Science = a method for describing and explaining why and how things work. The scientific method consists of two components: theory and research (scope).
Theory = abstract statements that explain how and why certain things happen and why they are as they are. Scientific theories must make definite predictions and prohibitions.
Epistemology

Is the knowledge to be empirical or evaluative?
Empirical = sensible (seeable, smellable, touchable)
Evaluative = normative claim or value judgement

	Empirical	Not Empirical
Evaluative	Philosophy	Faith
Not Evaluative	Science	Pure Logic or Math

Hypothesis = a testable statement (x causes y)

Causality

Association between variables, or correlation (when x changes y needs to change in some relation to x)
Time-order (x has to happen before y)
Non-Spuriousness (x & y aren’t just caused by the same thing)
Mechanisms (the aspects of x that cause y)
Context (some aspects of x only apply to y in certain settings)

Data or Research

Making appropriate empirical observations or measurements.
Test theories or gain knowledge about some portion of reality so it becomes possible to theorize about it.
Good research looks for the problems with the theory
Empirical generalisations or observable patterns

Deductive process starts with a theory
Inductive process starts with data

Emile Durkheim’s Theory of Differentiation & Integration

Emile Durkheim focussed on material reproduction or work
Social Differentiation = division of labor (according to Durkheim)

bifurcation = something splits in two
Population growth causes Social Differentiation

groups grow & split. They split along typical lines (gender, age, interests, personalities).
Society = aggregate group of people that share some social tie (kinship, citizenship, language, currency)

Intra-societal change = societal change caused from within the society
Stages of societal growth:

Foraging (hunter/gatherer)
Pastoral/Agricultural (domesticating plants & animals)
Agrarian (large institutions?)
Industrial
Post-Industrial
Global Economies

Three questions:

What causes populations to grow in the first place?

External factors work as a catalyst.

War
Good Harvest
Migration

How does that population growth cause differentiation?

Members hyper-specialize to avoid competition and secure a place as a valued member of society for the sake of survival
Internal or sub societies form based on specialization.

What is it about the differentiation that causes more population growth?

Because members specialized they produce new knowledge and culture that promotes population growth through longevity.
Because members specialized they depend on one another more which drives them to reintegrate with each other.

George C. Homans’ Law of Inequality

Homans = rational choice or exchange theorist
The law = Friendships tend to be concentrated among people of the same rank. Members with close ties to those of another rank, tend to lack ties to others of their own rank.
Examples of ways to rank

age, skill, credentials, race, relationship status, popularity, wealth, accomplishment

The base reason that people generally stick together with people of their own rank is because of convenience due to similar living situations, educational background, and current career.
Those relatively few with power establish arbitrary (w/o reason) ranking systems to normalize (make predictable and thus controllable) inequality in order to dominate resources and secure power.
Those relatively few who are promoted to the top of an established ranking system are most likely to defend the ranking system by using their power to suppress those who threaten the system.
Threats to an arbitrary ranking system

Openly acknowledging the ranking system and/or it’s arbitrary nature.
Ignoring the ranking system.

Those who submit to a ranking system don’t perceive it as arbitrary, but once they recognize the arbitrary nature of they are likely to seek change through revolution or reform.

Social Facts

Governments started collecting demographic data in the early 1800’s.

Due to the industrial revolution humans become more important as workers.
With more governments becoming more demographic, there was more desire by politicians to understand voters.

Suicide & Durkheim

Around the time of the industrial revolution suicide rates were increasing across the Western world.
In 1897 Frenchman, Émile Durkheim, published Suicide.
Durkheim stressed that high suicide rates reflect weaknesses in the relationships among members of a society, not in the character or personality of the individual.
“Suicide varies with the degree of integration of the social groups of which the individual forms a part”

Social Solidarity =

frequency and intensity of interaction
shared beliefs and values.

Anomie = societies that don’t have rules or norms
Egoistic = self-centered
Altruism = selflessness
Shift in identity due to reduction of social solidarity

According to...	From	urbanization, industrialization, and modernization	To
Weber	Traditional	➙	Rational/modern
Tonnies	Gemeinschaft rural/village	➙	Gesellschaft Urban/individual
Simmel	Individual as Unknown Fixed Identity	➙	Individual as Stanger Fluctuating Identity Category Cognitive Conservatism
Durkheim	Mechanical Solidarity Concrete	➙	Organic Solidarity Abstract Functionally Independent

Social Networks

Local

Connotation: Albuquerque Journal, boring, here, used to, beer
High redundancy (everyone knows everyone directly)

Information travels fast
change happens slowly
trust
High social solidarity
collective efficacy
Past or history oriented
Conservative

Cosmopolitan

Connotation: Urban, City Sophistication, Upper class, Martiny, Fashion, New, Youth, Trendy
Many structural holes

Fractured Identity (Putting on fronts for different social circles)
Progressive (fast changing)

Sociological Imagination

Social Imagination = seeing the link between the lives of individuals and larger social forces.
Levels of Social Structure

Micro = interpersonal interaction
Meso = institutional (sometimes interchangeable with macro)
Macro = society at large
Global = Intersocietal

Why should we focus on the global level?

