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Title: Sociology for dummies
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Whether you’re currently enrolled in a course or want to
learn how to apply sociological concepts to your personal
or professional life, Sociology For Dummies helps you understand how to scientifically analyze social organization and
cultural structure
...
com®
for videos, step-by-step photos,
how-to articles, or to shop!
• Analyze the cultural impact that race,
gender, religion, and sexual orientation
have on society
• Use and interpret sociological research
methods
$19
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99 CN / £15
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Gabler received
his PhD from Harvard University and now teaches at Rasmussen College in
Minneapolis, Minnesota
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7680”
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01_572368-ffirs
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Sociology For Dummies®
Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc
...
Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
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com
Copyright © 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc
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, Indianapolis, Indiana
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or
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About the Author
Jay Gabler is a writer, editor, and college teacher living in Minneapolis
...
D
...
With colleagues,
he has published multiple sociological research studies including the book
Reconstructing the University (with David John Frank, Stanford University
Press, 2006)
...
He is also associate editor of the Twin Cities Daily Planet,
where he writes regularly on the arts, and author of the most recent edition
of the Insiders’ Guide to the Twin Cities (Globe Pequot Press, 2010)
...
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Author’s Acknowledgments
I owe gratitude to Susan Hobbs and Erin Calligan Mooney, my editors at
Wiley, for everything they’ve done to make this book a reality
...
My professional training in sociology took place over the course of a decade
at Harvard University; every page in this book benefits indirectly from the
insights and expertise of my then-colleagues in the Department of Sociology
...
My current colleagues at
Rasmussen College have also been supportive, as have my coworkers at the
Twin Cities Daily Planet
...
This book is informed by a range of sources, three of which were particularly
useful
...
I recommend that book
in Chapter 17
...
Essentials of Sociology, by David B
...
White, Suzanne T
...
Throughout my life I’ve enjoyed the enthusiastic support of a loving family,
both immediate and extended
...
As
I wrote this book, many friends — in particular, Anna Meyer — helped sustain me with caring encouragement every day
...
01_572368-ffirs
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For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U
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at 877-762-2974,
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at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002
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Christine Williams
Assistant Editor: Erin Calligan Mooney
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Cartoons: Rich Tennant
(www
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Publishing and Editorial for Consumer Dummies
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Publishing for Technology Dummies
Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher, Dummies Technology/General User
Composition Services
Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services
01_572368-ffirs
...
1
Part I: The Basic Basics
...
11
Chapter 2: What Is Sociology, and Why Should I Care?
...
39
Chapter 4: Research Methods: Because You Can’t Put Society in a Test Tube
...
79
Chapter 5: Socialization: What is “Culture,” and Where Can I Get Some?
...
101
Chapter 7: Caught in the Web: The Power of Networks
...
137
Chapter 8: Social Stratification: We’re All Equal, But Some of Us Are
More Equal Than Others
...
157
Chapter 10: Getting Religion: Faith in the Modern World
...
and I Won!
...
211
Chapter 12: Corporate Culture: The Study of Organizations (and Disorganizations)
...
233
Chapter 14: Urban Sociology and Demographics: (Ain’t No) Love
in the Heart of the City
...
271
Chapter 15: Get Born, Get a Job, Get a Kid, Get Out of Here:
The Family and the Life Course
...
295
Part VI: The Part of Tens
...
317
Chapter 18: Ten Ways to Use Sociological Insight in Everyday Life
...
333
Index
...
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...
1
About This Book
...
2
Sociology is Controversial: Brace Yourself!
...
4
Part I: The Basic Basics
...
4
Part III: Divided — er, United — We Stand:
Equality and Inequality in Our Diverse World
...
5
Part V: Sociology and Your Life
...
6
Icons Used In This Book
...
7
Part I: The Basic Basics
...
11
Understanding Sociology
...
12
The history of sociology
...
13
Seeing the World as a Sociologist
...
14
Microsociology
...
15
Understanding Differences Among People and Groups
...
16
Race and sex
...
17
Crime and deviance
...
18
Corporate culture
...
18
Urban sociology
...
19
The life course
...
20
Sociology for Dummies, for Dummies
...
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xii
Sociology For Dummies
Chapter 2: What Is Sociology, and Why Should I Care?
...
24
Defining sociology
...
25
Asking and answering sociological questions
...
28
Colleges and universities
...
29
Nonprofit organizations
...
30
Journalism and reporting
...
32
Everyday life
...
33
Thinking about the social world in an objective,
value-free way
...
35
Uncovering what really matters
...
35
Informing social policy
...
38
Chapter 3: Making It Up as They Went Along:
The History of Sociology
...
Who Cares about History?
...
40
People are the same everywhere you go
...
41
Pre-sociologists: People with ideas about society
...
42
The Development of “Sociology”
...
44
Common themes of early sociologists
...
46
Sociology’s Power Trio
...
48
Emile Durkheim
...
52
Sociology in the 20th Century
...
54
Mass society: Are we, or are we not, sheep?
...
56
Sociology Today
...
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Table of Contents
xiii
Chapter 4: Research Methods: Because You Can’t Put
Society in a Test Tube
...
60
Ask your question
...
