Untitled Flashcards Set

1/8/25

Body Ritual Among the Nacirema

• Who are the Nacirema

• A North American group living in the territory between the Canadian cree, the yaqui, and tarahumare of mexico and the carib and arawak of the antilles

• What do they value

• Fundamental belief: human body is ugly and has natural tendency to…

Key quotes

• 1. slides

• Shrines-bathroom; focal point in houses, medicine cabinet

• The listener-psychologists

The Nacirema Today

• Example: what does the celebration of things like halloween tell us about society

• Sports fans: what solidarity does it bring; acts as an outlet for members in society

• Why is youth so valued,

The sociological imagination

• Morally problematic and supporting the justification of empire (context)

• Key questions

• What is the structure of this particular society as a whole

• Where does this society stand in human history

• Human history: what are the values and structure relevant today that differed in the past and will differ in the future

• What varieties of men and women now prevail in this society and period: how is it structured and why do some groups have more power than others

History and Biography

• “When a society is industrialized, a peasant…

• A historical change occurs when society is industrialized, when peasants become workers; historical change that impacts individual lives

• “Seldom aware of the intricate…

• These aren’t things that are always directly apparent, and it takes the sociological imagination and its questions to find the connections and patterns over time; doing so is the sociological imagination

The sociological Imagination: “a quality of mind that will help them to use…

Examples of history

• 9/11, Recession, Covid-19, etc

• More mundane  histories

• Ex: why scotch tape is named that; larger social history

Biographies: names

• Names show how our personal stories are influenced by histories and social forces

Troubles and issues

Troubles

• Directly connected to history and biography but focuses on the social aspects

• Deals with the self and limited issues of social life which they are directly and socially aware

• Don’t account for structural or collective factors

• A trouble is a private matter; when values cherished by an individual are under threat

• Personally: trouble

Issues

• A public matter; some matter cherished by public is threatened

• Most don’t understand that what they are undergoing is also a public issue; others are experiencing the same thing

• Collectively: issue

Unemployment

• Someone may become unemployed and feel like they personally failed, but realize there is a broader issue

• Underemployment: when a person does not work full time or works a job that doesn’t reflect their personal and financial needs

• People need to realize their individual troubles are public issues

Debt

Global histoires and issues

Thinking historically and globally

• Historical perspectives

• How other times have been different

• The present is a product of the past; history “repeating itself”- changes over time but patterns are seen

• Global perspectives

• Places are different but the world is interconnected

• For example, many parts of the world have been under european control

History depends on perspective

1/13/25

Origins of Sociology

Social science for a changing world

• A social science that emerged in 1800s western europe

• Germany was a flourishing place for higher education

• Population in europe increasing rapidly

• With this growth, people started working in factories; instead of most europeans working on farms, growing food, and making sall scale products, there is the rise of the industrial industry

• This leads to the rise of capitalism

• Shift in social structure; people in cities are increasingly dependent on one another

• These are all due to the rise of capitalism

• Emergence of the division of labor: people are increasingly specialized into, for example, building one section of a product instead of doing it all themselves from start to finish

• Disadvantage: with that specialization, it can be harder to get different types of jobs

• What does this mean for the social world? 

City life was dangerous

• Rise of concern with social problems

• Fires that broke out burning neighborhoods, very few, if any, labor laws, sociologists concerned with the rise of the working class

• Emilie Durkheim

• Max Weber (1864-1920)

• Interested in religion and thinking about how different religious values shaped capitalism

• W.E.B. Du Bois 

• American sociologist, used multiple methods to study social life

• Drew on his own biography to illuminate histories and structures of oppression

• Used first hand methods to study social data: interviews, observations, surveys, etc

• Took a global perspective

• Cofounded the NAACP

• Systemic racism

• Du bois uses health data to uncover systemic racism video

Social structure

• Consists of the boundaries of our everyday lives

• Can limit the choices that we have, i.e. black people in 1800s were segregated and were limited to housing, etc

• Rules and resources that guide our behavior

Rules

• Definition: the informal and formal expectations for behaving in any given situation, ex: traffic lights, greeting people and responses

• Formal rules are enforced by authority (government, religion)

• Informal rules may have consequences but are not enforced by an authority

Resources

• Includes money, education, etc: things that we have or acquire; all this depends on who we are (identities, social location, etc)

Cultural Burning and social structure

Social Status

• A person’s or group’s socially determined positions within a large group or society

• Has a big effect on where an individual stands

• Ascribed status: what are we born with and what are we born into 

• Achieved status: what results from our efforts?