To provide meaningful comparisons.
Much of what goes on in one society influences or is influenced by what goes on in another society.
Science seeks general theory (abstract statements). A theory must hold everywhere through time and space to be most useful.

Social Problem

Historical Development (of the problem)
Totality (Consider structural, cultural, and interpersonal areas of the problem)
Moral Philosophy (priorities, values)

Self Interest (Privatism, Objectivism)
greater good (Altruism)
Democracy

Do something (Praxis)

Homicide & Commodification

Why does someone commit a homicide?
Who is responsible for homicide?
Commodification = the process of turning use values into exchange values.

use values = value is derived from the satisfaction of a specific human want or need.
exchange value = value is based on what the product can command in exchange.

Levels of Social Structure
American Dream

Individualism
Universal
Achievement

meritocracy
earned it
opposite of ascription

Fetishism of Money

Self Aware Subjects

I wrote a document giving better explanation of all of this in paragraph form.
We are self aware because we “can make objects of ourselves.”
The Hawthorne Effect (AKA White Coat Effect, observer effect)

People change their behavior when they know they are being observed.
Researchers have an effect on the subjects so it is best to observe the subjects without them knowing they’re being observed.

Ways of observing subjects

	Participant	Pure
Overt
Covert

Covert Participant Observation = subjects don’t know that you’re a researcher

There is no Hawthorne Effect.

Overt Participant Observation = subjects know that you’re a researcher

The researchers can probe and ask whatever they want.
The researcher should gain rapport (trust) in order to reduce the Hawthorne effect.

Pure Observation = standing on the side, not participating

By not participating the researcher keeps a greater level of objectivity.

Ethical issues

It is unethical to harm a human subject while researching them. It might be justified if the benefits outway the harm.
IRB = Institutional Review Board, university boards that decide if a study is ethical
Studying a human subject without them knowing they are being studied poses an ethical problem. If the subject doesn’t know they are being studied, then they aren’t free to opt-out of the study.

Laud Humphrey

Studied tearoom trade via covert participation.
He autonomized the subjects and published his findings.
There was no harm to an individual, but there was harm to the community of tea-room traders. By shedding light on the secret activities and putting it into the public consciousness, Humphrey gave a target to people who might wish to hunt down participants of these communities.

Martin Sanchez-Jankowski

Studied male youth street gangs in NY, Boston, and LA. Published “Islands in the Street.”
Ethnographic study = researcher observes from the point of view of the subject of the study
Went to community centers and churches to find gangs and start trust relationships.
He had to gain trust to reduce the Hawthorn effect.

Crime (participate in a crime)

The gang needs to know you are willing to break the law.

Violence (get beat up by the other members)

Dekker found that violence had something to do with inflicting dread (fronting). Protect yourself by making others fear you by using violence. Normal people don’t need this because we have collective efficacy.
Fighting new gang members is a way to make sure these people will fight and not curl up into the fetal position.

Heterogeneity = includes individuals of differing ethnicities, cultural backgrounds, sexes, or ages

PI = Principal Investigator, the person who initiated the research and got the funding
SESS

Families with newborns volunteered and were placed into one of five categories: substance abuse, mental health problems, domestic violence, teen pregnancy, or combo. There were 250 families per category (1250 total). Case workers were assigned to help half the families from each category (1 case worker per 5 to 10 families) who would give them a lot of help. This was the treatment group. The rest of the families had one case worker per 175 families that would call them once every three months and provide them with information. This was the comparison group. Researchers would survey the families every six months. This involved interviews that took hours. Responses from the comparison group regarding how things were going usually hovered around a 7 (on a scale of 1 to 10) and never changed. Responses from the treatment group started around 7 and then dropped to around a 4 by the six months mark and stayed there through the 24 month mark. Researchers figured that the treatment groups responses weren’t reflecting worsening situations but greater trust of the researchers.

