Soci 201 Dumas - Midterm II

Culture

Knowledge, language, values, customs and material objects passed to others over time that help us to deal with real-life problems

Culture - Brym

Culture isn't something that just exists but is beneficial

Two types of Culture

Material and non-material culture

Material culture

tangible artifacts, physical objects ex. pieces of art, religious texts, etc.

Non-material culture

values, beliefs, traditions
sociologists care more about this

Features of Culture

- learned (values)
- shared (symbols)
- transmitted (intergenerational)
- cumulative
- human
- distinguishes us from animals
* sum of the total of socially transmitted ideas, practices, and material objects

Abstraction

the human ability to create and use symbols such as language in order to classify experience and generalize from it

Cooperation

the human ability and capacity to construct norms and laws

Production

-the human capacity to make and use tools and techniques to take and create what we want
-improves our ability to take what we want from nature

Building blocks of Culture

values, norms, laws and sanctions

Values

general beliefs of right and wrong

Norms

specification of appropriate behaviour

Laws

codified norms; norms that are so specific and important that we outlined punishments for not following them

Sanctions

rewards and punishments used to encourage or, in some cases, ensure that people follow norms (cultural guidelines)

Norms (Sumner)

Folkways and Mores

Folkways

(Minor Norms) customary behaviour; don't really control how someone acts, nothing really happens when you violate ex. holding the door for someone, interrupting someone, cutting in line

Mores

(Major Norms but not Laws) more serious and carry moral condemnation and severe punishment ex. cheating on a spouse, dating your best friends ex, rumour depending on severity

Cultural relativism

states that all cultures have intrinsic worth and all are equal and worthy ex. Canada's Multiculturalism

Ethnocentrism

-the tendency to judge other cultures exclusively by the standards of our own
-assuming one's own culture is superior
-closely tied to racism
-ex. Nazi Germany, the KKK

Twin faces of Culture

freedom and constraint

Twin faces of Culture: Freedom

Multiculturalism, Globalization, Rights revolution, postmodernism

Freedom: Multiculturalism

provides minorities with rights; prevents tyranny of the majority

Freedom: Globalization

increased trade, communication and production

Freedom: Rights revolution

-the process by which excluded groups have obtained equal rights under the law and in practice
-1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights
-compensation for past injustices (ex. Japanese internment)

Freedom: Postmodernism

-an eclectic mixing of cultural elements, the erosion of authority, and the decline of consensus around core values
-not as much elitism as there was in the 80s and 90s; more freedom to dress and act as people will
-"Fruit Machine": tests performed on people to determine if they were gay, and if they were they were, they were fired (occurred around the time of the communist scare)
-erosion of authority
-a decline of consensus about core values; people used to take the path of least resistance but not anymore

Constraint: Rationalization; Werkglocken

-the Werkglocken: the "central work clock" measured the efficiency of the employees (disempowering)
-in Europe, when people would rebel against the division of labour, they would take down the Werkglocken

Constraint: Rationalization; McDonaldization

-McDonaldization: a term developed by George Ritzer in 1993
-companies want 4 things:
1) Efficiency
2) Calculability
3) Predictability
4)Control
-McDonaldization occurs when a society adopts the characteristics of a fast food restaurant

Constraint: Consumerism; The nag factor

-psychologists who help companies to sell products will market them to children
-1/3 of purchases made today would not be made if children didn't nag their parents to buy them

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

-people see and understand the world through the cultural lens of language
-our language determines our thought
-if language is lost, the entire culture surrounding that language is lost/at risk
-we form concepts about things in our environment and develop language to express our concepts
-our language teaches us to think in binaries
-Kendall (2008) said that in Lesotho, there was no word for "lesbian" but women regularly engaged in homoerotic acts and it was considered normative

Language and Gender: Women

-use more modifiers and tag questions
-have more variety in their vocabulary
-are more likely to disclose aspects of their personal lives and feelings (men are not comfortable doing so)

Language and Gender: Men

-men use the imperative form (commands) and expletives more often than women
-in the beginning of male-female relationships, they talk more than women (this decreases over time)

Subcultures

-groups in society with their own distinct values, norms, folkways and mores
-ex. bikers, surfers, hippies, hutterites

Countercultures

-subcultures in opposition to the dominant/parent culture
-want to change the dominant culture and engage in behaviour to change the way society works in order to improve it
-ex. feminism, Nazi, hippie culture in the 60s, environmentalists, the civil rights movement, the black lives matter movement

Giving the finger, to your sociology professor would be a violation of a

Mores (fing)

Artists such as Ozzy Osbourne and Marilyn Manson are best categorized as members of

?

