Gender and the Family Flashcards
What is sociology on a personal level ?
‘love’, racial and gender identity, family conflict, deviant behaviour and religious faith
What is sociology on a societal level?
Crime and law, poverty and wealth, prejudice and discrimination, schools and education, urban and rural communities, social movement
What is sociology on a global level?
Population growth and migration, war and peace and economic development
What are the principles of sociology?
- Social interaction is the basis for the construction of society
- How we interact with one another reflects what we believe and what we value a group members
- Societies are organised into distinct social units that tell us what the rules are
- Patterns of behaviour reveal unequal social relationships
- Social change is a necessary and essential part of human survival
- We must attempt to explain our social behaviour
What is functionalism?
- Society is made up of many different systems and subsystems which function to sustain the whole wider social structure
- Cultural subsystem- ensures the individual motivations are in line with the systems at whole
- Without this central value system society would cease to function
- Each person has a role or function to fulfill
- The fullfillment of these roles and relationships ensures order and continuity in society
What is symbolic interactionism?
- Concerned less with the larger social system or structure that with interpreting human behaviour
- Understanding health behaviour that appears irrational
- Interpreting health behaviour in context of peoples own beliefs and meanings
- Micro elements of society-small scale interactions between individuals and groups
- Macro elements of societal structure are given less emphasis
What is Marxism?
- It is the economic structure of any society that determines the social relations contained within that structure
- Gives rise to specific patterns of class relations and inequalities of power
- Capitalism- underlying factors that explain social, economic and political relationships
- Causes of ill health and the relationship between the state and the medical profession based on these insights
- Explanation of health between social classes and maintained by medical professionals
What is Feminism?
- Sought to challenge the invisibility of gender within sociological theory
- Broad concept that argues social structures are fundamentally based on inequalities between women and men
- Dilemma of combining paid work and childcare
- Moved social research into the private sphere of the home
- Provides an analysis of gender relayions on the basis of the way in which female inequality has been structured and maintained within society
- Women’s lives have been subject to far greater control and regulation by the medical profession- pregnancy and childbirth being one example
What is postmodernism?
- Draws attention to how our knowledge of the social world is constructed and offers a critical and questioning approach to understanding the world around us as it is now
- Call into question the concepts of class, national and gender identity
- Suggests that society is less stable due to evolving changes such as family dynamics
- Less concerned with producing an all-embracing theory which explains all aspects of the social structure and more on enquiring into the nature of knowledge itself
- Dominant discourse of medicine as the only legitimate way of knowing has been challenged- mover towards a ‘social model’ of care
What is Gender?
- Socially constructed characteristics of men, women, boys and girls
- Includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with eachother
- As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time
- Gender is not fixed and can change over time
What three categories can gender be broken down into?
1- Gender identity- how a person sees themselves. It is their own internal sense and personal experience of gender
2-Gender expression- includes all the ways a person communicates their gender based on societal factors such as gender norms and perceptions
3-Physical sex- the development and changes of a person’s body over their lifespan
What is family?
- has many different meanings
- socialogical functions of the family:
- Socialise children
- Provide practical and emotional support for its members
- Regulates sexual reproduction
- Provides its members with a social identity
What are the types of families?
- Tradtional or nuclear family- husband wife own children, husband works
- Symmetrical family- more joint roles, women working more
- Nuclear family with house husband- female adult is breadwinner
- Extended- aunts uncles etc
