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Second Edition

Real-Life Sociology
A Canadian Approach

Anabel Quan-Haase | Lorne Tepperman

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Title: Real-life sociology : a Canadian approach / Anabel Quan-Haase, Lorne Tepperman.
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Description: Second edition. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
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Preface

Anabel Quan-Haase
Lorne Tepperman

The job of any textbook is to invigorate an old field (or discipline), giving it new life. If
successful, the present book does this by highlighting ways that the field—cultivated
over centuries in various ways, for a variety of historical reasons—can help us better
understand the present day, and perhaps even the future.

In Real-Life Sociology, we have tried to show how the present-day world has been
shaped by rapid developments in science and technology, and how, in turn, social forces
have brought science and technology to fruition. As we will see, science and technology
have flourished at particular times and places, but never as much as today. As a result,
many aspects of daily life—how we play, work, and learn—have been transformed by
technological innovation—by computers, robotics, the internet and social media,
modern medicine, space-age modes of transportation, and household appliances that
would have been unimaginable only a century ago, to name a few of these “miracles.”

Sociologists are becoming increasingly aware of the rapid scientific and technological
transformations that are unfolding. This provides a unique opportunity for
understanding and predicting how all of these technological marvels will affect our
personal lives, institutions, and social norms. Sociologists are developing new
methodologies to study how people communicate and interact in a world mediated by
mobile phones, social media, and online communities. This is an exciting time, as many
new questions surface and new ways of looking at the social world emerge. But it is also
a time of post-truth, unprecedented forms of alienation and inequality, and rapid
transformations in many domains of life.

Futurologist Alvin Toffler said in the 1970s that we were all at risk of suffering “future
shock”—the result of a speeded up pace of life and unparalleled social change. There is
some evidence Toffler was right: for example, we see high and growing rates of anxiety,
depression, and addiction in many parts of the world, especially among our young
people. In some part, these issues are a response to the stress produced by change and
uncertainty. Yet humanity has always struggled—and will continue to struggle—with
rapid social change. It is our hope that this book, which sets some of the most
newsworthy and important social changes in a sociological context, will help students
overcome “future shock” by adapting to the future as it unfolds.

So, with that thought in mind, we hope our readers find this “real-life approach” to
present-day society exhilarating and useful. Let us know what you think.
Acknowledgments

It takes a village to raise a child and a community of helpers to write a book as wide-
ranging as this one.

At the University of Toronto, a variety of undergraduate researchers helped Professor

Tepperman research, write, and edit this book. These excellent research assistants
included Ivana Avramov, Teodora (Teddy) Avramov, Gary Guinness, Richard Kennedy,
Darya (Dasha) Kuznetsova, Ashley Ramnaraine, Jacqueline Wing Yang Siu, Sylvia
Urbanik, Alice Wang, and Jiaqi Wang. They were headed up by the amazing Zoe
Sebastien, who has now gone on to excel in the study of law. So, we send thanks to all of
our Toronto undergraduate and graduate helpers for their insights and efforts. At
Western University, Professor Quan-Haase benefited greatly from the help of students
Isioma Elueze, Chandell Gosse, Kelsang Legden, Ryan James Mack, Victoria O’Meara,
Abdul Malik Sulley, and Carly Williams for the first edition, and for the second edition,
Dennis Ho, Alice Hwang, Claudia Jiang, Olivia Lake, Kristen Longdo, Charlotte Nau,
and Sananda Sahoo.

We were also helped by a number of anonymous reviewers who provided wonderful and
instrumental suggestions for improvement at various stages of development. Big thanks
go, then, to our reviewers:

• Anton Oleynik, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador

• Ataman Advan, Simon Fraser University
• Kelsey Leonard, Six Nations Polytechnic
• Marcella Cassiano, University of Alberta
• Deanna Behnke-Cook, University of Guelph
• Angela Aujla, Georgian College
• Ondine Park, MacEwan University

as well as several who chose to remain anonymous.

Last and certainly not least, we want to thank the marvellous people at Oxford
University Press who supported our work throughout with great dedication. They
include Darcey Pepper, who, as former acquisitions editor, helped us launch the project.
Amy Gordon, our developmental editor, provided a steady flow of good humour and
countless invaluable suggestions. In these ways, Amy made our job genuinely enjoyable,
even at times when we were struggling. So, thank you, Amy. We also thank Leslie
Saffrey, our copy editor, who was extraordinarily thorough and helpful; her edits were
invaluable and made sure this text is the best it can be. Finally, we thank Lisa Ball, who
saw the book safely through final stages of the production process.

We also thank our colleagues at the University of Toronto and Western University for
their input and support. Finally, we thank our parents, who through their hard work
made generational upward mobility, and in that way the writing of this book, a reality.

Anabel Quan-Haase Lorne Tepperman

Western University University of Toronto

Publisher’s Preface

Anabel Quan-Haase
Lorne Tepperman

Society shapes our everyday lives in ways we often cannot see unless we exercise our
sociological imaginations. It is our hope that Real-Life Sociology will not only teach you
to engage your sociological imagination but will also help you understand why this skill
is so important, particularly in today’s globalized and technology-driven world.

In preparing this new edition, we retained our one paramount goal: to produce the most
relatable, comprehensive, and dynamic introduction to sociology available to Canadian
students. We hope that as you browse through the pages that follow, you will see why we
believe the second edition of Real-Life Sociology is the most exciting and innovative
textbook available to Canadian sociology students today.
What Makes This a One-of-a-Kind Textbook

A Canadian Textbook for Twenty-First Century

Canadian Students
Written by Canadians for Canadians, Real-Life Sociology highlights the realities of
Canadian society as it exists today: it uses recent major events with sociological drivers
and effects—such as #NoMoreStolenSisters, the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives
Matter protests, and many more—to illustrate sociological concepts.

An Intersectional Approach
While the chapters in Real-Life Sociology are organized according to the traditional
separation of gender, racialization, and class, the concept of intersectionality has been
implemented throughout the book. Students will better understand the intersections of
racialization, gender, gender presentation, citizenship status, Indigeneity, sexuality,
disability, and class when discussing topics such as the wage gap, suicide statistics,
educational attainment, social mobility, and climate change.

Coverage of Technology and the Digital Society

In addition to Anabel Quan-Haase’s expertise on the social changes led by information
and communication technologies, every chapter includes powerful and accessible case
studies and examples that show how technology and digital media are changing our
everyday lives—and who these changes are leaving behind.
A Visual, Thought-Provoking Presentation
Students are encouraged on every page to adopt a sociological imagination in order to
see the sociology in everyday life. Carefully chosen photos and captions, provocative
Time to Reflect questions that link back to chapter learning objectives, and end-of-
chapter review and critical thinking questions invite readers to apply theory to their
everyday lives.
Case Studies and Compelling Viewpoints
In addition to the Time to Reflect boxes, Real-Life Sociology features five other types of
boxes that illustrate sociological concepts by highlighting issues, events, and ideas at the
centre of contemporary life. Case studies with questions and answers at the end of each
chapter were written by Sonia Perna, instructor, Southern Alberta Institute of
Technology.

Think Globally

Think Globally boxes apply a global perspective to the concepts in the chapter,
either comparing Canada with the world or bringing up key issues in other
countries that illustrate the chapter concepts.

2.2 Call for a Global Public Sociology

3.3 The Law of Jante
4.4 Relocation and Gendered Social Scripts
 5.2 Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation

6.5 Closing Global Inequality through Digital Education: One Laptop per Child
7.3 Labour Participation of Women Worldwide
8.5 Diaspora Communities Build and Preserve Social Ties Online
9.1 Science, Technological Progress, and the Alarming Longevity Gap
9.4 COVID-19 and Asylum Seekers at US and Canadian Borders
12.3 The Cost of Workplace Accidents

13.1 Can the Digital Divide Be Used for Religious Social Control?
14.2 Social Media as Citizen Journalism
15.3 Who Will (Likely) Be the Main Victims of COVID-19?
16.3 M-15 or Los Indignados: Networked Mobilization

Theory in Everyday Life

Theory in Everyday Life boxes introduce theories and theorists and apply their
work to the real world.

1.1 Founders of Sociology

2.1 Representations of Community Policing

3.2 Gender Scripts

4.2 Residential Schools: Resisting Total Institutions
6.3 The Digital Divide and Differential Benefits from Digital Media
7.1 The Work of Judith Butler
8.1 Two Examples of Racial and Ethnic Discrimination
9.2 Access to Health Services
11.4 A Feminist Approach to Online Education
12.4 H.G. Wells
13.3 Reginald Bibby

14.5 Understanding and Measuring Digital Literacy

Sociology 2.0

Sociology 2.0 boxes outline contemporary examples as case studies that are
relevant for students, particularly related to science and technology.

