SOC*1100 FINAL EXAM SUMMARY

Chapter 1: The sociological Perspective

-Pg. 4- Sociology: Is the systematic study of human society – it is the heart of sociology

Seeing the General in the Particular

-Peter Berger=The Sociological perspective is seeing the general in particular. -

Sociologists identify general patterns in the behavior of particular individuals. -Society acts
differently on various categories of people (children vs. adults, women vs. men, poor vs. rich)

Pg. 5- The sociological perspective reveals the initially strange idea that society shapes what we think do.

Seeing Society in our Every Day Lives

Pg. 7 Emile Durkheim: Men, Protestants, wealthy people and unmarried had higher suicide rates than women,
Catholics and Jews, the poor and married people. He explained that differences in the terms of social integrations:
Categories of people with strong ties had low suicide rates, and more individualistic categories of people had high
suicide rates. Men had much more freedom than woman but freedom weaken social tires which increases the risk
of suicide. Likewise, more individualistic Protestants were more likely to commit suicide than the traditional Catholic
and Jews who encourage stronger social ties. The higher rate of suicide amongst men is the result of their greater
affluence and autonomy (less social integration. Highest rates are in Quebec and NWT where marriage rates are low
and Yukon with high divorce rates.

The Importance of a Global Perspective

Pg. 8 – Global perspective: The Study of the larger world and our society’s place in it. I.e. exportation of goods
between US and Canada.

High Income Countries: are the nations with the highest overall standards of living. 72 countries including Canada,
US, Argentina, South Africa, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia. They produce most of the world’s goods and
services and have most of the wealth.

Middle Income Countries: Nations with a standard of living about average for the world as a whole.
70 Nations including Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Low-Incomee Countries: Nations with a low standard of living in which most people are poor: 53 nations of the
world which include Asia, Africa. Very few are very rich and most struggle to find safe housing and water.

Pg. 9 – C. Wright Mills – Power of “sociological imagination” – Society rather than personal failure is the main cause
of poverty and other social problems. By turning personal problems into public issues, the sociological imagination
brings people together to press for needed change.

Consequences of Global Wealth and Poverty: Comparisons between North America and Other World Regions.

1. Where we live shapes the lives we lead: i.e. women living in rich and poor countries have different-sized
families because of where they live.
2. Societies through the world are increasingly interconnected: i.e. transmission of sound, pictures,
documents travel the world in second and music and dance influence the regions.
 3. Pg. 10- Many of the Social problems we face in Canada are far more serious elsewhere: i.e. Poverty in
Canada is serious however other countries such as Africa, Latin America and Asia it is much more common.
I.e. Gender equality.
4. Thinking Globally helps us learn more about ourselves: Comparing life in various settings leads to
unexpected lessons. I.e. squatter settlements in India, Madras reveals people who thrive off of love and
support of family despite poverty.
Summary: Sociology is an invitation to learn new ways of looking at the world.

Applying the Sociological Perspective pg. 10

1. Sociology is at work guiding many of the laws and policies that shape our lives
2. Individual level – leads to important personal growth and awareness
3. Preparation for the world of work

Sociology and Personal Growth pg. 11

Sociology benefits in four ways:

1. The Sociological perspective helps us assess the truth of “common sense”: Sociology approach encourages
us to ask whether common beliefs are true and to what extent they aren’t.
2. The Sociological perspective helps us see the opportunities and constraints in our lives: Sociology helps
size up the world so we can pursue our goals more effectively.
3. The Sociological perspective empowers us to be active participants in our society: We see how society
affects us, we may support society s it is or we may set out to change it.
4. The Sociological perspective helps us live in a diverse world: The Sociological perspective encourages us to
think critically about the relative strengths and weaknesses of all ways of life.

Origins of Sociology pg. 12

Social Change and Sociology

1. A New Industrial Economy: Moving from manual labour (Toiled) to industrialization resulting in weakening
traditions
2. The Growth of Cities: Enclosure movement – Landowners fenced off more and more farmland to create
grazing arears for sheep for a source of wool. Without land, they moved to cities to work in factories.
3. Political Change: As cities grew, god’s will came under spirited attack. I.e. the French Revolution was a break
for social and political tradition which was “nothing short of the regeneration of the human race” Freedoms
of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms state:
a. Freedom of conscience and religion
b. Freedom of thought, believe, opinion, and expression including freedom of the press, and other
media communications
c. Freedom of peaceful assembly
d. Freedom of association.

Science and Sociology pg. 12-13

August Compte: Coined the term sociology in 1838 as the new way of looking at society. He saw sociology as a
product of a three stage historical development.

1. Theological Stage: beginning of human history to end of European Middle Ages – Society expressed God’s
will
 2. Metaphysical Stage: Renaissance Age - People saw history as a natural rather than supernatural system.
Society reflected not the perfection of God so much as failings of a selfish human nature.
3. Scientific Stage: Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Compte- Study the physical world to the study of society.

Positivism: Compte approach – way of understanding based on science.

Canadian Sociology: Distinctive Touches pg. 13

Began in early part of the twentieth century

1913- Canadian Political Science Association was formed and accepted sociologists as members
1920- Sociology courses offered in a number of disciplines
1960- Sociology had its own department at UofT
Harold Innis – Staples Thesis (Fur Trade in Canada – 1930)Canadian economic development depended on
resource extraction and exportation

Pg. 14 Marshall McLuhan – Media Theorist 1960s and 70s – Foresaw the impact of electronic communication on
culture, politics, counties and personal identities.

- Barry Wellman carried on Innis and Wellman study of community and communication. He studied the impact of
computers and internet on organizations.
- John Porter – Canada’s leading sociologist. His book The Vertical Mosaic laid the ground work for the focus on
Canadian Society in the context of Development and under Development.
- Erving Goffman- pioneered micro-analysis – study of face-to-face interaction. He argued that maintenance of the
social world requires each individual to play his own part.
- Dorothy Smith – at UofBC taught one of the first women’s studies courses across Canada. Feminist inspired by Karl
Marx. Founded feminist standpoint theory. Developed ”sociology for women”.
- Raymond Breton – UofT world renown expert on ethnocultural and immigrant communities (Linguistics, Quebec
Nationalism, multiculturalism

Sociological Theory – pg. 15

Theory – Statement of how and why specific facts are related. It explains the job of sociological behavior in the real
world. Include two questions: 1) what issues should we study and how should we connect the facts.

Theoretical Approach: Vision of society as stable and orderly. Basic image of society that guides thinking and
research. Sociologists use three major theoretical approaches:

Macro level:

Structural-Functional Approach – Framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system who’s parts
work together to promote solidarity and stability
Social Structure – relative stable pattern of social behavior. i.e. give our lives shape in families, workplace,
classroom
Social Functions - Consequences of any social pattern for operation of society as a whole. I.e. handshake,
religious rituals.

Compte/Durkheim: we need to keep society unified when many traditions break down.

Pg. 16 - Herbert Spencer – Compared society to the human body

 Robert K. Merton – Social Structure has many functions:
Manifest functions: Recognized and intended consequences of any social pattern
Latent functions: Unrecognized and unintended consequences of any social pattern
Social dysfunction: Any social pattern that may disrupt the operation of society

1) Social-Conflict Approach – Framework for building theory that sees society as an arena of inequality that
generates conflict and change. Factors include social class, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, money
power, education etc. This approach looks at ongoing conflict between dominant and disadvantaged
categories of people. All theoretical approaches have political consequences. Note: Karl Marx helped
develop this approach.

Pg. 17 - Feminism and Gender-Conflict Approach

Gender-conflict approach: point of view that focuses on inequality and conflict between women and men.
Feminism: Advocacy of social equality for women and men. Harriet Martineau was the first woman sociologist (802-
1876)

Race-Conflict Approach: a point of view that focuses on inequality and conflict between people of different racial
and ethnic categories.
White people have numerous social advantages over visible minorities including higher income, schooling
and health.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois – First visible minority to receive doctorate from Harvard

MICRO Level

The Symbolic-Interaction Approach –pg. 18. Framework for building theory that sees society as the product of the
everyday interactions of individuals.
Macro-level orientation: A broad focus on social structures that shape society as a whole (the bigger picture)
Micro-level orientation: A close-up focus on social interaction in specific situations (street level). i.e. how
pedestrians observe the homeless on the street
Max Weber claim that people’s beliefs and values shape society is basis of the social-interaction approach.
Society is nothing more than a shared reality that people construct as they interact with one another.
Reality is how we define our surrounding, our obligations towards others and even our own identities.

2) Postmodern Approach: Is critical of modernism, with a mistrust of grand theories and ideologies that can
have either a micro or macro orientation.

Postmodernists seek to observe other societies without applying the conceptual baggage of their
own. Observe with a goal of achieving understanding and a vision rather than collection data.

Applying Approaches: Sociology of Sports - pg. 27

1) Structural-Functional approach – How sports help society function smoothly
•Provide recreation, getting into physical shape, and safely let of steam. Build relationships and create
jobs.
2) Social-Conflict approach – link between sports and inequality
•Sports benefit more men than women. More accessible to affluent people. Racial discrimination exists
3) Social-Interaction approach – meanings and understanding people have of sports
•Within a team, players affect each other’s understanding of the sport
•Reaction of public can affect how players perceive their sport.
 Chapter 2: Sociological Investigation

Requirements for sociological investigation:

o Seeing the world sociologically (applying the sociological perspective)
o Ask questions
Science: a logical system that bases knowledge on direct, systematic observation Scientific knowledge rests on
empirical evidence (information that can be verified with our senses)
sometimes challenges our common sense
o Ex. Some people believe poor people are more likely to break the law than rich people. Research
proves that police and prosecutors actually treat the wealthy and powerful more leniently
“doing” sociology means learning more about the social world

Three ways to do sociology:

1. Scientific sociology: the study of society based on systematic observation of social behavior
concept (basic element of science)= mental construct that represents some part of the world in a simplified
form
variable= concept with a changing value from case to case
-operationalizing variables= specifying exactly what is to be measured before assigning a value to a variable
-correlation= a relationship in which two (or more) variables change together
-spurious correlation= an apparent but false relationship between two (or more) variables
-to establish cause and effect:
o 1. A demonstrated correlation
o 2. An independent (or causal) variable that occurs before the dependent variable
o 3. No evidence that a third variable could be causing a spurious correlation between the
original two
Measurement= determining the value of a variable in a specific case
Reliability= the consistency of a measurement
objectivity (personal neutrality) is important in research

2. Interpretive Sociology: the study of society that focuses on the meaning people attach to their social world
the interpretive approach is better suited to research in a natural setting where investigators
interact with people, learning how they make sense of their everyday lives.

3. Critical Sociology: the study of society that focuses on the need for social change
Rather than thinking of the question “how does society work?”, ask “should society exist in its
present form?”
Typically, researcher and subjects use their findings to provide a voice for less powerful people
and to advance the political goal of a more equal society

Gender & Research- sociologists have become aware that research is affected by gender
o Androcentricity= approaching an issue from a male perspective
o Overgeneralizing= when researchers use data drawn from people of only one source to support
conclusions about “humanity” or “society”
o Gender blindness= failing to consider the variable of gender
o Double standards= distorting a study by judging men and women differently
o Interference= if a subject reacts to the sex of the researcher, interfering with the research operation

Research Methods
o The Experiment investigating cause and effect under highly controlled conditions
Testing the hypothesis a statement of a possible relationship between two (or more) variables
o Survey Research subjects respond to a series of statements or questions in a questionnaire or interview
o In The Field: Participant Observation investigators systematically observe people while joining them in their
routine activities
Usually falls within interpretive sociology (mostly qualitative data)

o Using Available Data:

Secondary Analysis using data collected by others
Content Analysis counting and coding of the content of written, aural or visual materials, such as
television and radio programming, novels, magazines, etc.
-Inductive logical thought reasoning that transforms specific observations into general theory
-Deductive logical thought reasoning that transforms general theory into specific hypotheses suitable for testing

Chapter 3: Culture

Culture: refers to the ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that together form a people’s
way of life.
Nonmaterial culture: the ideas created by members of society,
Material culture: the physical things created by members of a society

Culture shock: personal disorientation when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life

People experience this shock when they immigrate or visit a new country.
Example: when a young person moves from rural Newfoundland to Toronto to attend university knows the
real feeling of cultural shock
no way of life is “natural” to humanity, even though most people around the world view their own
behaviour that way
only humans rely on culture rather than on instinct to create a way of life and to ensure survival (Harris,
1987)

Culture and Human Intelligence

the importance of primates is that they have the largest brains relative to body size of all living creatures
250 000 years ago, Homo sapiens (thinking person) finally emerged
with larger brains, these “modern” Homo sapiens developed cultures rapidly
humans lived by changing the natural environment to benefit themselves

Culture, Nation, State and Society

culture refers to the ideas, values, and artifacts that make up a shared way of life
nation is used to refer to a political entity – a state or country, and to people who share a culture, ancestry
and history
state is a political entity in a territory with designated borders
society refers to the organized interaction of people- within a nation, state, or other boundary- who share a
culture

How many Cultures?

