Midterm Flashcards
Who was the believed to be the first socio.?
What book did he write? What does he do in it?
Ibn Khaldun
Wrote Muqdimma
Examined types of societies and their histories, culture, and economics
Developed systematic approach to studying differ. Types of societies such as tribes, cities, nations, and economics
Who coined the term “sociology”
August comte
He referred to it as the “queen of sciences”
Who was the first women socio.?
What’d she focus on?
Harriet Martineau
Focused on economics, social, historical/ spheres, and their intersections
What’d Karl Marx do?
Worked alongside Fredrick Engels, inspired modern communism
Believed conflict grew from the division of social classes
Believed that conflict between bourgeoise and proletariat would initiate a revolution that would eventually produce an equalitarian society
Argued that capitalist society lead to multiple forms of alienation
What did Max Weber do?
What’d he like to write about?
Liked to write about religion
He described how proletarianism and the religion values towards hard work and frugality led to the development of modern capitalism.
His book “The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism” has been the subject of the heated debates throughout the twentieth century. Many disputes his claims about the “origins” of capitalism as being limited to Europe.
Who was George Simmel?
Famous works?
He wrote “The Metropolis she metro life”
He looked at how the urban stimuli in a city affected a city dweller.
City dweller was blasé and highly individual, lonely, and atomized, but also free with an explosion of creative individualism
Focused on micro sociology
Micro VS. macro
Micro socio.: focuses on the examination of an individual or small group
Macro”: involves an examin. of society as a whole and it’s institutions
Who is C. Wright Mills? And what did he do?
What were the three components sociological imagination was divided into?
Coined the term “sociological imagination”
Mills stated that the challenge of socio. Is to make the connection between how society works and how it works in terms of our personal lives
The sociological imagination helps us to understand the connections between the political and the personal. In many ways, these are interlinked.
Socio. Imagination: was a quality of mind, had three components:
Understanding of history
“ of social structure
“ of individual biographies
Where/ when did sociology emerge as an academic interest?
And why?
German
France
England
1800’s
It developed as a response to the frantic Sofia changes as a consequence of industrialization.
Population increases and urbanization were major social factors in the rise of sociology as a way of studying the world.
What did Herbert spencer do?
What did he believe in?
Many people believe he coined the term “survival of the fittest”, but he actually used the term to justify social inequalities.
Essentially It was his belief that those with wealth and power deserved it’d because they were the fittest members of society
Who was Emile Durkheim?
Which term did he coin?
Coined social fact
Social facts are patterned ways of acting, thinking, and feeling that exist outside of any one individual but exert social control over people.
Coined structural functionalism
Uses an organic or biological analogy for society
It identifies the various structures of society (eg, the family), and describes the functions the structure performs to maintain the entire social system.
Who is George Herbert mead?
What term did he pioneer?
Examples of symbolic internationalists?
Pioneered “symbolic interactionism” approach
Looked at how the self is constructed through personal exchanges with others.
Looks at the meaning (the symbolic part) of the daily social interception of individuals
Herbert Blumer (coined) Erving Goffman
Characteristics of social facts
And examples
- It was developed prior to and separate from you as an individual
- It can be seen as a characteristic of a particular group
- It involves a constraining of coercing force that pushes individuals into acting in a particular way
Language
Money economy
Citizenship
Kinship roles
Who coined the term “Symbolic Interaction”?
Herbert Blumer
Who is Erving goffman?
What’d he introduce?
Famous work?
Introduced the dramaturgical approach to studying social interaction.
“The presentation of the self in everyday life”
Who was WEB DuBois?
First black American sociologist of race, economics, and culture
Created charts expressing black excellence
What was the feminist theory?
Addresses issues or systematic discrimination against women
Do not need to be a women to be a feminist or to use feminist theory
Harriet martineau was one of the first feminist sociologist
Who was Dorothy smith?
What term did she coin?
Feminist sociologist
Developed standpoint theory
Challenged sociology’s preferred objective as opposed to subjective stance in research and writing
Standpoint theory considers specific subject positions and does away with a universal subject
Standpoint theory story lates that even when we argue that a fact is based research and this objective, we need to recognize that all information is developed from the standpoint of the researcher.
Also developed “relations of ruling” which argues that denying the subjective standpoint entrenched that dominance of the ruler over the ruled
Postmodern theory?
an approach that attempts to define how society has progressed to an era beyond modernity
Tries to include a diversity of voices, especially those that are often drowned out by powerful voices
Postmodernism rejects all totalitarian discourses and calls to end to the age of Grand Narratives
Postmodernism pays attention to ruptures and fissures — calls into question progress narratives
Why was structural functionalism declining? And when?
Around the time, postmodernism was emerging, late 1960’s
It was criticized for being unable to account for social change, or structural conditions and conflict.
Who was Michael Foucault?
