Module 3 Flashcards
What’s the difference between behaviour and action?
behaviour is natural, instinctual
action occurs in response to another person
How is Weber’s concern with subjective meaning different from Durkheim’s focus on social facts?
Weber - A person acts according to the subjective meaning of their own and other’s behaviour
Durkheim - a social fact is a widespread idea within society of how people should act and people act according to social facts
How did Weber and Durkheim view collectivity differently?
Durkheim - the collective influenced individuals
Weber - Individuals influence the collective and have more choice than in Durkheim’s theory. Their actions are based on their interactions with others at an individual level, moreso than the collective
How are subjective meanings different from objective meanings?
subjective: Based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.
Objective: (of a person or their judgement) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
Why are objective meanings more available for scientific study than subjective meanings?
- rationalism and devoid of emotion
- statistical
- can be labelled as fact
Superstructure
Secondary social phenomena
Ex- the state and culture
Economically based
Economy determines the superstructure
Base (Marx)
-the economy determines the nature of everything else in society
Culture industry
Movies, radio, etc
Makes culture more important than economy
Mass culture
Culture made for and available to the masses
One-dimensional society
Marcuse
Result of breakdown of relationship between people and larger structures they created and are controlled by
People lose capacity to be creative and think critically and negatively about the structures that oppress them
Technocratic thinking
Concern with being efficient and finding a means to an end
Knowledge industry
Research institutes, universities, etc
Become autonomous and serve their own interests instead of those of society
Intent on expanding their influence over society
Reason
The assessment of means to an end in terms of ultimate human values (Justice, freedom, happiness)
Irrationality if rationality
Rational systems inevitably spawn a series of irrationalities
Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991)
Theorized the nature of space and it’s relationship to social life
Absolute spaces
Built in natural locations that embody religious and political principals
Spaces that serve interests of political and religious elites
Historical space
Produced when separate nations vie with one another for power and accumulation of wealth
Abstract space
Space produced within modern capitalist society
Space treated as a problem that needs to be solved
Space dominates nature and all unique human forms
Differential space
Hoped for space that would accentuate difference and freedom from control and restore the natural unity that is broken by abstract space
David Harvey
Critiqued the communist manifesto in relation to space
Wants us to pay attention to the way the world, and capitalism, are organized geographically
World-system
Broad economic entity with a division of labour that is not circumscribed by political or cultural boundaries.
Social system comprised of a variety of social structures and member groups
Largely self contain
Set of boundaries
Definable lifespan
Core
The geographic area that dominates the capitalist world economy and exploits the rest of the system
Periphery
Areas of the capitalist word economy that provide raw materials to the core and are heavily exploited by it
Semiperiphery
Residual category in the capitalist world economy that encompasses a set of regions somewhere between the exploiting and the exploited
Civilizing process
Long term changes in West related to manners
Everyday habits become less acceptable publicly
Activities that were acceptable are now embarrassing
Norbert Elias
Described historical changes in mundane behaviour
Macro level of the state - king and court central to Elias’s argument
Dependency chains
Chains of relationships involving people on whom a person is dependent as well as those people’s dependency on the person
Figurations
Social processes involving the interweaving of people who are seen as open and independent.
Power is central to social figurations
Emerge and develop in unseen and unplanned ways
Jurgen Habermas
Grand theory of increasing colonization of the lifeworld
Lifeworld
Schutz
The common sense works of everyday life
System
To Habermas - structures that have their source within the lifeworld but come to develop their own distinct existence and grow increasingly distant and separated from the lifeworld
Colonization of the lifeworld
As the system and structures grow increasingly differentiated, complex and self-sufficient, their power grows as well as ability to control what transpired in the lifeworld
Ideal speech situation
Free of distorting influences, especially power
Better argument wins, rather than one backed by a powerful group
Consensus arises and truth is arrived at through this consensus
Juggernaut
Gidden’s metaphor for the modern world as a massive force that moves forward inexorably
Ppl steer the juggernaut but it may easily fall out of their control
Distanciation
Tendencies of the modern juggernaut to grow distant in space and time from those trying to control it
Anthony Giddens
Theorized the juggernaut
Boomerang effect
Risks strike back on the upper classes and rich nations most responsible for their production
Why is the juggernaut always threatening to careen out of control?
- design flaws
- those who run the juggernaut make mistakes
- consequences of modifying the juggernaut are not always foreseeable
- people are constantly reflecting on and creating new knowledge about the juggernaut and changing its pace or moving it in a different direction
What do Berger and Luckman mean when they say “self-production is always, and if necessity, a social enterprise?
The mental processes related to self production are always considering our position in the social sphere
How do human beings create social order if it is not purely instinctual or biological?
What is the role of language in this process?
Through relationships
Language allows us to communicate and create social order through our knowledge and experience of the world
What role do habitual actions play in creating social order?
Habitual actions create social order in that everyone has a place and a role to play in society
How is habitualization related to institutionalizations?
Behaviour that is not habitualized may be seen as deviant. Institutionalizations forces people to habitualize their behaviours, creating normalcy and order
How can institutionalizing beliefs or behaviours be considered systems of social control?
They create an order that people must follow. Those who deviate from the social order are punished by society and so people act in a way that is socially acceptable within the institution and are controlled by it
Could education, family, or religion be systems of control?
Yes.
Certain behaviour are deemed acceptable and unacceptable in these institutions
Ethnomethodology
Study of ordinary members of society and their daily lives/understanding how they navigate the day to day
Accounts
The ways in which actors describe certain situations
Accounting
People offer their accounts of the world in order to make sense of it
Accounting practices
The way one person presents an account and others accept or reject it
Harold Garfinkel
Ethnomethodologist
Breaching experiments
Researchers violate social reality in order to shed light on the methods by which people construct reality
Reification
-products of human activity that become social facts that seem to have always existed
Phenemology
Study of society as it appears within the consciousness of its members
-social reality is described as it is constructed in the minds of those who experience it
Social constructionism
- rejects that social phenomena (ex suicide) have an independent objective existence
- reality is socially constructed by members of society
Ethnomethodology
- the world is subject to to interpretation and not a solid fact for every member of society
- social world is fluid “flimsy”
- rules exist because people believe they exists therefore can be contested and changed
Intersubjectivity
- ordinary people as well as sociologists assume that if another stood in their shoes they would see the same things
- subjective experience is available and understandable by others as well
Typifications
Ideal types and what is “normal”
Normative paradigm
Approach to research which presupposes “a stable system of symbols and meanings shared by members of a society.”
Individual’s behaviour is understood in relation to existing norms, values and role-expectations
Interpretive paradigm
- role to role expectation is not pre-existing. Is up for negotiation & must be figured out
- made sense of by both actor and the other (wife, lover, client, student, sociologist)
Master status
Status that overrides all others in perceived importance
Prison judges primarily on this one attribute (criminal for example)
