Midterm Flashcards
Objective social problem
measurable- poverty and violence- since they can be measured, we can understand the harm. Surveying people, numbers and data gathered.
Subjective social problems
Socially constructed, defined by people of power, includes moral assessment about the “issue”. EX. Youth sexting, sex work, drag, marijuana use. Moral panic
The sociological imagination: Connection between personal experience and societal experiences.
Micro to macro
Why your issues are happening in society. Societal perspective rather than individual perspective.
Structural functionalism
society is a set of interconnected elements. If something within the society in which is supposed to, the society is lacking stability. Uses a societal rather than an individual level of analysis. It is a macro-sociological approach.
Emile Durkheim
Structural functionalism. Introduced anomie which is a state of normlessness. Chaotic feeling where no one knew how to function. Suicide occurred when people felt displaced and disconnected, he theorized. Social isolation linking to mental health-people used his teachings to study this link.
Law binds people together according to Durkheim.
According to the structural functionalists:
the cause of most social problems is a failure of institutions to fulfill their roles. Argued that this happens during times of rapid change- causing social disorganization. They believe this disorganization causes social problems- like crime, poverty, and addiction.
Manifest functions (Robert Merton):
obvious and intended effects of structures and institutions.
Latent functions (Robert Merton)
Hidden, unstated consequences of activities in an organization or institution.
Conflict Theory
propose that social problems stem mainly from the economic and political inequalities that exist between social classes. Society does not have shared norms and values, when these values clash- that is where we see social conflict arise.
Karl Marx
Society is characterized by class conflict. Capitalism was an exploitative economic system that facilitated the accumulation of wealth by those who owned the means of production (The Bourgeoise) – over workers who had to sell their labour in exchange for money to live (The Proletariat). He saw power as repressive, power concentrated in the hand of the few and used to dominate the many.
Symbolic Interactionism (micro approach)- George Herbert Mead
proposed that as children we learn to play by the rules, and we learn these rules by interacting with others. Through the interaction with others, we acquire a shared system of rules and symbols that allow for shared meaning.
Labelling Theory
Mead proposed we learn rules as kids by interaction. This labelling that is created is an instrument of social control. Ex. Labelling someone as deviant may influence how they act. This is an instrument of social control.
Social Constructionism
examines the way people create a shared interpretation of social reality. When we say that some problems are socially constructed, this means that they come to be seen by society as problems because they have been defined as such by moral entrepreneurs (rule creators/enforcers).
Claims-making
Claims-making is an exercise in the construction of knowledge. Claims-makers must convince their audience that what they are claiming is the “truth” about a problematic condition.
They construct what should and should not be included as part of the problem.
Moral Crusades
A moral crusade is a social movement that campaigns around a symbolic or moral issue (e.g., alcohol, pornography, sex work, crime comics, etc).
One major consequence of a successful crusade is the establishment of a new rule or set of rules, usually with enforcement machinery being provided at the same time.
Moral Panics
a reaction by a group of people based on the false or exaggerated perception that some cultural behavior or group, frequently a minority group or a subculture, is dangerously deviant and poses a menace to society
Stuarts Hall’s work on understanding the moral panic about mugging in the UK in the 1970s.
Mugging- targeting young black men as muggers and searching out this particular population because of this stereotype formed by moral panic.
Stages of Social Problem Construction-Herbert Blumer
- Social Recognition- The point where a behaviour is identified by moral entrepreneurs as a social concern.
- Social legitimating- Takes place when a person in a position of authotiy recognizes the activity as a serious threat to social stability.
- Mobilization for action- The point at which social organization begin planning ways to deal with the problem.
- Developing and carrying out an official plan- Putting in place laws, policies, or government sanctioned approaches to dealing with a problem (or something that has been constructed as a problem).
First Wave Feminism
- Associated with middle and upper-class white women fighting for women’s suffrage and political equality.
Ida B. Wells
was an early leader in the civil rights movement and also fought for the vote despite facing immense racism within the suffrage movement itself.
Second Wave Feminism
attempted to further women’s equality by combating social and cultural inequalities.
Pushed two goals:
1. Obtaining equivalent social and political opportunities.
2. Doing away with legislation that limited women’s ability to work.
- We also see at this time battles for reproductive rights and birth control.
- In the 1970s and 80s prominent organizations won important legals battles including Roe. V. Wade (1973).