1.3 Online Gaming and Social Construction

2.5 The Facebook Experiment: Do Researchers Need to Ask for Consent to
Study Facebook Interactions?
3.1 Social Media Reshaping Canadian Culture
4.5 Context Collapse on Social Media
5.1 Challenging the Norm
6.2 A New Elite of Technological Visionaries
7.2 Gigi Gorgeous
8.4 Birds of a Feather Flock Together in Digital Space
10.4 Technology and the Time Spent on Housework
11.5 Plagiarism: Its Causes and Consequences
12.1 The Shared, Electric, Self-Driving Car
13.2 Religion? We’ve Got Apps for That
14.3 Participating in Remix Culture
15.4 Technotrash
16.1 Smart Mob: Water Movement

Digital Divide
Digital Divide boxes discuss inequality in a digital and technology-driven age,
relating the concepts in the chapter to modern inequality.

1.4 Gamergate
2.3 Statistics Canada’s Strategy for Ensuring Full Enumeration of Indigenous
People in Canada
3.5 Technological Acceptance

4.3 Masculinities on Instagram

5.4 Older Adults and Cybercrime
6.1 Disciplining Digital Play in Youth Culture
7.4 Initiatives to Promote the STEM Curriculum to Girls
8.2 LinkedIn Profiles as Markers of Identity: To Erase or Not?
10.5 Can Older Parents Connect with Cyber-Obsessed Kids?
11.3 Making Technology Accessible
12.5 Are New Information and Communication Technologies Creating a “Digital
Skills Gap”?
13.6 Internet Use and the Decline of Religion
14.1 Fake News and Children’s Vulnerability
15.1 Social Inequality and Pollution

16.2 The Arab Spring of 2011: A Twitter Revolution

Spotlight On

Spotlight On boxes illustrate key sociological concepts with relatable, familiar

examples.

1.2 The Social Determinants of Health

2.4 Alice Goffman’s Ethnographic Work in Chicago
3.4 Foodies
 4.1 Appearance Norms Influence Young Girls’ Sense of Self

5.3 Shopping Online and Credit Card Hackers

6.4 Can Homeless People Afford Cell Phones?
7.5 NoMoreStolenSisters: Violence against Indigenous Women
8.3 Indigenous Youth and Suicide
9.3 The Variety of Adolescent Experiences

11.1 Fundraising and Social Inequality

12.2 Five Famous Women Inventors
13.4 Should Governments Try to Enforce Secularism?
13.5 Lingering Effects of the Potlatch Ban
14.4 Vertical and Horizontal Integration and the Irving Oil Company
15.2 The Development of Renewable/ Sustainable Energy
16.4 Idle No More
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1
Thinking Like a Sociologist

Anabel Quan-Haase
Lorne Tepperman

Simone Golob/Offset.com

Learning Objectives

In this chapter, you will:

• Understand the concept of the sociological imagination

• Read about the history and development of sociology as a social scientific
discipline
• Be introduced to foundational concepts of sociology: social structure,
society, social institutions, and roles
• Be able to distinguish between the four main theoretical approaches taken
throughout this book: conflict theory, functionalism, symbolic
interactionism, and feminism

• Consider how learning about sociology as a discipline can be useful in

many aspects of your life
Introduction

Already today, wherever you live and whatever your age, you’ve probably done hundreds
of things that thousands of other people were doing. Maybe you stopped for coffee on
your way to class, or posted on social media about something you watched last night, or
put off writing a difficult message to someone. That doesn’t make you boring; it just
makes you human.

Humans like to feel like part of a community, and part of being a community member
means doing the same things that other community members do. Humans also like to
exclude people from their community and compete with people from other
communities. Belonging to a community includes pressures to conform and punishment
for not conforming. With your behaviour, among other things, you signal to your
community of friends that you belong. On a selfie, for example, you might use particular
visual cues, slang, references to other media, or commentary such as hashtags or memes
to include those “in the know” and exclude potential viewers who are not members of
your community.

Have you ever asked yourself why selfies are so popular? Diefenbach and Christoforakos
(2017) write that there is a “selfie bias”—a tendency to view our own selfies as ironic and
only half-committed—that allows us to satisfy our desire for self-display without feeling
narcissistic (or stuck up). That’s why selfies have been such a success in our social lives:
they let us show off without looking like we’re showing off. Paradoxically, other research
suggests that this practice may backfire: that taking and posting selfies often increases
people’s social sensitivity and lowers their self-esteem (Shin et al., 2017).

Two other dynamics also likely drive selfie creation: a desire to innovate and a desire to
imitate. In many ways, whatever selfie you may have posted this week looks like a
million other posts, so in that sense it is imitative. But, in small ways—maybe the
expression you’re making in a photo, the exact phrasing you used in your description, or
the filter you added—your post is a tiny bit unusual, even unique. That little bit of
weirdness or specialness is your innovation, though it remains innovation within an
acceptable range of behaviour. We are always aware of what our friends and
acquaintances are ready to accept. In other words, we innovate to stay included, and
only innovate within an acceptable range in order to not be excluded.

These two dynamics—inclusion and exclusion—are a central part of the story we tell
about sociology in this book. We will repeatedly look at how people connect to and
communicate with one another in communities and societies: how we teach one
another, learn from one another, copy one another, and restrict one another. We will
also look at how people cooperate with, compete with, reward, and punish one another.
And we will see all these inclusive and exclusive behaviours come to life through
interactions between individuals and groups.

In short, as we will see throughout this book, almost everything you think, say, and do is
social. However innovative your actions may be, they are also imitative. However hard
you may try to separate yourself from one group of people, you are usually also aiming
to connect yourself with another group of people.

These processes are hard for people to see at first. We all like to think of ourselves as
unique, special, and remarkable. Similarly, most of us are used to thinking about our
problems as individual and deeply personal. However, this course will teach you to
consider the wider forces at work in your (and everyone’s) lives. Often, the problems you
are facing—pressure to do well in school, your growing student debt, or uncertainty
about what career to prepare for—are widely shared with other students.

When problems that seem individual are widely shared by a similar group, it’s time to
think like a sociologist. As you will see, there are large social forces that are shaping your
own life and every other human life. In order to see them, you need to activate your
sociological imagination.
The Sociological Imagination and Sociology’s
Beginnings

Time to reflect

What had you heard about sociology before you started reading this book? Think
about your expectations of sociology as a discipline as you read about and are
introduced to its key concepts.

C. Wright Mills and the Sociological Imagination

Today, every sociologist understands the importance of sociological imagination. Many
decades ago, the American sociologist C. Wright Mills (1959) defined sociological
imagination as a “vivid awareness of the relationship between personal experience and
the wider society” (p. 5). The sociological imagination is not a theory but an outlook that
makes us connect the situations we experience in our lives to broader societal events. It
is also a deeply historical undertaking, pushing us to compare our own society to other
societies at other times and places. The role of history in shaping present-day society
cannot be ignored if we are to be good and imaginative sociologists.

Mills (1959) wrote that the sociological imagination requires us to connect large and
small, fast-changing and slow-changing parts of social life. This imagination makes us
aware of the relationship between individuals and the wider society in which they live. It
pushes us to look at our personal experiences in a more objective way. It urges us to ask
how our lives are shaped by the social, cultural, economic, political, and environmental
context in which we live. In this way, the sociological imagination helps us think of
society as the result of millions of people working out their personal lives. As we do this,
we are shaped by society and, reciprocally, we participate in changing it.

For example, it helps us see that, often, our actions are the product of (invisible) norms
and values; such invisible norms and values exist in every society, though they change
over time. We generally do what people have told or taught us to do because we want
social approval. Our actions take place in a particular social context that makes some
choices easy and other choices difficult. Equally, our actions affect other people and in
that way they shape the society we live in and contribute to changing society.

Developing a sociological imagination means learning to shift from one way of thinking
to another. This often means trying to see the world from a new angle, from outside our
culture and outside the socialization we have received. Often, we can do this only by
questioning what everyone thinks is true. In short, applying the sociological imagination
forces us to break free from personal experiences and assumptions, if only for a while.

Often, this way of understanding leads sociologists to empathize with people who have
been disadvantaged by the norms, values, and structures in society and to seek social
justice. Mills thought that a lack of sociological imagination could make people apathetic
—that is, unwilling to study and help disadvantaged people. Without a sociological
imagination, people might lose their ability to respond empathetically to human
tragedies and injustices or to effectively criticize their political leaders. They might lash
out at disadvantaged people or offer individual solutions rather than try to change the
system that created the disadvantage in the first place.

In studying sociology, you will find many opportunities to use your sociological
imagination. Using your sociological imagination will mean applying critical thinking
skills to social issues; however, the sociological imagination is more than critical
thinking. It is a way of thinking about society as a tapestry of individual lives interacting
and evolving in time. So, though the sociological imagination is challenging, we think it
will make the world come alive for you and help you to see your life in new, more
interesting, and provocative ways.

Understanding sociology also means seeing the general in particular cases. By this,
sociologist Peter Berger (1963) meant looking at seemingly unique individual events or
circumstances and finding patterns and trends that might point to broader forces at
work.

