Chapter 2- Lecture Flashcards
What is a theory?
A theory is a statement that tries to explain how facts or events are related, in order to predict future events.
What is your job when it comes to seeing the world theoretically?
Develop skills that are necessary to see the world from alternative perspectives.
What does each theory have? What does each theorist offer?
- Each theory has both strengths and weaknesses.
- Each theorist offers unique insights into our social world
What did classical sociological theory push back against?
Traditional ideas
What did Thomas Hobbes believe?
People are responsible for creating their social worlds.
Which sociologist would pose the question: What society do you want to create by the virtue of the knowledge you’re creating here (at university)?
Thomas Hobbes
What is Hobbes’ natural state?
How humans existed prior to the emergence of social structures.
What did Thomas Hobbes believe that people are motivated by?
Self-interest and the pursuit of power.
Who believed that God was responsible for the emergence of society and government?
John Locke
What is John Locke’s concept of tabula rasa?
People are born as blank slates.
What did John Locke believe that people had the right to (4 things)?
1) Self-preservation
2) Private property
3) Individual autonomy
4) Freedom
What did Charles Montesquieu believe about society and humans?
People never existed outside, or without, society. Humans are created and defined by society.
What did Montesquieu believe about laws? What are his three types?
- Laws define the spirit of the people
1) the Republic
2) the Monarchy
3) Despotism
What did Montesquieu appreciate?
Cultural diversity and comparative methodology
What is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s social contract?
People existed in symbiotic and idyllic relationships in the natural state.
What is an example of the social contract when it comes to student loans?
We ay them back so someone else can access the money later.
“We give something up for someone to do something for us; we achieve more together than apart”…these statements are all part of what notion?
the social contract
What is Rousseau believe about humans and society?
Humans are perfectible and can achieve their potential only through society.
How do we enter the social contract acc. to Rousseau?
As free and equal individuals.
What did the Enlightenment challenge?
Years of Christian teachings
What did the Philosophes advocate? What did they challenge? What did this result in?
Critical thinking and practical knowledge and built on the natural sciences.
- challenged beliefs guided in traditions
- resulted in the ability too the masses to challenge their oppressors
What did the Enlightenment lead to?
Reorganization of societies
What was sociology born out of?
- Sociology was born out of the conservative reaction against Enlightenment thinking.
- Sociology: reverse social changes/return to old ways
What did Conservatives believe about society?
That society is not the product of individuals, rather an entity in itself
What are the 10 points of Conservative thinking?
1) Society exists on its own
2) Society produces the individual
3) Individuals simply fill positions
4) Smallest unit of social analysis is heftily
5) Parts of society are interrelated and interdependent
6) Change is a threat
7) Social institutions are beneficial
8) Modern social changes create fear and anxiety
9) Emphasis on seemingly irrational factors
10) Return to social hierarchies and healthy competition
How does functionalism view the social world?
The social world is a dynamic system of interrelated and interdependent parts.
Why do social structures exist acc. to functionalism?
To help people fulfill their wants and desires.
What type of theory is functionalism?
A systems theory
What is human society similar to acc. to functionalism? Explain.
An organism, when it fails to work together the “system” will fail.
Functionalism advocates for___and___.
balance and harmony
What do functionalists believe will happen if we don’t participate in society?
Society will die and social systems will fail.
What do functionalists believe that society must meet?
The needs of the majority
When was functionalism the dominant theoretical paradigm?
Between the late 1920s and the early 1960s.
What do functionalists believe about institutions?
Institutions need to work together.
Who are the functionalist theorists?
-Herbert Spencer
-Emile Durkheim
Robert Merton
What is Spencer’s term “survival of the fittest”?
Justifies why only the strong should survive. Environmental pressures allow beneficial traits to be passed on to future generations
Why does Merton believe that societies evolve?
Because they need to change in order to survive.
What societies were typically viewed as the societies with the best traits? What emerged because of this?
- White societies
- Emergence of white supremacy
What concerned Spencer? Hint: it’s a problem that we still have today? What did this justify?
- Overpopulation
- Justification for colonization
What is Spencer’s idea of Social Darwinism?
Draws upon Darwin’s idea of natural selection; asserts societies evolve according to the sam principles and biological organisms. Societies that didn’t evolve as well were viewed as inferior.
What is Spencer’s laissez-faire approach?
Opposes regulations or interference with natural processes.
Who is viewed as the founder o modern sociology?
Emile Durkheim
What did Durkheim believe?
That human action originates in the collective rather than in the individual
What is the Durkheim’s notion of the collective conscience?
Drives behaviour
What are some examples of the collective conscience?
- Getting up to go to work/school
- Value on education
- Wearing the clothes we wear: fashions of today
- We eat cereal, not steak, for breakfast
What does the collective conscience tell us?
What is the normal thing to do
What can the collective conscience inspire us to do?
Good social change
What are social facts?
Are general social features that exist on their own and are independent of individual manifestations
What re some examples of social facts?
- Email etiquette, emailing, texting
- Cold weather –> social fact is the winter clothing we wear
What are ideas around marriage, funerals, and raising children all a part of?
Collective conscience
What is the effect or creation of human activity (unanticipated consequences)?
Social facts
What is this an example of: We graduate to fill the ideal in the collective conscience?
Social fact
What is Durkheim’s idea of anomie?
A state of formlessness that results from the lack of clear goals and creates feelings of confusion the tray ultimately result in higher suicide rates.
What is Durkheim’s mechanical solidarity?
Describes early societies based on similarities and independence.
- Teamwork
- Similar people in groups together yet were still independent.
What is Durkheim’s organic solidarity?
Describes later societies organized around interdependence and the increasing division of labour
-You need people to help you survive
What did Merton believe about social structures?
Social structures have any functions.
What are Merton’s two types of functions?