Number of languages spoken around the world are declining
In the coming decades, many languages such as Gullah, Pawnee etc. will disappear as many people are
involved in electronic communication, increasing international migration and an expanding global economy

Aboriginal Languages in Danger of Extinction

There were about 60 Aboriginal languages in Canada a century ago, but now there are only four: Cree,
Inuktitut, Ojibwa, and Dakota
“Canada is on the verge of losing precious jewels of its cultural heritage”
 these languages represent vast reservoirs of intellectual knowledge stretching back thousands of years
the lose of these languages is one of the world’s greatest disasters
languages embody a unique way of understanding and responding to the world
language shapes our experience of life, in the simplest and most profound ways
the extinction of any language is a serious loss to world culture in terms of diversity and vital knowledge

THE ELEMENTS OF CULTURE

Symbols
Symbols are anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share culture.
Humans are dependent on symbols
Entering an unfamiliar society reminds us of the powers of symbols: The resulting culture shock involves the
inability to “read” meaning in unfamiliar surroundings
Culture shock is a two process way: it is something that the traveller experiences when encountering people
whose way of life is unfamiliar, and it is also what the traveller inflicts on others by acting in ways that might
offend them
Vary within a single society
Allow people to make sense of their lives, and without them human existence would be meaningless

Language
Language is a system of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another
Language is the key to cultural transmission: the process by which one generation passes culture to the
next
Our culture contains countless symbols of those who came before us
Although Canada is officially bilingual, it is geographically unilingual, French speaking majorities in Quebec
and New Brunswick while the rest of Canada is English speaking
Throughout history, people have transmitted culture through speech- or the oral cultural tradition
Writing began about 5000 years ago
Language sets humans apart as the only creatures who are self-conscious, aware of our limitations and
ultimate morality, yet able to dream and to hope for a future better then the present

Does Language shape reality?

Yes, each language has its own distinct symbols serving as the building blocks of reality
Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf (anthropologists) noted that each language has words or expressions
with no precise counterparts in other languages
Sapir- Whorf hypothesis: people perceive the world through the cultural lens of language
Scholars do not support the Sapir- Whorf hypothesis because for example, children understand the idea
of “family” long before they learn the word; adults can imagine new ideas or things before naming them

Values and Beliefs

Values: culturally defined standards that people use to decide what is desirable, good, and beautiful, and
that serve as broad guidelines for social living
Beliefs: specific statements that people hold to be true
values are abstract standards of goodness, and beliefs are particular matters that individuals consider to be
true or false
cultural values and beliefs not only colour how we perceive our surroundings but also form the core of our
personalities
we learn from families, schools, and religious organizations to think and act according to approved
principles, to pursue worthy goals, and to believe a host of cultural truths while rejecting alternatives as
false
particular values and beliefs thus operate as a form of “cultural capital”
 few cultural values and beliefs are shared by everyone
Canada has become a cultural mosaic
Canadians share certain “Key values”

Values: Inconsistency and Conflict

We affirm our belief in equality of opportunity only to turn around and promote or degrade others because
of their race and gender
Value inconsistency reflects the cultural diversity of Canadian society and the process of cultural change by
which new trends supplant older traditions
A tradition that is seen in Canada is watching hockey
Example” Hockey is so central to our identity that the loss of 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, which
unleashed lots of anger throughout the country
Today’s value inconsistences can lead to strain and awkward balancing act

Values: A Global Perspective

Each of the thousands of cultures in the world has its own values
Values that are important in higher- income countries differ somewhat from those in lower- income
countries
Societies in lower- income nations have cultures that value survival: people who are poor give priority to
physical safety and economic security
Lower-income societies tend to be traditional, with values that celebrate the past and emphasize the
importance of family and religious beliefs
In high-income countries, people take survival for granted, and focus on quality of life
these countries tend to be secular- rational, placing less emphasis on family ties and religious beliefs and
more emphasis on independence and tolerance of diversity
women have social standing more equal to men and widespread of support for divorce and abortion

Norms
Norms are rules and expectations by which a society guides the behaviour of its members
These norms are proscriptive, stating what we should not do
Prescriptive norms on the other hand state what we should do

Mores and Folkways

Mores: refer to norms that are widely observed and have great moral significance. Also known as taboos
Mores distinguish between right and wrong
Folkways: norms for routine or casual interaction
Folkways draw a line between right and rude

Social Control
Sanctions- weather an approving smiling or a raised eyebrow- operate as a system of social control
Social control: attempts by others to regulate people’s thoughts and behaviour
Example: Doing wrong can cause shame and guilt

Ideal and Real Culture

Ideal culture: social patterns mandated by cultural values and norms
Real culture: actual social patterns that only approximate cultural expectations
Material Culture and Technology
Every culture includes a wide range of physical human creations, which sociologists call artifacts
Example: Japanese put mats rather than rugs on the floors, and many men and women in India prefer
flowing robes to the close-fitting clothing common in North America
The material culture may seem as strange to outsiders as their language, values and norms
Technology: knowledge that people use to make a way of life in their surroundings
The more complex a society’s technology, the more its members are able- for better or worse- to shape the
world for themselves
Technology is another cultural element that varies substantially within Canada
Technology important element of culture because it determines the overall way of life

New Information Technology and Culture

Many rich nations such as Canada have entered into a post-industrial phase based on computers and new
information technology

Cultural Diversity in Canada

Heavy immigration, over the two centuries and especially in the last 30 years has made Canada the world’s
most multicultural country

High Culture and Popular Culture

High culture: cultural patterns that distinguish a society’s elite
Popular Culture: cultural patterns that are widespread throughout the society
High culture is praised more than popular culture because its supporters have more money, power and
prestige

Subculture:
Subculture: cultural patterns that set apart some segment of a society’s population
Almost everyone participates simultaneously in numerous subcultures, to which we have various levels of
commitment
Important cultural traits such as ethnicity or religion do divide people

Multiculturalism:
Multiculturalism: embodied in social policy designed to encourage ethnic or cultural heterogeneity
Eurocentrism: the dominance of European cultural patterns
Multiculturalism generates controversy because it requires a rethinking of core norms and values
Example: although Canada is bilingual, the Canadian population is actually composed of people with many
different mother tongues
Multiculturalism has only symbolic significance in Canada, meaning that it allows people belonging to
minorities to maintain heir culture within their homes
Four basic positions of multiculturalism:
o Proponents defend multiculturalism as a way to capture a more accurate picture of our past
o Multiculturalism allows us to come to terms with our current diversity
o Proponents assert that multiculturalism is a way to strengthen the academic achievement of
children of immigrants
o Proponents see multiculturalism as worthwhile preparation for all people in Canada to live in a
world that is increasingly interdependent
Multiculturalism fuels the “politics of difference”
It is a term used signify formal recognition and the celebration of diversity
Counterculture:
Counterculture: cultural patterns that strongly oppose those widely accepted within a society
Example: hippies and other counter culturists favoured a co-operative lifestyle in which “being” took
precedence over “doing”
o They drew personal identity from headbands, long hair, and blue jeans
Cultural Change:
Not only continuous, but change in one dimension usually associated with other transformations
Example: increased labour- force participation among women occurs along with changing family patterns,
including a later age at first marriage, fewer births, more divorce, and more children raised without fathers
Cultural integration: the close relationship among various elements of a cultural system

Causes of Cultural Change:

Is set in three ways:
o Invention, the process of creating new cultural elements. Inventions have given us the telephone,
airplanes, internet all which has a tremendous impact on our way of life
o Discovery, involves recognizing and understanding something not fully understood before. Many
discoveries result from scientific research- such as the Canadian Blackberry
o Diffusion, the spread of cultural traits from one society to another. For example: insulin was
developed first by Fredrick Banting and Charles Best at the University of Toronto in 1920

Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism:

What people in one society think of as right and natural, people elsewhere find puzzling and even immoral
Ethnocentrism: the practice of judging another culture by the standards of one’s own
o Also generates misunderstanding and conflict
Cultural relativism: the practice of judging a culture by its own standards
o Can be difficult for travellers to adopt
o require openness to unfamiliar values and norms but also the ability to put aside cultural standards
we have known all our lives

A Global Culture?
Today we can observe many of the same cultural practices all over the world
Societies have more contact with one another than ever before:
o 1. Global economy: The flow of goods. The global economy has spread many of the same consumer
goods- from cars, to television shows, to music and fashion
o 2. Global communications: The flow of information. Satellite-based communications enable people
to experience the sights and sounds of events taking place thousands of kilometres away
o 3. Global migration: The flow of people. Knowing about the rest of the world motivates people to
move to move to where they imagine life will be better
There are 3 important limitations to the global culture thesis:
o 1. The global flow of goods, information, and people is uneven
o 2. The global culture thesis assumes that people everywhere are able to afford various new goods
and services
o 3. While many cultural practices are now found throughout the world, people everyone do not
attach the same meanings to them

THEORIES OF CULTURE

The functions of Culture: Structural- Functional Analysis

cultural values direct our lives, giving meaning to what we do, and bind people together
countless other cultural traits have various functions that support the operation of society
Cultural universals: traits that are part of every known culture
 o One common element is the family
o Jokes

Inequality and Culture: Social- Conflict Analysis

The social- conflict approach stresses the link between culture and inequality
Culture is shaped by a society’s system of economic production
Social conflict analysis ties our cultural values of competitiveness and material success to our country’s
capitalist economy, which serves the interests of the nation’s wealth elite
The social-conflict approach suggests that cultural systems do not address human needs equally, allowing
some people to dominate others

Evolution and Culture: Sociobiology

Sociobiology: a theoretical approach that explores the ways in which human biology affects how we
create culture
Sociobiology has generated intriguing theories about the biological roots of some cultural patterns

Structural-Functional Social-Conflict Sociobiology Approach

Approach Approach
What is the level of Macro level Macro level Macro level
analysis?
What is culture? Culture is a system of Culture is a system that Culture is a system of
behaviour by which benefits some people behaviour that is partly
members of societies and disadvantages shaped by human
co-operate to meet others biology
their needs
What is the foundation Cultural patterns are Cultural patterns are Cultural patterns are
of culture? rooted in a society’s rooted in a society’s rooted in humanity’s
core values and beliefs system of economic biological evolution
production
What core questions How does a cultural How does a cultural How does a cultural
does the approach pattern help society to pattern benefit some pattern help a species
ask? operate? people and harm adapt to its
What cultural patterns others? environment?
are found in all How does a cultural
societies? pattern support social
inequality?

