Flashcards in Final Deck (46):
1
What is socialization?
The lifelong social experience by which individuals develop their human potential and learn culture
2
Discuss Sigmund Freud's contributions to socialization.
- Basic human needs: eros and thanatos as opposing forces
- Model of personality: id (basic drives), ego (balance), superego (culture)
- Criticism: studies reflect gender bias that devalues women, difficult to test theories
3
Discuss Jean Piaget's contributions to socialization.
- Cognition: how people think and understand
Stages of development:
1. Sensorimotor stage: sensory contact understanding
2. Preoperational stage: use of language and other symbols
3. Concrete operational stage: perception of causal connections in surroundings (cannot think “what would happen if I did something life-threatening”)
4. Formal operational stage: abstract, critical thinking (post-gratification, imagine negative consequences)
- Criticism: view mind as active and create, result of biological maturation and social experience but can it apply to other cultures?
4
Discuss Lawrence Kohlberg's contributions to socialization.
- Moral reasoning: ways in which individuals judge situations as right or wrong
Stages of moral development:
1. Preconventional: young children experience world as pain or pleasure
2. Conventional: teens lose selfishness as they learn to define right or wrong in terms of what pleases parents and conforms to cultural norms
3. Postconventional: final stage, considers abstract ethical principles
- Criticism: viewed as stages, many people do not reach final stage, research limited to boys but generalized to population
5
Discuss Carol Gilligan's contributions to socialization.
Theory of gender and moral development:
- Boys develop justice perspective (formal rules define right and wrong, tend to be inclusive)
- Girls develop care and responsibility perspective (personal relationships define right and wrong, exclusive and about personality)
- Girls are socialized to be controlled and eager to please
- Criticism: cannot generalize entire sexes, differences may change as women enter workforce
6
Discuss George Herbert Mead's contributions to socialization. Mention Cooley.
Theory of the social self:
- Self: part of personality composed to self-awareness and self-image
- Develops from social interaction (exchange of symbols)
- Understanding intention requires imaging situation from other’s point of view
- By taking role of other, we become more self-aware
- Self is developed by imitation, play (taking on roles of significant others without rules), games (taking roles of several others at once and following rules and learning about groups)
- Generalized other: widespread cultural norms we use as reference in evaluating ourselves
Cooley’s looking class self
- Others represent mirror in which we see ourselves
- I (subjective element) is in constant interply with Me (objective element)
- Criticms: doesn’t allow biological elements
7
Discuss Erik H. Erikson's contributions to socialization.
Stages of development:
- Stage 1 (infancy): trust vs. mistrust
- Stage 2 (toddlerhood): autonomy vs. doubt/shame
- Stage 3 (preschool): initiative vs. guilt
- Stage 4 (peradolescence): industriousness vs. inferiority
- Stage 5 (adolesence): gaining identity vs. confusion
- Stage 6 (young adulthood): intimacy vs. isolation
- Stage 7 (middle adulthood): making a difference vs. self-absorption
- Stage 8 (old age): integrity vs. despair
- Criticism: not everyone confronts challenges in same order, do other cultures share this definition of successful life?
8
What are the agents of socialization?
1. Family
- Most important
- Gender socialization, values, beliefs, languages
- Household environment stimulates development, parental attention resuts in well-adjusted child
2. School
- Experience diversity of other races and genders
- Gender socialization continues (certain activities reserved for genders)
- Hidden curriculum: informal lessons (self-concept based on how others see you)
- First bureaucracy (teaching you how to behave in society and follow rules)
3. Peers
- Social group whose members are similar
- Sense of self beyond the family
- “Generation gap” between parents and peers
- Peers govern short-term goals while parents influence long-term
- Anticipatory socialization: learning that helps achieve a desired position
4. Mass media
- Impersonal communications aimed at wide audience
- Canadian children watch TV before they learn to read
- Average Canadian watches 22 hours of TV per week
- TV makes children more passive and less creative
9
Discuss TV and socialization.
