Lecture
1. What is sociological imagination according to C. Wright Mills?
 Ability to see societal patterns of influence
 Capacity to see your own life in context of society and history
 Ability to see how biography (personal is shaped by history thru mediation of milieu, and
of their others and of soc itself
2. How is the self and society connected?
Through one’s social milieu.
An individual is created by a society. A group of individuals does not create a society,
3. What do ruptures in history create?
Generates cont. changes that are mirror opposites of each other
4. Give the four examples how ruptures in history affect modernity that we talked about in class?
a. Massive profit (massive wealth) -- Masisve proverty
i. # of pple in aboslute poverty is about 1 billion
1. Very existence as animals is threatened living hand to mouth
a. In 1850 same amount
2. Large majority of people are relatively poor
b. Pol Democracy -- Pol Totalitarianism
c. Individualism -- Massification and Dehumanization
i. Massification : pple conglomerated together making it diff to live independent
lives
ii. Opportunity for ind couples with constraints
d. Personal Liberty -- Control and Constraint
i. PL - sexuality, and sexual freedom/expression
ii. Control, surveillance
1. Every purchase is tracked thru credit rating agency
a. If not conform to good practices of debt payments
b. Homeland security surveillance
5. What are sociology’s three core assumptions?
1. Social Realism (phil positions
a. Society is real
b. Recog reality status of spiritual thing called society
c. Society is not a projection
d. It has real consequences for peoples life
e. Sociologist are realists when comes to society
2. Social is the ABSOLUTE
a. The full unit of human life is not the individual but rather the human society
b. Societies are basic units of human life
c. Societies create ind, ind do not creates societies
d. Society is something creates this specificity of ind
e. Ind are embedded in this real powerful things that shape them
3. History
a. Is the story, biography of the change of society
b. Image (encyclopedia 1960):
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
Pple reflected on ways of tribal, village ways of life, feudal way fo f life,
traditional city ways of life compared to modern pple
Tribal pple on second and third tier
Modern at top (slicked back dude, with nicely polished shoes, greased
hair, bathed in cologne
Self changes depends on which society (T or M) you live in
6. Compare and contrast primary and secondary groups.
Primary
Secondary
7. If aristocracy is the rule of the elite, and democracy is the rule of the people, what is
bureaucracy?
 Hierarchical formal organization characterized by rationality and efficiency
 Rationality, conscious specified terms of contract penetrate mind
 Social Machine
 ELIMINATES FREE PLAY
o Eliminates spontaneity
 Essence: limits human activity to planned movement
 RULE OF RECORDS
8. What are the characteristics of bureaucracy? Give an example of a bureaucracy.
Characteristics:
1. Specialization
1. Marx: rally taught a division of labour unleashes incredible productive and
efficiency, really shrinks hb down to a part; we become specialized , small, the
larger a B organ, the smaller each ind becomes
2. Division of labour and each person within machine an each has own function
2. Hierarchy of offices
1. Pathway of command and pathways of submission
3. Rules and Regulations (rational/legal authority)
1. The things that makes B operate = rules
2. Rules determine activity
3. Job specification are B outlined
4. Punishments of not dong job are B outlined
4. Technical Competence
1. What we care about are not general traits
2. Care about you are good at doing task
3. If you bring thousand pple together = not productive
a. Have them do the one thing each in ids good at
4. Negative trait
5. Impersonality
1. Hiring dec, rises, favors all things that occur in B, are not on raw identity
2. Hire and fire based on TC
3. Once inside B, name becomes symbol, usu overlaid with number
a. Student ID number
b. Social sec
c. Telephone numb
d. All things memorized
6. Formal, Written Communication
1. All rules, records about record as me, are all kept
2. Records themselves determine action of B rather than people
3. What is B record w are worried about building over next 4 years: GPA (degree)
4. File determine future
9. Compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of a bureaucracy.
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
o Efficiency (routine matters)
o Inefficiency (exceptions and non o Fairness (don't need to know
routine matters)
someone but based on technical
 When things are exceptional
competency)
o Dehumanization
o Predictability (B thing of retail is
 Full rounded ness of hb
fair)
 Alienation
o Consolidates power and
 Your soul is outside
administration control (reigns of
of you and
control in hand s of few, go to war
something else has
quickly, can change direction
animated you
quickly)