For example, marriage may be a unique event in a person’s life. Nonetheless,

sociologists can see it as one of many life transitions or changes a person will make that
are remarkably similar to other changes. We can compare marriage to graduation, a first
job, parenthood, divorce, retirement, or widowhood, for example. Like these other
transitions, marriage changes how a person spends their time and money, the people
they associate with, and the opportunities and barriers they face. It even changes the
ways they see themselves and other people, as do other major life transitions.

This generalized view of marriage is simple and understandable. However, you may
never have thought about it this way before. According to Berger, sociologists need to
hone their imagination by seeing the strange in the familiar. They do this by looking at
things that appear ordinary and straightforward, and then rather than taking them for
granted, question everything about them. For example, questions as to why someone
would choose to get married at all, to whom, at what point in their relationship, and
what the marriage ceremony would look like might not even be considered but can
reveal a lot about the circumstances in which someone finds themself. Often, travelling
abroad helps us see the strange in the familiar and the general in the particular. We will
say more about revealing social and cultural differences in Chapter 3.

With the help of both techniques—seeing the general in the particular and the strange in
the familiar—we use our sociological imagination to connect personal troubles to public
issues.

Recommended Resources

Already interested in learning more about Sociology as a discipline? Try out an

episode of CRStal Radio, a podcast of the Canadian Review of Sociology, to
hear about the work Canadian sociologists are doing today.

The Beginnings of Sociology as a Discipline

Most present-day sociologists will tell you that the modern study of sociology began two
or three centuries ago. The Age of Enlightenment (roughly 1650 to 1850) was a
significant era in European philosophical, intellectual, scientific, and cultural life. The
Enlightenment promoted secular (nonreligious) institutions, the rule of law, free
economic markets, and mass literacy. Enlightenment thinkers opposed despotic political
power, religious superstition, and the traditional hierarchies (monarchy, aristocracy,
and clergy). Enlightenment thinking also admired and promoted science.

Time to reflect

If you read about the history and development of sociology as a social scientific
discipline, you’ll find the widely accepted view that sociology emerged from a
lengthy debate between tradition and the so-called Enlightenment. Why would the
support of science, rationality, and secularism be central to the development of
sociology as we have described the field so far?

In the early nineteenth century, armed with knowledge of Enlightenment thinking and
its effects on traditional social life, sociologists began to develop a science of society.
Through evidence-based theories, they thought that people would be able to build better
communities in the future. These ambitions are obvious in the writings of sociology’s
three founding figures: Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber (see Box 1.1).

T H E O R Y I N E V E R Y D AY L I F E
1.1 | Founders of Sociology

Émile Durkheim was born in 1858 in France, a Jew in an anti-Semitic European

world. Instead of becoming a rabbi like his father, Durkheim followed an academic
career. He completed his doctoral thesis The Division of Labor in Society in 1893
and soon after completed his classic study Suicide in 1897. In many ways,
Durkheim wrote Suicide (1897/1951) to set up sociology as a recognized academic
discipline. He based his approach in Suicide on what he called the sociological
method. It rested on the principle that suicide revealed social patterns—that is,
variations in incidence according to gender, age, religion, marital status, location,
and period, for example. For this reason, sociology must study “social facts … as
realities external to the individual.” Durkheim showed that existing, nonsociological
explanations of suicide were inadequate. He distrusted explanations of suicide that
relied on evidence provided in suicide notes or family accounts of the death.
Karl Marx was also born a Jew in Prussia, in 1818. In 1843 he married and
moved to Paris, where he met Friedrich Engels. They both joined the Communist
League and in 1848 published Manifesto of the Communist Party (also known as
The Communist Manifesto). Soon after, Marx and Engels moved to London for
their own safety. Marx’s views continued to win him both admiration and
persecution for the rest of his life. In Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and
Engels proclaimed the unavoidable collapse of capitalism and thus the end to
social inequality and social strife. They argued that capitalism continually splits
society into two opposing classes, the bourgeoisie (who control the means of
production) and the proletariat (who do the work producing goods or services).
This antagonism, they predicted, would result in the downfall of capitalism and the
end of all class conflict.
Max Weber was born in 1864 in Germany. Weber did his most famous work
after 1903. His significant works span various topics: politics, science, religion, law,
formal organization, and economics, among others. His most famous book, The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, argues that religion was one reason
the economies of the West and East developed differently. General Economic
History (1923), Weber’s final work, brings together all his unique interpretations of
economic change. Weber examined the many ways that social groups gained
power in both modern and historical societies. He recognized that people’s
relationship to the means of production was only one of many sources of power.
Many other early sociologists played essential roles in founding sociology.
Because of racism and sexism within society and within academia, these important
figures continue to be marginalized. Harriet Martineau wrote the treatise Society
in America in 1837, in which she criticized the social injustices that women, slaves,
and the working poor often experienced. Here and in other work, she stressed the
importance of seeing the role of political, religious, and social institutions in
promoting inequality. Dorothy Smith, a prominent twentieth-century Canadian
sociologist, wrote about one’s place in society affecting how one sees that society
(see Chapter 2). Other important Canadian women sociologists have included
Grace Anderson, Jean Burnet, Kathleen Herman, Helen McGill Hughes,
Thelma McCormack, and Aileen Ross. As another significant woman Canadian
sociologist, Margrit Eichler (2001) tells us, “All were born before 1930 [and]
encountered significant sexism,” yet all found jobs easily. Eichler continues, “Three
of the four women whose formative years in sociology were in the 1940s and
1950s … did not consider themselves feminists, although all of them did significant
work on women.”
Racialized people also played an important role in the development of
sociology and continue to do so today. W.E.B. Du Bois did significant work in the
 early twentieth century on the effects of slavery and racial discrimination in
American society. Frantz Fanon, the great North African thinker and
psychoanalyst, wrote in the mid-twentieth century about the ways that colonization
affects both the colonized and the colonizer. Orlando Patterson, a Jamaican-born
sociologist, has written prize-winning works about freedom and slavery in the
United States and Jamaica. But the earliest racialized sociologist, and the most
ignored in the West, was certainly Ibn Khaldun, of the fourteenth century. Like
Émile Durkheim five centuries later, he studied social cohesion in different kinds of
communities and put forward a cyclical theory of nations and empires.
What do you think? As you read this book, see if you can identify the ways
that each of these thinkers used their sociological imagination to reveal interesting
and surprising social forces.

Space does not permit a thorough discussion of the social and cultural changes that took
place between 1650 and 1850 that contributed to the birth of sociology. Let’s say simply
that the Enlightenment—with its secularism and support for scientific exploration, and
its opposition to aristocracy—strongly encouraged the rise of industrial technology
(known as the Industrial Revolution), the expansion of commerce under capitalism, the
spread of scientific and rational thinking, and the growth of democratic republicanism.
All of this rapid social change had important social consequences we will discuss
throughout this book including the loss of traditional rules, increasing inequality
between employers and wage labourers, and new forms of work organization such as
bureaucracy.
The principal founders of sociology: from left to right, Weber, Marx, and Durkheim. Martineau (far right), an important
early influence, is less often read today. Keystone Pictures USA/Alamy Stock Photo Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock
Photo © Georgios Kollidas | Dreamstime Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo
The Enlightenment had led some early thinkers (like the English social theorist Herbert
Spencer and French social theorist Henri de Saint-Simon) to imagine a nineteenth-
century leap in social evolution where rational thought triumphed over “nonrational”
beliefs. Yet, despite these expectations, nonrational elements of social life such as
religious faith persisted alongside the rise of science. Founding European sociologists
revealed the social importance of the nonrational beliefs and behaviours (Parsons,
1937). Weber showed that, under some circumstances, religious belief also contributed
to orderly change. And while Marx criticized religion for stifling the intellect of the
masses and dulling their willingness to rebel, he recognized its political importance.
Later Marxists, especially those in the Frankfurt School (discussed later in this chapter),
would pay attention to the social and political significance of nonrational beliefs in
religion, the media, and culture at large.

Yet we cannot deny the important role of science and technology in sociology’s
development. Marx grounded his own scholarship in the transformative power of
productive technologies and their effect on class structure. As Weber might say, there
was an elective affinity—a deep compatibility of goals and purposes—between
technological change and the rise of sociology. Both technology and sociology sought to
improve or better understand the everyday lives of ordinary people through scientific
investigation and the systematic application of knowledge. There was also a causal
connection between technology and sociology. Sociology, like any art or science, cannot
prosper under conditions of poverty and despair. Science and technology, by increasing
prosperity and emphasizing structured learning, encouraged the growth of universities
and, within them, the growth of academic sociology.

In turn, sociology embraced this new opportunity. Throughout what some have called
the golden age of technology (roughly 1870 to 1940), sociology explored ways to solve
the social problems associated with industrialization and modernization. In this period,
Weber wrote about the rise of science, Durkheim about the rise of modern industrial
relations, and Marx about the socially transformative role of technology in work
relations.

