soc 100 final

Marx

• prescriptive (offers direction for important choices, ethics)
• explanatory (explains the world)

• culture (beliefs and practices)
• takes many forms

• christianity and socialism come together?
• happened at the height of the cold war

• 67.3%
• Mainstream Christianity groups: roman catholic and protestant groups

• changing
• we are becoming increasingly diverse as a nation
• also growing number who identify with "no religion" - what does this actually mean?

• focus on what the religion does for the social group and the individual
• ie. social cohesion

• examine what religion is, what does not count as religion
• tend to emphasize core elements like belief in a higher being, a set of prescribed beliefs and rituals

they don't believe in a higher power, so is it a religion?

• Durkheim
• religion greatly contributed to social cohesion
• at its core, religion is a social/group phenomena 
• argued society divided the world into a binary, differentiating between things deemed sacred and profane (sacred = focus of religion)

• they face stigma, harassment, denial of beliefs
• have a hard time gaining legitimacy

• how important is religion in different public sectors?
• how many people are "religious"?

• No
• but, church has no authority over the state

• attempts to modify/overthrow existing power relations, often by working outside the formal political process
• normally comprised of non-elite members of society with little or no control over major economic, symbolic, political, or military resources

an organized public demonstration expressing strong objection to an official policy or course of action

a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd

perception

• The Crowd (book)
• anonymity
• less resistant to hypnotic effects
• emotional contagion

• critical of any approach that discredits crowd disorder as irrational, doesn't give it any underlying meaning or justification
• people may behave differently in a crowd but they still know what they're doing
• rationalize what they're doing

(Weber def) ability to realize one's will despite the resistance of others

• ability to pursue your dreams and ambitions is highly affected by power relations and your place within them
• continually contested, not a fixed possession

• notions of civil society, middle class
• rose during the Industrial Revolution
• urban middle-classes created and power was increasingly based on money and capital ownership

• 1800s
• organizational form that utilize impersonal practices and procedures
• authority comes with the title, not the qualities of the individual who has the title

• formal system of rules
• separation of the person from the office

• those who control material resources can realize their will over others, exercise and challenge power
• during industrial era, became moreso who controlled the means of production

• agreed with marx that industrial societies were stratified
• but thought there were other ways for power to be asserted:
• class
• status (prestige)
• party (organizational and institutional resources)

• after the second world war, US was controlled by a group of corporate, military, and political leaders
• they controlled the interlocking hierarchies of the economy, army, and state

• working class do not revolt under difficult circumstances because elites manufacture consent of the population by enlisting social institutions 
• counter-hegemonic ideals must be generated to challenge existing power and bring change

the institutions that shape political outcomes

• set the rules and guidelines around social interactions
• patterns of behavior that order people's lives in predictable ways
• establish stable patterns that are not easily changed
• once estabilished, institutions can affect types of decision-making by encouraging different "paths" of action

• studies on revolutions in China, France, Russia
• showed how each was related to the inability of existing state structures to cope with crises, so revolutionaries could take advantage
• looked at institutions that governed at the time

social process by which traditional constraints posed by geography, economic activity, culture, and social configurations have diminished and replaced by international processes

may see more interaction across borders, but these changes aren't global

• need for "collective action frames" to identify grievances, promote a cause, shape a common identity
• examines how collective understandings are created and communicated in order to realize objects

• social movements determined by opportunities (scandal, unhappiness) and constraints (funding, access to media, organizational problems)
• suggests that politics can be characterized by constraints and opportunities

subversive use of computers and networks for political ends

minimal efforts ("likes") for political ends

• 1. diagnostic frames define social problems, injustices
• 2. prognostic frames articulate solutions and strategies for positive social change
• 3. motivational frames compel people to join the social movement

• unity and diversity have tradeoffs
• diversity can = broad membership, but which may end up fragmentation -> disagreement
• unity around a specific single common goal = powerful, but can't sustain a lasting movement once achieved

transnational

makes people, societies, states more similar

makes the world unequal, differentiated, diverse

• current economic globalization is simply a continuation of a series of long economic cycles in the capitalist world system
• rejects "national" development
• unequal power hierarchy where capital accumulation flow from periphery to core

• Marx's dependency theory
• during mid 20th century, some countries weren't moving ahead like other countries were
• dependency theory stated that this was part of the plan, meant to be exploited by those with the capital

• developed core
• semi-periphery (ex. China) exploited and exploiter
• underdeveloped periphery

