Chapter 3- Textbook Flashcards
What are the 8 contemporary social theories?
- Western Marxism
- Second-wave feminism
- Third-wave feminist
- Post-structuralist theory
- Queer theory
- Post-colonial theory
- Critical race theory
- Globalization
What does western marxism refer to?
the rule of the dominant class involves ideological control and consent
Who is the leading theorist behind western marxism?
antonio gramsci
What dod Gramsci accept about Marx’s analysis and what did he diverge from?
Accepted Marx’s analysis of the struggle between the ruling class and the working class, but he diverged from Marx in his analysis of how the ruling class ruled.
How did Marx explain how the ruling class domination and how did Gramsci believing the ruling class dominated?
Marx explained the ruling class dominated through force and coercion, using the police and military. Absent from this analysis, acc. to Gramsci, was consideration of the ruling class’s subtle, yet insidious, ideological control and manipulation.
What two different forms of political control exist acc. to Gramsci?
domination and hegemony
What is domination?
direct physical coercion exerted by police and military to maintains social boundaries and enforce social rules.
What is hegemony?
domination through ideological control and consent. -ideological control means that society's dominant ideas reflect the ruling class and help mask social inequalities.
To enjoy longevity and stability of rule, a regime must have the___of the masses.
allegiance.
How does hegemony of the dominant group’s ideas and cultural forms work?
by bringing about the consent of the subordinate class.
What did Gramsci separate the superstructure into?
state (coerce institutions–police) and civil society (schools, religion, etc.)
Whose role did Gramsci focus on when looking at what established hegemony? What happens through them?
Focused on the role civil society plays. Through them, the population internalizes the ruling class’s ideas which become common sense.
Hegemony is a process that is constantly___and___.
negotiated and renegotiated
Can the ruling class take hegemony for granted? Why?
No they can’t because consent secured is active consent, to secure, ruling class incorporates elements of subordinate class’s culture so they don’t feel suppressed.
How is hegemony used in the TV show Will and Grace?
- Will–serious and seen as heterosexual
- Fact that Will and Grace lived together
- Easily forget that will was a gay man
- Show did little to challenge heterosexual hegemony of ruling class
What is hegemony used to explain in regards to particular features of social organizations?
How particular features of social organizations are taken for granted and treated as common sense.
Is here one single feminist theory?
No
-While they differ in their explanations of women’s oppression and nature of gender and ideas about women’s emancipation, they still have at their core a concern for gender oppression.
Who was the leading theorist behind second-wave feminism?
Dorothy Smith
What is the key insight into second-wave feminism?
Women’s common experiences could be used as the basis for a political project of emancipation.
When was first wave feminism and what was the major accomplishment?
mid 1800s-just after WWI with the citron of the right to vote –> “The Persons Case” –> women defined as “persons”.
What is second-wave feminism characterized by an understanding of women as?
a coherent social group with a common experience as women–as victims of sexist oppression and patriarchy.
In second-wave feminism, was gender oppression conceived as being the same or different for all women?
the same
What is patriarchy?
A pervasive and complex social and cultural system of male dominance.
What does Dorothy Smith recognize that women share?
domination by man
What does Dorothy Smith have a desire to produce?
sociology for women
What is Dorothy Smith’s central concern?
- gendered character of he social production of knowledge
- critical of classical sociological approaches as endocentric (male centric)
What concept does Dorothy Smith use to indicate the “socially-organized exercise of power that shapes people’s actions and their lives”?
ruling
What are ruling relations?
organized relations (professions, corporations, etc.) that exist in a generalized form and work to coordinate from outside the local sites of our bodies, what people do (their actions)
Dorothy Smith believes that we need to know and understand what is not___from our individual locations –> make___the social relations that frame the conditions of our experiences.
- visible
- visible
How does Smith’s approach differ from that of macrosociology?
