EDUCATION AND EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTS

SOCIETY AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Sociology is a science that studies how and why things change or not. Is a concrete view on a specific subject of
study (perspective that changes depending on the person) Individual interaction  microsocial view. Society
determines our position  macrosocial view

Sociology was born when we realized that society was changing.

PRESUMPTIONS DEFINITION
Work in favor or against people Social phenomena. Order, changes, conflicts…

Attempt to understand Study the meaning that people give to their actions

Social reform Approaching the social dimension of phenomena. Education, sports,

sexuality

Collect statistics Social dimension of education

Manipulating humans

Durkheim (macrosocial view)  our society determines what we are and what we do. We showed how the social
elements define suicide, he took information and showed the correlation between commit suicide and social
elements.

Weber (microsocial view)  how the interaction of individual has been developing a society.

Relativism people have the knowledge of different points of view but they have a critical analysis to choose the
one they think is the best.

We have born in a family that has it values, social position, culture… and we started to develop and change (or
not) our contest. And again, the new generations will be born in other situations than before.

Unmasking: things are not what they seem

Normality: an approach to the analysis of the relations established

Sociological problems: phenomena that I want to study (where are more suicides)

Social problem: the political changes they do to solve them (what could we do)

individual problem: difficulties or problems of a person (I don’t want to live)

Merton:  manifest function: the fact, what you see (bailar bajo la Lluvia)

 latest function: what’s behind, the objective (cultural or religious issue)

WHAT IS SOCIETY?

 Experience and interaction with others

 Routinization of experience  behavior patterns and norms
 Arbitrary or rational will, characterized by rational, instrumental and strategic calculations

The individual doesn’t exist without the society and backwards.

THE HUMAN BEING IN SOCIETY

 Individuals are living in configurations defined by strangers, previous people. Durkheim talks about
SOCIAL FACTS
 Learn is to grow  to grow is to be social (grow in these structures)
 To live in society is to do ir in systems of power and prestige
 The norms are:
o General: everybody follows them
o Specific: gender, class… explicit: written. Implicit: cultural, values
 The norms we must obey define our position in society

Social norms  pattern of behavior

Explicit norms  legal nature (school)

Implicit norms  rules unwritten but obvious to all (tradition)

Social context  do not talk with your mother full, respect the row, how traditions are changing  N. Elias
“the process of civilization”, how personality is created by lived things or situations.

John Elster, social norms  our cultural context will define our norms, in a rational way.

Social institutions  places where we have a pack of norms that we have to follow

Social control

 Physical violence  the most ancient. Monopoly of violence  a way to ensure not violence, I leave it to
the democratic society.
 Economic pressure  the most basic. In a company, if you don’t follow the norms you’ll be fired
 The informal social control in primary groups (small groups that we know each other and there is loyalty)
o Persuasion
o Ostracism (Amish)
o Derision (burla)
o Gossip
 Moral, costumes and manners

Stratification

The company consist of hierarchically ordered levels  POWER, PRIVILEGES, RANGES

systems of social stratification  CLASS, ETHNICITY, GENDER

In conclusion, society is an objective fact, faces us in the dorms of restrictions. If we leave the limits, has a
variety of instruments of control and coercion.

SOCIETY IN THE HUMAN BEING

 Relation nature / culture  the human being is open: is configured in relation to the environment
 Society determines:
o What we do
o What we are
o What do we think about what we do
 To explain it, we will refer to:
o Socialization process
 How we internalize, the norms, values of our society
  Process of acquiring culture
 Integration of culture in personality/identity
 Adopted from the individual to the environment
 We will have languages, culture… if we socialize.
o The theory of the role
o The theory of reference group

Socialization process  we become members of society internalizing beliefs, norms and values

Primary socialization  that occurs during childhood and makes us members of society

Secondary socialization  any subsequent process which leads the individual be socialized – to participate

Agents of socialization:

 Family
 School
 Peer group (grupo de gente igual)
 Massmedia

What we feel as private, is the most socially shared

Theory of role or social function:

 The role provides the pattern according to which the individual has to act in a particular situation
 We become a role
 The children learn to play the roles that correspond adopting the role in games
 The self is like a reflection in the mirror. How people treat you
 The scope depends on the number of roles we can play

Identity

 Is not something

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

Class  power, inequality, access to the top of the pyramid, poverty, role of education system.