61
Operationalize your question and find your data
...
64
Interpret your results
...
66
Quantitative vs
...
66
Cross-sectional vs
...
68
Hybrid methods
...
70
Statistics
...
72
Preparing For Potential Pitfalls
...
73
Getting overzealous
...
75
Statistical snafus
...
just plain oops!
...
79
Chapter 5: Socialization: What is “Culture,” and
Where Can I Get Some?
...
82
Defining “culture”
...
83
Examining the culture-structure continuum
...
87
Other angles on culture
...
89
The reception of culture
...
91
Subculture
...
93
Socialization: Where You Connect in Culture
...
nurture: Social psychology
...
96
Culture Paradox: Pulling Us Together and Pushing Us Apart
...
98
Dividing because of culture
...
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xiv
Sociology For Dummies
Chapter 6: Microsociology: If Life Is a Game,
What Are the Rules?
...
102
Social facts: The sum of our parts
...
104
Rational — and Irrational — Choices
...
107
D’oh! Making poor choices
...
114
Play ball! The rules of the game
...
116
Chapter 7: Caught in the Web: The Power of Networks
...
119
It’s all about you: Egocentric networks
...
122
The Strength of Weak Ties
...
124
Find a structural hole and jump in!
...
129
The difference between “your society” and your society
...
132
Social networking online: Making the invisible visible
...
137
Chapter 8: Social Stratification: We’re All Equal,
But Some of Us Are More Equal Than Others
...
140
Understanding social inequality
...
142
The Many Means of Inequality
...
145
Occupation
...
147
Motivation
...
149
Credentials
...
151
Specialized knowledge
...
153
Age discrimination
...
154
02_572368-ftoc
...
157
Bias and Discrimination: A Two-Sided Coin
...
160
You can choose your ethnicity, but you can’t choose
your race
...
162
The myth of the “model minority”
...
167
Sex and Gender
...
169
GBLTQ rights and the deconstruction of gender
...
173
Chapter 10: Getting Religion: Faith in the Modern World
...
176
Marx: Opiate of the people
...
177
Weber: A switchman on the tracks
...
and in Practice
...
181
Open the church: Religious organizations
...
185
Shopping for God
...
187
Chapter 11: Crime and Deviance: I Fought the Law
...
191
All Crime is Deviance, but Not All Deviance is a Crime
...
193
Some criminals are just bad people (but
...
194
Some crime is simply normal
...
197
In the courts
...
199
Becoming Deviant
...
203
What works, and what doesn’t
...
206
02_572368-ftoc
...
211
Chapter 12: Corporate Culture: The Study of Organizations
(and Disorganizations)
...
214
Weber’s Big Idea About Organizations
...
218
Measuring the shovels: Efficiency! Efficiency!
...
220
Natural Systems: We’re Only Human
...
222
Corporate culture: Trust falls and free coffee
...
226
Keeping the riff-raff out: Setting organizational boundaries
...
228
Institutional isomorphism: If that company jumped off a
cliff, would your company jump off a cliff, too?
...
231
Chapter 13: The Rules of the Game: Social Movements and
Political Sociology
...
234
Social structure and the state
...
236
Sharing (or Not Sharing) Power in Society
...
239
Pluralist models: Fair is fair
...
244
Getting off the ground
...
248
What it means for a social movement to be successful
...
253
Sociology in the City
...
254
Street corner society
...
258
It’s 10 PM
...
258
Neighborhoods on the tipping point
...
262
02_572368-ftoc
...
264
The upper class, the lower class, and the underclass
...
266
Order and disorder on the streets
...
271
Chapter 15: Get Born, Get a Job, Get a Kid, Get Out of Here:
The Family and the Life Course
...
274
The “invention” of childhood
...
276
Running the Course of Life
...
278
Different shapes of the circle of life
...
282
Deciding what counts as “healthy”
...
285
Families Past and Present
...
287
The family today
...
295
Why Societies Change
...
296
Durkheim: Increasing diversity
...
300
What Comes Next?
...
302
Increasing — and decreasing — diversity
...
307
The growth of the middle class
...
310
Sociology in the Future
...
312
The paradox: More data, less information
...
315
Chapter 17: Ten Sociology Books That Don’t Feel
Like Homework
...
317
William Foote Whyte: Street Corner Society
...
Whyte: The Organization Man
...
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xviii
Sociology For Dummies
Erving Goffman: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
...
320
Arlie Hochschild: The Second Shift
...
320
Michael Schwalbe: Unlocking the Iron Cage
...
321
Katherine Newman: No Shame in My Game
...
323
Think Critically About Claims That “Research Proves”
One Thing or Another
...
324
Understand Barriers to Effective Communication
...
326
Understanding Art: If It Seems Confusing, That’s Exactly the Point
...
327
Changing Society: Be Optimistic, But Keep Your Expectations
Reasonable
...
329
Run Your Company Effectively
...
330
Chapter 19: Ten Myths About Society Busted by Sociology
...
334
Our Actions Reflect Our Values
...
335
Understanding Society is Just a Matter of “Common Sense”
...
337
In Time, Immigrant Families Will Assimilate and Adopt
a New Culture
...
