DEFINITIONS

• Sociology - the systematic study of social behaviour and phenomena in human societies

  • Looks at how social behaviour creates a social whole

• Auguste Comte - Founder of sociology 

• Matineau - foremother of sociology 

• The Sociological Imagination (Mills) 

  • Use sociological awareness to deduce the relationship between an individual and the wider society 

  • Ability to view society as an outsider, rather than relying on bias

  • Ability to look at personal biographies and link them with history and social structure 

  • Private troubles vs public issues (private could be personal breakup, and public would be divorce rate)

• 3 Generally Accepted Sociological Perspectives

  • Functionalism - Macro Sociology 

    • Durkheim

    • Society is made up of several independent parts, which function exactly as they should to maintain social order

  • Conflict Theory - Macro Sociology

    • Marx

    • Society is made up of unequal groups, the privileged exploit the underprivileged. The struggle for money, resources, and power creates conflict which leads to social change

  • Symbolic interactionism - Micro Sociology

    • Weber

    • Society is made up of everyday social interactions, and this shapes individual identity and shared meanings of the social world

• Freud 

  • Self is social product are in result of one’s parents

  • Parts of self seek pleasure, other parts regulate these emotions through regulating behaviours

    • Id - animal instinct 

    • Ego - respond to animal instinct 

    • Superego - get what we want using socially acceptable means

• Mead

  • 2 core components of self:

    • The I - walking, talking, smiling 

    • The me - plan actions, judges performances, how others expect us to behave

  • 3 Stages of self development:

    • 1. Prepratory stage

      • Age 0-3

      • Imitate people around them

      • Gestures, objects, words

    • 2. Play stage 

      • Ages 3-5

      • Realize that relationships involve roles

      • Pretend to be other people

    • 3. Game stage

      • Children think about roles

      • Understand that people may hole many roles

      • Understand and excel at sport

• Piaget 

  • Four stages in development of children’s thought processes 

    • Sensorimotor - ages 0-2; using senses to discover

    • Preoperational - ages 2-7; using words and symbols

    • Concrete operational - ages 7-12; using logical thinking

    • Formal operantinal - 12+; thinking about complex things

• Cooley’s “looking glass self” 

  • We can learn about self by interacting with others

  • 3 phases:

    • 1. We imagine how we present ourselves

    • 2. We imagine how others evaluate us

    • 3. We define ourselves as a result of these impressions

• Erving Goffman 

  • Views society as actors on a stage

    • Front Stage  - our “best selves”, who we want others to see us as

    • Back Stage - our true selves, who we are alone or with people close to us

• Durkheim 

  • Organic solidarity (society of interdependence) vs Mechanical Solidarity (societal cohesion)

  • Mechanical solidarity - a society of sameness (miniaml division of labour, everyone produces what they need for their own beenfit)

  • Organic solidarity - society is a system of different organs that work together 

  • Empiricism - a philospohy that all knowledge comes from experience and observation

  • Dogmas - a generally held belief that lies in bias

  • Causal logic - relationship between a consition or variable and a particular outcome, with one event leading to another (two variables may seem to have a causal relationship due to outside factors)

  • Criticism - ignore inequality, referred to as “sunshine sociology” as they beleive that everything serves a purpose (even things like crime)

• Karl Marx

  • Argues that class struggle is the movement that moves history forward

  • Soceity is made up of unequal groups where the most privileged exploit the underprivileged

• Macrosociology

  • Focuses on large-scale phenomena/entire civilizations

• Microsociology

  • Focuses on small groups, and everyday experiences and interactions

• The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 

  • Main arguemnt - Capitalism can be linked to the protestant ethic 

  • Iron cage - self sustaining and purely rational order in modern capitalist society 

  • Domination = Power + Legitimacy

• Types of authority 

  • Traditional - a traditional style leader

  • Legal Rational - police, government, prime minister 

  • Charimatic - people obey because of charismatic personality type

• Aldon Morris

  • Critiques the trinity for being racist in discourse, and not using intersectionality to analyze society