Social structure

 Set of stratification axes that rations access to social resources

 The form that adopts the global system of relations between individuals.

Studies of social structure are cartographies of social positions of inequality.

Main stratification axes of inequality: age, studies, gender, class, religion…

Any system of social stratification is based on an explanation: a discourse of legitimization: religion (god wants it
that way), nature (everyone takes the position that correspond), science (science says things are like that).

Social class as a form of social stratification

 According to the relation with the means of products (Marx)

 According to the position. Socioeconomic status (Bourdieu)

Marx (1818-1883):

Why do we accept that there are people rich and with a good position and other al reves?

Maybe be many time ago, people who were rich, worked a lot.
Characteristics of human being:

 Produces their means of existence (livelihood)

 Create their needs: rich in needs
 Acts in nature insofar as it acts on him: subject and object (we change the world)
 The organization of society depends on means of production

The object of study is the production of human existence.

Historical materialism (means of production defines society: feudalism, capitalism…):

 Historical eras are social

 Build relationships that have not been chosen or wanted
 Marx distinguished historical eras in terms of distinct modes of production: feudalism, capitalism,
communism…

The concept of mode of production:

 Doesn’t covers only material life, it is the way to act, to express our life
 “to be” is: the way we produce our life, what we produce

The nature of individuals depends on the material conditions of production of their existence. The way that we
produce things will effect on how we live (tortilla de patatas y amor).

Class theory:

The kind of structure that we have (capitalism) is different between classes.

Capitalist (owners of means of produce):

 Active subject
 Passive subject

Workers (proletarian)

 Based on the existence of struggle (problema)

 Fight is initially conceived as an individual struggle

Labor theory of value:

Change in the relationship between commodity/money

From pre-capitalism to capitalist

 Simple mercantilism: money is an exchange, purpose  production of commodity. COMMODITY 

MONEY  COMMODITY
 Capitalism: commodities means of produce capital, aim  produce capital. MONEY = COMMODITY 
+++ MONEY
 Work: a commodity subject to the same laws

Use value: needs that can be satisfied for the use of a certain object. Is not possible to deduct because it hasn’t
had a common unit of measure. Exchange value: exchange become a reality.

Components of value (explotation)

Value of commodity  divided into three parts:

  Constant capital (means of production) C
 Variable capital (labor power) V (trabajadores + dinero)
 Surplus valia (plusvalía) P (profit – beneficio)

Simplifying: the less you pay for labor power, more surplus is guaranteed

Alienation:

Objective fact  separation between labor and capital

 Product alienation (1)

 Alienation of productive activity (2)
 Alienation of human respect human (3)

Production activity produces alienation

1) You are a worker, you have no control/power to control what you are doing. We don’t have control of
what we do, we don’t decide what we produce
2) We don’t define how we do the products, how we work
3) You will not have the ability to discuss to others how do you want the life. We can decide what we
produce hand how like a human (hobbies, spending money…)

Alienation and commodity fetishism:

Alienation  objectification  naturalization of market behavior  fetishism (as we don’t develop our identity
when we are working, we have to develop it in other areas)

 Objectified value: buyers and sellers in the market – exchange pieces that people will pay for the
commodities.
 Cosification: dehumanization of products made in social relationships
 Fetishism: social relations are continuall mediated and expressed with objects (commodities and money

Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002)

Habitus: need to incorporate new variables in social stratification (apart from means of productions). Orientation
of cultural practices that create a social group. Bourdieu added a new variable: cultural capital (intelligence)

GENDER (1/10-10/10)

 Arbitrary characteristic (it will define our life)

 Objectification of discrimination and legitimacy of prejudice
 Socialization (socialization process  norms, values, role)
 Identity subjected to inequality (humiliation, exploitation)
 The stereotype paradox (sometimes having some stereotypes helps us to move around the world. “If I
am a man/woman I know what I have to do”)

The discomfort and suffering in inequality

The massmedia standards of a gender are sometimes artificial.

Sex  biological characteristics that we have

Gender  all the cultural elements attributed to a man and a woman. It’s a social construction. Each culture has
their own definition of gender

United Nations Definition: the concept that establishes relationships between men and women based on socially
defined roles that are assigned to either sex: those are social constructs that are different in each society.

