Definition of Sociology

Old-time Definition Socius (Latin): companion;

-ology (Greek): the study of
Textbook Definition The study of group life & the aspects of individual
lives shaped by social interaction & social group
*Assume: Humans are social creatures

Scientific Method of Sociology (Process of Sociological Research)

Social Life Question

Theories
Hypothesis
Qualitive (describe social life using words): Make observations
interviews (focus group/individuals), field work
(ethnography)
Quantitative (number to describe social life):
survey; obtrusive measures
Use systematic procedures Analyze our data
Report to your Peers Conclusions
- Harriet Martineau – founding mother of sociology “the powers of observations must be trained”

Features of science as the way of knowing:

- Reliance on data
- Use procedures to control error
- Standard of publicness
- Purposeful Skepticism

Sociological Conclusion is always probabilistic not deterministic.

Mid 1800s

- Marx & Engels on Class: Your relations to the ownership of the means to production (factory workers
or owner of factory)
1. Proletariat: worker class; sell labor for wages
2. Bourgeoisie: owning class; profit from the labor of others

Early 1900s

- Weber on Class: classes share lifestyle & life chances

- Veblen on Class: conspicuous consumption

*Class: position within the society

Today Definition on Class: Socioeconomic status (SES): education, occupation, income & wealth

Definition of Social Structure (Allan & Johnson) – organized social relationships that connects people to social &
social systems to one another

 Social system: group (couple  global economy)

  Relationship: not concrete, cannot touch
 Building blocks of social structure:
o Status: a position within a social system
 Ascribed status: places upon by others usually at; what is written or given at birth
 Achieved status: status that you have to do something to get
 Master status: one status that overrides all the other status
o Role: all social expectations (for behavior appearance thought & emotion) attached to a position
relative to other position

Statification:

- Stat: layer or rocks (geology); -ification: to make

- structure & systematic inequalities of condition opportunities & outcomes that persist overtime
(generation)
- Hierarchial social structure

Goodies
People

- Jen’s Definition: social inequalities that are stubborn as rock

- Examples: Race, Class Gender, Nation

Military Corporations

Power Elites

Government

Thesis Fm. Roots of Inequality: “Inequality is created (thefts – land; extortion; exploitation-forced labor) &
reproduced by institutionalizing (relationships – explioting gp., working gp., collaborating gp.; practices – rules
of the game; process – racialization, gendering, a.k.a. the social construction of race & gender) imbalanced
(class, race, gender & etc.) flow of social valued resources (money, land, tools, animals, knowledge, skills,
credentials, respect & confidence).”

“Inequality is an accomplishment.” – Michael Schwalbe

CAPTURING THE STATE

- WHO MAKES THE RULE, __________________________ , ____________________________

Culture (Anderson & Taylor): the complex of meaning & behavior that make up a way of life for a given group

Example:

Bandanna Gang Symbol Table Cloth Whiteboard Eraser Facemask

Fashion Moon lighting Handkerchief Napkin Gap

Ann Swidler: uses the metaphor a toolbox to explain culture provides shortcuts to meanings, which results in us
taking our understandings of the world for granted

Ethnocentrism: a byproduct of culture; views that your culture as the only or best way

“THAT’S JUST WRONG!”

ELEMENTS OF CULTURE

- SYMBOL: are the basic building blocks of culture; something that means something, a tiny piece of
meaning
- LANGUAGE: a complex symbol system designated for communication

HEAD

- BELIEF: idea considered to be true or real by a given group

- VALUES: ideas seen as socially desirable w/in a gp. (Ex. Family & Money)
o Ideas that rank things in term of social desirability

WORLD

- NORMS: expected behavior that is enforced b/ social consequences informal rules for behavior
(Ex. Never sit down while others sit down when in a classroom; laws)
- MATERIAL CULTURE: stuff human makes (Ex. Clothes, Book)

BODY: emotion produced by culture

- ATTITUDE: culture feelings/emotions (Ex. Cricket casseroles – delicious but if you know then you won’t
eat it culturally)

Recipe for Social Inequality

Distribution of Social Goodies Cultural Ideology

Top:
- Get to use drinking fountain
- Use playground equipment
- 5 extra mins. of recess
- 2nds for lunch & get to go to lunch first
- Gets the teacher’s praise
- Social segregation
Belief Statement:
- Top = Better, learn faster
- Bottom = wasteful, slower, naughty &
fight a lot
Stereotype creation through selective example.
Status Symbol = collar
*Belief, values, norms, attitudes & material
culture  justify unequal distribution of
resources & make it seems acceptable
*Resistance is use as an example of inferiority
Cultural Ideology: cultural elements (belief, values, norms, attitudes, material culture) that fn. to justify
inequality by making inequality seems natural, appropriate, normal, acceptable, & legitimate.

