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SOCI 333 > Test #1: 3-5 > Flashcards

Test #1: 3-5 Flashcards

1
Q

Define social actions

A

-actions that have meaning attached and are oriented towards the past, present or future behaviour of others

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2
Q

Who came up with the idea of social action?

A

Weber

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3
Q

What does Week 3 focus on?

A

What determines our actions:
-structure vs. agency
-different paradigms for social action
(all paradigms are under the umbrella of social action)

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4
Q

What is structure and what is agency?

A
  • structure is the idea that our actions are the products of external forces that exist beyond our comprehension
  • agency is the idea that we act based on our free will
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5
Q

Who made the unit act?

A

Parsons

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6
Q

What was the first way Weber saw social action being studied?

A

-positivist, closer to science, explains action through external causal forces, like Durkheim (macro)

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7
Q

Was Weber against macro extremism?

A

-No, but he did believe they were incomplete

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8
Q

What paradigm did Weber create in response to macro extremism?

A
  • Verstehendesoziologie
  • social actions can be explained by identifying the subjective meanings that motivate them
  • meanings can be attached to ends/goals and means/methods
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9
Q

What did Weber create in addition to verstehen?

A

-ideal types of actions based on different meanings associated with ends and means

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10
Q

What are the four ideal types?

A
  • instrumental-rational
  • value-rational
  • traditional
  • affectual
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11
Q

Did Weber believe all actions were rational?

A

-No, he believed they were on a spectrum

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12
Q

Rate the ideal types from most rational to least?

A

-Instrumental, Value, Traditional, Affectual

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13
Q

What was instrumental rationality?

A
  • means and ends are both rational

- getting a job to make money

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14
Q

What is a core part of all forms of action theory?

A

-rationality and the inherent assumption that peoples actions are rational

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15
Q

What was value-rationality?

A
  • one of either means/ends are rationally calculated
  • then the other means or ends is not rational but instead based on values
  • helping the poor because its our value to help the community
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16
Q

What was the ideal-type, traditional?

A

-both means and end are irrational
-just doing what we have always done
-

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17
Q

What was the ideal type, affectual?

A
  • both means and end are irrational

- we’re driven by emotion

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18
Q

Where does rational choice theory sit?

A

-it is a whole strain of theory underneath action theory with the primary focus on rationality

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19
Q

Define rational choice theory

A

-actors enter situations with pre-existing goals and access to resources and make choices aimed at maximizing utility

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20
Q

Define utility

A

-acquiring more resources or accomplishing more goals

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21
Q

What two assumptions is rational choice theory made on?

A
  • choices are made independently using rational calculation

- actions are caused by their anticipated consequences

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22
Q

What is the basis for modern economic and legal theory?

A

-rational choice theory

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23
Q

What are criticisms of rational choice theory?

A
  • not everyone has rationality and what may be rational to one person may not be to another
  • if people are making choices independently, why do societies look so rule bound?
  • where do actors get their ultimate ends?
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24
Q

What does the criticism, where do actors get their ultimate ends, mean?

A
  • I want money because I want a house because I want a family etc. etc.
  • what is the end goal?
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25
Q

How does utility answer the criticism of ultimate ends?

A

-says that utility is the attainment of pleasure and avoidance of pain

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26
Q

What was Parson’s attempting to do when looking at the three approaches (positivism, utilitarianism, idealism)?

A

-trying to make a general theory of action

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27
Q

What did Parson’s notice about RTC and utilitarianism?

A

It’s weakness:

-rational choices may look different for one person than it does for another

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28
Q

What typology did Parson’s come up when trying to understand the differences between different types of actions?

A

Pattern variables/axes:

-all actions can be plotted along five different axes

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29
Q

What were the five different axes?

A
  • affectivity-affectivity neutral
  • self-orientation-collectivity oriented
  • universalism-particularism
  • ascription-achievement
  • specificity-diffuseness
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30
Q

What was the axes affectivity-neutral?

A

-how emotional is the action?

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31
Q

What was the axes self-orientation-collective orientation?

A

-Are we acting for or the greater good?

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32
Q

What was the axes universalism to particularism?

A

-Is it unique to one individual or universal across a society?

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33
Q

What was the axes ascription to achievement?

A

-Is the action based on who we are or what we have achieved?

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34
Q

What was the axes specificity to diffuseness?

A

-Is it narrowly defined or multifaceted?

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35
Q

How actions fall on the 5 axes depends on what?

A

-social, cultural and personality systems

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36
Q

What was the ultimate ends for Parsons?

