Freedom and Constraint: Agency and Structure

Question 0

Why does sociology critique essentialist approaches?

Answer 0

Although identity includes common characteristics, identity is also about difference which changes over time and space

Question 1

What is Essentialism?

Answer 1

The belief that for any type of group (e.g. males, religious, ethnicity) there is a particular set of characteristics shared by then.

Question 2

What is the materialist conception of history?

Answer 2

Fundamental forms of social relationship are determined by the product of the basic means of existence (e.g. Shelter, food, clothing)

Question 3

How is society divided in the way commodities are?

Answer 3

Produced by population
Distributed to people
Exchanged in some way.

Question 4

What are degrees of freedom and restraint directly related to?

Answer 4

The dominant mode of production

Question 5

What 3 things are involved in the means of social existence?

Answer 5

1. Forces of Production
2. The means of production
3. The relations of production

Question 6

Critical analysis of Marx (4)

Answer 6

1. Few would say that Marx’s ideas can be transferred wholesale to the 21st century
2. Class is still a vital means to understand both inequality and change
3. We cannot understand our own capitalist society without understanding its dependence on class relations and class inequalities
4. Britain today is one of the most unequal countries in the Western world (only headed by USA and Portugal) -Roberts 2011, Wilkinson & Picket 2009

Question 7

How is Louis Alrhusser critical of Traditional Marxism?

Answer 7

Places too much emphasis on the economy
Political and ideological
Hegemony needs to be consolidated
Repressive state apparatus
Ideological state apparatus
Social structures need to be studied to understand why individuals act the way they do.

Question 8

Who said this: “Men make history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered and inherited from the past.”

Answer 8

Marx: The 18th Brumaire