Sociology Exam 2 Study guide PDF

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Sociology 201 exam 2 study guide for Perez...

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Exam 2 study guide The social construction of reality - Berger and Luckmann ● Intersubjective agreement of expectations ● Is social reality fixed? What is it? ○ It’s a product of negotiation (social norms, social context) ○ When is the situation real - when we agree on what’s expected and follow those rules ● This “social construction of reality” is based on how the social context and the social statuses of those present structure the activity that’s expected in that situation ○ There is no one true “you” as you move through different social contexts ○ *All you really are is an interconnected set of performances across social contexts* ● Social reality is what we agree it is ○ Norm violations: going to pee right next to someone while every other urinal is open ● Berger and Luckmann (from their book The Social Construct of reality): ○ “Everyday life presents itself as a reality interpreted by men and subjectively meaningful to them as a coherent world… [an] intersubjective…” NOT ON EXAM ● The Thomas Theorem - “SITUATIONS THAT ARE DEFINED AS REAL ARE REAL IN THEIR CONSEQUENCES” ○ What we socially negotiate as reality becomes substantial, important and meaningful ■ Hugh Jackman gets punk’d ○ Behavior does not depend on the objective existence of something, but, rather, on our subjective interpretation, on our definition of reality. In other words, the reality that society impresses on us. ○ Gender and the power to self-designate and perform ■ Transgender ○ Race and the power to self-designate and perform - Rachel Dolezal interview ■ NAACP Leader ■ Identifies as black ■ Identified herself as black when she was younger (looked white) ■ Although she was born as white she now identifies herself with black culture and black history ● Race: differences in human physical characteristics (given social meaning) used to characterize large numbers of individuals ○ Learn through race socializations ○ “This bring up the question, if race is a social construction, is it every individual’s right to decide their own race?” ● If one can or cannot be transracial, they can still be “multi-racial.” How does a sociological perspective illuminate this idea (pics from NatGeo)? ● Race is to a very large extent socially constructed ● Presentation of self in everyday life - Goffman

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Dramaturgy ■ Goffman argues that people “shape reality intentionally” ■ Social interaction is, therefore, acting ■ Social reality is nothing more than performance Presentation of self ■ Every person’s performance is a presentation of self ■ In order to become what they have to, and to be seen with dignity and in a good light, people idealize impressions in social situations ● He called this “impression management” ● Are we nothing more than successful at convincing others of “who we pretend to be?” Sexuality as performance → how does “bud-sex” challenge this notion? ■ An example of how performance and sexual identity are complex is “bud sex” ● Situational homosexuality ● “The participants reinforced their straightness through unconventional interpretations of same-sex sex: as “helpin’ a buddy out,” relieving “urges,” acting on sexual desires for men without sexual attractions to them, relieving general sexual needs, and/or a way to act on sexual attractions. “Bud-sex” captures these interpretations” ● Is this an example of “situational homosexuality?” What does this tell us about how we understand sexuality? ■ The phenomenon of ‘Bud Sex’ between straight rural men ● Sexuality as a fundamental component of one’s identity is not fixed → it is contextually based ● Norms of masculinity in rural men’s life are very strong ■ From The Pleasure of Honesty (1917) ● Luigi Pirandello, an italian Playwright… from his play, The Pleasure of Honesty ○ “Inevitably we construct ourselves. Let me explain. I enter this house and immediately I become what I have to become, what i can become: I construct myself. That is, I present myself to you in a form suitable to the relationship I wish to achieve with you. And, of course, you do the same with me.” ■ Social context constrains your performance Commercial realism ■ Goffman called the mainstream advertisements that we could see gender in “commercial realism” → Present advertising world in ways which it could be real; “ideals”, theoretically what is possible of gender ● Ex: Dr. Pepper commercial: “it’s not for women” ● Ex:Old Spice commercial ● Ex: 70s Old spice commercial:

