Microsociology Exam 1

What does the sociologist as a spy look like?

"The interest of the sociologist is primarily theoretical. That is, he is interested in understanding for its own sake. He may be aware of or even concerned with the practical applicability and consequences of his findings, but at that point he leaves the sociological frame of reference as such and moves into the realms of values, beliefs and ideas that he shares with other men who are not sociologists."

- This view is strongly contested! - seen as activism by many

- We can analyze and measure, in context, a social phenomenon's real or anticipated impact. But applying that analysis toward social change is not the job of the sociologist

What is sociology?

The systematic study of social life. This includes human actions and relationships, and their motivations. NOT just "what", but more importantly, "how" and "why"

What is the turf view of studying social life?

Sociology has its own turf, distinct area of social life alongside politics, the economy, history, language, etc.

What is the "angle of vision" of studying social life?

Sociology has a distinctive set of sensibilities, orientations, perspectives on social life;

The Sociological Imagination (C. Wright Mills)

What is the sociological imagination?

the ability to understand the connections between biography and history, or the interplay of the self and the world; "the most fruitful form of self-consciousness"; in other words, the capacity to think systematically about how many things we experience as personal problems are really social issues that are widely shared by others born in a similar time and social location as us.

What is the task and promise of the sociological imagination?

Enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals

What does the sociologist as a scientist look like?

"Someone concerned with understanding society in a disciplined way. The nature of the discipline is scientific...One of the main characteristics of this scientific frame of reference is that operations are bound by certain rules of evidence. As a scientist, the sociologist tries to be objective, control his personal preferences and prejudices, to perceive clearly rather than to judge normatively." (sociology requires research and evidence!)

What is normativity?

When there is a shared belief in society that no one is going to question

What does sociology on an emancipatory level look like?

- It's not enough to simply understand that we experience "objective reality" through the lens of personal and social subjectivity—it is critical to understand that we created the lens!

"Once we better understand how the apparently natural, inevitable, immutable, eternal aspects of our lives have been brought into being through the exercise of human power and resources, we shall find it much harder to accept that they are immune and impenetrable to subsequent actions, including our own."

What does sociology as a way of thinking look like?

Holistic, synthetic, contextualizing, constructionist, collectivist, attentive, critical and questioning

What is macrosociology?

the study of large-scale patterns and processes that characterize society as a whole

What is microsociology?

the study of small-scale patterns of individuals' social interaction in specific settings

What is "the challenge" according to Mills?

- "Nowadays men often feel that their private lives are a series of traps. They sense that within their everyday worlds, they cannot overcome their troubles, and in this feeling, they are often quite correct: What ordinary men are directly aware of and what they try to do are bounded by the private orbits in which they live; their visions and their powers are limited to the close-up scenes of job, family, neighborhood; in other milieu, they move vicariously and remain spectators. And the more aware they become, however vaguely, of ambitions and of threats which transcend their immediate locales, the more trapped they seem to feel."

- "They do not possess the quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay of man and society, of biography and history, of self and world." - Often hidden, obscured, reified, taken-for-granted

What are some tricks for thinking sociologically?

• People doing things together - Collective act, interconnections/interdependencies

• Everything has to be someplace - Context, conditions, definition of the situation

• Ask "how?" not "why?" - Process

What are the two sides of sociology?

1. Making familiar what people do not understand (the strange, foreign, deviant); Gaining new understanding of the familiar- How are the thing that we take to be natural (biological, inevitable, innate) socially constructed?

2. To make the familiar unfamiliar, sociologists show how "reality" itself arose through human activities - Can reveal power, inequalities, assumptions, inconsistencies; This course is heavily based around making the familiar unfamiliar, revealing how "things" are socially constructed

What is nonconformity/deviant behavior?

Behaviors that deviate widely from what is expected

(can also just be the product of different social contexts/situations)

What is intersubjectivity?

Shared meanings (they can promote coordination of action)

What is the goal of socialization/internalization?

Correspondence between socially shared or objective reality and subjective experience

What is the existential view of reality?

Objective reality exists, independent of us; Deterministic; The essence also serves as the explanation (tautology); Involves suspending doubt

What is human nature NOT?

It is not created by human activities- it is independent of our own volition

Examples of our "biological constitution" (human nature)?

• Death • Procreation • Disease • Natural disasters • Time • Space • Language • Emotion • Beauty • Sexuality • Intelligence • Art • Borders • Race

What is reification?

- The error of creating a concept and then assuming the created concept has a concrete reality;

- "The apprehension of human phenomena as if they were things... [it] is the apprehension of the products of human activity as if they were something else than human products — such as facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will. Reification implies that man is capable of forgetting his own authorship of the human world.... The reified world...confronts man as something outside of himself. ... Human meanings are no longer understood as world-producing but as...products of the 'nature of things'." (Berger and Luckmann)

How does sociology work against reification?

by showing how seemingly natural social arrangements are in fact socially constructed

How are different realities formed?

