social change midterm

Labor movements, class struggle and capitalism

• Appalachian mine wars

  • Series of early 20th century conflicts between coal miners and mine operators over labor rights

• Battle of blair mountain (1921)

  • One of the largest labor uprisings in US history

  • coal miners fought for better conditions

• Bread and roses strike (1912)

  • Labor strike in Lawrence, MA

  • Demanded fair wages and dignified working conditions

• Company towns

  • Towns where businesses controlled housing, stores, and wages

  • Keep workers economically dependent

• Competition among capitalists

  • Struggle between owners to maximize profit

  • Can lead to exploitation

• Conflict theory

  • Views social structures as defined by conflict between dominant and oppressed groups

• Exploitation

  • Process of capitalists profiting from workers labor without fair compensation

• Labor as a commodity

  • Labor is bought and sold like goods

• Communist manifesto (1848)

  • Karl marx and friedrich engles 

  • Advocated for proletarian revolution

• Proletariat

  • The working class

• Surplus value

  • The extra value produced and taken by capitalists

• Trade unions

  • Organizations formed by workers to fight for labor rights

• Scabs

  • Workers who continue to work during strikes

• Strike

  • Work stoppage as protest

• The general strike

  • Strike across industries to protest broader social injustices

• Workingmen's benevolent association

  • 19th century labor organization

  • Coal miners advocating for better conditions

• Monopoly capitalism

  • Advanced stage of capitalism

  • Few large companies dominate industries

• Molly maguires

  • Secret labor organization in 19th century pennsylvania coal mines

  • Accused of violent resistance against owners

• Railroad imperialism 

  • Use of railroad expansion to control economies 

• Scrip

  • Company issues currency in company towns

• Pinkertons detective agency

  • Private security force hired to break strikes and suppress labor movements

Colonialism, imperialism, and resistance 

• Colonialism

  • Control and exploitation of one country by another

  • settlements

• Imperialism

  • Control and exploitation of one country by another

  • Political, economic, and military domination

• Settler colonial state

  • System where settlers establish permanent control

• Colonies of rule

  • Colonies where ruling power governs through local elites

• Colonial monoculture

  • Producing single cash crop for export

• Doctrine of discovery 

  • Legal concept that justified colonization through christianity

• Enclosures

  • Privatization of common lands

• Neocolonialism

  • Continuation of colonial like control after formal independence 

• Haitian revolution (1791-1804)

  • Successful revolution of enslaved people against french rule

  • Led to first black republic

• Maroons

  • Communities of escaped enslaved people

• Internal colony

  • Marginalized communities in a nation that are exploited like a colony

• Turtle island

  • North America

Power, Ideology, and Social Structures

• Hegemony

  • Dominance of one group over another

  • Maintained through cultural means

• Historical materialism 

  • Marxist theory

  • Economic structures shape social and political life

• Great man theory

  • History is shaped by extraordinary individuals not social forces

• Sociological imagination

  • Concept by C. Wright Mills

  • Encourages understanding personal experiences in relation to social structures

• moral suasion

  • the use of moral and ethical arguments to change another individuals behavior

Oppression, Dispossession and Resistance

• Dispossession

  • Forcibly removing people from their land and resources

• Triplets of systemic violence

  • How oppression operates through structural, direct and cultural violence

• Primitive accumulation

  • Capitalists acquire wealth through dispossession

• Sullivan-clinton campaign (1779)

  • Military campaign against Haudenosaunee

• Bartolemeo de las Casas

  • Notable figure advocating for the rights of Indigenous peoples during the colonial period.

Social Theories and Functions

• Biological determinism

  • Social and cultural differences are rooted in biology

• Cyclical crises

  • Economic crises that occur due to contradictions in capitalism

• Latent functions

  • Unintended social effects of an institution or action

• Manifest functions

  • The intended functions of an institution

• Structural functionalism

  • Theory that views society as a complex system with parts that work together