Cultural Sociology: Week 1 (Classical Social Theory, Decolonizing Sociology, Black Feminist Epistemologies)

On Smith, Philip, and Riler's "Culture in Classical Social Theory"; Meghji's "Decolonizing Sociology"; and Collins' "Black Feminist Epistemologies".

Karl Marx

Historical Materialism, Conflict Theory, Alienation, Class Stratification

Superstructure

[KM] The political, legal, religious, and cultural institutions that rest upon and are determined by the economic base, or mode of production.

Base

[KM] The production forces, or the materials and resources, that generate the goods society needs.

Mode of Production

[KM] Combination of productive forces (labor, means of production [resources]) and relations of production (how one is related to others, objects of work, social classes, etc.). Determines the character of social, political, and spiritual processes.

Means of Production

[KM] Assets and resources that enable a society to engage in production.

Relations of Production

[KM] The social relations found among the people involved in the process of production.

Species Being

[KM] Hegelian, also known as species essence. A form of solidarity, self-actualizing activities, relations, and praxes towards which people aspire.

Alienation

[KM] The separation from fellow humans, sentiments of isolation, inability to live in a fulfilling community. Some were economic, referring to the objective exploitation of labor power.

Class Consciousness

[KM] Awareness of a common class identity and interests.

False Consciousness

[KM] Engenders a mistaken/distorted view of reality; allows one to withstand the bleak reality of their situation (e.g. religion). Often related to base and superstructure.

Class System

[KM] A broader social structure in which these things were made around. Under a Marxist lens, involves the binary of the proletariats (workers) and bourgeoisie (owners).

Emile Durkheim

Sacred/Profane, Social Facts, Mechanical/Organic Society

Social Facts

[ED] Values, cultural norms, and social structures that transcend the individual and can exercise social control.

Functionalism

[ED] A sociological perspective that focuses on understanding how the different parts of society work together to keep it running smoothly.

Collective Conscience

[ED] Shared moral awareness and emotional life. Seen in the punishment of individuals.

Mechanical Solidarity

[ED] Non-industrialized societies. People were more alike and performed similar tasks in non-industrialized socieites. Little tolerance for deviance, harsh punishments to enforce conformity.

Organic Solidarity

[ED] Industrial societies, with division of labor, higher threshold of tolerance for deviance and diversity. Punishment is aimed at reintegration of the individual back into the diverse group.

Collective Effervescence

[ED] A collective emotional excitement, a strong sense of group belonging.

Sacred/Profane

[ED] Sacred: Awe, fear, reference. Profane: Everyday. Power regulated by special rites (e.g. ritual, prayer), power maintained/enforced by taboos. Church as a place of worship (not necessarily Abrahamic).

Ritual

[ED] Societies come together to perform these to fulfil the need to worship the sacred. Ultimately, religion as an act to enrich social bonds not simply to worship.

Max Weber

Protestant Work Ethic, Traditional/Legal/Charismatic Leader, Status, Modes of Action

Modes of Action

[MW] A person can have in their way of thinking and acting and how these forms can influence the behaviour of others, forming society as it relates and connects with others.

Wertational (Value-Rational)

[MW] Driven by cultural beliefs and goals. Conscious beliefs as basis behind actions/behaviors.

Zweckrational (Goal-Oriented)

[MW] Means-end rationality, has grown more popular with the rise of modernity. Norms of efficiency. To complete specific ends without identifying morals or ethics.

Protestant Ethic

[MW] The Protestant doctrine of predestination helped to motivate a preoccupation with work and helped attach moral value to economic virtues such as thriftiness and efficiency.

Thesis of Disenchantment

[MW] In the age of bureaucracy, meaning has been emptied out of the world as we begin to focus more on efficiency and rationality. We are trapped in an iron cage of bureaucracy and rationalism.

Traditional Authority

[MW] Small-scale, pre-industrial. Conservatism: things should be as they’ve always been. Problems begin with change.

Authority/Legitimate Domination

[MW] Rule was justified by reference to broader structures of meaning.

Charismatic Authority

[MW] In groups wherein it is believed that the ruler has divine powers/gifts. Linked to social change, antithetical to economic considerations. Rulers must continuously prove that they have these gifts/blessings.