338
People Who Make Bad Choices Are Just Getting the
Wrong Messages
...
339
There Is Such a Thing as a Perfect Society
...
341
02_572368-ftoc
...
Yes, you
read that right: Sociology is a science
...
What makes sociology both so interesting and so challenging is its subject:
the social world
...
In addition
to the challenge of answering sociological questions, there’s the challenge of
asking them — that is, of thinking about society as a subject of objective, scientific study
...
Studying society scientifically means
setting aside — temporarily — your thoughts about how society should work
...
The achievements of sociologists are among the great achievements
of the human race because in sociology, people from all different walks of life
come together to understand society objectively — so that, in the long run,
it can perhaps be made to work better for everyone
...
What sociologists see when they look at society isn’t always pretty, but that
fact makes sociology all the more important: Just like you need to know how
a car works before you can fix it, you need to understand how society works
before you can change it
...
03_572368-intro
...
If this book makes you curious about a specific
aspect of society — say, the job market in the United States or the changing
class system — that’s great
...
What I aim to do in this book is to introduce you to sociology as a discipline
so you have the tools and understanding you need to succeed in a sociology
class or to apply sociological concepts in your professional or personal life
...
Sociologists study a lot of things — in fact, they study just about everything
that has anything to do with people interacting — which means that most
things studied by sociologists are also studied by people who don’t consider
themselves sociologists
...
The fact that sociologists consider all aspects of the social world
together means that they are able to see connections that people who study
only part of the social world cannot
...
Conventions Used in This Book
Obviously, I can’t possibly know each and every person who reads this book,
but I can reasonably guess that you’re living in the early 21st century, that
you have some reason for being curious about sociology, and that you’re
likely — but not necessarily — living in an English-speaking country
...
I’ve drawn examples and illustrations from a wide array of social situations,
but you may notice that there are especially frequent examples from the
contemporary United States
...
I’ve written the book in the first person, and often refer to
03_572368-intro
...
Sociology is an objective science, but any
given sociologist is a particular person with a unique set of interests and
experiences; I hope that as you read this book and see how sociological concepts relate to my life, you’ll think about how they relate to your life, too
...
For one, there’s the distinction between society and sociology
...
Society is what sociologists study; sociology is the study of society
...
If this seems confusing to you, you’re not alone: Right on up to the New York
Times, writers often make the mistake of using the term “sociological” when
they ought to use the term “social
...
If you’re trying
to study that crime rises but are having a problem with missing data, then
you have a genuinely sociological problem
...
Sociology is a way of looking at the
social world and a tool to use in understanding society; but it’s also an academic discipline, and most people who actually call themselves “sociologists” work at colleges, universities, and research institutes
...
You’ll find all kinds of information that may help you understand your place of business, your neighborhood, your city, and even some of your family members!
Sociology is Controversial:
Brace Yourself!
As I mention earlier, sociology is the study of the entire social world
...
If sociologists avoided controversial subjects, that would
defeat the whole point of the discipline; and the same goes for this book
...
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4
Sociology For Dummies
It’s part of a sociologist’s job to deal with hot topics, and some sociologists
have made highly controversial arguments
...
Among the ideas you’ll encounter in this book:
✓ Religion is a way of getting people to give you money, and serves no
other constructive purpose
...
✓ Society works best when women stay home to cook and clean while men
go out and earn money
...
If you don’t agree with one or more of those statements,
why don’t you? Each of the statements above makes an empirical argument
...
How
could you test them? What data would you gather? How would you analyze
those data? If you think the truth is not reflected in those statements, how
can you prove it? That willingness to think about the social world as a scientist — that is, objectively — is the very foundation of sociology
...
When you come across something you don’t
agree with, think about why you don’t agree with it and what you would say
in a debate with the people who advanced that idea
...
How This Book Is Organized
This book is divided into six parts
...
Part I: The Basic Basics
This part gives you the what/who/how: what sociology is (the scientific
study of society), where it came from (the tumultuous 19th century), who
does it (sociologists in academia as well as people outside academia who
can benefit from its tools and insights), and how it’s done (with a range of
complementary methods, none of which are perfect but all of which have
value)
...
03_572368-intro
...
In this part, I explain
how sociologists understand culture (what it is, and what it’s not), the micromacro link (what does “society” have to do with individual people interacting
face to face), and the importance of social networks (what’s the difference
between your “society” and the people you actually know and interact with?)
...
Part III: Divided — er, United — We
Stand: Equality and Inequality in
Our Diverse World
Just about everyone who studies society is in some way or another concerned about social inequality
...
This part is devoted to that subject in all its various forms
...
Part IV: All Together Now: The Ins and
Outs of Social Organization
People are always interacting, all the time — but as any parent of young
children knows, “interacting” is not necessarily the same thing as “being productive
...
Cities are a
slightly different form of social organization, but people who live together in
a city are together in a social organization whether they like it or not; at the
conclusion of this part, I look at urban (as well as suburban and exurban) life
...
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6
Sociology For Dummies
Part V: Sociology and Your Life
Your life is inextricably tied to your society — the life you’ve lived, the life
you’re living, and the life you will live
...
