Theorists Flashcards
Explain Durkehim’s Key Theories
- Functionalist theory, based on consensus - macro theory; all the institutions in society have apositive effect upon the individuals
- Used the mechanical solidarity and organic analogy; to describe the shift that occurred from
pre-industrialisation to industrialisation. - The modern collective consciousness: the shared norms and values that are now stressed
are: individual dignity, equality of opportunity, work ethic and social justice - Social fact: the formula is social fact = externality (it exists out there in society) + constraint (it acts back upon the individual, exercising power and constraint over
them) e.g. the law - State of anomie; state of normlessness, when the norms and values of the society rapidly change or are blurred by changes
- Is functionalism still relevant today? There is evidently less of a collective consciousness
due to postmodernism and industrialisation, we have become more individualised
Explain Parson’s Key Theories
- Work 1: ‘The Structure of Social Action’ (1937) – voluntaristic theory of social action.
Social action is ‘individual’. ‘Can be understood as part of a larger system of normative orientations defined in terms of a general theory of social action’ It’s not just a response to stimulus but there are other factors e.g. norms, moral codes (HAMILTON) - Work 2: ‘The social system’ (1951) – move from voluntarism to explore systems of action
in social structures. Tthe focus is on how people are geared to enact roles associated with positions. Differentiation of roles - professions interdependency of roles. - Work 3: ‘Concern with social evolution’ – 1) differentiation 2) adaptation 3) inclusion 4) generalisation of values 5) legitimization of the increasingly complex system
- The ‘unit act’ = individual ‘actor’ makes ‘choices’, in context of ‘norms’ and ‘values’, and
‘obstacles’. Unit acts made up of ‘systems of action’ (e.g. interaction) with institutionalised roles
Explain Parson’s Action Theories
PARSONS ACTION THEORY: 1) Aim: ‘analytical realist’ theory of ‘subjective’ events - this
is the reality of action for people (creating a model for it)
2) Critique of utilitarian and behaviourism (materialistic)
theories of action (its mostly a response to a stimulus), maximisation of utility. Gaining from something. We need to think of culture and values in social action that determine
why people make rational decisions 3) Place of culture and ‘ultimate values’ 4) A social system consists in a plurality of individual actors interacting with each other in a situation which has at least a physical or environmental aspect, actors who are motivated in terms of a tendency to the “optimization of gratification” and whose
relation to their situations, including each other, is defined and mediated in terms of a system of culturally structured and shared symbols
Explain the critiques of Parson’s Action Theory
- WRIGHT MILLS: Theory of theory sake. ‘’To what is translated we must add
that the roles making up an institution are not just one big ‘complementarity’ of shared expectations’. - 2) Conservatism: functionalism has the capacity to provide a critique of existing
social conditions (MERTON) - 3) Western centrism: theory is mostly a defence of America and the American way
of life, it’s about how America and the western way of living is better. Problematic. - 4) Not a verifiable theory: problem of causality in interdependent systems.
- 5) Theory: abstraction as necessary for creation of social science own language.
It’s about taking the most important concepts and looking at them through a new
lens.
Explain how Parsons explains social change
- Societies move from simple to complex structures e.g. in traditional society a single institution performs many roles e.g. church or local parish would provide religious services, politics and education, socialises its members but now it is split up
- As societies develop, the kinship system loses these functions – to factories, schools, churches etc. Parsons calls this structural differentiation – a gradual process in which separate, functionally specialised institutions develop, each meeting a different need
- Parsons also sees gradual change occurring through what he calls moving or a dynamic
equilibrium – as a change occurs in one part of the system, it produces compensatory changes in other parts e.g. rise of industry brings about a change in the family from extended to nuclear
Explain the system needs that Parsons identified
1) Goal attainment: society needs to set goals and allocate resources to achieve them. This is the
function of the political sub-system, through institutions such as parliament
2) Adaptation: the social system meets its members’ material needs. These needs are met by the
economic sub-system.
3) Integration: the different parts of the system must be integrated together in order to pursue
shares goals. This is performed by the sub-system of religion, education and the media
4) Latency: refers to processes that maintain society over time. The kinship sub-system provides
pattern maintenance (socialising individuals to go on performing the roles society requires) and
tension management (A place to let off steam after the stresses of work)
Explain Merton’s criticiques of Parsons
1) Indispensability: Parsons assumes that everything in society is functionally indispensable in its existing form. Merton argues that this is an untested assumption and he points to the
possibility of functional alternatives E.G. Parsons assumes that primary socialisation is best
performed by nuclear family, but it may be that one parent families or communes do it just aswell or better
(EV = FEMINISM – escaping domestic abusive partner, better and safer, strong single mothers and dads and homosexual partners provide so much love)
2) Functional unity: Parsons assumes that all parts of society are tightly integrated into a single whole and assumes that change in one part will have a knock-on effect on all other parts. Complex modern societies have many parts, some of which may be only distantly related to one another. Some parts have functional autonomy, independence from others.