Life Chances

• Status directly impacts our life chances

• For example, im our society education is a determinant of life chances and social status; what is it about education that increases these things

Social groups, networks, and institutions

CUltural components of structure

• Symbols: material or immaterial objects that groups affix meaning to

• Rituals: routinized and highly important group activities that give a community its specific character

• Values: moral beliefs and practices

• Norms: rules and expectations by which a group guides the behavior of its members

Role of the individual

Social role

• We all have different roles

• The set of expectations concerning the behavior and attitudes of people who occupy a particular social status

• Role conflict can result from having two or more roles that may not go together

Agents of socialization

• The individuals, groups, organizations and institutions that influence tour sense of self and help you learn the ways of being a member of society

• As we move through life, we have different things that influence us

The looking-glass self and the generalized other

• Looking glass self: the way our perception of how others see us affects our sense of self

• Come back

How much power do individuals have>

• Agency: our capability to act given the structural rules and resources that impact our behaviors

• Even in situations that can have consequences, we still have a capacity to act

Individual agency and social structure

As humans we have reflexivity and decision making power

• We evaluate our position in the social world, evaluate these rules we are expected to follow, evaluate the resources e have at our disposal or can acquire, and decide what to do

Code switching between structural contexts

1/15/25

1/22/25

Foundations

Defining social class

A group of individuals who share a similar economic position based on income, wealth, education, and or occupation 

• Income: the amount of money you earn from employment or other sources

• Wealth: assets such as savings, investments, property, businesses, etc

• Income is what you are earning and getting, spending saving

• Saving is the wealth

• Wealth tends to be passed down through generations; sets up a nest egg for following generations

Is social class ascribed or achieved?

• We talk about it as being something that is achieved, baseline american dream (work hard for achievements)

• For most people its both, ascribed: born into a particular class, achieved: we are not locked in and we have opportunities

• Look at rather how much of it is ascribed

Marx on class

• Two economic groups- or social classes- are key in an industrial capitalist society

• Capitalists: owning classes

• Workers: laboring classes

• Workers are working for a wage, have income but not wealth

• Capitalists have wealth and are deriving income from that wealth because theres profit being derived from it

• These groups are interdependent but they have opposing interests

• Marx said these groups will always be in conflict

• In today: who has wealth and who is working, i.e. Jeff Bezos and amazon employees

• Not a personal matter: the fact that they have different interests

• Ex: boss is going to want to get as much out of workers with as little pay so they can profit, worker wants higher wages and better treatment

What does class conflict mean

• Owning class and working class always have conflicting interests

• Ex: if employees realize they don’t have the same interests as their bosses, they may come together based on those mutual interest (better working conditions, compensation, etc) to have more of a basis to assert their interests against bosses interests

• Rich only get richer by making workers do more for less

• In order to change this arrangement, workers must come together to secure self-determination

• Workers must come together and recognize that they are dominated and fight for self determination 

Origins of the Labor movement

Inspired by ideas from marx and other socialist thinkers, there came the labor movement

• People rise up and organize (talk to coworkers, reflect on problems and what needs to change)

• Late 1800s and early 1900s, workers rising up against unsafe working conditions, long work days, child labor, etc, and these issues were shared amongst the working class

• Idea: if we recognize class and class domination, workers can be empowered to fight for better working conditions

Model of US Class structure

• In US, not a division of factory floor where there are just two classes

Inequality

• Inequality: a dimension of class that is relational and doesn’t necessarily treat it as something that requires radical change but rather something as policy change

• What are indicators of inequality, how is it influenced by race and gender, etc

Global inequality

• Measurement of inequality us Gini index: puts on a scale income earners of each country and the spread of that inequality 

Income inequality in US

• We often talk about this in terms of quintiles (taking a whole and then creating five different caches/groups within that data that maps them out into first 20 percent, second, third,.. fifth)

GRowing gap between poor and rich

• Indicator: pay gap between CEOs and employees

• CEO pay increasing 1000% since 1987 while salary of average worker has remained relatively stable

• Wealth inequality has stagnated for everyone except top 10%

• Extreme wealth concentration at the very top

• Income concentration in certain parts of the country, usually areas with tech and finance concentration; move to finance and technology so places with more upper income people and housing is more expensive