Sociology Chapter 4: Society

Symons Report concluded that Canadians know little about their own society
Society: refers to people who interact in a defined territory and share a culture
Gehard and Jean Lenski: Society and Technology
The Lenskis use the term socio-cultural evolution (means changes that occur as a society gained new
technology)
Simple technology=little control=less people
Advanced technology=support hundreds of millions of people
The more technology, the faster a society changes
Lenskis’ describes five types of societies: Hunting and gathering, horticulture and pastoral, agrarian,
industrial and post-industrial societies.
Hunting/Gathering Societies
Simplest
Hunt animals, gather vegetation
Aka and Baka of Central Africa, San of Botswana.
Aboriginals of Canada and Australia retain their hunting and gathering traditions but no longer rely solely on
this.
Nomadic
Very busy and no free time
Depend on the family heavily
Healthy do the work
Sexes as having the same socioeconomic importance
Shaman (spiritual leader)
Simple tools like spear, bow and arrow bone or stone knife to hunt animals
Disappearing from the world slowly
Believe many spirits inhibit the world

Horticultural and Pastoral Societies

Horticulture : the use of hand tools to raise crops, settlements formed until the soil was bad (i.e. a hoe,
punching holes, planting seeds, gardening)
First humans were those of the Middle East
Not useful for people living in dry regions (i.e. mountains, desert)
Pastoralism: the domestication of animals, nomadic
Growing plant and raising animals expands populations to hundreds of people in one location
These are more socially diverse because they often have a material surplus (more resources than you need
to support a population) so not everyone has to work at getting the food
Government power, military force so greater inequality
See one God as Creator, involved in the well-being of the entire world

Agrarian Societies
Started in the Middle East
Agriculture: large scale cultivation using plows harnessed to animals or more powerful energy sources
Also the breakthrough of irrigation, the wheel, writing, numbers, metals
Often called “the dawn of civilization”
Able to grow way more food to supply way more people
Greater production = even greater specialization of people’s occupations
Money was required as a common standard of exchange and the trading system was abandoned
High social inequality, lots of slaves
Men at a high position of power in these societies

Industrial Societies
Industrialism: the production of goods using advances sources of energy to drive large machinery
1750- water power and steam boilers
Way more power = way quicker social changes (more in one century of industrial societies than the
previous thousand years)
Railways, steamships, skyscrapers, automobiles, modern conveniences (refrigerators, radio, TV, telephone)
Work changes as people travelled to factories for their jobs
Family ties and values were lost
Occupational specialization at its highest
 Raised living standards
Social inequality decreases slightly from agrarian because people provided with schooling and political
rights.

Post-Industrial Societies
Post-industrialism: technology that supports an information-based economy
Relies on computers and other electronic devices that create, process, store, apply, and transmit
information
More jobs become available for people to process information
The Information Revolution is at the heart of this kind of society

Limits of Technology
Not all good
Can’t fix poverty, lost sense of community, weapons that could destroy the world, threats to our natural
environment.

Karl Marx: Society and Conflict

Observed how Industrial Revolution changed Europe
He observed that the riches produced from the new technology only ended up in the hands of a few people,
the aristocrats and industrialists
However, most people worked long hours and lived in the slums
He was motivated by compassion and wanted to help a badly divided society
Social Conflict: the struggle between segments of society over valued resources
Most important social conflict to Marx is conflict from way a society produces material goods
Capitalists: people who own and operate factories and other businesses in pursuit of profits
Proletarians: people who sell their labor for wages
To keep profits high they make wages low but workers want higher wages but industrialists want higher pay
and more resources = conflict
Social Institutions: the major spheres of social life, or societal subsystems organized to meet human needs
(economy, political system, family religion, education)
Viewed social institutions as operating to support societies economy
The economy in the industrial/capitalist societies most important to Marx
False Consciousness: explanations of social problems as the shortcomings of individuals rather than flaws of
society
Communism is a system by which people commonly own and equally share the food and other things they
produce, everyone does the same work so little conflict
Marx argued the Industrial Revolution was also a class revolution
Wanted the proletarians to join together and overthrow the capitalists
Friedrich Engles (Marx’s collaborator)
Class Conflict: Conflict between entire classes over the distribution of a societies wealth and power
Marx wanted the workers to become aware of their oppression, see capitalism as the cause, organize and
address problems, replace false consciousness with class consciousness
Class consciousness: worker’s recognition of themselves as a class with unified in opposition to capitalists
and ultimately to capitalism itself
Alienation: the experience of isolation and misery resulting from powerlessness
Workers and dehumanized from their jobs and feel little satisfaction
4 ways capitalism alienates people
o 1. Alienation from act of working: repetitive
o 2. Alienation from the product of work: they don’t get $$
o 3. Alienation from other workers: competitive workplace
 o 4. Alienation from human potential: is not fulfilling their potential
The only way out for Marx was to completely recreate society (Socialism)

Max Weber: The Rationalization of Society

Knew the power of technology and shared Marx’s ideas of social conflict
Disagreed with materialism however
Members of pre-industrial societies = tradition
Members of industrial-capitalist societies = rationality
Tradition: values and beliefs passed from generation to generation
Rationality: a way of thinking that emphasizes deliberate, matter of fact calculation of the most efficient way
to accomplish a particular task.
Rationalization of Society: the historical change from tradition to rationality as the main mode of human
thought
Weber claimed the key to the industrial capitalism lay in Protestant Reformation, specifically Calvinism (a
Christian religious movement by John Calvin)
o Inner worldly asceticism: deny pleasures in favor of a highly disciplined focus on economic pursuits
o Predestination of God’s path

Is Capitalism Rational?
Marx: no because not meeting everyone’s needs, only a few

Definitions
- Society: people who interact in a defined territory and share a culture
- Socio-cultural evolution: changes that occur as a society gains new technology
- Hunting & Gathering: use of simple tools to hunt animals and gather vegetation
- Industrialism: production of goods using advanced sources of energy to drive large machinery
- Post-Industrial: technology that supports an information-based economy
- Social Conflict: the struggle between segments of society over valued resources
- Capitalists: people who own and operate factories and other businesses in pursuit of profit
- Proletarians: people who sell their labour for wages
- Social Institutions: major spheres of social life, or societal subsystems, organized to meet human needs
- False consciousness: explanations of social problems as the shortcomings of individuals rather than as the
flaws of society
- Materialism: the means by which humans produce material goods shapes their experiences
- Communism: system by which people commonly own and equally share food and other things they produce
- Class Conflict: conflict between entire classes over the distribution of a society’s wealth and power
- Class Consciousness: worker’s recognition of themselves as a class unified in opposition to capitalists and
ultimately to capitalism itself
- Alienation: experience of isolation and misery resulting from powerlessness
- Socialism: an economic system in which natural resources and the means of producing goods and services are
collectively owned
- Ideal type: an abstract statement of the essential characteristics of any social phenomenon
- Tradition: values and beliefs passed from generation to generation
- Rationality: a way of thinking that emphasizes deliberate, matter-of-fact calculation of the most efficient way
to accomplish a particular task
- Rationalization of society: the historical change from tradition to rationality as main mode of human thought
- Anomie: A condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals
- Mechanical Solidarity: strong social bonds, based on common sentiments and shared moral values among
members of pre-industrial societies
 - Division of labour: specialized economic activity

Chapter 5
Socialization is a complex process that never fully stops; therefore our development of personalities, self
awareness, and morals never fully cease to change
In our generation, the media plays a large role in how socialization occurs and has continual influence over
personality development
o Cultural norms, expected reactions, and supposed ‘pleasing’ traits are largely influenced by the
media
o Socialization is very similar to ‘training’ humans to behave a certain way

Media Literacy: the ability to analyze and evaluate messages created in any varying forms of medium
Mass media is a form of one-way communication that requires no input from the people consuming it
Advertising: meant to subtly manipulate wants & needs; socialize us to believe that humans are in constant
need of improvement rather than constructive development;
o Subliminal (impacting someone’s way of thinking without their knowledge ie. A magazine
advertisement for a perfume that the reader now wants) vs Covert (actively disguising the fact that
someone’s thought process is being influenced ie. Product placement in a movie)
Graham Knight believed that media entertained, distributed information, provided social control, and
contributed to socialization
Mass media is largely monopolized, resulting in idealistic versions of world events; everything we see in the
media is largely idealistic and based on what cultural norms we are meant to reflect
Television plays an important role in how we are socialized because, while is shapes our view of cultural
norms and socializes us, we are also meant to believe that television shows demonstrate our social reality
A message is found in all forms of media, with three components:
o The message, containing obvious and subtle content
o The audience (viewers, readers, etc.)
o The sender (medium and people behind that medium who sent it)

Popular culture: Reflected to us through mass media; largely created by members of society for the present time
Examples of popular culture include music, movies, books, video games, slang, jokes, and sports

Socialization: a continual process characterized by an individual adopting ‘norms’; development of a personal

identity; the process of learning culture
Socialization occurs through interaction with other humans
Largely culture; the culture we live in shapes us to be suitable members of that specific culture
As we are shaped by our society, we in turn shape that society; this allows cultural norms to develop and
change over time
Ultimately, we are socialized through a combination of CULTURAL NORMS, TRADITIONS, PERSONAL
EXPERIENCE, GENETICS, CONTINUAL SOCIAL INTERACTIONS

Personality: an individual’s regular thought, behavioral, and emotional patterns

Nature vs. Nurture: the debate of whether a person is influenced more by their DNA or by their surrounding
environment
Biological sciences take the role of nature
Sociology is the role of nurture
Evidence to support the argument that nurture is impactful on a developing personality include: adopting
mannerisms and ‘norms’ from those surrounding an individual & the permanent damaging effects that
isolation cause lead to in a growing individual
Marshal McLuhan: developed a theory that the medium through which a message is delivered impacts how that
message is interpreted
Media shapes and controls the scale of human association
Complex mediums allow humans to transition from making brief lineal connections to configurations;
arguably, if more information is presented in an understandable format, deeper connection will be drawn
from it
Medium: can refer to different forms of media (television, movies, social media, the internet, newspapers,
billboards), or the surrounding environment (connects to Nature vs Nurture)
For example, people are more likely to feel unhappy towards a disturbing topic (crime, war, etc.) if that topic
is approached in a safe environment such as their homes
People are more likely to focus on dramatic changes and ignore the slower social changes that still impact
our society; something with an immediate impact on an individual’s daily life is more likely to shape their
morals and values than a slowly implemented change
For example, the social and cultural implications of our dependence on technology is not as discussed as
political news
o Slowly implemented changes will have secondary impacts over time, and slowly shape our views of
cultural norms

Freud’s theory of opposing forces in each individual: eros (need for love) and thanatos (drive of aggression)
Model of each personality: as the personality develops through external influences (largely the media), the forces
described below are in constant conflict with each other. This is how values and morals are eventually developed,
unique to each person, which external forces they have been conditioned by (media, family, caste system, their
‘categories’ and the resultant expectations) and their circumstances.
Id: natural drives
Ego: efforts to achieve balance in life
Superego: interior culture

Mead: speculated that there were four stages in the socialization process: imitation, play, games, and ultimately
conforming to and developing within cultural norms

Piaget: developed a theory of cognitive development; viewed each mind as activie and capable of creativity
Cognition: The mental action of thinking and being capable of acquiring knowledge, through thought and
experience
Four Stages of Cognitive Development: how each person develops through these stages is a result of social
surroundings and biological factors
o Sensorimotor (understanding through sensory contact)
o Preoperational (understanding of language, numbers, symbols)
o Concrete operational (understanding of informal connections to surrounding environment)
o Formal operational (understanding and developing critical thinking)

Kohlberg: developed a theory of moral development & the ways in which a person learns to judge a situation from
right and wrong
Three Stages of Moral Development: it is speculated that many people to not continue to develop past the
second stage
o Preconventional (when each young child experiences new aspects of the world as either pleasurable
or painful)
o Conventional (teenagers; develop sense of others; less selfish; begin defining right and wrong based
on their parents’ and surrounding authority figures’ views; develop concept of social norms)
o Postconventional (begins to consider ethics)
Gilligan: developed a theory about how gender bias influences the development of personality and amount of
conditioning each gender is subjected to (for example, young girls frequently develop unrealistic expectations
regarding physical appearance as a result of conditioning by the media, and are more subject to this than young
boys)
Speculated that boys develop a sense of justice, and girls develop a sense of responsibility
Speculated that girls are subjected and conditioned to be expected to please those around them
Questions raised by Gilligan’s theory include the differences of nature and nurture in the personality
developmental differences between boys and girls; are girls more conditioned by their families and the
surrounding environment (such as the media) than boys are; are boys naturally given more freedom to
develop personalities without outside forces dictating defining traits; is there a prominent gender bias in this
regard

Chapter 6: Social Interaction in Everyday Life

Social Structure: A Guide to Everyday Living

Social Interaction: The process by which people act and react in relation to others
o Through interaction, we create the reality in which we live in
o We rehearse things based on what we know
Social Structure: Any relatively stable pattern of social behaviour

