SOC CUL 3-4

• Symbolic Interactionism


  18th century theory that examines how people use symbols to encapsulate their experiences and how this shapes social life and self-concept
• Symbolic Interactionism


  • Focuses on face-to-face interaction and how people define themselves and others
  • Sees everyday life as a stage where people switch roles to suit their changing audiences
• Symbolic Interactionism


  • How changing meanings of marriage, divorce, children, parenthood, and marital roles have contributed to the high US divorce rate
• Structural Functional Analysis


  Also known as functionalism or structural functionalism, this theory views society as a whole unit made up of interrelated parts that work together
• Structural Functional Analysis


  • Looks at both structure (how the parts of society fit together) and function (what each part does and how it contributes to society)
  • Focuses on the beneficial consequences (functions) and harmful consequences (dysfunctions) of people's actions
• Structural Functional Analysis


  • How industrialization and urbanization changed the traditional functions of the family, such as economic production, socialization of children, care of the sick and elderly, recreation, sexual control, and reproduction
• Conflict Theory


  Developed by Karl Marx, this theory views society as being divided into two main classes - the bourgeoisie (who control the means of production) and the proletariat (who are exploited by the bourgeoisie)
• Conflict Theory

  • Sees conflict as inherent in all relations involving authority, with those in authority trying to enforce conformity and those under authority resisting
• Conflict Theory


  • Explains the high US divorce rate in terms of the basic inequalities and exploitation of women by men in traditional marriage relationships
• Positivism


  The idea developed by Auguste Comte that the methods and techniques of natural science can be applied to the study of society
• Positivism


  • Comte saw sociology as a new science that could discover social principles and apply them to social reform
  • Comte believed there were only six sciences, with sociology being the most superior
• Sociological Imagination


  Developed by C. Wright Mills, this concept stresses the importance of understanding the social contexts and influences that shape people's lives
• Sociological Imagination


  • Examines how people's social location (e.g. job, income, education, gender, age, race) affects their ideas and experiences
  • Connects individual biography to broader historical and social processes
• Sociological imagination

  Enables you to gain a new vision of social life
• Sociological imagination


  • Stresses the social contexts in which people live
  • Examines how contexts influence people's lives
• At the center of sociological imagination


  How groups influence people, especially how people are influenced by their society (a group of people who share a culture and territory)
• Social location


  The corners in life that people occupy because of where they are located in a society
• Significant aspects of social location

  • Jobs
  • Income
  • Education
  • Gender
  • Age
  • Race
• Sociological imagination


  Enables us to grasp the connection between history and biography
• History


  Each society is located in a broad stream of events that lead to each society having specific characteristics (its ideas of the proper roles of men and women)
• Biography


  Individual's specific experiences in society
• Not inherited internal mechanisms, such as instincts, rather external influences - our experiences become part of our thinking and motivations
• The society in which we grow up, and our particular concerns in that society, lie at the center of our behavior
• Verstehen


  "To grasp by insight" (German "to understand")
• Weber's verstehen


  The best interpreter of human action is someone "who has been there," someone who understands the feelings and motivations of the people they are studying
• We must pay attention to subjective meanings, the ways in which people interpret their own behavior
• Social facts


  Patterns of behavior that characterize a social group
• Social facts


  • June being the most popular month of weddings
  • Suicide rates being higher among people 65 and older
  • More births occurring on Tuesdays than on any other day of the week
• We must use social facts to interpret social facts
• Patterns that hold true year after year indicate that as thousands and even millions of people make their individual decisions, they are responding to conditions in their society
• It is the job of the sociologist to uncover the facts and then to explain them through other social facts
• Anthropology


  • Universalism - All people are fully and equally human whether they belong to indigenous groups or modernized
  • Integration - Anthropologists view the various aspects of life as interwoven to form a social whole, and look at societies within the context of the larger world or global perspective
  • Adaption - Anthropology studies how humans are affected by the environment and what adjustments they make
  • Holism - Getting the whole picture of a phenomenon and application of knowledge from different fields to understand human behavior
• Subfields of Anthropology


  • Biological and Physical Anthropology
  • Socio-cultural Anthropology
  • Archaeology
  • Linguistics
  • Applied Anthropology
• Biological and Physical Anthropology


  Engages in studies of human evolution and biological variation within the species, and the mechanics of growth and development
• Socio-cultural Anthropology


  Focuses on the origin and history of human societies and their culture, using ethnography and ethnology
• Archaeology


  Reconstructs the cultural events of the past since the development of culture through the material remains left by people
• Linguistics


  The study of human language, its complex system of symbols, and its development
• Applied Anthropology


  Focused on the application of ideas and information gathered for the solution of specific problems to achieve particular ends
• Primatologists


  • Observe primates both in their natural habitats and in the lab
  • Encouraged by Louis Leakey in 1960-1970
  • Found behavior patterns similar in our closest relatives, the great apes, and humans today, then maybe behaviors were present in the ape-like, human-like ancestors millions of years ago