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Ex: Secret outlast clear gel- females are supposed to be pretty and clean and strong enough to be able to clean the house but not stronger than men ○ Video: Codes of Gender ■ If we can’t understand the signals (of a boy or girl) it is almost impossible to proceed to any further interaction ■ Erving Goffman ● How the communication of gender takes place ● There is nothing natural about gender identity → It is part of a process where we learn to take on certain attributes ● We need to learn how society constructs the categories in which we fit ● Goffman is interested in how the gender categories are maintained and held in place ● Result of active process by learning a script or learning a shorthand of codes ■ The way we walk becomes a medium of how we are perceived ■ Make visible what seems to be invisible ■ Advertising → commercial realism: trying to present the world in ways that could be real ● The way hands are presented in advertising ○ Female hands don't seem assertive → item is not being held in a strong manner; fingers holding object delicately and lightly ○ Masculine touch is powerful and assertive; utilitarian, controlling and bold; manipulating the environment ● Women are constantly shown touching themselves (shoulder, face, neck, etc) ○ Rare to find men touching themselves ○ Touching themselves has become exclusively feminine ● Women are shown in a breathless posture or holding themselves delicately like they need support ○ Impression management in virtual worlds ■ In order to become what they have to, and to be seen with dignity and in a good light, people idealize impressions in social situations ● He called this “impression management” ■ Food for thought: how can we apply Goffman’s analysis, originally formulated for face-to face interaction, to the virtual world where people very much engage in impression management? George Herbert Mead’s theory of the self ○ In highlighting how we develop our capacities for role taking, Mead offered a profound sociological insight: ■ “The self emerges and becomes established through our relationships and interactions with others. Through these interactions, we learn to take

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the role of others and see ourselves as social objects. This capacity is the essence of selfhood.” ○ What does this require: the ability to take the role of the other (imagine the situation from the other person’s POV -- seeing ourselves as we think others see us-- “the generalized other”) ■ Notice what happens when other cannot understand performance of social cues ● Pat at the barber shop Cooley’s “looking glass self” ○ You use the way you believe other think about the social world to become socially aware and competent, but also to develop an idea of who you think you are (which you then act upon) ○ Case in point: ■ C. H. Cooley’s looking glass self: what we think of ourselves (self-image) depends on how we think other people see us-- how else do you know who you are? How society creates the individual (and vice versa) ○ Cooley observed: ■ “In general, then, most of our reflective consciousness, of our wide-awake state of mind, is social consciousness… self and society are twin-born, we know one as immediately as we know the other, and the nation of a separate and independent ego is an illusion” ○ VIDEO: Dove real beauty sketches ■ They are all concerned in the social construction of reality Agents of socialization -- mass media and the Internet ○ How does the internet socialize children into gendered, images, values, and preferences? ○ Images and ads saturate television and the web → Direct attempts to influence us ■ Early on, children’s television cartoons were primary ways to sell toys ■ FTC (federal trade commission), early 1980’s, loosened its regulations on direct advertising to children on television ● EX: He-Man → cartoon designed to sell toys (commercials, cartoons, kid’s movies) ○ Socialize us into preferences and beliefs ■ What are some of the ways that the mass media socializes young boys/girls into “gender appropriate” behavior or fastes? ■ Using word clouds ● Boys has an emphasis on violence and power ● Girls has an emphasis on appearance/fashion, relationships, and playing mommy ■ Kid’s puzzles ● Toolbox for boy and handbag for girl ● Pink/blue lead kids to begin to associate particular preferences or

