Notes for midterm - Graeme Metcalf PDF

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Lecture 1 What is Sociology? - Looks for (and at) social patterns in the social world, social institutions, and social interactions - Scientific study of the connection between individual and social structure - C.Wright Mills (1959) invented the term “sociological imagination” o Sociological Imagination: the connection sociologists make between the individual and society.  Seeing our lives in the lives of others : privilege, share experience, difference  Recognize the personal is the political  See both the past and the present Introduction to Sociology - Sociologists notice social patterns - We recognize that our personal experiences are affected by our class, ethnicity, gender, age, and sexual orientation o Ex: we can have a different experience doing the same thing - Sociological research enables us to discuss social issues in an informed and critical manner A Sociological Perspective - Allows us to see the strange in the familiar o Giving up the idea that human behaviour is simply a matter of what people decide to do o Understanding the society shapes our decisions - We see individuality in social context - Social experiences can shape how we understand others. What is Culture? - Culture: a system of shared beliefs, values, customs and behaviours that we use to negotiate the world around us. - Culture is usually passed down generationally - Raymond Williams : believes culture is made of two separate components. o A particular way of a life or a group or people (whole way of life) o And/or artistic critical work producing meaning ( arts and learning) Four Characteristics of Culture - Culture o A) is learned o B) is rooted in symbols: physical, vocal and gestural signs that have arbitrary, socially learned meaning. o C) is shared o D) is integrated within itself; that is A, B, and C must be present fo a culture to be whole.

Type of Culture - Low Culture: o Low ( or pop culture ) traditionally considered as an opposite to high culture. o A line in the sand is drawn: “this is good, this is bad” o Low (pop) culture is marked by sameness, easiness & predictability – Romantic Comedies o Example:  Graffiti  Rap music - High Culture: o Historically seen as good, valuable and important o Is recognized as a part of civilized living, enlightenment, intellect, critical thought o Artifacts we consider “works of art” o Example  Fine Art  Jazz  Opera  Classical music  Literature such as TS Eliot, Shakespeare, James Joyce Introducing Critical Theory - Sociological, Cultural and Media theories are used to explain different phenomena( a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen) and dimensions of the society. - They help us: o A) understand different social phenomena by describe, exploring and explaining their different aspects o B) theories helps us analyze the ideology, production and consumption of popular culture. Ideology - Ideologies are made up of a group of ideas - Systematic body of ideas by a specific group o (I.e., the ideology of the conservative party of Canada or the ideology NDP) - Those ideas are then made normal and natural by the dominant class o I.e., Dominant culture (mainstream culture) : the culture that is held within a large amount of people residing in a society. o For example  The social and culture mainstream, Hollywood  Capitalism  (i.e., running used to be free, but because of capitalism, it isn’t free anymore (Nike sells expensive gear for running)  Nationalism  Corporations ( Powerful and Influential entities such as Nike) - For Karl Marx , “ideologies may become natural enough to the point of invisibility, become common sense, or reflect ‘‘a way of life’’

o Marx believed that capitalism contained the seed of its own destruction. Hegemony - Hegemony : the ways in which dominant groups maintain intellectual and moral leadership and seek to win the consent of subordinate groups in society. - Hegemony is leadership or dominance of one group over another. o A) draws connections between culture, power and ideology and protects or maintains ideology. o B) employs a system of Coercion (the practise of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats) and Consent (permission for something to happen or agreement to do something) in order to create a passivity in the people in which we come to agree with a dominant culture and ideology o C) the ideology is often made to “ seem normal and rational” o D) Hegemony is exercised through popular culture and its normalizing of presumed norms and expectations - Example: o Voting Structural Functionalist Theory - The social world, like popular culture is structured so as to function smoothly ( is made to function smoothly without any problems) - For example o Our behaviour is governed by relatively stable social relations or structures which rest upon shared values or preferences (morals bind people together)  (relatively stable social relations in terms of popular culture is taxation etc) o Structural Function identifies the various structures of society (religion, the family, education, laws, or Hollywood, popular culture and advertising) and describes the functions that the structure performs to maintain the entire social system.  Advertising makes us feel good/bad that we bought something  Popular culture- Kendell dyes her hair in a particular colour, we all will then do the same  Hollywood- we see something, we’ll do the same thing  ReligionSocial Conflict Theory - Views society and pop culture as arenas of inequality/equality that generate conflict and change o Both are structured in ways to benefit a small minority. o Factors such as ethnicity, race, sex, class, and age are linked to each in terms of social inequality ( social inequality is the existence of unequal opportunities and rewards for different social positions or statuses within a group or society) (not every person is equal)  Age-not allowed to vote till we are 18

