Social Transformation Flashcards
Methodology
The broad principles of how to conduct research and how interpretive paradigms are to be applied.
Agency
An individual or social group’s will to be self-defining and selfdetermining.
Binary thinking
A way of conceptualizing realities that divides concepts into two, mutually exclusive categories, e.g., white/black, man/woman, reason/emotion, and heterosexual/homosexual.
Black community
A set of institutions, communication networks, and practices that help African-Americans respond to social, economic, and political challenges confronting them. Also known as the Black public sphere or
Black civil society.
Black nationalism
A political philosophy based on the belief that Black people constitute a people or nation with a common history and destiny.
Capitalism
An economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production. Capitalism is typically characterized by extreme distributions of wealth and large differences between the rich and the poor.
Commodification
In capitalist political economies, land, products, services,
and ideas are assigned economic values and are bought and sold in marketplaces as commodities.
Critical social theory
Bodies of knowledge and sets of institutional practices
that actively grapple with the central questions facing groups of people. These groups are differently placed in specific political, social, and historic contexts characterized by injustice. What makes critical social theory “critical” is its commitment to justice, for one’s own group and/or for that of other groups.
Disciplinary domain of power
A way of ruling that relies on bureaucratic
hierarchies and techniques of surveillance.
Epistemology
Standards used to assess knowledge or why we believe what we believe to be true.
Essentialism
Belief that individuals or groups have inherent, unchanging characteristics rooted in biology or a self-contained culture that explain their status. When linked to oppressions of race, gender, and sexuality, binary thinking constructs “essential” group differences.
Eurocentrism
An ideology that presents the ideas and experiences of whites as normal, normative, and ideal. Also known as white racism or white supremacy.
Hegemonic domain of power
A form or mode of social organization that uses
ideas and ideology to absorb and thereby depoliticize oppressed groups’ dissent. Alternatively, the diffusion of power throughout the social system where multiple groups police one another and suppress one another’s dissent.
Identity politics
A way of knowing that sees lived experiences as important to creating knowledge and crafting group-based political strategies. Also, a form of political resistance where an oppressed group rejects its devalued status.
Ideology
A body of ideas reflecting the interests of a particular social group. Scientific racism and sexism constitute ideologies that support domination. Black nationalism and feminism constitute counter-ideologies that oppose such domination.
Interpersonal domain of power
Discriminatory practices of everyday lived experience that because they are so routine typically go unnoticed or remain unidentified. Strategies of everyday racism and everyday resistance occur in this domain.
Intersectionality
Analysis claiming that systems of race, social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, and age form mutually constructing features of social organization, which shape Black women’s experiences and, in turn, are shaped by Black women.
Matrix of domination
The overall organization of hierarchical power relations for any society. Any specific matrix of domination has (1) a particular arrangement of intersecting systems of oppression, e.g., race, social class, gender, sexuality, citizenship status, ethnicity and age; and (2) a particular
organization of its domains of power, e.g., structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal.
Oppositional knowledge
A type of knowledge developed by, for, and/or in
defense of an oppressed group’s interests. Ideally, it fosters the group’s selfdefinition and self-determination.
Oppression
An unjust situation where, systematically and over a long period of time, one group denies another group access to the resources of society. Race, gender, class, sexuality, nation, age, and ethnicity constitute major forms of oppression.
Outsider-within-locations
Social locations or border spaces marking the
boundaries between groups of unequal power. Individuals acquire identities as “outsiders within” by their placement in these social locations.
Paradigm
An interpretive framework used to explain social phenomena.
Public and private spheres
Two areas of social organization with the public
sphere of work and government typically juxtaposed to the private sphere
of home and family
Racial segregation
A constellation of policies that separate groups by race
based on the belief that proximity to the group deemed to be inferior will
harm the allegedly superior group.Though currently forbidden by law in
the United States, racially segregated neighborhoods, schools, occupational
categories, and access to public facilities persist.
Racial solidarity
The belief that members of a racial group have common
interests and should support one another above the interests of members
of other racial groups.
Racism
A system of unequal power and privilege where humans are divided into groups or “races” with social rewards unevenly distributed to groups based on their racial classification. Variations of racism include institutionalized racism, scientific racism, and everyday racism. In the United States, racial segregation constitutes a fundamental principle of how racism is organized.
Rhetoric of color-blindness
A view of the world that resists talking of race
because to do so is believed to perpetuate racism
Scientific racism
A specific body of knowledge about Blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Whites, and Latinos produced within biology, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and other academic disciplines. Scientific racism was designed to prove the inferiority of people of color.
Self-definition
The power to name one’s own reality
Self-determination
The power to decide one’s own destiny
Social class
In its most general sense, social groups differentiated from one another by economic status, cultural forms, practices, or ways of life. Social class refers to a group of people who share a common placement in a political economy
Social justice project
An organized, long-term effort to eliminate oppression
and empower individuals and groups within a just society.
Standpoint theory
A social theory arguing that group location in hierarchical
power relations produces common challenges for individuals in those groups. Moreover, shared experiences can foster similar angles of vision
leading to group knowledge or standpoint deemed essential for informed political action.
Structural domain of power
A constellation of organized practices in employment, government, education, law, business, and housing that work to maintain an unequal and unjust distribution of social resources. Unlike bias and prejudice, which are characteristics of individuals, the structural domain
of power operates through the laws and policies of social institutions.
Subjugated knowledge
The secret knowledges generated by oppressed groups.
Such knowledge typically remains hidden because revealing it weakens its purpose of assisting them in dealing with oppression. Subjugated knowledges that aim to resist oppression constitute oppositional knowledges.
Transnationalism
A view of the world that sees certain interests as going
beyond the borders of individual nation-states. Whereas internationalism emphasizes the relationship among nation-states, transnationalism takes a global perspective.
African Diaspora
The mass dispersion of peoples from Africa during the Transatlantic Slave Trades, from the 1500s to the 1800s. This Diaspora took millions of people from Western and Central Africa to different regions throughout the Americas and the Caribbean.
Redlining
The systematic denial of various services by federal government agencies, local governments as well as the private sector either directly or through the selective raising of prices.
Insurgency
An active revolt or uprising.
Futile
Incapable of producing any useful result; pointless.
Indigent
“Poor… needy”
Individualism
A social theory favoring freedom of action for individuals over collective or state control.
Dole
Benefit paid by the government to the unemployed.
Demarcate
Separate or distinguish from.