The more people act as though something is real, the more consequential that definition of reality becomes

What does it mean to say something is socially constructed?

- Not natural or inevitable

- Could be otherwise

- A product of social activity (Sometimes/often: a product of deliberate action by specific actors, pursuing their own interests)

BUT, Thomas theorem and an issue of explanation (the processes, contingencies) - Not existence or morality

What is the Thomas Theorem?

situations that are defined as real are real in their consequences;

Ex: sociologists are less interested in proving that race is real or not but how it emerged over time and the social consequences and implications of race in people's everyday lives (the consequences of the belief that race is real)

Main points of Berger and Luckmann article:

• "Social order is not part of the 'nature of things,' and it cannot be derived from the 'laws of nature'."

- "this does not mean, of course, that there are no biologically determined limitations to [people's] relations with [their] environment."

- But... "the human organism is capable of applying its constitutionally given equipment in a very wide and, in addition, constantly variable and varying range of activities." • "immense plasticity"

- Because... "Submitted to continuing socially determined interference"

- "There is no human nature in the sense of a biologically fixed substratum."

• "Social order is a human product, or more precisely an ongoing human production."

- "Reality is ongoingly reaffirmed in the individual's interactions with others" ("language realizes a world")

• "The individual is not born a member of society. He is born with a predisposition toward sociality, and he becomes a member of society."

What is the social construction of identity (the self as social)?

- "Identity is, of course, a key element of subjective reality...and is formed by social process." •

- "Societies have histories in the course of which specific identities emerge; these histories are, however, made by [humans] with specific identities."

- "Identity remains unintelligible unless it is located in a world."

What is the social construction of reality?

- The process whereby people continuously create, through their actions and interactions, a shared reality that is experienced as objectively factual and subjectively meaningful; "A world so regarded, attains a firmness in consciousness; it becomes real in an ever more massive way, and it can no longer be changed so readily."

What is the social construction of ways of seeing the social world?

Seeing the world through categories, and acting on the basis of those categories (or classifications)

What are the two kinds of conceptual lenses in the social construction of reality?

1. Universal and species-wide

2. Common to a particular group or society but variable across groups or societies; "thought communities'

How was the first act of Creation a divisive one?

- In the beginning...the earth was unformed and void...and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night

- The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying "This is mine," and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society

What does separating entities from their surroundings do?

Allows us to perceive them, make them meaningful, in the first place (the social construction of reality)

What does Karl Mannheim say about the solitary thinker (tabula rasa)?

"Strictly thinking it is incorrect to say that the single individual thinks. Rather it is more correct to insist that he participates in thinking further what other men have thought before him."

What is classification/typification?

An artificial process of concept formation rather than of discovering clusters that already exist

What is framing in sociology?

"the act of surrounding situations, acts, or objects with mental brackets"; Creating a shared "definition of the situation"

What is the ubiquitous role of language?

It is something we learn with others over time

What do the things we do, choices we make, meanings we give, etc., do?

The way we cut up the world clearly affects the way we organize our everyday life

What are social beings?

Products of particular social environments that affect as well as constrain the way we cognitively interact with the world

What are the social foundations of our thinking?

- Link between differentiation and perception

- To define something is to mark its boundaries

- How we draw these fine lines will certainly determine the kind of social order we shall have

- Varies across time and space, sometimes disputed and contested

- Focus on the process by which we cut up the world and create meaningful entities (sociology)

What is the social construction of mental illness?

Historical and cross-cultural variability in naming and framing mental disorders

What are the processes of social construction (How do we come to know what we know?)?

- Socialization (Interaction)

- Institutionalization

- History and path dependence

-Power

- Conflict and change

What is the transition to illegality?

- Marked as insiders and outsiders (Conflicting meanings of membership)

- Transition to adulthood (Liminality and time)

- Illegality becomes a master status (Dominates and stigmatizes)

What are the stages of becoming?

- Discover: Ages 16 to 18 - I never actually felt like I wasn't born here. Because when I came here I was like 10 and a half. I went to school. I learned the language. I first felt like I was really out of place when I tried to get a job. Well, I didn't have a Social Security number. Well, I didn't even know what it meant. You know Social Security, legal, illegal. I didn't even know what that was. - Learning to be illegal: Ages 18 to 24 - At every step of my education, I have had a mentor holding my hand. It's a thousand times harder without someone helping you. Being undocumented, it's not about what you know, it's who you know.