As you will see, sociology also has deep roots in the humanities, such as social and moral
philosophy, and history. It also draws on the writings of people who saw flaws and
weaknesses in the Enlightenment project. These authors argued against a wholesale
rejection of tradition and saw a place for preindustrial, prescientific, and religious
values. They despaired of the loss of community, authority, custom, ritual, and the
personal certainties that went with these social certainties. (For a discussion of these
traditional concerns and their role in sociology’s evolution, you might read books by the
sociologist Robert Nisbet, such as The Quest for Community [2014] and The
Sociological Tradition [1993]).

Self Assessment

Chapter 1 The Sociological Imagination and Sociology's

Beginnings
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Thinking Like a Sociologist

Foundational Concepts of Sociology

Time to reflect

Every field has its key concepts. These are ideas that are central to a wide range
of different theories in that field. As you read about each new concept that follows,
think about an example of that concept in your own life. Do you see evidence of
social structure, social institutions, roles, and statuses in your own choices?

In this book, you will read about some ideas and topics that you will also encounter in
other courses such as anthropology, political science, history, economics, philosophy,
and psychology. To varying degrees, all social sciences deal with ideas like culture,
power, and value. However, the way sociology discusses them will be unique. The most
significant difference between sociology and other disciplines is its subject matter.
Sociologists usually describe their field as a study of the relations among individuals and
groups in a society. When these relations form an enduring, predictable pattern of
behaviour, sociologists refer to it as social structure.

Social Structure and Culture

Social structure is important because it constrains and shapes people’s behaviour. First,
it limits people’s actions in the way a situation dictates. In that sense, social structure
constrains them. Despite having different personalities and lifestyles, people follow a set
pattern of behaviour when they attend a religious service, for example. Second, social
structure causes the same people to act differently at different times. In this way, social
structure is transformative. You may be quiet, polite, and attentive at a religious service
but equally noisy, rude, and obnoxious in the stands at a sports stadium or when
hanging out with friends. For sociologists, situation is (almost) everything because social
structure dictates so much of social life.
Equally crucial for the study of sociology is the study of culture. As we will see in
Chapter 3, culture is the lens of values and beliefs through which we view reality.
Cultures differ widely across time and space, so it is rarely useful to speak about
universal, unchanging “human nature.” Nor is it useful to speak about better and worse
cultures or “primitive” and “civilized” cultures. Sociology recognizes a high degree of
cultural relativism: an acceptance of human diversity and the ways that people in
different cultures behave in different ways. Perhaps more important for sociologists,
cultural relativism pushes us to consider fundamental differences in ways of viewing and
thinking about the world. Behaviour at religious services and sports stadiums, for
example, can vary widely from one culture to another, as well as within a culture at
different points in that culture’s history.

We learn how to act through socialization—a topic we will discuss at length in Chapter 4.
We human beings spend the first five years of our lives trying to understand the norms,
values, attitudes, and beliefs that are a part of our society. Then comes what sociologists
call secondary socialization, which includes socialization at school, at work, through the
media, and elsewhere. As we learn norms and what sociologists call role expectations,
we become more like other members of our society and more like adults. Socialization
continues throughout life, as we move through different roles and different stages of the
life cycle. Changing geographical location also results in socialization, as newcomers to a
society are also socialized—though this process is sometimes called acculturation.

Note that these assumptions about social structure are precisely opposite to those that
underlie genetics research and psychology. According to those fields, people don’t
change much from one situation to another and they are fundamentally different from
one another in unbridgeable ways. However, sociology holds that people vary their
behaviour from one situation to another and throughout their lives.

Even deeply personal emotions and acts are socially structured. We are taught what to
feel in different situations and how to express our feelings. We also learn what to
repress, that is, to ignore and avoid expressing. Consider the sociological approach to
suicide we mentioned earlier. Some might think that suicide, which is intensely
personal, would not be subject to social influences. Yet Durkheim showed that suicide is
socially structured. For example, divorced people (especially men) without children are
much more suicide prone than married people with children. This observation might
lead a sociologist to ask, What is the constraining power of marriage and parenthood
for men? And what is the transformative power of divorce? Do these powers vary
among cultures, where marriage and divorce may have different social meanings and
goals?

Behind all our choices, no matter how deeply personal they may seem on the surface, is
what we call social structure: that set of often-invisible rules that regulates how we
behave and that transforms and constrains us in different social situations. People
interact with one another and, in doing so regularly, create and preserve this social
structure together.

Social Institutions
A social institution is a social structure made up of several social relationships. So, for
example, in a school, we find teachers, students, administrators, and custodial staff.
People in each group are governed by different rules and have different roles; what’s
more, they all understand each other’s roles. Teachers, for example, clearly understand
their rights and responsibilities where students are concerned, and vice versa.

Statuses are socially defined positions that set out how individuals should behave
toward one another: their mutual rights and responsibilities. Being a teacher or a
student defines one’s status in an educational institution. Roles, also called social roles,
are patterns of interaction with others. Being a teacher is a status, while acting as a
teacher is a role performance. Role expectations are shared ideas about how people,
regardless of personal characteristics, should carry out the duties assigned to a
particular status. Each of us performs the social roles we have adopted or have been
assigned. We also develop expectations about the roles of others around us. Roles and
statuses are another form of social structure—they constrain and transform our
behaviours based on a shared set of expectations by members of a culture.

Social relationships, such as those between students and teachers, are enduring and
stable for many reasons. Humans value stable relationships, feeling confusion and
distress when they experience social uncertainty. As well, we often lack the knowledge or
courage to change our relationships. Often, people with power want to keep things just
as they are. These reasons, and many others we shall discuss, help to uphold the social
relationships of the society in which we live.

At the same time, social roles and relationships don’t exist until and unless we perform
them in interaction with others. By interaction, we mean the ways social actors—people
trying to meet each other’s expectations—connect with each other, especially in face-to-
face meetings. It includes various forms of communication, such as words, body
language, attentiveness (or inattentiveness), and what some sociologists have called
face-work. Much of our interaction involves negotiation. By that we mean all the ways
people try to make sense of one another and to one another, for example, by conferring,
bargaining, arranging, compromising, and agreeing. Though often hidden or masked by
habit, interaction and negotiation are what make roles and relationships work. They are
the working parts of social structure.

Knowing What We Know

Present-day sociology concerns itself not only with knowing the social world but also
with examining how we know what we know.

For sociologists in the positivist (especially, quantitative) tradition, the goal of

sociological research is to propose and test theories—possible explanations of a social
event. As scientists, we seek the best available theory when we ask, “What happens if XYZ
is true?” For other sociologists, especially those who do qualitative and historical
analysis, the goal of sociological research is to propose and examine explanations of
reality.

In both instances, sociologists approach the subject of study with caution. We will have
more to say about theories and research in the next chapter. To sociologists, whether
they use quantitative or qualitative research methods (or a mix), the popular use of
“common sense” to understand the world is not good enough. Common-sense
knowledge often consists of nothing more than beliefs and superstitions that people take
for granted. Instead, sociologists use research to seek scientifically sound explanations—
explanations based on empirical evidence. We call the sequence they follow the research
process (see Chapter 2).

We study social structure, and study it carefully, because it controls people’s lives.
Consider the result of being born into a particular social class. People born into
wealthier families tend to become wealthy adults, while people born into poor families
tend to become poor adults. Differences in people’s life experiences are rarely a simple
result of higher intelligence, harder work, better values, or other personal
characteristics.

Take, for example, the way that your position in the social structure affects your health
and longevity. The Whitehall Studies looked at social determinants of health over a 10-
year period beginning in 1967. They examined data on 18,000 British civil servants and
found that position in the civil service hierarchy was a powerful predictor of health and
longevity. People lower down the hierarchy lived shorter, less healthy lives than people
in higher positions. Common sense might tell you this is because they were poor, but
this research showed it was not poverty but unequal rank that caused higher-than-
average rates of heart (and other) disease in the lower ranks of employees. In short,
social inequality produces continued stress; continued stress promotes the continued
release of a chemical called cortisol; this continued flow of cortisol raises blood pressure
and undermines the immune system, making a person more vulnerable to illness. Thus,
we see that individualistic explanations that ignore social structure are simply not good
enough. Box 1.2 elaborates on how health, often treated as an individual issue, is
actually strongly affected by social factors.