3) Universal functionalism: Parsons assumes that everything in society performs a positive
function for society as a whole. Some things might be functional for some but dysfunctional
for others (EV = Feminism and Marxism and other critical theories have developed this)
Explain the external criticques of Functionalism
1) Logical criticisms
- Teleology is the idea that things exist because of their effect or function e.g. functionalists claim
that the families exist because children need to be socialised is teleological
- A REAL EXPLANATION of something is one that identifies its cause – and logically, a cause must come before its effect.
2) Conflict perspective criticisms –
- Marxists and Feminists argue that society is not harmonious – it is based on unequal power and inequalities which are perpetuated by every institution - shared values that functionalist society has are merely a cloak concealing the interests of the dominant class (ISA AND RSA)
Frank Pearce: nothing more than caring faces
3) Action perspective criticisms
- Dennis Wrong criticises functionalism’s over socialised or deterministic view of the individual
- the social system uses socialisation to shape people’s behaviour so that they will meet the system’s needs by performing their prescribes roles.
Individuals have no free will or choice
- The only social reality is the one that individuals construct by giving meaning to their worlds
(hypodermic syringe approach vs decoding approach – we choose what is real for us)
4) Postmodernist criticisms
- Functionalism is an example of a meta-narrative that attempts to create a model of the workings of society. An overall theory is no longer possible because today’s society is increasingly fragmented
Explain New Right Theories
- Shares a lot in common with functionalism e.g. meritocratic society and the traditional family
- Demonise the ‘underclass’, specifically single parent mothers and blames the state for being too generous with welfare and encouraging the ‘underclass’ to increase
- Keynesian economics became discredited because of rising inflation in the 70s
- PM Thatcher, argued that the free market, rather than government, was the most efficient allocator of resources
E.G YOUTH CLUBS BEING SHUT DOWN IN AND AROUNDLONDON – 88 IN LONDON ALONE – causing and fuelling further violent crime
Explain evalutations for the New Right
EV: political ideology centred on neo-liberal principles it is ideologically blinkered
EV: many of their ideas are seen as simplistic and short-sighted, ignoring the complexities of modern society and reinforcing stereotypes that lack evidence
EV: Murray’s views on lone mothers and the underclass have been denounced by Walker as reliant on little more then ‘innuendo, assertions, and anecdotes’ rather than any firm evidence
EV: others challenge the naïve assumptions of the New Right that we have quality of opportunity and live
in a meritocracy
Explain what historical materialism is
- Materialism is the view that humans have material needs
- They use the means of production to do so
- In the earliest stage of human history, these forces are just unaided human labour, but over time peopledevelop tools, machines etc. to assist in production
- Led to a division of labour develops between two classes: Bourgeoisie (class that owns the means of
production) and Proletariat (class of labourers who are being exploited) by the owners of the means of production - We currently live in a society where we have a capitalist mode of production, this forms the economic
base of society, this economic base shapes all other features of society (the superstructure of institutions) – shapes the nature of religion, law, education etc.
Explain what Marx meant by class society and exploitation
- In the earliest history of human history, there are no classes, no private ownership and no exploitation everyone works, and everything is shared
- Marx describes the early classless society as ‘primitive communism’, he believes that one day we are going to go back to our natural state
- In class societies, one class owns the means of productions, which enables them to exploit the labour of others for their own benefit (clearly shown in Victorian era – workhouses full of poor, working for the rich – poor conditions and dangerous work conditions)
- They cannot control the society’s surplus product – this is the different between what the labourers actually produce and what is needed simply to keep them alive and working
Explain what Marx meant by capitalism
Capitalism has three distinctive features:
- The proletariat legally free and separated from the means of production. They don’t own any means of production, they have to sell their labour power to the bourgeoisie in return for wages in order to survive - not an equal exchange.
- The proletariat do not receive the value of the goods that their labour produces, but only the cost of subsistence – of keeping them alive.
- The difference between the two is the surplus value – the profit that the capitalist makes by selling the commodities that the proletariat have produced
- Competition forces capitalists to pay the lowest wages possible
- Capitalism continually expands the forces of production in its pursuit of profit – production becomes concentrated in ever-larger units (technological advances de-skill the workforce)
Explain what Marx meant by class consciousness
-Capitalism creates the conditions under which the working class can develop a consciousness of its own economic political interests in opposition to those of its exploiters
- Aware of the needs to overthrow capitalism
- EV = hypodermic syringe approach vs decoding) – do we have free will or is reality distorted through ruling class tools, such as the media?