o Alienation
o Anti-democratic
 Don't vote for leaders in B
 Democracy try to dist
power, get participation
 Power flows up and
information and domination
flows down
10. Describe the authoritarian personality of people in the middle of a hierarchy.
11. Compare and contrast the four different types of Traditional Societies.
Hordes
 Time Period: Paleolithic era (30-40,000 years)
 Economic Type: HUNTER-GATHEIRNG ONLY ECONOMIES
o Live off of nature (animals and bushes, no gardening)
 Nomadic
 Majority of Pop: Rural (support own horde)
 Stability: Unstable
 Size: Very small (50-75 members)
 Bonding Agent: Dominate Alpha Male (Bonded together thru brute force)
o Most enduring bond: Mother-Child, interrupted by BD
 Hierarchy of members: Big Daddy, Harem of women, Children, Subordinate Men (too
weak individually to overthrow BD)



Language: No real universal lang, limited
Law: none, except domination by BD
Longevity of people: Short lives
Clans and Tribes
 Time Period: Paleolithic/Neolithic eras (10,000BCE)
 Economic Type: HUNTER-GATHERS & some HORT (H &G, fishing, whaling)
 Nomadic
 Majority of Pop: Rural (support own clan)
 Stability: increased stab from horde
 Size: bigger
 Bonding Agent: Rituals (create and sustain belief in clan or totem ancestry-usu an
animal)
o UNLIKE HORDE: ind is not important, if chief dies, replace him
 Language: Growing (oral)
 Law: Growing
 Cult Dev: traditions, myths and history developing


o Lang, law, cult dev begin to grow
Bonded together through: Mechanical solidarity (Durkheim)
o Bonded together thru shared believes
Horticultural Village
 Time Period: Neolithic Era
 Economic Type: H&G and Horticultural (gardening, hand tools, human muscle power
only, some domestication of animals to eat)
o Surplus develops
 Pple exempt selves from eco activity and focus on cult things
 Ex. Emergence of Shamans (specialists of cult who don’t
contribute to eco)
o Allowed explosion of human cult and dev
 Settling
 Majority of pop: Rural (support own village)
 Stability: Stable
 Boding Agent: Rituals (spirits linked to ancestors who are closely buried)
 Language: growing (oral
 Law: Growing
 Cult Dev: growing
 Bonded Thru: Mechanical Solidarity
Agrarian Soc
 Time Period: 4000 BCE (EGYPT, MESOPOTAMIA)
 Economic Type: H&G, Agricultre (diff from Hort b/c use animals as tools)
o Generate surplus—support cities
o Markets emerge
 Settled: Cities (5% of pop reside here)
 Majority of Pop: Rural (support the cities)
 Language: Growing (more universal, WRITTEN)
 Law: military (under domination of cities)
 Always incredible divide between rural villages and cities
o Cities: proto-modern and dominates much larger region of rural village
 Life is similar to cont soc
o Rural village: same life as hortic soc



 Dominated from outside by city
Stability: Stable, but GREAT INEQUALITY (City exploits village)
Organized Religion emerges
o Set aside to deal with sacred things
o Specialized institution emerges
STILL EXISTS TO DAY
12. What are the characteristics of Modernity?
Modern Industrial Society
 Time Period: 1750-1950
 Economic Type: CAPITALISIC (ground which rest of life is built) (wage, salary emerge)
o Existed in agrarian soc
 Marginal region of economy
 3-5% may have been producing
o Commodities we need to survive are bought and made by others
 We work to produce what other people need
o Market for labour (none of us have a right to a job)
o Market for capital for factories, corp stocks and bonds
o World of immesne trade
 Trade ourselves
 Trade money
 Cpatial itself get traded
 Leads to urbanization
o Cities not just small part but become ground of soc
 Most of pop live in city
 Industrialization spreads
o As pple work in industry
o Rapid dev of tech makes ind and effecitie
 Machinofacotries
o Hb as modern ind dev become less importatn for making things
 Hb muscles power becomes unnecessary
o Marx looked forward to fully mechanized soc
 Disenchanted
o Enchantment = spirit possession
o Loosing our spirit/spirits gods demons
o Instead of pple being governemed by fear of demons,
 Live our lives to B (control of pple)