What did he practice?
Practiced what he called “archeology of knowledge”: a process of digging through historical discourses to see how they may have been distorted along the way — and to study how these distortions have affected us in the present.
Who first developed the department of sociology in Canada? Who influenced him?
Carl addington Dawson founded the depart. Of socio. At McGill university
Was influenced by Robert park and the Chicago school the social gospel movement in Canada.
What was the social gospel movement?
Developed as an attempt by people trained for the ministry to apply Christian principles of human welfare to the treatment of social, medical, and psychological ills brought by industrialization and unregulated capitalism.
What’s political economy?
An interdisciplinary approach involving sociology, political science, economics, law, anthropology, and history.
Political economy looks at the relationship between politics and the economics of the production, distribution and consumption of goods.
Who was Harold Innis?
Was a political economist whose work focused on how the availability of staples (eg, furs, cod), shaped the social and economic foundations of Canada.
Who was John porter?
What did he study?
What terms did he coin? Meaning?
Studied the differences between the metaphors of cultural integration employed by the us and Canada
Studied Canada’s multiculturalism
Coined vertical mosaic
The situation in which systemic discrimination produces a hierarchy of racial, ethnic, and religious groups.
Who coined “power-knowledge”?
Michael Foucault
Power produces knowledge and the fields in which knowledge is created and exercised
What is research methodology?
The system of methods a researcher uses to gather data on a particular question
Researchers take a variety of approaches
Who coined the term “Positivism”
Meaning?
August comte. He believed that the objective scientific methods used to study the natural sciences could be applied to the social sciences: said sociology was a kind of social physics
Insider vs outsider perspective
What best critical examines a group?
When favouring the objective (hard facts) outsider perspective would produce the best research
Critical sociology stresses the unique role of the insider perspective
Quantitative? Qualitative?
Quan.: the close examination of social elements that can be measured or counted, and are therefore used to generate statistics
Qual.: the close examination of characteristics that cannot be counted or measured
Examples of qualitative research.
Ethnography: groups studied through extensive fieldwork. Involves direct observation
Participant observation: becoming a member of a group to experience the group first hand
Semi- structured interviews: informal, face to faces interviews.
Informants: insider who help the researcher interpret information and behaviour and assist the researcher in becoming accepted by the group
Case studies: a research design that takes as its subject a single case or a few selected examples of social entity. Identified as the best one
Narratives: the stories peoples tell about themselves, their situations, and others around them
Voice: the expressions of someone occupying a particular social location (influenced by gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc.)
Content analysis: involves studying a set of cultural artifacts (eg., newspapers, ads, or events) by systematically counting them and then interpreting the themes they reflect
Semiotics: study of signs and signifying practices. It’s the science of signs. Two parts:
A signifier carries meaning
A signified is the meaning that is carried
Discourse analysis: analyzing a conversation, a speech, or written text.
Whos Roland barnes?
What’d he study?
A major theorist in semiotics
Difference between texts and fields
Texts: court transcripts, newspapers, movie trailers, advertisements
Fields: presentation of things over long periods of time: movies from the early twentieth century, reality tv shows, introductory sociology textbooks, Canadian historical writing
What is genealogy?
Who loved this method?
Michael Foucault loved it
A form of discourse analysis that involves tracing the origin and history of modern discourses
Quantitative research examples
Statistics: involves the use of numbers to map social practices and beliefs
Operational definitons: transform abstract concepts into ones that are concrete, observable, measurable, and countable.
Variables: a concept of measurable traits or characteristics that can vary change from one person, group, culture, or time to another. Two types:
Independent: presumed to have an effect on another variable.
Dependent: are affected by the independent variable
What is culture?
A system involving behaviour, beliefs, knowledge, practices, values, and material such as buildings, tools Mx and sacred items.
Example of culture being used as a instrument of oppression
Rape culture
A sociological concept for a setting in which rape is pervasive and normalized due to societal attitudes about gender and sexuality.
Colonialism
The policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another conundrum Mx occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.
What is authenticity?
Factor of contention
Carries ideas of being true to a particular culture
Culture is dynamic. Traditional practices change as a culture changes.
What is cultural appropriation?
Example?
An act of taking someone else’s culture without their consent.
Can include aspects of traditional knowledge or cultural expressions, as well as, particular music, dances, cuisine, symbols, ceremonies, etc.
A power imbalance between 2 cultures: taking of culture — rather than — consensual sharing of it. Results in exploitation of one group
Ex. Justin Trudeau dressing up as an Indian person, painted his face BROWN!
Who is Edward said?
What did he develop?
Example of it?
Wrote orientalism
Criticized western intellectuals for forming impressions of the Middle East and Central Asia from historical accounts written by the 19th and 20th century scholars.
These ideas perpetuated romanticized notions of eastern cultures and ways of life.