*EQ T/F when a person is ethnocentric they are always racist

False

*EQ Ritzer's conception of McDonaldization is similar to the idea of bureaucratization by who

Faber

*EQ Intentionally slamming a door on another with books in their hand is an example of

Mores

*EQ Using the wrong fork at a restaurant is considered

Folkway

*EQ Smoking during university classes is considered

Laws

*EQ Language determines thought is known as

Sapir-Whorf

*EQ Judging other cultures by our own is

ethnocentrism (eq)

*EQ Surplus value is similar to

profit

3 basic emotional reactions to social class

resistance, paralysis, rage

Resistance

-do not want to conform
-"there cannot be these big discrepancies between classes"

Paralysis

-a sense of powerlessness
-"well theres not much we can do about this; wealth is inherited and we are powerless"

Rage

-extreme anger
-"F*CK the rich people"

Income

-economic gain attained by wages, salaries, and income transfers from the government

Wealth

-accumulated assets of good such as buildings, land, farms, houses, factories, etc.

Net worth

-the difference between all debts and assets

Income Inequality

- Median is used because the extremely wealthy and extremely poor don't affect the average
- Considerable variation in how much you earn
- Means will be lower

Wealth Inequality

- At what point do you let psychological aspects like jealousy effect individuals and the wealth inequality and what aspects will make us think about inequality differently

Hegemony

-created by Italian communist Antonio Gramsci
-the state and ruling capitalist class, the bourgeoisie, use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies
-"why does the working class behave in ways that are in favour of the rich people?"

Poverty

-not measured just financially
-can be measured socially, such as participation in social life
-a social group phenomenon
-in wealthy countries such as canada, it is defined in two ways; absolute poverty and relative poverty

Absolute poverty

-an inability to attain the basic necessities of life (Basic Needs Measure)

Relative poverty

-an inability to secure an average standard of living
-considered deprived relative to others
-measured by LICO (low income cutoff point) to determine inequality of the nation

Relative poverty: LICO (low income cutoff point)

-if you spend more than 55% of your monthly income on basic necessities, you are considered relatively impoverished

Consequences of Relative poverty

-delayed vocabulary development
-poor health and hygiene
-poor nutrition
-absenteeism and low scholastic achievement
-behavioural and mental problems (crime/deviance)
-low housing standards
-greater likelihood of being poor in adulthood

Poverty: more common in...

-single parent families
-people under 25
-women
-people of colour (visible minorities)
-people who are disabled

Social stratification

-refers to persistent patterns of social inequality
-a system by which a society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy
-open and closed

Social stratification: open

-people are allowed to raise their social standings
- just as easy to go to the top as it is to go to the bottom
-ex. Canada

Social stratification: closed

-does not allow for people to raise their social standings
-ex. the Caste system in India, where people are ranked in terms of their social status and remain at the same status they were born into

Meritocracy

-social stratification based on merit (how well a person performs in a given role)
-regardless of your social standing, you are getting what you deserve
-controversial

Status

-a social position that a person holds
-ascribed and achieved

Status: ascribed

-born into it
-doesn't change much over the course of your life
-ex. royalty, age, race, sex, skin colour

Status: achieved

-you have some measure of control over it
-ex. career, wealth, education and citizenship (to an extent)

Explanations for Inequality

- Structural
- Conflict
- Feminism
- Symbolic Interactionism

Structural Functionalism - Davis & Moore

-written when the war was ending and wealth was generating
-an attempt to explain social stratification
-believed we live in a meritocracy
-made of 4 points
-considered unworkable because it seemed to say everything in the world is functional and thats why its there
-problematic because things that are unwanted exist too ex. crime, famines
-believed inequality was both inevitable and necessary because it ensures that the most qualified individuals are selected to fill the most important and rewarding roles
-downplays power differences and conflict between social classes

Structural Functionalism - Davis & Moore: 4 points

1) society is held together by consensus, not based upon conflict
-laws are what the majority want
2) inequality is functional for society
3) eliminating inequality would be harmful
-inequality is a good thing for society and taking it away would be bad
4) inequality will continue because it is functional and necessary**

Inequality

-people who support it are usually gaining from it
-people would want to keep inequality because there would be no incentive to do things without it

Intrinsic motivation

-doing something because you enjoy it
- value

Extrinsic motivation

-doing something for external outcomes such as financial rewards
- money, benefits

Gramsci

hegemony, inheritance
- Hegemony = Engage in behaviour that is not in their best interest
Ex. People of welfare

Conflict Theory - Karl Marx-

-two groups in society; the haves (bourgeoisie) and the have nots (proletariat)

*EQ what is the social relationship to the means of production?

-refers to the peoples position in society
-are you the proletariat or the bourgeoisie?