In this part, I first explain how sociologists think
about individuals’ life courses (including childhood, old age, health, and
family life) and then look at what sociology can tell us about life in the future
...
” Flip to that chapter to see how sociological insight will change
the way you think about the social world around you
...
They give
you hints about how to understand what you’re reading
...
Make a point of remembering the information in paragraphs highlighted by
this icon
...
When you see this lit fuse, you’ll see information about a trap to avoid — a
risk of being misled or confused
...
indd 6
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Introduction
7
When you see this icon, you can be sure that you’re getting a significant piece
of information that may come in handy in class or in your everyday life
...
Where To Go From Here
Like all Dummies books, this book is written to be modular — meaning that
each part can stand alone
...
That said, I’ve organized the book to lead you through sociology
from beginning concepts to specific topics, so if you’re pretty sure you’ll be
looking at the whole book, your best bet is to start at the beginning and read
your way through
...
They provide concrete examples of the material discussed in the main body
of the text, so if you feel like things are getting too theoretical or abstract,
look to the text boxes for down-to-earth illustrations of what’s being discussed
...
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8
Sociology For Dummies
03_572368-intro
...
indd 9
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W
In this part
...
By the
end of this part, you’ll know what sociology is, where it
comes from, what sociologists do, why they do it, and
how they do it
...
indd 10
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Chapter 1
Sociology: Getting Your
Head Around It
In This Chapter
▶ Understanding sociology
▶ Seeing the world as a sociologist
▶ Understanding differences among people and groups
▶ Looking at social organization
▶ Appreciating your own sociological insights
Y
ou may be holding this book because you’re enrolled in a sociology
course in college or high school, or are thinking about studying sociology
...
Whatever the reason, you’re
reading this book because you want to know more about this thing called
“sociology
...
Along the way, I do mention a lot of specific findings that
sociologists have made, but my main goal is to tell you about sociology, not
about society
...
This chapter provides a road map to the rest of the book
...
I’ve
organized the book to proceed from basic concepts to more specific topics,
but the chapters are designed to stand alone, so you may not want to start
right at the beginning
...
05_572368-ch01
...
Defining sociology
In a nutshell, sociology is the scientific study of society
...
Though social
groups — or societies — are made up of individual people, sociology is the
study of the group rather than of the individual
...
Most people who call themselves “sociologists” work in universities and colleges, where they teach sociology and conduct sociological research
...
Many people
who study sociology go on to conduct sociological research outside of academia, working for government agencies, think tanks, or private corporations
...
Studying sociology, whether or not you call yourself a “sociologist,” means
taking a particular view of the world: a view that sociologist C
...
” You have to be willing to set aside your
ideas about how the social world should work so that you can see how it actually works
...
The history of sociology
Sociology is considered one of the social sciences — along with economics,
psychology, anthropology, geography, and political science (among others)
...
The world
was changing dramatically and quickly as industrial production replaced
agriculture, as democratic republics replaced monarchies, and as city life
05_572368-ch01
...
Realizing how many great insights science had lent
regarding the natural world, people decided to try to use the same method to
understand the social world
...
It’s a daunting task, and one that sociologists
are still struggling with today
...
Karl Marx emphasized the importance
of physical resources and the material world; he believed that conflict over
resources is at the heart of social life
...
Max Weber took ideas from
both Marx and Durkheim and argued that both conflict and cooperation,
both material resources and cultural values are essential to social life
...
)
Over the past century, sociologists have continued to debate the early sociologists’ ideas and have applied them to specific societies all over the world
...
Today, sociologists appreciate that the big questions and the little questions regarding society are
interlinked, and that you can’t understand the macro (the big) without also
understanding the micro (the little)
...
A perennial challenge for sociologists is
to develop ways to accurately observe society, and to test hypotheses about
the way it works
...
The next researcher to be curious about the topic takes your
results into consideration when they conduct their own study
...
indd 13
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14
Part I: The Basic Basics
Sociologists use both quantitative and qualitative research methods
...
) Quantitative research involves questions that are asked and answered in terms of numbers; qualitative research
involves close observation and detailed descriptions, usually written
...
In using statistics or any other research tool, sociologists must take great care
to avoid any of several potential pitfalls that can lead to inaccurate or misleading interpretations of the data they observe
...
Unless you understand these perspectives, sociology can
be quite confusing
...
Understanding culture
Sociologists differentiate between culture (that is, ideas and values) and
structure (that is, the basic organization of society)
...
(See Chapter 5 for more on culture and structure
...
Sociologists of culture study the production
of culture (how culture comes about) and the reception of culture (the effect
of culture on people’s actions and beliefs) separately
...
) They also study different types and levels of culture, from mainstream
culture (culture that is widely shared) to subcultures (cultures that exist in
opposition to mainstream culture) to microcultures (cultures that are selfcontained within a broader set of cultures)
...
05_572368-ch01
...
Sociologists, economists, and other social scientists are all tremendously
concerned with understanding how people make decisions about their lives
...
A perennial hot topic in microsociology is understanding how and why people
make decisions from moment to moment, taking into account both their individual needs and their social circumstances
...