Status
A social position that a person holds
Status is a part of social identity and helps define our relationships to others. Georg Simmel: before we can
deal with anyone, we need to know who the person is
Status Set: All of the statuses that a person holds at one time
o A teenage girl, daughter to her parents, sister to her brother, student

Different types of Status: Ascribed and Achieved Status

Ascribed Status: A social position a person receives at birth or assumes involuntarily later in life; have little
to no choice (ie, being a daughter, or an aboriginal person)
o Race
o Class
o Age group
Achieved Status: A social position a person assumes voluntarily that reflects ability and effort; individual has
at least some choice in the matter
o An honour student
o An olympic athlete

Master Status: A status that has special importance for social identity, often shaping a person’s entire life
o Occupation, A recognizable family name, gender for women
o Negative sense: disease, disability
we sometimes dehumanize people with physical disabilities by perceiving them only in
terms of their disability. Although it is not a disability in the same sense, being too tall, too
fat, or too thin can act as a master status that gets in the way of normal social interaction
Role
Role: Behaviour expected of someone who holds a particular status
A person holds a status and performs a role (i.e., holding the status of a student leads you to perform the
roles of attending classes and completing assignments)
o Statuses and roles vary by culture
Role Set: A number of roles attached to a single status (e.g., a professor's role includes being a teacher,
colleague, and researcher)
Role Conflict and Role Strain
Role Conflict: Conflict among the roles connected to two or more statuses
o E.g., more than one politician has decided not to run for office because of conflicting demands of a
hectic campaign schedule and family life, or police officer who catches her own son using drugs at
home
To minimize role conflict, separate parts of your life so that we perform roles for one status
at one time and place, and carry out roles connected to another status in a completely
different setting, example: leaving a job at work before heading home to family
Role Strain: Tension among the role connected to a single status
o E.g., a professor who may enjoy being friendly with students but at the same time must maintain
personal distance in order to evaluate students fairly
** Sometimes role conflict and role strain can be easy to confuse.. just remember that it takes 2 to have a conflict**

Role Exit
Becoming an “ex”: Disengaging from social roles can be very traumatic without proper preparation. (ex., ex-
nun, ex-doctor, ex-husband, ex-alcoholics)
Process:
o Doubts form about ability to continue with a certain role
o Examination of new roles leads to a tipping point when one decides to pursue a new direction
o Learning new expectations associated with new role (ex-nun may hesitate to wear stylish clothing)
o Past role might influence new self, rebuild new relationships and learn new social skills
o Men tend to have a more difficult time with role exit compared to women
Women tend to be more diversified

The Social Construction of Reality

The Social Construction of Reality: The process by which people creatively shape reality through social
interaction; this is the foundation of the symbolic-interaction approach
Social interaction is a complex negotiation of reality: Everyday situations involve some agreement with what
is going on, but interests and intentions can affect perceptions, e.g., family formation
o Today people use internet sites like facebook to present themselves to others, thereby creating
“reality” that may bear little resemblance to the reality constructed through face-to-face
interactions
The Thomas Theorem: Situations we define as real become real in their consequences
o Means: although reality is “soft” as it is socially constructed, it can become “hard” in effects.
Ethnomethodology: The study of the way people make sense of their everyday situations
o This approach begins by pointing out that everyday behaviour rests on a number of assumptions...
eg. when asking someone “how are you”, we’re usually interested in knowing how they are.
However the person you are asking is probably assuming that you are not really interested in the
details and are just asking to be polite.
One good way to uncover assumptions we make about reality is to purposefully Break the
rules. Example, next time you’re asked “how are you” offer details from your last physical
examination or explain all the good and bad things that have happened since you woke up
that morning. Observe how people react to the rules you just broke…

Reality Building: Class and Culture

Interests and social background affect our perceptions
o E.g. People who live in different parts of a city experience it in different ways
E.g. People in Canada would say a “short walk” is a couple blocks, where as someone living
in the Andes Mountains of Peru would say a “short walk” means several kilometers
People around the world have different realities
o E.g. People have different meanings for specific gestures
 inexperienced travellers might find using the gesture “thumbs up” to build an unexpected
and unwelcomed reality

Dramaturgical Analysis: “The Presentation of Self”

Dramaturgical Analysis: The study of social interaction in terms of theatrical performance
The Presentation of Self or Impression Management: A person’s efforts to create specific impressions in the
minds of others

Performances
Role performance includes:
o The way we dress (costume) the objects we carry (props) and our tone of voice and gestures
(manner) reveal things about ourselves that we may consciously and unconsciously notice
o We vary our performances according to where we are (Stage setting)
Example: Doctor’s Office
o “Front region” (stuff that you see) and “back region” (behind the scenes; seeing the doctors office
and noticing a lot of medical tools.. makes us think he must specialize or have a lot of knowledge))
o Medical books, framed degrees, big desk, lab coat, technical language etc..

PROF’S NOTES: Erving Goffman contended that all of us are actors in the game — or ‘play’ — of life. Let’s return to
your role exit as a student. Now you are playing the role of job applicant. How do you present yourself? Do you stroll
into the boss’s office late, dressed in sandals and torn jeans, a joint hanging from your lip, and say “Hey, man, I need
this gig!”? Probably not! Very few jobs require the demeanor of a hippie and the lack of deference reflected in this
scenario. In fact, what you wear (costume), carry (e.g., briefcase or prop), how you comport yourself (demeanor),
your respect for the interviewer (deference) – even your non-verbal communication (e.g., how you walk) – are how
you present, and represent, yourself as job applicant and will impact on your chances of being hired. In fact, your
backstage preparation for the interview (e.g., researching the company, rehearsing your speech) will be reflected in
your front stage performance, as will your *sincere enthusiasm and the fact that you tactfully refrained from
mentioning that the interviewer had spinach stuck in a tooth (i.e., you prevented embarrassment). In short, your
presentation of self as a suitable employee prospect expressed an idealized you as you played the role of job
applicant. *(Harry Truman [former president of U.S. A.] once said: “Be sincere, even if you’re not.”)

Nonverbal Communication
Nonverbal Communication: Communication using body movements, gestures, and facial expressions rather
than speech
Body Language: E.g. Smiling, eye contact, gestures (facial expression are the most important type of body
language)
Body Language and Deception: Unintended body language can contradict our planned meaning.
o ex: few people can lie without some slip-up, raising the suspicions of a careful observer; the key to
detecting lies is to view the performance with an eye to inconsistencies

Gender and Performances

Demeanour - the way we act and carry ourselves- is a clue to social power (gender issue)
o How much space does a personal performance require? The more power you have the more space
you use
Men typically command more space than women, whether pacing back and forth before an
audience or casually sitting on a bench. Why? Our culture traditionally has measured
femininity by how little space women occupy with the standard of “daintiness”. Likewise,
masculinity is defined by how much territory a man controls with the standard of “turf”.
Personal Space: The surrounding area over which a person makes some claim to privacy
o Men often intrude in women’s space and the opposite is seen as a sign of sexual interest
o Eye contact vs staring
 Women hold eye contact more than men in conversations; men often star to claim social
dominance and define women as sexual objects
o Men claim dominance by touching
A male physician touches the back of his female nurse as they examine a report
The intent of touching may be harmless and may bring little response, but in
amounts to a subtle ritual by which men claim dominance over women.
Idealization
People behave the way they do for many, often complex, reasons. Goffman suggests that: We construct
performances to idealize our intentions
Doctors, professors, and other professionals describe their work as:
o Making a contribution to science, helping others, serving the community
o There is less honourable motives: income, power, leisure time and prestige

Embarrassment and Tact

Embarrassment: Discomfort following a spoiled performance
o Goffman describes embarrassment as “losing face”- that is, temporarily losing some of the prestige
associated with a status.
An audience often overlooks flaws in a performance, allowing an actor to avoid
embarrassment.
o Tact: Helping someone “save face”
E.g., people may tactfully ignore an embarrassingly inaccurate remark by pretending they
didn’t hear it, or by treating it as if it were a joke, perhaps with mild laughter… or by simply
responding by saying something like, “I’m sure you didn’t mean that”
o An audience often overlooks flaws in a performance, allowing the actor to avoid embarrassment
(Saying “yeah I knew what you meant”)
o Tact is so common because embarrassment creates discomfort for the actor and for everyone else;
socially constructed reality thus functions like a dam holding back a sea of chaos- when one person’s
performance springs a leak, others tactfully help make repairs.
o Goffman’s research shows that, although behaviour is often spontaneous, it is more patterned than
we think

Interaction in Everyday Life: Three Applications:

Emotions: The Social Construction of Feeling

Emotions, more commonly called, feelings, are an important element of human social life; what we do often
matters less than how we feel about it.
The Biological Side of Emotions: Paul Ekman reports that people everywhere recognize and express six
basic emotions:
o Happiness
o Sadness
o Anger
o Fear
o Disgust
o Surprise
In addition, he found that people use the same facial expressions to show these emotions- some emotional
responses are “wired” into humans- that is biologically programmed in our facial features, muslces, and
central nervous system. Why?....
o From an evolutionary perspective, emotions have biological roots, but they also serve a social
purpose: supporting group life.
The Cultural Side of Emotions
Culture, however, does play an important role in guiding human emotions
o Ekman explains that culture determines the trigger for emotion. e.g, is an event defined as happy?
Culture provides rules for display of emotions, e.g, we express our emotions more freely when with family
othan at work with colleagues
Culture guides how we value emotions
We construct emotions, called emotion management

Language: The Social Construction of Gender

Language communicates not only a surface reality but also deeper levels of meaning
One such level involves gender
Language defines men and women differently in terms of power and value
o Language and Power
Power: Men refer to things they own as “she” and women traditionally take the man’s
name in marriage
o Language and Value
Value: What has greater value, force, or significance is treated as masculine
Language also confers different values on the two sexes. Traditional masculine terms such
as king or lord have a positive meaning, while comparable feminine terms such as queen and
madam can have negative meanings. Suffixes such as -ette and -ess that are used, denote
femininity and devalue the words to which they are added. (example, master over mistress)
o Language and Attention
Attention: Directing greater attention to masculine endeavours

Reality Play: The Social Construction of Humor

Everyone laughs at a joke but few people think about what makes it funny.

Foundations of Humour: A contrast between conventional (what people in a specific situation expect) and
unconventional ( unexpected violation of cultural patterns) realities- the greater the opposition, the greater the
humour: “It’s deja vu all over again”, “Work is the curse of the drinking class”
People who like to tell jokes pay careful attention to their performance- the precise words they use and the
timing of their delivery. A joke is well told if the teller creates the sharpest possible option between the
realities

The Dynamics of Humour: “Getting It”

Humour is tied to a common culture and doesn’t translate easily
Getting the joke makes you an “insider”

The Topics of Humour

What is humours to the Japanese may be lost on the Chinese or Canadians
First jokes in life are about bodily functions
Some topics are too sensitive for humour treatment, such as tragic accidents

Theoretical Perspectives on Humour

The Functions of Humour: Humour can act as a safety valve (e.g. it was just a joke)
Humour and Conflict: Humour can oppress other (e.g. put down of disadvantaged or advantaged)
A sense of humour allows us to assert our freedom and prevents us from being prisoners of reality

PROF’S NOTES:
To summarize: jokes, urban myths and gossip (while fun) are cultural representations – conversations with ourselves
– which assist us in making sense of our fears, threats, concerns and the contradictions in our lives. They are
transmitted from person to person (rapidly via the Internet) and thereby provide us with the opportunity to publicly
and privately name and understand our concerns (and perhaps devise actions to overcome them?).

Now, what do we hope that you have learned from this Unit?
1. That we create our social reality through interacting with others (within the constraints of cultural norms
and social structure).
2. That our statuses, while abstract, encompass the patterns for playing our roles in the game of life.
3. That, as we play these roles, our presentation of self indicates an “idealized” self.
4. That language, in its multiple forms, is the quintessential medium of human interaction.
5. That language is used to play with our reality. Jokes, urban myths and gossip are conversations with
ourselves and can function (i) to express dominance and subordination or integration, (ii) as political
discourse about taboo topics or as public discourse about our concerns, as well as other functions.
6. That even our emotions, our personal feelings, are often structured by cultural prescriptions about how
we should feel.