traits with a specific gender How does the media socialize young children into preferences for gendered commodities? ● Kids are being branded ○ Social media ■ Reveals how many of us are embedded in a system of privatization and monetization of core aspects of self and identity ■ Corporations can triangulate data and put together who and what you are from your social media and monetize them ■ Your virtual self is transformed into a commodity and then utilized to market back to you ○ Symbolic interaction ○ The essence of selfhood ○ Cyborgology ■ From a sociological perspective, “cyborg” means people in today’s society rely heavily on technology ■ Much of what we do ■ An extension of what we are Gendered commodification of childhood ○ Alison pugh and the gendered commodification of childhood ○ We are socialized throughout the life course into consumption, consumerism, and commodification ■ “The commercialization of intimate life” ■ Our most intimate connections to others are increasingly mediated by material items (like with our parents) ○ Facework in the economy of dignity ○ In this culture context, commodities express connections to self and others ■ The ‘economy of dignity,’ the system by which children make themselves audible, and therefore present, therefore mattering to their peers. ○ Contemporary statistics on childhood and consumerism ■ When goods come alive with local meaning, that’s a local process: local social context in which toys become important ■ $19.4 billion are spent in toys per year Kapur’s work on how children’s toys show society’s anxiety with obsolescence, also how toys are part of a global system of replacement of material items and labor ● Boy and rabbit can be measured by the same standard: money. ○ “There is nothing unique about the boy, the rabbit, and their relationship because, as consumer and commodity, each is replaceable.” ● Homogenization of the consumer and commodity ● From Toy Story: ○ The anxiety of being obsolete (no longer produced or used; out of date) is prevalent ■ Being replaced by something better and more advanced ■

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Buzz doesn’t even know he’s a toy, which is a metaphor for how the human condition is increasingly equated with material objects ○ “This is my place and i won’t be replaced” -Buzz The anxiety of being obsolete is prevalent among the toys in The Velveteen Rabbit, as well ○ The same can be said of workers in an increasingly mechanized, modern technological economy How does Kapur discuss the commodification of childhood? Here’s one interesting insight: ○ “In Williams’s tale, the evocation of childhood as innocent of commerce nevertheless has to wrestle with a growing market in commodities produced for children. By the time The Velveteen Rabbit was written, children’s literature - like clothes, furniture, and toys - was part of a growing market in children’s consumer goods, inviting the adult to buy these as gifts for a child. It speaks of Williams’s insight that she casts the boy as a fickle consumer. In a room filled with toys, he comes to love the rabbit just as easily (his nana, one night not finding his usual toy, hands him the rabbit) as he eventually abandons it. From the point of view of the rabbit/worker, it is no different from being arbitrarily chosen by a consumer/employer from a toyshelf lined with other mass-produced commodities or workers.” (p.240) Let’s take a look around the web, as well, and see if you can find the highly traditional gender characteristics of masculinity and femininity in the toys, games, slogans, etc. sold to children online today ○ Bratz - first thing you see is videos of people ○ Barbies - nurturing ○ Transformers - violence and aggression ○ Legos - have become a victim of increase gender modification → historically they were very gender neutral ■ Creative section does not specifically say for girls but it is implied $1.3 trillion (1950) to $11.4 trillion dollars (2015) consumption

ARTICLE: WATERS ● Why do whites, according to Waters, have the option for a “symbolic ethnicity,” while many other racial groups do not? ● Symbolic ethnicities: ethnicity that is individualistic in nature and without real social cost for the individual ○ Whites: optional, little influence on their lives ○ Non-whites: socially and institutionally imposed, connected with discrimination and inequality ○ EX: individuals who identify as irish on occasions such as Saint Patrick’s day, on family holidays, or for vacations ● Paradox of symbolic ethnicity: consider all identities as equal and interchangeable; ignores the gap between an individualistic symbolic ethnic identity and a socially enforced and imposed racial identity ○ Who has the power? IClicker: according to waters in the article “optimal ethnicities,” one reason that symbolic ethnicity is important to understand is because ● All of the above → It has little social cost for affiliation, it is voluntary, it generally only involves leisure activities ARTICLE: KAPUR ● From the Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams ○ “Only when a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become real.” ○ Rabbit is mortified at the feeling of inadequacy in relation to the more ‘‘modern’’ mechanical toys in the nursery who ‘‘pretended they were real because they could move.’’ ■ knows that as a commodity he is disposable and that only the boy’s love can save him ■ Speaks of the anxieties of being made obsolete by other, more skilled workers or by technology. ○ “It speaks of Williams’s insight that she casts the boy as a fickle consumer. In a room filled with toys, he comes to love the rabbit just as easily (his nana, one night not finding his usual toy, hands him the rabbit) as he eventually abandons it. From the point of view of the rabbit/worker, it is no different from being arbitrarily chosen by a consumer/employer from a toyshelf lined with other massproduced commodities or workers.” ● Toy Story ARTICLE: DEAN ● Openly gay and lesbian people ● Two periods help in the rise of post-closeted dynamic as a national formation ○ Stonewall riots of 1969 ○ Mid-1990s: mass media ● Historians and social movement scholars have found a rapid proliferation of gay organizations, such as newspapers, crisis hotlines, and social clubs, which increased