 Primary way pple are structred and live
 All major inst of soc (fam, edu, pol, sci) allb ecomes transformed
by industry in capitalistic soc
 Logic of capt penetrtes into all
13. What are the three forms of informal social control?
1. Physical vio
a. Modern tend to do away with physical violence to conform
b. Traditional soc: used physical vio to stop violations of norms
c. Done with administrative control (NOW)
d. South and West of US
i. Rules /regulations of paddle/size of holes/3 of holes
e. Informal
2. Shaming
a. Embarrassed
b. Other people reactions to you
c. acknowledgement
3. Shunning
a. Famous historical example: German anipbaptistic group: Meidung
i. Ultimate version: exiled, excommunicated
b. Kept in soc where they treat you as not human/not real
c. No acknowledgement of self
d. You lost self
14. What was William Graham Sumner’s main argument?
o Each soc unifed by an ethos
 Ethos: ethical system
 Rules that become conscious have to be made legal, sensible, susceptible
 As we become more modern we create more powerful reason for folk ways
o Modern pple bound by morays (ethically defended rules)
o Things that really matter:
 Taboo: strongest possible More (Latin world for norm)
 Taboo: absolute rules, if violate you are killed
 Strong ethically defended moral rule
o Human beings live according to rules, and create moral ethical explanations for them
 Sociology is deeply conservative (he is one of these people)
 Any rule can be legitimated
 Thus any bases for moral judgment is the longstanding trad of group
15. What bonds people together in a Traditional Society? What is that bond called? What happens
to the individual consciousness?
Traditional
Totem: collective representative
 Symbolic representation of collective/society itself
 Viewed as ancestor of group of people they represent
 Usu animals
 Tribal pple view themselves as descendent of that totem
 Engage in rituals that reenact behaviors/stories of totem
 As soc develop replace animal with spirit beings
o Becomes anthropomorphic
 Greeks created Titans
o Heroes in Greek culture are offspring of Gods
 Gave lang and law to the people
 Specific language you have in group, specific law you have is morally legitimated,
made sensible, by totem you have
o Can have one clan with frog as totem and another as snake
 Both clans are really different due to different lang and law totem
made sense of
Ritual (as governor of moral energy/Social power):
o Churches
o
o
o
Roman Catholic
 Reproduce moments in life of Jesus
Ritual: fixed group enactment of beliefs/myths of group
o Fixed frozen enactment of beliefs of group
o Reproducing important aspects of collective orientation
o The thing that holds soc together/give it form
Held together by shared belief
o Locked together in by set of ritual
o Not individuals, no free
o Thinking of self as primarily member of clan, as faith system and shared
beliefs that give form/instruction to entire society
Collective conscious is clarified by ritual, spiritual punishment of sacrilege
o Shared belief/set of practices that bond together Village, Clan or Tribe
Individual conscious is very underdeveloped
o Do not think of themselves as individuals
o Homoduplex (humans have two heads)
o In Traditional soc--collective self big and small individual self
o Modern soc: big individual self, small
o Tribal person is very similar to other person from same tribe
o Modern pple are all very different from pple from same place
o Bonded together by shared beliefs
Readings:
Chapter 1 &2
16. Describe what society would be like if one of the five values America holds dear was taken
away.
 Freedom
 Prosperity
 Genrate high standard ofliving for all people
 In America we have enever been more enslaved than we are now
 Generally those who do better are the educated
 Am is resistant to change: sharing of prosperity is due to educated
 Efficiency
 Fairness
 Basic civil rights
 Equality of opportunity
 Democracy
 Slogan: every time there is war: we go to war for democracy
 Democratic society: vs demo voting system
 Maximize of soc
 People in control of own fate
17. How does the book compare conservatives and progressives?
ECONOMIC
Progressive: high levels of poverty, irrationalities, waste and inefficiencies generated by markets
Conservative: wonderful machine gor generating prosperity and efficient rational economic
outcomes
FREEDOM & FAIRNESS
Progressive: fairness (justify taxation of the wealthy on grounds of broader fairness)
Conservatives: freedom (taxes restrict individual freedom in unacceptable ways
IMPROVING SOCIETY
Progressive: American deo could be revitalized with appropriate institutional change
Conservative: not much can be done to change situation, and all efforts to improve things
generally make them worse
18. What makes up a capitalist economy? (3 things)
1. Markets for exchange
a. Produce for the market
b. Things are made to be sold rather than DIRECTLY consumed by people who
produce them
2. Private ownership and control of investment
a. Production companies are private allowing owners to do what they like with
assets and investments
3. Market for labour
a. Person has NO right to a job
b. Employees do not own company, have no say in how company is run