Soc 100 exam 1 - exam 1 study guide PDF

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Soc 100 Exam 1 Sociological Imagination ● Sociological imagination ○ Look at things in a new way, at different layers ○ Quality of mind ● Images = windows to society ○ Reveal values, history, relationships ● What sociology tells us ○ Life is dependent on historical and social conditions ○ Life is dependent on people I don’t know ■ Ex. corporations, policy makers ○ What I do may affect people I don’t know ○ If i understand the world I may be able to change it ● “The forest and the trees” - Allan Johnson ○ Individualism - explaining the world through what goes on in individuals ○ Social problems explained through flaws in personal character ■ Ex. homeless b/c lazy ● “The promise” - CW mills ○ Sociological imagination = way out of trap of individual life ○ Can’t understand individual problems unless they are seen in the context of society ● Three fundamental questions ○ 1. Where does this society stand in human history? ○ 2. What is the structure of this particular society ○ 3. What types of individuals prevail in this society and this period? ● Private problems vs. public issues ● Central tenets of sociology ● chicana ● C.W. Mills reading ○ Men are not aware of the connection b/w their private lives and society ○ Sociological imagination ■ Enables person to understand larger historical scene ○ Life of an individual and history of a society can only be understood together ○ Troubles ■ w/ in the individual and his immediate relations w/ others ■ Milieu = social setting that is directly open to personal experience and willful activity ○ Issues ■ Matters that transcend local environments ■ Have to do w/ integration of people into society ■ How different milieux interact ○ Well-being ■ When you cherish a set of values w/ no threat to them 1

■ Crisis = when they are threatened ○ Indifference = no experience of values or threat ○ Uneasiness = threat but no values (anxiety) ○ No problem of private life can be solved w/ out recognition of the crisis of ambition ● Peter Berger reading ○ Sociologist = person interested in the doings of men ■ Occupies himself w/ typically untouched material ■ Finding the familiar and being transformed in its meaning ○ See the strange in the familiar, and the familiar in the strange ● Romero reading ○ Women are domestic servant b/c it is convenient and easy to hide from the government ○ People hire servants to enhance their image as superior ○ Example of how sociological imagination can be applied ■ Romero looks at mexican american war to explain her domestic history ○ In which ways was juanita poorly treated? Research Methods ● Questions sociologists ask ○ Factual questions - issues concerning facts ■ What happened? What percent of people are married? ■ Most important in sociology ○ Comparative questions ■ Did this happen everywhere? ■ Compare health care systems in US vs. europe ○ Developmental (historical) questions ■ Has this happened over time? ■ Path of development/pattern over time ■ Ex. chart republican votes in michigan since 1945 ○ Theoretical questions ■ What underlies this phenomenon ■ Explain events, generalize about social facts ■ Ex. why was there an increase in unemployment ● Skills in sociology ○ Sociological imagination ○ Ask questions ● Steps in the research process ○ 1. Define the research problem ■ Select a topic for research, how to select a good topic ○ 2. Review literature ■ Familiarize yourself with existing research ○ 3. Formulate a hypothesis ○ 4. Select a research design 2

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5. Carry out the research 6. Interpret your results 7. Report research and findings ■ Significance? Relation to previous findings? Prove or disprove hypothesis? Research methods ○ Surveys ■ Issue: people aren’t always honest ■ Researchers ask subjects to respond to structured questionnaire ○ Random sample ○ Ethnography ■ First hand studies using participant observation in which researcher observes, works with or lives with subject he is studying ■ Issue: they might change how they act b/c you’re there ● Hard to gain people’s trust ○ Experiment ■ Researchers test hypothesis under very controlled conditions in labs ■ Issues: controlling groups, ethics ○ Comparative research ■ Researchers compare issues, problems, and data from different nations ■ Issues: comparable data, comparable circumstances ○ Historical analysis ■ Researchers try to search for answers in the past Ethical dilemmas ○ Risks to the subject? Negative consequences to family or researcher? ○ Should the researcher reveal his identity? ○ Should you reveal the purpose of the research to subjects? ○ Could the police have access to data collected? ○ To whom does the info belong? Who could benefit from it? Tuskegee Syphilis Study reading ○ Ethically unjustified experiment to determine the course of untreated syphilis ○ Blacks thought of as physically inferior -> “ready made experiment” ○ Failure to provide penicillin = major ethical mistake ■ No informed consent ○ Bad blood ○ Social darwinism

Karl Marx ● Key questions ○ Under what social and historical conditions is it possible to have more just, productive, and peaceful society? ○ Within which individuals have all their basic needs satisfied and are able to be free, happy, and cooperative? 3