Aladdin is an example of this fetishization
What is Dominant culture?
Canadian Example?
The culture that through its political and economic power is able to impose its values, language, and ways of behaving and interpreting behaviour on a given society
English speaking, white, heterosexual., between ages 25-55, etc.
What is subculture?
Examples?
A group of people who share a distinctive set for cultural beliefs and behaviours that differ in some significant way, but are not necessarily opposed to, that of the dominant culture.
Minor cultural differences possessed by certain groups organized around occupations or hobbies, engaged in no significant opposition to the dominant culture
Ex. Lawyers, endurance sprinters, snow globe collectors.
What is counterculture?
Examples?
Groups that reject selected elements of the dominant culture
(eg., clothing styles or sexual norms)
Examples: hippies, black panthers, riot Greek, gothic style.
High culture?
Examples?
Culture of the elite — things like opera, classical music, ballet, artsy films, alcoholic beverages.
Hugh culture requires a of set of skills and knowledge, cultural capital, which sets the elite apart from the masses.
Who was Pierre bourdieu?
What did he develop?
Example?
Developed the notion “cultural capital”
Cultural capi. — refers to the knowledge and skills needed to acquire the sophisticated tastes that mark someone as a person of high culture.
Pretty women dinner etiquette scene, didn’t know how to eat the food of such a standard; snail, started using a fork…
What’s hegemony?
Who coined it?
Antonio Gramsci
Hegemony is a set of relatively non-coercive methods of maintaining power used by the dominant class (eg, through the media or educational system)
A system of domination where the dominated consent to be being, often passively or unconsciously.
Who is Jean Baudrillard?
Which did he coin?
Examples?
Simulacra was coined
stereotypical cultural images produced and repoduced like material goods or commodities by the media and sometimes by scholars.
Examples: Inuit often represented by simulacra of described practices (eg, rubbing noses, abandoning children, sharing wives, etc), and physical objects (eg, igloos, kayaks, etc).
The figure of “the tourist” wearing a t-shirt of the place they’re visiting or totally occupied with a selfie stick.
Baudrillard describes simulacra as being “hyper real” that is likely to be considered more real than what actually exists or existed.
What’re symbols?
Examples? Material and non material.
Symbols are cultural items, either tangible or intangible, that come to take on tremendous meaning within a culture or subculture of a society
Materials: Canadian flag, hijab.
Non material can be songs or events: Canadian anthem, French Revolution.
Ethnocentrism?
Examples?
Occurs when someone holds up one culture—usually their own — as being the standard by which all cultures are to be judged
Americans judge asians for using chopsticks to eat their food, where Americans use forks, knives, etc.
Eurocentrism?
Examples?
A dominant viewpoint in N.A. It involves addressing others from a broadly defined European position and assuming the audience is or would like to be part of that “we”
Ex. Many Europeans believe that Christopher Columbus founded other continents, however, they have been people livin there for years before “his discovery”
Reverse ethnocentrism?
Examples?
Involves assuming that another culture that is not ones own is better in some way
The myth of the noble savage (innately good) is an example
Sociolinguistics?
Examples?
The study of a language as a part of a culture
Little woman example— Julia Roberts was replying in a colloquial manner oppose to the way she should’ve in the “fancy dinner scene”
Replied with “yeah, do that”, instead of “yes, please do so”, when she was asked if they should order for her while she’s in the bathroom.
Primary socialization?
Examples?
The socialization that occurs during childhood
Secondary socialization
Socialization that occurs later in life
Determinism?
Refers to the degree to which a persons behaviour, attitudes, and other personal characteristics are determined or caused by a specific factor
Biological determinism?
States that the greater part of who we are is determined by our roughly 26,000 genes
Ex. If we’re good at sports or math it is cuz we’re somehow genetically disposed to be so.
Social or cultural determinism
Cultural determinism is the belief that the culture in which we are raised determines who we are at emotional and behavioural levels.
Behaviourism is a school of thought in psychology that takes a strong cultural determinist position
Who was Edward throndike?
What’d he do?
Developed a law effect, has two parts:
If you do something and it is rewarded, the likelihood of doing it again increases (rewarded behaviour is reinforced)
Ex. Laughing at a kids joke, it’s likely they will tell it again.
If you do something and it is punished or ignored, the likelihood of you doing it again decreases
Whose BF Skinner?
What’d he develop?
Example?
Developed radical behaviourism
- creatures including humans could trains to do anything through a system of positive rewards
Pigeon ping pong
Whose sigmund Freud?
What’d he believe?
Believed the mind had three parts:
Id: represents our unconscious instinctive drives: Eros (life) and thanatos(death)
Superego: represents our conscience
Develops from the moral messages that our socializing agents present to us
Ego: mediates between the conscious and the unconscious while trying to make sense of what the individual self does and thinks
Agency
The capacity to influence what happens in ones life
