Week 3 (part 2): Poststructuralism & indigenism

Question 1

What is poststructuralism?

Answer 1

Examines how the production of knowledge is intertwined with the exercise of power in ways that shape individual human subjectivity

Question 2

what does poststructuralism investigate?

Answer 2

the production of discourse through power-knowledge relations

Question 3

what is a discourse through power knowledge?

Answer 3

the feedback relation in which power is exercised in order to produce some discourse and that discourse is then used to extend the effects of power.

Question 4

what is discourse?

Answer 4

how knowledge, subjects, behavior, and events are depicted. and they are defined in statements, assumptions, concepts, themes, and shared ideas. The simplest way to think of the concept of discourse is that it provides a framework. through which we see the world.

Question 5

where are power-knowledge relations found?

Answer 5

In every day institutions

Question 6

What does poststructuralism aim to produce?

Answer 6

social change by questioning taken-for-grantd realities

Question 7

why did the Canadian government pursue cultural genocide towards the indigenous?

Answer 7

genocide in order to divest (deprive of power, rights, or possessions) itself of financial and legal obligations to Indigenous people and gain control of land and resources.

Question 8

what do indigenist writers argue?

Answer 8

every aspect of traditional Indigenous societies needs to be revitalized, adapted to contemporary realities, and reincorporated

Question 9

what has kept indigenous people out of academic sociology?

Answer 9

racial discrimination and economic barriers

Question 10

what is eurocentric?

Answer 10

the perspective that views European culture, values, and people as superior and central to history, while ignoring or marginalizing non-European perspectives. This worldview has been challenged and critiqued as oversimplifying and distorting the contributions of non-European cultures and civilizations.

Question 11

how is sociology shaped?

Answer 11

• Its institutional basis in universities

Question 12

why does sociology tend to be Eurocentric?

Answer 12

Emerged out of Europe and existed to serve upper-class, white European interests

Question 13

what is ethnocentrism?

Answer 13

Judging other cultures based on preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one’s own culture

Question 14

what does ethnocentrism involve?

Answer 14

Looking at another culture from the perspective of one’s own culture

Question 15

what does an ethnocentric individual believe?

Answer 15

That his culture is better, correct, or normal

Question 16

what is cultural relativism?

Answer 16

the notion that a culture should be understood on its own terms, not using standards of another culture

Question 17

what does cultural relativism involve?

Answer 17

looking at another culture by its own perspective instead of one’s own culture

Question 18

what does a person who believes in cultural relativism understand?

Answer 18

that one culture is not better than another

Question 19

what are dualities

Answer 19

pairs of concepts or categories that are seen as opposing or complementary.

Question 20

what are the three aspects of the European worldview that are falsely treated as universal?

Answer 20

Society-individual duality
Society-nature duality
Modern-primitive duality

Question 21

how is modern-primitive duality perpetuated?

Answer 21

through silencing indigenous thought

Question 22

what does Peyak Strongbird bring together?

Answer 22

Cree teaching and academic sociology

Question 23

what is functionalism’s main assumption?

Answer 23

All aspects of society serve a function and are necessary for the survival of that society.

Question 24

functionalism unit of analysis (ontology)

Answer 24

Macro – The entire social system and the institutions within it that function together.

Question 25

functionalism seeks

Answer 25

objective scientific understanding od the world

Question 26

symbolic interactionalism’s main assumptions

Answer 26

The self is a social structure, produced through social interaction.

Question 27

Symbolic interactionism unit of analysis (ontology)

Answer 27

Micro - individual experiences and understanding of the self and the social world

Question 28

symbolic interactionism seeks (epistemology)

Answer 28

intersubjective shared meanings

Question 29

conflict theory (Marxism) main assumptions

Answer 29

Society is the product of perpetual class conflict due to the unequal distribution of resources.

Question 30

conflict theory (Marxism) unit of analysis (ontology)

Answer 30

Macro - social inequality and conflicts between classes over access to resources