Social Forces: Intro to Sociology

C Wright Mills “Sociological Imagination”

Cultivating the “quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay of man and society, biography and history, of self and world”

• the application of imaginative thought to the asking and answering of sociological questions. People who use the sociological imagination “think themselves away” from the familiar routines of everyday life”

Personal troubles of a milieu

troubles occur within character of the individual + within the range of their immediate relations with others, microsoc scope

• cause: personal values, individual choices, localized circumstances are threatened

• resolution: solved directly by individual or within their immediate local environment

Public issues of social structure

issues that transcend the local environment and the inner life of the person, relates to how institutions overlap and form the larger structure of social and historical life, macrosoc scope affecting society as a whole

• caused by institutional failures, structural inequalities, policy decisions

• resolution: solved through institutional reform, structural shifts or policy changes

comparative example of personal trouble (milieu) vs public issue (social structure)

Unemployment: milieu - in a city of 100,000, one person = unemployed. caused likely by skill set, work ethic/personal circumstances

public issue: in city, 15,000 ppl are unemployed. the cause stems from economic recession, outsourcing or automation

C Wright Mills and The Power Elite

• the Metropolitan 400: members of historically-notable local families in the principal American cities who are generally represented on the Social Register

• celebrities, chief executives, corporate rich, warlords, political directorate

Celebrities in The Power Elite

prominent entertainers and media personalities

the “Chief Executives”

presidents and CEOs of the most important companies within each industrial sector

the “Corporate Rich”

major landowners and corporate shareholders

the “Warlords”

senior military owners, most importantly the Joint Chiefs of Staff

• joint chiefs of staff: a body of senior military leaders in the United States Department of Defense that advises the prez, the secretary of defense, the homeland security council, and the national security council on military matters

the “Political Directorate”

“fifty-odd men of the executive branch” of the U.S. federal government, including leadership in the Executive Office of the President, who are sometimes variously drawn from elected officials of Democratic and Republican parties, but are usually professional government bureaucrats”

What is #EpochEnd?

when discourses of consequence define an event as so meaningful that previously existing rules and distributions of resources for a given set of social, economic, political, and cultural relations must be transformed in order to take into account the new circumstances issuing from the event. The greater that transformation in scale and time, the more it approaches the end of an epoch.

War (Ukraine, Russia impact)

For those in Ukraine, Russia's invasion defines end of an era and those affected fight to define the terms of its conclusion and its successor states. The violence of that confrontation radiates outward, however. While conflict is clearly bounded at least atm, implications spread globally with effects on food security, the displacement of populations, disturbances in the prior global energy system and consequent environmental outcomes with specific concentrations of harm

• legitimate threats of invasion elsewhere. there is not inherently transcendant truth in this conflict, but truth does become an object of contest

• conclusion wont be known, world won’t remain the same though

Connection of C Wright Milis Idea of the “Power Elite”

Millis argued American society by relatively small groups CONTROLLING major political, economic, and institutional organizations. From this pov, Trump’s rise can be seen less as “the people defeating the elites” and move as one group of elites challenging and replacing another

Structural approach

where an individual ends up in life is determined by the position into which he or she is born. By their social roles, gender, race and class

An emphasis on agency

Individuals are responsible for their own lives, futures

In total,

an individual’s life chances are shaped more by their social circumstances than by their individual agency

Agency

The ability to think, act, and make choices independently

Agency: With what consequence

• you are free to walk through that door and leave

• you have greater agency if you do that in concert with others with others

Agency, independently of what?

• authority, constrains without obvious authority

But structure also enables ex (current)

• trump couldn’t act with such authority were it not for qualities of executive power he inherited (e.g. pardons) AND the structure of our congress - its powers, the electoral system that figured the distribution of GOP and Democrats in it and our 2 party system

What is Structure

“Social Structure:” “underlying regularities or patterns in how people behave in their relationships with one another”

• structures are combinations of virtual rules/schema (guidelines, principles, laws, customs, etc.) and actual resources (things and people over which some people have control)

Who rules with what? (Marx vs Weber vs Durkheim)

Marx: those who control the means of production (property)

Weber: those who control the state and the means of violence (political officials, bureaucrats)

Durkheim: mutual dependence in a division of labor as well as common values reinforced through rituals

Whose Theories Count? if you are in authority…

and seeking to reproduce society as it exists, you will tend more toward Durkheim— what holds us together?

