Sociology of Gender and Family Lecture Series

This flashcard set covers the sociological frameworks of family and gender, including Marxist-feminist social reproduction theory, the history of marriage, transfeminism, IPV, and the future trajectories of family life as discussed in the lecture transcripts.

Standard North American Family (SNAF)

An ideological code identified by Dorothy E. Smith comprised of a legally married couple sharing a household where the adult male is in paid employment and the adult female's primary responsibility is the care of the husband, household, and children.

Social Reproduction Theory (SRT)

The primary framework for Marxist-feminist political economy that analyzes how society as a whole is reproduced, grounded in the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Base

The economic bedrock of society in the Marxist model, consisting of the forces of production (technology) and the relations of production (social power dynamics).

Superstructure

The layers of society resting on the economic base, encompassing the political-legal layer (state and law) and the ideological layer (prevailing ideas and beliefs).

Dialectics

The reciprocal, two-way relationship where the material base determines the superstructure, but the superstructure acts back upon the base to reinforce its conditions.

Dual Systems Theory

A 20th-century feminist framework arguing that misogyny and class oppression are two separate spheres existing simultaneously with independent dynamics.

Unitary Theory

Lise Vogel's critique of dual systems theory that uses the base and superstructure model to describe the social, rather than purely biological, origins of misogyny.

Expanded Formula for Capital

$M \rightarrow C(M_{p} + L_{p}) \rightarrow P \rightarrow C' \rightarrow M'$ where $M$ is initial capital, $C$ represents commodities split into means of production ($M_{p}$) and labour-power ($L_{p}$), $P$ is the process of production, and prime symbols denote surplus value and profit.

Surplus Value

The new value created unique to human beings expending labour-power ($L_{p}$) during the production process.

Articles of Consumption ($Ac$)

The goods and services a worker buys with wages to survive and replenish their capacity to work, determined historically and culturally by class struggle rather than just biological minimums.

Worker's Circuit of Reproduction

$M \rightarrow Ac \rightarrow P \rightarrow L_{p} \rightarrow M$ illustrating how wages are converted into articles of consumption and consumed to replenish the capacity to work.

Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS)

A condition where a body with XY chromosomes is immune to testosterone and responds to estrogen, resulting in a normatively female phenotypic development, birth with a vulva and vagina, and female pubertal development.

Performativity

A concept by Judith Butler where the act of citing and performing a social norm reproduces that norm as a reality, such as grooming practices maintaining the appearance of a dimorphic sex binary.

Safetyism

A term criticized by organizers of Defying Destiny referring to an over-emphasis on immediate individual safety that sacrifices collective self-defense.

Institutions

Clusters of behavioural rules that govern human actions and relationships within recurrent situations, or an enduring set of ideas about how to accomplish recognized goals.

Total Fertility Rate (TFR)

The number of children born per woman; the population replacement rate is considered to be $2.1$.

Ex-nuptial births

Births that occur outside of a legal marriage, often attributed to the rise of stable de facto relationships.

Diverging Destinies

A phenomenon described by Smock and Schwartz where socioeconomic status, education, and race create distinct, often unequal, family patterns.

Choice Marriages

A Western historical development where marriages are based on romantic love and subjective feelings rather than economic or social necessity negotiated by families.

Companionate Marriage

An ideology emerging in the late 1800s that defines a good marriage by sentiments of love, affection, care, communication, and joint decision-making.

To Circlude

An alternative verb proposed by Bini Adamczak to describe the enveloping body as the active subject in a sexual act, challenging the hierarchical history of the term 'to penetrate'.

Motherhood Mandate

The societal expectation that a woman's successful expression of womanhood and identity is grounded specifically in her fecundity and central role as a mother.

DIY Biographies

A sociological term for life paths, such as the reflexive choice to parent, that are no longer obligatory or uniform but are self-fashioned and personal projects.

Pronatalism

An ideological framework that views heterosexuality and reproduction as a woman's moral duty to secure the social reproduction of the working class.

Situationalists

A category in the continuum of parenting desires, common among men, whose paternity is contingent on their specific romantic attachments and current circumstances.

Reproductive Justice

A broad framework encompassing bodily autonomy, the right to have sex without discrimination, the right to mother, and the right to decide the timing and spacing of children.

Abortion Stigma

Negative attributes ascribed to women who terminate a pregnancy, marking them as transgressing normative constructions of femininity and maternal instinct.

Duluth Power and Control Wheel

A model developed in the 1980s listing tactics used by abusive partners to maintain power, including coercion, isolation, emotional abuse, and economic abuse.

Coercive Control

A malevolent course of conduct described by Evan Stark that subordinates a partner through violating physical integrity, intimidation, isolation, and control of resources.

Horizontal Segregation

The sorting of genders into different industries, such as women being heavily concentrated in the services sector.

Vertical Segregation

The disproportionate share of top organizational positions held by men, often referred to as the 'glass ceiling'.

Fatherhood Wage Premium

The phenomenon where the number of hours men spend in paid work, and subsequently their earnings, rises after they have children.

Black Box

The historical sociological assumption that family finances were a single unit where the needs of all members were met equitably without conflict.

Tender Years Doctrine

A historical legal stage in child custody that favored mothers for the care of young children.

Metabolic Rift

The contradiction identified by Kʼnhei Saitʼn between the infinite growth demands of capitalism and the finite limits of the 'eternal metabolism of nature'.