SOCIOLOGY’ S WINNING
TRIFECTA
PEOPLE, OBJECTS AND SOCIETY
WHAT I AM SAYING – MY ARGUMENT
• Society gives people guidance by using popular
culture objects.
• These objects can tell us…
• Where we are in time and place
• Which actions are better
• And how other people will feel about us
WHAT IS A SOCIAL OBJECT?
• Objects enable other people to relate to us.
• If we are associated with Santa objects, other
people will relate to us as a grown-up does to a
child.
WHERE DO WE FIND SOCIAL OBJECTS?
• Society is full of thousands of signifying objects popular culture is everywhere.
• These objects fill up the space around us so that
modern people are never alone.
HOW OBJECTS ARE USEFUL
• I am presenting a picture of American society filled
with objects that guide and harmonize its people.
• People know how to use these objects to steer their
lives.
THIS IS A NEW PICTURE OF SOCIETY.
• Social scientists before have not regarded society
as successfully guided by its objects.
• Creating a new picture of society is a project of the
social theorist.
• I am a theorist in sociology and the picture of
society I am presenting comes from the professional
work of the sociological theorist.
WHAT DOES A THEORIST DO?
• The job of the theorist is to give a “big picture” view.
• It is not to account for all the details.
• A theorist tries to provide an internally consistent
model that describes a variety of important events.
• Can we provide a big picture view of modern
American society?
• Why might this picture involve popular culture
objects?
(WRONG) WAYS OF SEEING SOCIETY
• I’ve seen many unconvincing pictures (theoretical
models) of society.
1.Seeing society politically – as laws and public
administration
2.Seeing society economically – as capitalism
3.Seeing society biologically – as human brain areas
and hard wiring
All these approaches are sociologically deficient.
AMERICAN SOCIETY IS SOCIOLOGICAL
• Modern American society contains features that
are distinctively sociological. People have…
• Free choices (many people take varied paths)
• Spontaneous and informal groups (non-structural)
• Rapidly disappearing (ephemeral) associations
• Expressing themselves through designed objects
(communication by objects not culture)
WHAT A MODEL OF SOCIETY SHOULD
EXPLAIN
• Why people behave so differently in stages of life –
early childhood, teen years, tumultuous twenties,
parenting, etc. (not biological)
• Generational differences - why decades in the
United States look so different (not political)
• Why our most meaningful relationships are with
strangers – school friends, out-marrying, startup
associations (not economic)
A MODEL OF SOCIETY MATTERS
BECAUSE IT GIVES US THE BIG PICTURE
• We can explain in a more connected way what is
going on in America.
• People’s success or failure
• Who is in the driver’s seat steering society’s changes
• What future direction we can expect society to
take
HOW OBJECTS PUT THE PIECES OF LIFE
TOGETHER
• Objects explain time as our personal biography –
our personal phases of life (six of these)
• Objects supply judgments – the attractiveness of
things shows us good and bad
• Objects contain dreams – ideal worlds are
designed into them
• These objects add up to organize people into
generations
EXAMPLES OF DIFFERENT
OBJECTS
WH A T S O C I A L O B J E C T S C A N D O F O R U S
Can We Guess Your Actual Age?
OBJECTS USED BY ONE PERSON CREATE
A CHAIN OF MEANING
Object 1
Object 2
Object 3
• Performer
• Aaron
Lewis
• Song
• Staind
“Nutshell”
• Makeup
• Heavy
black eye
makeup
OBJECTS IN A
WEDDING
PHOTOGRAPH
Find ten signifying
objects.
HOW PEOPLE USE OBJECTS
OVER THE LIFETIME
PARENTS USE OBJECTS TO TELL (WELLINTENTIONED) LIES
Santa is a socially acceptable lie.
Why is it important to start children off with a lie? This is an unanswered
sociological question.
USING OBJECTS TO MAKE A FRIEND
• A ten-year-old girl makes a new friend using two
words, “Nice shoes.”
USING OBJECTS TO FIND LOVE
• In 1973, American student, Bill Bryson, was traveling
around Europe and decided to take a temporary
job at the Virginia Water mental hospital outside
London, England.
•
“One day...I was despatched to a neighboring
ward called Florence Nightingale to borrow a bottle
of thorazine to keep the patients docile. Flo, as it
was called was a strange and gloomy place, full of
much more seriously demented people who
wandered about or rocked ceaselessly in high
backed chairs...