SPOTLIGHT ON
1.2 | The Social Determinants of Health

Social scientists have now spent many decades studying the effects of various
social factors commonly referred to as the social determinants of health (Raphael,
2009). Much research has been done on a variety of topics, including events like
the 1919 Spanish flu epidemic. Generally, researchers have noted that it is usually
the most vulnerable who are hurt or killed in any disaster, disease driven or
otherwise. Disaster researcher and sociologist Thomas Drabek (2016, p. 208)
reports “not all victims are aided equally, regardless of loss or damage. Less likely
to receive assistance … are the elderly, ethnic minorities, and the poor.” Michael
Marmot (2017) writes:
A lifetime spent studying how social determinants of health lead to health inequalities has clarified many
issues. First is that social stratification is an appropriate topic of study for epidemiologists. While it is
important to consider alternative explanations of the social gradient in health—principal among them
reverse causation—evidence strongly supports social causation. Social action is by its nature political. It
is, though, a vital function to provide the evidence that underpins action. (p. 537)
 F I G U R E 1 . 1 Determinants of Health, by Weighting Source: Adapted from B. Booske, J. Athens, D.
Kindig, H. Park, & P. Remington (2010), Different perspectives for assigning weights to determinants of health.
County health rankings working paper, University of Wisconsin, Population Health Institute. Retrieved from
www.countyhealthrankings.org/sites/default/files/differentPerspectivesFor
AssigningWeightsToDeterminantsOfHealth.pdf

What do you think? If social determinants of health are so important to health,

why do we spend so much money curing sick people and so little money
preventing people from getting sick?

In short, common sense can often misguide us about society. The central goal of
sociologists is to replace faulty common-sense reasoning with empirical evidence and
scientific explanation. Sociologists do this by conducting research and examining the
published results of such research. Armed with this evidence, we are better able to
interpret the world around us and evaluate different policy proposals for improving
society.

Self Assessment

Chapter 1 Foundational Concepts of Sociology

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ecstatic condition in which the hallucinations may be connected with
sentiments of religion, love, fear, or other emotions. One shows an
attitude of menace or an expression of fear; in another the
expression is of beatitude or saintly happiness: to this expression
perhaps succeeds one of intense joy; to this, one of passion and
lubricity. Throughout all the changing phases of attitude and
expression the patient has the other concomitants of the true ecstatic
state, such as want of volition and insensibility.

DIAGNOSIS.—A cataleptic may also be an ecstatic or the reverse; but

not a few cases are on record in the history of which, on the one
hand, an individual has been subject over a long period to cataleptic
seizures without the recurrence of ecstasy, or, on the other hand, to
fits of ecstasy without a single attack of true catalepsy. Cataleptic
attacks usually occur with more suddenness than ecstasy; the
cataleptic may suddenly become rigid and statuesque—the ecstatic
gradually, although it may be somewhat rapidly, passes step by step
into a visionary state. In catalepsy and ecstasy the expression of the
patient differs. One of the striking features of ecstasy is not simply
the absorbed and abstracted, but also the radiant, expression of
countenance. In catalepsy the expression is more likely to be vacant
or at least negative. In ecstasy waxen flexibility is not present. The
muscles can act in obedience to the will, and the trunk and limbs do
not maintain the positions in which they are placed for any unusual
time. In genuine catalepsy the consciousness is so suspended or
altered that the period of the seizure afterward remains a blank in the
memory of the patient. In ecstasy, however, the visions and fancies
present during the fit can afterward be recalled, and are frequently
recounted by the individual.

DURATION, COURSE, PROGNOSIS.—Nothing need be said as to

duration, course, prognosis, etc. of ecstasy. The remarks made in
considering hysteria, hystero-epilepsy, etc. fully cover these matters.

TREATMENT.—With reference to the treatment of ecstasy little need be

said. It must, in part at least, be directed to rousing and changing the
dormant or dreamy condition of the individual. As it is the mind or the
volitional nature which is chiefly affected, the use of agents which
either directly or reflexly exert a powerful impression on the cerebral
centres is indicated. Thus, in all ages harsh measures have received
more or less applause in the treatment of ecstasy. The cold douche
or shower-bath, the plunge-bath, the hot iron, painful electric
currents, scourging, and beating have all had their advocates. Flint6
gives details of a case in which burning with a heated hammer was
employed for three weeks, the patient eventually recovering, either
because of, or in spite of, the treatment. Chambers believes in the
forcible repression of ecstatic and emotional exhibitions. “In Unst, the
most northerly of the Shetland Islands,” he says, “an epidemic of
convulsive fits occurring in sermon-time began to prevail in several
parish churches. At one of these, Northmaven, the disease was cut
short by a rough fellow of a Turk who carried out a troublesome
patient and tossed her into a wet ditch. Nobody else caught it. From
what scandalous scenes Europe might have been saved had the first
dancer on St. John's Eve been tossed into a wet ditch!”
6 Loc. cit.

Trance, Lethargy, and Morbid Somnolence.

Trance may be defined as a derangement of the nervous system

characterized by general muscular immobility, complete mental
inertia, and insensibility to surroundings. The condition of a patient in
a state of trance has been frequently, and not inaptly, compared to
that of a hibernating animal. Trance may last for minutes, hours,
days, weeks, or even months. Astonishing stories, some true, others
—and these the greater number—false, frequently find their way into
newspapers. A recent story is that of a hystero-cataleptic young
woman of Nebraska who is reported to have been for seventy days
in a state of trance, during which she was to all appearance lifeless
with the exception of respiration and pulsation. She said that she
was unconscious during the whole time of her protracted trance, but,
although she exerted her utmost power to evince her consciousness,
she could not move a muscle. Such cases like the Welsh fasting girl
either live or seem to live for a long time on little or no food;
doubtless food is often taken secretly.

In an interesting case which, so far as I know, has never been put

upon record in any medical publication, attacks of catalepsy or of
trance, or of both, occurred three times at long intervals during the
life of this individual. The first time was while held in the arms of his
mother preparatory to receiving the baptismal rite: the clergyman
and others observed that the infant changed appearance and
suddenly became rigid. It was feared that he was dying; the
ceremonies were stopped, but in response to efforts after a time he
came back to a normal state. When about sixteen years of age,
while at school, he was accidentally wounded; it was necessary to
probe for the ball, and while this was being done he again passed
into a trance-like condition. Many years later, while in good health, a
prosperous and well-known citizen, he suddenly again fell into an
unconscious condition, and was believed to be dead. So marked
were the appearances of death that after numerous efforts to
resuscitate him preparations were made for his funeral. The
knowledge of his previous attacks, however, induced his friends and
relatives to defer his interment and continue their efforts. He finally
revived just as they were about to give up in despair.

Aëtius, according to Laycock,7 mentions hysteric death as being very

common in his day, and asserts that real death may supervene
without any of the ordinary symptoms. The eyes preserve their
brightness and the color of the skin remains vivid. Good cites the
case of a woman whose funeral was postponed to ascertain the
cause of her death, and whom the first touch of the scalpel brought
to her senses. Authors and travellers have described wonderful
cases of trance which have been observed in Persia and in India. A
Persian youth is recorded to have possessed the power to restrain
his breath for two days; and fakirs in India are said sometimes to
have allowed themselves to be buried alive for weeks. Doubtless, a
little Caucasian light let in upon some of these stories might dissolve
them, as the esoteric Buddhism of Madame Blavatzsky has been
dissipated into thin air by a hard-headed English investigator.
According to Diogenes,8 Empedocles, a celebrated disciple of
Pythagoras, obtained great fame by curing a female supposed to be
dead, but whom he discovered to be suffering from hysteria. He
termed the affection under which she labored apnoë, and maintained
that a female might live in an apparently lifeless state for thirty days.
7 Op. cit.

8 Quoted by Laycock.

Landouzy has reported an interesting instance of lethargy produced

by the application of a magnet to a patient suffering from hysteria
major. The attacks of hysterical sleep are often preceded by
convulsive phenomena, and, according to Briquet, are often ushered
in by epileptoid signs, such as whistling inspiration, movements of
deglutition, frothing, and transient rigidity of the limbs. Richer reports
a remarkable case of Plendlers of Vienna, in which a young girl, after
a series of violent hysterical attacks, fell apparently dead.
Preparations were made to bury her, when she was found to be
living, having been in a state of lethargy. Among cases observed in
Salpêtrière the duration of lethargy has been from two to eight days.
Sometimes, in cases of grave hysteria, attacks of lethargy
complicated with general or partial contractures and epileptoid
phenomena have been observed. The presence of neuro-muscular
hyperexcitability is of diagnostic value in determining the nature of
such cases; if present, we have probably to deal with phenomena of
hysterical lethargy. This symptom may, of course, pass unperceived.
A woman came under observation a short time since, being then far
gone in pregnancy. About a month before delivery she had a very
marked hysterical outbreak, in which she so simulated apoplexy as
to make it almost impossible to decide what was the matter with her.
She had apparently lost sensation, her breathing was stertorous, her
pulse labored, and she had divergent strabismus. In the course of
half an hour the symptoms passed off.

In trance, as in ecstasy, the patient may remain motionless and

apparently unconscious of all surroundings; but in the former the
visionary state, the radiant expression, and the statuesque positions
are not necessarily present. In trance, as stated by Wilks, the
patients may lie like an animal hibernating for days together, without
eating or drinking, and apparently insensible to all objects around
them. In ecstasy the mind, under certain limitations, is active; it is
concentrated upon some object of interest, admiration, or adoration.
Conditions of trance, as a rule, last longer than those of ecstasy.