Chapter 2 = Concepts for Social Structural and Cultural Theories

Part I = Social Structures

Institutions
Social Networks

Part II = Culture

Multiculturalism
Subculture
Prejudice & Discrimination
Modernization & Globalization & Rationalization (Weber’s perspective)

Dialectics in Chapters 2, 3, & 4

Social Order and Disorder/Change
Structure and Culture
Individual and Society

Kinds of Capital

Weekly incomes of 1911 immigrants to America.

white, native born	$13.89/wk
Jewish	$14.37/wk
Italian	$9.61/wk

Capital = the means by which individuals gain things (exchange)

Economic Capital (money, property)
Social Structural Capital (credentials, titles, positions)
Cultural Capital (language, knowledge, values)

Social Structure

Institutions

Society = relatively self-contained & self-sufficient group of people united by some social relationship.

Nation State = a government that monopolizes the legitimate use of force within a political boundary (not the same as a society).

When a nation state falls new boundaries are often formed along societal boundaries.

Institutions = templates for structures of relationships. Institutions often structure when, where, & how we do things.

Institutional realms:

Polity (governments)
Economy (farms, factories, businesses, work place, employers, employees)
Education (universities, colleges, K-12 schools, instructors)
Family (primary socialization, parents, children, siblings)
Religion (churches, congregations, leaders, followers)

Peter Berger & Thomas Luckmann

Institutionalization = process & continually reconstructed

Rules
Roles
Historical context (institutional memory)

Social Networks

Networks as Structures.png

A tie is another word for a relationship.

Strong ties

Require more time and effort than weak ties.
More effective for exerting influence
High social solidarity

Weak ties

Networks based on weak ties will be larger than networks of strong ties.
More autonomy or individuality
Access to different pools of information
More upward mobility
(Mark Granovetter)

Redundant Ties & Networks

A tie that duplicates links among members.
Any member can send a message to another member by several routes.
Implications:

Information will get around rapidly.
Everyone’s information will be the same.
The scope of the information reaching the group will be very limited.

Cosmopolitan & Local Networks.png

Local Networks

Members engage in direct, person-to-person interaction and form and sustain strong ties.
Members provide one another with emotional and material support.
Weakness: They are self-contained and lack input as well as outreach.

Cosmopolitan Networks

Members seldom engage in face-to-face interaction and tend to be scattered geographically.
Offer little solidarity and have little capacity to comfort and sustain members.
Benefit: Members have a constant flow of new information and a great reach of influence.

Stanley Milgram’s Small-world Problem

300 people from Omaha and Wichita sent packages with instructions to send the package to someone who might be able to get it to Milgram (in Boston) or get it to someone who might be able to get it to Milgram. There was typically only 6 degrees of separation (people, associations) between the subjects and Milgram.

Duncan Watts

Assumed that every person in the world has 50 acquaintances (people we know by name). If you have a person who knows 50 people who each know 50 different people who all know another 50 different people, then by the time you get to six degrees of separation you have 50^6 (15,625,000,000) people which is over twice as many people as there are on the planet. The trouble is that the 50 people one person knows aren’t completely different than the 50 people another person knows. FAIL.

Researchers asked people across developed countries, “If you could improve you work or living conditions how willing or unwilling would you be to another neighborhood or city within this country?” The countries were United States, Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, Italy, Austria, Russia (ordered from highest willingness to lowest willingness).

“If you could improve your work or living conditions, how willing or unwilling would you be to:”

Nation	“Move to another neighborhood?”	“Move to another city within this country?”
	Unwilling (%)	Unwilling (%)
Russia	72	77
Austria	58	69
Italy	38	53
Sweden	31	46
Great Britain	28	38
Canada	21	33
United States	19	29

Wolfram|Alpha Country Comparison

Factors that affected willingness to move:

Higher social solidarity corresponds to less willingness to move.
Greater geographical heritage corresponds to less willingness to move.
More free markets correspond with greater willingness to move.

Market Society = a society where economic institutions take precedence over other institutions.

Social Culture

Definition of Culture

Language = symbols that we appropriate (make our own) from culture (meanings we have)

Coordination or Cooperation = Norms, values, rituals, traditions, laws (getting along)

Material culture = Things we take from nature and manipulate to make usable.

Tools & technology that augment our natural faculties causing a collapse of time and space.
This allows for global commodity chains and also enables resistance to them.

Cognitive Culture = Learning & thinking. Narratives.

Storytellers

Media

TV, Cinema, Radio, Internet, Print, phone, text chat, video call
Mass media = many receivers, but few senders of messages. Much of mass media is passive.
Entertainment and education or edification
The strength of a democracy rests upon an informed citizenry.
Media gives us what we need to know.
Chomsky & Edwards claimed that there are five filters on media.

Corp. ownership of the media

5 corporations control 90% of media.
The bottom line is profit. Content is then in support of capitalism.

Advertising driven

The viewer is a commodity. Audiences are sold to advertisers.
Media outlets won’t criticize corporations, because then those corporations will pull advertising.