Identity: the power acts from inside

  The cultural significance that assumes the sexual body
 Construction of subjectivity: subjected subjects. Also, the concept of sex and sexuality

Social position: the power acts from outside

 The position that has an individual in production of existence. Socio-economic structure

 Consider social structure. Social relations are established and actions
 Existence of structure involves stablishing relationships of need and dependency between the different
component of the system relations. Man and woman are submitted to relationships socially constructed.

Patriarchy definition

System of social relations in which men as a social group and individually, support positions of power, oppress
woman and take control of their reproductive and productive capacity, their bodies and their products either
peacefully or violently.

We can talk about patriarchy when the gender variable is significant and define social positions, decision-making
positions and access to resources.

Equality has a normative character

 In connection with the ethical principles of a society

 Regarding the principles of effectiveness and efficiency
 Is when a society understand people as the same

The concept of difference has a positive character:

 It refers to the diversity that comes to human life, or cultural diversity

 However, the existence of social groups is a significant indicator of inequality

Discrimination: action to deal differently depending on a certain characteristic. Pay attention to action (dos
personas de sexo diferente cobran diferente en el mismo trabajo)

Inequality: refers to the different situation of a group based on their access to resources and power positions
(en un hospital, el 90% son enfermeras y el 90% son cirujanos)

social structure

 Refers to systems of relations between social positions

 Dependencies between positions (the existence of a position presupposes the existence of the other
position)
 Is based on the division of labor
 sexual division of labor builds two categories of gender
o feminity: women housewife, household nurturing and caregiver
o masculinity: head of household, defender, proviewfinder

supermasculin position: un puesto de trabajo en el cual tienes que estar fuera de casa mucho tiempo, cobras lo
mismo independientemente del sexo

Social estructure

 the sexual division of paid job is a replica of the sexual division of labor in the family
o women are over represented in productive activities relating to the care of people
o the men are over represented in productive activities relating to the production and management
of intellectual and material wealth
 the sexual division of labor determined the presence in social activities
Positions in social structure

 for assignment:
o implies the existence of institutions where social positions are attributed to individuals
o this is the case of the sexual division of labor or the monarchy
 for choice:
o the individual occupies the social position has chosen
o when the number of positions is lower than people who want to occupy we apply competition
criteria among candidates
 democracy is an indicator of the fact that the positions are not occupied by the same kind of people from
generation to generation based on features such as: family origin, sex assigned, ethnicity, attributed
race.

Psychic structure

 characteristics of subjectivity are gender constructions

 internalized in the early years of life. Identify with figures of reference
 in terms of sexual division of labor between mother and father, the child has sexist references
 basis of socialization: identification
o the creatures play an active role in the constitution of their subjectivity
o overcome gender patterns in the constitution of subjectivity depends on overcome adult
generation patterns

ETHNICITY AS A STRATIFICATION AXES(10/10)

Race: defined group from a biological characteristic. Group of people who share similar and distinct physical
characteristic.

Ethnicity: defined group considering their cultural practices. Is a socially defined category of people who identity
with each other based on common ancestral, social, cultural or national experience.

Nationality: defined by the legal relationship between a person and a state.

 Never mobility of men and women had been so prevalent

 Global phenomenon: migration today can’t be understood outside this dimension
 Globalization intensifies migration, but also migration carries the globalization
 Growing politicization of migration (ex. Security policy)
 Feminization of migration: play an active role in different regions
 We live in an increasingly multicultural world
 Spain generates emigration a receive immigration
 Common topics around immigration
o Talking about immigration as a homogeneous community
o Conceiving a closed compartment, a different group without the possibility of change including
the following generations
o Attributing social, political, labor and economic problems that previously exist.

Integration:

 Structural integration: penetration in the occupational structure of the host society

 Cultural integration: exercise minimum values of coexistence and the right of difference and acceptance´
 Legal integration: guarantee equal justice between immigrants and natives
Ethnocentrism

 Is judging another culture only by the values and standards of one’s own culture
 Ethnocentric individuals judge other groups through their own ethnic group, especially with concern for
language, behavior, customs and religion
 It is considered a natural proclivity of human psychology, it has developed a generally negative
connotation
 Bronislaw Malinowski argued that any human science had to transcend the ethnocentrism of the scientist
 Judith Butler: recognizing the other in other to sustain the self and the problems of not being able to
identify the other

Symbolic construction

 Immigrant =/ citizen. Immigrant: always halfway. It just arrive… endangering our truth. It embodies
cultural characteristics. “different. Distant. Monstruous”. At the same time that confirm our identity.