Legal-Rational Authority

[MW] Bureaucratic, industrialized societies. Emphasis on rule of law, procedure, efficiency. Disenchantment increases as this authority replaces more cultural forms of power.

Status

[MW] Groups with a common lifestyle/shared level of social prestige.

Class

[MW} Position in an economic order.

George Simmel

Money, Metropolis, Fashion

Thoughs on Fashion

[GS] The codes of fashion are arbitrary; survival in a cultural sphere, not a practical one. Fashion is classed, and there is tension between using it for self-expression and social belonging.

Philosophy on Money

• [GS] Money has transformed human interactions; allowing us to make relationships impersonal, transactional. More instrumental and calculable. Infinite growth ("line goes up") as a possible endgoal.

• The economy as a thing of interactions and not production

Thoughs on Society

[GS] ○ Society as a product of ceaseless interactions between individuals, how they made groups Simmel argued that the self had become more free thanks to the removal of customary constraints upon action in the course of societal modernization.

Metropolis and Mental Life

[GS] Modern society (Berlin, 1900), is bombarded with information; intensification of nervous stimulation

• This bombardment of signs and symbols and info as threatening to our sense of self and our ability to operate as autonomous subjects in the metropolitan environment

• In order to cope with this, we shut down our emotional responses

Friedrich Nietzche

Post-modernism, Will to power, ressentiment, tragedy

Will to Power

[FN] Main driving force behind living. Driven to self-actualization, self-determination, and self-differentiation.

Revaluation of All Values

[FN] Post-structuralist. What we think is truth may not be truth. Same for morals and religion.

Ressentiment

[FN] Outward-directed, reactive morality. Starts with an assumption of suffering.

W.E.B. DuBois

Racial theory, Post-colonial communism, Double Consciousness

Polygenism

An archaic biological race theory that believed races were divergent species.

Social Darwinism

An archaic ideology that subscribes to the idea that immorality was biologically/genalogically inherited. Is very classist and racist in nature.

Black Underclass

[WD] There are four distinct subgroups of Black Americans at the time, based on occupational, economic, and cultural factors; similar to White counterparts. Black people are not prone to criminality; there are other factors.

Double Consciousness

[WD] An idea in which that Black Americans have a complex relationship with identity: They see themselves inherently intersectional, seeing themselves as both a Black person but also a Black person under the purview of Whiteness.

Edward Saïd

Orientalism

Standpoint Theory

[PC] Roots in academic feminism. Argues that knowledge stems from social position and challenges the objectivity of traditional science.

Stuart Hall

The West and the Rest, Representation Theory

Orientalism

[AM, ES] In this text it is discussed as a perspective or lens rampant in early (and present) sociological theories in which Western Europe is seen as the preeminent/central case study, discussion point, audience, and subject of sociology.

Eurocentrism

Describes a fallacy that western humanities and social sciences scholars fall for in which they exotify, misunderstand, stereotype and/or disparage Eastern cultures/nations (or simply, non-European cultures/nations).

Bifurcation

[AM] Division of two subjects. Fallacy in sociology that, in this text, separates the West from "the rest" of the world.

Southern Standpoint

[AM] A reaction to the predominant Northern Standpoint. An alternative standpoint recognizing the shared reality of those colonized and introducing ideas from and about these shared histories into mainstream sociology.

Radical Rationalism

[AM] ○ The existence of certain phenomena relies on their constitutive connections with other phenomena.

Patricia Hill Collins

Black Female Epistemologies

Subjugated Knowledge

[PC] Subjugated Knowledge (also called Marginal Knowledges) are knowledges that have been disqualified from consideration due to the fact that they have been deemed as inadequate or insufficiently elaborated.

Black Feminist Epistemologies

[PC] A series of collective experience, conditions, worldviews that were shared and passed on → collective wisdom of a Black women's standpoint, then formalized in academia later.

Epistemology

[PC] Constitutes an overarching theory of knowledge. Investigates the standards used to assess knowledge or why we believe what we believe to be true. Relations of power to knowledge and vice versa.

Paradigms

[PC] Encompasses interpretive frameworks (e.g. intersectionality). Used to explain social phenomena.

Methodologies

[PC] Broad principles of how to conduct research and how interpretive paradigms to be applied.

Subjugated Knowledge Considerations

[PC] Own-voices, authentic lived or learned experience, accountable to the consequences, negotiate with power structures and the tools of oppression.