- Liberal critics say that TV shows mirror society’s patterns of inequality and rarely challenge status quo
- Conservative critics are concerned about TV shows advancing liberal causes
- ⅔ of TV contains violence that is unpunished
- There is a link between violence on TV and in society
10
Discuss the life course.
1. Childhood (0-12)
- Care-free time for learning/play or hurried child
2. Adolescence (teenage years)
- Turmoil as struggle to develop own identities
3. Early adulthood (20-40)
- Managing daily affairs while juggling conflicting priorities
4. Middle adulthood (40-60)
- Concerns over health, appearance, career and family
5. Old age (mid-60s and older)
- Anti-elderly bias will diminish as proportion of elderly increases
- Leave roles that provided satisfaction and social identity
6. Dying (79 years; 76 for males but 83 for females)
- Denial, anger, negotiation, resignation, acceptance
11
What is total institution?
- Setting in which people are isolated from society
- Formal rules, standardized environment, supervision by staff
12
What is resocialization?
- Rapidly changing someone’s personality by carefully controlling environment
- Staff erode inmate’s existing identity and builds new self using rewards and punishments
- Can leave people institutionalized (without capacity for independent living)
13
What is social interaction and social structure?
- Social interaction: process by which people act and react in relation to others
- How we create the reality in which we live
- Social structure: any relatively stable pattern of social behaviour used to make sense of everyday situations and frame people’s lives
14
What is status, status set, ascribed status, achieved status, and master status?
- Status: social position that a person holds
- Status set: all statuses held at one time (eg. teenage girl, daughter, sister)
- Ascribed status: social position one receives at birth or assumes involuntarily later in life
- Achieved status: social position a person assumes voluntarily that reflects ability and effort (eg. honours student, Olympic athlete, spouse)
- Master status: status that shapes one’s entire life and holds special importance for identity (eg. occupation, recognized family name, illness)
15
What is role, role set, role conflict, role strain, and role exit?
- Role: behaviour expected of someone who holds particular status
- Role set: number of roles attached to single status (eg. professor’s role of teacher, colleague, and researcher)
- Role conflict: conflict among roles connected to 2+ status (eg. police officier who catches own son using drugs at home)
- Role strain: tension among roles connected to single status (eg. manger who tries to balance concern for workers with task requirements)
- Role exit: disengaging from social roles can be very traumatic without proper preparation (examination of new roles and learning new expectations)
16
What is the social construction of reality? What is Thomas Theorem and ethnomethodology?
- Process by which people creatively shape reality through social interaction
- Social interaction is complex negotiation of “reality” and involves some agreement about what is going on, but interests and intentions can affect perceptions
- Thomas Theorem: situations we define as real because real in their consequences
- Ethnomethodology: study of way people make sense of everyday surroundings (break rules and observe reactions)
17
According to Goffman, what is dramaturgical analysis, idealization, personal space, embarassment and tact?
- Dramaturgical analysis: the study of social interaction in terms of theatrical performance
- Idealization: we construct performances to idealize our intentions
- Doctors and other professionals describe work as “helping others” but there are less honourable motives such as income and power
- Personal space: surrounding area over which person makes some claim to privacy
- Being caught staring is embarassing because seen as imposing on one’s personal space
- Embarassment: discomfort following a spoiled performance
- Tact: helping someone “save face” from embarassment
18
Discuss Goffman's presentation of self.
- Presentation of self (impression management): a person’s efforts to create specific impressions in the minds of others
- Adopt persona and manage what people think about us
- Role performance involves stage setting and use of props (costume, tone of voice, gesture)
- Part of performance is nonverbal (body language, gestures, facial expressions)
- Unintended body language can contradict our planned meaning
- Research shows that although behaviour is often spontaneous, it is more patterned and has been thought about
- Demeanour is clue to social power
19
What are the 6 basic emotions and emotion management?
- 6 basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, surpirse
- Most people are freer to express their emotions at home than on the job
- Emotion management happens when we socially construct our emotions to fit our social environment
20
Discuss language and social interaction with gender.
- Language communicates surface reality as well as deeper levels of meaning
- Language defines men and women differently
- Power: men refers to things they own as “she” and women traditionally take the man’s name in marriage
- Value: what has greater value is treated as masculine
- Attention: directing greater attention to masculine endeavours
21
Discuss humour and social interaction.
