📕SOCIOLOGY PPE Section A Flashcards
(52 cards)
What is the contemporary relevance for Parson?
Parson’s focus on the socialisation function of families remains relevant as families adapt to new challenges, including socialising children in digital environments and navigating changing gender norms.
What were the 4 main processes through which gender socialisation occurs according to Oakley?
- Manipulation - parents dis/encourage behaviour based on gender. 2. Canalisation - directing children’s interests towards gender-appropriate toys/activities. 3. Verbal appellations - using different language and descriptions for boys and girls. 4. Different activities - assigning different tasks and responsibilities based on gender.
What is the theoretical significance of Oakley’s research?
Oakley’s research provided strong evidence for social constructionist theories of gender, challenging biological determinism.
What is the contemporary relevance of Oakley’s research?
There have been significant changes in gender attitudes; however, research continues to show gendered patterns in childhood socialisation, evaluating efforts at gender neutral parenting.
What is the theoretical significance of Nayak?
Nayak demonstrated how racial and ethnic identities are fluid and shaped by global cultural flows rather than being biologically determined.
How can Nayak’s findings be criticized?
Critics question whether cultural borrowing represents appreciation or appropriation, and whether it challenges or reinforces social hierarchies.
What is the contemporary relevance of Nayak’s findings?
Nayak explains cultural appropriation debates and the global spread of hip-hop culture, and how young people construct their identities through style and consumption in an interconnected world.
What is the theoretical significance of Parsons’ findings?
Parsons established a functionalist understanding of the family that dominated society for decades, explaining how families contribute to social order.
What are criticisms of Parsons’ findings?
Parsons’ model neutralizes traditional gender roles and ignores power inequalities within the family. The model was based on middle-class nuclear families.
What is the theoretical significance of Bourdieu’s findings?
Cultural preferences function as a form of social power, helping explain social inequality beyond economic factors alone.
What is the contemporary relevance of Bourdieu’s findings?
Continues to explain digital divides, where access to tech has become a new form of cultural capital.
What is the theoretical significance of McLuhan’s work?
Helps analyze how social media platforms reflect and reinforce class distinctions through consumer patterns and aesthetic preferences.
What are the criticisms of McLuhan?
Technologically deterministic - overemphasizing the impact of media while underestimating human agency and social factors. Writing style deliberately obscure and lacking empirical evidence.
What was revolutionary about McLuhan’s work?
Shifted focus from content analysis to examining how media technologies themselves reshape human consciousness and society.
What is the contemporary relevance of Mead?
Remains foundational in understanding cultural relativism and how gender roles vary across cultures. Informs nature vs nurture debates. Questions social constructions of gender in contemporary society.
What were the key concepts in Bourdieu’s research?
Cultural capital, habitus, and field.
What are Bourdieu’s key findings?
Cultural capital is identified in 3 forms: embodied (personal dispositions and habits), objectified (cultural goods owned), institutionalised (formal qualifications and credentials).
What is habitus?
Internalised ways of thinking acquired through socialisation that shape views unconsciously.
What is a field in Bourdieu’s research?
A social arena where people compete for resources/position.
How is taste viewed in Bourdieu’s findings?
Taste is not individual but socially constructed and class-based.
How do higher classes use cultural capital?
Higher classes use cultural capital to distinguish themselves.
What does the education system encourage according to Bourdieu?
Encourages social inequality through valuing/rewarding cultural capital of dominant classes.
How do working class people develop taste?
Working class people develop a taste for necessity, preferring functional choices over aesthetic ones.
What was the theoretical significance of Mead’s study?
Homosexuality should be understood as a social role rather than just sexual preference. By treating it as a role, it creates a distinct category that shapes identity and experience.
