Download SYA 4110 – Development of Sociological Thought Tuesday October

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SYA 4110 – Development of Sociological Thought
Tuesday October 28th 2008
1. Announcements
-Exam 2 is on Thursday
-What's up on campus & in the community?
-UF Asian Studies and the City of Gainesville Cultural Affairs presents “Documenting China: Photography and
Social Change” – TODAY Oct. 28 through Jan 4 from 9-5pm in the Thomas Center, 302 NE 6th Ave.
-BSU and Gatorship presents “The Great Divide” featuring representative of different cultural backgrounds –
TODAY Oct. 28 at 6pm in Pugh 170
-Gators for a Sustainable Campus – TODAY Oct. 28 at 6:30pm in CSE E121
-VOX: Voices for Planned Parenthood presents “Sex on the Lawn” - Oct. 29 from 8:30am-4pm at the Reitz Union
North Lawn
-Immigrants’ Rights as Human Rights: A Presentation by UF Professor Hernandez – Oct. 29 from 12pm – 1pm at
the UF Law School
-College Students for Cancer Awareness and Raising Emotions Through Sports presents “Who C.A.R.E.S??
(Cancer Awareness Forum) – Oct. 29 from 7pm- 9:30pm in the Graham Area, Graham Gallery
-IBC presents “Conversations with Black Faculty and Staff” – Oct. 29 at 6:30pm in the Pugh Hall Lobby
-Workshops for CLAS Majors – Oct. 29 at 4pm in the Career Resource Center
-Depression Screening – Oct. 30 from 11am – 1:30pm in the front lawn of the Student Health Care Center
-Filipino-American History Month Closing Ceremony – Oct. 30 from 7-10pm at the Amphitheatre
-Center for African Studies presents “Reconstructing Lives and Community in Post-War Angola” – Oct. 31 at
3:30pm in Grinter Hall, Room 404
2. Questions?
3. Review: Blumer's SI & Goffman's Dramaturgy
4. Today:
-Critical Theories of Marginalized Voices: Woolf, Gramsci, de Beauvoir, Cesaire, MLK, SDS, Friedan
-Critical Theory: C. Wright Mills
-Review for Exam 2
Review:
Symbolic Interactionism
-were "relativists": believed that truth is not universal, it is up to each individual to construct their notion of what's real and
true, depending on the context.
-if people define a situation to be real, it is real in its consequences
-people react to others based on the meanings they attach to the actions of the others
Mead & Cooley were early S.I.s (and the teachers/colleagues of Blumer & Goffman)
Blumer
-asserted that it is not possible to reduce social phenomena to measurable dimensions with clearly defined properties
-Blumer critiqued Parsons & structural-functionalism...
Goffman’s Dramaturgy
-social life as a stage
-impression management
-aligning actions
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Critical Theory
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~rmazur/dictionary/
An approach to the study of society in which human interests shape and guide the research enterprise from the formation
of analytic categories to the quest for accurate, relevant, timely, sensible information.
Critical theory has an overt political goal: that of a rational, fair, and just society.
Woolf & Gramsci
Virginia Woolf (1929)
-“A Room of One’s Own”
-written as a speech to young women (forbidden to enter university)
-in response to the question of “what are women like”?
-connected gender and fiction with economics
-at a time when women had just recently received the right to vote and the right to own property
-declared that what a woman needs to write fiction is money and a room of her own
In the other chapters of the book she deals with:
-why only one gender has been allowed access to the university
-women have not historically written books about men, but men have written lots and lots about women.
-admires the writing of nineteenth century women at a time when women did not have money and rooms of their
own and often faced many barriers
Gramsci (1929) - Italian
-committed himself to the idea that human beings can alter their historical circumstances when consciousness
and praxis interact.
-He was an activist
-prisoned for his activism by Mussolini in 1936
-wrote Prison Notebooks
-concept of “ideological hegemony”
-the connection between a given power structure and the cultural-ideological superstructure that supports
it
-one must look beyond the economic base to see how power is legitimated by the willing consensus of
those who are most exploited
-military is only a short term solution
-popular consensus is thus essential for continued survival
-this requires a common set of values, beliefs and morality
-accomplished through institutions such as those that control education, religion,
government bureaucracy and media
-Ultimately, the prevailing consciousness seems to be a world-view that is natural, unquestioned
and accepted by everyone, even those who have the most to lose.
-Can you think of an example?
-this world-view must be promoted by intellectuals
-“organic intellectuals”
-appear equitable and unbaised yet are simultaneously reinforcing a hegemonic agenda
of class interests
-What do Virginia Woolf’s writings and Antonio Gramsci’s theories have to do with each other?
de Beauvoir
One/Other
women’s relationship to oppressor compared to other groups
historical consciousness of past freedom
Cesaire
55 years after DuBois “Spirit of Modern Europe” - pointing out inconsistencies in Enlightenment ideals
King
-message of nonviolence resistance
SDS
-Message from our society is that there is no viable alternative
-p. 352 - do we currently have this kind of thing going on?