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Social Conflict Theory examines inequalities in both the social and popular culture.

(1950’s) Symbolic Interaction Theory - We live in a world of symbols, attaching “meaning” to virtually everything, from the appearance of the police to the wink of an eye. - “Reality therefore is simply how we define and construct our surroundings, our obligations toward others, and even our own identities. Lecture 2 Structural Organization - The way pop culture is structured affected the way re/presented information is structured (- a system that outlines how certain activities are directed in order to achieve the goals of an organization.) - Two key terms used to address this presentation: o 1. Agenda setting: the process by which issues are set up to direct the audience into perceiving these issues to be the most important.  ( the process whereby the mass media determines what we think and worry about) o 2. Gatekeeping: the process of controlling what gets included and whose voices are heard.  (process through which information is filtered for publication, broadcasting, the internet.)  For example:  Who has power in Hollywood,  who dictates direction of an advertisement  whose perspective head on news. The Culture Industry Thesis. - Pop Culture is recognized by 3 characteristics: o 1. Standardization:  a system of cultural production with a built in audience response system marked by predictable conflicts, outcomes, moments of tears or fear etc.  the process of implementing and developing technical standards. o 2. Commodification:  Popular entertainment and end entertainers came to act as commodities complete with a host of external components such as marketing tie-ins  Transformation of goods, services, ideas and people into commodities or objects of trade. o 3. Pseudo-Individualization:  genres, now so closely aligned and redundant- rely on the illusion of individuality  Refers to the effect of popular culture and advertising hat addresses the viewer/consumer specifically as an individual.

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While there are differences in film, these differences amount to merely a pseudoindividualism that serves to mask the fact that the style and form of the film is identical to all others Ultimately, these “differences” simply mask the fundamental uniformity of its products.

Popular Culture & Cultural Studies - A simple way of defining popular entertainments suggests that it’s the culture left over after what’s been decided what is high-or ciritcal-cutlure - . Popular Culture in this definition, is a residual category, present to accommodate texts and practices that fail to meet the required standards to qualify as high – or critical culture. - In other words, popular culture is an inferior culture (: lower culture ) - Post-2000s conflict : NBC’s Must See Tv of the 90s versus HBO’s Its Not television of the 2000s o Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinctions:  Argues that cultural distinctions of this kind - NBC v HBO – are used to support class based distinctions. 

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Distinction : a difference or contrast between similar things or people

This theory states to show that social agents develop strategies which are adapted to the needs of social worlds that inhabit.

Taste o A formal term and a deeply ideological category: taste functions as a marker of “class” in a double sense to mean both a social economic category and the suggestions of a particular level of quality. o For Bourdieu (1984), the consumption of entertainments culture is “predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfil a social function of legitimating social differences’

Cultural Studies For John Story o (1) cultural studies involves scrutinizing (examine or inspect closely and thoroughly) “’ the cultural phenomenon of a text and drawing conclusions about the changes In textual phenomena over time” o (2) cultural studies is politically engaged.  For example  Cultural critics may see themselves as “in opposition” to dominant codes or models reflected in the Entertainment industry o (3) cultural studies denies the separations of “high” and “low” or elite and popular (mass) culture. - Finally, cultural studies also analyze “ not only the cultural work, but also the “means of production””. - Why and how are cultural texts produced and for whom? - Cultural studies join subjectivity- that is, culture in relation to individual lives with engagement, and approach to addressing social issues often obscured within popular culture.