• its better to hide the question of power, and to emphasize a mutual good: integration

Whose Theories Count? if you are challenging authority

and wishing to transform it, you are more likely to ask how power works. Marx emphasized class relations

Whose Theories Count? DuBois

emphasized race. but also emphasized class, and intersection of class and race for reproducing power “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line”

• refers to the deep social, legal, economic, and psychological barriers that separate people of color—specifically African Americans—from white people

Harriet Martineau

in the early 19th century, challenging any sociology that only talks about some people rather than all people

Rationalization as a process

by which social, economic and cultural life comes to be increasingly organized around principles of efficiency and on the basis of technical knowledge

Zuboff quote on engaging on the world with ever better questions

“Twentieth-century industrial society was organized around the ‘division of labor,’ and it followed that the struggle for economic equality would shape the politics of that time. Our digital century shifts society’s coordinates from a division of labor to a division of learning and it follows that the struggle over access to knowledge and the power conferred by such knowledge will shape the politics of our time

New centrality of epistemic inequality signals what?

signals a power shift from the ownership of the means of production, which defined the politics of the 20th century, to the ownership of the production of meaning.

challenges of epistemic justice/rights

in this new era are summarized in 3 essential questions about knowledge, authority, and power.

• who knows

• who decides who knows

• who decides who decides who knows?

epistemic justice and rights

Epistemic rights are moral or legal entitlements that protect a person's ability to seek, receive, produce, use, and share knowledge. Epistemic justice is a state of fairness where people are treated with proper respect, credibility, and inclusion as knowers, thinkers, and communicators

need a what with which to approach what? whose framework

framework with which to approach questions

• William Sewell: the duality of structure: social structures are simultaneously the medium and the outcome of human practices

Analyzing historical transformations in these terms does what

it clarifies how power works, and how change can happen by the exercise of people’s sociological imaginations

• instead of saying struture or agency, figure out how they inform one another

Structure/Agency/Structure

Distribution of Rules and Resources —> Follow Rules, Bend Rules, Break Rules —> distribution of rules and resources

Parsons

A sociologist known for his structural functionalism theory, emphasizing the interconnection between social institutions and their roles in maintaining social stability.

Marx

A German philosopher and economist known for his theories on capitalism, class struggle, and historical materialism. He is best known for co-authoring "The Communist Manifesto" and writing "Das Kapital."

Weber

A German sociologist known for his theory of bureaucracy and concepts such as the "Protestant Ethic" and rationalization in society.

Durkheim

A French sociologist regarded as the father of sociology, known for his studies on social cohesion, collective consciousness, and suicide rates, and for establishing sociology as a discipline.

Merton

An American sociologist known for his theories on the sociology of science and the concepts of manifest and latent functions, as well as his work on deviance and social structure.

WEB DuBois

An African American sociologist and activist known for his work on social stratification, race relations, and the concept of "double consciousness". He co-founded the NAACP and was a prominent figure in the early civil rights movement.

Symbolic Interactionism

A theoretical framework in sociology that focuses on the interactions between individuals and the meanings they attribute to objects, events, and behaviors, emphasizing the subjective experience of social life.

Rational Choice Theory

A framework for understanding social and economic behavior that posits individuals make decisions based on maximizing benefits and minimizing costs, considering their preferences and available information.

Social Change Question

Do you analyze it “objectively” or is your work implicated in it? For whom and for what?

Reflexivity Question

How does the position of the researcher and their networks shape the questions, methods and conclusions realized?

Sociology’s nuclear contradiction

contradictions exist everywhere

Aldon Morris: Alternative View of Modernity

Shouldn’t we center in our scholarship “white supremacy western empires, racial hierarchies, colonization, slavery, Jim Crow, patriarchy, and resistance movements”? Consider DuBois as inspiration: “How does it feel to be a problem?”

• origin of civil rights movement

• modernity is too general

Agency in the world of AI: empowerment

amplifies what we can do (but who among us is amplified?)