from just 50 in 1969 to more than a thousand in 1973. ○ made possible by the growth of lesbian and gay subcultures ● Today, 60% of Americans embrace the recognition of gay marital rights. ● How does dean suggest that sexuality and gendered norms of masculinity have decoupled? ○ New freedom in expression masculinity or femininity in non discriminatory culture ● Why is this important for a discussion of the way we assume congruency between sex, sex category, gender, and sexuality? ○ Not decoupling from gender norms ● In their words: how children are affected by gender issues - NatGeo article IClicker: according to dean in “being straight in a post-closeted culture,” which of the following groups had the most possibility to “augur the possibility of a truly post-closeted era in which the line between straightness and gayness isn’t a form of social hierarchy and denigration?” ● None of the above → real answer is anti-homophobic straight white women (p.69 of article) ARTICLE: WEST AND ZIMMERMAN ● Gender is performed and product of our interactions with one another ○ Gendered interactions justify institutional arrangements by creating gender ○ Judith butler on performance vs performative ■ Performed: taken on the role; acting in some way → crucial to the gender that we are and that we present to the world ■ Performative: Produces a series of effects → consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman ● Sex: “determination made through the application of socially agreed upon biological criteria for classifying persons as females of males” ● Sex category: dependant on sex classification (male or female), but “established and sustained by the socially required identificatory displays that proclaim one’s membership” ○ “If people can be seen as members of relevant categories, then categorize them that way” ■ Use the category that seems appropriate, except in the presence of discrepant information or obvious -features that would rule out its use ○ Is it possible to claim a sex category without sex criteria? ■ It is possible to claim membership in a sex category even when the sex criteria are lacking ■ Before transition surgery she can successfully perform herself as a woman but still has the reproductive surgery as a man, so yes ● Gender: “managing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for one’s sex category” ○ Constituted through interaction ● According to west and zimmerman, how do these categories relate to one another? ○ Gender activities emerge from and bolster claims to memberships in a sex category ICLICKER: According to west and zimmerman (1987), _____ is the assumed biological

category. It’s based on sex classification, but “established and sustained by the socially required identificatory displays…” ● Sex category ARTICLE: SCHILT AND WESTBROOK ● How does the article “bathroom battlegrounds and penis panics” argue that male genitals drive “gender panics?” ○ Sexual predators considered males or transgender ○ Genitals not gender identity or gender expression that drive panics ○ Posing a fear and discrimination against trans-gender people ● Who counts as women and men in our society?? ● The history of gender separated bathrooms is relatively short ● This exclusive focus on “males” suggests that it is genitals—not gender identity and expression—that are driving what we term “gender panics”—moments where people react to a challenge to the gender binary by frantically asserting its naturalness. Anchors for gender ● Earplugs: woman ones are pink and the others ones are blue ○ Noise reduction rating is the only difference ○ Women one is 32 and the ones for everybody else is 33 ○ However, any value between 29-33 is considered normal so why is there a difference?? ● Pens ● Beer opener ● Devour foods website ICLICKER: Among the following concepts, which is not discussed in Schilt and Westbrook’s article “bathroom battlegrounds and penis panics”? ● All are discussed in the article → sexuality free, gender panics, penis panics

More IClickers: IClicker: Why does Goffman call advertisements “commercial realism”? ● Presents advertising world in ways which it could be real IClicker: what does “cyborg”mean from a sociological perspective? ● People in today’s society rely heavily on technology IClicker: who said “situations that are defined as real are real in their consequences.” ● Thomas IClicker: in the Velveteen Rabbit, why is boy called only “boy,” and rabbit called only “rabbit?” ● Each is replaceable and not unique AND homogenizing of the consumer/commodity (p.241 in article)...