contemporary social theories

Question 1

Western Marxism

Answer 1

• 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

Question 2

Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony

Answer 2

• 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)

Question 3

two forms of political control

Answer 3

domination and hegemony

Question 4

domination

Answer 4

refers to the direct physical and violent coercion exerted by the police and the military to maintain social boundaries and enforce social rules

Question 5

hegemony

Answer 5

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)

Question 6

state

Answer 6

coercive institutions such as the police, military, government, and system of laws

Question 7

civil society

Answer 7

schools, media, religion, trade unions, and cultural associations, Gramsci focused on the role that civil society plays in establishing hegemony

Question 8

what must the ruling class do to secure the active consent

Answer 8

must constantly incorporates elements of the subordinate class’ culture so that the ladder never feels oppressed by the ruling class’ culture

Question 9

wave

Answer 9

metaphor of feminism to distinguish between between approaches to feminism on a larger scale

Question 10

first-wave feminism

Answer 10

mid 1800s, concluding after WW1 with the victory for women of the right to vote

Question 11

“the Persons Case”

Answer 11

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

Question 12

second-wave feminism

Answer 12

• 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

Question 13

Dorothy Smith

Answer 13

• 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

Question 14

criticism of Dorothy Smith’s approach

Answer 14

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

Question 15

third-wave feminism

Answer 15

• 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)

Question 16

Bell Hooks

Answer 16

• 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

Question 17

post-structuralist theory

Answer 17

• 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

Question 18

Michel Foucault

Answer 18

• 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

Question 19

Foucault’s ideas of power, knowledge, and discourse

Answer 19

• 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

Question 20

repressive hypothesis

Answer 20

supposes that since the rise of the bourgeoisie, any expenditure of energy on purely pleasurable activities has been frowned upon.

Question 21

agency

Answer 21

the capacity for self-directed action, since they have the ability to resist power relations and to alter power relations

Question 22

discourse

Answer 22

guide how we think, act, and speak about a particular thing or issue, and determine who is authorized to speak

Question 23

Foucault’s idea of discipline

Answer 23

means how we come to be motivated and produce particular realities

Question 24

normalization

Answer 24

a social process by which some practices and ways of living are marked as “normal” and others as “abnormal”

Question 25

surveillance

Answer 25

the sense that people think they are consistently observed

Question 26

queer theory

Answer 26

• problematizes the assumptions that we are all the same and receive same treatment
• concerned with deconstructing sexual identities

Question 27

three areas of queer theory

Answer 27

desire, language, identity

Question 28

desire

Answer 28

• aim to disrupt categories of normal sexuality and allow diversity
• ideas of Foucault applies as he understood sexual identities are created

Question 29

language

Answer 29

• 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

Question 30

identity

Answer 30

• 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

Question 31

post-colonial theory

Answer 31

• focuses on the political and cultural effects of colonialism
• suggests a focus on events that happened after formal colonialism ended in early 1960s

Question 32

imperialism

Answer 32

refers to the ideas, practices, and attitudes of colonizers

Question 33

colonialism

Answer 33

refers to the effects of imperialism within colonized spaces (concrete and ideological effects)

Question 34

Edward Said’s concept of orientalism

Answer 34

• 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)

Question 35

three kinds of orientalism

Answer 35

academic, imaginative, and institutional

Question 36

academic orientalism

Answer 36

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)

Question 37

imaginative orientalism

Answer 37

refers to any representation making a basic distinction between the Orient and the Occident (art, novels, poems, images)

Question 38

institutional orientalism

Answer 38

refers to the institutions created by Europeans such that they could gain authority over and rule the Orient

Question 39

criticism of orientalism

Answer 39

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

Question 40

Homi Bhabha’s stand on orientalism

Answer 40

argues that the West and East are enmeshed in a relationship that is not completely oppositional, power relation is multidirectional

Question 41

residential schools

Answer 41

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

Question 42

Hijin Park’s research on gendered orientalism

Answer 42

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

Question 43

critical race theory (CRT)

Answer 43

• 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

Question 44

Steven Seidman

Answer 44

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

Question 45

Anthony Giddens

Answer 45

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)

Question 46

time-space distanciation

Answer 46

coined by Giddens, allows social relations to shift from a local to a global context

Question 47

disembedding mechanism

Answer 47

aids in shifting social relations from a local to global contexts

Question 48

symbolic tokens

Answer 48

media of exchange that can be passed around without consideration of the specific person or group involved (money)

Question 49

expert systems

Answer 49

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

Question 50

Which type of analysis would be the most appropriate for studying the process through which revolutionary struggle against oppression can lead to social transformation.

Answer 50

Dialectic Analysis

Question 51

Auguste Comte, considered by some to be the father of sociology, would have agreed with what statement

Answer 51

Scientific methods can reveal the universal truths governing the patterns of society.

Question 52

Which perspective emphasizes the role of power relations in the structuring of society?

Answer 52

Historical Materialism

Question 53

The functionalist perspective sees society as

Answer 53

An organism comprised of interdependent and interrelated parts