Manifest Functions and Latent Functions
What are manifest functions?
The intended consequences of an action or social patter
What are latent functions?
The unintended consequences of an action or social pattern.
What are the manifest and latent functions of school?
Manifest: degree (economic unit)
Latent: find partner
What are the manifest and latent functions of television and Facebook?
Television: Manifest- inform and entertain Latent- default babysitter Facebook: Manifest- stay connected Latent- cyber bullying, political platform
What are the two criticisms of the functionalist approach?
1) Inability to account for social change
2) Overemphasis on the extent to which harmony and stability actually exist in society
What does conflict theory highlight?
Struggles between large groups of people.
What does conflict theory believe that society is grounded on? What does society need to survive?
Society is grounded upon inequality and competition and needs inequality to survive.
What is power in conflict theory?
Power is the core of all social relationships; scare and unequally divided among members of society.
What does conflict theory believe are the vehicles by which the powerful promote their own interests at the expense of the weak?
Social values and the dominant ideology
Who is conflict theory rooted in the writings of?
Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau
What is the Base/Superstructure?
Dynamic relationship between the material and social elements of society.
What is the Base? What does it include?
Material and economic foundation for society. Includes the forces and relations of production.
What are the forces of production?
How we make things; allow the creation of material world (resources).
What are the relations of production?
- Relationship between workers and owners
- Unequal relationship between workers and owners
What is the Superstructure? What three things does it include?
All of the things that society values and aspires to once its material needs are met. When forces and relations of production come together. When things go well and are balanced. Includes religion, politics, and law.
What is Hegel’s concept of dialectics?
A way of seeing history and society as the result of oppositions, contradictions, and tensions from which social change can emerge.
What does dialectics lead to?
Leads to positive social change as a result of contradictions, oppositions, and tensions.
What is Marx’s concept of Idealism?
Human mind and consciousness are more important in understanding the human condition than is the material world.
What does idealism believe could change society?
Human consciousness and human interaction with the material world could change society.
What are relations of production based on with conflict theory?
Based on power
How did Marx refer to the workers and the owners?
The workers: proletariat
The rich owners: bourgeoisie
What is alienation acc. to Marx?
The process by which workers are disconnected from what the produce.
What is exploitation acc. to Marx? Where is the exploitative nature of labour hidden within Capitalism?
- The difference between what workers are paid and the wealth they create for the owners.
- Within capitalism, the exploitative nature of labour is hidden within the wage system.
What would workers do from a marxist perspective? Why did this never happen?
From a marxist perspective, workers would rise up in revolution. But it never happened because of social change and creation of middle management.
What is ideology acc. to Marx?
Set of beliefs and values that support and justify the ruling class of society.
What maintains the position of the ruling elite acc. to Marx?
Dominant ideology
-Belief that one group of people have more value than others
What is Marx’s concept of false consciousness?
Belief in and support of the system that oppresses you.
What is Marx’s concept of class consciousness? What is an example?
Recognition of domination and oppression and the collective action that arises in response.
- Forming groups resisting
- Ex. creation of unions
What is symbolic interactionism acc. to Blumer?
People act toward things based on the meaning those things have for them; and those meanings are derived from social interaction and modified through interpretation.
How does symbolic interactionism look at the world?
From the ground up
What are Ritzer’s 7 principles of symbolic interactionism?
1) Humans have the capacity for thought
2) Human thinking is shaped by social interaction
3) People learn meanings and symbols in social settings
4) Meanings and symbols enable people to carry on uniquely human actions and interactions
5) Meanings and symbols change dependent upon interpretation
6) Unique ability to interact with self
7) Culmination of interaction and patterns of action make up society
What is the micro versus macro approach of symbolic interactionism?
Highlights the ways in which meanings are created, constructed, mediated, and changed by members of a group of society.
What is Max Weber’s concept of verstehen?
A deep understanding and interpretation of subjective social meanings.
What does George Simmel believe?
Society is the summation of human experience and its patterned interactions.
What is Simmel’s concept of formal sociology?
Different human interactions can be similar in form
-We are more the same than we are different.
What is George Herbert Mead’s book Mind, Self, and Society (1934) state?
The social organism is not an organic individual but a social group of individual organisms.
What does Mead believe the human mind results from?
The individuals ability to respond and engage with the environment.
What is society acc. to Mead?
The sumo individuals within it
What is Mead’s concept of the ‘I’ and ‘Me’?
‘I’- creative, spontaneous self
‘Me’- filter, regulates ‘I’. Social cohesion and control.
What is Charles H. Cooley’s concept of sympathetic introspection?
Putting yourself into someone else’s shoes.
What is Cooley’s concept of the looking-glass self?
We develop our self image through the cues we receive from others.
-Society is that mirror
What does the looking-glass self become?
The self-fulfilling prophecy.
What is the self-fulfilling prophecy acc. to Cooley?
Internalize impressions and as a result become the kind of person we believe other see us as.
What is Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis?
The ‘self’ emerges from the performances we play and how the other actors relate to use.
Does dramaturgical analysis really exist?
No
What is dramaturgical analysis a function of?
Of how others interpret the signs and signals we convey during social interaction.
What do we attempt to control with dramaturgical analysis?
We attempt to control how others see us or hid our true feelings or motivations through deceptions, misrepresentations, or enactment of idealized notions of behaviour?
What is the front stage self vs. back stage self?
Dramaturgical analysis
Is any interaction as simple as it first appears acc. to Goffman and his concept of dramaturgical analysis?
No
Who are the 3 contributions by women?
Wollstonecraft, Martineau, MacLean
Who are the 3 contributions by visible minorities?
Cooper, Well-Barnett, Du Bois
Who are the 4 contributions by non-Western scholars?
Fanon, James, Padmore, Nkrumah