Macrosociology tends to produce accounts of social processes as if they were external to the individual because the kind of sociology she envisions can provide an account of social relations that may transform women into active social agents.
How does Smith’s approach differ from microsociology?
Microsociology is rooted in the microcosms of daily. Rather Smith wants to produce an account that tells people how things happen that go beyond the local sites of their experiences.
In summary, what kind of sociology is Smith interest in?
a sociology that can show people how the relations of the ruling shape their lives.
What is one of the major critiques levied agains second-wave theorizing?
Is that the singular voice that supposedly represents all women is really the voice of white, middle-class, heterosexual, educated women.
What do third-wave feminists believe is needed?
attention to the multiplicity of women’s voices and the emphasize the need for greater acceptance of complexities, ambiguities, and multiple locations
Third-wave feminists are interested inc reading space for feminism that takes up difference based on ___, ___, ___, etc.
- race
- social class
- sexuality
Who is the leading theorist behind third-wave feminist?
bell hooks
What did bell hooks argue?
That no one in the 1960s civil rights or women’s movements paid attention to black women’s lives and that when people talk about blacks, they focus on black men, and when people talk about women, they focus on white women.
Why did bell hooks criticize feminist theorizing that automatically positions households as places of patriarchal oppression for women?
Such position is based on the assumption that gender segregation exists in the labour market in capitalist societies, but hooks believed that households are places of refugee from racism.
What is the key insight into post-structuralist theory?
Power is productive–it produces particular forms of behaviour. The production of knowledge cannot stand outside of power relations.
What does post-structuralist theory argue?
that scientific knowledge or ideas about absolute “truth” cannot stand outside power relations.
What are post-structuralists concerned with in regards to knowledge?
How it is socially produced.
Who is the leading theorist behind post-structuralist theory?
Michel Foucault
What was Foucault interested in?
the ways that power and knowledge work together
Why did Foucault criticize Marxism?
For emphasizing class and the political economy as being the key principles in social organization. This emphasis meant that struggles based on race, gender, and sexuality were marginalized.
What is Foucault’s greatest contributions to post-structuralist thought?
His rethinking of power
What does Foucault refer to Marxist theory of power as? What does this mean?
- Repressive hypothesis
- Oppression (holds that truth is opposed to power). Views “truth” as something that can be produced outside of power relations.
According to Foucault, what is/is not power (how does he view power relations as being created)?
Power is not a thing posses by one individual over another–he views power relations as being created within social relationships.
What does Foucault think power is linked with?
knowledge
Foucault believes that ___and___are contextual–they can never be separated from the relations of power that they are produced with.
truths and facts
To know something is to exercise___.
power
What are discourses, acc. to Foucault?
Foucault outlines how truths and facts come together in systems he refers to as discourses, which are systems of meaning that govern how we think, act, and speak about a particular thing or issue.
Discourses not only tell us what the world___, but also what the world___to be.
- world
- ought
What is discipline?
Foucault uses the terms. Means “the means by which we become motivated to produce particular realities”.
Disciplinary power works in what way?
to produce bodies, practices, and subjectivities that “…bear the imprint of a given interest and logic…”
Foucault thought about how power operates by producing some___while discouraging others.
behaviours
Discipline, as a form of modern power, can work through what Foucault termed___–acts of observing, recording, training.
surveillance
What is an example of surveillance?
The threat of something being added to your permanent record.
Disciplinary power is exemplified by what judgement?
normalizing
What is normalization?
A social process by which some practices and ways of living are married as “normal” and others marked as “abnormal”
Unlike Marxist theorists, Foucault contends that resistance to modern disciplinary power is not manifested in revolution, but within what?
power relations
-there is no single source of all rebellions, but a plurality of resistances, each of them a special case.
When did Queer theory develop and why?
the 1960s because gays and lesbians felt they were being marginalized
What is the key insight to queer theory?
Seeks to destabilize and deconstruct sexual identities. Sexuality is socially constructed.
