EXAM 2
Moral Holiday
specified times and locations where norms are expected to be broken
Deviance
violation of rules or norms
Race as Social Construction
Race and ethnic categories are socially defined phenomena, the boundaries and content of which are constantly being renegotiated, revised, and redefined
Race as Essence
Race and ethnicity are perceived to be biologically based, present at birth, instinctive, innate, and unchangeable
Status Inconsistency
Ranking high on some dimensions of social class and low on others; also called a status discrepancy
Cultural capital
Refers to symbolic activities that can be used to generate honor and prestige. These symbolic abilities may include familiarity with high culture. - Knowledge of the norms, values, beliefs, and ways of life of the groups to which people belong - Ex: dining utensil usage, placement, signs
Prestige
Respect or regard that people assign to various occupations, positions, and/or accomplishments; evaluations that others make about one's standing
Katz "The Importance of Being Beautiful" (Ch. 29)
Social stratification- system of ranking Attractiveness rankings have significant consequences in our lives Early life, at school, college years, marriage, careers, old age We make assumptions about peoples' personalities based on the way they look
Minority Group
Socially constructed group that does not have the same access to power or resources as dominant groups, even if the minority group is larger in population than the dominant group
Consequences of Race
Thomas Theorem: "If people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." Mary Waters: "The social and political consequences of being Asian or Hispanic or black are not, for the most part symbolic, nor are they voluntary. They are real, unavoidable, and sometimes hurtful."
Gender Stratification
Unequal access to power, prestige, and property on the basis of gender
Theories of Deviance: Strain theory
When society socializes people to desire a cultural goal (e.g. monetary success) but withholds from many the approved means to reach that goal; one adaptation to strain is crime.
Theories of Deviance: Differential association theory
associating with some groups results in learning an "excess of definitions" of deviance, and, by extension, in a greater likelihood that one will become deviant
Gender Expectations
"Act Like Man Box" "Act Like A Lady Box"
Status Characteristics Studies
"Status characteristics, such as age, sex and race, determine the distribution of participation, prestige, and influence among members of such groups. The effect is independent of any prior cultural belief in the relevance of the status characteristic to the task." (Berger, 1972)
Privilege
- A favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck - Confers dominance, permission to control by allowing systematic over-empowerment of some groups and - Benefit from the existing social arrangement a dependent on the unfair exclusion or direct harm to others
Race
- A group is defined as a race when certain physical characteristics are selected for special emphasis by members of a society - It is a "loose, variable and imprecise concept" - Race is socially constructed category based on real or perceived biological differences between groups of people
Massey & Denton "American Apartheid"
- Argue that segregation, particularly residential, is a fundamental dimension of race relations in the US and is all too often ignored by policy makers and scholars - Major cause of many of the ills of race relations - Argue that it is the missing link in past attempts to understand the urban poor - Racial segregation is the key structural factor responsible for the perpetuation of black poverty in the US and residential segregation is the principle organizational feature of American society that's responsible for creation of urban underclass
Theories of Deviance: Control Theory
- The idea that two control systems - inner controls and outer controls - work against our tendencies to deviate - Inner controls - conscience, ideas of right and wrong, fear of punishment, religious principles - Outer controls - people and structures (such as family, friends, police, etc.) who encourage us not to engage in deviance
Walton "My Secret Life as a Black Man"
- Thought to have two lives: life as a black man and other real life - Black man is constantly being told what he should think, his affinities, whom he should love, and his loyalties - Is there a person inside besides a "black" man - "too white" "showing color" - identity is called into question
Lopez "9 Questions About Gender Identity and Being Transgender You Were too Embarrassed to Ask"
- Transgender issues - A common misconception is that gender identity and expression are linked to sexual or romantic attraction - Don't think they fit in either the male or female category - Many obstacles make it difficult for people to come out until later in life - Imagine someone trying to give you a hug and stepping on your foot every day and if you ask them to step off your foot they reply that they were just trying to give you a hug - There's been some progress but long way before LGBT have equality
Ethnicity is
- Voluntary - you define - Self-defined - embraced by group members from within - Nonhierarchical - Fluid and Multiple - can be more than one, can change - Cultural - based on differences in practices - Planar - less about unequal power
Principles of Inequality (5)
1) Inequality is created by social interaction - It is a necessary part of social organization - Will always exist, but not be a particular form 2) Any individual or group difference can be transformed in to a dimension of inequality; Inequality is ubiquitous 3) Inequalities generalize - They expand from one status characteristic to affect people's perceptions and performances - Performance becomes a function of status - Self-fulfilling prophecy 4) Inequality is supported both by those "at the top" and by those "at the bottom" 5) Patterns of inequality are strong and stable - Once established, hard to change - Become a social reality (socially constructed) - Generate their own justifications, an ideology - Cohesion among those at the bottom difficult to maintain - Emotions reinforce the structure of inequality