Explain what Marx meant by ideology
- The class that owns the means of production also owns and controls the means of mental production – the production of ideas
- The dominant ideas in society are the ideas of the economically dominant class
- The institutions that produce and spread ideas, such as religion, education, media, all serve the dominant class by producing ideologies
- Ideology gives us a false consciousness in the subordinate classes and helps to sustain class inequality
- Marx used the analogy of the ‘camera obscura’ to show that ideology is a set of ideas capable of making circumstances appear upside down and inverting our perception of reality; the workers end up supporting capitalism which exploits them
- Ideology that pervades the superstructure therefore alters and distorts the individual’s perception of the
outer world – their objective social reality - RSA – Think about who is now being targeted - LINK TO RACE, CRIME AND AGENTS OF SOCIAL CONTROL
Explain what Marx meant by alienation
- Alienation is the result of our loss of control over our labour and its product and therefore our separation from our true nature
- Alienation exists in all class societies because the owners control the production process for their own needs
Alienation reaches its peak for two reasons:
- Workers are completely separated from and have no control over the forces of production
- Workers is reduced to an unskilled labourer mindlessly repeating a meaningless task (they cannot even afford the items they make with their salary)
- Religion for Marxism also causes alienation and exploitation – making people believe that if they work hard and well, then they will be praised in the afterlife
Explain what Marx meant by the state and revolution
Marx defines the state as armed bodies of men – the army, police, prisons etc.
- The state exists to protect the interests of the class of owners who control it (form the ruling class)
- Use the state as a weapon in the class struggle, to protect their property, suppress opposition and prevent revolution
What are two evaluations of Marx’s theories?
1) Class
- Simplistic, one dimensional view of inequality – sees class as the only important division
- Weber: status and power differences can also be important sources of inequality,
- Weber sub divides the proletariat into skilled and unskilled classes, and includes a white-collar middle class of office workers and a petty bourgeoisie
2) Economic determinism
- Marx’s base superstructure model is criticised for economic determinism – view that economic factors are the sole cause of everything in society, including social change
- Fails to recognise freewill
- Weber argues that it was the emergence of a new set of idea e.g. Calvinism that led to help bring modern capitalism into being (e.g. work ethic was high brought about capitalism)
What is humanistic marxism?
e.g Gramsci, draws on Marx’s early writings, focusing on alienation and people’s subjective experience of the world
- Voluntarism: humans have free will. Active agents who make their own history. Their consciousness and ideas are central to changing the world
- Socialism will come about when people become conscious of the need to overthrow capitalism
- Encourages political action, time is always ripe for revolution
What is scientific marxism?
E.g. Althusser, draws on Marx’s later work, where he writes about the laws of capitalist development
- Marxism is a science – discovers the laws that govern the workings of capitalism
- Determinism: structural factors determine the course of history – individuals are passive puppets, victims of ideology manipulated by forces beyond their control
- Socialism will come about only when the contradictions of capitalism ultimately bring about the
system’s inevitable collapse
- Discourages political action
Explain Gramsici’s key ideas
- Proletariat must develop its own ‘counter hegemony’ to win the leadership of society from the bourgeoise
Gramsci sees the ruling class maintaining its dominance over society in two ways:
1) Coercion: it uses the army, police, prisons and courts of the capitalist state to force other classes to accept its rule (RSA)
2) Consent (hegemony): it uses ideas and values to persuade the subordinate classes that its rule is legitimate (e.g. religion – God intended this way, ruling class were chosen by God to rule)
Explain how the hegemony of the ruiling class is never complete
- The ruling class are a minority: to rule, they need to create a power bloc by making alliances with other groups
1) The proletariat have a dual consciousness: their ideas are influenced not only by bourgeois ideology, but also by their material conditions of life – the poverty and exploitation they experience
- There is always the possibility of ruling-class hegemony being undermined, particularly at times of economic crisis
- Gramsci: the working class can only win this battle for ideas by producing their own ‘organic intellectuals’ by this he means a body of workers, who are able to formulate an alternative vision of how society could be run
Evaluate Gramsci’s key ideas
- Accused of over-emphasising the role of ideas and under emphasising the role of both state coercion and economic factors –
- E.G. workers may wish to overthrow capitalism, but be reluctant to try because they fear state repression or unemployment - they need the means of employment to help them survive in this society (very materialistic and consumeristic)
- Sociologists stress the role of ideas and consciousness as the basis of resisting domination and changing society e.g. Willis describes the working class lads who saw through the schools’ ideology to recognise that meritocracy is a myth – but they still managed to slot themselves into meaningless labour jobs
- HUMANISTIC MARXISTS SEE HUMANS AS CREATIVE BEINGS, ABLE TO MAKE HISTORY THROUGH THEIR CONSCIOUS ACTIONS – People shape society
Explain Althusser’s key ideas
Structural determinism, there are three structures/levels:
1) Economic level: comprising all those activities that involve producing something in order to satisfy a need
2) Political level: comprising all forms of organisation
3) Ideological level: involving the ways that people see themselves and their world
In this model the political and ideological levels have relative autonomy or partial independence from the economic level.
- Economic level dominates in capitalism BUT the ideological and political levels perform indispensable functions e.g. workers who rebel must be punished.