• Gender as an Organizing Principle of Social Life

  • Feminist waves 

    • Liberal - suffragettes earning right to vote

    • Radical - 1960s, bra burning

    • Intersectional/Postmodern - women of colour were starting intervention 

  • Methods - techniques used to gatherr evidence 

  • Methodologies - theories about how methods and research should be conducted

• Joan Alway

  • Feminist Theorist

  • Argues that gender challenges the dichotomous categories that frame sociological thought, it also displaces sociology’s founding problem - the problem of modernity

  • Looks at gender as the organizing principle of social life

  • Key theorists: McClung, Smith, Alway

  • The goal is to abolish patriarchy, deconstruct gender inequality

• Standpoint Theory

  • Advocates that marginalized people have an epistemologically privileged standpoint

• Anti-Racist Perspectives

  • The colour line (Dubois)

  • The veil & double consciousness (Dubois)

    • The veil - refers to Black people being hidden from society

    • Double consciousness - seeing themselves as how they are, but also how white people see them through the veil

  • Black Feminist Thought (Collins)

    • Black women scholars have a unique position of being both in and outside of academia 

    • The idea that black women can produce knowledge “for them, by them”

  • The outsider within (Collins)

  • The souls of Black Folk - emphasizes the importance of black standpoints

  • Pan-Africanism - all Africans from arounf the world have a shared identity

• Critical Race Theory

  • Racism is a permanent feature of American Society

  • Racism working through intersecting structures of domination

  • Racism’s formation through white supremacy

  • Narrative storytelling, lived experience, resistance

  • Racism is always present and will continue to always be present

  • Draws on intersectionality 

• Intersectionality (as an analytical tool)

  • Allows us to analyze systems of oppression

  • Emphasizes that these systems are interlocking

  • Centralizes lived experience 

  • Kimberle Crenshaw coined intersectionality (she thought of intersectionality like roads)

    • If a black woman was standing in the middle of two roads, and got hit by two cars, the law is unable to decide which is truly at fault

  • The idea that race is socially constrcuted may lead to colour-blind racism, instead Black people are encouraged to embrace these labels 

• Decolonial, Anti-Imperialist, and Anti-Orientalist Perpsectives

  • Western knowledge production is based on a history of imperialism and colonialism

  • “Producing knowledge” has harmed marginalized, especially Indigenous populations

  • We should think critically about taken for granted concepts like time and space (panoptical time and anachronistic space)

  • Orientalism has been used as a tool to divide the world into two unequal halves

  • Power, violence, and control are ultimately about anxiety, fear, and entitlement 

• Classical Perspectives 

  • Functionalism

  • Conflict Theory

  • Symbolic Interactionism

• Interventions

  • Gender as an organizing principle of social life

  • Anti Racist perspectives

  • Critical Race Theory

  • Intersectionality

  • Decolonial Perspectives

  • Anti-Orientalist Perspectives

  • Anti-Imperialist Perspectives

• Definitions:

  • Agency - the freedom of individuals to choose and act (everyone has a will and that matters more than social structure)

  • Social Structure - the underlying framework of society which is made up of predictable relationships

  • Labelling Theory - a group is viewed as problematic if they are labeled as such

  • Deviance - behaviour that violates the standards of conduct or expectations of a group/society 

  • Gemeinschaft - a close knit community that is united by close personal bonds

  • Gesellschaft - a commiunity that is large an impersonal 

  • Maifest functions - consequences that are intended and organized

  • Latent functions - consequnces that are unintended and often hidden 

  • Positivism - society must be objectively analyzed 

  • Interpretivism - analyze society through empathetic understanding of subjective experiences, morals, and values

  • Ideal type - create a perfect version of any given phenomenon and compare it to reality 

  • Bureaucracy - a formal organization that uses rules and hierarchial ranking to acheive efficiency 

  • Anti-Essentialism - idea that we should not think of everybody’s experience as on single experience (women of dif. Races, sexual identities, and classes all have different experiences)

  • Panoptical time - global history that is consumed at a glancd (looks at history in a very linear way)

  • Anachronistic space - prehistoric space and inherently out of place in the historical time of modernity