A

-cultural values or norms

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37
Q

What criticism does Parson’s ultimate ends raise?

A
  • that people aren’t in control of their actions

- ultimately, the way they act is the way society tells them to act

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38
Q

What does the utilitarian perspective see for ultimate ends?

A

-all action is intended to maximize pleasure and minimize pain

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39
Q

What does the normative/culture perspective see for ultimate ends?

A

-action is guided by cultural norms or values

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40
Q

What have sociologists chosen and turned towards instead of action theories?

A

-pragmatism and practice theories

41
Q

What umbrella theories are termed forward looking and which backward looking?

A
  • action theory is forward looking because the actor looks towards the future to make their choices
  • pragmatism and practice theories are backward looking
42
Q

Define pragmatism and practice theories backward looking approach

A

-explicit decisions are rare, most action is spontaneous, intuitive and draws on habits that have developed over time

43
Q

Rather than ends or means what term do pragmatists use?

A

-habit; acquired predispositions to ways of response of which actors are typically not conscious in the moment

44
Q

Rather than ends or means what term do practice theorists use?

A
  • schema; knowledge structures that represent objects or events and provide default assumptions about their characteristics, relationships and entailments under conditions of incomplete information
  • ex) the bird flying by
45
Q

How are habits or schemas linked?

A

-they are linked in structures that make up our overall personalities

46
Q

What determines the habits or schemas we develop?

A

-our social position

47
Q

In what way does action theory and pragmatist/practice theory differentiate the mind and body relationship?

A
  • action theory sees the mind and body separately, the mind tells the body what to do
  • pragmatism/practice theory sees mind and body as one thing acting together, intuition
48
Q

What is one of the most famous practice theories?

A

-the habitus by Pierre Bourdieu

49
Q

What is the habitus?

A

-general set of bodily and cognitive scheme we acquire over the course of our lives

50
Q

What interrelationship did Bourdeau focus on?

A

-the development of ourselves (habitus) and the environments in which we have lived

51
Q

What does our environment do for our habitus?

A
  • it reenforces it

- via the people we interact with, the objects that surround us and even the food we eat

52
Q

What context was Bourdeau interested in relating to the habitus?

A
  • How the bodily schema differ between the different social classes
  • he believed we seek out familiar schema which reproduce our schema
53
Q

How do we allow ourselves to be categorized by others in terms of habitus according to Bourdeau?

A

-when people gravitate towards certain schema they allow others to categorize them

54
Q

How is the habitus a structure?

A

-because it is a set of inter-related cognitive and bodily schemas through which we act in any given situation

55
Q

How is the habitus structured?

A

-it is shaped by our social environment in which we have lived our lives

56
Q

How is the habitus structuring?

A

-it predisposes us to act in ways that reproduce the status quo even if we have no intention of doing so

57
Q

What is criticism of the habitus?

A

-it is too rigid and does not explain creativity, novelty and social change

58
Q

What does Gross outline as a framework?

A
  • a pragmatist framework for theorizing social action that focuses on actors who possess existing sets of habits, confront and address problem situations
  • for the most part we operate on auto pilot until an assumption is contradicted then we must shift to creative thinking
59
Q

How does Gross distinguish his theory from practice theory?

A
  • arguing that pragmatism is able to better account for creativity and novelty in actions
  • similar to the idea of abduction
60
Q

How does Gross relate his theory to Abend’s theories?

A
  • Gross says this should be the basis for theory 1

- our general propositions should concern the relationship between actors, habits and problem situations

61
Q

How does the neuroscientist DiMaggio break up human types of thinking?

A

-into automatic and deliberate thinking

62
Q

What is automatic cognition?

A

-the norm because it is quick, intuitive and makes use f existing schema

63
Q

What is deliberative cognition?

A
  • explicit, verbalized and slow
  • it requires our full attention and a great deal of motivation
  • tends only to occur when our existing schemas fail
64
Q

What is the hot and cold cognition dilemma?

A
  • the ability of the brain to use more or less emotion to make choices
  • trolley philosophical question
65
Q

Define interaction situations

A
  • occur when 2 or more people are orienting there actions around each others perception of the situation
  • almost always occurs when we are aware of other people and vice versa
66
Q

How do individual actions get shaped via interaction situations?

A

-individual actions cannot be understood except as part of larger gains of interactions

67
Q

How do interactionists see identities and selves and further, the habitus?

A
  • its interactions that give rise to selves or identities, not the other way around
  • the habitus is not a determining factor of situations but is instead the result of encountering the same situation over and over again
68
Q

What situations are interactionists usually interested in studying?

