2ND QUARTERLY EXAM IN DISS

Study Guide

I. PHENOMENOLOGY (EDMUND HUSSERL)

- it includes & highlights human experience and consciousness in the study of society.
- philosophy of experience

1. TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY (EDMUND HUSSERL)

- focuses on human consciousness.
- interested in the nature of knowledge.
2. HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGY (MARTIN HEIDEGGER)
- interested in the nature of being and temporality.

JEAN PAUL SARTRE & MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY

- highlights how we act out our existence in the world.

MERLEAU-PONTY

- used the concept of embodiment in explaining that individuals are not “flee-floating
consciousness” but embodied beings.

INTENTIONALITY

- define as a characteristic of consciousness wherein consciousness is always directed at

something.

II. FEMINISM
- a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the
political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes.
- it highlights women’s issues in the social sciences and forwarding the observation that research
is gendered.
- was introduced during 15th century work of CHRISTINE DE PIZAN “La Cité des dames (1405)”

THREE WAVES

FIRST WAVE (1830s - early1900s)

- focused on the right to suffrage/right to vote, equal contract, and property rights.

SECOND WAVE (1960s - 1980s)

- focused on sexuality, family, feminist rights in the workplace, and reproductive rights as well as
ending discrimination against women.
 THIRD WAVE (1990s - present)

- focused on the responses to the failures of the second wave and leaned on gender issues and
micro-politics of gender equality giving birth to various types of feminists fighting for different rights
on education, ecology, etc.

VARIATIONS

1. RADICAL FEMINISTS – call for the reorientation of society and the eradication of masculine
supremacy.
2. MARXIST FEMINISTS – focus on social and class inequalities and how female exploitation is
located within these qualities.

AUTOETHNOGRAPHY

- involves in recording the researcher’s emotions and reactions during research.

III. SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM

- a micro-level theory that focuses on meanings attached to human interaction, both verbal and
non-verbal, and to symbols.
- it is a micro-level framework and perspective in sociology that is also a reaction to the positivist
way of looking into society and positivist social research that emphasized a “bottom up”
approach where the focus shifted to face-to-face encounters of individual and everyday relations
to explain the operations of society.

- emerged in the mid-20th century with influences from Scottish moralists and American
pragmatist philosophers.

- its greatest influence came from American philosopher GEORGE HERBERT MEAD.

BASIC CONCEPTS

 SYMBOLS – are the images that represent a meaning.

 SIGNS – are the things that may represent something else.

 OBJECTS – are anything to which attention can be paid and action can be directed.

 LANGUAGE – is the socially constructed and organized system of symbols used to express
meaning.

 ACTS – refer to the interplay of internal processes and external manifestations that are made
evident by human behavior.
AMERICAN SOCIOLOGISTS

 HERBERT BLUMER OF THE CHICAGO SCHOOL

THREE MAIN PREMISES OF BLUMER’S SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM

1. Human beings act toward objects or persons based on the meanings that the objects or persons
have for them.
2. The meaning of things or persons, on the other hand, is derived from or arises out of the social
interactions that one has with others.
3. Meanings are handled and modified through an interpretative process used by a person in
dealing with the things that they encounter.

 MANFORD KUHN OF THE IOWA SCHOOL

– emphasized the four core themes in his theory.
1. Cybernetic Perspective: Social interaction can be examined through a cybernetic perspective.
2. Dyads and Triads: Studying society can be done focusing on dyads and triads as the location
for most social behavior and interaction.
3. Natural and Laboratory Settings: Society can also be studied in its natural form, focusing on
how interactions are naturally done in society, or it can also be recreated in a laboratory with the
purpose of identifying patterns and establishing laws.
4. Systematic and Rigorous Vocabulary: Social scientists must endeavor to create a more
systematic and rigorous vocabulary to refer to the nature of sociality.

 SHELDON STRYKER OF THE INDIANA SCHOOL

- emphasized that meanings and interactions eventually lead to the creation of stable patterns
that support social structures.
- he concluded that roles are expectations attached to positions or symbolic categories that serve
to cue behavior.