social structure. Agency is something that individuals do to others.
Why is symbolic violence?
-The imposition on subordinated groups by the dominant class which legitimates and naturalizes the status quo. -Women themselves apprehend all reality, and in particular, the power relations in which they are held, through schemes of thought that are the product of embodiment of those power relations and which are expressed in the founding oppositions of the symbolic order. Acts of cognition are acts of practical recognition, doxic acceptance. -The dominated apply categories constructed from the point of view of the dominant to the relations of domination, thus making them appear as natural. Leads to a kind of systematic self-deprecation, even self-denigration. -The effect of symbolic domination is exerted through the schemes of perception, appreciation and action that are constitutive of habitus and which, below the level of the decisions of consciousness and the controls of the will, set up a cognitive relationship that is profoundly obscure to itself. -The dominated, often unwittingly, sometimes unwillingly, contribute to their own domination by tacitly accepting the limits imposed. -Symbolic power cannot be exercised without the contribution of those who undergo it, and who only undergo it because they construct it as such, however, one has also to take not of and explain the social construction of the cognitive structures which organize acts of construction of the world and its power - durably embedded in the bodies of the dominated in the forms of schemes of perception and disposition which sensitize them to certain symbolic manifestations of power.
How have gender relations changed in recent times? In what ways have they not changed?
-The major change has been that masculine domination no longer imposes itself with the transparency of something taken for granted thanks to Feminist movements. Increased access to secondary and higher education and waged work, and through this, to the public sphere; and a degree of distancing from domestic tasks and reproductive functions. The postponement of marriage and procreation. Increased access to higher education, and consequently, to economic independence, and the transformation of family structures. The inertia of habitus, and of law, tends to perpetuate the dominant model of family structure. -Led to a very important modification of the position of women in the division of labor. Women are now much more strongly represented in the intellectual professions. However, while female graduates have found their main career openings in intermediate middle-range occupations. -Progress made by women must not conceal the corresponding progress made by men, so that, as in a handicap race, the structure of the gaps is maintained. -Formal equality between men and women tend to disguise the fact that, other things being equal, women always occupy less favored positions. Women are paid less than men, above all that they are proportionately more affected by redundancies and insecurity of employment and more often relegated to part-time posts. -Women have in common the fact that they are separated from men by a negative symbolic coefficient which, like skin color or any other sign of membership of stigmatized group, negatively affects everything they are and do, and which is the sources of systematic set of homologous differences. Despite the specific experiences which bring them together, women remained separated from each other by economic and cultural differences which affect, among other things, their objective and subjective ways of undergoing and suffering masculine domination. -In defending their jobs against feminization, men are trying to protect their most deep rooted idea of themselves as men, which owe much, if not all their value, even in their own eyes, to their image of manliness.
Influences on Berger and Luckmann
-The social construction of reality. First half is restating phenomenology (Alfred Schutz - influenced by Weber). Utilization of Marxian reification, and Garfinkel's ethnomethodology for gender theorists. -Marx and the sociology of knowledge: Georg Lukacs reification; we lose any ability to see the things as being man made. Treated as having non-human origins. Lose sight that we produce such realities. "Sociology of knowledge": Official/ established sets of beliefs and values. Shift focus from political and religious things to everyday level. We carry around all this common sense knowledge - understand how they're produced. -Durkheim's View of society: Structures of society - established patterns of thinking that exists outside of the individual. Shaping how we act. Independent of our own consciousness. Berger and Luckmann: Institutions are outside the individual, produced from individuals, but is passed from generation to generation, and believed to be truth. -Mead's theory of Self: Process by which people become members of society (socialization). Shift focus from sense/ experience of self, but of the experience of the world around us. We learn how to perceive the world around us.
How is masculine domination reinforced by the occupational structure and by gender relations in the workplace?
-The still very strongly sexually differentiated division of labor that the so-called 'feminine' dispositions inculcated by the family and the whole social order are able to be fulfilled or even blossom, to be rewarded, thereby helping to reinforce the fundamental sexual dichotomy, both in the jobs, which seem to call for submissiveness and the need for security, and in their occupants, who are identified with positions in which, enchanted or alienated, they both find themselves and lose themselves. -Women are almost always confined to minor roles. Men interrupt them, and, with good faith, address to a man the answer to a perfectly intelligent question just asked by a woman. This virtual denial of their existence often forces them to resort to the weapons of the weak, which confirm the stereotypes - outbursts, hysterical, seduction, etc. -The same tasks may be noble and difficult, when performed by men, or insignificant and imperceptible, easy and futile, when performed by women. Every job, whatever it may be, is in a sense qualified by being performed by men. -To succeed completely in holding a position, a woman would need to possess not only what is explicitly demanded by the job description, but also a whole set of properties which the male occupants normally bring to the job.
Bourdieu "... the social relations of domination and exploitation that are instituted between the sexes thus progressively embed themselves in two different classes of habitus" (Bourdieu 2001, pg. 30)
-This get embedded into two different forms of us. The male habitus and the female habitus. The social order and gender gets embodied.