Midterm Exam Review
5 multiple choices questions
3 social theories : each theory offers competing interpretations of the same reality
structural-functional approach : approach understands society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability.
This approach stresses social structure and looks for each structure’s social functions.
From a functionalist perspective, societies evolve, grow, and develop — like living organisms.
Like a living organism, societies have certain needs.
All societies have these needs, but they can achieve them in different ways.
Social institutions are developed to meet the needs of society.
social conflict theory : approach understands society as an arena of inequality that generates conflict and change (society is like a competitive sport)
Highlights how factors such as class, race, ethnicity, gender, and age are linked to inequality in terms of money, power, education, and social status.
Conflict theories look at social institutions and ask:
— Who benefits and who is exploited?
If society is like a competitive sport, the goal is to gain and maintain power.
The rules to the competition are made by the people in power.
symbolic-interaction approach : approach understands society as the product of the everyday interactions of individuals. (society is like a play)
Society is nothing more than the reality that people construct for themselves as they interact with one another.
Symbolic interaction theory explores the ways we communicate, how we develop our self-concept, and our expectations of others.
Here, the focus is on social behavior, relationships, and meanings that people bring to situations.
From this view, we study how society is made up of interactions between individuals and small groups.
We focus on how interactions between individuals are negotiated through shared symbols, gestures, verbal and nonverbal communication.
Symbolic interactionists ask: How do people experience society? How do people construct reality, norms, inequality, etc.?
Symbolic interactionism helps to understand how race and gender (among other social categories) shape social interactions.
— “Where are you from? Your English is perfect.”
— “It’s a boy!”
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
→ observed the social changes taking place in France at the time.
Durkheim’s insights:
Society is greater than the sum of its parts.
Collective conscience or collective consciousness: communal beliefs, morals, and attitudes of a society.
Social integration: the strength of ties that people have to their social groups is a key factor in social life.
Anomie: A social condition in which there is a disintegration or disappearance of norms and values previously common to society.
Modern society weakens social bonds. Rapid change creates a breakdown in rules that govern behavior and creates feelings of “anomie,” or normlessness. This produces social instability.
Durkheim (1800s) studied suicide in France, which represented a growing problem at the time.
He began with various questions:
Why do people suicide?
Why don’t people suicide?
Why does the rate of suicide vary from place to place?
He looked to the research at the time. One explanation was that suicide resulted from individual psychological conditions. (suicide → isolation)
findings :
More women than men in asylums, but more men than women suicide.
Found higher rates of suicide among certain categories of people:
The unmarried (as opposed to the married)
Without children (as opposed to with children)
Men (as opposed to women)
Protestants (as opposed to Catholics)
Seniors (as opposed to the young and the middle-aged)
Conclusion: Social Integration – The more integrated people are in society, the more anchored they are to social institutions, the less likely they are to suicide.
Karl Marx
→ Karl Marx looked at similar social changes taking place in Western European countries but interpreted it differently.
He noticed conflict in society, not shared values.
He noticed that some people were becoming super rich, while most people were becoming worse off.
He focused on power and resources: who had them, who didn’t, and why?
He thought: If we can answer these questions, we can improve society.
Marx’s insight :
It’s all about the money!
Some people have it; they are called the capitalists (or the bourgeoisie).
Others don’t; they are called the workers (or the proletariat).
Marx predicted that eventually the workers would rise-up in revolution against the capitalist class.
3 short answer questions
→ how important context is?
our behavior is the result of individual decisions and consider how society influences our choices and behavior.
it influences people’s behaviour within the social environment they’re in
The power of sociology is recognizing that we are not alone in our struggles – and collectively, we have the power to change our circumstances.
social forces impact everyday decisions
structure vs agency
— What shapes human behavior?
Social structure: refers to the system of socioeconomic stratification (i.e., social class), social institutions (i.e., family, religion, education, legal), or other patterned relations between large social groups.
Agency: refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own choices.
→ Social structure is believed to exert a constraining effect on human activity; agency refers to the ability of individuals to act independently of this.
ethnocentrism - relativism - appropriation
Ethnocentrism: the tendency to judge other cultures by your own cultural standards. People tend to think of their own cultural values and beliefs as normal, natural, and good, and then think of other cultures as abnormal, unnatural, and wrong.
Cultural Relativism: the view that all beliefs, customs, and ethics are relative to the individual within their own social context. Right and wrong are culture-specific; what is considered moral in one society may be considered immoral in another, and since no universal standard of morality exists, no one has the right to judge another society’s customs, etc.
Cultural Appropriation: the adoption of elements of one culture by members of a different cultural group. This typically involves members of a dominant group exploiting the culture of less dominant groups—often with little understanding of the latter’s history, experience, and traditions
social construct of reality
The social construction of reality refers to the theory that the way we present ourselves to other people is shaped by our interactions with others, as well as by our life experiences.
How we define everyday situations depends on our respective backgrounds and experiences.
Our reality is a complicated negotiation. What is real depends on what is socially acceptable. Most social interactions involve some acceptance of what’s going on. While we participate in the construction of reality, it is not entirely a product of our own doing.
While we participate in the construction of reality, it’s not entirely a product of our own doing.
What is the role of context in shaping our reality?
How do we make sense of reality through symbolic meaning?
How we define everyday situations depends on our respective backgrounds and experiences.
positionality
Positionality, also termed social location, “refers to the place a person occupies within a set of social relationships.”
Understanding positionality means understanding where you stand with respect to power.
WHAT you SEE depends on WHERE you are standing.
What aspects of your identity have played a particularly important role in determining where you stand, how you are ‘positioned’, or ‘socially located’ in the society where you live?
Positionality is not fixed – gender, race, class, and other aspects of our identity, are markers of relational position rather than essential qualities.
1 long answer question
→ explain gender socialization
One of the most powerful sets of expectations we learn through socialization are gender roles: the behavioral norms assumed to accompany status as female or male.
is the process of teaching members of society how to behave according to gender expectations, or gender roles
In our society, we place enormous emphasis on socializing girls and boys into ‘appropriate’ gender roles.
If masculinity and femininity were part of our nature, that would not be necessary.
In other words, we learn (nurture) ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ according to our cultural norms.
Why are girls and boys, women and men, socialized differently? What function does this serve in society?
— socialization into gender roles
Structural-Functional theory:
The roles of women and men are complimentary.
Traditional gender roles ensure that society functions.
Social-Conflict theory:
The idea that women and men are different and should have different roles in society creates conflict, because one group (usually women) will always have less power.
Symbolic Interaction theory:
There is no inherent meaning to sex (‘girl’/’boy’ are just labels).
Based on these labels, culture creates ideas about femininity and masculinity. But these are simply ideas created in society; they change over time and within different groups.