SOC 100 Exam #2: Martineau

Who was Harriet Martineau?

• Translated, paraphrased & reduced to 2 volumes Compte’s 6 volume Cours de Philosophie Positive 

• Society in America: a critique of America’s failure to fulfill its promise. A chapter on the “non-existence” of women 

• How to Observe Morals and Manners: the principles and methods of empirical social research 

• Examined class, religion, national character, domestic relations, women’s status, criminology, and interrelations between institutions and individuals 

• “Dress and Its Victims”

  • Concerns that women dress for men, fashion designers are men, what women look like/wear isn’t completely under their control

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Biography & mental illness

• Writer and lecturer

• Mental illness resulting from desire to be socially approved for behavior that society did NOT approve for women 

• Per Lengermann, PM and Niebrugge - Brantley, J. (1998)

• The Women Founders. Boston: McGraw Hill 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: “Yellow Wallpaper”

• Women need to be involved in the larger world

• Don’t trust men to make your decisions for you!

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Purpose in Writing

• Wants to (define and) reduce the pain that people experience in society 

• One way this pain occurs is as the social interaction of “work” comes into contact with our “common consciousness” (culture) 

• Our consciousness is androcentric: designed to support male control rather than humanness

• Feminism and mental health 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Social Theory - Key Place pain occurs & why it occurs

• Gilman wants to (define and) reduce the pain that people experience in society

  • Pain bc women can’t do the things they’re talented enough to do – she wanted to change this

• Excessive gendering results in sexuo-economic relationship that is distorted -  the woman depends on the man

  • Man goes out to work, woman is in a place of economic dependency on the man… Man has more power bc they’re bringing in the money 

• This is especially painful in workplace arrangements

Anna Julia Cooper - redemptive power of African American woman

• Witness oppression; appeal to public conscience

• A Voice from the South 

• “The Colored Woman’s Office” - The (redemptive) power of the African American woman 

• Because African American women have been double marginalized — pushed to the side bc we’re women and ALSO bc were African American — we have seen stuff to make better leaders for America's future 

  • Benefit: we see from the perimeter what's going on the middle of society & we understand what’s going on compared to the people in the middle

Jane Addams

Refocus from personal moral concerns to social ethical concerns, esp. related to the poor.

• Hull House – a settlement house in Chicago, help provide places for immigrants, help them resettle – trying to make life bearable for immigrants

• Chicago Women’s School of Sociology 

• Democracy and Social Ethics America must raise moral concerns from the personal to the social 

Ida B. Wells-Barnett — activism (railroads and lynching)

• Worked against race discrimination in railroads (foreshadows Rosa Parks); Interested in desegregation, railroad quality

• Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases 

  • Argued against lynching bc America was on the global stage as a young rising nation, if other nations see these acts, they will say America is barbaric. We must stop this for America’s representation in the world. 

Marianne Weber - patriarchy in the domestic setting

• Uses marriage and women’ work to explain the patriarchal distortion of social life

• Favors having middle class men pay their wives a salary, women can control their salary then. 

• “On the Valuation of Housework”

What is Standpoint Theory?

Women [or other oppressed groups] possess knowledge unavailable to the socially privileged, particularly knowledge of social relations 

• We all have a social location (where am I in relationship to other people based on my social identity) - race, class, generation

• We all have a viewpoint because of out social location - those social viewpoints are limited and imperfect

  • We have to recognize this 

• Men have controlled a lot of the intellectual world and have seen the world through there limited view from that standpoint 

  • We need to correct think and find the blindspots 

Patricia Hill Collins

Examines the “matrix of domination”: gender, race, class

Patricia Hill Collins: Intersectionality

• Concept of the "matrix of domination" to explain how race, gender, and class intersect to produce different experiences and forms of oppression for individuals.

  • Being a Black female can involve navigating distinct challenges compared to being a white female, due to the combined effects of racial and gender-based oppressions.

• These intersecting identities provide a comprehensive framework to understand individuals' diverse social positions and challenges.

Patricia Hill Collins: The power of the Black woman’s experiential standpoint

• "Black Feminist Thought" highlights how Black women have experiential knowledge due to their positions at the intersection of multiple oppressive systems (race & gender)

  • Can give them the ability to improve the knowledge of others into resisting & understanding domination.

• Their experiential knowledge is viewed as a powerful tool for both personal and collective empowerment, enhancing broader societal knowledge and fostering resistance against intersecting oppressions.