Sociologist Erving Goffman pointed out that every person is in
a way like an actor on a stage: Your social identity is the role you play, and
the setting in which you’re interacting with others is like the stage you’re
performing upon
...
(See
Chapter 6 for more on microsociology
...
A society isn’t just one big cloud of people who all
breathe the same air, it’s a highly complex network in which each person is
tied to other people by relationships that vary in nature and intensity
...
)
You’re connected — either directly or through friends of friends of friends —
to just about everyone in your society, but your ties to some people are
much tighter than your ties to others
...
Your position in the social network
determines what options you have when finding a job, making friends, or
spreading your influence
...
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Part I: The Basic Basics
Some sociologists devote themselves specifically to network sociology, but
just about every sociologist today uses the insights and methods of network
analysis to some extent
...
Understanding Differences Among
People and Groups
An issue of paramount importance to sociologists is understanding differences and inequality among different social groups
...
Social stratification
The word “stratification” refers to different levels on top of each other, and it
can be used for society as well as for rocks
...
There seems to be class inequality in
every society, but it’s much greater in some than in others, and sociologists
have always debated whether or not significant class inequality is necessary
for a society to function
...
)
When you hear that someone is of a “higher class” than someone else, money
is probably the first thing you think of, and indeed, money is certainly important
...
Class systems change over time, and people’s positions in those class systems change even more frequently
...
Race and sex
Sociologists distinguish between race (a label that others assign to you) and
ethnicity (the cultural group heritage with which you identify)
...
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17
way you identify your own status)
...
Race, ethnicity, sex, and gender often serve
as justification for discrimination and stereotyping, but they can also serve
as common ground for people to bond with one another
...
)
Questions of race and ethnicity are particularly important today, when immigration is common and societies are increasingly diverse; but there are different races and ethnicities in every society, so for better and for worse, issues
regarding race and ethnicity are timeless
...
Religion
Religion may seem like an unusual subject to study scientifically — but sociologists aim to understand the entirety of the social world, and religious
beliefs and institutions are at the very center of that world
...
Sociologists study both religious values — what people believe about the
spiritual world, specifically as it affects their actions in this world — and religious organizations
...
What has remained the same is that for many people in
all societies, religious groups are among the most important groups in their
lives
...
)
Crime and deviance
For sociologists, crime is one type of activity that falls under the general category of deviance
...
Why do people commit crimes? Sociologists have different theories about
that, but Durkheim famously observed that some form of crime has been
present in every society ever known — in that sense, crime may or may not
be good but it does seem to be “normal
...
05_572368-ch01
...
In Chapter 11, I provide several examples
...
In
Part IV of this book, I look at three major types of social organization that
have been of great concern both to sociologists and to ordinary people who
want to work and live together peacefully and productively
...
Well, at least that’s what they say
they’re doing
...
They are rational because they do typically work in a machine-like manner to achieve some goal, but they are also
natural because humans are not machines and they bring their own foibles
and idiosyncrasies into the workplace with them
...
I explain this in more detail in Chapter 12
...
Many sociologists have studied the circumstances under which social movements are successful: In general, it seems to be a matter of being in the right place, at the
right time, with the necessary resources to make your voice heard
...
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19
or “the state” in sociological parlance
...
(See
Chapter 13 for more on the sociology of governments
...
Urban sociology
Sociology was born in cities; specifically, in the fast-growing cities of the
Industrial Revolution
...
There was violence, disease and poverty, and an electrifying mix of
languages, values, and ideas
...
How, and why, do
people keep living in cities? Inner-city life is still crowded and excitingly
intense, but not all urban life is inner-city life
...
As those suburbs have aged, some residents have moved back
into the inner cities whereas others have moved even further out, to newly
built “exurbs
...
You can read about it in Chapter 14
...
The life course
Your life course, of course, is your own: You decide if and when you’ll go to
school, marry, have children, and retire
...
What are
you “supposed” to do? What happens if you don’t? The timing and nature of
life-course transitions varies greatly among societies, and sociologists have
studied why
...
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Part I: The Basic Basics
As you live your life, you’ll be profoundly influenced by the families you’re
a part of; sociologists and historians have shattered many myths about the
family, and in Chapter 15 I explain how sociology can help you understand
your own family
...
Social change
The one constant in social life is change: changing norms, changing classes,
changing everything
...
Marx believed that social change was driven by conflict over material
resources
...
Weber thought
that both material conflicts and changing norms influenced social change
...
Sociology is, and will likely remain, a long way from
being able to see the future any more clearly than meteorology can — but
like weather forecasters, sociologists have a fair idea of when a storm front
is brewing
...
Will sociology survive? What will society look like in the future? See
Chapter 16 for my best guesses at the answers
...
” In chapters 17 and 18, I mention ten ways to use sociological
insight in everyday life; also, I provide a list of ten readable sociology books
that you can pick up if this book piques your interest
...
In the end, that’s my best argument for why you should read this book: to
learn more about the social world around you
...
Wright
Mills, about Arlie Hochschild’s conversations with frustrated working mothers, about the sociologists who went to Paducah, Kentucky to talk with families affected by a tragic school shooting
...
05_572368-ch01
...