Racial wealth gap

• Racial wealth gap: gap between wealth held by white families and non while families

• Has been large and growing over time

• Even as wealth grows for everyone, grows slower for people of color but grows astronomically for white people and creating a larger gap over time

• Because non white families were prevented systemically from buying homes at a time when it was cheap, that is something that has remained persistent over time; causes reproduction of inequality over time

Wealth inequality in the US

• Watch video

• Key Ideas

• Sources of personal wealth -> inherited and earned

• Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck

• America presents itself as a meritocracy

• Dynastic wealth creates an aristocracy

• The estate tax and capital gains tax are supposed to curb wealth, but they have been gutted

• A wealth tax would generate funding for social services

Poverty and homelessness

• Huge problem in the country and region

• Federal government defines it as you have to make below a certain threshold; ino order to receive social services you need to meet guidelines

Who lives in poverty

• Disability status: for people aged 18-64 with a disability, the 2020 poverty rate was 25 percent, more than 3 million people living in poverty

• Race: poverty rate is around two times higher for african american, hispanic, and native american people than it is for white and asian americans

• Region: the south has the highest poverty rate, the poverty rate is lowest in the northeast

• Households of poverty are more often lead by single mothers, gender pay gap, 

• People living in poverty have a variation of education

The working poor

• So many people in US working multiple jobs and paying for necessities

• Approximately 10.5 million individuals can be categorizes as working poor in the US

• More women than men are classified as woking poor

• Black and hispanic people are more than twice as likely as white and asian people to be working poor

•  Benefits cliff: because the poverty line in US is so low, many working poor may not be able to get benefits (food stamps, medicaid, etc)

Homelessness and the Criminalization of Poverty

• Watch video

• Homelessness: ex in southern california high rates of homelessness but in most cities, homeless people have some sort of shelter

• Homeless policy approaches shift focus to what it takes to prevent and reduce homelessness, like permanent housing and a stable place to work a job 

• Criminalization: illegal to sleep on streets, kicked out of places, getting charged, etc

Cultural aspects of social class

• Social class is about the resources available to us, but also taste, preferences, and ways of carrying ourselves

• There may be a mismatch (class mobility between generations, aspirational cultural tastes for people trying to climb class ladder)

Perceptions of social class

• What factors shape how class is perceived

• Your own class position

• Politics

• Education

• The media

• Our perceptions are based on these larger institutions, and we use these to, sometimes unknowingly, place people into class categories

What is the working class?

• Media: cultural reference point to this being a white male manual laborer

• The working class is mostly in the service sector

• Today, most non college workers are in service work rather than factories and where organized labor built themselves in US

• Working class becoming decreasingly white

• Women make up nearly half of the working class at this point

Why all americans believe they are Middle Class

• 6 categories of defining class: upper middle class that falls into top tier category, but has a lot of privilege and resource compared to most americans

• Bottom tier of middle class (working poor)

• Why: in this country we want to believe we worked hard for what we earn

• Ex: inherited wealth, did you inherit a college education, were you entitled to an Ivy league

• If you are at the bottom third of class category; stigmatization of poverty, many don’t want to identify with this

Conspicuous consumption

• Spending money on luxury commodities as a public display of economic power- the income and the accumulated wealth- in order to attain or maintain a given social status

• Most of all we think about brands, houses, and physical displays of wealth   

Class privilege 

• Conspicuous consumption is one element of class privilege 

Is education the great equalizer

• Yes and no

• Education in US is great promise of meritocracy; working hard should give you opportunities for success

• Over time, education has equalizing affects; class and arace and ethnicity plays a role in education

Who gets access

• Family resources

• Parents’ education level

• School funding

Functionalist perspective

• Idea that education is a kind of machine that sorts people into the place they are supposed to be (theoretical idea that is commonly used in many disciplines)

• Reason for disparities between poor and rich children is that education system is sorting them into their rightful place and does so in an efficient manner

Conflict theory

• Data shows that schools tend to reproduce class status over time

• Doesn’t determine, but rather shows tendencies

• To a conflict theorist, reinforces idea that society functions based on power

• Schools actually make societies less fair; different groups compete for different things

Elite universities and class reproduction

•  Disparities between 1% and next 20%

• Large portion of 1% people attending top universities- is it that they are the very smartest, but no doubt that within bottom percentages, there are just as smart students but did not have resources and everything it takes to attend elite universities

