Lesson 1 - Introduction and Identity

Question 1

societies

What is sociology? - Giddens definition

Answer 1

It is the study of the societies in which we live today

Question 2

What is sociology? Jenkins definition

Answer 2

The study of recurrent or regular aspects of human behaviour (you could say studying patterns of aspects human behaviour)

Question 3

What are the dimensions of Sociology

Answer 3

‘Sociologists study all things human, from the interactions between two people to the complex relationships between nations or multinational corporations.’
- longer term/ trend of a historical process
(American Sociological Association)

Question 4

laws/ SOCIAL

What does Sociology really mean? Comte definition (starting point)

French social scientist (AUGUSTe Comte 1834 - remember via birthday)

Answer 4

Comte had an interest in social phenomena and laws of the ‘social’.

Question 5

law… human behaviour

Bourdieu’s definition of sociology

Answer 5

Sociologists try to establish laws, to grasp regularities and the recurrent nature of human behaviour to define their principle.

Question 6

Persistance/ progress …

Regularities

Answer 6

Many sociologists study regularities which asks “Why certain parts of sociology- in specific, social inequality is still sustained eg: Marx- why is there still class inequality
“Why despite progress do we still have gender and race inequality”

Question 7

Key question for the following sociologists: Founding Fathers
- Marx
- Durkheim
- Weber

Answer 7

Marx: Changing society/(ies), in particular the changing capitalist society - political view
Durkheim: Aims to explore order and stability (different in comparison to Marx- he believed that in order for society to be functional there had to be some order/ regularity- committed to societies
Weber: interpret the meanings of people’s action- you can’t understand inequality in society unless you begin to interact and understand people’s actions and behaviour as opposed to using quantitative measures to study them (would not work).

Question 8

What happened in the second half of the 20th century?

Answer 8

Growing challenge to the predominantly white male field of researchers/ sociologists and became more diverse.

Challenged that white perspective with the “Black feminist perspective” like Mirza

Challenged the legacies of colonialism and how it shaped understandings of inequality - ongoing “DECOLONISING SOCIOLOGY”

Question 9

Identities

Answer 9

How do we define ourselves and others?
- Individual choice and freedom v What others think of us

Wider cultural understandings of different social groups
Identities are often put through labels too - but instead of using harmful labels it is important to recognise people want equality especially those who have been historically marginalised
Identities and inequalities come together when labels become a way of studying how structures are reproduced or challenged

Question 10

free and constraint?

Relation between Individual and Society/ structure v agency

Answer 10

Free individuals (positive value), BUT we aren’t actually as free as we might think we are.
CONSTRAINT
Race, gender, disability all inform the choices we make- sometimes unconsciously other times consciously.
EG: Constraint which can clearly be still seen through economic inequality in terms of capital, based off your job and family income

Question 11

Name different structures of power which influence our lives/ can they be changed?

Answer 11

Power is very much central to our life (critical sociological perspective)

• Political structures, parties and power
• Family very important social institution
• Government
• Religion and Education (both define how we see the world and can even create inequality)
• Gender and Sexuality

Question 12

Gender identity and structures- constructs

Answer 12

Gender norms as social/cultural structures - Beauvoir highlighted that gender is not natural it is constructed

Femininity and masculinity is also seen through historical cultures and

Only in the past few decades have “non-binary and etc…” come up to light
- ^^ This shows how there are structures but these structures are open to change over time
Eg: social movements also play a large role in challenging social structures not just gender or religion etc

Question 13

economy and impacts

Example: Cost of Living Crisis

Answer 13

• COST OF LIVING CRISIS:
  Economy on a larger scale v people on a smaller scale in terms of jobs being affected, free school meals and housing prices, benefits and relationships between people in the same household eg: stress increasing
  • Gender inequality increase and racial disparity increases - Crises?
  • Domestic violence
  • Class divide
  • Unequal impact of rising costs
  • Struggles of poor or working class families, minority ethnic groups
  • Additional burden on women, single-parents, people with disabilities, but also people with Multi generational family members- like grandparents to grandkids
  • Is government response sufficient? For whom?
  • Lived experience(s) of the crisis
  • E.g. the meanings, feelings, strategies etc. developed by different groups, in different places, etc.
  • Media representations of the crisis
  • E.g. articles about how to ‘save’ on gas and electricity
  • ‘Individualisation’ of the crisis?
  • Any ‘blaming’ narratives?

Question 14

What is social interaction?

Answer 14

Social interaction is the process by which people act and react to each other
Described as an “On going game” by micro-sociologists- society as it flows/ sustain society

Day-to day routines give structure to society, and we learn about ourselves as human beings.