Power: the ability to make what you want to make happen, even in the face of resistance

- Depends on ability to ability to get other’s - Can get peoples’ emotions (especially
cooperation: Incr. coop. = Incr. power fear & anger)
- Need symbolic resources to be able to - Need access to larger network of
shape ability communication
- Need material resources to shape reality - Get coop. to define reality
- Need skills & resources to shape other’s - Punishment & rewards
beliefs & feelings
“Power requires access to major institutions.” C. Wright Mills

If you do not have (distributive) power over, then the power you have is collective power (power over the
masses).

- Distributive Power: the ability of a group or social class within a community or nation to be successful
in conflicts with its rivals in issues of concern to it
- Collective Power: a community or nation has the capacity to perform effectively in pursuing it common
goals
o technological resources
o organizational forms
o population size
o common spirits

*DEPOLITICALIZATION (to make unpolitical) OPPOSITE OF POLITICALIZATION (to make politicalized)

4 Power Network

1. Special interest process = narrow policy concerns (ex. Lobbyist)

2. Policy planning process = general interest of corporate community (ex. Thinktank)
3. Opinion shaping process = public opinion (ex. News)
4. Candidate selection process = concerned with the election of politician (Ex. $)

Organizational Network: consists of relationships among organization, determined by their common member

- Also consist of people socially interact w. each other which develop in social organization

Interpersonal relationship: reveals the relationship among individual , as determined by their common
organizational affiliate

- “By determining the names that overlap on two or more these lists, it would be possible to determine
which of these organizations are part if the same social network.”

Cooperation: gp. of individual working together for return; great wealth and profit hungry

- Birth: the association of people charter by the state for a specific function
- Purpose: serve for the public good; civil war & industrial revolution
  Corporate lawyer wants more profit & use the 14th Amendment (used to protect
slaves)
 States that corporation is a group of people. Thus, it is a legal person. (THEY DO
NOT HAVE A SOUL.)
- INCAPABLE OF EXPERIENCING GUILT: harm to worker; harm to human health; harm to animal/habitat
destruction; harm to dangerous products)
1. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886): grants corporation rights of a person
2. Taft-Hartley Act (1947): makes it hard to form union; no sympathy strikes; petition NLRIS; + 1/2 workers
need to vote; rather than ½ voters
3. Buckley v. Valeo (1976): $=money
4. Citizen United v. Federal Election Commission (2010): corporation give unlimited amts. to political action
committee – Keep ID a secret
5. McCurcheon et. Al v. Federal Election Comission (2014): unlimited amt. individuals can spend on any
amt. total on an election
6. Janus v. AFSCME (2018): public union can charge mandatory fee union does

3 Indicator of Power

WHO GOVERNS? Wealthy Rich People; those who has the most of what people want

WHO WINS? Those who occupy important institutional position

WHO BENEFITS? Who successfully initiates, modifies or vetoes policy alternatives

VOTER ID LAWS – need govt. issued photo IDs; specific groups less likely to have one

FELONY DISENFRANCHISMENT – if you’re convicted of a felony, you can’t vote; removes poor & brown folks
from democracy

RULES AROUND VOTERS REGRISTRATION & VOTING – when? & how?; what if we had a national holiday?

GERRYMANDERING/DISTRICTING – how you draw the lines of a district to increase the likelihood of certain
outcome (Ex. Prison gerrymandering used to increase votes)

“REVOLVING DOOR”

CORPORATION DOOR
DOOR GOVERNMENT

- Monsanto -FDA

Researching Before Elections

 - Consult trustworthy new sources (Ex. SJ Inside)
- Consult w/ organization you support (Ex. Sacred Heart) you trust to be knowledgeable a specific issue or
that align your values
- Attend League of Women panels w/ candidates or other candidate panel
- Research who is endorsing the candidate
- Research who is funding the campaign
- https://ballotpedia.org/Main_Page

What is Politics?