Chapter 7: Groups and Organizations

Social Groups
Two or more people who identify and interact with each other
Primary group: small, personal, and lasting
Secondary group: large, impersonal and goal oriented, often of shorter duration

Elements of group dynamics

Group leadership
Instrumental leaders focuses on the completion of tasks
Expressive leadership focuses on a groups well being
Authoritarian leadership is a style that demands obedience
Democratic leadership includes everyone in decision making
Laissez0faire leadership lets the group function on its own

Group Conformity
Group members often seek agreement and may pressure each other towards conformity (Asch, Milgram,
and Janis)
Reference group: a social group that serves as a point of reference in making evaluations and decisions
In group: a social group where members feel respect and loyalty
Out group: a social group where members a sense of competition or opposition

Group size and diversity

A Dyad is a group of two people and a triad I a group of 3 people
Triads generally tend to be more stable than a dyad, but a triad can turn into a triad if one person is
excluded from the group (Georg Simmel)
Larger groups turn inward, socially diverse groups turn outwards, and physically segregated groups turn
inward
Formal Organizations
Large secondary groups organized to achieve their goals efficiently
Utilitarian organizations: pay people for their efforts (example: businesses)
Normative organization: have goals people consider worthwhile (example: volunteering)
Coercive organizations: people are forced to joined (example: being emitted to a mental hospital)
An organizational environment are factors outside of an organization that effect its operation
o Technology
o Political and economic trends
o Current events
o Population patterns
o Other organizations

Virtual Community (page 165)

The arguments of Wellman and Gulia (1999)
People who establish contact over the internet are able to build meaningful relationships and a sense of
community
Online relationships mimic face to face contact and also maintain ties among relatives or friends that are
separated by distance
The lack of social and visual cues allows individuals to “control the timing and content of self disclosure” and
thus the development of intimacy
The internet fosters community diversity, it forms a link between groups that would normally be physically
and socially dispersed
We are part of a “global village”

Characteristics of Bureaucracy (pages 166-167)

Bureaucracy: an organizational model rationally designed to perform tasks efficiently
Example of Bureaucracy: telephone systems that connect millions of people exist because of the
bureaucracy of keeping track of every phone call, information is presented to the public as phone bills
Weber believed that bureaucracy was an “iron cage” which, he argued, was ultimately alienating people
Weber also believed that impersonality was the distinctive feature of a rational social organization that
reduced people to nameless (but not number-less) “ciphers” (cf. student ID numbers)

Weber’s six key elements of the ideal bureaucratic organization

1. Specialization. Assigns individuals to highly specified jobs and compensates them so that they can pay
other people for food and shelter (unlike our ancestors who had to look for food and shelter)
2. Hierarchy of offices. People are arranged in a vertical ranking of offices. Each person is supervised by
higher-ups, while simultaneously supervising others in lower positions. There are few people at the top
and many at the bottom forming a pyramid (Oligarchy)
3. Rules and regulations. Bureaucracy doesn’t follow tradition. It forms its own rules and operates in a
predictable way.
4. Technical competence. New members are hired according to set standards and are regularly monitored
on their performance. (This is the opposite is the opposite of nepotism where relatives are favoured
over strangers no matter their talent)
5. Impersonality. Rules are placed ahead of personal whim so everyone is treated the same way.
 6. Formal, written communications. Rather than face to face contact, formal written memos are the form
of communication.

Problems of Bureaucracy (page 169)

Bureaucratic Alienation
Max Weber used bureaucracy as a model of productivity
It dehumanizes the people is it supposed to serve
Formal organizations cause alienation by reducing the human to “a small cog in a ceaselessly moving
mechanism” (Weber 1978)
Formal organizations are intended to benefit humanity, but Weber believes that humanity might end up
serving formal organizations

Bureaucratic Inefficiency and Ritualism

Inefficiency is the failure of an organization to carry out the work that it exists to perform
Example: when hurricane Katrina happened, FEMA was unable to coordinate all of the relief effort
Bureaucratic Ritualism: a focus on rules and regulations to the point of undermining an organizations goals

Bureaucratic Inertia
Officials work to keep an organization going
Bureaucratic Inertia: the tendency of bureaucratic organizations to perpetuate themselves
Formal organizations tend to take on a life of their own beyond their formal objectives
Example: as the need for service to veterans declined, the Canadian War Amputations turned their attention
to child amputees
Inertia usually leads formal organizations to develop new justifications for themselves after they have
outlived their original purpose

Organizations today vs. a century ago

Creative freedom: executives can set production goals but cannot dictate how a worker accomplishes tasks
Competitive work teams: organizations typically give several groups of employees the freedom to work on a
problem
A flatter organization: the pyramid shape of bureaucracy is flattened when responsibilities for creative
problem solving are spread out throughout the work force
Greater flexibility: some organizations are not able to respond as quickly and are not able to accomplish
large amounts of work

The McDonaldization of Society

We model many aspects of our lives on the famous food chain
The McDonaldization of society rests on four organizational principles ( Ritzer 1993)
o Efficiency
o Predictability
o Uniformity
o Control
Note: This chapter relates to Unit 04 in the course; Chapter 3 is also part of that unit (the subjects with page
numbers beside are those that correspond to unit 04)

Chapter 8: Sexuality and Society

“This chapter explains how society shapes human sexuality and also how sexuality figures into our everyday lives.
Although sexuality is biological, society (including patterns of culture & inequality) shapes how we experience
sexuality.”

Understanding Sexuality

Sexuality is found everywhere. It is an important part of how we think about ourselves and how others think
about us. In the middle of the 20th century, the taboo surrounding sex as a topic of research faded, and we have
since discovered a lot about human sexuality.

Sex: A Biological Issue

Sex refers to the biological distinction between females and males. From a biological perspective, sex is the way
humans reproduce.

Sex & the Body:

Male & female sexes have different primary sex characteristics (the genitals, organs used for reproduction).
At puberty, as people reach sexual maturity, additional sex differentiation takes place. Secondary sex characteristics
(bodily development, apart from the genitals, that distinguishes biologically mature females and males) develop at
this point. Examples may include wider hips for birth, milk-producing breasts for nurturing infants for mature
females. Mature males develop more muscle in the upper body, body hair and deeper voices.

Sex is not the same thing as gender. Gender is an element of culture that refers to the personal traits and
patterns of behaviour, including responsibilities, opportunities, and privileges, that a culture attaches to being
female or male. Sex is not always as clear-cut as described…

Intersexual People refers to people whose bodies, including genitals, have both female and
male characteristics. Another term is hermaphrodites
o A true hermaphrodite has both a female ovary and a male testis
o Our culture demands clear-cut definition of sex, as evident by the recording of the sex
of newborn children as either male or female, no grey area
Transsexuals are people who feel they are one sex even though biologically they are the other
o Most become transgendered meaning that they begin to disregard conventional ideas
about how females or males should look and behave, going as far as getting gender
reassignment surgery

Sex: A Cultural Issue

Sexuality has a biological foundation, but it is also very much a cultural issue.

Cultural Variation:

Around the world, some societies restrict sexuality, and others are more permissive. In China, for example,
norms closely regulate sexuality so that few people have sexual intercourse before they marry. In Canada,
intercourse prior to marriage has become to norm, and many choose to have sex without strong commitment.
 Modesty, too, is culturally variable. If a woman stepping into a bath is interrupted, what body parts do you
think she would cover? Helen Colton (1983) reports that an Islamic woman covers her face, a Laotian woman covers
her breasts, a Samoan woman covers her navel, a Sumatran woman covers her knees, and a European woman
covers her breasts with one hand and her genital area with the other.

The Incest Taboo:

There is one cultural universal – an element found in every society the world over – is the incest taboo,
meaning a norm forbidding sexual relations or marriage between certain relatives. In Canada, this is enforced not
only through culture, but law as well. The United States also enforces this law banning sexual relations and marriage
of close family (siblings, first cousins, parents, children), with 24 states outlawing marriage between first cousins and
26 states choosing not to. This taboo is universally accepted largely due to biology – reproduction between close
relatives of any species raises the odds of producing offspring with genetic diseases. The reason humans view it as
taboo and animals don’t is due to social organization. Family ties define people’s rights and obligations towards one
another. Reproduction through family would hopelessly confuse kin. Example, if a mother and son had a daughter,
would the child consider the male to be a father or a brother? The incest taboo integrates the larger society as
people look beyond their close kin to form new families.

Sexual Attitudes

The Sexual Revolution:

During the 20th century, there were profound changes in sexual attitudes and practices. The Sexual
Revolution increased sexual activity overall, but it changed the behaviour of women much more than that of men.
Historically, women were subject to greater sexual regulation than men, so the introduction of birth control had
significant effect on them. Some more of the profound changes are listed below:

In the 1920s, people left farms for rapidly growing cities

In the 1930s, 1940s, the Great Depression & WWII slowed the sexual freedom of the “Roaring
Twenties.”
Postwar period set the stage for the Sexual Revolution, led by Alfred Kinsley’s first study of sexuality
in the USU released in 1948. It caused uproar on the notion that scientists were studying sex, but
these books encouraged a new openness towards sexuality
The Sexual Revolution blossomed in the late 1960s, where youth culture dominated public life.
These “Baby Boomers” or baby-boom generation, born between 1946 and 1964, became the first
cohort to grow up with the idea that sex was part of life regardless of marriage
The birth control pill, introduced in 1960, encouraged sex with convenience

The Sexual Counter-revolution:

By 1980, sexual freedom began to be criticized by some as evidence of moral decline, laying the groundwork
for what would be known as the sexual counter-revolution began. Critics of the Sexual Revolution objected not just
to the idea of free love but to trends such as living together, and childbearing out of wedlock. As evident by the
social norm of acceptance of premarital sex, as well as increasing tolerance for diverse sexual orientations, it is
obvious that this revolution did not turn back the tide, but rather provided a framework morality and concern when
making sexual choices (ex considering STD’s or the gender of a partner).

Premarital Sex:

Statistically and socially, it is evident that attitudes towards premarital sex in Canada have improved.
Sex between Adults:

The study of sexuality in the second half of life resulted in a revitalized attitude toward sexuality among
aging baby boomers. Statistically, Canadian adults are more sexually active and more sexually satisfied than
Americans. The measurement of this satisfaction and sexual activity has been healthy and useful to society, however
it will be a long time before these surveys can be applied to the elderly. Social norms see elderly sexual activity as a
grey area, teeter tottering on the inappropriate side. Sexuality in nursing home troubles many families and
realistically every nursing home.

Extramarital Sex: otherwise known as sex outside of marriage (adultery), is widely condemned. More than
85 and 90%, respectively, of Canadian and American adults consider extramarital sex to be (almost) always
wrong. Therefore, the norm of sexual fidelity within marriage has been and remains strongly supported in
North American culture. Cultural ideals differ from real life, as evident by the fact that extramarital sex is
actually more common than it should be.

Sexual Orientation

Sexual orientation is a person’s romantic and emotional attraction to another person. The norm in all human
societies is heterosexuality, meaning sexual attraction to someone of the other sex. Also featured in society is
homosexuality, sexual attraction to someone of the same sex. These categories, however, are not concise, as some
people in society may fall into both. This category is bisexuality, sexual attraction to people of both sexes. Asexuality,
on the other hand, refers to a lack of sexual attraction to people of either sex. It is important to remember that
sexual attraction is not the same thing as sexual behaviour. Heterosexuality is the norm around the world because it
is ideal biologically, as it permits human reproduction.

What Gives us a Sexual Orientation?

There is no concise answer to this question but the debate is divided between two ideas: sexual orientation
as a product of society or biology.

A Product of Society: argues that people in any society attach meanings to sexual activity, and those
meanings differ from place to place and over time. Evidence is in the form of diverse patterns of sexual
behaviour and experiences in societies around the world, and it indicates that human sexual expression is
socially constructed.
A Product of Biology: argues that sexual orientation is biological. Evidence includes anatomical differences
such as orientation of brain structures and size of the hypothalamus, the part in the brain that regulates
hormones. Genetics also may play a part, as scientists, after a conducted study, believe that there may be a
“gay” gene located on the X chromosome.

