Soc

Sociological Imagination

• The way our experiences are a part of the context we are in

• “The ability to see connections between individual lives and experiences to broader social and historical issues and forces.”

• If you have a sociological imgination/perspective you have the ability to see the real reasons that shape our behaviour

• Sociology is about public issues

• From individual identity to globalization and socio economic status

Why do People Commit Crime?

Structure and Agency

• Stucture

  • Macro: economy

  • Meso: below macro over face to face

    • Opportunities to commit crimes

  • Micro: Who you are around

Agency

• An individual’s capacity to think and act independent of larger social structures

• Individual decision making despite the structural pieces

• False dichotomy

• Even with agency the decisiions are decided by the structure of social world

• Agency and structure act hand in hand

• Decisions are shaped by what is available to you

Week 2 ~ Jan 14th

Sociological Theory

Major Theories in Sociology

• Theory:  “A set of testable ideas designed to explain something observed about our social world.”

• Structural functionalist theory

• Conflict theory

• Symbolic interactionist theory

• Feminist theory

• Postmodern theory

Structural Functionalism

• Society is a complex system of parts working together to promote social solidarity and stability

• Something with complex parts that have to work together

• Society like an organism

• derkheim

• Stablility

  • Where all the parts work very well

  • Stability is really important

• Social solidarity

  • When you have good social solidarity you have stability

  • The degree of a group’s cohesion based on shared values, beliefs, and interactions.”

  • If something makes the system unstable there is a problem in social solidarity

  • Anomie: “A negative individual state produced by absent or poorly-defined norms in society.”

• Functions

  • Everything has a function

  • Manifest: “Visible and intended purposes of social structures.”

    • An obvious function

      • e.g Education system

        • ABC’s and 123’s

  • Latent: “Invisible and unintended purposes of social structures”

    • Hidden discovered functions

    • Not necessarily bad

    • Less obvious

  • Dysfunctions: “Elements of social structures that create instability in a social system.”

Conflict Theory

• Karl Marx

• Contradictions, conflict, and change

• Important: how people earn their lielihoods]

• Industrial capitalism

• Means of production

• Two key groups

  • Bourgoise

    • “Owners” and profits

  • Proletariat

    • “Workers” and wages

• Inherant conflict between both groups

• What about now?

  • Industrial capitalism versus market capitalism

  • Ideology, influence, and the “status quo”

    • More on this when we talk about Mass Media

Week 2 ~ Jan 16th

Symbolic Interactionism

What’s In the Name

• Human biengs interact with things in their social world because of the meaning attached to them

Goffman’s “Dramaturgican Model”

• Controlling the messaging

• Front stage: How we are perceived, the perfomance we give in the world

• Backstage~ thinking about the presentation, all the planing, not part of the performance

• Micro

Feminist Theory

Postmodern Theory

• Our world is not on some ark or development

  • Carl marx theorized about industrial capitalism and that ther would be some revolution (ark) that did not occur

• Set of disparate ideas

• Poststructuralism

  • Looking at how language and rules and laws are used to controlled a population

Week 7~ Feb 27th

Relationships and Families

Families

The nuclear family

• Nuclear Family

  • Consists of a cohabitating man and women who maintain a socially approved sexual relationsip and have at least one child

Non-nuclear Families

• Proliferation of non-nuclear families

  • A response to changes in power relations between men and women

  • The recognition of different notions of family and kinship

• Not always captured by census data

• Sociologists understand changes to notions of family through study of economics, immigration, gender norms, and cultural notions of kinship

Trends in family

Marriage and Cohabitation

Age of first marriage is rising

Declining Marriage Rates

Same Sex Couples

Separation

Declining  Divorce Rates

Children

More women are having children in their thirties

The number of children per family has dropped below the replacement rate

Relationships

• Mate selection

  • Height and strength

  • Symmetry

  • Complexion

  • Dominance and protection

  • Youth and fertility

Love

• Emerged in the 18th century

• Liberty, pursuit of happiness, freedom of choice

• Autonomy from family and greater independence, rise of family home, shifts in cultural norms

• Pure relatioships:

  • Interests and needs of others rather than law, tradition, necessity

Social Factors

• Who you enter into a relationship with conforms to well-established rules outlined by social scientists

• Culture, socioeconomic resources, race, status, and group membership all important factors that determine partners

• Non-random, not entirely based on romantic notions of love

• Homogamy:

  • Marriage between people who are similar

• Assortive mating:

  • Non-random matching of people into relationships

• Research on marriage

  • Select partners based on similarities in education, attractiveness, resources, race, religion, culture

  • Dissimilarity leads to lower quality and relationships

• Homogamy in education is one of the strongest findings across the world; Assortive mating + assortive meeting

• Third party pressure from friends discourage the crossing of social boundaries (“dating down”, marrying outside of your religion or race, etc.)