Politics = struggles to protect, resist or transform existing power relations

1. Art or science of govt.

2. The exercise of power
3. The process of making decisions that apply

Ways of Being Political

1. Community Organizing: the process of developing of a culture of solidarity of people bring people
together to identify & study the problem that affect them & the work together to find the solutions
to those problems
2. Advocacy: postcards to nonvoters; write to your representatives (www.democracy.io)
3. Service Delivery: volunteering with community organization
4. Direct Action: large group engaging in legal or/and illegal action

IMPORTANT DATES

- 1450: Printing Press  Mass Literacy (Public Schooling); Protestant Reformation: individual read the
bible themselves instead of the pope
- 1462: Columbus/European Discontiguous Colonialism
- 1700-1720: Industrial Revolution (people moving from the agricultural life to suburban/city factories)
- 1770-1800: Political Philosophy
- 1838: 1st Birthday of Sociology
1. August Comte coins the term “sociology” – use the same science principles to study nature
2. Harriet Martineau’s how to observe morals & manners – need for attitude of sympathy w/
- 1840s: Communism Manifesto
- 1859: Darwin’s Origin of the Species
- 1865: American Social Science Association
- 1868: Railroad (Chicago is the center of railroad.)
- 1874: The Study of Sociology
- 1876: Phone Call
- 1877: Record Player
- 1879: Lightbulb allows us to work all the time
- 1885: Car was invented.
- 1890: First Introduction to Sociology
- 1892: 2nd Birthday of Sociology
 First Ph.D. program of sociology at University of Chicago (75% immigrants b/c Chicago was the center of
trading)
- 1903: Airplane was invented.
- 1905: American Sociological Society  American Sociological Association

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) (Capitalism - 1848) – “Men make their own history but not circumstances of their
choosing.”

- He was primarily an analyst/critic of capitalism.

Capitalism: a system of wage labor & commodity production for profit rather than for the immediate need of
producer; profit is surplus valve & is tied to exchange in the market

Rational Capitalism: based on mass production of the commodities of everyday life, in contrast to booty
capitalism (sell only to the rich people) based on luxury trade (George Ritzer)

- Relies on steady accumulation of small gains while booty capitalism relied oneshot greedy maximization
of profit (George Ritzer)

Rationalization: a process of social life that emphasizes (1) calculability (ability to count); (2) efficiency; (3)
predictability; (4) substitution of non-human for human technology

 MODERNITY

W.E.B. DuBois (1868 – 1963): studies race & race relation

- Witness Jim Crow Segregation + saw the civil rights movement

- First African American to receive Ph.D. from Harvard
- Activist all his life, cofounded NAACP in 1910

*Double-consciousness

1. How you view yourself

2. How others view you if their view is negative

HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE THE PROBLEM?

Jane Addam (1860 – 1935):

*1889: Hull House founded before the Ph.D.

- They have their own school. (classes for mother’s sanitation; research)
- An activist, piece activist of NAACP
- Most famous person in America (Newspaper: has bronchitis)
- Had meetings with the president

DUBOIS & ADDAMS: has been surveillance by the govt.  “Politics is housekeeping on the grand scale.”

Critiques of Patriarchy: Society where men dominate

 1. What are the critiques of patriarchy?
- Fondness of fighting: military budget investing in military instead of education
- Careless around the house: lack of health & safety regulations in industry
- Business Profit over Human Life
- Unfamiliar with Children: Child labor
- Recklessness with Human Life
- Revenge & Punishment: Spend $ on mass incarnation budget instead of education

How is Stratification maintained?

- Institutionalized discrimination
- Cultural Ideology
 Rules to rig the game

Othering: How does it work?