Milgram Experiment
obedience to authority learner and teacher teacher administer electric shock if answered incorrectly
Femininity and masculinity
refer to a complex set of characteristics and behaviors associated with a particular gender by society and learned through the socialization experience - Ex: wasp waist (corset)
Quan "Global Strategies for Workers: How Class Analysis Clarifies Us and What We Need To Do"
- Argues that workers in global assembly line are not the cause of workers' struggles within the US - Class analysis gives us a way of viewing the world that identifies power relationships and clarifies who has power and how they are using it worldwide against the working class - Globalization causes more hardship for workers and new rules threaten the core of our democratic values and rights - Challenge for American workers is whether we will be content to watch event unfolding from a distance or whether we will organize ourselves to unite with global allies to wage an effective response - Class analysis explains relationship between us and them - Can't afford to make mistakes of the past
Pay Gap
- Choices - Gender Discrimination - Testosterone Bonus - Mentors - Assumptions about competence - Stereotypes and Bias - Child Penalty
McName & Miller "The Silver Spoon: Inheritance and the Staggered Start"
- Compares effects of inheritance and individual merit on life outcomes - Inheritance comes first and merit follows it - Income and wealth inequality - Intergenerational mobility: upper class won't go under unless America as a whole does - Higher quality of life in childhood: know which fork to eat with - Having friends in high places - Early withdrawals on the family estate - What comes up, doesn't come down - Exclusive, isolation, endogamy, distinctive lifestyle, political power - US has high levels of both income and wealth inequality - Large gap between rich and poor - Little opportunity for merit based mobility into the upper class
Pager "Would You Hire and Ex-Convict?" (Ch. 6)
- Consequences of criminal justice system for white and black men - Higher incarceration rates for blacks than whites - Face barriers after due to minority status and criminal record: poor employment outcomes - Used 2 black and 2 white male auditors with objective characteristics the same and each assigned randomly a criminal record and rotated each week for entry level job positions - Blacks with and without criminal records received less callbacks than white noncriminals and whites with criminal records
Social Foundations of Deviance
- Deviance, just like conformity, is shaped by society. - Deviance varies according to cultural norms (What is deviant?): "It is not the act itself, but the reactions to the act, that make something deviant." (Becker 1966) - People become deviant as others define them that way (Who is deviant?) - Both norms and the way people define rule breaking involve social power (How does deviance relate to social inequality
Race is
- Externally imposed - someone else defines - Involuntary - you don't choose - Usually based on physical differences - Hierarchical - ranked - Exclusive - one and only one - Unequal - power conflicts and struggles
Ethnicity
- Identifying with or membership in a group perceived by self and/or others to be bound by common origin, history, values, attitudes, and behavior - "a sense of peoplehood" - A category based on common language, religion, nationality, history, or another cultural factor
Lucal "What it Means to Be a Gendered Me"
- Live in a gender system that recognizes only 2 genders - Analysis of her experience as a woman whose appearance often leads to gender mis-attribution - Discusses consequences of gender system for her identity and her interactions - Examines assertion that gender bending serves to perpetuate gender categories rather than break them down, suggests her experiences contradict this argument
Ehrenreich "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" (Ch. 36)
- Middle class have hard time understanding what life is like for the poor - If prices of common everyday objects increases, it's a matter of inconvenience rather than disaster - Discuss what it's like to live on minimum wage - Can't imagine what it's liek for welfare recipeients and singel mothers to live on minimum wage - She couldn't hold two jobs and make enough money to live on with one - Has long term advantages like health, stamina, working car, and no children to support - Low wage work involves more hardship and deprivation - Welfare reform - "Far too smart and funny and caring for the work they do and the wages they are paid" - One day maybe they'll know how much they're worth ad take appropriate action
How can we explain deviance: Is it biology?
- No physical traits distinguish criminals from noncriminals. - 2003 Study at University of Wisconsin
McIntosh "White Privilege and Male Privilege"
- Not invisible systems conferring dominance; rather intentional - Sexism - Open more doors and opportunities - Obliviousness of white advantage is kept strongly in US to maintain myth of meritcracy
Chambliss "The Saints and Roughnecks" (Ch. 26)
- Observed 2 groups of delinquents in same HS - Both were involved in serious and repetitive delinquent acts but one was perceived as saints and others as roughnecks - Analyzed what influenced peoples' perceptions and reactions to the boys - Roughnecks were poorer with less resources (no car) were more visible in turn and led to people locking them into behaviors that continued after HS leading to prison or low paying jobs - Saints were well off, had cars, most acts took place out of town, stayed out of prison and entered well paying jobs - Visibility, demeanor, and bias attributed to different social reactions towards the groups
Aizenman & Valentine "Why This Boy Started Helping His Sister with Chores"
- Program that's trying to persuade India's boys to treat girls as their equals
Waters "Optional Ethniciites: For Whites Only?"