• These disparities reproduce over 

Educational access is racially unequal

• Higher poverty at public schools- consider racial stratification

• Alarmingly high percentage of POC attending high poverty schools in comparison to white and asian people

• Concentration of poverty means it much more difficult to get knowledge and resources and expectations

Within schools, tracking creates inequality

• Within schools we talk about tracking: the idea that students get assigned to classes based on achievement levels

• If we figure out which students are better suited for college, manual work,etc, we can get students into tracks that are appropriate for them and help them along the correct pathway; good for society as it creates different types of workers that we need

• Tracking is often racially and class segregated: students tracked are put into courses that are academic or non academic and you are much more likely to be in a non academic track if you have a lower income, vice versa

• Tracking in k-12 schools

What can we do?

Where is the public safety net?

• Public safety net in US is very limited; there is often a benefits cliff: earning too much forbids you of getting such benefits, or they still might not be enough 

• Generally underfunded and doesn’t reach those in need

Unions today

•  Ex: workers going on strike

• Today most people who are unionized work for public workforce, like the government and private unionization has been on decline since 70s, usually because companies are moving to places with lower unionization rates

The billionaire tax

• If we know that we have more need than available funding, we can rethink how our programs are run and how welfare is provided, but also look at the country’s budget

• Billionaire tax: proposal introduced in congress that would tax billionaires and close loopholes that allow billionaires to avoid tax/high tax

Universal basic income

• Alternative to welfare benefits

• Started out in mexico, brazil, 

• Idea is that lots of money is spent on bureaucracy

• Universal basic income would provide people with a basic income right, could get everyone up to a particular number and make it easier to get by

Resource organization

• Organizes young people who have access to wealth

• Looking at a situation where baby boomers are passing on wealth in the trillions: to interrupt it/distribute it more equally by new generations doing something different

• Ex: wealthy people can share their wealth with organizations that are doing work to ensure more equitable distribution of wealth and resources in this country

1/27/25

What is race

Race and racism beyond identity

• It’s common to think of race as identity, and as an interpersonal set of beliefs

Race myth-busting

• There is no biological or genetic basis for the concept of race revealed by research

• Ex: in society someone who is white and someone black can be more similar genetically

• Sociologists think of race as a social construct, a concept that humans invented to help understand or justify some dimension of the social word

• Also have to acknowledge that it is a social reality

• Reality that race exists and is powerful in society

• Upheld by racism and white supremacy

• But if humans created race, they can also dismantle it: influence how race is institutionalized, manage racist practices, etc

Racial hierarchy vs ethnic difference

• Hierarchy: placing differences into power; infusion of power so some have more than others on the basis of race

White supremacy

• Race as a matter of group position

• Hierarchy: where a racial group is placed is a matter of their position in relation to other groups

• Whiteness is self defined and enshrined at the top of the hierarchy

• Ex: top ceos, those in power in the government and corporate america, etc

• Its power operates the best when it is taken for granted, when there is some type of threat

• Ex: kkk emerged at the end of slavery

The origins of race as a social structure

European Imperialism

• The fact that racism, white supremacism exists is tied to european colonization

• European rulers see themselves as more colonized (?) than those they are conquering

SCientific racism and biological reductionism

• Idea that ideas about race that are being justified by science

• Sciences have often proclaimed that the white race is superior

• Seeking data that justifies their theories/questions

• Biological reductionism: everything can be reduced to biology; biology is the determinant of everything

• Problematic in regards to race

• Science being used in conjunction with rise of biology;

The role of religion

• Middle ages in europe: skin color determined superiority

• Crusades divided world into believers and heathens

• Moralizing into good and bad

• Idea that believing in christianity is righteous, otherwise is a heathen

• Common bond amongst europeans was by contrasting christianity with the muslim world

Enslavement and Racial Capitalism

• Racial capitalism: idea that processes of racialization, exploitation, and capital accumulation are mutually constitutive and must be addressed together 

• To justify things like enslavement

• Neighborhoods, etc, are stratified by race

• Has affect on capitalism: i.e. if group of people are oppressed, it is easier to pay less for their labor

• Early english accounts noted the highlights of african communities, i.e. they had skills that europeans could benefit from

The psychological wage of whiteness

• White working classes insisted that they were free

• They become part of the larger group of white people and claim that, unlike africans, they were free and their low was at least better than enslavement

