THE WAY YOU VIEW REALITY
PART III

Social Marginality
Being excluded
Becoming or living as an “outsider”
Social Crisis
Living through a rough period: Great
Depression
Having to deal with specific situations affected by your place in society

Helps us assess the truth of “common sense”
Helps us assess both opportunities and constraints in our lives
Empowers us to be active participants in our society
Helps us to live in diversity

Shaping public policy & law
Personal growth and expanded awareness
Preparation for the working world

17 th & 18 th Centuries
Rise of factory based industrial economy
Emergence of great cities in
Europe
Political changes including democratic ideas

Rise of factory based industrial economy
Before the Middle Ages
◦ Worked in homes and small scale manufacturing
New sources of energy led to larger machines/factories
◦ Hydroelectric power
◦ Steam power

Changed how communities were originally established
Now people were anonymous and worked for strangers instead of in a close-knit community of families

Emergence of great cities in
Europe
Enclosure movement
More and more land was being
“fenced off”
This enabled easier control over grazing animals
Sheep were important to the wool needed in the factories

This led to more tenant farmers searching for work elsewhere – factories in the cities
Cities grew with this influx of workers and their families.
Social problems also grew:
◦ Pollution
◦ Crime
◦ Homelessness
The world became very impersonal

Political changes including democratic ideas
Enlightenment ideals grew
Locke, Hobbes and Smith – brought up new ideas that differed from the old theological view of society
Before (Middle Ages) – Everyone played a part in the “holy plan”
Royalty to serfs – everyone had an obligation

Enlightenment brought ideas:
Pursuit of self-interest
Individual liberties and freedoms
Individual rights

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” – Thomas Jefferson
French Revolution
Alexis de Tocqueville – “nothing short of the regeneration of the whole human race”

August Comte
Karl Marx
Herbert Spencer
Emile Durkheim
Max Weber

French philosopher
Founder of sociology
Coined the term “sociology”
Favors positivism – understand sociology through science
Tried to find solutions to the chaos caused by the French Revolution

Influenced by the scientific method
Believed that sociologists should concern themselves with the problems of order and change
Never completed college
Suffered from depression

Born in Germany to middle-class parents
Received doctorate from the University of Berlin
Worked as a writer and editor for a racial newspaper
Believed that overall structure of a society is influenced by how the economy is organized
Thought that people who own the means of production control society

Stated that imbalance of power leads to conflict between owners and laborers
Was deeply troubled by social conditions produced by capitalist systems
Believe that the task of social scientists was to transform society
Emphasized that conflict is the primary cause of social change

English
Worked as a civil engineer for a railway
Received large inheritance in his thirties
Was influenced by views of Charles Darwin
Viewed society as a system of interdependent parts that work together to maintain system

Believed that social change and unrest were natural occurrences in society’s evolution towards stability and perfection
Asserted that the fittest societies would survive over time
Believed in “Social Darwinism”

French
Taught philosophy
Taught first social science course in
France
Systematically applied methods of science to the study of society

Developed the idea of a function – positive consequence that an element of society has for the maintenance of a social system
Study only aspects of society that are directly observable
First sociologist to test theories through statistical analysis

German with middle class parents
Received doctorate from University of
Berlin
Founded the German sociological society in 1910
Was interested in groups within a society more than in society as a whole

Believed that sociologists should uncover the feelings and thoughts of the individuals
Verstehen – sociologist places himself in the place of others and attempts to see things through their eyes
Used concept of idea type – essential characteristic of some aspect of society

Major goal
Goals of sociologists – especially
Comte
Understand society as it operates
Use positivism – the “science behind it”
Sociology is a product of three main stages of historical development

3 stages of historical development
Theological stage (religious)
Metaphysical stage
(transitional)
Scientific stage

Religious – all people took their
“signals” from “God’s will”.
From beginning of human history to the Middle Ages
Society expresses God’s will
Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, etc

This is a transitional stage
Renaissance affected this change – forced people to look at the world differently
Saw society as a natural rather than a supernatural system
Hobbes, Locke, etc

Starting with Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton
Positivism
◦ Understanding society based on science
◦ Society operates according to its own laws just like the physical world operates according to gravity and laws of nature

Sets of assumptions that guide thinking and research
Two basic questions:
◦ What issues should we study?
◦ How should we connect the facts?

Think of these as “road maps”
Basic images of society that guides thinking and research
◦ Structural-functional approach
(paradigm)
◦ Social-conflict approach (paradigm)
◦ Symbolic-interaction approach
(paradigm)

Structural-Functional paradigm
Framework for building theory that see society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability.
Our lives are guided by social structures (relatively stable patterns of social behavior)
Each social structure has social functions (consequences) for the operation of society as a whole.
Shares a macro-level orientation with the social-conflict paradigm (focus is on broad social structures that shape society as a whole)

Auguste Comte
Emile Durkheim
Herbert Spencer
Talcott Parsons

Three concepts (by Robert Merton):
◦ Manifest functions – the recognized and intended consequences of any social pattern
◦ Latent Functions – Largely unrecognized and unintended consequences
◦ Social dysfuntions – undesirable consequences of a social pattern for the operation of society

it focuses on stability – which ignores the inequalities of social class, race and gender.

Framework for building theory that sees society as an arena of inequality that generates conflict and change.
It helps you understand society but help to reduce social inequality.
Shares a macro-level orientation with the structuralfunctional paradigm
Example: the rich in relation to the poor (dominant vs disadvantaged)
◦ People on top trying to protect “what is theirs” while the people on the bottom are trying to gain “what the believe is theirs too”.

Gender OR Race-Conflict
Paradigm
A point of view that focuses on inequality and conflict between:
◦ Men and women
◦ Racial and ethnic categories

Several Weaknesses:
◦ Ignores social unity based on mutual independence and shared values
◦ Because it is explicitly political, it cannot claim scientific objectivity
◦ Looks at society with broad abstractions

Symbolic-Interaction Paradigm
Framework for building theory that sees society as the product of the everyday interactions of individuals.
Micro-level orientation – focuses on patterns of social interaction in specific settings

Max Weber
George Herbert Mead
Erving Goffman
George Homans
Peter Blau

Attempts to explain more clearly how individuals actually experience society
Two weaknesses:
◦ By focusing on a patterns, one loses sight of the influence by the larger social structures
◦ By emphasizing the unique, it risks overlooking the effects of culture, class, gender, and race.

A social-conflict analysis points out that sports are closely linked to social inequality

The symbolic-interaction paradigm sees sports less as a system than as an ongoing process.