What is the most
important thing in your life right now? Are you
just starting a romantic relationship — or just
ending one? Is something important going on at
work? Are you preoccupied with a tough situation involving a loved one, or are you excited
about an upcoming vacation or graduation?
All of those things are very personal, but they’re
also very social
...
As much as your life is your own,
it is fundamentally, profoundly influenced — in
05_572368-ch01
...
If you’ve done any traveling, or read books or
see movies about other cultures, you realize
how much norms, values, and practices vary
from one society to the next
...
If you don’t understand how your society works
and how it’s shaped your life, you’re in the
dark about important parts of yourself
...
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22
Part I: The Basic Basics
05_572368-ch01
...
Maybe you think sociology is the same thing as social work,
or you confuse it with psychology or anthropology
...
You might have an idea that sociologists study social
problems, but you don’t really know how sociologists actually conduct their
studies
...
In this chapter, I explain in clear terms exactly what sociology is, what a
sociological question is, and how, in a general sense, a sociologist would go
about finding an answer to it
...
Finally, I explain how sociology
affects your life today and how learning more about sociology will help you in
the future
...
But even if your friends aren’t
burning up with curiosity about sociology, after you understand a little bit
about what it is, you’ll be hooked
...
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Part I: The Basic Basics
Figuring Out What Sociology Is
A student-written university course guide once jokingly defined sociology
as the study of “everything in the whole wide world
...
And how
sociologists study just about everything people do defines sociology
...
” Sociology is the study of society
...
And sociology, which is considered a social science, is generally
grouped with the following areas of study:
✓ Psychology
✓ Anthropology
✓ Economics
✓ Political science
✓ Ethnic studies (for example, African-American studies or Latino studies)
✓ Area studies (for example, Asian studies or European studies)
✓ Gender studies (for example, women’s studies)
✓ Cultural studies
Sociology shares a general approach with all these fields, and sociologists
often read work by or collaborate with experts in these disciplines
...
Politics,
economics, culture, race, gender
...
So, you can study just about anything having to do with
humans’ social life and call it sociology — but only if you study it in a scientific, systematic way
...
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25
Studying society scientifically
If you’ve ever participated in a science fair, you know how the scientific
method works
...
Ask a question
...
Set up an experiment or a study that can provide an answer to that
question
...
Make very careful observations
...
Analyze your observations to see what answer they might provide
...
However, one of the hardest things to understand about sociology
is also one of the most important: Sociologists have asked many important
questions about society, but the most important contribution of sociology is
not the answers to those questions
...
What makes studying society in a scientific manner so difficult, but ultimately
so rewarding, is that to do so you have to set aside your own biases and preconceptions about how society “should” work
...
”
Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of sociology (more about him in
Chapter 3) used what has been called an “organic metaphor” for society
...
Durkheim said society is like a human body — one big thing made up of many
smaller parts
...
In this way, you are your cells because there’s nothing in your
body that’s not made of cells; however, your cells aren’t you
...
There’s not any
one cell that is “you” — you are all of your cells, working together in organs
and systems to make up the total person who is sitting there, breathing and
thinking and holding this book
...
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Part I: The Basic Basics
Society is like that — but much bigger and even more complicated
...
Your country is a society, but no one person — not even the
president or the prime minister — is the society
...
Just like a body is, in a sense, what happens when a lot of different cells interact together, a society is what happens
when a lot of people interact together
...
You can’t understand how a liver works unless you understand its place in the body, and sociologists believe that you can’t understand
how any part of society (a company, an ethnic group, a small town) works
unless you understand its place in society
...
A scientific, sociological question is a question about how society works —
not about how it should work, but about how it does work
...
So the following two sections give you more detailed info on how scientific, sociological questions
should be formed as well as answered
...
An empirical question is a question that can be answered
by gathering facts
...
If I ask, “What is racism?” I’m asking a theoretical question — I’m looking for a general definition of what is called
“racism
...
If I ask, “Should there be racism?” I’m asking a moral question — I’m
asking you to make a value judgment about whether it is right to judge
someone by the color of his or her skin
...
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Chapter 2: What Is Sociology, and Why Should I Care?
27
✓ Empirical question: A question that can be answered by gathering
facts
...
In this case, if I want to fight racism, I can do so more effectively if I have
accurate information about how, where, and why people act in a racist
manner
...
How I became a sociologist
The story of how I became a sociologist may
help you to understand what’s unique about
the sociological perspective, and to think about
how sociology can cause you to think differently about your job and your life
...
So I ended
up babysitting for many different families
...
They might check out a stack
of parenting books from the library, but they
would usually end up sticking with the one that
told them to do whatever it was that they were
going to do anyway
...
Again, I was struck by how in every
time and place, people were convinced that
they had it all figured out
...
indd 27
Eventually, I realized that I was interested not
in the education of children, but rather in the
sociology of childhood — the study of different
ideas about what children should do, and what
those changing ideas have to do with changes
in other areas of society
...
I systematically gathered articles about
children’s books and media and analyzed
them to test my hypothesis that, in our concern that kids aren’t reading enough, we have
become much more open-minded about what
we consider “good” reading material for children
...
