SA150 1st Test Main Concepts pt.1

Theory

a lens used to explain why things happen in society and how society can change.

Theory as Liberatory Practice (hooks, 1991)

• Helps us understand social reality and how it could be changed (+ our everyday lives).

• Uses critical thinking to challenge problems and empower people.

Example: Learning about sexism can help someone understand that their experience is not just personal, but connected to larger social inequalities.

Sociological Imagination (Mills, 1959)

• The ability to connect personal experiences to larger social, historical, and political forces.

“quality of mind” - mills

• seeks to connect personal troubles to social issues.

The Sociological Imagination Troubles vs. Issues

• Troubles: Personal challenges.

• Issues: Problems grounded in broader social structures and conditions

Structural Functionalism

• society is made up of interconnected institutions that work together to maintain stability, order, and consensus.

Society = interconnected parts working together.

• If one institution fails, another may have to help fill the gap. (creates disruption and weakness across institutions.)

Institutions: Organizations or patterns that perform important functions in society.

Manifest functions

• The intended and obvious purpose of an institution or activity

• Example: You go to university to earn a degree.

Latent Functions

• The unintended or less obvious benefits/functions of an institution or activity.

Example: You go to university to earn a degree, but you also:

• Make friends

Conflict Theory (Marx and Engels, 1848)

• Not just 1 of these theories (group of different theories focus on inequality, power, and conflict in society

• Society is shaped by conflict between groups competing for limited resources, power, and wealth.

Conflict Theory Historical materialism:

• People need basic things like food, shelter, education, and money.

• Different social classes have different levels of access to these things.

• This inequality creates conflict between classes.

• That conflict can lead to social and political change.

Conflict Theory Bourgeoisie

• Own the means of production; are profit-seeking: want to

  maximize worker effort and maintain/minimize pay. Retain surplus

  value.

Conflict Theory Proletariat

• Working class, who must sell their labor to satisfy material needs, who are instrumental in creating surplus value.

Bourgeoisie and Proletariat

• Contrasting interests because owners want to maximize profit, while workers want better wages and working conditions.

Conflict Teheory Class Consciousness

• Workers becoming aware of their exploitation and organizing to improve their working conditions.

Example: Workers realize they are being underpaid and organize a union.

Max Weber (1864 – 1920)

• studied inequality and social change but believed that economics was not the only important factor. He also looked at things like religion, status, politics, race, and ethnicity.

Marx vs. Weber

Marx:

• Economics and class are extremely important.

Weber:

• Economics matters, but status, religion, politics, and other factors matter too.

The Protestant Ethic - Weber (1904)

Central Argument: Culture and religious beliefs can influence economic behaviour and help create capitalism.

• Argued that certain Calvinist religious beliefs encouraged behaviours such as hard work, saving, discipline, and frugality, which helped create an ideological environment favorable to capitalism.

Religion → work ethic → capitalism

• He was not criticizing Protestantism. He was trying to understand how religious beliefs helped encourage capitalist development.

The Protestant Ethic Predestination

• A belief within the Calvinist denomination that certain individuals had been fated to make heaven.

The Protestant Ethic Asceticism

• Hard work + discipline + avoiding luxury → seen as signs that someone might be destined for heaven (salvation).

Symbolic Interactionism

• A theory that focuses on how people create meanings through everyday interactions. (micro-level)

Symbolic Interactionism macro-level

• Looks at society as a whole and large social structures.

Symbolic Interactionism micro-level

• Looks at interactions between individuals in everyday life.

Example: "LOL" → same symbol, but different meanings depending on the interaction/context.

The Social Construction of Reality

• The idea that our understanding of reality is created and shaped through social interactions, meanings, norms, and shared beliefs.

• Society teaches us what things mean.

E.g. Give up your seat for someone else on the bus (formed interactions with others)

Berger and Luckmann (1966) 3 STEPS

1. Externalization

2. Objectivation

3. Internalization

Berger and Luckmann (1966) Externalization

• Expressing subjective ideas, beliefs and practices to others/the external world.

We create it.

Berger and Luckmann (1966) Objectivation

• Ideas take the character of objective values which exist independently of their creators. (Laws, customs, norms, values, languages).

It becomes established.

Berger and Luckmann (1966) Internalization

• Ideas become unquestioned, taken-for-granted, ‘natural’ realities. Incorporated into the sub-conscious.

We accept it as normal.

• Taken for granted norms that we live by (E.g. going to school k-12)

William Isaac Thomas

• Argued that when people define a situation as real, their actions can make it real in its consequences.

• What people believe can have real effects.

Example: You play music loudly on a train. Other passengers think you are being rude. They stare at you or complain.

Feminist Theory

• Rooted in conflict theory assumptions but primarily consider sex and gender as analytical dimensions of social life and inequality.

• Fundamental rejection of biological determinism

Feminist Theory Biological determinism

• The belief that biological differences between men and women determine what roles they should have in society.

• Ultimately, feminist thought seeks to highlight and disrupt sexist

  forms oppression and inequality, not to reinscribe hierarchies.