Conflict Theory - Karl Marx: exploitation

-surplus value is profit that is taken away from the proletariat by the bourgeoisie
-Marx believed it was the labourers who create value, so they are being exploited
-the proletariat is not only exploited, but also experience alienation; related to anomie, which is a sense of rootlessness

Conflict Theory - Karl Marx: alienation

-the unnatural separation of things that go together
-the proletariat is not only exploited, but also experience alienation; related to anomie, which is a sense of rootlessness
-alienated in two ways:
1)the proletariat is separated from the wealth they create
2) capitalist societies tend to breed unhealthy competition and pits people against each other, leading to cheating, various forms of crimes, homicides, etc.
-the proletariat almost begins to feed on itself

Conflict Theory - Karl Marx: law of accumulation

-as the bourgeoisie obtains more wealth, the proletariat will eventually have no money to purchase products and the system will collapse
-pretty much states that all capitalist societies are doomed for failure and that life with this much competition will fight so endlessly that it will collapse

Lumpenproletariat

- Very poor, did not have much revolutionary potential

Drunk, druggies, homeless

Petite Bourgeoisie

-Small business owners

Conflict Theory - Erik Ohlin Wright

-studied in the 20th and 21st century
-believed there was more than just two classes; rather than just the bourgeoisie and proletariat, there was four classes:
1)capitalist class
2)managerial class
3)small-business class
4)working class

Conflict Theory - Erik Ohlin Wright: the four classes

1)capitalist class: control the means of production
2)managerial class: control the labour of others
3) small-business class: purchase the labour of others
4) working class: sale of ones labour

Compare and contrast: classes, Marx vs Wright

-both believed there were classes in society, but disagreed in the number of classes
-marx believed there were two; the bourgeoisie and the proletariat
-wright believed there were four; the capitalist, managerial, small-business, and working classes

*EQ What term does Marx use to refer to the group that purchases the labour of others?

Petty Bourgeoisie

Conflict Theory - Max Weber

-deeply distrusted bureaucrats
-"bureaucrats are the ones in society that we should really be worried about"
-"bureaucratization is really what controls all of us"
-put considerable emphasis on the power that resides in ownership of property
-made 4 points:
1) one factor cannot explain social stratification
2) we should take a multidimensional approach to social stratification, including class, status, and party
3) society will be increasingly controlled by bureaucrats
4) inequality will continue

*EQ which of the theorists believed that inequality would end?

Marx, who believed that inequality would end when the proletariat seized control of the means of production

Predictions for the future: Marx, Wright and Weber

-Marx: believed inequality would end when the proletariat seized control of the means of production
-Wright and Weber: inequality would not end

Feminisms

-society doesn't improve or change linearly, and neither does feminism
-various types of feminisms:
1) liberal feminism
2) radical feminism
3) socialist feminism
4) postmodern feminism

Feminisms: Liberal feminism

-believe that women can participate fully in society if they can achieve equality of opportunity with men

Feminisms: Radical feminism

-male domination is rooted in the family
-society is a patriarchy and must be eliminated

Feminisms: Socialist feminism

-maintains that legal equality is not enough to ensure that women can participate fully in society
-the state should provide affordable and accessible daycare facilities and other services to alleviate the economic burdens that prevent working class women from participating in society

Feminisms: Postmodern feminism

-the new wave of feminism
-intersectional: criticizes liberal, socialist, and radical feminists for generalizing from the experiences of white women and not looking at the experiences of women of colour
-have extended the relevance of feminism to previously marginalized groups
-the removal of gender norms

Symbolic Interactionism

a micro-level theory in which shared meanings, orientations, and assumptions form the basic motivations behind people's actions
-social psychology, this is a micro level theory
-if we are going to look at social stratification, rather than just looking at numbers we should look at how people experience/feel about poverty

Symbolic Interactionism: Goffman

Goffman (dramaturgy) said that we have roles based on our social class status. If you come across someone wealthy, there is social class deference. The poor person is more likely to not question/act subordinately towards the wealthy one

Relative to other OCED nation, where is Canada's level of equality?

In the middle

prejudice

-the thought process
-unfavourable, generalized, and rigid beliefs applied to all members of a group
- Pre judging on the basis of stereotypes

discrimination

-practices that deny groups equal access to societal rewards
- is the act of stereotyping, physical aspects
- doing

stereotyping

-exaggerating oversimplified images of the characteristics of social categories

Lucius Outlaw- "Toward a Critical Theory of Race"

1) We need to examine the "career" of the "race"
2) It is unclear whether the term devices from an Arabic, Latin or a German source.
3) First (recorded) use in English by William Dunbar in 1508 in a poem.
4) It was initially used to denote a class of person. In the 19th and 20th centuries, however, it came to signify groups that were distinguished biologically.

Did race begin with science?

No, race actually predates science itself