It leaves a large imprint on who we are as individuals and our habits

Question 15

importance of it

Repetition in social interaction

Answer 15

Repetition is central to interaction:
- Going to participate in predictable social interactions
- like lectures: very predictable and as if there is a script/ social scripts which aren’t really discussed
- Neurodiverse people may not find these “predictable scripts” of social interactions like saying hi and hello as easy and normative/ conventional as us

Question 16

Symbolic Interactionism ( George Mead)

Answer 16

Our identities are part of how we present ourselves to the world;
partly acquired through our interactions with others
and their expectations of how we will behave- generate reactions as well

Additionally labels placed on us help us act the way we act

Question 17

Understanding the self (Goffman)

Answer 17

The ‘self’ as social product, a result of social ‘performances’ or interactions:

‘the person [is] […] built up not from the inner psychic propensities but from moral rules that are impressed upon him from without. These rules, when followed, determine the evaluation he will make of himself and of his fellow-participants in the encounter, the distribution of his feelings, and the kinds of practices he will employ to maintain a specified and obligatory kind of ritual equilibrium. ’ (Goffman, 1967: 45)

Who we are/become, how we evaluate others, and how we act in different situations, depend on external moral rules- how the social self develops

Question 18

FRONT AND BACK…

Erving Goffman’s Dramaturgic Analysis

Answer 18

We are all performers on “life’s stage”
Impression management – Impression management – ‘front stage’ and ‘back stage’ versions of us

‘front stage’ (acceptable socially ) and ‘back stage’ (private realms that we might only talk about in secrecy which usually breaks a very well established idea of morality- - eg: telling someone you broke the law)versions of us.

Subconsciously, we will try to go along with an idea of ourselves which is more morally just and acceptable- pre-reflexive.

Question 19

Frames

Answer 19

Different contexts and institutions set different rules and expectations (‘frames’) for the self

How we see ourselves and how society sees us, depends on specific institutional and contextual ‘frames’

The conditions imposed by social settings and/or social institutions

Question 20

SCHOOL

Frames and Context (1)

Answer 20

The school – people are ‘framed’ as students, teachers, etc. This means their actions and sense of self is shaped by specific expectations(!!!), conventions and rules re their roles in the school. This has an effect on their sense of self and on how they are perceived by others

Other contexts and/or institutions – the army, the hospital, the prison – also ‘frame’ identities and interactions in specific ways

Question 21

several - school and glass ceiling and general

Frames and Context (2)

Answer 21

• hierarchal roles in diff institutions
• legislations
• glass ceiling/ concrete ceiling- WC class backgrounds aren’t able to access higher opportunities, also in an alienated environment unable to bond with people of upper class and their tastes/hobbies
• Gender and romantic interactions/ males expected to pay and women expected to act feminine : informal rather than a formal interaction
• Hidden curriculum

Schools: people framed as students and teachers - sense of self and actions are shaped by their actions and how they interact with diff people thru their roles at schools — perceived by others

Question 22

Identity Theory

Answer 22

‘Identity is our understanding of who we are and of who other people are, and, reciprocally, other people’s understanding of themselves and of others (which includes us).’ (Jenkins 1996)
SEVERAL LAYERS OF IDENTITY

Question 23

Primary Identity

Answer 23

Primary socialisation- always develops sense of self early on in life eg: Gender, learning what is femininity and masculinity

Pre reflexive and subconscious / not concrete but set in at a young age- as in how you think of yourself as gender, but later on in life you learn about yourself more eg: LGBTQ/ could change your mindset

• A sense of ‘self’ we develop early in life (always in relation to others)
• Primary socialisation (e.g. gender, family and primary school)
• Learning whats femininity and masculinity
• ‘Sticky’ and enduring, but not immutable
• ‘primary identifications are only resistant to change, they’re not set in concrete.’ (Jenkins, 2008: 70)

Question 24

Secondary Identity

Answer 24

• Associated with social roles or achieved statuses
• Less ‘sticky’ and enduring, more context and role-specific- no real attachment to the role
• e.g. occupational roles; family roles

The role you play when holding specific social positions in groups; how you see yourself in relation to others

Question 25

Individual and Collective Identities

Answer 25

• How we infer our similarities and differences to other people; shared identities

e.g. membership of particular groups, political identities, cultural/national identities, taste in music, sports club supporter, religious identities

Question 26

Stigma

Answer 26

An ‘undesired difference’ as a result of constraints on the self (e.g. poverty, imprisonment, racism- societal constraints) and/or natural occurring affliction which is considered undesirable by society (e.g. physical disability)

‘an individual who […] possessing a trait that can obtrude itself upon attention and turn those of us whom he meets away from him […] He possesses a ‘stigma’’ (Goffman, 1963: 15).
In contrast Goffman describes ‘normals’: do not conflict with social morality or do not possess any obvious affliction.

Question 27

Stigma

Answer 27

Three types of stigma are identified
Physical, behavioural, ‘tribal’

Two further categories of the stigmatized person
Discreditable (has a stigma but has not yet been discredited. This person has to continually judge whether to reveal their stigmatic quality)

Discredited (those who have been socially marginalized as a result of their stigma. They have to manage the tension caused by their stigmatic quality)

Growing up with stigma can potentially give stigmatised groups key insights into wider structures of oppression

Insights that ‘normals’ won’t have access to because of a privileged lived experience

Think about the ‘movements’ in the previous slides

(and LGBTQ+, Feminist, anti-racist movements, etc.)

Question 28

Physical Discredited Stigma

Answer 28

EG: Being in a wheel chair visible disability stigma

Question 29

Behavioural Discreditable

Answer 29

Not always visible: eg sex workers having human rights (seen as criminals)

Question 30

Tribal’, discredited in general, but individual group membership is not always visible (discreditable)

Answer 30

Traveller’s having rights same as the rest of the humans

Question 31

Stigma’s effects

Answer 31

Brings together ‘identities and inequalites’

Tells us how structural inequalities (race, gender, class) constrain identities and interactions

Stigmatised individuals & groups still have ‘agency’, even if constrained by wider society