The Gay Rights Movement

The attitude and tolerance of gay marriage in both America and Canada have been improving in recent
decades up to present day. These changes mostly came about through the gay rights movement that arose in the
1960s. Before then and at the time, most people did not discuss homosexuality. It was common for companies
(including federal government & military) to fire anyone who was thought to be gay. Homosexuals were often
described as “sick” and sometimes were placed in mental hospitals. During this era of intolerance, most lesbians and
gay men remained “in the closet.” Regardless, the movement gained momentum, and Canada removed homosexual
activity in private between consenting adults from the Criminal Code, not without its share of criticism and debate.
In 1974, the American Psychological Association declared that homosexuality was not an illness but a form of
“sexual behaviour.” On July 20, 2005, the Civil Marriage Act made same-sex marriage legal throughout the country.
 The gay rights movement began using the term homophobia to describe the dread of close personal
interaction with people thought to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual. This concept turns the tables on society; instead of
asking “what’s wrong with gay people?” the question is instead “What’s wrong with people who can’t accept a
different sexual orientation?”

Sexual Issues & Controversies

There are four key issues of controversies in North America today: teen pregnancy, pornography, prostitution, and
sexual assault.

Teen Pregnancy

High rates of teenage pregnancy (1 million American teenagers become pregnant yearly) has led to sex
education in schools, but the problem has changed to concern about the problems of female-headed single parents
families, including teenage mothers. Many of these pregnancies don’t lead to families as they may end in abortion,
the deliberate termination of a pregnancy. Within a single decade, Canada’s teen pregnancy rate dropped from 50
to 34 per 1000 teenage women.

Pornography

Pornography refers to sexually explicit material that causes sexual arousal. What pornography is has been a
matter of debate. In Canada, pornography is legal, while obscenity, which involves undue exploitation of sex and
violation of community standards, is illegal. The debate about pornographic material deals with when pornography
crosses the line from erotica to obscenity.

Definitions aside, pornography is popular in North America. It is an industry that generates US$10 billion a
year, and rising. Criticisms of pornography are usually on the moral ground. There is also the issue of power, where
it is believed that pornography plays a part in objectifying women, causing men to see them as sexualized objects
rather than humans. Some studies imply that the viewing of pornography encourages violent behaviours such as
sexual assault. While sexual material that is offensive is free to be objected, it should be noted that artistic
expression may play a part and free speech is valued. These demands and critiques must be balances within
constitutional rights.

Prostitution

Prostitution is the selling of sexual services, and has always been widespread. Mostly prevalent in poor
countries, where patriarchy is strong and traditional cultural norms limit women’s ability to earn a living. Many find
this practice disturbing. In Canada, prostitution itself is not a crime, but activities such as soliciting or communicating
for the purposes of prostitution in a public place are illegal.
Types of Prostitution: Most prostitutes are women, and they fall into different categories. Call girls
are “higher end” prostitutes that are young, attractive, and well educated who arrange to meet
clients via telephone. Middle category prostitutes work in massage parlours or brothels under the
control of a manager that gives them less choice in clients, and less money. Streetwalkers, women
and men who “work the streets” of large cities, are at the bottom of the sex-worker hierarchy. Often
victim to violence, they are under the control of male managers, or pimps, who take most of their
earnings.

Questions of whether prostitution is a victimless crime that hurts no one are debated. Police actions suggest that
society wants to control prostitution rather than eliminate it. Prostitutes are subjected to abuse and violence and
play a part in spreading sexually transmitted diseases.
Sexual Assault

In reality, sex can be twisted by hate and violence. In Canada, rape is officially recorded as sexual assault.
Sexual assault statistics include only victims who are women, but men are also raped. Most men who rape men are
heterosexual, motivated not by a desire for sex but by the urge to dominate.

Applying Theory

Structural-Functional Symbolic-Interaction Social-

Approach Approach Conflict/Feminist
Approach
What is the level of Macro level Micro level Macro level
analysis?
What is the Society depends on Sexual practices vary Sexuality is linked to
importance of sexuality for among the many social inequality.
sexuality for society? reproduction. cultures of the world.
Society regulates
Society uses the Some societies allow women’s sexuality
incest taboo and individuals more more than men’s,
other norms to freedom than others which is part of the
control sexuality in in matters of sexual larger pattern of men
order to maintain behaviour. dominating women.
societal order.
Has sexuality changed Yes. Yes. Yes and no.
of time?
How? As advances in birth The meanings people Some sexual
control technology attach to virginity and standards have
separate sex from other sexual matters relaxed, but society
reproduction, are all socially still defines women in
societies relax some constructed and sexual terms, just as
controls on sexuality. subject to change. homosexual people
are harmed by
society’s heterosexual
bias.

Chapter 9: Social Deviance

- What is deviance?
Deviance: the recognized violation of cultural norms ranging from minor infractions, such as bad behaviour,
to major infractions, such as serious violence.
Social Control
Social control: attempts by society to regulate people’s thoughts and behaviour.
Often done informally, such as when a parent's praise or scold their children.
Criminal justice system: a formal response by police, courts, and prison official to alleged violations of
the law.
Cases of serious deviance
Theories of Deviance
Biological theories

• Chapter 5 (“Socialization”) explains that in the past, most people misunderstood human behaviour
to be the result of biological instincts. Early interest in criminality therefore, focused on biological
causes.

• Biological theories focus on abnormality in the individual personality.

- Ex. 1876, Cesare Lombroso theorized that criminals stand out physically, with low foreheads,
prominent jaws and cheekbones, hairiness, and unusually long arms. This was later proved to
be untrue.

• Today, genetics research seeks possible links between biology and crime.
- Sociologists have concluded that genetic genetic factors (i.e. defective genes) together with
environmental factors (i.e. abuse early in life) were strong predictors of crime later in life.

Psychological theories

• Like biological theories, psychological explanations of deviance focus on abnormality in the

individual personality. Some personality traits are inherited, but psychologists think that
personality is shaped primarily on social experience.

- Deviance, then, is viewed as the result of “unsuccessful” socialization.

• Reckless and Dinitz (1967) containment theory links delinquency to weak consciousness

Sociological theories

• Views deviance as the free choice or personal failing of individuals, all behaviour- deviance as
well as conformity- is shaped by society.

• Three social foundations of deviance:

- Deviance varies according to cultural norms.
• No thought or action is inherently deviant; it becomes deviant only in relation to particular
norms. Varies from place to place.

- People become deviant as other define them that way.

• Whether actions define someone as mentally ill or criminal depends on how other perceive,
define and respond to it.

- Both norms and the way in which people define rule breaking involve social power.
• Karl Marx believed that the law is the means by which powerful people protect their
interests. Therefore those who speak against the government are at trick of being arrested.
Norms and their application reflect social inequality.
- The functions of deviance: Structural-Functional Theories
Durkheim’s Basic Insight

- Durkheim stated that deviance is not abnormal and infant serve four essential functions:
• Deviance affirms cultural values and norms.
• Responding to deviance clarifies moral boundaries.
• Responding to serious deviance brings people together.
• Deviance encourages social change.
- Aboriginal suicide has been attributed to the effects of rapid social change and damages to social
solidarity (Chapter 1)

Merton’s Strain Theory

- Merton argued that society can be set up in way that encourages too much deviance.
- Strain Theory of Deviance: Combining a person’s view of cultural goals and the conventional
means to obtain them.

• Ex. the means (such as schooling and job opportunities), goals (such as financial success)
- Merton’s types of deviance:
• Innovation: using unconventional means to achieve a culturally approved goal.
- Ex. He believes that the strain generated from our culture’s emphasis on wealth and the lack of
opportunities to get rich encourage some people to engage in stealing, drug dealing, or other
forms of crime.

• Ritualism: The inability to reach a cultural norm may prompt this kind of deviance.
- Ex. Many people believe they cannot achieve the cultural goal of becoming rich, therefore they
rigidly stick to the conventional means (the rules) in order to at least feel respectable. The
embrace the rules to the the point the lose sight of their larger goals.

• Retreatism: the rejection of both cultural goals and means, so that a person in effect “drops out”.
- The deviance in retreatist lies in their unconventional lifestyle and in what seems to be their
willingness to live this way.

• Rebellion: Reject both the cultural definition of success and the conventional means of achieving
it, but they go one step further by forming a counterculture that supports alternatives to the
existing social order.
 • Deviant subcultures
- Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin extended Merton’s theory, proposing that crime results not simply
from limited legal opportunity but also from readily accessible illegal opportunity. (relative
opportunity structure)

- Albert Cohen suggests that delinquency is most common among lower-class youths because they
have the least opportunity to achieve conventional success.

- Elijah Anderson explains that, in poor urban neighbourhoods, most people manage to conform to
conventional values. Yet face with neighbourhood crime and violence, indifference or hostility from
police, and sometimes even neglect from their own parents, some young men chose to live by the
“street code”. They display nerve in order to prove that the can survive on the streets, and the risk of
ending up in jail is very high.

Labelling deviance: Symbolic-Interaction Theories

Labelling theory: claims that deviance depends less on what someone does than on how others react
to that behaviour.

- Lemert (1951, 1972) noted that some norm violations such as underage drinking provoke slight
reaction from others and have little effect on a person’s self-concept. This is known as primary
deviance.

• The response of primary deviance sets in motion secondary deviance, by which a person
repeatedly violates a norm and begins to take on a deviant identity.

- Ex. If someone describes a man as a drunk and excludes him, the man may become better, drink
more, and seek the company of people who others who approve of his behaviour.

- Goffman (1963) believed that that as people develop a stronger commitment to deviant behaviour,
they typically acquire a stigma: a powerfully negative label that greatly changes a person’s self-
concept and social identity. A stigma operates as a master status (Chapter 6), overpowering other
aspects of social identity, so that a person is discredited in the mind of others and becomes isolated.

• The medicalization of deviance: the transformation of moral and legal deviance into a medical
condition. In practice, this means a change in label’s, replacing “good” and “bad” with “sick” and
“well”.

• Sutherland’s differential association theory links deviance to how much others encourage or
discourages such behaviour. People who are well integrated into society are less likely to engage in
deviant behaviour.
- Deviance and inequality: Social-conflict theory
• Based on Karl Marx’s ideas, social conflict theory holds that laws and other norms operate to protect
the interests of powerful members of any society.

- White-collar offences: committed by people of high social position in the course of their
occupations

- Corporate crime: refers to illegal actions by a corporation or people acting on its behalf. Although
corporate crime cause considerable public harm, most cases of corporate crime go unpunished.

- Organized crime: a business supplying illegal goods or services. Has a long history in North
America, especially among categories of people with a few legitimate opportunities.

- Deviance, Race, Ethnicity, and Gender

• What people consider deviant reflects the relative power and privilege of different categories of people.
• Hate crimes: a criminal act against a person or a person’s property by an offender motivated by racial
or other bias. They target people who are already disadvantaged based on race, gender, or sexual
orientation.

• Around the world, societies control the behaviour of women more closely then that of men.

- What is crime?
• Crime: is the violation of criminal laws enacted by local, state, or federal governments. There are two
major categories of serious crimes:

- Crimes against the person (violent crimes): Crimes that direct violence or the threat or violence
against others, including murder, aggravated assault, forcible rape, and robbery.

- Crimes against property (property crimes): crimes that involve theft of property belonging to
others. Includes, burglary, larceny-theft, auto-theft, and arson.

• (less important) Victimless crimes: violations of law in which there are no readily apparent
victims

• Patterns of crime in Canada

- Official statistics show that arrest rates peak in late adolescence and drop steadily with age.
- About 85% to 90% of arrests involve males.
 - Street crime is more common among people of lower social position. Including white-collar and
corporate crime makes class differences in criminality smaller.

- Black people and particularly Aboriginal people are arrested and imprisoned in disproportionate
numbers.

- The Criminal Justice System

• Police
- The police maintain public order by enforcing the law.
• Police use personal discretion in deciding whether and how to handle a situation.
• Research suggests that police are more likely to make an arrest if the offence is serious, if
bystanders are present, or if the suspect is of a visible minority or Aboriginal.

• Courts
- Courts rely on an adversarial process in which attorney’s - one representing the defendant and one
representing the Crown- present their cases in the presence of a judge who monitors legal
procedures.