Becoming a sociologist allowed me to pursue
questions that I felt needed to be answered:
How do we decide what’s right and wrong
whether it comes to kids’ books, or anything
else? How do our society’s norms and values
come to be? Why do the people in one neighborhood have completely different ideas about
child-rearing than the people in the next neighborhood? Those are fundamentally sociological
questions
...
” You have to look at a society, at specific people in a
specific place at a specific time
...
Here are some examples of sociological questions, and studies that
might help provide answers
...
✓ Is inequality inherited? A sociologist might conduct a survey to see
whether people raised in poverty grow up to have different jobs than
people raised in wealth
...
It’s not easy, but sociologists are ready for the challenge
...
)
Looking at the previous questions, you probably have guesses as to what the
answers are
...
Over the course of this
book you’ll come across many examples of sociological findings that may surprise you, so you need to be careful not to assume that your guesses about how
society works are correct
...
Some of these people call themselves sociologists and some of
them don’t (depending on their jobs, they might call themselves “researchers” or “program officers” or “reporters”), but they all make use of sociological findings and ideas
...
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Chapter 2: What Is Sociology, and Why Should I Care?
29
Colleges and universities
The loudest, proudest sociologists are found in institutions of higher learning, where they explicitly teach sociology to (more or less) eager young
minds
...
Elective courses in
sociology can also be very popular, especially when they deal with interesting subjects like sex and gender, media and culture, or race and immigration
...
A professor of sociology at a research university
might be busy coordinating a team of research assistants working on a major
study; training doctoral candidates who will become professors themselves;
and teaching undergraduate courses in sociology
...
Faculty members,
graduate students, and even advanced undergraduate students often travel
to sociology conferences where they share their completed or ongoing work
with colleagues from other institutions
...
” It’s relatively unusual for someone to be a fulltime sociology teacher at a high school — but there are the lucky few!
Think tanks and research institutes
Research institutes, sometimes called think tanks, are organizations that
focus on research in a particular area
...
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Part I: The Basic Basics
People with an interest in social issues like these have an interest in gathering facts that will help them accomplish their mission most effectively or
garner support for their cause
...
These organizations often publish research reports that can affect policy
and rally the public around a cause
...
Nonprofit organizations
Every nonprofit organization, from Greenpeace to the Girl Scouts to the
Boston Ballet, has a mission it is seeking to accomplish, and sociologists
often work with these organizations to help them do so most effectively and
efficiently
...
A sociologist can
help make this decision based on what other sociologists have discovered, or
perhaps conduct a study to see what has worked best in other contexts
...
Government
Governments are the biggest non-profits of all, and they face all the same
challenges on a much larger scale
...
✓ Legislators turn to sociologists for advice on which programs and policies might be most effective
...
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31
✓ Law enforcement officers must use their limited resources to prevent
crime from happening and, when it occurs, minimize the damage and
apprehend the perpetrators
...
What are the best strategies for helping
people in these situations? Should government provide financial support, food assistance, skills training, or other resources? How much, for
how long, and to whom?
✓ Teachers and educational administrators find it enough of a challenge
to teach reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic, but also face a host of other
social issues
...
Sociologists — sometimes working directly for
these agencies, sometimes coming in as consultants — can help these agencies make well-informed decisions
...
There are important differences between journalism and sociology
...
But journalists share sociologists’
interest in understanding what makes society tick, and they’re out on the
front lines reporting on social change
...
And a journalist who’s trained in sociology or who knows what sociologists have discovered about violence and
urban life is in a good position to understand what is happening even as it
unfolds
...
06_572368-ch02
...
Does the story seem to suggest that things “should” be a certain way?
If so, that is an opinion or a value judgment rather than a statement of fact
...
(See Chapter 11 for more on the sociology of crime
...
If sociologists are curious about how information flows through different kinds of social networks, you can bet that marketers and retailers are
wondering as well
...
Just because you think something is a great idea doesn’t mean
it’s actually going to fly with your customers
...
A management consultant’s job is not to be an expert in any one industry, but to look at a company
and see how problems with its organization may be keeping it from performing as effectively and efficiently as possible
...
Whether
you’re Cap’n Jack’s Frozen Fish or Cathy’s Computers, you’re going to face
certain challenges that are universal, such as employee motivation, supply
chain management, publicity, and advertising
...
You’re presented with a
dizzying array of choices every minute of every day of your life, and whether
you’re choosing a husband or choosing a brand of toothpaste, it can be
really tough to know what choices to make
...
Consider
these situations:
06_572368-ch02
...
✓ You’ve started dating a coworker, and you’re trying to figure out how to
reconcile your professional and personal roles
...
In each of those situations, you’re thinking sociologically — you’re trying
to figure out how society works so you can make it work to your advantage
...
(For specific examples of how you can
use sociology in your own life, see Chapter 18
...
So what? Why should you care? What can
learning about sociology do for you besides helping you pass a class or make
scintillating cocktail-party conversation?
Sociologist Randall Collins uses the phrase sociological insight to describe the
way that learning to think sociologically can change your entire perspective
on the world
...
Understanding these insights doesn’t mean you’re going to stop prosecuting
criminals or start treating your husband like a doormat, but it does put people’s behavior in an interesting new light
...