- Foundations of humour: contrast between conventional and unconventional realities
- The greater the opposition, the greater the humour
- Humour is tied to common culture and doesn’t translate easily (won’t understand if outsider)
- Humour allows us to assert our freedom and prevents us from being prisoners of reality
- First jokes in life are about bodily functions
- Some topics are too sensitive for humour treatment
- Humour can act as safety valve (it was just a joke) or oppress others (put down disadvantaged)
22
Discuss sex.
- Sex: biological distinctive between females and males
- 23 pairs of chromosomes (biological codes that guide physical development) combine to form fertilized embyro
- X from father produces female embryo (XX)
- Y from father produces male embryo (XY)
- Primary sex characteristics: genitals used for reproduction
- Secondary sex characteristics: bodily development that distinguishes biologically mature females and males
- Intersexual people: people whose bodies have both male and female characteristics
- Transexual: people who feel they are one sex even though biologically they are the other
- Our biology does not dictate any specific ways of being sexual
- Sexual practices, showing affection and timing of sexuality varies between cultures
- However, incest taboo is found in virtually every society
23
Discuss sexual attitudes in Canada.
- In North America, sexuality is regulated with laws, norms and attitudes
- In 1967, PM Trudeau declared “the state has no place in th ebedrooms of the nation”
- Kinsey’s studies (1948, 1953) were bestsellers
- Youth culture (late 60s) was “if it feels good, do it” without marriage
- The pill in 1960 removed fear of pregnancy
- By 1980, climate of sexual freedom was criticized by conservatives as evidence of moral decline due to prevalance of AIDS
- Opposed cohabitation, single parenthood, sexual freedom
- Premarital sex within Canada has gained approval
- High percentage of teens are sexually active
- 75% of the time when people have their first sexual encounter, they are impaired
- Sexual double standard still persists (fun vs. love aspect of sex)
- Average age of marriage in Canada is 26-27
24
Discuss sex between adults.
- Canadians seem to be more sexually satisfied by Americans
- 24% rarely or never, 23% 1-3 times per month, 53% at least once per week
- Least satisfied is in Thailand, China and Japan (less gender equality)
- People who are married report greater sexual satisfaction
- Adultery is widely condemned
- 53% of married people say they would forgive an affair
- However, 63% of divorces can be attributed to affairs
25
Discuss sexual orientation and homosexuality.
- Heterosexuality: romantic and emotional attraction to other sex
- Homosexuality: romantic and emotional attraction to same sex
- Bisexuality: romantic and emotional attraction to both sexes
- Asexuality: no sexual attraction to either sex
How do people develop sexual orientation?
- Product of society: people in any society attach meaning to sexual activity
- Product of biology: difference in size of hypothalamus
- Most people experience same-sex attraction at some time in their lives
- 2011 National Household Survey counted 64 575 same-sex couples, 43 560 of them in common-law unions
- Greater acceptance of homosexuality in Canada than in US
- Homophobia: dread of close personal interaction with non-heteros
- In 1974, APA declared that homosexuality was not an illness but simply a form of sexual behaviour
- In 2005, same-sex marriages were legal through Canada
26
What are some sexual issues?
- Teen pregnancy: most are unplanned
- Abortion: deliberate termination of pregnancy
- Pornography
- Prostitution: most are women, little protection, trapped in it, frequently victims of sexual abuse/violence
- Call girls: elite workers who arrange own clients and offer companionship for a fee
- Sex workers in massage parlouts and brothels receive only portion of money
- Streetwalkers are most victimized
- Robert Pickton: charged with murder of at least 26 women
- Sexual assault: often underreported, mostly women (10% men)
- 75 reported incidents per 100 000 population
27
Discuss sociological perspectives with regards to sexuality.