Agency in the world of AI: replacement

does what we used to do (but what happens to those who used to do such jobs)

Agency in the World of AI: domination

directs us or uses us for someone else (but can the technology enhance us, or will only some be enhanced and use it to exploit others even more?)

Tressie McMillan Cottom on AI PANIC

• Whether or not you believe #BigTech CEO proclamations (I don’t) we should be paying equal attention to what these men stand to gain by feeding our panic about the #AITechnology they’ve long claimed is both essential and absolutely inevitable”

• look at the rest of the quotes in ur notes

Alondra Nelson

• tech interaction with sociology

• involved in policy work/debate AI technology

Questions about me and sociology

• where do you locate yourself in sociology?

• Where you locate youself in a society

• Where do you locate yourself in global social change?

What Does Theory Do?

• helps us look at patterns

• easy to overlook race when white ppl were the only sociologists

Double consciousness

is a concept introduced by W.E.B. Du Bois that describes the internal conflict experienced by subordinated or colonized groups in an oppressive society. It highlights the struggle of seeing oneself through the eyes of a dominant culture while maintaining one's own identity.

behind the color line

refers to the barriers and challenges faced by African Americans and other marginalized groups in a racially divided society, emphasizing the social, economic, and political struggles they endure.

behind the veil

is a metaphor used by W.E.B. Du Bois to describe the lived experience of African Americans who face systemic racism and a lack of understanding from the dominant white society, symbolizing the separation and invisibility of their struggles.

Marx vs DuBois

Marx: race is derivative

DuBois: can’t break up race and class and shows that race is significant

DuBois famous books

• The Souls of Black Folk

  • this is where color line and double consciousness come in

• Black Reconstruction in America

  • reinterpretation of civil war and reconstruction

  • central role of empancipated Black Americans in shaping post-war democracy

  • poor whites central to economy

Micro-sociology

the study of one or another of the many different component parts of societies (e.g. individual, families, communities, classes) and to specific features and problems (e.g. crime, race relations, religion, politics). The study of these components and features of societies is sometimes called microsociology

Macrosociology

in contrast focuses on human societies themselves. Although it, too, is concerned with individuals, families, classes, social problems, and all of the other parts and features of societies, it analyzes them in relation to the larger social systems — the societies — of which they are part

Selfie City Project

• used visualization data analysis to ask how mood varies.

• Would you be surprised that smiles are more common in Sao Paulo than they are in Moscow?

• meaning that for all those ppl interested in “big data,” selfie sociology might be a good substantive focus for methods so associated

• quite useful to think across levels to figure out social change. consider religion

What is the selfie?

• micro: picture taken by yourself of yourself

• macro: trend, more than a picture, like a culture

What is the Self?

• I, me and you. humans only recognize these differences after age 2

The Social self

the identity conferred by the reactions of others

Mead, symbolic interactionism

microsoc pov stating that ppl actively shape their social world and assign meaning to things—such as words, gestures, and objects—through daily face to face interactions

• I, me (taking the role of the other) as the self, and then the generalized other—embodying generalized rules enabling you to fit in

Chodorow

how does the sense of self vary for boys and girls when breaking with the mother is socially scripted in different ways for boys and girls

We all have roles, yes?

socially defined expectations of a person in a given status

impression management and presentation of self in everyday life

• we manage impressions alongside these roles—does your dress, your speech, vary in these different contexts?

• in class vs at a party or before ppl you don’t know vs before your family

• can you manage impressions intentionally?

Gerhard Lenski’s theory of evolution

• size, spaces, modes of production and consumption, social organization, technology is what changes

• societies replace other societies (larger, powerful tend to succeed smaller ones)

• change is largely cumulative

• colonialism

Landon Schnabel: multilevel approach to religion: individual

intrapersonal religion; individual faith; private practices and rituals; traits, personality, and orientation to religious life; identity; spirituality; individual of lived religion

religion at interactional level

interpersonal religion, shared practices and rituals, (dis)affirmations from coreligionists; pressure from family/friends; interfaith dynamics; international aspects of lived religion

religion at institutional level

organized religion; hierarchical systems, cumulative traditions; doctrine; systematic theology; formal and informal rules and expectations; culture; societal norms and structures

landon schnabel quote

“differential change across levels of religion as a social structure. even in these items measured based on individual responses to surveys we can see a shift from markers of institutional religion while people retain if not increase their involvement in individual faith and spirituality.”