At the far end of the room, there moved a pretty young nurse of clear and
radiant goodness, caring for these helpless wrecks with boundless reserves
of energy and compassion – guiding them to a chair, brightening their day
with chatter, wiping dribble from their chins – and I thought: This is just the
sort of person I need.
We were married sixteen months later in the local church...”
Source: Notes From A Small Island 1995 p.79
Bill Bryson and his English wife Cynthia have been married ever since. They
have four children and have lived in Yorkshire, England; Hanover, New
Hampshire, U.S.A.; and other places.
DEFINING GENERATIONS
Source: Pew Research, March 19, 2015
GENERATIONS ARE DIFFERENT IN
THEIR CELEBRITIES AND THEIR MUSIC
Depression
Era
Silent
Generation
Baby
Boomers
GenXers
Millennials
Frank Sinatra
Elvis Presley
Beatles
Rappers
Taylor Swift
Swing
Rock ‘n’Roll
Rock, Soul
Hip hop
Uplifting
music?
FEATURES OF ONE GENERATION
• Hipsters Skinny jeans, froyo, cupcakes, repurposed
furniture and decorations
• Newly popular neighborhoods in many cities
• Brooklyn, New York
• Mission District, San Francisco
• Angel, London
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
H O W WE H A V E S E E N O B J E C T S B E I N G U S E D
WE HAVE SEEN THAT OBJECTS HELP
PEOPLE
• Using objects helps individuals
• Using objects aggregates people into whole
generations
• Object-using generations put their stamp on society
WHAT WE HAVE SEEN IS
SOCIOLOGICAL
•
•
•
•
Santa
Shoes
Music and neighborhoods
New generations with their own culture, priorities,
and aesthetic
THE WORK OF THE THEORIST
• The job of a sociological theorist is to bring together
the trio of components we have seen…
• People
• Objects
• and Society
This process of bringing together the pieces of
sociology is called “conceptualization.”
How much of modern life see as sociological?
SEEING THINGS SOCIOLOGICALLY
MEANS STARTING WITH OBJECTS
• Objects link people dynamically – in changing
ways. This is not fixed like law or institutional mission.
• Objects attract people freely – it’s not limited by
lack of money or economic inequality.
• Objects connect people socially. Objects show us
society and not just what is happening in the various
regions of a person’s own brain.
SOCIETY IN EACH GENERATION HAS A
WINNING SHAPE
• There is only one configuration of American society
in each generation. This is the world each
generation creates; it’s the mainstream of what
exists in each decade.
• People in each generation are prepared to fit into
their world. They do things differently from older
generations.
• People understand how their own generation wants
to do things.
• People and society are matched up; new
generations of people fit into a changed society.
CONCLUSIONS
THE TRIFECTA: A WINNING
SOCIOLOGICAL MODEL
• The work of social theorists is to discover how the
pieces of sociology come together in their own
generation.
• How do people, using their new objects, create the
society of their generation?
• People, objects and society all fit together. The
details of how this happens is the challenge to be
discovered.
THE WORK OF THE SOCIOLOGIST IS
NEVER DONE
• It’s an exciting time to be a sociological theorist
because a new picture of society emerges in each
generation.
• What is new, what is different about the next
generation of people’s objects? It is easy for older
generations to notice only what is different and to
complain that it is not as good as the past.
• The theorist’s conceptual challenge is identifying
what are the new features and capabilities of new
ways of connecting.
WHAT SUCCESS IN SOCIETY MEANS
• At any one time there exists one American society.
• Success in life means coordinating with our society in
the present moment – the decade of its settling
generation.
• Personal success involves finding out how our
generation has configured society and
synchronizing with them.
• Helping other people involves getting them to the
standards and expectation of changing
generations.
THE END
BONUS SLIDE – AN AFTERTHOUGHT ON
GENERATIONAL CONSENSUS
• Generations seem to be clearer about objects they
dislike than those they admire.
• Today, April 2015, Suffolk students polled said that
the celebrities they most dislike are…
• Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.
• There is overwhelming agreement on this and not
on any such consensus about which stars who is
liked.
• Question: Why does generational agreement
identify what is disliked more easily than what is
adored?