1. Structural-functional
- Social institutions regulate with whom and when people seek to reproduct (eg. adultery and incest are condemned, people are labelled as illegitimate)
- Latent functions of prostitution: sex for those without access and in loveless marriages
- Criticism: patterns of sexuality are varied over time and cultures
2. Symbolic-interaction
- Social construction of sexuality: great change in sexuality patterns (eg. virginity and sex education)
- Sexual practices vary from culture to culture
- Criticism: not all sexual practices are so variable (eg. men see women in sexual terms more than vice versa)
3. Social-conflict
- Sexuality reflects social inequality (poverty drives women into prostitution, women get arrested more)
- Sexuality can create social inequality (pornography shows men’s power, degrades women)
- Queer theory: challenges heterosexual bias (stigma to anyone who is not heterosexual as “queer”, heterosexism is tolerated and in the law) in Western society
- Criticism: sexuality can deepen commitment and not a power issue, doesn’t consider that societies have taken steps to reduce inequality
28
Discuss toxic masculinity.
- Every man hears “be a man”
- Ball field: athletic ability
- Bedroom: sexual conquest
- Billfold: economic success and power
- Alexithymia: inability to put emotions into words
- 80% of American men suffer from some form of this
- Empathy deficit disorder: unable to understand others’ emotions
- Men are isolated as cannot enter meaningful relationships with people and medicate feelings away
- Masculinity should come down to relationships and commitment to a cause
29
What is deviance, crime, social control and the criminal justice system?
- Deviance: recognized violation of cultural norms
- Crime: violation of society’s formally enacted criminal law
- Social control: attempts by society to regulate people’s thought and behaviour
- Criminal justice system: formal response by police, courts, and prison officials to alleged violations of the law
30
What are the differing perspectives on deviance?
1. Biology
- Early faulty studies showed relationship of criminality with head shape (Lombroso) and body size (Sheldon)
- People’s overall genetic factors and environmental factors are strong predictors of crime
- Criticism: offer limited explanation of crime
2. Psychology
- Focus on abnormality in individual’s personality
- Containment theory: individual factors like ability to cope with frustration and identifying positively with cultural norms are related to fewer problems with the police
- Criticism: the most serious crimes are committed by those whose psychological profiles are normal
3. Sociology
- Deviance varies according to cultural norms
- People become deviant as others define them that way
- Both norms and the way people define rule-breaking involve social power
31
Discuss structural-functionalism and deviance.
Durkheim’s functions of deviance:
- Deviance affirms cultural values/norms
- Responding to deviance clarifies moral boundaries and brings people together
- Deviance encourages social change
Merton’s strain theory:
- Deviance depends on whether society provides the means to achieve cultural goals
- Conformity: uses approved means
- Innovation: strain between cultural goals and opportunities to get them; people may use illegitimate means (eg. crime)
- Ritualism: inner rejection of cultural goals
- Retreatism: dropping out
- Rebellion: seek new cultural goals
Deviant subcultures:
- Deviance/conformity arises from relative opportunity structure that frames a person’s life
- Criminal subcultures offer knowledge and skills needed to succeed in unconventional ways
- Conflict subcultures appear when there is no opportunity and violence is ignited by frustration
- Retreatist subcultures involves dropping out
Criticism: not everyone seeks success, attention focused on poor, communities do not always come together in reaction to crime, not everyone who breaks important rules are labelled deviant
32
Discuss symbolic-interactionism and deviance.
- Labelling theory: deviance and conformity result not so much from what people do as from how others respond to those actions
- Primary deviance: violations are minimal and have no effect on self-identity (eg. skipping school)
- Secondary deviance: if perceptions of people label someone as deviant, a person may adopt the identity (eg. labelled an alcoholic)
- Stigma: powerful, negative label that greatly changes one’s self-concept and social identity
- Operates as master status, discrediting a person in minds of others
- Retrospective labelling: interpreting someone’s past in light of present deviance
- Projective labelling: a deviant identity is used to predict future action (eg. repeated molestation)
- People have a tendency to treat difference (eg. living on the street) as deviance or illness
- Medicalization of deviance: deviant behaviours are defined today as illnesses
- Labels influence who responds to deviance (police or doctors), whether someone receives punishment or treatment, whether someone is sick or bad
- Sutherland’s Differential Association Theory: a person’s tendency toward conformity or deviance depends on amount of contact with others who encourage or reject conventional behaviour
- Learning takes place in groups
- Hirschi’s Control Theory: conformity is linked to 4 types of social control
- Attachment: strong social attachments
- Opportunity: access to legitimate opportunity
- Involvement: time and energy spent on legitimate activities
- Belief: strong belief in conventional morality and respect for authority
- Criticism: some kinds of behaviour are universally condemned, labelled may discourage further deviance, some people actively seek deviant label
33
Discuss social-conflict and deviance.