A

-they’re interested in how co-present actors orient their behaviour toward each other to create some sense of micro-level social order in real time

69
Q

Who is credited for the idea of Symbolic interactionism?

A

-Herbert Mead

70
Q

What three principles does symbolic interactionism rest on?

A
  • human beings act toward things on the basis of the meaning that the things have for them
  • the meaning of such things is derived from interaction that one has with others
  • meanings are never fixed but arise out of interactions
71
Q

What research methods does symbolic interactionism take generally?

A
  • qualitative
  • observational
  • inductive methods (grounded theory)
72
Q

What is grounded theory?

A

-rather than coming in with an existing theory in a deductive way sociologists go into the world and build up inductively a theory

73
Q

What does symbolic interactionism do a good job of accounting for?

A

-humans creativity

74
Q

What is an example of symbolic interactionism by Lofland, World of Strangers?

A
  • people who live in cities are surrounded by millions of strangers and every time you go onto the sidewalk you’re forced to interact with strangers
  • so how are cities so orderly?
  • people have a common meaning or understanding of things such as;
  • maintain a personal bubble where other people are not allowed in including sitting on the bus when its empty
75
Q

Who was one of the most famous interactionists?

A

-Erving Goffman

76
Q

For Goffman what is social life based on?

A
  • impression management

- being able to signal to others our role within a given situation and evaluate the signals sent by others

77
Q

What do social interactions involve according to Goffman?

A

-some amount of negotiation to determine relative roles

78
Q

What does Goffman mean by role?

A
  • patterned social behaviour that are adopted by social participants
  • as well, scripts for behaviour that are understood by all and adhered to by performers
79
Q

What was Goffman most interested in?

A
  • how we effectively perform within the roles we find ourselves in
  • convincing others that we belong in these roles
80
Q

Who and how did Goffman study his interests?

A
  • he studied children
  • looked at how children played and how children weren’t able to understand (from a certain age) that their mother wasn’t everyones mother but that she played different roles to different people
81
Q

What do performances have according to Goffman?

A

-fronts

82
Q

What are fronts and what are the three components?

A
  • the expressive equipment intentionally employed by the individual during their performance
  • settings, appearance or manners
83
Q

What are settings?

A
  • physical surroundings including objects, layout or geographic location
  • ex) lecture hall for a professor
84
Q

What is appearance?

A

-clothes and physical features

85
Q

What is manner?

A
  • attitude or disposition

- ex) authoritative or pompous for professor

86
Q

Are fronts more or less generalized?

A
  • they can be both

- ex) lab coats are everywhere and worn by a lot of different people

87
Q

What do roles often require?

A
  • dramatic realizations
  • we may exaggerate aspects of the role because we need people to acknowledge us in it
  • focused on conveying a behaviour
88
Q

What do performances often appeal to?

A

-widespread social values or ideals

89
Q

Besides a front, what else do performances need?

A

-backstage areas where we can let down our guard

90
Q

Whats an example of frontstage and backstage?

A
  • restaurants
  • the waiters have scripted communication in front of diners to make them look a certain way
  • in the back they may be smoking, gossiping, fixing their makeup
91
Q

Are the expectations of performances always doable?

A
  • No, many times they are out of our ability

- one of the reasons backstages are so important to help reenergize and prepare for the frontstage

92
Q

In the article, Doing Gender, by West and Zimmerman how do they approach interactionism and their study?

A

-ethnomethodological perspective

93
Q

Who developed the ethnomethodological perspective?

A

-Garfinkel

94
Q

What sets ethnomethodological perspective apart?

A
  • extreme focus on the implicit structures of interactions
  • going into the interaction without preconceived idea or conceptions
  • techniques like breaching, violating social norms
  • conversational analysis, record conversations and analyze the interactions
95
Q

What do West and Zimmerman criticize Goffman for?

A

-they criticize Goffman for treating gender as a preexisting concept or role but is actually produced through our interactions

96
Q

What is at the heart of Doing gender?

A

-distinguishing between sex, sex category and gender

97
Q

What did West & Zimmerman define as sex?

A

-socially agreed upon biological criteria for classifying persons as female or male

98
Q

What did West & Zimmerman define as sex category?

A
  • the way in which we practically classify people or ourselves as female or male
  • ex) through physical appearance
99
Q

What did West & Zimmerman define as gender?

A
  • gender is a way we behave and interact with people not an inherit thing
  • we engage with gender against the backdrop of Western societies binary so we bolster our membership in a sex category
  • gender is accomplished

SOCI 333 (6 decks)

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