Sociology Unit 2 Exam

What year did sociology become a discipline?

1880

What are the factors that promoted the emergence of sociology?

Intellectual, Economic, Social, Political

What was involved with the intellectual factor?

Enlightenment, Counter-enlightenment

What was involved with the economic factor?

Industrialization

What was involved with the social factor?

Urbanization

What was involved with the political factor?

The rise of bureaucratic nation states (Italy, Germany), decline of Church power

What are the 5 key questions addressed by sociology?

What are the mechanics (physics) of society: How does it work?

What causes society to change/progress?

How are individuals related to each other and to society?

Do individuals shape society (agency), or does society shape individuals (structure)?

What is the best way to study society?

Saint-Simon

Father of French sociology, 3 stages of history, socialist and feminist

Comte

3 stages of history, coined the term “sociology” (Queen of all the sciences)

Martineau

Developed the sociological method, translated Comte, wide-ranging interests

Marx: Key Biographical Points

Fiesty disposition

Expelled from multiple cities

From middle-class to poverty

Family was unsupportive and not connected

Marx: Material (Economic Conflict)

The belief that society is driven forward by economic conflict

Marx: Class Conflict (Bourgeoisie and Proletariat)

The proletariat will eventually rise up against the bourgeoisie after many conflicts

Marx’s 5 stages

Tribal, communal, feudal, capitalism, communism

Marx: Tribal

Tribal leaders/male head of household controlling labor of all

Marx: Communal

Great city-states of Rome and Greece; citizens controlled labor of the cities

Marx: Feudal

Medieval, landed lords controlled labor of the serfs

Marx: Capitalism

Bourgeoisie controls labor of the proletariat

Marx: Communism

Classes eventually go away (Marx believed this would arise naturally from capitalism)

Marx: Commodification of Labor

Selling your labor

Marx: Alienation

A side effect of the commodification of labor, the passion is lost in the work because it is purely for monetary purpose rather than joy

Marx: Surplus Value

Essentially, profit. The bourgeoisie uses the proletariat to create this

Marx: Economic base

All of the institutions involved in the economy

Marx: Social super-structure

Education, religion, government, healthcare, built on top of the econommic base.

Marx: Economic base and social super structure argument

Every institution in the super structure arose because it met some need of the economic base, all serve the economic base, and therefore serve the bourgeoisie who control the economic base

Marx: Economic Determinism

The theory that economic forces determine, shape, and define all political, social, cultural, intellectual, and technological aspects of a civilization

Physics Approach

When sociology began, it was trying to study society in the same way that the national sciences studied nature

Society is like the natural world, forces that drive eachother (Marx: economy) (Weber: economy and thoughts) (germans)

Biology approach

Durkheim (French) (functionalism)

The psychology approach

American, more individual approach (cooley and mead)

Structuralism

the belief that society is made up of larger pieces that exert power over individuals

Cooley and Mead did NOT believe in this

Weber: Protestant Ethic

Calvinist Protestants worked as a service for God

They made a lot of money, but didn’t believe in spending it on pleasurable things, so their wealth went back into their business.

They became the bourgeoisie.

Weber: Class

Views class the same as Marx

Your class is where you are in the economic structure

However, Weber divides bourgeoisie into the captains of industry, those who rent/lease, and those who posses intellectual property

Party

What groups are you affiliated with and their social cause (and are they powerful or not)

Status

The degree of respect your group has

Marx: the sociological approach

Do it just like science, stand at a distance, observe

Weber: the sociological approach

Talk to the involved, study and compare different, smaller groups, rather than everyone as one group (concept of ideal types)

Weber: Domination

Weber argues that some forms of exerting power over other people are OK and legitimate in society

Weber: 3 types of Domination

Traditional, Legal, Charismatic

Weber: Traditional Domination

parents, teachers

Weber: Legal domination

law enforcement, governement

Weber: charismatic domination

positive or negative (ex MLK or Hitler)

Hegel: what drives society forwards?

thoughts

Marx: what drives economy forwards?

economic conflict

Weber: what drives society forwards?

economic and thought conflict

Weber: Rationality and disenchantenment

Robs the world of the beautiful, the imaginative, the supernatural…anything that doesn’t contribute to absolute efficiency

Weber: steel-hard shell

with the loss of religion from the aspect of hard work, the sense of not being materialistic was lost to, creating an entrapping shell of materialism

Durkheim: social facts

anything outside the individual that exert influence on the individual’s behavior

Durkheim: “Suicide” - what did he demonstrate?

Durkheim demonstrated that suicide is in fact a highly social decision rather than an entirely individual one

Durkheim: What are the 4 types of suicide?