- The state performs political and ideological
functions that ensure the reproduction of capitalism:
RSA (repressive state apparatus)
ISA (ideological state apparatus)
Explain Althusser’s key criticsms of humanist marxism
For structuralist Marxists, our sense of free will, choice and creativity is an illusion. Everything about us is the product of underlying social structures
Craib – society is a puppet theatre, we are merely puppets, and these unseen structures are the hidden puppet master, determining all our thoughts and actions
- Socialism will not come about because of a change of consciousness but will come about because of a crisis of capitalism resulting from over-determination (the contradictions in the three structures that
occur relatively independently of each other, resulting in the collapse of the system as a whole)
Evaluate Althusser’s key ideas
- Humanistic Marxists such as Gouldner: scientific approach discouraged political activism because it stresses the role of structural factors that individuals can do little to affect
- E.P. Thompson criticises Althusser for ignoring the fact that it is the active struggles of the working class that can change society – accuses Althusser of elitism (belief that communist party knows what is best for the workers, who should therefore blindly follow the party’s lead)
Explain Willis study of working-class bodies
- Working class counter school culture rejects middle class values – formal academic knowledge is derided as feminine – practical jobs are believed to be masculine
- The boys develop a counterculture that resists the philosophy of school, namely that academic hard work will lead to
progress. - Through language, dress etc. they make clear that their rejection of middle class ideals and instead emphasise their belief in practical skills and life experience, developing what Willis sees as a patriarchal attitude
- The boys see academic knowledge as feminine and pupils who aspire to achieve as ‘’ear’oles’’ and inferior
- The lads experience their employment as a matter of theirown free choice rather than exploitation
Describe and evaluate Butler’s theories
Problem with sex/gender dualism: **
* Gender is material (as well as social) e.g. gender performed through the body. Sex is social (as well as biological)
* BUTLER – sex as social grouping of bodily aspects, social selection of important distinctions, gender concept naturalises sex
BUTLER – gender identity as a performance, gender is what we do not what we are.
* Gender trouble and the importance of the body for consumption and identity – cultural configurations of gender have seized a hegemonic hold (GRAMSCI**): needs to be challenges (subversive action): the mobilisation, subversive confusion, and proliferation of genders and therefore identity.
BUTLER – we all put on a gender performance, whether traditional or not, it is not a question of whether we do a gender performance, but what form of performance will take.
* By choosing to be different about it, we might work to change gender norms and the binary understanding of masculinity and femininity
* People perform in ways that are expected of them by their culture – traditional expectations of gender are based on how most people behave in their culture – gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original – gender is what you do, rather than a universal notion of who you are (we perform gender e.g. female gender is known to wear dresses)
* Critiques: some have argued that she implies a lack of free will in those imitating the sexual norms of society, whereas in fact those norms have frequently been broken by those who felt uncomfortable with them. Many postmodern thinkers believe that her writing has attracted the criticism that its convoluted form conceals some basically simple ideas
Describe and Evaluate Liberal Feminim
Liberal Feminism
1. Challenging the limitations of the female role
2. Opening up equality of opportunity for women
Greer: women liberation, sex and the pill
1. Highly positive with the changes that have been occurring
2. Optimistic about the future and what lays ahead for women, acknowledging the evident process that women have made
3. Believe that we can change and see more progress by tackling/challenging attitudes and laws
e.g Evident with equal pay act of 1970 and sex discrimination act of 1975
e.g GIST and WISE are also important campaigns as they attempt to bring more girls into engineering and science, allowing girls to branch out into subjects that traditionally are male dominated
**EV **- radicals believe that liberals are too passive when it comes to progress, we still have sexual harassment within all institutions, including schools and workplaces, issues such as this have not been addressed enough and need to change
**EV **- laws are just caring faces, they are there to mute the population that it is addressed for e.g. equal pay act, women are still not paid equal (17.1% less in the UK)
Explain the key ideas of liberal feminism
**LIBERAL FEMINISTS **sexist attitudes and stereotypical beliefs about gender are culturally constructed and transmitted through socialisation.
* To achieve gender equality, we must change society’s socialisation patterns 🡪 promote appropriate role models in education and the family e.g. fathers doing more domestic tasks.
* Also, challenging stereotyping in the media (over time, such actions will produce cultural change and gender equality will become the norm
Enlightenment project and its faith in progress:
1. Changes in socialisation and culture are gradually leading to more rational attitudes to gender and overcoming ignorance and prejudice
2. Political action to introduce anti-discriminatory laws and policies is steadily bringing about progress to a fairer society in which a person’s gender is no longer important
EV = Liberal feminists can be seen as a critique of functionalism 🡪 gender roles (Parsons), who distinguishes between instrumental (public sphere) and expressive roles (private sphere)
E.g In modern society, when women began to work and to prove themselves worthy of being able to do a man’s job – it actually made things harder – women were expected to do dual labour (work and household – paid and unpaid labour) 🡪 this is why we need more men branching out and helping with housework and childcare (Can argue that this does happen now, in western societies at least – must expand it across the globe - new man)
* Men and women are equally capable of performing roles in both spheres and that traditional gender roles prevent both men and women from living fulfilling lives
**Liberal feminism **recognises conflict between men and women, these are not seen as inevitable but merely a product of outdated attitudes
* Believe that women’s rights have come a long way and looks at it in an optimistic way – we have gained a lot of rights and we have been successful.