WE ARE NOT THEM

 condition for the construction of categories: stigmatize category

 Besides covering insecure jobs, a symbolic space: they blame for everything.
 JUSTIFICATION OF EXPLOTATION

AGENTS OF SOCIALIZATION

Family:

 Primary socialization. Mediates social influences

 Sexual and reproductive legitimated relations
 Stable emotional support
 Attention to basic material needs and breading of children
 Assigns children to social position
 Family have lost grounded lately. STATE and MARKET cover functions of the family

Family structure depends on:

Marriage

 Monogamy: only one partner

 Polygamy: more than two partners
 Polyamory: non-monogamy

Degrees of kinship

 Nuclear: first and second generations degree coexist

 Extended: more than the second generations degree living together

Socialization:

 Primary socialization: children learn the cultural norms of the society in which they are born
 Self-aware:
 Piaget, Mead, Freud
Freud (1856-1939)

 THE IMPORTANCE OF EARLY YEARS OF LIFE

 Unconscious part governs our behavior
 Most experience disappears
 Children musk know that they desire can’t be covered immediately
 Super ego external order, the blame
 Process with tension. Controlling impulses
 The child becomes independent overcomes. Oedipus complex

PEER GROUPS

Socialization agent consisting in a friendship group composed of individuals of similar age and social status.

Social group: Group of people who maintain some kind of relationship and have consciousness they share
objectives and activities and they have a relative stability.

Age: each society establishes different categories with different functions, tasks and rites of passage.

Primary groupis characterized by face to face relationships and usually involves a strong group.

 There is no explicit aim to socialize, but increasingly plays a more important role in the socialization of
children and adolescents.
 Maintain regulations, social control mechanisms and their own models of social relations.
 Contributes to the formation of personality, values and behavior patterns.

Central mechanism: play, imitation and routine.

The peer group is a central agent for the social and psychological development.

Toplay is one of the main ways of their development. They learn the rules of the “majority”: what’ does the
majority becomes the common rules.

The preferred model of a child is another child. The food, the games...

Desire to belong and to identify with a peer group.

In the peer group we will learn how to be and how to think to be accepted. The peer group assesses the conduct
of its members continuously. Peer group share friendships, interests and taste. Regulating behavior

Socialization is specific to the context, therefore, if children and young people behave differently at home is
precisely because they use codes.

For teenagers there is a need to distance themselves from the adult world peer group helps them to do so.

Main characteristics

 Neoindividuality: back to the Self conceived as a refuge from society. Lack of belief in the collective
ideals
 Hedonism and immediacy: cult to the present. Fragmentation in a series of perpetual presents.
Immediate requirement for an experience of pleasure. Cult to de body and fashion affects individual
behavior
 Weak thought: absence of ideology capable to explain the reality.All major metastories, speeches
legitimizing enters into crisis. Predominant language of the image to the verbal or textual.
 Weak thinking: absence of an ideology capable to explain our world. Persistent opposition to universals,
meta-narratives, and generality.
 Aestheticization of life: abolishing border between art and everyday life. Stylistic multiplicity,
eclecticism and mixing codes: pastiche, irony, fun and celebration
 New forms of social relations. Renunciation of social transformation projects.
  Ironic vision of social reality. Predominance of irony and humor in front of rational argument.
 Subordination of culture to market logic.The market absorbs cultural products and turns them into
commodities.
 End of the “era of representation”Simulacrum era: when simulacra occupy plays an equivalence with
real (idealization of reality)

What is Free time?

Personal Time: Duty Time (mandatory tasks)
Remaining time (time released of obligations)

Evolution in the FT amount

Reduced working time

 Reduction of working hours (generalization weekend vacation time, reduced day)

 Reducing the domestic time (increase domestic employee, technology, redistributing roles)

Life cycle

 Lengthening of education
 Delay labor market entry
 Increased life expectancy

Legitimation process (s.XIX and XX):

What do we do after work?
Need of personal time/personal fulfillment. Effect on productive improve. Comeback of classical Greece ideal
and upper classes of the S.XVIII.