- Define not human: arbitrary characteristics

- Distribute unequal resources

John Zannikos Juan Peralta

- Network of citizens - Latino
- White - Send $ money back home: Remittance
- Married a Puerto Rican American Citizen - Does not marry a citizen
(gave him citizen)

Immigration Dates – Immigration has always been racialized (A little Better in 1956)

- 1790: Naturalization – only “free white person” can be naturalized

- 1882: Chinese Exclusion Act
- 1886: Welcome All
- 1891: Polygamist disease
- 1901: Exclude Anarchist
- 1913: Alien Land Act (support white supremist)
- 1924: Border Patrol Emergency Quote Act (only from N. Euro.)
- 1934: Filipino citizenship were strip from them
- 1954: Operation Wetback
- 1965: Quote Repeal
- 1986: Amnesty from Reagan
- 1990: Immigration Act – have economic elites come; 18% of immigrants
- 2001: 9/11 Homeland Security – immigration & naturalization services (criminalize immigrants)

Sex – the biological apparatus that determines whether a creature is male/female/intersex

 Hormone balance
 Chromosome: XX, XY, X0, XXY, XYY
 Secondary sex characteristics: breast; voice (pitch); facial hair What you get at puberty
 Primary sex characteristics: reproductive organs
Gender – all of the social baggage attached to the sex categories in a given society

Masculinities, Femininities, Trans Identities

- “Gender is thus not a property of individuals, some ‘thing’ one has but specific set of behaviors that are
produced in specific situation.” – Michael Kimmel

The social construction of gender – the differences between men and women are produced primarily by social
movement rather than biology

3 Kind of Evidence

1. Historical Variation
2. Cross-cultural Variation
3. Social Engagement of Difference

Patriarchy: a society that

1) male-dominated (position of authority occupied primarily by men),

2) male-centered (cultural attention focuses on men activities),

3) masculine identity (masculinity overlaps with what is generally culturally valued)

a) Hegemonic masculinity: power through culture, using culture to secure the consent of the
oppress

what we hegemonic emphasized

valued masculinity femininity

Historical Variation

- 12000 BCE – Settled Agriculture – Class Emerges

- 4000 BCE – Militarized Empire – Patriarchy
- 1500 BCE – Colonialism – White Supremacy

Meritocracy – the rule of/by ability or effort; a social system in which status is achieved through ability & effort
(merit) rather than ascribed on the basis of age, class, gender, race or other inherited advantages; the term
implied that the meritorious deserved any privileges which they accrued

What is a social movement?

Sociologists Doug McAdam and David Snow define a social movement as "a collectivity acting with some degree
of organization and continuity outside of institutional channels for the purpose of promoting or resisting
change in the group, society or world order of which it is a part." In William Gamson’s terms, social movements
are those who “don’t play by the rules” of democracy; a challenging group has to organize itself and demands a
change its members can’t provide.

Everyone has two forms of power to make change:

- Masses: our ability to get together with other people and work collaboratively
 o One of the core strategies that social movements use to get people to work together is
called community organizing. Community organizing is the process of developing a culture
of solidarity, of bringing people together to identify and study the problems that affect them
and then work together to find solutions to those problems; it is the process of building
relationships first and foremost. Community organizing begins with one-on-one meetings
between activists and someone they want to recruit to action.
- Disruption: the ability to bring normal activities to a halt.
o Imagine if 500 students chained themselves to the furniture in the Administration
building. Would the people who run the college be able to do their work? Disruption is the
single most effective tool that social movements have to force people in power to make
changes. But it is most effective under two conditions:

When is disruption most effective:

1. Disrupts the TARGET (people who can meet your demands or change the rules of the game you are
trying to change)

- As shutting down a major bridge--but that disruption affects bystanders rather than people in
power. Sometimes social movements disrupt the target but they do so in ways that the wider public
disapprove of--such as when animal rights activists destroy medical labs where animal testing takes
places.

- Doug McAdams argues that disruptive strategies are most effective when they are new. He calls
these tactical innovations—the discovery or rediscovery of new forms of protest that spread quickly
and mobilize many people.

- William Gamson: disruption is most effective when it is organized, meaning that the goals are
carefully thought out and limited, that the strategies are carefully planned to maximize the
likelihood of achieving the goals and that there is an organizational structure that can implement
this careful planning.