Third Wave Feminism
- Associated with the term intersectionality- “layers of oppression”-
- Third wave feminism continues to address financial, social, and cultural inequalities, traditional gender roles as well as reclaiming derogatory terms directed at women.
Critical Race Feminism
- By pointing the spotlight only on gender, traditional white feminists ignore important differences that exist among women, most notably, differences of race.
- They argued that feminist theory focused excessively on the needs of privileged white women.
- Raised the intersectional nature of women of colour’s oppression.
- Critical race feminists argue that legal doctrines in various areas, such as rape, sexual harassment, and domestic violence, do not adequately address discrimination based on the intersections of these categories.
Intersectionality
- The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.
- Intersectional theory asserts that people are often disadvantaged by multiple sources of oppression: their race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and other identity markers.
- Intersectionality recognizes that identity markers do not exist independently of each other, and that each informs the others, often creating a complex convergence of oppression.
Economic Inequalities
- Refers to the income or wealth gap among individuals, groups, or even entire countries.
- Economic inequality differs from economic growth or contraction, which refers to how much money, goods, and resources exist overall.
- The shifting size of the pie overall-a small, medium, or large pie- illustrates economic growth or contraction.
- On the other hand, economic inequality refers to how the pie is cut into different- size pieces (with some getting bigger pieces than others).
- The two do not necessarily correlate
Social Class- Karl Marx
Canada, like other democratic countries in the Global North operates on a social class system where people can move up or down in the hierarchy.
Social Structure
- The social arrangements of a society established through laws, interactions, and expected behaviours.
- The way a society is structured largely determines its level of economic inequality.
Social Reproduction Theory
- According to social reproduction theorists, a system of unequal access to resources (such as money, education, nutrition, safe neighbourhoods) causes economic inequality, and this leads to unequal opportunities for some groups of people, through no fault of their own.
- Social reproduction theorists argue that the upper classes use their money and power to make sure that this unequal access continues.
Functional Theory of Stratification (sometimes called the Davis-Moore hypothesis)
Reflects the viewpoint that inequality is good for society because it ensures that people who contribute the most to society gain the most rewards.
People favoring this explanation argue that people take on careers to which they are most suited and are rewarded based on their contributions to society.
Social Mobility
Refers to the movement of people from one social class to another during their lifetime.
Social mobility tends to be most possible in societies where the opportunity structure is open and there are limited barriers associated with peoples’ backgrounds.
Intergenerational income elasticity
the correlation between a parent’s and a child’s income.
A fundamentally false perception seems to be gaining currency in which a young person’s ability to succeed economically in Canada is predetermined by their parent’s social class.
Absolute Poverty
refers to the lack of necessities for survival such as food, shelter, and medicine.
Relative Poverty
refers to situations where individuals are surviving but living much below the general living standards for the rest of society.
The poverty line
a threshold representing the lower limit of the usual standard of living, which differs across countries. The definition of poverty varies by society, within societies, and also over time.
Low Income Measures (LIMs)
identifies families with income below 50% of the median income for a given family size.
The Low-Income Cut-Offs (LICOs)
is the income level at which families spend 20% more of their income than the average family on food, shelter, and clothing and is based on family and community size.
The Market Basket Measure (MBM):
The MBM is based on the cost of a specific basket of goods and services representing a modest, basic standard of living for a reference family of 2 adults and 2 children.
“Opportunity For All”
To establish Canada’s official poverty line
To reduce the rate of poverty by 20% by 2020; and
Reduce the rate of poverty by 50% by 2030 (aligned with the United Nations Development Goals).
Opportunity for all: Has three pillars which include:
Dignity: lifting Canadians out of poverty by ensuring basic needs – such as safe and affordable housing, healthy food, and healthcare – are met.
Opportunity and Inclusion: helping Canadians join the middle class by promoting full participation in society and equality of opportunity; and,
Resilience and Security: supporting the middle class by protecting Canadians from falling into poverty and by supporting income security and resilience.
Colonialism and Poverty
-Histories of violence and the dispossession of Indigenous people of their lands and livelihood causing forced dependency on the colonial state.
-The resulting poverty, unemployment, low rates of education lead to food and water insecurity, lack of housing or severe over-crowding, lack of infrastructure for sanitation or power, and higher rates of preventable diseases (Palmeter, 2012).
