Chapter 10 Flashcards
Describe Project Camelot:
was a social science project designed by the U.S Army in 1964, at the peak of our government’s obsession with “communist subversion” in the Americas. The goal of the project was to identify the causes of social unrest and the actions a (pro-US) Latin American government could take to undermine political opposition. Project Camelot was to recruit social scientists to gather data for the U.S Army in “politically unstable” societies that could then be used to prevent evolutionary change.
Describe Modernization Theory
refers to a model of a progressive transition from a ‘pre-modern’ or ‘traditional’ to a ‘modern’ society.
Describe Rituals of Rebellion:
Gluckman stressed that these were rituals rebellions and not actual revolutions, in that they did not alter the social structure in any lasting way. Ritualized rebellion essentially prevented the real thing from happening.
Describe: Social Structure versus Social Organizatoin
Social structure as defined much as Radclife-Brown defined it as social roles, statuses, and rues for behavior. In Firth’s usage it makes up a “framework for action”. Social organization is the action or behavior itself, which he called role-playing (circumstances provide always new combinations of factors).
Describe Trasnactionalism
considers social behavior as a series of exchanges between individuals who are pursuing their self-interest, a view of behavior in stark contrast with that of structural functionalism. Transactionalists recognized that intra-cultural variation was much more common than structural functionalists acknowledged and provided insight into change.
Describe Bourdieu’s “Capital” forms:
Economi-Wealth
Social-Social networks
Cultural-Education or cultural knowledge
Symbolic-Social honors or recognition
Describe Field
Bourdieu view’s society as game-like in that it involves rules, indivduals behavior, and strategy, all of which taken together comprise a particular social field. The field is not the same for everyone. The arena in which you compete.
FROM SLIDES
-Bourdieu’s definition of the “field” is akin to other structuralist attempts to understand the dynamics of social life. Bourdieu, however, introduces power dynamics into the field, which he describes as the socio-cultural arena where people compete for resources and prestige.
Describe Habitus
Socially learned dispositions, skills, and ways of acting that are often taken for granted, and which are acquired through the activities and experiences of everyday life. It is what we get acculturated with, influenced by our Habitus but we can make our own decisions.
FROM SLIDES
-Habitus includes both behavior (and thus empirical verification) and mental models – cognitive and subconscious– held and enacted by practicioners who comprise a class or a class fraction.
Who is Gluckman?
in his perspective conflict was not some kind of pathology but seemed to contribute to the integration of society. Certain kinds of ritualized conflict are functional in other words.
-use of humor to pass a message
Who is Goffman?
Applied Mauss ideals in his book The Presentation of Self where Goffman argued that almost all social interaction entails individuals trying to influence others in order to obtain their goals. “Impression Management” designed to shape others perceptions of you.
- Transactionalism
- front and back stage behavior
- Explains human behavior rather than in the context of society.
Who is Mauss?
(1872-1950) the student and nephew of Emile Durkheim claimed that a gift is never entirely free to its recipient, but invariably contains some expectation of return; “gifting” is a means of establishing reciprocal relationships. He argued that all behavioral interactions involve some kind of exchange between people.
Who is Adam Smith?
(1723-1790) smith argued that the economic behavior of individuals was governed exclusively by their pursuit of self-interest. There are three critical assumptions about human behavior in Smith’s economic theory that is in turn adopted by Barth.
- The claim that people are free to make choices between alternatives.
- Assumed that people everywhere attempt to maximize their self-interest
- Assumed that people are rational
Who is Pierre Bourdieu?
Rejects tose aspects of Durkheimian sociology and emphasized social solidarity and the reproduction of social structure through the normative behavior of society’s members. Bourdieu emphasizes the creative role of social actors in both reproducing and transforming society, although unlike Barth, he rejects the assumption that agents base their actions on rational economic calculations. He views it as a market metaphor
- Shades of WeberSocial, symbolic,economic, and culturalcapital
- Neo MarxistSpecifically investigated social reproduction of classes
What was Smith’s vision of the relationship between citizens, governments, and markets?
Smith rejected the idea of a powerful state to help regulate behavior. Smith believed that if people were free to pursue their self-interest, conflict would in fact not occur. Instead, everyone entered a free, unregulated market either as producers or consumers of goods where everyone would be able to assure their own best interests. From Smith’s point of view, capitalism creates relationships in which there are no losers. Invisible hand of the market place. Citizens are free, aside from the little bit of control the government has to ensure that citizens are free
Reciprocity as basis for social harmony?
The idea that all social relations are reciprocal: people receive from others something of equal or greater value than what they give themselves. The idea that reciprocity is the basis of all enduring relationships helps us understand how legislative politics operate. A critical assumption carried over from economic theory to transactionalism is that exchanges between individuals result in social harmony.