- Norms reflect intersts of powerful
- Belief that laws are natural masks their political character
- Deviant labels are applied to those who interfere with operation of capitalism (threaten private property, don’t work, resist authority, challenge status quo)
- White-collar crime: crimes committed by people of high social position in course of occupations
- Corporate crime: illegal acitons of corporate or people acting on its behalf
- Organized crime: business supplying illegal goods/services
- Hate crime: criminal act against person or person’s property by offender motivated by racial or other bias
- Common in all societies, highest in Ontario in Canada
- Virtually every society in the world applies stricter normative controls to women than to men
- Criticism: laws also exist to protect non-rich, deviance does not just exist in capitalist societies
34
Discuss crimes, crime types, and trends.
- Violation of criminal law enacted by federal government
- Act itself
- Criminal intent (mens rea; guilty mind) which ranges from negligence to willful conduct
Types of crimes:
- Violent crime
- Property crime: theft of property belonging to others
- Victimless crime: violations of law in which there are no obvious victims
- Property and violent crime rising from 1962-late 1990s and then slowly declining
- Victimization surveys show higher crime rate because of unreported crimes
- Street criminals tend to be 20-34, males, lower social position, - Aboriginals and Blacks (may be police enforcement)
- US homicide rate is 4x higher than Canada and 5x higher than Europe
- Sexual assault rate is 2.6 and 7x higher
- May be due to lacking social safety nets and availability of guns
35
Discuss the criminal justice system.
- Police is main point of contact between population and criminal justice system
- Discretion in who to arrest depending on seriousness of crime, if suspect is uncooperative or has history of crime, bystanders, and other biases
- Courts: determine innocence/guilt but many cases are resolved before going to court
- Plea bargaining: legal negotiation in which prosecutor reduces a charge of defendant’s guilty plea
- Bargain-counter justice: spares judical system time/expense of court trial
Criticism: media coverage of crimes make punishment a public event, recidivism remains high so deterrence is questionable, prisons provide short-term protection but rehabilitation may not work among criminals
36
Discuss methods of punishment.
- Retribution: society makes offender suffer, moral vengeance
- Deterrence: discourage crime through punishment (eg. fines)
- Rehabilitation: program for reforming offender to prevent more offences
- Societal protection: rendering offender incapable of more offences either through incarceration or execution
37
Discuss restorative justice.
- Correctional programs operating within society rather than in prison
- Probation: offender remains under supervision of an officier in the community
- Parole: early release to serve remainder of sentence in the community
- Sentencing circles: for Aboriginal offenders, including accused, victim, families, and other community members
38
What is socioeconomic status and its components?
- Canada is highly stratified because we welcome immigrants
- Socioeconomic status: composite measure of social position that considers wealth, power, occupational prestige and schooling
- Income: occupational wages/salaries, earnings from investments and government transfer payment
- In 2011, average family income was $75 900
- Dual-earner families have higher income
- Top 20% shares 44.3% of income while bottom 20% has 4.8%
- Wealth: total amount of money and other assets, minus outstanding debts
- Distributed less evenly than income
- Includes stocks, bonds, real estate and privately owned property
- In US, richest 20% control 89% of all wealth
- Occupation is a major determinant of income, wealth, and power
- Physicians, lawyers and engineers are ranked near the top on prestige while cashiers and janitors are ranked near the bottom
- White-collar work that involves mental activity only has greater prestige than blue-collar work
39
Discuss schooling and social class.