Systemic Racism:
refers to the ways that whiteness and white superiority become embedded in the policies and processes of an institution, resulting in a system that advantages white people and disadvantages BIPOC/IBPOC, notably in employment, education, justice, and social participation.
Indigenous Populations and Poverty
- The current Statistics Canada data on Indigenous poverty rates suggests that poverty levels fell between 2015 and 2020 but that Indigenous people are still more likely to experience poverty.
- The MBM is currently not available on First Nations reserves or the three territories. In part, this is because of advocacy from Indigenous communities around the fact that the MBM is not what is needed to understand poverty in Indigenous communities. Need much more holistic understanding for their needs. No term to express poverty.
Sexism and Economic Inequality
Gender discrimination creates economic inequality in several ways: occupations are often (unofficially) segregated by gender.
- women are expected to spend more hours caring for children and doing household chores.
- there are fewer female mentors for women in male-dominated jobs.
The gender pay gap
the difference in average earnings of people based on gender.
The gender pay gap is worse for those who face multiple barriers, including racialized women, Indigenous women, and women with disabilities.
How Can We Eliminate the Gender Wage Gap
- Make closing the gender gap a human right priority.
- Legislate card check & promote access to collective bargaining Enforce and expand pay equity.
- Increase the minimum wage.
- Legislate equity compliance for workplaces and businesses Provide affordable, high-quality, universal childcare.
- End violence and harassment of women
- Table Pay Transparency legislation.
Health inequities:
avoidable inequalities in health between groups of people within countries and between countries.
Effects on Mortality
People living in situations of economic disadvantage are less likely to have access to safe housing, nutritious food, transportation, education and employment opportunities, and healthcare systems.
Social Cohesion:
defined as the willingness of members of a society to co-operate with each other in order to survive and prosper.
Unsheltered Homelessness
refers to individuals who, at some point in their life, have lived in a homeless shelter, on the street or in parks, in a makeshift shelter or in an abandoned building
Hidden Homelessness
refers to individuals who had to temporarily live with family or friends, or anywhere else because they had nowhere else to live.
Critical Race theory
Created by activists and scholars interested in examining the relationship between race, racism, and power.
An approach to thinking about, analyzing, conceptualizing, and taking action on race and racism. CRT is not a grand explanation of how society works but rather a set of arguments, observations, claims, and affirmations about the racialized nature of the world.
Race as a Social Construction
Race is not something that is fixed, stable, singular or inherent, but rather are categories that people produce and attach to things such as physical features, skin tone, hair texture, etc.
Race is an invention and is often used to give legitimacy to systems of power, knowledge, and control.
Racialization
process of constructing, differentiating, making inferior, and excluding a group of people from the population.
Racism
reflects the ways in which social relations are constructed to advantage and disadvantage human groups that are distinguished as belonging to disparate ‘racial’ categories.
it reflects the ways in which social relations are continuously maintained, recursively reconstructed, and creatively innovated to advantage and disadvantage human groups that are distinguished as belonging to different ‘racial’ categories.
Canada tries to present as a….
colour-blind nation
Multiculturalism is itself a vehicle…
for racialization, it ignores colonization.
The Vertical Mosaic
A term coined by John Porter that refers to a socio- economic hierarchy in which French and English Canadians live at the top and other ethnic minorities are positioned below.
Anglo-saxons view immigrants below
Othering
a process whereby a group of people is dehumanized, made to seem fundamentally different, and leads to an “us” and “them” mentality.
* In many instances, othering has been used to degrade, isolate, criminalize, abuse, and exclude a group of people from the population.
The Chinese Head Tax
- Immediately following the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the federal government passed the Chinese Immigration Act and imposed a fee of $50 on every person of Chinese origin immigrating to Canada.
- Due to the costly Head Tax, by 1923 Canada’s Chinese communities were largely “bachelor societies” where there was about 1 woman to every 28 men.
The Chinese Exclusion Act 1923-1947
Under this new act, Chinese immigration was banned, with very few exceptions.
Policing Borders
- A key strategy adopted by Canada and other Western states for preventing unwanted migrants and immigrants from entering is to criminalize their activities.
- The stereotypes that play into narratives about border control are closely linked to the internal policing of people of colour, stigmatizing and monitoring racialized bodies in ways that clearly establish their subordinate status in a nation (Razack 1999).
- Key is to criminalize immigrant activities to keep them from crossing the border.