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What has happened before ○ Conflict ■ The whole history of mankind has been class struggles ○ Inequality ■ Contests b/w exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed, those who have and have not ○ Private property ■ Source of all struggles and suffering Fundamental proposition ○ Look at the economic system of the society to understand everything else Seven key ideas ○ 1. Mode of production ■ Economic structure ● Super structure: ideas, religion, culture, politics, sports, media ● Infrastructure: forces of production, relations of production ○ 2. Historical stages ■ Slave (master - slave) ■ Feudal (lord - serf) ■ Capitalist (bourgeois - proletariat) ■ Communist (no classes) ● Each society created the stage for the next society ○ 3. Classes in capitalism ■ Bourgeois ● Modern capitalists ● owners of the means of social production and wage labor ■ Proletariat ● Modern wage laborers ● have no means of production on their own ● Sell their labor in order to live ○ 4. Ideas and culture ■ Ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas in every epoch ■ Ex. idea of working hard in children's books ■ If the wealthy support ideas for the poor then the poor will get money ○ Religion ■ Religion is the opium of the masses ■ Religious ideas prevent people from rebelling ● Promise poor people they will have a better life in heaven ○ The national state (government) ■ The executive of the modern capitalist state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeois ○ Freedome ■ Capitalism : justice and equality are basis for freedom Communist Manifesto reading 4

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Fights b/w classes = history of all society ■ Ends in a revolutionary reconstruction of society or destruction of the classes Modern bourgeois = product of revolution of production Only freedom is free trade

Max Weber - the protestant ethics and rise of capitalism ● TEST PREP → aspects of his doctrine, argument about how religion impacted the economy ○ “It’s okay to be wealthy” → new idea of protestant era ● Key questions ○ Are modern societies really progressing towards higher stages of development? ○ Is communism better than capitalism? Will it free us from alienation, exploitation, and inequality? ○ Are societies really moved by ideas, religion, or economic interest? ○ What is the role of the individual in shaping history? ○ What motivates people to act? How do we interpret human action? ○ Are people becoming freer and happier with the advance of science and technology? ○ Are human beings surrendering their freedom in exchange for material comfort, security, and obedience to those who rule them? ● Protestant ethic and rise of capitalism ○ Fact ■ Wealthier regions of the world were generally protestant ○ Other societies ■ Several pre-industrial societies had the technology and infrastructure to begin capitalism and economic expansion but it didn’t emerge ● Values and economics ○ Protestant ethics (values) ■ Predestination ● God designated before creation who would be saved and who would go to hell ● God determines who will receive the gift of salvation ■ Calling ● Avocation to work in order to realize god’s work here on earth ● God’s work: by performing one’s duty (calling) one is god’s spiritual laborer ■ Asceticism ● Worldly asceticism ○ Performing one’s duty w/ out seeing a reward is the most elevated form of ethics ● Frugality

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A system of practices that aims at the development of virtue and strength of character through self-denial and mortification ● Worldly enjoyments were unnecessary and a source of temptation ○ Represented inefficient way to use one’s resources in doing god’s work ■ Spiritual tension ● Protestant tension ○ Tension b/w god’s sovereignty in salvation and man’s responsibility to believe ● Faith, work, and salvation ○ One’s behavior does not determine one’s salvation ○ Successful work may be an indication that one has been predestined by god for salvation ■ Sacredness of work and wealth ● Work ○ It is in working that one participates in god’s work and may perceive a hint of salvation ● Wealth ○ Wealth was taken as a sign that you were one of god’s elects ■ Encouragement to acquire wealth ○ Capitalism ethics ■ Rational organization ■ Acquisition of wealth ■ Frugality and savings Rationality and the west ○ Distinguishes characteristics of modern western society ■ Behavior was increasingly dominated by goal-oriented rationalizing, less and less by values traditions ○ To identify the factors that have brought about rationalization and the ways in which it shapes the operation of the economic, social, and political systems ○ Social action ■ Rational action ● A way of acting in which there is a calculation b/w goals and means ■ Traditional action ● Action guided by custom or habit b/c it is “always done” ■ Affective action ● Based on emotional state of the person guided by feelings Bureaucracy - corporate rationality ○ Bureaucrats are goal oriented organizations designed according to rational principles in order to efficiently attain their goals 6