• Freedom developed as a concept defined against enslave people

• W.E.B. Du Bois argued that whiteness becomes a psychological wage- something that gave them value beyond the meager earnings they received as laborers within capitalism

• Take on belief that they are getting benefits from being white, even if they aren't necessarily getting paid much

Racial Formation Theory

• Racial Formation: idea that racial systems are shaped by time and place

• The sociohistorical process by which racial identities are created, lived out, transformed, and destroyed (Omi and Winant)

• The concept of racial formation signifies social conflicts and interest by referring to different types of human bodies

• Racial project: how racial dynamics and meanings are used to reorganize and redistribute resources along particular racial lines

• Ex: jim crow system, the scientific racism as a racial project; particular ways of thinking about what race is

• Ex: choosing to celebrate either columbus day or indigenous peoples day

Racial formation in the U.S.

• Colonial conquest: indigenous people were characterized as heathens by europeans in order to take their land

• Slavery, Jim crow segregation legal racism

Biologized racism: eugenics

• Set of beliefs and practices said to improve genetic quality of human population

• Takes idea of scientific racism and implementing it by exerting scientific control into reproduction

Enforcement through terrorism: lynchings

• Acts of terrorism done in order to provoke fear throughout communities

• Wasn't merely about enforcing whiteness or criminal activity, but the logic was economic and executed to show they were economically subordinated

• Lynching painted black men as criminals and dangerous

Legalized Racism: Jim Crow

Family separation and cultural loss: native boarding schools

• Intended to take children away from their families; a type of eugenic approach where US gov decides who has the right to a family- taking children and removing them from their cultural context\

Racial boundary Making

Policing racial boundaries: the one-drop rule

• Idea that those with african ancestry are defined as black

• Example of hypodescent- the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union to the more socially oppressed social

• The one drop rule has been use primarily to define african americans but also japanese americans during WWII

• Distinguishes US from other historically colonial slave societies

• Ex: in other places like latin america have different and more continuous racial categories

The Shifting boundaries of whiteness

• Ex: irish initially defined not to be white, european jews not seen as white

• Whiteness did not include every group; shifts over time

State-defined boundaries: census categories

• How racial categories are defined today and how they shift over time

1/29/25

Ethnicity

• A group that shares a common culture, religion, history, or ancestry- not as hierarchical as race

• Often overlaps with racialized categories

• Allows us to see important cultural and linguistic differences

Racial and ethnic identity

Racial and ethnic identity

• Identity is about meaning and meaning is fundamentally social

• Identity delineates social boundaries

• The characteristics to which we attribute meaning are somewhat arbitrary and culturally/historically specific

Identity and ancestry

• Ex: Dr Henry Louis Gates: identifies as black and presumably arrested for this, but has european ancestry

Mixed Race Identities

The persistence of Racial Divides

Black/White Income Disparity

• Significant difference/disparities

• Over time it has been fairly persistent

The racial wealth gap

• Wealth is important for the reproduction of inequality over time

Housing and the racial wealth gap

• Redlining and mortgage discrimination

• Determined who could get access to home loans and in which neighborhoods

• Racial covenants

• Written into deeds saying home could only be sold to a certain type of people/ could not be sold to certain groups of people, like african americans, people of color, jewish, etc

• Contract buying

• Families of color excluded from buying houses using normal mortgage system; (?) landlord could take away right to buy property if payment missed

• Explicit discrimination

• Public housing initially segregated and meant for white families

Whiteness as Property

• Argument that holds whiteness is a kind of property

• Investment that US government made that predominantly white families were able to purchase homes in the 50s

Racial Bias, Stereotypes, and Prejudices

Defining racism

• A set of beliefs, ideologies, or institutional practices that are based on the idea that one racial group is biologically or culturally inferior to another group and that reproduces racial domination and exploitation.

• Ex: white people abiding certain practices that are racist

Bias and prejudice

•  Implicit bias = the association our minds make between seemingly unrelated things.

• Explicit bias = prejudice that we are openly and consciously aware of.

• Stereotypes = widely-shared perceptions about the personal characteristics, tendencies, or abilities of individual members of a particular group.

• Prejudices = preconceived beliefs, attitudes, or opinions about members of another group.