* Believes that women’s emancipation is a ‘win-win’ situation that will help men gain too (e.g. hegemonic masculinity vs subordinate masculinity – will allow men to express their feminine nurturing side, which current gender stereotypes force them to suppress
Describe and Evaluate Radicial Feminim
Radical feminism
1. Patriarchy: the rule of the father was the fundamental oppression within society and pre-dated capitalism and class oppression
Firestone: suggested that women would only be free when birth was done by machines she combined this with an idea of separation from women’s natural condition of difference and from men
* Exposed such oppressions as: rape, domestic violence, child sexual abuse
* Women must separate themselves from men, who’s desire is always to dominate women - knives, missiles and penises (all swords of the pig)
Greer: believe that women should drink their own menstrual blood, in order to prove that they are a woman
Firestone and Holt: believe that men are the enemy and the direct oppressors of women, 99% of men oppress women
Segregation: to stop men from being in contact with women, proved useful with women’s refuges e.g. domestic violence
Political lesbianism: becoming lesbians in order to avoid sleeping with the enemy
EV - cannot change someone’s sexuality, therefore lesbianism maybe an unrealistic solution
* Even though some solutions are unrealistic, they had influenced many women to stand up for themselves and to be more active; evident with various movements across the world such as *Pussy Riot in Russia and the tampax tax protests that occurred in London because sanitary products are not luxuries but are necessities *
*Women are not conforming to the gender norms that are put forward like not shaving frequently and not wearing make up *
EV - functionalists believe in the nuclear family and socialisation, equips the child with the necessities that are needed to socially conform to the societies norms and values
EV - Marxism believes that there is more of a class issue e.g. class exploitation
Explain the key ideas of radical feminism
- Emerged in the 70s, key concept is patriarchy **‘rule by fathers’ **– a society where men dominate women. They make the following claims:
- Patriarchy is universal: male domination of women exists in all known societies.
- Firestone: the origins of patriarchy lie in women’s biological capacity to bear and care for infants, since performing this role means they become dependent on males
- Patriarchy is the primary and most fundamental form of social inequality and conflict. The key division in society is between men and women. Men are women’s main enemy
- All men oppress all women. All men benefit from patriarchy – especially from women’s unpaid domestic labour and from their sexual services** (EV = Kingsley Davis)**
- Patriarchal oppression is direct and personal – occurs not only in the public sphere but also in the family (private)
- Radical feminists see the personal as political: all relationships involve power and they are political when one individual try to dominate another.
- Personal relationships between the sexes are therefore political because men dominate women through them – radical feminists refer to these power relationships as sexual politics; Has the effect of controlling all women e.g. Brownmiller: fear of rape is a powerful deterrent against women going out alone at night** (EV = Heidensohn, media and patriarchy – Islington crime survey – 54%) **
- Radical feminism also sheds new light on the nature of sexuality – mainstream sociology regards sexuality as a natural biological urge BUT radical feminists argue that patriarchy constructs sexuality so as to satisfy men’s desires e.g. women are portrayed in pornography as passive sex objects and penetration as the main source of sexual pleasure – creates unrealistic fantasies of men, who then coerce their partners to do stuff they are not comfortable with
Adrienne Rich: men force women into a narrow and unsatisfying ‘compulsory heterosexuality’, which becomes the only socially acceptable form of sexuality
Describe and Evaluate Marxist Feminism
Marxist feminism
1. Believe that gender and capitalism are interlinked, women produce the free labour force e.g. reproducing and socialising the next generation of labour force into the capitalist hierarchy
Ansley: ‘‘women are the takers of shit’’ - this is because women absorb their husbands anger and instead of revolting, they release their anger (built up by capitalism) upon their wives, causing a revolution to not occur (arguably working class women are affected more)
- Solution: to revolt, working class women are affected more by domestic violence, must address this
EV - revolution is not realistic, only occurred in Russia in 1917
Explain the key ideas of Marxist feminism
** Dismiss liberal feministview that women’s subordination is merely the product of stereotyping or outdated attitudes
Reject radical feminists **view that it is the result of patriarchal oppression by men
**Marxist feminists **see women’s subordination as rooted in capitalism.
* Individual men may benefit from women’s subordination, the main beneficiary is capitalism
* Women’s subordination in capitalist society results from their primary role as unpaid homemaker, which places them in a dependent economic position in the family.
* Their subordination performs a number of important functions for capitalism:
* Women are a source of cheap, exploitable labour: for employers.