Online dating

Who we Date Online

• Eclipsed all other ways of meeting people

• Young people, LGBTQ+, middle aged people

• Like offline, mostly conforms to homogamy around class, education, race, attractiveness

Decision-Making in Online Dating

• Functionality of online dating sites encourage adoption of market orientation towards dating

• Influences communication, filtering, and presentation of self

• Shopping mentality/ catalogue, discrete aspects of individuals

• Rational cotrol, rather than unpredictable non-rational factors like chemistry and emotion

• Exchange nature of relationship decision making — exchange own assets for desirable attributes in a partner

• Pressure to present self in attractive snd desirable ways based on economic thinking

• Changes how people think about dating by focusing on demographics and descriptions (height, weight, income, age, appearance) rather than social interaction or chemistry

• Sustainable? Rational control set users up for frustration?

Colorism and Race

• Colourism is a form of prejudice or dicrimination that is based on social meanings attached to skin tone

• Past research shows that whittes and asians have a reluctance to date partners with dark skin

• Skin tone as predictor variable in recent studies of Asian daters

  • Darker skinned asians more likely to date those with darker skin

  • More likely to express preference for darker skin

  • Could be that prejudice makes them sympathetic; reluctant to reach out to lighter skinned partners due to rejection

Week 8 ~ March 4th

Education

The Cost of Postsecondary Education

• Tuition increses (including relative to inflation and other consumer goods)

• Ontario versus the rest of Canada

• Why variation across the country?

  • Funding

  • Regulation

• Feb 26/24 Ontario government news release:

  • “Ontario Investing Nearly $1.3 Billion to Stabilize Colleges and Universities”

  • The details:

    • continued tuition freeze (from initial 10% reduction in 2019-20)

    • up to 5% increase for domestic, out-of-province

    • continued de-regulation of international tuition

Influences

• The most important influence on educational attainment and educational achievement: the socioeconomic status of the family.

• Some of the relevant considerations:

  • Cultural capital

  • Reading

  • Role models

  • Fundraising gaps

Theoretical Perspectives

• Conflict theory

• Education system is unequal

  • Access, experience, outcomes

• In comparison to conflict theory, the other theories are more likely to focus on…

  • Feminist Theory

    • Gender-based inequalities in education (especially focusing on women), such as field of study choices and their impact on career

  • Symbolic Interactionism

    • Classroom dynamics between student and teacher, especially those that shape outcomes

  • Structural functionalism

    • The functions of education, including skill-building, character-building, and sorting people into different occupational pathways

  • Postmodernism

    • Educational institutions as tools for surveillance and the regulation of students  (less prominent in Soc of Edu)

Week 8 ~ March 6th

Religion

What is Religion?

• Religion

  • What it is

    • Natural vs. Supernatural

  • What is does

    • Answer to life’s problems

  • No definition

    • Commonly understood

• Sociological study of beliefs, symbols, practices, and organizational forms of religions

New Religious Movements

• Converts

• Atypical segment of population

• Charismatic leaders

• Young religions

• Realians

  • Quebec-based NRM (Claude Vorilhon)

  • Life created by aliens called Elohim

  • Benign, support equality

• Aum Shinrikyo

  • Japan-based cult (Shoko Asahara)

  • Countercultural beliefs, controlling leaders, brainwashing, isolation from the outside world

  • Sarin gas atacks on Tokyo subway

Functions of Religion

• Social Cohesion:

  • Moral community, solidarity

  • Rules, values

• Social Control

  • Conformity

  • Judgement

• Meanin and Purpose

  • Comfort and belonging

  • Major transitions

Spirituality

• The experience of a personal relaationship with the transcendent - feel part of a timeless context or tradtion, greater whole, which influences how we act

• Spirituality has been  characterized as the feelings, thoughts, and behaviour that arise from a search for the sacred

Spirituality and Well-being

• Positive relationships the strength of a people’s spiritual beliefs and their psychological well-being

• Those reporting more spiritual experiences (e.g., find strength in spirituality, experience a connection to all or life) report greater happiness, self-esteem, and optimism

  • After adjusting for age, gender, education, marital status, income, religious attendance and prayer

Day-to-Day Spirituality

• If you report high baseline spirituality, on days when you feel your life is more more meaningful or feel better about yourself, you’ll also feel more siritual