Filmic Identification - Identification is necessary for understanding - The subject (spectator) gives meaning to the object ( filmic image) - The spectator is the one who makes sense of the images on the screen, and the spectator’s relation to the image is what gives the narrative a meaning o Jacques Lacan’s Mirror Stage:  A moment of identification in which a child starts to develop the notion of the ego and recognizing the self in the mirror and then again later on the screen  The mirror stage describes the formation of the ego via the process of identification, the Ego being the result of identify with one’s own specular image Spectatorship Theory - (1) a spectator is an individual member of an audience - (2) spectatorship is an important concept in film theory in terms of its relationship to audience and interpretation - (3) rather than being concerned with media or special effects, spectatorship study focuses on “ understanding the way films produce pleasure in their viewers” Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory (1980) - Reception theory states that cultural texts- film , television, advertisements, brands are encoded by the producer of the text and are loaded with values and messages. - The text is then decoded by spectators in possible different ways, and perhaps not in the way the producer intended. ( I think the producer might show a moral but us spectators might see something else) - The reception theory asserts that media texts are encoded and decoded. The producer encodes messages and value into their media which are then decoded by the audience. Polysemy and the Cultural Text - Polysemy: reflects a form of interpretation and is defined as: o “the meaning of a text is fluid wherein the viewer, reader or listener may INTERPRET A TEXT with a personal and social associations at work” o The coexistence of many possible meanings for a word or phrase. Polysemy & Spectatorship - Janet Stager’s Preserve Spectators (2000) examines spectatorship and reception theory in terms of a passive and active audience and references Tom Guning’s “Cinemas. Of Attractions” theory: - Thesis: shock factor is part of the whole viewing experience

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Causality: this shock effect can cause confrontation and participation in the spectators, as opposed to classical narrative cinemas where our only requirements is to be absorbed into the illusion Basic Instinct

Perverse Spectators (2000) - Janet Stagier argues: o All spectators are more or less “perverse” in that they “use” films in their own way. o We read film or television through contextual-how we read something within our context- factors, more than textual- what is simply, objectively occurring on the screen-ones o These viewing experiences are then put into play navigating our everyday lives in terms of how we experience and look at the social world. Discourse - (A) explains how language use is subject to a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic - (B) reflects how language is constructed and why o For Example  Free Speech v Hate Speech - Judith Butler calls discourse “reflects the limits of acceptable speech” Linguistics - The study of this language use and separates it into three area - 1)form 2) language meaning and 3) of language in context - 1) sentence structure 2) word meaning 3)social meaning - 1/2/3 may operate to protect ideology ie, as hegemony Linguistics Discourse - The linguistic study of discourse reveals the various ways in which mediated language embodies relations of power and authority in society. - That is , how ideology is produced, maintained and protected o For example, an image maintain ideology and an image countering ideology… Lecture 3 Introducing : Class & Representation - C. Wright Mills o Sociological Imagination : drawing connections between our lives and the lives of others. o For example  Status panic: When members of the middle classes come increasingly to depend on the goods they consume to express their claims to social prestige and to enforce their “distinction” ( Pierre Bourdieu)  Bourdieu Distinction (1984)

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Class belonging structured through two categories of accrued capital: economic and cultural. Like economic capital, cultural capital is accumulated and includes the consumption of goods associated good taste, alongside acquisitions of skills and education Taken together, economic and cultural capital work to produce an individual’s – or family’s – status and distinction.