• world bank/IMF(??) told less developed countries to open up to foreign trade, required lots of privatization (like water)
• private enterprises bought up their state-owned industry, exploited them

• why do states share similar structures despite their diverse histories?
• from common set of "world cultural" norms, scripts, models adopted by states
• come from efforts of NGOs, intergovernmental bodies, experts

countries want to look like they're following the norm

• embeddedness and model density 
• states embedded in relations with each other
• adoption of models by other states makes them more attractive

• time-space compression
• distances shrink, time is accelerated or compressed

• mixing of global and local
• how globalized identities, products, and structures are adapted and modified in local practice

inequality and exploitation

isomorphism and similarities

increasing global interconnectedness, mixing of global and local, changes in space/time

• promotes the efficacy of free markets, limited gov't, private property
• as an economic model: market forces are the way to organize society, allocated resources. likes privatization, deregulation, free flow of capital, minimal gov't interference in market activities

greater consumer choice and efficiency

inevitable

primacy of individual over society/group

• seperation of people who have internet and those who don't (rural areas, people who can't afford it)
• even if you have the internet, you have to know how to use it

temporary and permanent

convergence and divergence

• capitalism
• insitutional isomorphism
• changes in time/space

knowledge/truth is produced through rigorous objectivity and the application of the scientific mind

knowledge is the product of social processes

• communalism 
• universalism
• disinterestedness
• organized skepticism

the products of science belong to the whole scientific community (discoveries are not a secret)

all scientists can contribute without being judged on personal characteristics

scientists do not act out of personal gain

• claims are exposed to critical scrutiny and peer review 
• science is self-critical

• self-interest
• power
• ritual
• tradition
• symbolism

• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
• incl. scientific paradigms, problem-solving, anomalies, change
• argues that science itself is a social enterprise
• commits ppl to seeing the world in a certain way, which explains why it can withstand a fair amount of contradictory evidence  (anomalies)
• dogmatic principles?

• constructed
• process of construction is tidied up in written accounts

• "Laboratory Life"
• treated a laboratory like a different culture/tribe
• how does a lab work as a social institution?

• how is scientific knowledge being constructed and used in public domains?
• used to exert authority, or as a basis for decision-making (politics)

• focuses on interaction among individuals and the everyday use of symbols
• symbols come to be shared through the process of socialization

• its microsociological focus gives it a limited applicability
• doesn't easily extend to how media institutions are organized/their role in society

• this macrosociological theory focuses on social order
• order is maintained by a shared consensus about social norms (social cohesion)

• surveillance of the environment
• correlation of parts of society (cohesion)
• transmission of social heritage (how culture carries forward ideas, beliefs, etc)
• entertainment (maintaining social order diffuses tensions of society?)

• macrosociological theory, concentrates on social conflict bw unequal groups and change
• allows sociologists to question rather than defend media institutions

• contemporary feminist theory on the media concerned with several themes: 
• difference (how the media justifies inequality bw men and women on the basis of natural differences)
• voice (degree to which women are denied opportunity to speak in various forms of communication)
• representation (ways in which women are depicted in the media, consequences of these characterizations

• political economy
• cultural studies

focuses on ownership/control of the media, gov't policy/regulation, conflicts over ownership, policy, globalization

emphasizes importance of the ideology embedded in media content, interpretation by audience members, efforts to change media representations/provide alternate messages

• media owned by the gov't (ex. CBC)
• freely available, education, ensures a Canadian voice

media owned by commercial firms, content based on ability to produce profit

• one firm owning media enterprises that link production, distribution, and exhibition or retail to guarantee an outlet for prices
• may prevent content from other sources

principle that internet providers should enable access to all content regardless of the source, without favoring or blocking any particular products or websites

when a media company owns organizations that are associated with diff types of media for efficient, economical use of administrative costs

• a company that owns many firms engaged in a variety of business activities (media may be a major or minor part of the business)
• combines horizontal or vertical or cross-ownership

routine collection of data about individuals w the specific purpose of governing, regulating, managing, or influencing what they do in the future

if surveillance is about monitoring and data collection for the purposes of governing, managing, or influencing

• technologies will liberate us from power structures
• liberate = decentralize power hierarchies

technologies are used to benefit powerful corporations and states

we can use technologies to profoundly affect one another (for good and bad)

• an interactive (thru "new media") realm wherein every action and transaction generates information about itself
• creates a digital record

we're becoming more transparent, but companies collecting the info are opaque