Exclusivity by class

Upper class/ Old middle class distinguished by exclusivity. UC mobilizing all available capital, while the
OCM tends to rely more on economic

New Middle ClassLooking exclusivity by personal development. The NMC will put more emphasis on the
expressive aspects while the LMC focus more on instrumental aspects

Working Class activities of a passive instrumental character and mass corruption

TV AND OTHER SCREENS 24/10/2018

Global screen: is that idea that we live in a world that the main way to communicate is audiovisual, it has a big
impact in our society and ourselves.

Communication

The media are instruments that allow the transmission of knowledge between people. From signs of art from
prehistory through writing, to audio-visual language and mass media. (Lipovetsky)

Society have evolved as technological advances (Harry Pross):

 Primary Media: used from the human body. Symbols, verbal language.
 Secondary media (machine): the producer of the information needs a machine, but the receiver doesn’t.
newspaper
 Tertiary media (electronic): When both need the technology. TV, radio
 Quaternary Media (digital media): when both have the technology, but we break the distinction between
producers and consumers. The receiver turns producer. Like Youtube.

Mass media functions are: to form, inform and entertain the mass audience that has access to them
The MM are managed by public organizations and Holdings of communication.

Influence:

 MM have the resources to strengthen attitudes, values and beliefs

 Support the exercise of power (institutional and business) with no coercion but through seduction
 SEDUCTION = EMOTIONAL CONNECTION

It can be that a company has different magazines or newspapers of distinct topics (p.e. Playboy and Salut)
Compañia Godó. It’s a private company

There are also public corporations as Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals (TV3, Esport3, Catalunya
Ràdio)

Audiovisual language: The multiple screens

With the birth of the moving image in the twentieth century, has imposed in contemporary communication

There is plurality of artifacts with screen in processes and communication practices.

The first film was created by the Lumiere brothers. Television was invented in the 30’s and established in the 50-
60’s. The film industry has been reinvented from the influence of other screens (video games, music videos…).

The audiovisual language has its own grammar for the narrative fiction.

This language is constructed from the evolution of fictional films and extends specific language as the universal
language of moving images for all screens and all contents (fictions, sports, news).

Characteristics of audiovisual fiction: Film editing, lighting, narrative use of film plans, music and sound.

 Film editing
 Lighting
 The narrative use of film plans
 The music and sound

The visual language seeks excitement and entertainment.

 Content
 Emotional impact

Establishing a magical bond between fiction and reality.

An example for this bond would be for example the champions league (with its music, its shouts, but also you
can see the face of a football player, the public eating…).

Global screen effects: the production of meaning

Baudrillard (1991) separates the information from the production of meaning (what we understand as reality is
only something created by ourselves, by the production of meaning). For him, these terms are associated to
negatively:

 Reality and fiction:For Baudrillard the universe of mass media causes that fiction become more real
than reality itself,
 Hyperreality: condition in which what is real and what is fiction are seamlessly blended together so that
there is no clear distinction between where one ends and the other begins. In whose interior finish every
meaning. (idea constructed for us)
  Simulacrum: is producing an artificial image self-referential, freed from any connection with the outside
world. Is something that lose the contact with reality and lives by itself. (the process of construction of the
hyperreality). Sacar algo de la realidad y convertirlo en otra cosa. (advertisement of a woman)
 The mass media have vanished all difference between reality and fiction. Between what is apparent and
what is real. Among simulacrum and true.

The global screen effects in the construction of subjectivities

Mass media are not neutral

The neutral character attributed to technology has brought, according to the critical theory of the Frankfurt
School, to a deep estrangement in relation to the central problems of humanity -ethics, justice, freedom,
happiness…-. Its only criterion of truth becomes to be operating value, for more irrational or despotic that may
be.

New narcissistic subjectivity:

 The media promote unattainable stereotypes.

 Creates discomfort in the individual: experiencing incomplete and defective.
 It manifests the absence of critical thinking, replacing the “sense of reality” for the virtual images and the
illusion of a “personal fullness” achieved through consumption (Lash)

Social network: a social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or
organizations) and a set of the dyadic ties between these actors.

Rhizomatic: Deleuze and Guattari use the terms “rhizome” and “rhizomatic” to describe theory and research
that allows for multiple, non-hieratical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation. You can
connect with other people, is a way to escape from the hieratical structure of the society (p.e. facebook).

Transversal: communication that escapes from the hegemonic discourses and allows peer to peer relations

Prosumer: is a person who consumes and produces media