- Reviews current meaning of ethnicity for the descendants of the 19th and early 20th century european immigrants to the US and contrasts that experience with the identities of people with non-European origins- descendants of earlier forced immigrants and conquered peoples and the growing number of voluntary immigrants from non-European countries - Ethnic identity is optional for most Americans of European background - Contrasts experience of non-whites: much more limited options in regards to ethnicity because of historical and social circumstances
Anderson & Kian "Examining Media Contestation of Masculinity and Head Trauma in the NFL"
- Rodgers elected to not re-eneter the game and team lost after head injury - Examined media attitudes : negative or ignored - Weakening hegemonic model - Players' safety is beginning to be taken more seriously
Social Class
A large group of people who rank closely to one another in income, wealth, power, and prestige
Racism
A set of beliefs about the superiority of one racial or ethnic group over another...it is used to justify social arrangements between dominant and minority groups
Social Stratification
A system in which groups of people are divided into layers according to their relative power, property and prestige
Why are people poor? Competing Explanations
Individual Explanations - Characteristics of Individuals - These explanations are not sociological - "Blaming the Victim" Cultural Explanations - Culture of Poverty & Newer Cultural Explanations Structural Explanations - Social Structure - aspects of society deny people access to jobs, education, skills... - Opportunity Structure - Most Sociologists Utilize Structural Explanations
Solomon Asch Experiment
Aim: Solomon Asch (1951) conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform. Procedure: Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity, whereby 50 male college students participated in a 'vision test'. Using a line judgment task, Asch put a naive participant in a room with seven confederates.The confederates had agreed in advance what their responses would be when presented with the line task. The real participant did not know this and was led to believe that the other seven participants were also real participants like themselves.Each person in the room had to state aloud which comparison line (A, B or C) was most like the target line. The answer was always obvious. The real participant sat at the end of the row and gave his or her answer last. Asch was interested to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view.
Discrimination
An action or behavior that results in the unequal treatment of individuals because of their membership in a certain racial or ethnic group - Individual discrimination - Institutional discrimination - actions, practices, and policies embedded in the organization of society that have negative impacts on individuals and groups with socially specified characteristics
Prejudice
An idea about the characteristics of a group that is applied to all members of that group, and is unlikely to change regardless of the evidence against it
Sex
Biological characteristics that distinguish females and males
Page "Showing My Color" (Ch. 31)
Circumstances inherited at birth affect what happens regarding one's life chances Learn race awareness from others around us Page's life: black in white society Rejects melting pot metaphor, thinks we are more like mulligan stew: each maintains distinct character but loaned special flavor to the whole and each absorbed others flavors
Intersectionality
Concept often used in critical theories to describe the ways in which oppressive institutions (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, classism, etc.) are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from one another.
How can we explain deviance: Is it psychological?
For some cases, YES.
Intersex
General term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male - Socially constructed categories
Consequences of Social Class
Health Family Structure Education Religion Politics Crime & Criminal Justice System Technology
Meyer "If Hitler Asked You to Execute a Stranger, Would You?" (Ch. 23)
Milgram study Worried about Nazi problem Germans are so different hypothesis Teacher-Learner Thought 3/100 would go to end (highest shock at 450 V) 65% were obedient up to 450 V Placed in same room as learner- 12/40 obeyed Only 1.3 % reported they were sorry
Income
Money received, usually from a job, business or assets
Social capital
Networks of social relations; provides differential access to opportunities through social connections
Power
The ability to carry out your will, even over the resistance of others
Gender
The behaviors and attitudes that a society considers appropriate for males and females; masculinity or femininity
Life chances
The material advantages or disadvantages that a particular member of a social category can expect to receive based on their status
The Glass Escalator
The mostly invisible acceleration that push men into higher-level positions, more desirable work assignments, and higher salaries
The Glass Ceiling
The mostly invisible barrier that keeps women from advancing to the top level at work both in terms of power and pay
Wealth
The value of everything someone owns, minus debts
Theories of Deviance: Labeling theory
The view that the labels people are given influence their own and other's perception of them, thus channeling their behavior into deviance or into conformity - Techniques of Neutralization - Denial of Responsibility - Denial of Injury - Denial of Victim - Condemnation of Condemners - Appeal to Higher Loyalties Ex: Saints and Roughnecks
Social control
formal and informal means of enforcing norms