- Coping: Ages 25 to 29 - I just stopped letting it define me. Work is only part of my life. I've got a girlfriend now....Obviously, my situation holds me back from doing a lot of things, but I've got to live my life. I just get sick of being controlled by the lack of nine digits.

What is symbolic interactionism?

the study of the ways humans act toward ideas, concepts, and values on the basis of the meaning that those things have for them; these meanings are the products of social interaction in human society; these meanings are modified and filtered through an interpretive process that each individual uses in dealing with outward signs

What is the social construction of the self?

Identifying who we are; Humans are much more than a collection of physical and psychological characteristics (or set of core personality traits we are born with)

"Man is a social product." - Berger and Luckmann

What is the self as social?

Our sense of self (self awareness) develops through our interactions with others; "There is no self without society"

"Anna" example

Anna's social contacts with others were at a minimum. What few she did have were of a perfunctory or openly antagonistic kind, allowing no opportunity for Gemeinschaft to develop. She affords therefore an excellent subject for studying the effects of extreme social isolation.

Findings:

• Her inability to develop past an "idiotic level of mentality....is largely the result of social isolation"

• "It seems almost impossible for any child to learn to speak, think, and act like a normal person after a long period of isolation."

• "Anna's history....seems to demonstrate that human nature is determined by the child's communicative social contacts as much as by his organic equipment and that the system of communicative symbols is a highly complex business acquired early in life as the result of long and intimate training."

Mirror exercise

• The first step is to distinguish yourself (your face and body) from the rest of the physical environment.

- Humans are not born with this ability, but most studies suggest that it develops around 18-months of age. - Cooley, Mead and their children

What is self-awareness?

- Sense of self- The awareness that the individual has a distinct identity separate from others

- Reflexivity: perceive, evaluate, motivate, and even talk to ourselves

- What makes us human and allows for social order- Building blocks of interaction

- No self without society- "To exist is to coexist"; "I think (with others), therefore I am"

What is socialization (in the context of becoming who we are)?

- The social processes whereby the helpless infant gradually becomes a self-aware, knowledgeable person, skilled in the ways of his or her culture; Learning process, a becoming; Continues, to some degree, throughout life

What are some agents of socialization?

Family, schools, peers, work, media, internet, religion

Charles Horton Cooley and "the looking glass self"

"Each to each a looking-glass, Reflects the other that doth pass."

The self emerges from what?

- How we imagine how we look to others

- How we imagine other people's judgments of us

- How we experience some kind of feeling about ourselves based on our perception of other people's judgments and revise our theory by fine-tuning our "self concept"

(Charles Horton Cooley and "the looking glass self")

How do we determine our sense of self, according to Charles Horton Cooley?

- We see ourselves as we imagine others see us

- Changes over settings, situations, life cycle

What is the idea that society is in the mind?

"The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society."

What is reflected appraisal?

What you think of yourself based on others' judgements; the influence of others on one's self-concept; Studies show that it is the perceived reactions (assessments) of others, rather than their actual reactions, that are crucial for self-concept formation

What is George Mead's take on the self?

"the self is something which has a development; it is not initially there, at birth, but arises in the process of social experience and activity."

What is a social theory of the self (related to Mead)?

The interconnectedness between self and social experience

What is the self as an object (according to Mead)?

"The self has the characteristic that it is an object to itself, and that characteristic distinguishes it from other objects and from the body."

- It is perfectly true that the eye can see the foot, but it does not see the the body as a whole....we cannot get an experience of our whole body

"The individual experiences himself as such, not directly, but only indirectly, from the particular standpoints of other individual members of the same social group, or from the generalized standpoint of the social group as a whole to which he belongs." (comes from social experience)

Two areas of development of the self (according to Mead)

1) "I": the unsocialized infant, a bundle of wants/desires

• No recognition of themselves or the boundary between their bodies and the bodies of others

• The subject of action

2) "Me": the self as a distinct object (role) to be perceived by others

• The socialized aspect of the person, learned in interaction with others

The 'I' acts creatively, though within the context of the 'me'. - Society in motion; a process

What is the generalized other?

An internalized sense of the total expectations of others in a variety of settings; "communities of attitudes" (self & society)

- Ex:

"Mummy is angry with me now to Mummy is angry with me whenever I spill the soup...to everybody is against soup-spilling...to one does not spill soup" (Berger & Luckmann)

Mead's Stages of Social Development

1) I/Me

2) Significant other

3) Reference group

4) Generalized other

What are the components of the self (related to Mead)?

• Me and I

- Behavior not totally determined by others

• More than socially reflected self-images (see Cooley)

- Ongoing process, continuous conversation:

• What does the generalized other want me to do in this situation? and How do I personally feel about these expectations?

• The I registers pain, the me bears pain in silence

- Interdependence of self and society

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