• In practice, courts resolve most cases through plea bargaining (a legal negotiation in which the
prosecution reduces a defendants charge in exchange for a guilty plea). Though efficient, this
method puts less powerful people at a disadvantage.

• Punishment
- There are four justifications for punishment

• Retribution: an act of moral vengeance by which society makes the offender suffer as much as
the suffering caused by the crime.

• Deterrence: The attempt to discourage criminality though punishment.

• Rehabilitation: A program for reforming the offender to preclude subsequent offences.
• Societal protection: Rendering an offender incapable of further offences either temporarily
through incarceration or permanently by execution.

- Criminal recidivism: subsequent offences by people previously convicted of crimes.

- Community based corrections: correctional programs operating within society at large rather than
behind prison walls. Includes probation, parole, and sentencing circles. These programs lower the
 cost of supervising people convicted of crimes and reduce prison overcrowding, but they have not
been shown to reduce recidivism.

Chapter 13: Gender Stratification

Gender: the personal traits and social positions that members of a society attach to being male/female
Provides a dimension of social organization
Shapes how we interact with others and think about ourselves
Hierarchy ranks men and women differently in terms of power, wealth, etc.

Gender stratification: the unequal distribution of wealth, power and privilege between men and women

But we can’t think of social differences in biological terms, because most differences are socially constructed
Example: women were not given the right to vote until 1918, because women were not smart enough. Yet
biologically, this is completely untrue.

Global Perspective

Different cultures can define 2 sexes very differently….

Example: The Israeli Kibbutz don’t have stereotypical gender roles, both sexes participate in all activities equally.
They have achieved remarkable social equality.
- Evidence that what defines masculinity and femininity is culturally defined, not biological.

There are other cultures where all individuals appear to be “masculine” by North American definition, or on the
other hand, the entire culture could appear “feminine” by North American definition. Or even our stereotypical
views of masculinity and femininity could be reversed entirely.

Patriarchy: a form of social organization in which males are dominant

Matriarchy: a form of social organization in which females are dominant
Matriarchy has never occurred in human history

Sexism: the belief that one sex is innately superior to the other
This is the justification of patriarchy
Built into the institutions of society

Sexism is costly, as it limits the talents of half of the human population

Also encourages males to participate in high-risk behaviours (smoking, drinking, driving recklessly)

Gender and Socialization

With regards to the….

Family – Babies are treated and held differently based on gender

Example: girls are cuddles and rocked, boys are bounced on the knee.

Peer group – young children have single sex friend groups. Their activities vary based on sex.
Example: boys play sports like soccer, girl’s jump rope or sing.
Schooling – Different sexes tend to cluster in different areas of study
Example: Boys tend to study sciences and engineering, girls study humanities and fine arts.

Mass media – TV shows generally have men as the main characters, often with important roles like brilliant
detective or head surgeon. Female roles are based off of sexual attractiveness
In advertisements, males and females are typically in their gender specific roles. Males are often in positions of
authority.

Gender and Social Stratification

- Historically, a much greater percentage of men worked than women. This has changed in recent years, due
to: decrease in farming, growth of cities, post-industrial economy, increasing education, shrinking family
size, and rising divorce rates.
- Men tend to hold jobs with more power, but this is slowly changing.
- Women still do more housework, despite the fact that both men and women are employed.

Chapter 14: Race and Ethnicity

Race: Socially constructed category of people who share biologically transmitted traits that members of society
consider important

Ethnicity: shared cultural heritage

Minority: any category of people distinguished by physical or cultural difference that a society sets apart and
subordinates
Based on race, ethnicity or both.

Prejudice: A rigid unfair generalization about an entire race of people

Stereotype: A simplified description applied to every person in the same category

Racism: a form of prejudice that is a belief that one racial category is innately superior or inferior to one another

Discrimination: Unequal treatment of various categories of people

Institutional prejudice and discrimination: bias built into the operation of society’s institutions

Pluralism: racial and ethnic minorities are distinct but have social parity

Institutional completeness: the complexity of community organizations that meet the needs of members

Assimilation: process by which minorities gradually adopt patterns of the dominant culture, thereby becoming more
similar to the dominant group

Miscegenation: biological reproduction by partners of different racial categories

Segregation: physical and social separation of categories of people

Genocide: systematic killing of one category of people by another

Theory’s of prejudice
Scapegoat theory: prejudice springs from frustration among people who are themselves disadvantaged
a scapegoat is a person or category typically with little power who unfairly blame for their own problems
Authoritarian Personality Theory: personality trait of certain individuals. People who express strong prejudice
toward one minority typically do so towards all minorities
Culture theory: prejudice is found because its in the norm to be that way
Conflict theory: Powerful people use prejudice to justify their oppression of minorities

>>Special status societies: some societies may be more influent on culture

-British may have lots of control. (British parliamentary system, english speaking, dominant culture).
-Aboriginal peoples
-55 or more sovereign peoples who occupied the North American continent before arrival of european
explorers and settlers. Status indians are registered under the Indian act and others are non-status, because
for whatever reason their ancestors did not register. Bad relationship at start of the nation. Boarding schools
caused trauma to some. Some status indians have reserves that they can house on and call their own land.
various settlements between government and them have caused a more homeostatic environment some
agreements came about.

>>The quebecois
-Settlement in the 1600s caused disruptions and disputes
-francophone culture was pushed into quebec and it was threatened by assimilation

-Social standing is about the education and money that is made within families.
-This has to do with how well off you are.
Canada is the land of immigration, immigration leads to the development of a country
Canada is an experiment of multi layered pluralism
multi layered because British, french, and aboriginal peoples and other ethnic minorities have different kinds of
relationships, and with society as a whole. each wave of immigration ads to the layers
new demands and expectations from aboriginal peoples and the quebecois will contribute to immigrant aspirations

Profs notes on this chapter:

CULTURE (NORMS, VALUES, SANCTIONS)

+
HISTORY/TRADITION
+
UNIQUE PERSONAL EXPERIENCES/BIOGRAPHY
+
BIOLOGY/GENETIC INHERITANCE
+
ONGOING SOCIAL INTERACTIONS
=
THE SELF

Human scientists perceive humans – those “bundles of bones and dreams,” in John Cage’s fine phrase — as
created/constructed. Socialization is an ongoing humanizing process, we create or “train” humans congruent with
their place and time in history. In today’s western world, this humanizing process is accomplished through:

the family (what Erving Goffman called the “socialization depot”)

schooling (including nursery and pre- and post-schools)
peers (particularly important for adolescents)
the media and popular culture4
the prevalent attitudes, ethics and public opinion to which we are exposed5
various associations: social groups, religious organizations, sports groups, occupational groups/associations

Chapter 18: Family

The Family: Basic Concepts

Family: a social institution that unites people in cooperative groups to care for one another,
including any children
Kinship: a social bond based on common ancestry, marriage, or adoption
Marriage: a legal relationship, usually involving economic cooperation, sexual activity &
childbearing

Families: Global Variations

Extended Family: a family consisting of parents & children as well as other kind
Recognized in pre-industrial societies
Nuclear Family: a family composed of one or two parents & their children
Industrialization, social mobility & geographic migration

Marriage Patterns
Endogamy: marriage between people of the same category
Exogamy: marriage from different categories
Monogamy: uniting of two partners
Polygamy: three or more people
Polygyny: two or more women
Polyandry: two or more men
Most marriages are monogamous as:
1. Supporting several spouses is very expensive
2. The number of men & women in most societies is roughly equal
Residential Patterns
Patrilocality: married couple live with or near the husband’s family
Matrilocality: married couple live with or near the wife’s family
Neolocality: married couple live apart from both sets of parents

Patterns of Descent
Members of a society trace kinship over generations
Patrilineal: tracing kinship through men
Matrilineal: tracing kinship through women
Bilateral: tracing kinship through both men & women
The dominance of polygyny, patrilocality & patrilineal descent reflects the universal presence of
patriarchy
Functions of the Family: Structural-Functional Analysis
Family performs many vital tasks for society:
1. Socialization:
 The family is the first & most important setting for child rearing
Adults change within marriage
Parents learn as much from their children as their children learn from them
2. Regulation of Sexual Activity:
Regulates sexual activity in the interest of maintaining kinship organization & property
rights
Incest Taboo: forbids sexual relations or marriage between certain relatives
3. Social Placement:
Parents pass their social identities to their children at birth
i.e. Race, ethnicity, religion & social class
4. Material & Emotional Security:
Offer physical protection, emotional support & financial assistance
People living in families tend to be happier, healthier & wealthier people

Critical Review
Glosses over:
Great diversity of family life
How other institutions are taking over its roles
Negative aspects like patriarchy & family violence

Inequality & the Family: Social-Conflict & Feminist Analysis

Approach points out how the family perpetuates social inequality
1. Property & Inheritance:
High class men’s need to identify their heirs
Families concentrate wealth & reproduce the class structure in each new generation
2. Patriarchy:
To know their heirs, men must control the sexuality of women
Own women as property
3. Race & Ethnic Inequality:
Marriage within group supports racial & ethnic hierarchies

Critical Review
Ignores that:
Non-capitalist societies also have families & family problems
Families carry out societal functions not easily accomplished by other means

Constructing Family Life: Micro-Level Analysis

Men bring wealth & power to the marriage marketplace, while women bring beauty, health & the
ability to bear children
Symbolic-Interaction Analysis
Intimacy: etymology means “sharing fear”
Opportunities for sharing activities helps build emotional bonds

Social-Exchange Analysis
 Courtship & marriage as a negotiation to make the “best deal” on their partner
Terms of exchange are converging for men & women
Critical Review
Misses the bigger picture: family life is similar for people in similar social & economic backgrounds

Stages of Family Life

1. Courtship
Arranged Marriages: family alliances
Romantic Love: affection & sexual passion as the basis for marriage
Homogamy (“like marrying like”): marriage between people with the same social
characteristics
2. Settling In: Ideal & Real Marriage
Idealized “happily ever after” picture of marriage
We fall in love with others not always as they are but as we want them to be
Couples with the best sexual relationship experience the most satisfaction in their
marriages
Infidelity: sexual activity outside marriage, 85% “always wrong”; but 33% of men & 35& of
women report that they have been cheated on
3. Child Rearing
Big families were necessary in pre-industrial times
Are children now a liability? – Parenting is expensive & a lifetime commitment
Children rate parents highly
4. The Family in Later Life
Empty nest, but grandparents help with childrearing
Skip Generation: grandparents raise their grandchildren
Sandwich Generation: adults care for both young & old
Death of a spouse is the most difficult transition in married life

Canadian Families: Class, Race & Gender

Social Class
Working-class wives seek men who hold a steady job, do not drink & is not violent
Middle-class wives seek communication
Middle-class children enjoy better health & achieve more than children born to poor parents

Ethnicity & Race

Traditional family values eroded for Natives (residential schools)

Mixed Marriages
Today, most Canadians approve of them (religion or ethnicity)
Gender
Few marriages are equal partnerships
Men have a deeper sense of responsibility to provide for their families
Marriage is more beneficial to women than to men
 Marriage seems to be healthful for men
Transitions & Problems in Family Life
Divorce: many of today’s marriages eventually fall apart

Causes:
Individualism on the rise:
Family members don’t spend as much time together
Become more individualistic & more concerned about personal happiness & earning income
rather than about well-being of family & children
Romantic love often fades:
Many end a marriage in favour of a new relationship that promises renewed excitement &
romance
Women are less dependent on men
Women find it easier to leave unhappy marriages
Today’s marriages are stressful:
Both partners are working which leaves less time for family life
Divorce is socially acceptable
Divorce is easier to get

Who Divorces?
Young spouses
Short courtship
Few financial resources
People with divorced parents
Less religious
Response to an unexpected
pregnancy
Alcohol or drug related problems
Two successful careers
Divorce & Children
Many men fail to support children
Can be entangled in bitter feuds
Risks of emotional problems & dropping out of school
Could be better than families constantly fighting
Courts favour joint custody, but problems can occur in confrontations are not avoided

Remarriage & Blended Families

Four out of five people who divorce remarry, most within five years
Men are more likely than women to remarry
Blended Families: remarriage creates them, composed of children & some combination
of biological parents & step-parents
They offer the chance to relax rigid family roles