Representing Class - Social Cognition: how we process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations – the homeless - For example o Social representations are considered as “thoughts in movement” developing through communication & interaction and allows us to classify others, to compare and explain behaviours , and to position others ie, “he/she does not belong here” - Emile Durkheim’s Collective Representation: o The processes of “collective meaning making resulting in common understandings which produce social bonds uniting societies, organizations and groups”. o Common ways of conceiving, thinking about and evaluating social reality. o For example  Consider our initial base responses when witnessing homelessness, or the degree to which we engage sports fandom. 3 Types of Representation - (1) Hegemonic Representation: o Shared by most of the members of a structured group – Canadians – that are uniform and prevail as the norm: terrorist are bad o Idea that a ‘ruling class’, for example the upper class ( years ago) could manipulate the media and how it is presented in favour of their upper class - (2) Emancipated Representation: o Refers to subgroups that create their own representation with a certain degree of autonomy with respect to the interacting segments of society: vegans, subculture youth groups, radical groups o Distinctively constructed information by small sections of a society - (3) Polemic Representation: o Related to social conflicts, struggles between groups and controversies in a society. o Determined by antagonistic relations and intended to be exclusive to that group. o Formed by subgroups In the course of a dispute or social conflict when society as a whole or the social authorities do not necessarily share them. o For example:  Communism in a capitalist country or cultural struggles or debate in restrictive societies Representing Class

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Stuart Hall (1973) o Problematic events which breach our expectancies and run counter to out “ common senses constructs” or “taken-for-granted” knowledge of social structures can only “make sense” when considered via comparison to the dominant thought. o To do so we assign this presentation a new designation within “ the problematic of social reality” o That is, when common sense is established as only common sense to some

Media Framing Theory - FT emphasizes the power of media in shaping perceptions of difference , o For example  Economic difference and poverty - The basic idea of each theory argues, “media tells us what to think about a particular issue” - Erving Goldman (1974) o “how a story is told influences how an audience will understand of evaluate the given information” Moral Panic - Folk Devils and Moral panic ( Stann Cohen) - Moral Panic o (A) a condition, episode or group which emerges to become defined as a threat to social value and interest o (B) this treat is then stylized by media in order to stand out and certain behaviour of practice are constructed as winning signs.  For example  Pop culture is marked by tendency to portion lower classes, economically, politically , and ideology -as “a class on stagnation) - Viewed up as an existence , tasteless , which disgust and as source of humour or Mo - These cultural texts also use inexperience with middle class lifestyle as a source of humour ,and as a way to signal their economic and cultural difference. Habitus - Class belongings is examined through the myriad structures of everyday life that helps shake “living life” as a complete construct that considered both socioeconomics as well as the less tangible elements of culture that markers one class habitus ( Bourdieu, 1982) - Habitus is your way or being, it is the collected aspects of culture that are anchored in the body or daily practices of individuals and groups, - Habitus: o A set of acquired modes of understanding , perception and experience which signal everyday lived experiences such as language, habits, rituals an consumption. Review: Linguistics - Reveals the various ways in which mediated language use embodies relations of power and authority in society

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That is, how ideology is produced, maintained and protected.

Lecture 4 Cultivation Theory - George Gerbner (1969) o Explains the long-term effects of television and proposes that the longer we spend with the television world, the more likely we are to succumb* to interpellation. o Long term exposures causes a distorted view of reality and the effects of this distortion are at the core of cultivation theory as cultivation occurs when an individual is ritualistic in exposure to encoded messages. Semiotics - Critical Race Theory has used a classical sociological approach – SF and SCT – when examining Pop Culture and has used semiotics as well. - The study of sign systems, it explores how words and other signs make meaning. - Semiotics: o Signs are made of up  A) signifiers – the word or image form which the sign takes  B) signified – the concepts and ideas they represent o Together a) and b) create a complete Sign. o Semiotic examines how meaning – entertainment-based- is constructed, interpreted and understood through Signs. Defining Race - According to Cornel West, the meaning(s) of race: o (a) ...