Beard's9 theory of trance is that it is “a functional disease of the

nervous system in which the cerebral activity is concentrated in
some limited region of the brain, with suspension of the activity of the
rest of the brain, and consequent loss of volition. Like other
functional nervous diseases, it may be induced either physically or
psychically—that is, by all the influences that act on the nervous
system or on the mind; more frequently the latter, sometimes both
combined.”
9 Quoted by Crothers in Quarterly Journal of Inebriety, January, 1880.

T. D. Crothers10 has contributed some papers upon the subject of the

trance state in inebriety. He gives the clinical history of some cases
of inebriety which presented the phenomena of cerebral automatism
or trance. He concludes that loss of memory and consciousness may
come on in inebriety and the patient give little or no evidence of his
actual condition. His conclusions are, that when the trance state is
established beyond doubt the individual is irresponsible for his acts
during this period. The study of the trance state in affections of such
definite origin and positive pathology as inebriety helps to throw light
upon its occurrence and explanation in cases of hysteria.
10 “Cerebral Trance; or, Loss of Consciousness and Memory in Inebriety,” Quarterly
Journal of Inebriety, January, 1880; and The Trance State in Inebriety: its Medico-
Legal Relations; with an Introduction on the Nature and Character of the Trance
State, by George M. Beard, M.D., a paper read before the New York Medico-Legal
Society, November 2, 1881, Hartford, Conn., 1882.

Dana11 reports about fifty cases of prolonged morbid somnolence.

Nearly all those reported previous to 1878 are cases of what has
been termed trance-like sleep or lethargy. In 1878, Gelineau called
attention to a disease which he termed narcolepsy. Dana has seen
five cases, and reports two others from notes furnished by Putzel of
New York. Some of the cases collected are both interesting and
remarkable. Dana calls attention to the distinction made by Briquet
between prolonged hysteria and lethargy. In lethargy the condition of
unconsciousness is generally more profound, the reflexes are
abolished, and the patient cannot be aroused. A patient may even
have periods of sleep within the lethargy.
11 “Morbid Drowsiness and Somnolence,” Journ. of Nervous and Mental Disease, vol.
xi., No. 2, April 18, 1884.

Dana excludes from his cases of prolonged somnolence those cases

of drowsiness due to ordinary causes, as old age, diseased blood-
vessels, cerebral malnutrition, or inflammation; various toxæmiæ, as
malaria, uræmia, colæmia, and syphilis; dyspepsia, diabetes,
obesity, insolation, cerebral anæmia and hyperæmia, cerebral
tumors and cranial injuries, exhausting diseases, and the sleeping
sickness of Africa.

He found that the prolonged somnolence shows itself in very

different ways. Sometimes the patient suffers from simply a great
prolongation of natural sleep; sometimes from a constant, persistent
drowsiness, which he is often obliged to yield to; sometimes from
frequent brief attacks of somnolence, not being drowsy in the
intermission; sometimes from single or repeated prolonged lethargic
attacks; finally, sometimes from periodical attacks of profound
somnolence or lethargy which last for days, weeks, or months.

He says that most cases of functional morbid somnolence are

closely related to the epileptic or hysterical diathesis; but a class of
cases is met with in which no history or evidence of epilepsy or
hysteria can be adduced, and though they may be called epileptoid
or hysteroid, these designations are simply makeshifts; the patients
seem to be the victims of a special morbid hypnosis. Possibly they
have a cerebral hyperæmia or anæmia.
Under the name of morbid somnolence a case has been reported by
P. J. Cremen.12 The patient was a man fifty-five years old, who was
admitted to the hospital under the care of Cremen. He said he had
recently returned from America, where he had taken a drink which
had affected his head. He went to bed, and the next morning was
found in a deep sleep, from which he could not be aroused. He
presented the appearance of a person in a sound sleep or under the
influence of anæsthetics. All ordinary measures were unavailing to
awaken him from his trance-like condition. He was completely
analgesic over the entire surface of the body. He would not eat or
drink when simply directed, but when the drinking-cup was placed in
his hand he drank, and when bread or meat was given he ate.
Subsequently he was seen eating while in the somnolent state with
the eyes closed; but after a time he would stop, and had to be urged
to commence again. Evidently, tactile sensibility was not lost. The
muscular sense appeared to be diminished. The superficial reflexes
were abolished, the knee-jerks exaggerated; ankle clonus was
absent. Smell and taste were obtunded. Hearing was retained. The
state of muscular rigidity during the somnolence was remarkable. He
was placed between two chairs, the tip of the shoulder resting upon
one chair, the heel of the left foot on the other, and the right leg bent
at a right angle to the trunk. A weight of forty pounds was then
supported on the rigid chest without causing the slightest yielding or
movement from the position described until muscular relaxation took
place. He often remained in this state for four or five days at a time
or longer. He could be aroused by a strong magneto-electric current.
In the intervals between the attacks he was sometimes bright and
cheerful, at others gloomy and depressed. When requested to walk,
he would do so in a perfectly straight line, from which he would not
deviate for obstacles. When told to walk around a table, however, or
other obstacle, he would do so. He would try to do anything that he
was told, even to standing on his head. The somnolent or hypnotic
state could be induced at will by closing the eyelids and pressing the
eyeballs for about two minutes. Of the genuineness of the
phenomena Cremen had no doubt; he believed that the somnolence
partook, in some degree, of the nature of that which has been
designated narcolepsy. This case in many respects is similar to
cases of catalepsy and automatism at command. A very similar case
has been reported in the article on Catalepsy.
12 Brit. Med. Journ., Dec. 12, 1885.

Self-concentration in those of robust minds differs rather in degree

than in essence from ecstasy or trance and allied conditions in the
weak and hysterical. “Archimedes,” says Clymer, “engrossed with a
problem in geometry, feels no hunger and is deaf to the tumult of the
soldiers in a captured town; Socrates, occupied with his own
thoughts, stands twenty-four hours immovable in one spot exposed
to the burning rays of the sun.” Goethe, Blake, and others are on
record as having the power to call up images at will. Francis Galton13
in a recent work advocates the cultivation of this power of the
reproduction at will of mental imagery. Clarke14 records many
wonderful instances of pseudopia. In what does the ecstatic differ
from these except in that the mental status of the individual is
different, and that the object of mental concentration is of a special
character, consonant with the person's ideas, training, and
surroundings?
13 Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, Francis Galton, F. R. S., New
York, 1883.

14 Vision, a Study of False Sight, by Edward H. Clarke, M.D., Boston, 1878.

In brown study or reverie, according to Laycock, the eye is fixed by a

muscular action analogous to that of the cataleptic; and not the eye
only, for a limb or the whole body will remain in the same position for
many minutes, the senses themselves being in deep abstraction
from surrounding objects.

Stigmatization.

Stigmatization (from the Greek στιγμα, a small puncture) is a

symptom or appearance which usually presents itself in the form of
bloody or blood-like markings on the palms of the hands, the backs
of the feet, and the left side, the positions in which Christ was
lacerated by the nails and the spear at the crucifixion. In some cases
the stigmata are found in scattered points on various parts of the
body, sometimes upon the forehead at the position of the lacerations
produced by the crown of thorns. In various ages it has been claimed
by Catholics that cases of genuine stigmatization have occurred. It is
not, however, a matter of Catholic faith, the claim being simply that it
is a genuine experience which has some supernatural significance.
Hammond15 has an interesting chapter on the subject of
stigmatization, of which I have made use, and Clymer's16 article,
already referred to, gives the details of several of the most
interesting historical cases. Space will not permit more than a glance
at this subject. A case of stigmatization is not necessarily one of
hysteria, but the phenomena of simulated, and possibly of genuine,
stigmatization usually occur among the hysterical.
15 On Certain Conditions of Nervous Derangement, New York, 1881.

16 Op. cit.

According to Garres, the first to exhibit stigmatization was Saint

Francis of Assisium, who was born in 1186 and died in 1236. In 1224
he was marked, and in memory of the event the 17th of September
was set apart as the Feast of the Holy Stigmata by Pope Benedict
XI. The story of this occurrence is of a highly emotional and
sensational character. Christine de Stumbele, born in 1242, a few
miles from Cologne, is another of the famous hystero-cataleptics and
ecstatics who were the victims of numerous stigmata. These were
irregular as to position and to times of appearance. On one
occasion, for instance, she had wounds on each foot from which the
blood flowed freely; a little later, on the same occasion, she was
wounded on the knee, and to the wondering priest who was
ministering to her at this time she showed hot nails of hideous
shapes. She was not only a case of ecstasy and stigmatization, but a
filthy creature withal, who covered herself and others with
excrement, which they had the foolishness to believe came from the
hand of the devil. Veronica Giuliani, another ecstatic, who conversed
with Christ and the Virgin Mary, received the stigmata during one of
her prayers, and was canonized in 1839. Imbert-Gourbeyre gives a
list of 145 persons who have received stigmata, besides 8 now living
known to him. He details one American case, that of a young French
Canadian.