Friedan
“The Problem That Has No Name” - Betty Friedan (1963)
1.
What is the problem? Why doesn’t it have a name?
2.
Education ---> then “not using it”
1960 - the contradictions and inequalities in US had again created an environment conducive to social change. One
contradiction - the continued degradation of blacks in a nation of “presumed” equality. . . resulting in civil rights movement
which became a model and inspiration for other groups in society who began to call for their rights.
Dislodging the canon: the reassertion of a moral vision of the human sciences
-have a moral vision of the human sciences.
C. Wright Mills (died in 1962 at age 46)
-known for his “radical sociology” and being a strong critic of Parsons.
-took a critical view of trends in sociology and in society
-questioned “grand theory”
-said that SFs studies were so broad and abstract that they were completely detached from public issues, political
concerns, historical change, and people’s every day lives
-wanted to offer an alternative
Basic Assumptions
Human beings cannot be understood apart from the social and historical structures in which they are formed and in which
they interact.
The number and variety of structural changes within a society increase as institutions become larger, more embracing,
and more interconnected.
Change has sped up (FASTER!) in the modern era, and the changes have become far more consequential for all—for
those who are in control of these enlarged organizations, and for those who are subject to them.
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The Sociological Imagination
-the ability to see our individual experiences as they are related to and influenced by macro level social, cultural, and
historical processes
-example: Unemployment
-what happens in our lives is beyond our control but that awareness of the relationships between the social and the
personal is necessary for change to occur
-creating institutional change will be more successful than provoking individual changes.
Power & Authority
3 forms of power
1. coercion or physical force
-rarely needed in the modern democratic state, used as a last resort.
2. authority
-attached to positions and is justified by the beliefs of the obedient.
-is the basis of bureaucratic structures
3. manipulation
-wielded without the conscious knowledge of the powerless
-power is shifting in this direction, esp in bureaucracies
-The cause of the shift is the centralization and enlargement of political power itself
-Authority has need of legitimation to secure loyalty and obedience.
-In the shift from coercion and authority to manipulation, power shifts from the overt to the covert, from the obvious to the
subtle.
-Exploitation becomes a psychological process.
Among the means of power that exist today is the power to manage and manipulate the consent of men. Because the
power of manipulation is hidden it deprives the oppressed from identifying the oppressor. This power effectively removes
the check of reason and conscience of the ruled on the ruler.
Emptied of all other meanings and legitimations, jobs are emptied of any intrinsic meaning. Money, in order to build a life
outside of work, becomes the only rationale for work itself.
The Power Elite
-an elite who command the resources of vast bureaucratic organizations that have come to dominate industrial societies.
Consists of the key people in the three major institutions of modern society:
Economy
Government
Military
-He is NOT implying that this is a conspiracy
-it’s more like networking
-the corporate sector is the most powerful (he was saying this in 1950!)
-below the corporate sector are masses of largely unorganized, ill informed, and virtually powerless, they are controlled
and manipulated from above
-in the middle are the “white collar” workers who are trapped in the organization
-the media were transforming the United States from a society of political discussions and public debate into a mass
society in which the media disseminated opinions and the masses could no longer talk back
-corporate media http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/giants/
-people passively receiving only one version of what happened
•So, what do you think he would say about elections today?
Mills identified five overarching social problems:
Alienation
Moral insensibility
Threats to democracy
Threats to human freedom
Conflict between bureaucratic rationality and human reason.
-Influenced by Marx
-more similarities between his ideas and Weber
-solution to economic inequality -- not proletarian revolution, but a re-opening of political debate, public
discussion, and citizen participation in politics.
Like Marx, Mills views the problem of alienation as a characteristic of modern society and one that is deeply rooted in the
character of work.
Unlike Marx, however, Mills does not attribute alienation to capitalism alone. While he agrees that much alienation is due
to the ownership of the means of production, he believes much of it is also due to the modern division of labor.
Social Problems: Apathy
One of the fundamental problems of mass society is that many people have lost their faith in leaders and are therefore
very apathetic. Such people pay little attention to politics. Mills characterizes such apathy as a "spiritual condition" which
is at the root of many of our contemporary problems.
Mills relates this moral insensibility directly to the rationalization process. Our acts of cruelty and barbarism are split from
the consciousness of men--both perpetrators and observers. We perform these acts as part of our role in formal
organizations. We are guided not by individual consciousness, but by the orders of others.
http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Four/Presentations/MILLS/tsld066.htm
Key Points:
-Mill’s defines the “Sociological Imagination” as the ability to see the connections between “personal troubles” and the
social issues that underlie them.
-Mill’s felt that the task of sociologists is to study the social world from a critical point of view and to direct their findings to
political leaders (“kings”) and people (“publics”).