2. Is perceived as MORALLY LEGITIMATE by wider publics

Why people join social movements:

a. They perceive a critical mass already involved

b. They are already in a group of some kind
c. They know some personally who is involved  more likely to join if they already know someone
involved.
d. They are structurally available: certain groups of people whose time is more flexible and who
are in a position in society that makes social movement participation less risky for
them. Students, especially those at universities, are often structurally available because their
families may not dependent on their income and because they can structure their time in ways
that allow them to engage in social movement activities.

Social movements will try to recruit people who are already involved in groups. Aldon Morris calls this internal
organization and Jo Freeman calls this "pre-existing communications networks"--these are groups where people
are already getting together with one another and have relationships of accountability and trust with one
another. In Aldon Morris' research on the civil rights movements, churches and schools were forms of internal
organization for the movement. Many civil rights activists came out of churches and schools where the
community could use peer pressure to encourage wide involvement. In Jo Freeman's research on the women's
movement, she found that consciousness raising groups created communication networks out of which social
movement organizations could develop. She found that organizers tried to recruit from co-optable networks: “A
co-optable network, then, is one who members have had common experiences that predispose them to be
receptive to the particular new ideas of the incipient movement and who are not faced with structural or
ideological barriers to action.”

Why do social movements arise?

Discontent with social conditions is constant, but that discontent doesn't always lead to the rise of a social
movement. Sociologists have pinpoint certain kinds of conditions that can facilitate the rise of social movement:

1. Large scale structural conditions, such as demographic shifts, industrialization, urbanization, the
development of the printing press and the rise of mass media, or the internet
2. Openings in political opportunity: This can come about because changes in political alignments or alliances,
the success of earlier social movements, conflicting and infighting among elites, new access to elites or new
signs of elite support, or a decline in repression
3. External resources such as money, knowledge, media, labor, solidarity, legitimacy and external support
4. A crisis that lights a spark to existing discontent

As you watch the film snippet, look for any of these concepts in action.

Social movements in action

If you have never participated in a social movement, I think the best way to understand how they work is to see
them in action. There are hundreds of documentaries on social movements that are worth watching (and I
suggested a whole bunch of them in the announcement from last week with suggestions for extra credit
opportunities), but here we will watch a snippet that I would have shown in class had I not ended up in the
hospital. :) This snippet will give you a good feel for how disruption operates. When a social movement disrupts
a target, the target will try to find ways to end the disruption or undermine the social movement. As you watch
this film, pay attention to and take notes on

 their goals--what *specific* goals do the activists in Birmingham want?

o Change discrimination laws (end segregation)
o To have the same equal rights as right & to become a citizen
 the target--who can meet the activists' demands?
o Government/Local Officials
 the strategies activists use to try to achieve their goals and why
o Had demonstrations & got arrested
o Black community did not support them and did not have enough $
o MLK led a demonstration & went to jail
 do the strategies disrupt the *target* and do they have moral legitimacy? Why or why not?
o Yes (white clergy said MLK is a troublemaker) – but it did not seem legitimate at that time
 People of the black community did not see it was necessary at that time
o MLK wrote in responds in jail on the margin of the newspaper
o Demonstration lost supporter
o Got the (700) children involve by taking them out of school b/c children have no economic
threat in the fail (but was taken to Birmingham jail)
 how the target and various other local parties respond to each of the strategies
o Keep power by running for Mayor
o Police tried to stop the demonstrator by bringing dogs
o Firemen were brought and they were sprayed with water to stop demonstrator (with enough
force to knock down a tree)

*Gain national attention on new by shocking the American public (explain a cause to the general
public)  became worried about their image in other parts of the world

*Governor George Wallace – does not care because they provide aid to other country

 what is the back and forth between activists and officials/police

o Demonstration & Jail
 the outcomes of the activism--what happens? Do activists get concessions out of the target?
o Both  truce & reach settlement (end segregation-on lunch counters)
o Friday May 10th an agreement was reach with the business community
o KKK – cause bomb
o Govt. brought police to beat the blacks (& in respond, black set fire to several building)
o JFK – went in & ended this violence; push for new civil right bill
 Cause a march (people went to Washington, DC)
 Aug 28, 1963: 2000 gather for the symbolic march
 what is the role of violence and nonviolence in what ultimately happens?
o Role of nonviolence: cause disruption and cause national attention
o Role of violence: saw that side was not fair and brought shame to them