* They can be paid less because it is assumed, they will be partially dependent on their husbands’ earnings
* Women are a reserve army of labour: that can be moved into the labour force during economic booms and out again at times of recession. They can be treated as marginal workers in this way because it is assumed their primary role is in the home
* Women reproduce the labour force: through their unpaid domestic labour, both by nurturing and socialising children to become the next generation of workers and by maintaining and servicing the current generation of workers – their husbands. They do this at no cost to capitalism (Benson)
* Women absorb anger: that would otherwise be directed at capitalism. Ansley describes wives as ‘takes of shit’ who soak up the frustration their husbands feel because of the alienation and exploitation they suffer at work.
* For Marxist Feminists, this explains male domestic violence against women. Men go to work and are tired and frustrated with their subordinate masculinity and subordinate roles/positions at work.
* They come home and instead of releasing their anger at their colleagues or at capitalism, they express it upon their wives – capitalism causes domestic violence** (EV = domestic violence happens in all classes and backgrounds)**
Describe and evaluate Dual-system feminism
- Have sought to combine the key features of Marxist and Radical feminism in a single theory
**An economic system – capitalism
A sex-gender system – patriarchy ** - Dual systems theorists such as Hartmann see capitalism and patriarchy as two intertwined systems that form a single entity ‘patriarchal capitalism’
- These theorists accept that patriarchy is universal, but they argue that patriarchy takes a **specific form in capitalist societies **
- To understand women’s subordination, we must look at the relationship between their position both in the domestic division of labour and in paid work e.g. domestic work limits women’s availability for paid work – but the lack of work opportunities drives many woman into marriage and economic dependence on a man (two systems reinforce each other)
Walby 🡪 Capitalism and patriarchy are inter-related. The interests of the two are not always the same. They collide over the exploitation of female labour. While capitalism demands** cheap female labour for its workforce, patriarchy resists this, wanting to keep women subordinated to men within the private, domestic sphere.
* In the long run capitalism is usually more powerful and so patriarchy adopts a strategy of segregation** instead: women are allowed into the capitalist sphere of paid work, but only in low status ‘women’s’ jobs, subordinated to men
EV = Walby’s approach is useful because it shows how the two system interact and structure one another, without assuming that their interests always coincide
Pollert: patriarchy is not actually a system in the same sense as capitalism, which is driven by its own internal dynamic for profit making. Patriarchy is merely a descriptive term for a range of practices such as male violence and control of women’s labour
Describe Heidensohn’s Theories
Heidensohn
* Found that women commit less crime due to the controls in society
* Home: dual labour; free childcare + cooking at home, while expecting to go to paid job and pay the bills. Domestic violence is also an issue.
-
Public: media overexaggerates sexual crimes.
e.g Islington Crime Survey found that 54% of women are scared to go out alone after dark in the fear of sexual and violent crimes - Work: maternity and paternity leave not equal, no equal pay. Glass ceiling; less women in the managerial world, the higher you go up in the work hierarchy, the less women you will see.
- Sexual harassment; male gaze is extended by the CCTV system and male teachers running into female headed classrooms if a fight breaks out
- Women are evidently blamed for being rape victims - comments on how much she had to drink, amount of make-up and dress code.
- Depending on their background, many men get away with rape e.g. Stanford rapist - upper class, white, prestigious university and good athlete
2014 Canadian Judge - in court asks rape victim ‘‘why couldn’t you have kept your legs closed?’’
Describe Carlen’s Theories
Carlen
* When it comes to courts, female offenders are judged not on their crime but on their role as a mother, wife etc. Found in her study on criminal women that CJS forces femininity upon females
* Working class women may commit more crime due to the frustration that they experience by being rejected by a movement that is supposed to represent them
Chesney-Lind: found that more women are branching out into crime but these are usually drug related crimes which link to prostitution, which is a key and very unliberated crime
Gender and class deals - shows that if society doesn’t provide than women will turn to crime, the society in a way pushes certain women to crime
Describe and Evaluate Difference Feminism
Difference feminism
* They want a universal feminism that represents all women from across the world.
* To them, radical and liberal feminism are only for middle class, white, western women but we need one that applies to all and deals with a more broad array of issues such as FGM and poverty etc.