Biases support the racial structure

• Ex: during slavery white people depicted black people negatively

Bias in history classes

• How U.S. history is taught influences the forms that racial projects take

•  Whether and how should we teach children about racist histories?

• What happens when American children learn about racism?

• Students of all racial backgrounds benefitted from reading more critical versions of U.S. history

Racial stereotypes

• Widely shared perceptions of characteristics and associations between one person and an entire group

Negative effects of stereotype

•  Loss of the right to be seen as an individual, with all your personal strengths and shortfalls

• Burden of needing to represent an entire group

•  Potential for discrimination or even violence

How sociologists study stereotypes

• Look for data on behaviors or characteristics of different groups; don’t simply accept what you might hear about them or what the media or politicans convey

Controlling Images

• Term coined by sociologist patricia hill collins to describe stereotypes that provide the basis for the dehumanization of black women and the exploitation of their labor

• Ex: particular images that set up options for what we can be based on our racialization

• Also stresses that they can give a basis for resistance; like idea that black women are born to serve and can justify things like black women working harder than they are compensated for

Racial Discrimination

From prejudice to racism

• Prejudice = Preconceived beliefs,

attitudes, and opinions about members

of a group

• Racism = a set of beliefs, ideologies, and

institutional practices based on the idea

that one racial group is biologically or

culturally inferior to another group and

that reproduces racial domination and

Exploitation

2/3/25

Reparations

• Formal recognition of and compensation for past harm against specific people or groups of people

Affirmative action and DEI program

• Policies or programs initially implemented to rectify past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity

• Used to encourage or require organizations to consider factors like race and gender in making decisions about contractors, job candidates, and college admissions

• Dei programs have become more common in recent years

Inequalities and Progress

Intersectionality

• How all different social structural systems interlink and overlap and transform one another in the process

• Ex: the intersections of race and gender and how that impacts someone

Institutional Inequality

• Seen in gender and sexuality

• Ex: having your authority questioned, being interrupted in meetings, expectations to be nice and never complain, unwanted sexual advances

• Women earned 84% as much as men in 202

• One reason for wage gap being that many jobs in US are low paying and more likely to be held by women (Occupational segregation)

Covid 19 disproportionate impact on women

• Women more likely than men to leave the workforce and take on childcare responsibilities

• Motherhood penalty: decreased earnings when having children, but fatherhood benefit is the opposite

• Reproductive labor is gendered in sociology; the one at home cooking, taking care of kids, etc

• Something that women tend to take on responsibility for, and this was especially seen during the pandemic

The politics of religion and gender

• The role that religious ideas have played in defining marriage, gender positions, etc

Gender and violence

• Women and girls experience sexual violence at high rates

• 16-19 4x more vulnerable

• Higher rate of murdered and missing indigenous women

• Violence and assault are disproportionately experienced by transgender people

Sociological perspectives on Gender

Nature nurture

• Sex: the different biological and physiological characteristics of males and females, such as reproductive organs, chromosomes, and hormones.

• Gender: the socially-constructed characteristics of women and men, such as norms, roles, and relationships of and between groups of women and men.

The social construction of Gender

Gender beyond the binary

• Over time this notion has been pushed

Legacies of Patriarchy-Coverture

• Laws of coverture- married women were civilly dead

• Held that no female person had a legal identity

• At birth, identity covered by father’s identity, and after marriage it then was her husband’s

• At marriage, the husband and wife became one (the husband)

• Didn’t own anything, had no rights to her children, their bodies, their wages,

• : there were ways to get around these laws

Feminism

• Three different waves of feminism 

• Elimination of patriarchy and equality among the sexes

• Worldwide, sociologists document persistent gender inequality

• Individuals or groups are treated and perceived differently based upon their gender

Sexualities

Gender, sexuality, race

• Marsha P Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Storme DeLarverie

The social control of sexuality

• The ways that society enforces normative behaviors through social interaction, values, worldviews, and laws: the ways that we learn about sexuality

• Argument that sexuality has been medicalized in society: outside the realm of the medical and becomes something medicalized, prone to treatment

• Social control depends on structural needs for reproduction

• Ex: in a primarily industrial society with need for many workers in factories, the focus was sexuality was about procreation

• Once society has shifted away from production to consumption, sexuality has become about pleasure generally

2/5/24

Thinking sociologically about the dimensions of sexual identity

• Desires, behavior,, identity

• Sometimes these exhibit “discordance”

• Laud Humphrey