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Characteristics of an ideal bureaucracy ■ Division of labor ■ Hierarchy of authority ■ Written rules of conduct ■ Promotion based on achievement ■ Impersonality ■ Efficiency Types of authority ○ Rational legal ■ Power legitimized by legally enacted rules and regulations ■ Ex. CEO ○ Traditional authority ■ Power legitimized through respect for long established cultural patterns ■ Ex. monarch ○ Charismatic ■ Power legitimized through extraordinary personal abilities that inspire devotion and obedience Revolutionary dimensions of charisma The iron cage (mediocrity) ○ Related to organization capitalism → inc need for efficiency, rationalization, bureaucracy ○ Capitalism turns into something man can’t escape, like a steel shell (something that someone must carry around, like a BURDEN) ○ Subjection to a system stronger than its creators The disenchantment of the world Protestant ethic and spirit of capitalism reading ○ Time is money ■ Money is of the generating nature (makes more money) ● He that murders a crown destroys all it might have produced ■ Duty of the individual toward the increase of his capital ○ Spirit of modern capitalism ■ Attitude that seeks profit rationally and systematically ○ Luther’s conception of the calling ■ Highest form of moral activity ■ Gives everyday activity a religious significance ■ Every protestant has a calling to fulfill obligations imposed on them by the world ○ Asceticism and the spirit of capitalism ■ You must use all chances of profit given by god ■ Wealth is a temptation to idleness and sinful enjoyment ■ Fixed calling justifies modern specialized division of labor ■ Attainment of wealth from labor = god’s blessing, pursuit of wealth for wealth = bad 7

○ Capitalism no longer needs religious backing Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) ● Key Questions: ○ Loss of community & gains in individuality ■ concern about the contemporary breakdown of the communal life & loss of individual happiness ■ greater individual freedom = the less sense of community = greater the unhappiness ○ central problem in modern societies is the relation of the individual to the collectivity ■ society has a life of its own, above & beyond individuals ■ often collective needs are in conflict w/ individual desires ○ To show what extent individuals are determined by collective reality (society) ■ even the most solitary acts (suicide) are governed by society ● Division of Labor: ○ Historical progress ■ primitive/traditional/pre-industrial -> civilized/modern/industrialized ■ these societies have different cultures, authority, division of labor, & forms of integration/solidarity ■ Mechanical solidarity ● pre-industrial societies → minimal division of labor ● people feel united by shared values & common social bonds ● Ex. all fishermen go through the same thing ■ Organic solidarity ● industrial societies → people perform very specialized tasks ● people feel united by their mutual dependence ● Ex. doctor only treats patients so depends on mechanic to fix car ● Fundamental Ideas: ○ Society has a life of its own above & beyond individuals ■ often collective needs are in conflict w/individual desires ○ Individuals are determined by collective reality ■ Even the most solitary acts (suicide) are governed by society ● Society and collective consciousness ○ Society ■ Made up of more than the sum of individuals ■ Composed of social facts, values, beliefs, norms, and sentiments that guide individual behavior and hold society together ○ Collective consciousness ■ Totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average member of a society ■ Forms a determinate system w/ a life of its own ○ Major concern is breakdown of communal life ■ Leads to loss of individual happiness 8

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Social facts ○ Phenomena that have an independent existence in society and are thus not shaped by the actions of individuals ○ Values, beliefs, love, solidarity, laws, and other social institutions, precede the individual and have a significant influence on them Suicide ○ Looks at how society caused suicide, not the individual ○ death resulting from a positive or negative act of the victim himself ○ Suicide rate ■ Suicide is an individual phenomena ■ The force which determines the suicide rate is social, not psychological ■ Men > women, unmarried > married, no children > children, protestants > catholics > jews, older > younger ○ Types of suicide ■ Egoistic ● Results from too little social integration ● Not bound to social groups = no support = more suicide ■ Altruistic ● Results from too much social integration ● Individuals lose sight of their individuality and become willing to sacrifice themselves to serve their group interest ● Ex. japanese fighter pilots ■ Anomic ● Results from disintegration of society ● Inability of traditional institutions to regulate and fulfill social needs ● Society doesn’t have enough rules ● Ex. people at time of rapid social change (loss of job) ■ Fatalistic ● People who have no way out ● Society has too many rules ● Ex. slaves ○ Social integration vs. moral regulation ○ Mechanical vs. organic solidarity Emile durkheim reading ○ Egoistic suicide ■ Varies w/ the degree of integration of religion, domestic, and political in society ■ Suicide varies based on degree of integration of social groups of the individual ■ Caused by weakened social groups -> individual depends less on them -> acts only in his private interests ■ Springs from excessive individualism 9

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■ If society disintegrates so do the people in it ○ Anomic suicide ■ Human activity naturally desires too much ○ Elementary forms of religious life ■ He sees religion as “social glue” → its effect on community ■ “Primitive”, “pre-modern”, “religious” Du Bois reading ○ Idea of double-consciousness/two-ness ■ Intersection of identities → American and African in white society ■ Himself through the perspective of his population - African Americans ○ Effect of racism of black identity - The Color Line ■ The “color line” weighed so heavily on the souls of black people that it prevented them from achieving overall as humans ○ The Veil ○ Stands out in bringing in the 1st of the outside voices

Why are all of these people canonical? (“Canon”/”Canonical” → ideas agreed upon and passed down) ● These people all look at foundations of society ● Link b/t society & individual ● Even though they don’t cite each others work → seems like they’re “in convo”/building upon their work ○ Ex: Weber & Marx

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