contemporary social theories Flashcards
Western Marxism
- recognized that there is a need for the underrepresented to come together and fight back against capitalism
- recognized the struggle between the ruling class and the subordinate working class
- consciousness and revolt against the bourgeoisie
- refers to more independent and critical forms of Marxism
Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony
- the processes by which dominant culture maintains its dominant position
-when some powerful ideas or groups become like leaders, and everyone else follows along without questioning too much. - stated that for a regime to enjoy longevity and stability, they must have allegiance of the masses (consent)
two forms of political control
domination and hegemony
domination
refers to the direct physical and violent coercion exerted by the police and the military to maintain social boundaries and enforce social rules
hegemony
refers to the ideological control and consent. ideological control means that a society’s dominant ideas reflect the interests of the ruling class and help to mask social inequalities (constantly negotiated and renegotiated)
state
coercive institutions such as the police, military, government, and system of laws
civil society
schools, media, religion, trade unions, and cultural associations, Gramsci focused on the role that civil society plays in establishing hegemony
what must the ruling class do to secure the active consent
must constantly incorporates elements of the subordinate class’ culture so that the ladder never feels oppressed by the ruling class’ culture
wave
metaphor of feminism to distinguish between between approaches to feminism on a larger scale
first-wave feminism
mid 1800s, concluding after WW1 with the victory for women of the right to vote
“the Persons Case”
an example of first-wave feminism activism which saw women being defined as persons under the law, thus paving the way for women to be able to occupy positions in public office
second-wave feminism
- originated in the social movements of 1960s
- characterized by understanding women as a coherent social group with a common experience (gender oppression)
- mainly asking for access to employment and for access for equal pay
- legal rights, reproductive rights, equal pay, employment, violence against women
- their focus on homogeneity was critiqued by the third-wave
Dorothy Smith
- recognized that women all experienced domination by men and her project is organized around the desire to produce a sociology for women
- approach differs from both micro and macro, she wants to produce an account that tells people how things happen that go beyond the local sites of their experiences
- uses the concept of ruling to indicate the socially organized exercise of power that shapes people’s actions and lives
criticism of Dorothy Smith’s approach
it is a singular voice that supposedly represents all women, with the voice from white, middle-class, heterosexual, educated women, the difference was not recognized and theorized
third-wave feminism
- 1990s
- attention to the multiplicity of women’s voices
- challenge second-wave thinking that women indeed shared a common experience and challenge the coherence of the category of women
- emphasize the need for greater acceptance of complexities and multiple locations (every women to be included)
Bell Hooks
- argued no one in the 1960s civil rights or women’s movement seemed to pay attention to the realities of black women’s lives
- criticized feminist theorizing that automatically positions households as places of patriarchal oppression for women, as it is based on the assumption that gender segregation exists in the labour market in capitalist societies
post-structuralist theory
- challenge the view of enlightenment thinking, arguing that scientific knowledge cannot stand outside power relations
- analyze the underlying structures of a cultural object, concerned with how knowledge is socially produced
Michel Foucault
- interested in the ways that power and knowledge work together
- criticizes Marxism for emphasizing on class
- should focus on race, gender, sexuality that are marginalized
Foucault’s ideas of power, knowledge, and discourse
- definition of power differs from Marxist theory of power as oppression (repressive hypothesis)
- power relationships are multidirectional
- individuals have agency
- power is linked with knowledge
- truths and facts come together in systems that he refers to as discourses
repressive hypothesis
supposes that since the rise of the bourgeoisie, any expenditure of energy on purely pleasurable activities has been frowned upon.