Two of the most extraordinary recent cases are those of Palma

d'Oria and Louise Lateau. These have become stock cases in books
and dissertations on the subject under consideration, and therefore
the briefest accounts of them will be all that is required. Palma in
1871 was sixty-six years old, humpbacked, thin, small, and with light
expressive eyes. It is important to note that she had seen Louisa
Lateau in ecstasy. Wonderful accounts are given of her
performances—eating the Host in the presence of the priest; having
visions of the devil with a little horn on his forehead; on another
occasion Jesus Christ himself bringing to her the communion; seeing
the Host flying through the air before entering her mouth. After the
communion, usually when others were not present, the
stigmatization occurred. Bleedings from the forehead or near it, and
hemorrhagic spots on various parts of the body of various shapes,
as of hearts and of the cross, appeared. Examination of the skin
subsequently showed it to be intact, except that she had a hole in
the cranium, which Hammond suggests was of syphilitic origin.
Plates are given in the work of the credulous Imbert-Gourbeyre
representing these figures.

In most respects the most celebrated of all cases of stigmatization is

that of Louise Lateau—celebrated because of the investigations
which have been made of her case; because of the amount of
literature, theological, scientific, and medical, which has been
devoted to her; because of the conflict of opinions even among
medical observers in regard to the true explanation of the
phenomena she exhibited. Louise Lateau was a Belgian peasant-
girl, born January 30, 1850. Her parents were poor. She suffered the
hardships of her class, and was as badly nourished and educated as
a poor Belgian peasant-girl is likely to be. During the cholera
epidemic of 1866 she nursed kindly and patiently many of the
victims. In 1867 she became weak, pale, and neuralgic, and
sometimes spat blood. On Friday, April 24, 1868, she for the first
time noticed blood immediately below the left breast; the following
Friday it appeared at the same place, and also on the back of the left
foot; later, it oozed from the left side and both feet, from the palms
and backs of the hands, and from the forehead. Some weeks after
this she began to exhibit the phenomena of ecstasy; and
subsequently for months and years, regularly on every Friday, she
had a recurrence of the stigmata and ecstasy, with accompanying
phenomena, sometimes varying a little in detail. Some of the
accounts given by Lefevre and others of her seizures are beautiful
descriptions of attacks of ecstasy. She stated that during her attacks
she had a distinct vision of the whole scene of the crucifixion.

Numerous experiments, some of them cruel in character, were

performed to test the genuineness of her conditions of
unconsciousness and insensibility. Sight, hearing, and touch were
tested. The mucous membrane of the nose was tickled; strong
hartshorn was applied to the nostrils; she was pricked and stabbed
with needles, pins, and even penknives; painful currents of electricity
were used. To none of these did she respond. During her attacks her
pulse was thready, ranging from 120° to 130° and upward;
respiration sometimes could be scarcely detected, and sometimes
fell as low as 10; body-heat was also much diminished. She
recollected everything which passed during the attack. Different from
Palma d'Oria, the examination of her skin revealed certain
appearances. Between Saturday and Thursday oval spots and
patches of rosy hue were to be seen on the backs and palms of the
hands and on the backs and soles of the feet. They were very much
in appearance as if the epidermis were thinned or scraped. The
marks on the forehead were not permanent; the chest was only
examined during the ecstasy. Before the bleedings blebs began to
rise at the position of the spots. The bleeding commonly began in the
night between Thursday and Friday. From the forehead of the girl
blood sometimes oozed from minute points, which looked as if they
had been made by microscopic leeches.
As regards the phenomena presented by Louise Lateau, various
hypotheses have been advanced; the chief, however, are the three
following: (1) The theological view—namely, that the stigmata were
genuine miraculous performances, the blood flowing by supernatural
command. (2) The view that the stigmata were genuine pathological
phenomena, vaso-motor in character—that the bleedings were in
some way similar to attacks of purpura hemorrhagica or to
hæmidrosis or bloody sweat. (3) The view that the stigmata were
produced by deceit—that in all probability, in order to excite the
sympathy and astonishment which are so dear to the hysterical
mind, the girl in some way caused the bleedings. The carefully
detailed accounts of the phenomena seem to lend the strongest
support to the last view.

A good test was employed for the detection of simulated

stigmatization in the following case,17 which came under the care of
Mr. Henry Lee at St. George's Hospital, London. An unmarried
seamstress aged sixteen had on the outside of her right leg above
the ankle a discolored patch, from which she said that every month
for two years there had been a discharge of about a tablespoonful of
blood. The patch was covered with minute red spots resembling flea-
bites. Fresh red spots and effusion of blood were seen at succeeding
visits. Lee ordered a sheet of lead to be applied over the bleeding
surface, to be secured by a starched bandage. On the next visit,
when the dressings were removed, a few spots and a little blood
were found, but the sheet of lead was pierced with holes large
enough to admit a needle. When asked how this had happened the
girl was silent, and was discharged as a convicted impostor. In
Lefevre's experiment with Louise Lateau he placed a leather glove
upon one hand, tying and sealing it at the wrists; but it is easily to be
seen why this test was not as thorough as that with the lead.
17 British Medical Journal, vol. i., 1871, p. 479.

Another case of ecstasy with stigmatization is cited by Bourneville

and Hammond from Magnus Huss of Stockholm—a servant-girl
twenty-three years old who was subject to convulsions, and also to
hemorrhages, which usually came on as the result of great emotional
disturbance. In her case examination showed no cicatrices. The
hemorrhages occurred from the scalp, the eyes, the face around the
eyes, the left ear, and the stomach. Her menstruation went on
regularly during the attacks: sometimes she had ecchymoses and
apparent bruises on the left half of the body, the limbs of which were
semi-paralyzed for short periods. The attacks occurred with
convulsions and unconsciousness, which usually lasted about half
an hour, and from which she awakened as if from a long sleep.

Autographic Women.

Certain peculiar phenomena have been described under the head of

femmes autographiques, or the autographic women, and are worthy
of note. Dujardin-Beaumetz18 in a case of well-marked hysteria with
loss of general sensibility reports that he was able to write or trace
with a needle or pointed instrument on the skin. Within a space thus
traced the skin was elevated in a white patch or plate. After some
five minutes the line would show itself more and more in relief, until it
attained from one and a half to two millimeters in thickness. It would
remain from three to six, and sometimes twelve, hours. He varied the
experiments in many ways, executing upon the skin designs, tables,
and names of from ten to fifteen letters. He detected in the centre of
some of the spaces traced a marked elevation of temperature,
sometimes appreciable to the hand. This woman was known by the
name of femme diche, or the autographic woman.
18 Bull. et Mém. Société médicale de Hôpital de Paris, 1880, 12, xvi. 197-202.

Dujardin-Beaumetz held that the phenomena were vaso-motor. The

red lines traced readily admit of this explanation. The white space in
relief, however, was not so easily explained. He had observed
among hysterical women, under the influence of pressure, irritation,
or the application of magnets, the appearance of patches of urticaria.
One of the common tricks of the Spiritualists is to have the name of a
spirit that has been called up appear upon the bared arm of the
medium. Among friends and private patients, and among the
hysterical patients in the wards of the Philadelphia Hospital, I have
successfully performed experiments similar to those reported by
Dujardin-Beaumetz. Such phenomena are by no means confined to
cases of hysteria. One of my most striking successes in an attempt
at skin-writing was in the case of a male physician of a peculiarly
clear and pale complexion. Certain peculiar conditions of the skin will
allow this to be done with facility. The similarity of this class of
phenomena to that of the stigmata will at once appear evident. Such
phenomena occur among the hysterical with a tendency to vaso-
motor deficiency of control.

Fasting Saints and Fasting Girls.

The wonderful saints who starved themselves or lived on

sacramental bread are almost a multitude. Saint Joseph, Saint
Catherine of Sienna, Saint Rose of Lima, Saint Collete, Saint Peter
of Alcantara are of the number. In modern and even in recent times
not a few of these cases have become widely known. Margaret
Weiss, about whom a book was written in 1542, is said to have done
without food and drink for three years. She suffered from pains and
contractures. She passed neither urine nor feces; at least, such are
the accounts which have come down to us.

Sarah Jacob, the Welsh fasting girl, has shared with Louise Lateau
popular and medical notoriety. When about ten years old she
suffered from various hysterical and hystero-epileptic symptoms. The
quantity of food she took gradually dwindled; on October 10, 1867, it
was said that she ceased to take any food whatever, and so
continued till the day of her death, more than two years later. She
had many visitors, pilgrims from far and near, who often left money
or gifts. The vicar of her neighborhood came to believe in her, and an
investigation was suggested. At one investigation, not very rigidly
conducted, nothing was discovered. After a time she was visited by
Fowler of London, who decided that the case was one of hysteria
with simulation, probably associated with the power or habit of long
fasting. Trained nurses were sent from Guy's Hospital to conduct the
second watching. Under the watching the girl died, starved to death.
The father was afterward condemned to imprisonment and hard
labor for twelve months, the mother for six months. In Brooklyn a few
years since one Molly Fancher, a similar case, attracted much
attention, and was written about and commented upon by the press.