Sociological Imagination

the sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society

analytical shift for sociological imagination

from “what’s wrong with me?'“ to “what’s organizing this?”

Thick at a Glance Main Themes

• she starts in her own life, then zooms out to the structure

• beauty is not personal taste, it reflects who holds power

• beauty works like capital: it has value, it is unequally distributed and it costs money

• naming is political: saying what was done and who did it

• sociology written for the public, in the first person

Think about: THICK

“Cottom writes that “I just like what I like” is always a capitalist lie. Do you agree… think of something purely your own taste and trace where you might have learned it

What does thick teach us

• “they say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that ugly is as ugly does. Both are lies. Ugly is everything done to you in the name of beauty. Knowing the difference is part of getting free.”

  • mills gave us the question: how do biography and history connect?

  • cottom answers from inside her own life, and shows that where you stand shapes what you can see

  • naming a structure is the first step to changing it

On Capitalism…Burawoy and Erik

focus on capitalism even if approaching it in very different ways despite both being Marxist

• viewpoint diversity

On capitalism

• private ownership

• capitalism is freedom

• marxist point: most dynamic system that favors innovation

• do u treat those who challenge your ideas as “saying something interesting” or “an outsider”

Capitalism textbook definition

an economic system based on the private ownership of wealth, which is invested and reinvested in order to produce profit”

marxism view of capitalism

• is a “mode of production” in which ownership of the means of production (land, technology, production facilities, etc.) defines one class—the bourgeoisie—while another class, the proletariat, earn their living by selling their labor

spirit of capitalism

• Weber

• ideas, culture, religion and mindset

• a psychological ethos or “calling” to accumulate wealth rationally

• people view hard work and wealth creation as a moral/spiritual duty

• market with a spirit of voluntary exchange

structure of capitalism

• material conditions, laws, ownership, and institutions

• the physical ownership of the means of production and market competition

• systemic necessity; capitalists must exploit and accumulate to survive market competition

• Karl Marx

market economy

is one based on capitalism, where goods and services are freely exchanged on an open market

voluntary exchange

the value of the outputs, most often characterized in terms of a price, is determined solely by market interaction between producers and consumers, a concept known as _________

principle of voluntary exchange

• key principles of a market economy

• based on consumers and producers acting in their self-interest.

• makes both parties better off than they were before the exchange

principle of voluntary exchange example

if you own a tulip farm and sell tulips at a farmer’s market, you are voluntarily exchanging your time and expertise for money, and consumers are exchanging money for your goods and services. Both parties are better off because of the exchange

socialist economy (under communist rule)

guaranteed work, but no freedom to self-organize labor

Feudalism

an economic system in Europe organized by an aristocracy, whose control of arable lands and the means of violence enabled them to control peasants obliged to work for those lords. No free exchange of labor here.

Colonialism

the process whereby Western nations established their rule in parts of the world away from their home territories. No free exchange of labor here

Settler colonialism

a distinct type of colonialism that functions through the replacement of indigenous populations with an invasive settler society that, over time, develops a distinctive identity and sovereignty. Violence is here too

Note for capitalism

even in its “free market” model, it was based on slavery, colonialism and wars of all sorts

• so… think more about power and structure in the sense of capitalism and ask even critically freedom for who

Power

the ability of individuals or groups to make their own interests or concerns count, even when others resist. Power, therefore, sometimes involves the use of force. Power is present in almost all social relationships

Authority

a form of power that is seen as rightfully exercised is legitimate

A mode of production

the specific way a society organizes its economic life to produce and distribute goods and services

• forms real foundation or base of society

Forces of Production

physical and human inputs used to create things, includes raw materials, land, tools, machinery, technology, and human labor power

organization of production

how a society coordinates and manages technology, land and labor to create goods

• driven by relations of production: who owns the property, who performs the work, and how economic surplus is extracted

• property ownership + class structure, divison of labor, extraction of the economic surplus

coercion

structural force that compels people to participate in a mode of production and surrender the wealth they create

The state as the executive

primary managing committee for the interests of the dominant economic class