• Identiication and commitmentto a spiritual belief system on a given day provides meaning and purpose in lie, which in turn increases self-esteem

Conflict

Inequality

• “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of souless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” (Marx 1978: 54)

• Tool of the ruling elite

• Camoulage personal interests, strengthen authority, and justify the political and economic status quo

• Religion justifies inqualities and interprets them as vital components of a divine plan

Social Change

• Religion mobilized by the oppresed for the revolution and social change

• Liberation theology

  • Blend of christian theology and marxist notions of social conlict and class struggle

  • Originated in latine america as a reaction to a widespread poverty, social inequality, and political repression

  • Advocate for just societies that eliminate poverity and inequality

  • Reject the separation between spirituality and worldliness— just and equal world can be crafted in the here and now

Feminism

Gender Inequality

• Religion as a patriarchal instrument that is hostile to gender equality and an obstacle to female liberation

• Gender inequality divinely inspired, and such divine warrants for inequality have widened the existing inequalities between the sexes

• Institutionalized patriarchy and sexism

Lived Religion

• How people understand, interpret, experience, and prectice religion and spirituality in their everyday lives

• Arab Muslims and feminism/ptriarchy

  • Not passively socialized into patriarchal interpretations of islam

  • Personal factors like education, critical thinking, female employmentl structural factors like existing feminist movements, free expression, predict deviation from patriarchal norms

  • Support is for muslims, not secular feminism

Contemporary Trends in Religion

Secularization Thesis

• Religious institutions, actions, and consciousness are on tthe decline worldwide

Does Wealth Influence Religiosity?

Does Income Influence Religiosity?

Does Education Influence Religiosity?

Religious Distribution

Trends in Non-Religion

Secularization?

• Fundamentalism

  • Growth in protestantism

  • Conservative reaction against globalization, modernaization, geo-political circumstances

• Global Populations

  • 83% of the world’s population is religious (74% of Canadians)

  • By 2050, 87% of the world’s population may be religious

• But…

  • Improved existential factors like wealth and health

  • Incresing education

  • Internet

• Revised secularization Thesis

  • Secula institutions break off from the institutions of religion over time. As a result, religion governs an ever-smaller part of people’s lives and has become a matter of personal choice

Week 9 ~ March 11th

Crime and Law

What is Crime?

• The violation of law

• Violation of law that takes place in public “typical” crimes like robbry and murder

• Crimes committed by respected people in the course of emplyment OR Crimes involving deceit, concealment, or violations of trust

Measuring Crime

• Official Statistics

  • Police reported crime data

• Self-report Surveys

  • Report Involvement in crime

• Victimization Surveys

  • Report involvement in victimization   

Explaining Crime

Structural

• Routine Activities

  • Daily routines create opportunities for crime

  • Convergence of motivated offenders, suitable targets , absence of guradians

• Social Disorganization

  • Bad neighbourhoods cause crime

  • Transience , low oppurtunity, poverty, low education, drug use, gangs, disrepair

• Strain

  • The inability to achieve societal goals causes crime

  • Social goals vs acceptable means

  • Adaptations to strain

Personal

• Biological

  • Genes cause crime

  • Predispositions to aggression, gene-envirnment interactions

• Psychological

  • Personality ttraits cause crime

  • Narcissism, psychopathy, impulsivity, extraversion, neurotism

Interactionist

• Labelling

  • Social groups create deviance by applying rules and labeling people

  • Social construction of crime and labels

• Social Learning

  • Bad friends create crime

  • Interacting with criminal peers exposes us to norms, values, attitudes supportive of crimes

• Subculture

  • Working class socialization sets people up for failure, creating criminal subcultures

  • Reaction to unachievable middle-class standards

Control

• Social Bonds

  • People don’t commit crime because of prosocial bonds

  • Attachment, commitment, involvement, belief

• Low Self Control

  • People don’t commit crime because because they have self-control

  • Lack of development of self control by age 7 leads to LSC

  • Impulsive, short-sighted, reckless

Rational Choice

• Deterrence

  • Crime occurs because the benefits outweigh the costs

  • Certainty, severity, celerity

• Situaltional Crime Prevention

  • Crime occurs because criminals percieve opportunities to commit crimes

  • Reduce crime by reducing opportunities

  • Effort, risk, reward, provocation, excuses

Law

What is Law?

• A system of rules to regulate behaviour

• Enforced through state and social institutions

• Sanctions are the penalty for disobeying or breaking a law

Types of Law

Law on the Books

• The formal, official written legal statutes, legislation, acts, courts decisions, and regulations, and well as rules for their enforcement

Law in Action

• The decisions, actions, or experiences individuals or organizations have that involve law. These can influence whether law or legal consequences might be important for how decisions are made.

