Lecture 4

Question 1

macro sociology

Answer 1

the study of large-scale society

Question 2

micro sociology

Answer 2

the study of everyday life in social interactions

Question 3

social construction of reality

Answer 3

the process by which people creatively shape reality through social interaction

Question 4

Thomas’ theorem

Answer 4

states that situations we define as real become real in their consequences
- because the way we define situations helps shape the world we live in

Question 5

socialization

Answer 5

a lifelong experience by which individuals construct their personal biography, assemble daily interactional rules, and come to terms with the wider patterns of their culture

Question 6

personal biography

Answer 6

a person’s unique history of thinking, feeling, and acting

Question 7

questions raised by socialization theory

Answer 7

• human nature/nurture: is human nature something people are born with, or are they the product of their environment?
• agents of socialization: family can be seen as the primary socializers but this soon moves onto other agents
• development theories: the mechanisms through which we become human
• locating time and place: how does socialization vary across different cultures and history?

Question 8

behaviorism

Answer 8

a theory devised by Watson stating that specific behavior patterns are not instinctive but learned
- humans differ only in their cultural enviroment

Question 9

psychoanalytic theory

Answer 9

peoples lives are partly shaped by emotional experiences, which then become too difficult to confront and so become hidden from the surface workings of life, while still motivating our actions

Question 10

eros and Thanatos (Freud)

Answer 10

• eros: the need for pleasure
• Thanatos: the need for aggressive drives

Question 11

the id, ego, and superego

Answer 11

• id: represents the human being’s basic drives, which are unconscious and demand immediate satisfaction (rooted in our biology and present at birth)
• ego: a persons conscious efforts to balance innate, pleasure-seeking drives with the demands of society (arises as we gain awareness of our distinct existence, and has us approach the world realistically; also manages the conflict between the id and superego)
• superego: the operation of culture within the individual (consists of cultural values and norms and allows for the comprehension of moral concepts of right and wrong)

Question 12

repression

Answer 12

the process by which culture operates to control human drives

Question 13

sublimation

Answer 13

the process of compromising
- transforms fundamentally selfish drives into socially acceptable activities

Question 14

the connection between the self and communication

Answer 14

• the self emerges from social experience: in the absence of social interaction, the body may grow, but no self will emerge
• social experience involves communication and the exchange of symbols
• to understand intention, you must imagine the situation from another person’s point of view

Question 15

the looking-glass self

Answer 15

refers to the image people have of themselves based on how they believe others perceive them
- we can only live socially by entering the minds of others

Question 16

the self as a subject and object

Answer 16

the self is the subject as we initiate social action, and the self is the object because, taking the role of another, we form impressions of ourselves

Question 17

the development of the self

Answer 17

• starts with imitation
• children first use language and other symbols in the form of play
• children learn to take the roles of several others at once during games
• the generalized other refers to widespread cultural norms and values we use as references in evaluating ourselves (socialization continues as long as we have a social experience)

Question 18

the ‘life course’

Answer 18

enables us to look right across the whole structure of a person’s life, which usually involves secondary socialization

Question 19

‘individualization of the life course’

Answer 19

refers to how in the post-modern era, life is shaped by heterogeneity, fragmentation, and discontinuities
- no ‘set’ way of life course anymore

Question 20

the interaction order

Answer 20

what we do in the immediate presence of others
- Goffman noted that people routinely behave much like actors performing on a stage

Question 21

dramaturgical analysis

Answer 21

the investigation of social interaction in terms borrowed from theatrical performance

Question 22

the presentation of self

Answer 22

an individual’s effort to create specific impressions in the minds of others

Question 23

elements of impression management pt. 1

Answer 23

• performances: we convey information as we present ourselves in everyday situations
• non-verbal communication: communication using body movements, gestures, and facial expressions rather than speech
• gender and personal performances: a central element in personal performances (women are socialized to be less assertive and tend to be especially sensitive to non-verbal communication)
• demeanour: general conduct that reflects a person’s level of social power

Question 24

elements of impression management pt. 2

Answer 24

• use of space: personal space has cultural differences, and differences across gender (how much space a personal performance requires is also a show of power play)
• staring, smiling, and touching: eye contact encourages interaction, smiling can signal pleasure, but it can also be a sign of appeasement or acceptance of submission in a male-dominated world (touching can be a form of intimacy, or again a form of men expressing their dominant position)
• idealisation: we construct our performances in such a way as to try to convince others (and perhaps ourselves) that what we do reflects ideal cultural standards rather than more selfish motives
• embarrassment and tact: slip-ups of performances can lead to embarrassment, or ‘losing face’ (tact is helping another person ‘save face’ because a slip-up can be embarrassing for everyone)

