Chapter 5 info

Like we'll do everyweek, be sure to complete the following tasks.

• Participate in Discussion Board
• Read chapter and complete quiz
• Complete Blog post and comment on another student's post

 

My Chapter Intro

Hook Up Culture--An application of the idea of culture to specific age and occupational groups and behaviors.

Chapter 4 info

Like we'll do every week, be sure to complete the following tasks.

• Participate in discussion boards
• Read chapter and complete quiz
• Complete Blog post and comment on another student's post
• View video below

 

My Intro 

 

This video isn't the perfect fit for a chapter on Social Structure...however, I do like how it illustrates that socialization is shaped by institutions and those shape identity.  In the end, it means that what makes you an individual is other people...woa.

 

Chapter 3 info

Like we'll do every week, be sure to complete the following tasks.

• Participate in Discussion Board
• Read chapter and complete quiz
• No Blog post for this chapter
• View videos below--wow, there's a lot.

 

 

My intro

 

 

The next video describes the process of socialization, emphasizing how critical it is for even becoming human 

 

 

The next video profiles Genie, a victim of extraordinary parental neglect.  It's a relatively long video (about 12 minutes), but does provide a horrible, "natural experiment" of what happens when humans do not undergo the process of socialization.

 

Whiile the animation is primitive, this is a relatively good primer on the sociological theory of Symbolic Interactionism (SI). Your textbook refers to this theoretical perspective as simply Interactionism. Though, basically the entirity of Chapter 3 comes out of this perspective.

 

 

 

Zimbardo discussing Milgram's Compliance Experiments.  Some difficult clips of Nazi concentration camp survivors and victims included.

 

 

Quick recap of Stanford Prison Experiment. While this was done as an experiment in Psychology, it has clear sociological content 

Discussion Board, Chapter 2 Instructions

Like we'll do everyweek, be sure to complete the following tasks.

• Participate in discussions
• Read chapter and complete quiz
• Complete Blog post and comment on another student's post
• View videos below

 

My Quick Introduction

 

Methods: Ethnography

Theoretical Traditions in Sociology

I like The Sociology Project quite a bit, however, it doens't explicitly delve into the major sociological theories.  They're in there, but not clearly examined.  I've included a couple of short videos to give you a sense of these ideas.  On this page, I've included Structural Functionalism and Marxian Social Conflict.  A Symbolic Interactionism video can be found in the Chapter 3 folder.

The following videos make some reference to specific authors and texts.  Until I state otherwise, you need not focus on that, however, do focus on the tenets of the theories.

Structural Functionalism

 

Social Conflict (though labeled as simply Marxism in the video)

 

Post-Modernism (yes, it's the most difficult to "get," so would be a good topic for discussions)

Quiz Results: Habitus

Just a quick post after looking at the results of the Chapter 5 quiz.  The question that was most frequently marked incorrectly had to deal with habitus.  Many of you selected that the concept referred to an individual's socioeconomic status. Obviously now, that's not the correct answer.

The key contribution of Bourdieu's habitus instead was that he expanded the notion of social class to the idea that through the personal history of an individual's experiences embodies a certain set of tastes, skills, and dispositions--a style almost--that sets a group apart from other groups.  A useful companion piece to habitus is that of cultural capital.

Quiz Results: Social Research Going Deep and Wide

This is another of the series of posts meant to clear up some confusion that seemed to characterize the last quiz.

Out of all the multiple choice questions, those that were most frequently selected incorrectly, had to do with ethnography.  Ethnography is the most in-depth of the social research methods. It involves immersion within a group of people.  For ethnography, it's essential to "be there," to "walk in the shoes" of other people.  This helps untangle how other people see the world, their cultural lens, and to encounter aspects of human social life you didn't even know your were looking for.  Subsequently, ethnography gets you the most detail, but at a cost.  That detail means you're getting a narrow slice of the total human experience.

On the other hand, surveys can potentially uncover social data from vast numbers of people.  For example, the US Census can really be considered a massive sociological research project.  It's collecting data on hundreds of millions of US citizens. That's a lot of important information, however, that data is shallow in an ethnographic sense.

Surveys go wide and ethnography goes deep.  Both are critical for a comprehensive understanding of human social behavior.


Compare this brief description by Ashley Mears of her ethnographic research....



...to Joel Best and his work into the reality of assumed deviant behavior.

 

Quiz Results: What is Race?

I just finished grading the first quiz and wanted to note one of the questions that was incorrectly marked fairly often. 

What important fact about racial identity is key to understanding the social context of race?

A) Racial identity is genetically determined and a fundamental natural component of human social identity
B) Racial identity is set in infants as early as three months.
C) Racial identity can change according to the kinds of institutions with which we are connected.
D) Racial identity has no significance in modern America.

The correct response is C, though several of you selected A.  We'll dedicate an entire chapter to this later in the semester, but this is central to sociology, represents one of the disciplines major contributions to our understanding of the world and, from the quiz results, seems to be frequently misunderstood.

I'm going to try and be as concise as possible as many have written volumes on the subject.

Patterns of human genetic variation (i.e. differences) don't show clear boundaries between different human groups, or "races." Each human carries about 30,000 individual genes in their bodies.  Where could anyone draw the line as to which specific gene or genes define race?  Why is one more important than another? What proportion of "Caucasian" genes is enough? Put simply, genetic variation provides little basis for the racial categories we understand.

Also, definitions of race vary widely in time and space. In early US history, many European peoples weren't considered white by American elites. In 1751, Benjamin Franklin wrote:

All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth.

As you can see,  he considered many, who contemporary Americans would have no trouble classifying as white, as non-white.

Further, different parts of the world use very difference racial classification systems.  In recent American history, we have practiced a pattern of racial classification known as hypodescent.  This means that a person's identity is determined by any demonstrable heritage to a stigmatized racial group.  An easy example, President Obama is black, despite his mother being a very white woman from Kansas.  That wasn't important for how most saw him.  What was important was that his father was black, so he was black.  In many Latin American countries, particularly Brazil, such a system seems silly as their classifications, while still shaped by stratification and hierarchy, are more nuanced and accommodate a more diverse spectrum of racial identities.

I know this brief post doesn't do the idea justice, but I had to make some comment that there is very little genetic science that supports the existence of genetically defined races and sociology, anthropology and history clearly demonstrate that race is primarily the product of human belief and behavior.