Family Violence
Women are more likely to be severely abused by a family member than they are to be
mugged or sexually assaulted by a stranger
Much help is available for women, but little for men
Violence against children – most abusers are men & have been abused themselves
Elder abuse is likely underreported
Alternative Family Forms
One-Parent Families
15.6% of Canadian families
Single parenthood increases a woman’s risk of poverty
Cohabitation
Sharing of a household by an unmarried couple (common-law)
16.4% of Canadian families
Gay & Lesbian Couples
Only 5 countries have extended marriage to same-sex couples
0.5% of Canadian families

Singlehood
Being outside marriage or a common law relationship
On the increase, now 25% of households

New Reproductive Technology & the Family

Test-tube babies are the product of in vitro fertilization, in which doctors unite a
woman’s egg & a man’s sperm
These technologies help some couples who cannot conceive by conventional means
These techniques may eventually help reduce the incidence of birth defects
The Family: Looking Ahead
1. Divorce rates likely to remain high
2. Family life will be highly diverse – trend towards more personal choice
3. Men are likely to play a limited role in childrearing
4. Economic changes will be influential
5. New reproductive technologies will increase

Chapter 19: Religion: Basic Concepts

Religion is an institution concerned with morality and values (and with the social control
of deviance). It is an institute that has many variations – there are many different types
of religions.
Emilie Durkheim stated that religion involves “things that surpass the limits of our
knowledge”.
Profane – an ordinary element of everyday life. We define most objects, events, of
experiences as profane. We also consider some things sacred.
o Examples in ours lives: logging onto the computer, turn a key to start our car are
profane.
Sacred – set apart as extraordinary, inspiring awe and admiration.
Setting the sacred from the profane is the essence of all religious belief.
Religion – a social institution involving beliefs and practices based on recognizing the
sacred. It is the socially constructed theories of the sacred systematized into beliefs and
practices (ritual).
Religion does not necessarily require a God or Deity – it is simply which is defined as the
sacred and set apart from the profane.
There is a large diversity in matters of faith, and nothing is sacred to every person on
earth (hence why there are many different religions).
For example, most people view books as profane, but Jews believe that the Torah (first
five books of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament) is sacred.
Durkheim explained that no matter how a community of believers draws its religious
lines, people understand profane things in terms of their everyday usefulness.
What is sacred we set apart from everyday life, giving it a holy aura.
The sacred is embodied in ritual.
Ritual – formal ceremonial behaviour.
For example, the Holy Communion is a central ritual of Christianity; to Christians the
wafer and wine consumed during this ritual are not seen in the profane way as food, but
as a sacred symbol of the body and blood of Jesus and therefore they are symbolized
like this though ritual.

Religion and Sociology

Neither common sense nor sociology can prove or disprove religious doctrine.
This is because religion is a matter of faith and deals with ideas that transcend every day
experiences.
 Faith – belief based on conviction (opinion) rather than scientific evidence.
Christianity for example urges Christians to “walk by faith, not by sight” because the
religion is not something that can be scientifically seen.
When studying religion sociologists simply look at why religions take a particular form in
one society or another and how religious activity affects society as a whole, they don’t
make any judgments about religion (they don’t asses the truth of falsity of the people’s
beliefs/theologies, they are more interested in the functions of religion and the social
construction of religions.

Does Science threaten religion?

Our meaningful world is increasingly a secular world: moving from religion to science.
Max Weber contended that throughout history the world has been increasingly
understood through a more rational way (more scientific) and thus secularization (the
decline in the importance of the supernatural and the sacred – religion) has occurred.
Could be considered as a “demagicking of the world”.
In the last decade, we have seen an enormous growth of new religion/religious
movements…possibly a remagicking of our world?
The fact that religion was giving way to science (rationalization), and that relevance of a
religious theory of human life had declined in importance is why so many classical
theorists (Weber, Durkheim, and Marx) were so interested in religion.

Functions of Religion: Structural-Functional Analysis: Emilie Durkheim

According to Durkheim, society has a life and power of its own beyond the life of any
individual. Basically he is saying that society is godlike because it shapes the lives of its
members and living on beyond them.
People around the world transform certain everyday objects into sacred symbols of
their collective life in order to celebrate their society (similar to how Christian’s take
food and make it a sacred symbol, in order to” celebrate” their religion – in this sense
society is the religion/god).
Totem – an object in the natural world collectively defined as sacred.
o Members of technologically simple societies transform every day objects into
sacred symbols of their lives by using totems.
o Could be like an animal or work of art.
o Symbolizes the power of society over the individual
o In our society, the flag is the totem, it is treated with respect; it is not used in a
profane way.
Durkheim believed that religious principles and rituals are the glue that held society
together. Religion promoted social cohesion, maintained stability through controlling
human desires and provided meaning for human experience/existence.
o This is because in his eyes what humans actually worship is Society itself, bound
about with sacred symbols.
Durkheim identified 3 major functions of religion that contribute to the operation of
society:
 1. Social cohesion
a. Religion brings people together through a shared symbolism, values, and norms.
b. Satisfied need for community, reduces alienation.
2. Social control
a. Society uses religious ideas to promote conformity
b. By defining god as a “judge”, many religions encourage people to obey cultural
norms.
c. Religion also backs up the power of political systems – plays a role in a lot of
political systems.
3. Providing meaning and purpose
a. Religious beliefs offer the comforting idea that our short lives serve some greater
purpose.
b. People who have these stronger beliefs are more likely to have a positive
outlook on life.
Also noted that “civil religion” is present.
Civil religion = traditional religious symbols, and emotions generated by religion
transposed into symbols of the State and emotions directed toward the State.
o “In god we trust” inscribed on coins
o Patriotic songs – “god bless America”
U.S. tends to be seen as having a stronger civil religion than Canada.
Although secular, civil religion is still religion because it integrates members of the
society into a moral community and reinforces the values of the group (which are the
primary functions of religion – according to Durkheim).

Constructing the Sacred: Symbolic-Interaction Analysis: Max Weber

From a symbolic-interaction point of view, religion – like society – is socially
constructed.
He also believed that religion functions to serve the social need for stability and to
provide meaning for human lives.
This perspective says that people use religion to give everyday life sacred meaning.
People are what sharpen the distinction between the sacred and the profane.
Peter Berger states that placing our small, brief lives within some “cosmic frame of
reference” gives us the appearance of “ultimate security and permanence”.
For example, if people view marriage as simply a contract, they would likely walk away
from it more easily, but since it is defined as a “holy” matrimony, people stay in a
marriage as they take it more seriously. Divorce rates are much lower in religious
people because of this.
Another point is that whenever we go through life-threatening situations – we turn to
our sacred symbols.

Max Weber: Protestantism and Capitalism:

Max Weber said particular religious ideas (particularly Protestant) brought about the
Industrial Revolution and Capitalism.
 People came to see property as a sign of divine blessing, therefore causing people to
work all the time and strive for wealth.
People believed they were best fulfilling their “calling” by reinvesting profits and
achieving ever-greater success in the process.
This led to technological advancements and what started the industrial revolution –
people striving for success to reach their God’s “calling”.
This shows the power of religion to alter the shape of society.

Inequality and Religion: Social-Conflict Analysis: Karl Marx

Both Durkheim and Weber looked at the positive functions of religion, while Marx say
religion in a negative light.
He though: man makes religion, religion doesn’t make man. He said religion was the sigh
of the oppressed people – the opium of the people.
The social conflict approach highlights religions support of social inequality.
Karl Marx said that religion serves to people of high status (it legitimizes status quo for
those with power), and moves people’s attention away from social inequalities.
There are close ties between political and religious “elites” – linking church and state.
o This creates the idea that opposing the government is opposing the church as
well and therefore God.
In Marx’s views religion was a form of social control, a false consciousness imposed by
the powerful (because church and state are so closely linked).
Religion encourages people to accept the difficulties of life and look hopefully to a
“better world to come”.
Basically, religion supports social inequality by claiming that the social order as it is, is
fine.
Because of this, Marx sees religion as preventing revolutionary change.
Religion also creates social inequality as most religions favour men.

Liberation Theology:
In the past Christianity has reached out to the oppressed people, urging them to have
stronger faith for a better life to come.
But, recently Christianity has taken a more political approach by using the liberation
theology.
A theology = set of specific beliefs (and associated practices) based on acceptance,
commitment and opinion.
Liberation theology – the combining of Christian principles with political activism, often
Marxist in character.
Today, Christian activists help people in poor nations liberate themselves from poverty.
Through this Christians are promoting greater social equality.
The liberation theology movement has gained strength in the poorest countries in the
world, where people of Christian faith help improve the conditions for the poor and
oppressed.
Feminist Spirituality:
Feminists have developed distinctively woman-centered religious and spiritual
adaptations, including ecofeminism and Goddess worship.
Here we see symbolic interactionist and sometimes-social conflict approaches: feminists
are committed to diverse personal experiences and an approach that represents gender
equality.
Most feminist activity is to raise awareness of the female presence within religious
history, while more revolutionary feminists attempt to make changes by broadening the
scope of established religions and incorporating other traditions.
Then there are feminists who have created their own religious rituals, symbols, and
belief systems, which are woman-centered.
Feminist religious activism is becoming global (increasing)

Religious Organization:
1. Ecclesia’s – “state religions”. Where there is no distinction here between Churhc and
State, they work “hand in glove”.
a. Clearly Ontario is NOT an ecclesia, but does recognize multiculturalism
b. Membership is ascribed.
2. Churches
a. Highly bureaucratized – they are integrated into the state, but not identified as
the State.
b. Roman Catholic church is a prominent example.
c. Membership is ascribed or achieved
3. Sects
a. Are opposed to the values of the broader society.
b. They are smaller, more experimental or emotional forms of religious
organization.
c. Membership is voluntary.
d. Sects seek out members through advertising the religion.
4. Cults
a. Small-scale religious groups, often opposed to the broader culture/religion.
b. Their meaning systems are outside of the institutionalized structures.
c. Usually initiated by a charismatic leader who conveys a message of a better
world to live in, or to find meaning for those who feel alienated.
d. Not ALL cults are against mainstream beliefs.
e. Most cults are unstable and fail – however all major religions did start out as
cults: group enlarged and became stable and become a sect, then maybe a
church and ecclesia.

Chapter 21 Summary

Colonial North America doctors, herbalists, ministers etc… engaged in healing arts, but
the lack of anesthetic, unsanitary medical instruments and ignorance led to many
unsuccessful surgeries; usually practiced within families
Health care was historically a family concern but with industrialization became the
responsibility of trained professionals
Gradually medical knowledge expanded:
o Scientific knowledge expanded vastly (anatomy, biochemistry, physiology)
o Medical societies appeared in Canada as the result of Doctors establishing
themselves as self-regulating professionals; early 19th century
o Medical schools established; gradually more and more existed, same with the
number of hospitals
o Society required people to obtain licences and follow strict medical standards in
order to practice medicine
The model of scientific medicine is the foundation of the Canadian medical
establishment
o Establishment of General Council of Medicine Education and Registration in
Upper Canada in 1865 signified the acceptance of the scientific model of
medicine
o Canadian Medical Association controlled certification process of medicine; they
determined who could and could not practice medicine (limited to those with
medical degrees)
o Due to the Medical Association guidelines, careers such as Naturopaths,
Herbalists and Midwives were limited in what power they had; in modern society
they have a very small following
o Doctors today hold a very high social profile
Expanding knowledge and acceptance of mental disorders contained in DSM; is
essentially a manual for mental illness created using the model of scientific medicine
o Medicalization = ‘defining behaviour as a medical problem or illness and
mandating or licensing the medical profession to provide some sort of treatment
for it’
o Mental illness treated using medicalization, as outlined by the model of scientific
medicine
o Example: addiction just recently defined as an illness to which treatment
exists; modern definitions of drug addictions involve changes in brain
chemistry and structure, as well as harmful memories used to fuel the
addiction
The model of scientific medicine has increased individual rights and privacy
o Medical confidentiality; medical discourse over public discourse
o Patient vs. deviant; sick individuals are treated with increased respect as patients
rather than deviants; in the past, deviants thought of as ‘broken’