Who is the leading theorist for queer theory?
Draws on insights from Michel Foucault.
What is the key focus of queer theory?
The belief that everyone should have equal treatment under the law.
What does queer theory problematize?
the assumption that we are all the same and deserve the same treatment
What are the three areas of queer theory?
Desire, language, and identity
What is desire? What do queer theorists want with it?
our sexual attractions and wants
-they want to open up the concert of desire and disrupt categories of normal and acceptable sexuality
Why are queer theorists concerned about language?
-concerned with how language is related to power because few of us stop to consider our use of language.
It is impossible to separate language from___.
knowledge
Language is not___but___.
- transparent
- value laden
How we use language is connected to what?
- the concept of power in that language produced reality
- sexualities that are produces under the category of “abnormal” are then governed, examined, and legislated by the “normals”
- such is the power of language to produce reality
Language operates with a logic of what?
binaries–they are value-laden–one element is more hight values which is how power is implicated in language or discourse.
What is identity?
our sense of self, that is socially produced, is fluid, and is multiple.
How is our identity situated and contextualized?
By our social relations
Identity is implicated the limits of what?
Language as well as the relations of power and discourse.
Identity is constructed through what?
Social relations and through discourses around gender and sexuality.
What does post-colonial theory focus on?
On political and cultural effects of colonialism.
-Conquests of land, resources, and labour
What is imperialism?
The conquest offend, resources, and people’s labour; the ideas, practices, and attitudes of colonizers (“what happens t home”).
What is colonialism?
The effects of imperialism, including concrete and ideological effects, within colonized territories (“what happens away from home”).
What does the “post” in post-colonial theory suggest?
A focus on events that happened after colonialism ended in the 1960s.
Who is the leading post-colonial theorist?
Edward Said
How does Said critique Western colonial dominion?
The fact that it remained in place even after ideas of person freedom, social progress, and national sovereignty.
What is Said’s concept of Orientalism?
Said’s concept of a discourse of power that creates a false distinction between a Superior West and and inferior East.
What are the three types of Orientalism?
1) Academic Orientalism
2) Imaginative Orientalism
3) Institutional Orientalism
What is Academic Orientalism?
refers to knowledge produced by academics and anyone else producing info about the Orient.
this knowledge is not neutral but embedded in power relations
What is Imaginative Orientalism?
any representation making a distinction between the orient and Occident.
art, novels, etc.
What is Institutional Orientalism?
institutions created by Europeans to rule to Orient
What does Said recognize that the discourse of Orientalism guided?
the representation of East and allowed the conditions for Orientalism to succeed as imperial domination
Disney was criticized for Orientalist lyrics in___.
Aladdin
What is an example of modern day Orientalism in the US?
They seek control of Iraq and Afghanistan.
What do critics of Said’s work argue?
That he fails to consider how non-westerners view themselves and the west and that some may try to maintain their own culture or create a hybrid culture as well as the fact that western discourses also reveal a longing towards East and power is multidirectional (colonizers rely on colonized to uphold they rule).
What is Canada’s history with colonialism?
- Canada was a British colony
- When we consider Canada’s Aboriginal population, perhaps the “post” has not yet been realized.
- Aboriginals among most marginalized in Canada
- Residential schools–assimilation into dominant culture.
What is an example of Canada and gendered orientalism?
- Hijin Park’s research–mainstream media depictions of attack on 6 Asian women in Vancouver
- Traces how media depictions of these attacks depicted the 6 girls of being in need of Western protections and how the quotes contrasted “Asian” and “Canadian” behaviour.
- Overall, Park argues that the media coverage of the Vancouver attacks is a reassertion of gendered orientalist scripts that position Asians as inferior to the West.
What is the origin of Critical race theory?
- 1981 student protest at Harvard Law School
- Protect because of departure of Harvard’s first African-Amercan professor, Derrick Bell
- Only two black professors left
- When university did not meet demand for more coloured professors, students organized course called Race, Racism, and American Law
Who are the leading theorists of CRT?
