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SOCI 333 > Test #2: 6 > Flashcards

Test #2: 6 Flashcards

1
Q

What theorists were interested in social structure?

A
  • Marx
  • Durkheim
  • Weber
  • simmel
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2
Q

How did Marx theorize social structure?

A
  • modes of production (feudalism, capitalism, socialism)
  • characterized by relations and means of production
  • people occupying different positions and the relationships of those positions
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3
Q

How did Durkheim theorize social structure?

A
  • division of labour
  • related to different forms of solidarity and social integration
  • how societies stayed together even when societies labour was so divided
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4
Q

How did Weber theorize social structure?

A
  • Ideal types as conceptual categories

- based on different ways of organizing society (value rational, traditional)

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5
Q

How did Simmel theorize social structure?

A
  • analyze different interactional forms (dyads and triads)

- just looking at the number of people involved and the patterning of their interactions

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6
Q

Where does social structure find its origins?

A

Within functionalism

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7
Q

What is the organism metaphor within functionalism?

A
  • sociologists are physiologists from this perspective
  • identify the various parts of society and how they fit together to form a larger living whole and
  • how they function to support the continued existence of this whole
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8
Q

What is functionalism?

A
  • A school of social thought that saw parallels between societies and the bodies of living organisms
  • called this the organismic metaphor of society
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9
Q

How far back does the organismic metaphor go?

A

Goes back to Plato and Hobbes

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10
Q

For functionalism how are sociologists like physiologists?

A

-in the way a physiologist looks at the body and says “what are all these things that I’m looking at and how do they all work together to produce the human body?”

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11
Q

Who introduced functionalism and the organismic metaphor into sociology?

A

Herbert Spencer

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12
Q

What did Spencer, when trying to come up with a perspective to understand societies, come up with?

A
  • he drew on functionalism based on the organismic metaphor
  • he drew on the biological idea of structure (organ) in describing social structures that carry out particular social functions
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13
Q

How did Spencer define and understand function?

A
  • functions were primarily understood as relating to the needs of individuals (safety, shelter, food)
  • Spencer saw various institutions in society provided these basic things/functions
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14
Q

How did Durkheim reconceptualize function?

A
  • function was not about individual human needs or wants

- rather related to the entire social order

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15
Q

For Durkheim, what does his organic solidarity describe?

A
  • the structuring of society around a series of institutions tied together in functional interdependence
  • the heart exists to support the rest of the body, not out for itself
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16
Q

How did Durkheim see crime in a functional sense?

A
  • he argued crime was functional from the perspective of the social whole
  • having rules and punishing people that violate those rules, letting everyone see how those people get punished is what helps generate solidarity within a society
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17
Q

Which theorists followed Durkheim definition of function as anything that supported the reproduction/stability of the structural features of society?

A

Structural functionalists:

  • Alfred Radcliffe-Brown
  • Talcott Parsons
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18
Q

What did the work of Robert Merton distinguish between and what paradigm did it relate to?

A
  • distinguished between manifest and latent function

- balance Durkheim notion and Spencer’s notion of societal vs individual level function

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19
Q

What are manifest functions?

A
  • The obviously superficial functions

- school exists to help us learn

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20
Q

What are latent functions?

A
  • it’s not obvious to us how it’s functional, but it is for a society
  • crime is functional
21
Q

How does Peter Blau define social structure?

A
  • distributions of a population among different social positions
  • that reflect and effect peoples relations with one another
  • to speak of social structure is to speak of differentiation among people
22
Q

What or who is Peter Blau?

A

-a sociologist in 1970s that highlighted how important Durkheim’s social structure and function became

23
Q

What two concepts does social structure have for Peter Blau?

A
  • social positions rather than roles (gender, race)

- relations with others

24
Q

What does Blau argue about concrete individuals?

A
  • concrete individuals can (and usually do) occupy multiple positions at one time
  • the positions exist independently of any given individual
  • a population distribution exists for each type of position
25
Q

What did sociology see a rise of in the 1960s?

A

-Neo-Marxism and conflict theories

26
Q

What did Neo-Marxism and conflict theories focus on?

A
  • positions tend to be characterized by access to resources
  • influences the relative power
  • for example, capitalists own means of production giving them control
27
Q

What do structural explanations in sociology tend to emphasize?

A

-the material aspects of societies

28
Q

What are the material aspects of society?

A

-things that can be directly observed and measured (people, material resources)

29
Q

What are criticism of functionalism? (3)

A
  • functional for who? What is functional from one perspective is dysfunctional to another
  • is society really an integrated, coherent whole similar to an organism? People have conflicting focuses
  • is every aspect of social life functional? Some aspects may not have any purposes at all
30
Q

Did functionalism become more or less popular?

A

-less popular by late 20th century

31
Q

What are criticism of structuralism generally? (3)

A
  • emphasizes stability rather than change, even the notion of structure does
  • ignore how people make choices (human agency) that could go against structural trends
  • creates a dichotomy between material and cultural things
32
Q

Who is and what did Anthony Giddens do?

A
  • became well known in the 1970s-90s for his efforts to resolve the issues with structure
  • he sought to over come the theoretical dilemmas of structure vs agency, change vs stability, objectivity vs subjectivity and material vs cultural
33
Q

What definition of social systems does Giddens follow Parsons with?

A

-the regular relations and practises that gives society it’s predictable, patterned appearance

34
Q

What are the product of structures?

A

The predictable patterns or the social system

35
Q

How are structures virtual according to Giddens?

A
  • structures are “virtual“ as they do not exist in the material world, they are only expressed in actual social practises
  • like languages, English is not reducible to the actual words coming out of our mouth but is instead virtual in the way you cannot pin point it to speech, it’s only expressed through speech
36
Q

What are structures constituted by according to Giddens?

A

-constituted by rules and resources

37
Q

What are rules (Giddens)?

A
  • knowledge of generalizable procedures applied to the enactment of social practices
  • noting if people are female or male and treating them based on that
38
Q

What are resources according to Giddens?

A
  • control over objects and people

- an employer not giving a job to someone who doesn’t conform to the binary

39
Q

What does Giddens argue structures exist to do?

A
  • they constrain and enable actions

- we can only act on our existing knowledge and available resources

40
Q

What term does Giddens come up with and what does it mean?

A
  • structuration
  • the way systems get reproduced overtime as actors draw on structure in various ways
  • structure is both the means and ends of our practice
41
Q

How does the notion of structuration allow for some social change?

A

-I might train myself to be comfortable around gender ambiguity

42
Q

In the reading by Lizardo, what does he distinguish between?

A

-the ontological approach and methodological structuralism

43
Q

What does the ontological approach by Lizardo try to do?

A
  • to define what structures are

- to identify exactly what they are comprised of

44
Q

What does the methodological approach try by Lizardo?

A
  • sees structures as abstract models

- constructed by scientists to better understand observable patterns in the world

45
Q

What do Levi-Strauss and Brodie distinguish between?

A

-the model of reality and the reality of the model

46
Q

What is the model of reality under methodological structuralism?

A
  • social scientists create abstract descriptions of reality
  • as tools to help them make sense of the world
  • but these are constructions
  • RTC
47
Q

What is the reality of the model?

A
  • an error of thought in which social scientists believe their abstract model is actually what is causing people to act
  • structural models can be useful in understanding patterns in society
  • but they do not “constrain “or “enable “action
48
Q

What does Lizardo argue?

A
  • how people act and why social patterns reproduce are empirical questions that we cannot specify ahead of time
  • we have to go and study this first before we can say how peoples minds work

SOCI 333 (6 decks)

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