Adichie: wrote a famous speech on feminism, being brought up in Nigeria and intellectual women like this are inspiring
Bell Hooks: argues that we need feminism for men also. Ever since colonialism, when the white man took charge of less developed countries, they viewed the black man to being inferior to the white man
e.g we are all women, we do not experience feminism in the same way e.g. others will experience gender barriers while others will experience racism, class barrier and gender
* For this reason we need a feminism that incorporates everything and everyone
* Inequalities within religion e.g. taboos with childbirth and menstruation, deemed as unclean and polluting, cannot touch holy script
e.g Victorian England - sex was only for the pleasure of the man and the wives had to obey
* Many feminists view the sex industry as degrading to women, strongly linked to sexual abuse and drug addiction
**EV **- many sex workers see themselves as independent women
- All the gender norms are ingrained and start from birth especially when it comes to primary socialisation, taught from a young age how to do gender e.g. boys encouraged to play rough and play outside, respect women and protect them while girls are taught how to be caring, cook and clean like their mother and to obtain the bedroom culture
Feminist researchers: have demonstrated how cultural and media products marketed to young audiences embody traditional attitudes towards gender and towards the sorts of aims and ambitions girls and boys are expected to have
Freud: saw women as men who lacked a penis and argued that they envied males for possessing one (penis envy theory)
Describe and evaluate postmodernist feminism
Judith Butler:
* Concerned with discourses and power/knowledge
* Discourses are ways of seeing, thinking, or speaking about something. The world is made up of many, often competing, discourses e.g. religious, scientific, medical, and artistic
* By enabling its users to define others in certain ways, a discourse gives power over those it defines e.g. by **defining childbirth as a medical condition **and healthy women as patients, medical discourse empowers doctors and disempowers women
Knowledge is power – the power to define or constitute the identities of others
E.G. Enlightenment project is a form of discourse
* Butler argues that the **Enlightenment ideals were simply a form of power/knowledge that legitimated the domination of western, white, middle-class males over other groups **– these supposedly universal ideals that claimed to apply to all humanity in reality excluded women, black people and other oppressed groups
- ALSO, the white, western, middle-class women who dominate the feminist movement have falsely claimed to represent **‘universal womanhood’ – feminists are wrong to believe they can adapt the Enlightenment project **so that it somehow includes all women – because women are not a single entity who all share the same ‘essence’
(EV = problems with essentialism – intersectionality – not all the same) - For poststructuralism, there is no fixed essence of what it is to be a woman because our identities are constituted through discourses, and because there are many different discourses in different times and cultures, there can be no fixed entity called ‘womanhood’ that is the same everywhere
- E.G. womanhood in Saudi Arabia is constituted partly by Islamic discourse, whereas in the Western world its mainly discourses of advertising and the media
- Butler argues that poststructuralism offers advantages for feminism – its enables feminists to ‘de-construct’ different discourses to reveal how they subordinate women – as in the medicalisation of childbirth
- Need to reject essentialism and by stressing the diversity of discourses, poststructuralism recognises and legitimates the diversity of women’s lives and struggles, rather than prioritising some and excluding others
EV = they offer a theoretical basis for recognising the diversity of women’s experiences and struggles against oppression
EV = Walby 🡪 agrees that there are differences among women, but she argues that there are also important similarities – they are all faced with patriarchy e.g. compared with men, women face a greater risk of low pay, domestic violence, and sexual assault
EV = celebrating difference may have the effect of dividing women into an infinite number of sub-groups, thereby weakening feminism as a movement for change
**EV = Segal **🡪 criticises poststructuralist feminism for abandoning any notion of real, objective socials structures. Oppression is not just the result of discourses – how we think and speak about women, it is about real inequality. Feminists should therefore continue to focus on the struggle for equality of wealth and income
Describe and Evaluate Walby’s Theories
Walby’s Theory of patriarchy:
- Understanding capitalism and patriarchy
- Together: housework limits women’s public life (including work), whilst limits on women’s public equality (such as unequal pay and promotion) reinforces their primacy in housework, and leads women to value a husbands higher earnings
- Historically we’ve moved from a system of private to public patriarchy and contemporary public patriarchy consists of 6 structures:
1. Paid employment
2. Household production
3. Culture
4. Sexuality
5. Violence
6. The state - Private patriarchy is based upon household production as the main site of women’s oppression
- Private patriarchy uses a strategy of excluding women from public life, public patriarchy by contrast, works by segregating and subordinating them within the public sphere
- Public patriarchy is based principally in public sites such as employment and the state’’ (Walby)
- Even if you set out to have an equal relationship, different opportunities for men and women often lead to choices being made that reproduce gendered divisions of labour - especially when choosing partners and bringing up children (and now with elder care)
Criticism
Anna Pollert: abstract structuralism, a static form of system theory
* Walby analysis is too structural - it is not embedded in an empirical, micro-sociological study of lived experience *i.e. women’s experiences of home, work, sex etc.
Heidi Gottfried: gender must be analysed in lived experience in order to dissolve the static opposition of capitalism and patriarchy. Mutually constituting terms mean that there are no ungendered class relations and no gender without class dimensions
What gender theories are patriarchal and focus on men e.g. Functionalism
Kingsley Davis: prostitution is okay because it acts as a safety valve, for the family
Murray: believes that single mother households breed deviance
Marxism: picks up on how capitalism is a ‘‘dog eat dog’’ system that thrives competition among men
Foucault: when talking about power and the body, addresses a man (androcentrism)
Oakley: distinguished between sex and gender and asserted that gender is a social construct
Butler: stated that gender is what we do, not what we are. We all put on a gender performance
Gender is a social construct - within the Victorian era, pink was the colour symbolising a new born boy, exacerbating that we as a society created a stereotypical boy and girl, attaching colours and toys etc. to the gender
Bowlby - **maternal deprivation **- not adequate socialisation (women should go back home after the second world war)
1,500 nurseries opened during world war 2 - allowing women to work
Describe Connell’s Theories
Connell:
* Men’s interest in patriarchy is condensed in hegemonic masculinity
* Assumed that masculinity is a natural, biological state that cannot be altered (it is actually an** acquired identity**)
* **Hegemonic vs subordinate masculinity **(class, ethnicity distinction?)
