sociology exam
Frustration-aggression thesis
- Hostility and racial conflict as a source of frustration
- People become frustrated when they attempt to move up on the social ladder
- Mobility hindered -> aggressive response
Double-consciousness
This sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others
Example: When people tell you to go back to where you came from and when you do, people there tell you you're not "from" that country
Panopticon
A prison design that allow inmates to be constantly observed without their knowledge
SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY
• Control is not only limited to prisons.
• All-encompassing surveillance to optimize social control
Globalization
Occurs as people become increasingly aware of, and dependant on, one another
McDonaldization: efficiency, predictability (same place to place), quantity vs quality, Non-human technology (taking skills away from humans)
Intersectionality
The interaction of gender and/or race, class, and sexuality [producing] unique outcomes with respect to health, education, income, and other aspects of life
Cracking the glass ceiling
A social barrier that makes it difficult for women to rise to top level [positions in society]
Social Constructionism and Symbolic Interactionism
Children, adolescents, and adults negotiate gender roles through interaction with media.
- Women are generally underrepresented as characters on television and in movies.
- Women in the media tend to be portrayed in stereotypical ways.
- Men in the media tend to be portrayed in work roles and tend to be seen as being financially successful.
Bechdel test (media representing women)
3 criteria
1. Two women featured
2. Women speak to each other
3. Conversation is not related to men
Theories of essentialism - functionalism
School of thought that views gender differences as a reflection of biological differences
between women and men (functionalism: Structures that create society and how society is able to remain stable)
Critique of essentialism
- provides little or no evidence to support claims
- ignores the role of power
- Essentialism ignores historical and cultural variability of gender and sexuality
- Essentialism generalizes from the average
The fruit machine
The RCMP conducted investigations on the LGBTQ+ community, claiming they were a national
security risk and vulnerable to blackmail by hostile intelligence agencies.
- Canada committed civil rights abuses similar to the US during the Cold War Era
Driving force of violence against women
Capital accumulation
- Land dispossession
- Destruction of communitarianism
- “Exploitation of women’s bodies and labour”
- “Persecuting women as ‘witches’ paved the way to the confinement of women in Europe to unpaid
domestic labor”
Example of violence against women
- 1989 shooting in Montreal in Ecole Polytechnique – Gunman shot
and killed 14 Women
- Gender and Racism - Since the 1980s – More than 3000 women are killed each year –
Women of Colour often receive little media attention, cases often remain unsolved.
Hockey and religion
- The Stanley Cup playoffs generate a sense of what Durkheim called “collective effervescence.”
- Making us feel part of something larger than we are
Totemism
Durkheim - Ways in which objects in the natural environment came on to take transcendent and supernatural powers for early social groupings
- Totemism was the simplest form of religion, and the totem expressed and symbolized the group’s identity.
Religious monopoly
- One religious body has acquired special privileges from the state
• No other brands can be sold to consumers
• One brand - satisfaction is limited to those whose needs match what is offered
Surveillence capitalism
Surveillence capitalism relies on behavioral surplus and instrumentarian power
- monetization of data captured through monitoring people's movements and behaviors online and in the physical world
Behavioral surplus
Data on behavior aquired that then allows companies to determine and predict behavior
- Marx's surplus value: difference between the amount raised through the sale of a product and the amount it costs the owner to make the product
Instrumentarian power
Power: is the capacity to direct or influence the behavior of others
Intrumentarian power: is not prohibitive and does not necessarily alter people
- Secretive form of power
- A form of power meant to modift behavior (nudging)
Behavioral surplus evolution
Companies realized that profiteering is a possibility through data collection via surveillence
- Even the most innocent seeming apps like weather and dating apps are filled with many tracking programs that collect massive amounts of behavioral surplus directed at ad targeting
Pokemon Go
Was it a game or social experiment? it would nudge people to where they would buy things
- Used predictors of behavior through data to determine the types of procuts that participants would buy and then lure them to establishments (by having pokemon pop up nearby)
- Example of nudging, behavioral surplus, digital crumbs
Modernization theory
What causes global poverty? Poor societies are dysfunctional because
1. No investment capital in Western-style agriculture and industry.
2. No Western-style business techniques.
3. No Western-style stable governments (stable environment for investment).
4. No Western mentality:
1. Savings, investment, innovation, education