Question 25

2 theoretical approaches of how we define reality for ourselves

Answer 25

- ethnomethodology - conversational analysis

Question 26

ethnomethodology

Answer 26

the study of the way people make sense of their everyday lives - ethnomethodology, then, delves into the sense-making process in any social encounter - we try to make sense of countless familiar situations by looking at the practical reasoning we employ in everyday reasoning - our everyday life depends upon our ongoing sense of 'trust' with each other, breaking established and unconscious rules leads to discomfort (e.g., bargaining items in a store, acting as boarders rather than children, continuously moving closer during conversation)

Question 27

conversational analysis

Answer 27

provides a rigorous set of techniques to technically record and then analyze what happens in everyday speech - conversational analysts are interested in the forms and rules of languages, which is seen as the underlying feature of social interaction - the sequencing of talk refers to how you normally have sentences follow on from one another - examples are (1) turn-taking, and (2) adjacency pair; appropriate conversational responses to greetings, and openings and closings of conversations

Question 28

new features of daily interactions

Answer 28

- being in perpetual contact with a wide range of people, and gaining access to people and information at great speed - being able to have immediate global access to people all over the world and get a response - being able to access friends, new communities, and shared networks of interests quickly - new modes of speaking and communicating - being able publicly to display identities to others through the new media, often making public what used to be held to be very private - our lives become more and more mediated lives - being able to manage all kinds of everyday practical matters from home and online - the development of new status systems based on whether you own technologies - the development of new rules and behaviour patterns

Question 29

social identity

Answer 29

our understanding of who we are and of who other people are, and reciprocally, other people's understanding of themselves and others

Question 30

tradition-directedness

Answer 30

rigid conformity to time-honored ways of living

Question 31

other directedness

Answer 31

referrs to a receptiveness to the latest trends and fashions, often expressed in the practice of imitating others

Question 32

identity becomes decentred

Answer 32

a process by which a center, core, or essence is destabilized and weakened

Question 33

body projects

Answer 33

the process of becoming and transforming a biological entity through social action

Question 34

Arlie Hochschild's study key ideas

Answer 34

- emotions are socially constructed and presented: emotional management, how you present your feelings also plays a role in forming and showing yourself and your identity - a sociologist should locate the feeling rules that are found in specific situations and that enable people to match their feelings with the expectation of a situation - emotional labor: the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial/bodily display

Question 35

economies

Answer 35

may comprise social institutions that organize the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services - always interconnected with other social institutions such as families, politics, crime, and media

Question 36

4 factors that were key to the expansion of the economy

Answer 36

- agricultural technology - productive specialization and division of labor - permanent settlement - trade

Question 37

5 changes introduced by industrialization to economies of Western societies

Answer 37

- new forms of energy: the power of the steam engine far surpassed muscle power - the centralization of work in factories: factories were impersonal workplaces separate from the home, and work moved from the private sphere to the public sphere - manufacturing and mass production: the industrial economy shifted most jobs into manufacturing, which turned raw materials into a wide range of products - division of labor and specialization: factories demand a division of labor and specialization so that a laborer has to repeat a single task over and over, and in the end contributes a small part to the finished product - wage labor: a worker sells their labor to strangers (supervision became routine and intense, incomes were usually pitifully low, and exploitation was common)

Question 38

middle of the 20th century

Answer 38

- automated machined machinery reduced the role of human labor in production - bureaucracy simultaneously expanded the ranks of clerical workers and managers - there was a shift from industrial work to service jobs such as public relations, healthcare, education, etc. - this economic change was largely due to the development of the computer and other new technologies

Question 39

3 changes due to the information revolution

Answer 39

- tangible products to ideas: the post-industrial era is marked by work that revolves around creating and manipulating symbols, e.g., programmers, and financial analysts - mechanical skills to literacy skills: the information revolution demanded literacy skills - decentralization of work away from factories: computer technology permits many people to work almost anywhere (in short, new information technology reversed the industrial trend)

Question 40

sectors of the economy

Answer 40

- the primary sector: generates raw materials directly from the natural environment - the secondary sector: transforms raw materials into manufactured goods - the tertiary sector: generates services rather than goods