* Men reap significant benefits from maintaining dominance over women, their general interest and investment in patriarchy is formidable
Globalisation - *media glamorises the hegemonic ideal through its adulation of ruthless billionaire entrepreneurs and fighting fit, contact-sports stars
Describe Hook’s Theories
Bell Hooks
* White women do not experience the same intersectionality of oppressive forces as black women, so may not recognise them
* White women do not wish to be seen as unfeminine (a fear of breaking away from patriarchy’s gender roles)
* White women have a vested interest in exploiting class and race privileges, so they can be freed from dirty work
* Capitalism values money more than people, so the wealthy are seen as more important than the poor (**imperialism and colonialism **also remain relevant because historically, non-white peoples and their countries resources have been plundered and exploited by white supremacist capitalists in their pursuit of wealth )
* Cannot dismantle patriarchy as long as we are in collective denial about its impact on our lives
* Women in lower class and poor groups, particularly black women, would not define women’s liberation as equality with men, because men in their groups are also exploited and oppressed - they too lack social, political and economic power
* Women with multiple social privileges may see a situation as demonstrating just one form of oppression, rather than the intersectionality of many different types of oppression - may be due to ignorance
* Feminism is a political movement, not a romantic notion of personal freedom
Describe and evaluate difference/Black feminism
- All feminist perspectives we have examined so far assume that all women share a similar situation and similar experience of oppression 🡪 ethnocentricity of other feminisms, blamed with essentialism
- Different feminists do not see women as a single homogeneous group – argue that middle class and working-class women, white and black women, lesbian and heterosexual women have very different experiences of patriarchy, capitalism, racism, homophobia and so on
- Feminist theory has claimed a** ‘false universality’ **for itself – claimed to be about women, but in reality it was about the experiences of white, western, heterosexual, middle-class women e.g. by seeing the family only as a source of oppression, white feminists have neglected black women’s experience of racial oppression – many black feminists view the black family positively as a source of resistance against racism
- Western beauty regimes have now damaged many women across the world. They are coercing and encouraging women who do not fit the** ‘Western beauty ideal’ **to change their traditions to be deemed beautiful – e.g. black women straightening their hard and Asian women getting surgery to widen their eyes
- They want a** universal feminism that represents all women from across the world. To them, radical and liberal feminism are only for middle class, white, western women but we need one that applies to all and deals with a broader array of issues such as FGM and poverty** etc.
Bell Hooks: argues that we need feminism for men also. Ever since colonialism, when the white man took charge of less developed countries, they viewed the black man to being inferior to the white man
* Evidently, even though we are all women, we do not experience feminism in the same way e.g. others will experience gender barriers while others will experience racism, class barrier and gender. For this reason we need a feminism that incorporates everything and everyone
Calhoun and Nicholson: described as difference feminists recognise that women’s experiences of family life varies depending on their type of household. They are critical of feminist perspectives that overlook the simple point
Describe Oakley’s Theories and Study
Oakley **
* Housework is directly opposed to self-actualisation
* Housework in capitalist and patriarchal societies is exploitative because it is low status work that is assumed to come naturally to women – because it offers little opportunity for creativity or self-fulfilment
* Oakley in 1974 undertook one of the first feminist sociological studies into domestic labour when she interviewed 40 London housewives between the ages of 20-30, all of whom had at least one child under five.
Findings:
* Housework should be understood as a job and not a natural extension of a woman’s role as a wife or mother
* Women are compelled to engage in domestic duties for no wages (exploitation**)
* Domestic duties have often been regarded as natural for women due to their ability to give birth
* It does not occur to most women to demand wages for the work they give for free - ideology serves to disguise this fact by presenting housework as natural for women and not worthy of a wage
* Oakley insists that the majority of housewives are dissatisfied with their lot, finding nothing inherently satisfying about their work, which is lonely, monotonous, and boring
* Women report feelings of alienation from their work more frequently than factory workers; this is due in part to their sense of social isolation as housewives – many of them had careers before marriage which they subsequently gave up; have no autonomy or control; responsibility for the work is theirs alone and if it is not done they risk an angry husband or sick children
How do feminists examine the family and how this impacts women?
Family: key site of welfare; has explored the extent to which families remain the main source of care of children and older people and in particular, highlighted how much of this care is provided by women.
* Feminism has exposed the ways in which the traditional family of a married heterosexual couple and children has been privileged over and devalued other ways of living such as lone parent and gay and lesbian families
* The implications for social policy of the questioning of the public-private divide: it has translated a number of issues deemed ‘private’ into legitimate concerns of public policy, domestic violence is a prime example.
* It has turned the spotlight on the impact of public policies and practices on relations within the family e.g. a range of public policies, including childcare and social security, affect mothers’ access to an independent income