agency
the capacity for self-directed action, since they have the ability to resist power relations and to alter power relations
discourse
guide how we think, act, and speak about a particular thing or issue, and determine who is authorized to speak
Foucault’s idea of discipline
means how we come to be motivated and produce particular realities
normalization
a social process by which some practices and ways of living are marked as “normal” and others as “abnormal”
surveillance
the sense that people think they are consistently observed
queer theory
- problematizes the assumptions that we are all the same and receive same treatment
- concerned with deconstructing sexual identities
three areas of queer theory
desire, language, identity
desire
- aim to disrupt categories of normal sexuality and allow diversity
- ideas of Foucault applies as he understood sexual identities are created
language
- how language is related to power
- just as Foucault understands knowledge is inseparable from power, it’s impossible to disentangle language from knowledge
- language is said to be value-laden as opposed to being neutral description
identity
- Foucault’s understanding that identity is a coherent entity that emerges without our souls, but it is socially produced
- understanding of others are always partial, which partiality connects to language as it is unable to convey the totality of objects or persons
- implicated in the restrictions and limits of language as well as the relations of power and discourse
post-colonial theory
- focuses on the political and cultural effects of colonialism
- suggests a focus on events that happened after formal colonialism ended in early 1960s
imperialism
refers to the ideas, practices, and attitudes of colonizers
colonialism
refers to the effects of imperialism within colonized spaces (concrete and ideological effects)
Edward Said’s concept of orientalism
- critiqued Western nations’ colonial dominion
- orientalism: discourse of power that creates a false distinction between a superior West and Inferior East (draws on Foucault’s notion of discourse as being implicated in relations of power and knowledge)
three kinds of orientalism
academic, imaginative, and institutional
academic orientalism
refers to knowledge that is produced by academics, governments, historians, who is producing information about the Orient (information is not neutral but embedded in power relations)
imaginative orientalism
refers to any representation making a basic distinction between the Orient and the Occident (art, novels, poems, images)
institutional orientalism
refers to the institutions created by Europeans such that they could gain authority over and rule the Orient
criticism of orientalism
argued that Said failed to consider how non-Westerners view themselves and the West, those living in the East resist the imposition of Western culture and try to maintain their cultures
Homi Bhabha’s stand on orientalism
argues that the West and East are enmeshed in a relationship that is not completely oppositional, power relation is multidirectional
residential schools
an example of colonial actions within Canada
- kids were taken from their families and forced to live at schools, speaking only English
- their histories and cultures were denied
- aim to assimilate them into the dominant culture
Hijin Park’s research on gendered orientalism
explained how social theories can explain what is happening in our social world, he notes how the media included Orientalist interview quotes from police and the attacks against Asian girls is a reassertion of gendered orientalism that poses Asian as culturally inferior
critical race theory (CRT)
- originated in 1981, sparked by the departure of Harvard’s first African-American professor Derrick Bell
- recognizes that racism is endemic to American life
- interested in exploring how the status quo of American life operates as a vehicle of racial oppression
- interdisciplinary and eclectic, allowing CRT to use a theoretical insight strategically to advance the pursuit of social justice
- allows us to view contemporary social issue through a lens of historical racism
Steven Seidman
his approach of understanding races brought out a disturbing dualism in which whites are thought of as simply people while nonwhites are understood as distinct races (white is default)
he argues that Orientalism is a discourse that normalized the centrality and supremacy of the West, and whiteness is standard against all others measured
Anthony Giddens
stated that globalization is not only about economic interdependence, but about the transformation of time and space in our lives (globalization is inevitable due to modernity)
time-space distanciation
coined by Giddens, allows social relations to shift from a local to a global context
disembedding mechanism
aids in shifting social relations from a local to global contexts
symbolic tokens
media of exchange that can be passed around without consideration of the specific person or group involved (money)
expert systems
systems of knowledge on which we rely but with which we may never be directly in contact
- it’s disembedding because it shifts the centre of our lives away from the local to the distant and abstract systems of knowledge
Which type of analysis would be the most appropriate for studying the process through which revolutionary struggle against oppression can lead to social transformation.
Dialectic Analysis
Auguste Comte, considered by some to be the father of sociology, would have agreed with what statement
Scientific methods can reveal the universal truths governing the patterns of society.
Which perspective emphasizes the role of power relations in the structuring of society?
Historical Materialism
The functionalist perspective sees society as
An organism comprised of interdependent and interrelated parts