- Determines labour force participation, occupation, and especially income
- Educational differences between men and women in similar jobs are minimal
- However, women have completed more years of schooling than men overall
40
What are the categories of merit and caste?
1. Ancestry
- Determines point of enter into system of social inequality
- Certain families with wealth and power have become well-established over generations
- Being born to prvilege or poverty sets stage for future schooling, occupation and therefore income
2. Race and ethnicity
- Higher average incomes for Japanese, British and French vs. Chinese, Black and Aboriginal
- Quebecois and First Nations have the lowest income
3. Gender
- Women earn less income, accumulate less wealth and have less occupational prestige than men
- Single-parent families headed by women are more than 2x as likely to be poor than those headed by men
41
What are the hierarchies?
1. Upper class
- Upper-uppers (1%): inherited enormous wealth (blue bloods, old money, high society)
- Lower-uppers (2-4%): working rich (nouveaux riches), high level of education
- Dual-earner families in which both wife and husband are professionals can make it into this lower-upper stratum of society
- Success stories fascinate us because it is accepted cultural goal
2. Middle class (40-50%)
- Tremendous influence on our culture (TV and media)
- Most commercial advertising is directed to middle class
- Has greater ethnic and racial diversity than upper class
- Upper-middles: professionals that accumulate considerable property , usually have university educations
- Average-middles: managers, tellers, clerks or highly skilled blue-collar jobs, accumulate some wealth, children go to local universities
3. Working class (⅓%)
- Otherwise known as lower-middle class
- Blue-collar jobs: little opportunity for imagination and high level of supervision
- Little or no accumulation of wealth, may own house in low-cost neighbourhoods
- Children have little chances of going to university
4. Lower class (20%)
- About 15% of Canadian population is classified as poor
- Working poor: incomes from full-time or multiple part-time jobs fall short of what is required to cover necessities of food, shelter and clothing
42
What difference does class make?
1. Health
- Children born into poor families are 3x more likely to die from disease, neglect, accidents or violence
- Richer people live 7 years longer due to nutritious food, safer environments and medical care
2. Values and attitudes
- Rich favour understated tastes while nouveau riche favour conspicuous consumption
- Richer people are more tolerant of controversial behaviour
- Working-class people tend to be less tolerant due to rules
3. Family
- The more money a family has, the more parents can develop their children’s talents and abilities
- Lower-class families tend to be larger
- Middle-class marriages are more egalitarian, share more activities and have greater intimacy
- Working class friendships are sources of material assistance
43
Discuss trends and definitions of social mobility.
- Canada is credential society that needs proof of knowledge to get a job.
- Upward: with college degree or higher-paying job
- Downward: drop out of school, losing a job, business failure or divorce
- Intragenerational mobility: change in social position during one person’s lifetime
- Intergenerational mobility: upward or downward social mobility of children in relation to their parents
IN CANADA:
- Long-term trend is upward
- Occupational inheritance occurs for men whose fathers are professional, white-collared or farmers
- Those at very top and bottom may experience significant occupational inheritance, while those in the middle do not
- Women’s opportunity for upward mobility has been less than men’s, but narrowing
44
Discuss types of poverty and how it is measured as well as trends.
- Relative poverty: universal and inevitable, refers to deprivation of some people in relation to those who have more
- Absolute poverty: deprivation of resources that is life-threatening
- Formerly the elderly, now children
- Higher rates for poorly educated, visible minorities and Aboriginals
- Feminization of poverty: trend by which women represent an increasing proportion of the poor
- In Canada, measured by LICO or low-income cut-off (people who spend at least 55% of pre-tax income for food, shelter, and clothing)
- Slowly decreasing through years, around 10%
- Working poor: includes men and women who labour for at least 50 weeks of the year and yet cannot escape poverty
45
What are the 2 ways of explaining poverty?
1. Blame the poor
- The poor are responsible for their poverty
- They cannot or will not take advantage of opportunities
- Culture of poverty: resignation leads to self-perpetuating cycle of poverty
2. Blame society
- Society that distribute wealth badly face significant poverty problem
- Lack of ambition of poor people is consequence and not cause of lack of opportunity
46