Sociology Exam 1

Breaching Experiments

A deliberate violation of social reality by an individual that attempts to generate an action from the other people present in the environment. It aims to determine how different people attempt to construct social reality, how they respond to it violation and how resilient they are to these breaches in reality

Goffman Main Argument

All the World's a stage; people act based on how they want to be perceived

Changetip Bot

Allows people to send micropayments of BTC to express appreciation for their posts, helps ppl get used to spending BTC for stuff

Methods for Researching BTC

Analyzed Bitcointalk.org Econ board and Reddit r/Bitcoin posts about money/value Used computational and manual analysis of content of the posts

Social construction of reality

Daily interactions like the ones studied in EM are a way to view social norms and a fundamental idea of social construction. People who act outside the norms created by these interactions are seen as breaking social reality in the lens of the ethnomethodologist.

Digital metallism

Emulate practical metallism by establishing an independent basis for money through development of algorithmic verification: Finite cap on amount that can be mined Record of transfer Pseudo-anonymous when using for transactions Does not rely on a centralized third party

Ethnomethodology

How people present themselves in ordinary situations and how they use common sense, knowledge, procedure & consideration to act in those situations

HODL

Meme about holding BTC despite fluctuations in price, evidence of adoption

Menger's theory of money

Money's value comes from its association with highly salable commodities that individuals inherently value

Cynical vs. Sincere Actors

Performers vs. Non Performers

Front

That part of the individual's performance which regularly functions in a general and fixed fashion to define that situation for those who observe the performance

Accounting

The process by which people offer accounts to make sense of the world (ethnomethodology).

Accounts

The ways in which actors explain (describe, criticize, and idealize) specific situations (ethnomethodology).

How did BTC gain its value?

There was a shift from conceptual details over how BTC fits into the nature of money and economics to the practical social issue of adoption of BTC.

Appearance

Those stimuli which function at the time to tell of us of the performer's social statuses

Manner

Those stimuli which function at the time to warn of us the interaction role the performer will expect to play in the oncoming situation