Egoistic, Altruistic, Anomic, Fatalistic

Durkheim: Egoistic Suicide

Focusing on myself, and not focusing on the group

ex. people jumping out of windows during stock market crash because they can’t face life as poor

Durkheim: Altruistic suicide

Made the decision based on the importance of the group at the expense of myself

ex. kamikaze pilots in ww2

Durkheim: Anomic Suicide

There are not enough norms holding me in place

ex. discharged form military and now feel lost

Durkheim: Fatalistic suicide

too much control, sees no other way out

ex. POW or death row prisoner

Durkheim: Professional background

Pedagogy, he taught teachers (big deal in France because teachers are responsible for getting French culture in to the children)

Durkheim: What did he hope to accomplish through sociology

Concern with the future of France: if sociology could learn what makes a successful society, what helps hold a society together in the modern world, then those insights could be used to improve France itself

Durkheim: What caused the decline of functionalism in the 1960’s?

Most people forgot that dysfunction was a part of functionalism

Cooley: 3 Ideas from human nature

1. Our thinking is social because we use language to think and language is social. Language is created by people in society

2. The self is made of “I” and “me”. “I” acts on the world, but “me” is imprinted by society

3. Sometimes we equate “I” with our body. It has a social dimension because it interacts with other people.

Self in contrast to others.

Cooley: Looking Glass Self - 3 steps

1. Idea of others perception (old man)

2. Idea of others judgement (useless old man)

3. Self-feeling (I’m a useless old man)

Cooley: Primary Groups (3 types)

Family

Playground (Peers)

Neighborhood (Community)

All positive effects and interested in you in a good way

Mead: Symbolic Interactionism

Social action, organization, and self are from the individual

Berger and Luckman: Social Construction

The meanings of social phenomena are not in the essence of the phenomena themselves, they are meanings that we construct as society as we interact

Who made the social construction theory?

Berger and Luckman

Becker and Goffman: Labeling Theory

If I keep telling you that you are something, you will begin to behave that way

Who made the labeling theory?

Becker and Goffman

Mead’s 5 Key Ideas

Social development of self

the self as object

the “i” and the “me”

Thinking is social

I think before I act

Mead: Social development of self

Imitation, role play, games, generalized other

all as a child

Mead: The self as object

The self is reflexive (look at myself as if I am an object)

Mead: the “i” and the “me”

I is internal, me is based on others

Mead: Thinking is social

thinking is language, which is social

Mead: I think before i act

Individuals consider socially defined meanings of stimulus and responses

Mead: biographical facts

Religious, taught at Michigan (and then left), influenced by and opposed to behaviorism, proponent of pragmatism

Pragmatism

Think about real people, real world, not giant abstract theories

Du Bois: First wave of race theory

Generally not highly trained sociologists (Du Bois was)

Wanted to explain to the world that the problem of Black people was not something of their own making, rather a consequence of the social reality of slavery and its legacy

Du Bois: Key biographical facts

Sheltered from the worst of racism until college

First Black person to obtain PhD at Harvard

multiple “eras”

Du Bois: Era 1

Explain to the audience

Philadelphia Negro

Souls of Black Folk

Du Bois: Era 2

Becomes an activist

Helps found NAACP

Du Bois: Era 3

Gives up on America

expatriates to Ghana and writes the African encyclopedia

Eugenics

Selective sterilization, race-targeted against non-Nordics

Anti-miscegenation laws

Prohibited marriage of white and black people

Reality for African Americans in early 1900s

Bottom level of race: Nordic > non-Nordic > black

Du Bois: 2nd wave of race theorists

Trying to fit into white sociologist institutions

Who was the sociologist that exemplifies the 2nd wave a race theory

E. Franklin Frazier

Breton: 3 approaches for race

Stratification theory

Economic theory

Social construction

Breton: Stratification theory

Looking at where we are in society, high or low

Breton: Economic theory

Domination

Breton: Social Construction

Race depends on how we define it

Ellis Monk: Colorism

Race is a spectrum of shade, darker = more discrimination

Key Idea of Racial Formation Theory

the meaning of race shifts

Third wave post WWII race theory

Viewing Black sociology through black lens (afrocentrism)

Who wrote the Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Gilman: Key place where pain occurs and why it occurs

Excessive gendering in the workforce

Anna Julia Cooper

Redemptive power of the African American women, very similar to Patricia Hill Collins

Jane Addams

Refocus from personal moral concerns to social ethical concerns (especially related to the poor)

Ida B. Wells

Activism in railroads and lynching

Marianne Weber

Patriarchy in the domestic setting

What is the Standpoint theory

We all have a social location

Not physical, but in relation to other people in terms of social identity

Men need help from women to fill in the gaps

Patricia Hill Collins

Intersectionality

Black women stand outside of society and can see more.