NEURASTHENIA.
 BY H. C. WOOD, M.D.

INTRODUCTION.—The term neurasthenia, signifying nervous

weakness, and not rarely paraphrased by nervous exhaustion,
indicates by its very derivation that it denotes not a distinct disease,
but a condition of the body. The relations of the nervous system to
the functions of organic and animal life are so intimate that almost all
forms of exhaustion might well be discussed under the present
heading. A further difficulty in attempting to decide the exact
limitations of this article is to be found in the fact that hysteria,
insanity, chorea, and various other nervous diseases are very closely
connected with nervous exhaustion. Indeed, many of the cases
which are considered by authorities as instances of neurasthenia
would be more appropriately classed with one or other of the
especial diseases. Thus, the nervous fears discussed in such detail
by George M. Beard in his work upon neurasthenia plainly belong
with the monomaniacal insanities, and, although they usually are
associated with nervous depression, may coexist with great physical
and mental power.

Further, very many chronic diseases produce neurasthenia. It has

not been many years since general debility was a common
inscription upon records of diagnosis. In very many cases the
general debility afflicted the diagnostic powers or zeal of the
physician rather than the body of the patient, and it is to be feared
that neurasthenia not rarely at present replaces it. Malarial
poisoning, chronic Bright's disease, chronic diarrhœa, lithæmia, and
various other affections may be readily overlooked, and patient and
physician satisfied with the diagnosis of neurasthenia; indeed, in my
own experience in a very considerable proportion of the cases which
had been diagnosed as nervous exhaustion the patient was really
suffering from definite disease.
The folly of attempting to make neurasthenia a distinct affection is
strongly brought out whenever it is attempted to give sharp
diagnostic differences between it and other diseases. As examples
may be noted the flat contradictions which exist in the different
diagnostic tables given in the elaborate work of the late George M.
Beard.

It is necessary, therefore, in the outset, to recognize that

neurasthenia is a bodily condition which is very frequently associated
with various chronic disorders, or not rarely coexists with perverted
functional activity of the nervous centres, which perverted nerve-
functions may, however, exist independently of any perceptible
neurasthenia, and are not simply the outcomes of the neurasthenia.
Under these circumstances an apology for devoting an article in this
work to the consideration of neurasthenia may seem necessary to
readers. The justification of the present discussion is to be found in
the facts that neurasthenia often exists without the presence of
definite disease, and that still more frequently it is a bodily condition
which dominates in its therapeutic importance the manifestations of
perverted functions, so that the patient is to be treated for it rather
than for the disease with which it is associated.

ETIOLOGY.—There are various chronic diseases which may lead

directly to nervous exhaustion. Neurasthenia may, moreover, be the
result of disease which is long past; neglected diarrhœas, bleeding
piles, and other affections with exhausting discharges, when they
have been cured, may leave behind them conditions whose source
and nature it is most important to recognize.

Overwork, excessive mental emotion, need only to be alluded to as

capable of producing a pure neurasthenia. As Samuel Jackson was
accustomed to say, in his lectures at the University of Pennsylvania
thirty years ago, “Whenever the expenditure of nerve-force is greater
than the daily income, physical bankruptcy sooner or later results.” It
is to be remembered that the nerve-capital of persons differs almost
as widely as does their moneyed capital. There are numerous
families many of whose members are neurasthenics from birth—i.e.
who are born with less power of creating nervous energy than is
necessary to meet the requirements of the ordinary duties of life.
There is every grade of natural endowment between the most feeble
person, scarcely able to produce more nervous energy than is
necessary for breathing, eating, and drinking, and the organism that
is capable of enduring incessant toil. The development of
neurasthenia is therefore not so much the result of a strain which is
absolutely great as of a strain which is excessive in its relations to
the organism which has to bear it.

SYMPTOMS.—The onset of neurasthenia is always gradual, although

at times the condition appears to develop with great suddenness.
Under these circumstances, however, the explosion has been
preceded by a long train of more or less overlooked phenomena:
thus, in a case that just now occurs to me a gentleman had long
suffered from the premonitory symptoms of neurasthenia, to which
he had paid but little attention until he was one day seized with
violent vertigo, accompanied by such prostration of strength that he
had to be taken home from the street in a carriage. The symptoms
vary very much according to the portion of the nervous system which
is especially affected, and also to some extent according to the
etiology of the attack. Nervous exhaustion may in the beginning
affect the whole of the nervous system, or it may be at first purely
local and coexist with general nervous strength. Many cases of
spermatorrhœa are instances of the local form of neurasthenia, the
sexual centres being primarily affected; but as in these cases,
sooner or later, the whole of the nervous system becomes
implicated, so in other forms of the disorder the exhaustion, at first
local, finally, if neglected, implicates the whole organism. There are
not rarely cases of brain exhaustion in which the symptoms are at
first purely local. Almost always the cause of a local neurasthenia is
excessive use of the part; thus, cerebral asthenia is usually the result
of mental overwork, sexual asthenia of sexual excesses, etc. When
to the intellectual fatigue is added the depressing effects of
excessive anxiety or allied emotions, the symptoms usually from the
first are more general. The exhaustion may affect chiefly a single
function of the brain. As an instance may be cited the case of a
postal clerk now under my care, who has been accustomed to
distribute five to eight thousand letters every day from a general
mass into three hundred pigeon-holes representing as many post-
office districts scattered over a large territory. As soon as the
address is read there must be an instantaneous automatic
recognition of the district to which the letter goes. It is at this place
where, in the case now under consideration, the symptoms manifest
themselves. Reading the address fails to produce immediate
recognition of the locality to which the letter is to be assigned. Asked
in what district such a post-office is, the clerk answers instantly, but
seeing the address himself he hesitates, and sometimes balks so
that he can distribute only about one-third as many letters as when in
health. As in most cases of local nerve exhaustion, in this patient
some evidences of general implication exist, there being decided
disturbance of the sexual organs.

Another form of local neurasthenia which is frequently associated

with brain exhaustion is that of writer's cramp. I have repeatedly
seen it come on as the herald of a general breakdown; but under
such circumstances the symptoms have usually not been those of
typical writer's cramp: there have usually been not so much marked
spasms as loss of power and distress in the arm on attempting to
write.

In pure brain exhaustion loss of the disposition to work is usually the

first symptom, the sufferer finding that it constantly requires a more
and more painful effort of the will to perform the allotted task. The
basis of this difficulty is largely loss of the power of fixing the
attention, and this by and by is accompanied with weakness of the
memory. Disturbances of sleep are frequent. Various abnormal
sensations in the head are complained of. In most cases there is not
absolute headache, but a feeling of weight or fulness or an
indescribable distress, usually aggravated by mental effort.

It is true that in some cases of very dangerous brain-tire cerebration

is performed with extraordinary vigor and ease; the power of work is
for the time markedly increased, and even the quality of the product
may be raised; the patient may even glory in a wild intellectual
exaltation, a sense of mental power, with an almost uncontrollable
brain activity. It is probable, however, that these cases are not
instances of pure neurasthenia, but that there is an active congestion
of the cortical gray matter. It is certain that they are very prone to end
in serious organic brain trouble. In some cases of cerebral asthenia
there are disturbances of the special senses, tinnitus aurium, flashes
of light, and even the seeing of visions. Under these circumstances it
is again probable that active congestion of the affected centres
exists.

Severe cerebral neurasthenia may be associated with good spirits,

but usually there is marked depression, and this perversion of
function may finally go on to decided melancholy. The will-power, as
all other functional activities of the brain, is prone to be weakened;
morbid fears may finally develop themselves; and at last that which
was at the beginning a simple brain exhaustion may end in
hypochondriasis or insanity. In my own experience such ending is
very rare unless there have been from the beginning marked
symptoms of hypochondriasis or melancholy; in other words, unless
there be the inborn tendency to distinct mental disorders, cerebral
neurasthenia rarely produces them, but in a person who inherits
such tendency the brain exhaustion may become an exciting cause
of insanity.

The symptoms of brain-tire may be very largely existing in the

individual who still has muscular strength and is capable of enduring
much physical labor; but in most cases, sooner or later, the more
general symptoms of neurasthenia manifest themselves.

Amongst the earliest of these symptoms may be disorder of the

special senses. For reasons which are not very evident it is the eye
which is generally affected. Although existing deafness is often
greatly intensified by the coming on of nervous exhaustion, I cannot
remember ever to have seen severe deafness entirely neurasthenic.
The nature of the optical trouble is to be recognized by the fact that
vision is at first good, but fails when the eye is steadily used for a few