• Decisions are the “action” of law in action

  • 266: Consent cannot be obtained by force

  • 273: Consent can be withdrwn any time

  • 273: Cannot consent if intoxicated!!!

Week 11 ~ March 27th

Health and Care

Health

• Disease

  • An objective biological problem

• Illness

  • The personal experience of being unwell, which is often socially and culturally conditioned

Lifestyle and Behaviour

Smoking

Smoking ans SES

• Low SES populations are more likely to smoke daily, smoke more, and be less likely to quit

• More prevalent in working-class workplaces

• More embedded in daily routines (smoke breaks)

• Homes are more smoker-friendly

• Peer smoking means more exposure to social norms that encourage smoking

Vaping

• Maketed to young people

• Sleek designs, compatable with modern tech, flavours, young people inads

• EVALI - e-cigarette or vaping product us-associated lung injury

  • Modified devices or substances not designed by manufacturer

  • THC, off market liquids

  • Dozen of deaths, thousands of injuries

Alcohol

• Consumed by nearly 80% of population

• Alcohol-related costs like hospital stays are nearly 15$ billion a year

  • SES paradox

    • High SES = more drinking

    • Low SES = more harm

  • Why?

    • More conflating factors like stress, poor diet

    • Beverage choices

    • Frequency of binge drinking

Social Determinants

Class Inequality

• Gini Coefficient

  • Standad measure of economic disparity

• Stress

  • Exposure to difficult living conditions

  • Money problems, marital problems, longer work hours, less autonomy

  • Inability to cope, take breaks, relieve stress,

  • Linked to metal health, high BP, cancer, substance use

  • Telomere length (measure of cell aging) shortes for those living in disadvantage

• Development

  • Prenatal exposure

  • Poor nutrition, maternal smoking, lack of execise

  • Suboptimal fetal development with lifelong consequences

• Education

  • Less knowledge about healthy lifestyle

  • Less knowledge about healthy diet

• Access

  • Inferior medical services

  • Limited access to other medical treatment

• “Rather than income inequality being a new and independent determinant of health, it is likely to act by strengthening the many causal processes (known and unknown) through which social class imprints itself on people throughout life.” (Pickett and Wilkinson 2015)

• Culture

  • Ideas about causes and mechaniss of illness heavily influenced by culture

  • Cultural background predictor of cancer screening

  • Perceptions about chemical/unnatural origins of prescriptions

  • Religious ideas and treatment

Health Care

• Public Health System

  • Government-run programs that ensure access to clean drinking water, basic sewage and sanitation, and inoculation

• Health Care System

  • A nation’s clinics, hospitals, and other facilities for ensuring health and treating illness

Obesity

Lifestyle Meets Environment

• Obesity

  • Excessive body weight (BMI)

  • 25%, 36% on reserve indigenous

  • ~10% children 6-17

  • Sharp increase, billions in cost

  • Thinness as a health and social ideal

  • Perpetuated by media, weight loss industry, fashion, gov policy, medical profession

    • Thin = health = beauty = responsible

    • Obese = unhealthy = unatttractive = lazy

  • Stigma from “thin ideal”

Factors

• Individual

  • Less physical activity, less time outdoors, more sedentary (devices), less activity for chuldren

  • Genetic factors (40%-70%), but not entirely predictive of rapid increase

  • Poor dietary choices

• Enivironmental

  • SES and class-based food preferences (inexpensive and filling vs light and fresh)

  • Widespread use of HFCS in processed food

  • Greater food consuption through social patterns like longer work weeks, constant availability of cheap food options

  • Tech like microwaves that encourage quick food prep

  • Less phys-ed in schools

Week 12 ~ April 1st

Mass Media

Media and Mass Media

• Media

  • “Any formats or vehicles that carry, present, or communicate information.” (Conley 2013: 94)

• Mass media

  • “Communication technologies that allow for the distribution of information tp a mass audience.”

What Forms of Mass Media are you Mostt Influenced By?

How Susceptible are we to media?

Structure and Agency

• Structure

  • Structural functionalism

  • Conflic theory

  • Feminist Theory

• Agency

  • Symbolic interactionism

  • Postmodernism

  • Feminist Theory

Emphasizing Structure

• Structural Functionalism

• Conflict Theory

Emphasizing Agency

• Audience Effects

  • Bots and Deep fakes?

  • Social media and body dysmorphia

  • Algorithms on Youtube? On TikTok?

  • Echo chambers