Sources

If a journalist is critical of his/her sources (government & corporations) then they will be cut off.

Flack

If a journalist attacks someone then they will attack back.

Anti-communism and anti-socialism

Government through public education
Family
Religious organizations

Multiculturalism & Subcultures

The stronger the social solidarity is within groups the more likely there will be conflict between groups. This gets worse when there are limited resources.

Dominant group will do something with the less powerful group (subculture)

Genocide
Expulsion
Slavery
Segregation
Pluralism
Assimilation

Assimilation can be hard when there are racial lines.
Power & Resources

Dominant Cultures
Minority Culture / subculture (lower in power, not numbers)

Ascribed statuses (marked)

Multiculturalism:

One society that includes several distinct cultures.
Can lead (and often does lead) to violence as groups seek to impose their standards of religion, language…

Subculture:

a culture within a culture—a distinctive set of beliefs, morals, customs, and the like.
Often serves as a basis for ascribed statuses (for a group to be ascribed a lower status requires actions by other members of the society to limit the opportunities of those ascribed a low status. Ascribed status is always rooted in prejudice and discrimination

If multiculturalism doesn't turn to conflict, and prejudice and discrimination, it can also turn to assimilation and accommodation.

Ecological Theory of Race and Ethnicity: Struggle for territory: 5 stages of conflict:

Invasion: one group tries to take another’s territory
Resistance: est. group defends: legal, violent, both
Competition: if both together, compete for scarce resources
Accommodation and Cooperation: segregation: spatial and institutional separation of race/ethnic group
Assimilation: minority group blends into the majority

Six Degree of Separation: Types of Ethnic and Racial Group Relations

Genocide
Expulsion
Slavery
Segregation
Pluralism
Assimilation

Prejudice & Discrimination

Prejudice = negative or hostile beliefs or attitudes about some socially identified set of persons.

Discrimination = actions taken against some socially defined set of people to deny members, collectively, rights and privileges enjoyed freely by others.

Mertin

	Prejudice	Not Prejudice
Discriminatory	Active Bigot	Fair Weather Liberals
Not Discriminatory	Timid Bigots	All Weather Liberals

Prejudice Cycle

Prejudice & Discrimination
Social Disadvantage
Belief in minority’s innate inferiority

Motivated by Ethnocentrism & Economic exploitation.

Ethnocentrism = evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one's own culture. May lead to xenophobia. xenophillia

Economic Exploitation

Superordinates dominate and have authority over Subordinates.
Both adapt and form social transcripts.

Public Transcript = shared between superordinates and subordinates. Subordinates show deference to superordinates.
Private Transcript = sub and supers each have their own that they don’t show to the others.

These adaptations and transcripts cause people to see the differences as innate.

Rationalization, Modernization, Globalization

Modernization (technological innovation, more urbanized, cosmopolitan, capitalist)

Traditional -> Modernization -> Postmodern

Globalization

Max Weber (German contemporary to Durkheim)

Leaders Traditional, Rational Legal, Charismatic

Rationalization of Society

All of our choices are guided by what will maximize our benefit and minimize costs. Exchange theory. The problem is that people don’t act rationally. Disruption in the normal flow of events causes emotional arousal. At most we are pragmatic about satisfying a desire.

Many protestant denominations are Calvinist and as such believe in predestination (God has already decided whether or not you will be saved). What then is the purpose of life? To do God’s work. Life then revolves around work, industry, efficiency, and productivity. Over time the religious aspect if this is lost leaving only the spirit of capitalism.

G. Ritzer's McDonaldization of Society

McJob = an unstimulating low paying job with few prospects, especially one created by the expansion of the service sector.

Microsociology vs Macrosociology

Symbolic Interactionism

meaning in interaction

Charles Sanders Pierce

People are pragmatic (problem solvers)

What makes us human is symbols (culture)

Reality (a person's understanding of the objective world) is a social construction and can be deconstructed.

Humans act towards things on the basis of the meaning the things have for them.
The meaning of things is derived from social interaction.
The meaning of things are handled in an interpretive process used by persons in dealing with things they encounter.

Language goes from being external (talking) to internal (thinking) or from unsolved problems to solved problems.

communicating with myself
handling meaning internally
decide how to act in an appropriate way

Melvin Kohn

Directed

Self-Directed

Working class

lower education

Middle class

Higher education

emphasis on conforming to the expectations of others
punish on the basis of what child did
father does the disciplining

emphasis on self expression
punish on the basis of intentions behind actions
share responsibility of disciplining

Social Class is understood in terms of people’s relationship to authority.

Upper class give orders. Make absent and permissive parents.

Middle class take and give orders. Authoritative parents.

Lower class takes orders. Authoritarian parents.

Lenski