- Charles Lawrence
- Mari Matsuda
- Richard Delgado
- Kimberle Crenshaw
CRT defined by what tenets?
1) “Recognizes that racism is endemic to America life”. Explore how status quo operates as vehicle of oppression.
2) “Expresses skepticism towards dominant legal claims of neutrality, objectivity, colour blindness, and meritocracy”. Argues that racism is institutionalized.
3) “Challenges ahistoricism and insists on a contextual/historical analysis of the law”. Contemporary racial inequalities are linked to earlier historical periods.
4) “Insists on recognition of the experiential knowledge of people of colour”. Sees value undraping on the experience of those who have experienced racism.
5) “Interdisciplinary and eclectic”. Draws from a number of traditions that allows CRT to advance the pursuit of racial justice.
6) “Works towards ending racial oppression as part of goal to end all oppression”.
CRT allows us to view contemporary social situations through a lens of___racism.
historical
What is an example of CRT in the US?
Hurricane Katrina
What percent of residents in New Orleans were poor (Katrina)?
28%
More than ___did not own a car (Katrina).
105 000
___affected in general by Katrina were black.
70%
___affected by flooding of Katrina were black.
44%
___of those without a vehicle in Katrina were black.
2/3
What is an example of CRT in Canada?
Case of R.D.S v. The Queen
- black youth arrested and charged with assaulting a white police officer
- original judge–only black female judge in Nova Scotia
- she acquitted him (tensions between police and nonwhite persons)
- case appear
- Supreme Court upheld original acquittal because a reasonable person would use their knowledge of the social context of the community and race relations.
Not until the ___and ___the social theorists began to consider whiteness as a racial identity.
- 1980s
- 1990s
What are whites thought of as and what are nonwhites thought of as? What is the deracializing of whiteness?
- whites: as people
- nonwhites: as distinct races
- marking (or non marking) represents the deracializing of whiteness
What does globalization influence?
sociocultural and political processes
What group of people mostly have the privilege of experiencing the world in a global way?
westeners
How do we theorize changing aspects of contemporary global life?
-How were time and space previously viewed?
- According to British sociologist, Anthony Giddens, “globalization is not only, or even primarily, about economic interdependence, but about the transformation of time and space in our lives.”
- Previously time was linked to changing seasons until time and space changed dramatically with the invention of the clock and industrial revolution.
What is the key insight into globalization?
Explores transformations in our lives dealing with time an space. Globalization is an economic, social, cultural, and political process.
What is time-space distanciation?
- The separation of time and space, which allows social relations to shift from a local to a global context.
- crucial distinction between traditional and modern institutions
What are desembedding mechanisms?
A mechanism that aids in shifting social relations from local to global contexts.
According to Giddens, what are the two mechanisms that allow for the reconfiguring of social relations?
symbolic tokens and expert systems
What are symbolic tokens?
A medium of exchange (such as money.
-Make it possible for people to move from one local space to another, illusion of shrinking world.
What are expert systems?
Systems of knowledge on which we rely but with which we may never be directly in contact.
What do expert systems shift the centre of our lives away from?
local to the abstract experts of knowledge that may be distant
What is an example of an expert system?
- In the past, you would rely on people in your social network
- Today, we rely on those trained in expert knowledge
- Ex Western medicine–same vaccination for polio in North America as in Sudan
Expert systems implicate us in relations of trust and risk. What does this mean?
We trust engineers–do not fear that the roof will cave in when we walk in a room.
Expert systems incorporated into both___and___practices.
institution and individual
What are institutional dimensions of modernity linked with?
Globalization
What are the institutional dimension?
Capitalism, industrialism, monopoly of violence, and surveillance
-They are all interlaced
___relationship between the local and distant in Globalization.
Dialectic
Globalization is something that transforms the___–not purely an economic phenomenon.
social