In this section I mention several ways that thinking sociologically can make a difference in your life
...
The students at that college go on
to serve as police officers, nurses, teachers, and therapists — all professions
06_572368-ch02
...
Going into any of those careers with cultural blinders on can lead to unfortunate, perhaps even dangerous, misunderstandings
...
You
grew up being told to stay away from “skate punks” who “probably are
doing all kinds of drugs” and “have no respect for authority
...
✓ As a nurse, you see a female patient who seems to have severe discomfort in her abdomen — but she can’t tell you about it directly because
she doesn’t speak English
...
“Only I can speak for my wife,” says the husband
...
When you call her mother in for a conference,
the mother explains that she’s a single parent of three children, and
she’s working two jobs to support her family
...
She
doesn’t see anything wrong with that
...
These are all difficult situations, and it’s not obvious what would be the best
way to handle any of them
...
Some might say that the skateboarders are
deviant, that the husband is abusing his wife, and that the mother is exploiting
her daughter
...
To say that sociology can help you to approach these situations in a “valuefree” way is not to say that you should check your values at the door, but it
is to say that sociology can help you understand the difference between your
own values and others’ values
...
Instead a sociologist would emphasize that all those things need
to be carefully, objectively defined so that you can deal with people fairly and
sympathetically
...
” Learning to distance yourself, when
necessary, from your own preconceptions is useful in any field of endeavor
...
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Chapter 2: What Is Sociology, and Why Should I Care?
35
Visualizing connections across
times and places
In recent years, sociologists have studied all these topics:
✓ Neighbors’ coordinated efforts to defend Paris when it was under siege
in 1871
...
Gould)
✓ The organization of the Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock
Desert
...
Chen)
✓ Women’s mobilization into the Salvadoran Guerrilla Army
...
(Robert Wuthnow)
✓ Families going through funhouses at an amusement park
...
The studies are about wildly different events, places, and times,
but they all appeared in mainstream sociological journals or books, meant to
be read by all sociologists
...
Sociologists believe that the organization of the
Burning Man Festival may, if carefully studied, have something to teach us
about social organization generally; and that women’s mobilization into the
Salvadoran Guerrilla Army may have something to teach us about women’s
(and men’s) mobilization into political parties or protest movements anywhere in the world
...
Uncovering what really matters
...
Sociologists are
sometimes criticized for oversimplifying the social world, but believe me,
sociologists are painfully aware of just how complicated the social world is!
When you spend years of your life trying to design studies that will shed even
a little bit of light on a question — such as what causes people to commit
06_572368-ch02
...
That said, sociologists have developed powerful tools to help understand
how society works, and sociology can help to cut through the confusion to
focus attention on what really matters
...
For example:
✓ Frank Dobbin, Alexandra Kalev, and Erin Kelly studied companies that
tried to make their workforces more racially diverse
...
Companies
that actually assigned a person to keep an eye on hiring saw much
better results
...
We found that kids whose parents attended art museums were much
more likely to attend elite colleges — and that it made no difference
whatsoever whether or not the kids even went along!
✓ The “broken windows” theory of policing, famously advocated by New
York City mayor Rudy Giuliani in the 1990s, holds that neighborhoods with
signs of disorder are more likely sites for crime — that if criminals see a
broken window in one building, they figure it’s okay to break a window
in the next
...
Sampson and Stephen Raudenbush,
though, found that although it’s true that people’s perceptions of a neighborhood’s “disorder” make a difference in the neighborhood’s crime rate,
people see evidence of “disorder” not as much in broken windows but in,
sad to say, the mere presence of racial minorities like blacks and Latinos
...
It’s more obvious how
people should change their actions based on the diversity-training study
than what they should do after learning about the college attendance study
or the neighborhood disorder study — parents probably aren’t going to
start visiting art museums to make their kids more likely to go to Yale, and
police certainly aren’t going to tell African-Americans and Latinos to stay out
of sight — but now you know that it’s barking up the wrong tree to drag your
kids to museums to make them more attractive college candidates or to
spend a lot of money fixing broken windows in hopes of keeping crime down
...
06_572368-ch02
...
or is it?
One of the most controversial sociological
arguments about social policy was a report
issued in 1965 by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a
social scientist who was then U
...
assistant
secretary of labor
...
The
memo, which became known as “the Moynihan
Report,” was Moynihan’s attempt to convince
President Johnson to promote marriage and
stable family life among African-Americans
...
The high rate of family instability among African-Americans, said Moynihan,
caused large numbers of black children to grow
up in troubled circumstances, to do poorly in
schoolwork and job searches, and to turn to
crime and deviance
...
Others — including Martin Luther King,
Jr
...
To this day, sociologists and lawmakers debate
the Moynihan Report
...
Informing social policy
If you live in a democracy, you’re a policymaker — your vote helps to determine which politicians are elected and which laws are passed
...
Every social policy is a sociological argument, whether or not the people who
created the policy think about it that way
...
Knowing which action to
take to achieve a certain goal can be difficult, and as politicians and pundits
argue about the merits of various pieces of legislation, they are often having
sociological debates about how society works, what (if anything
...
06_572368-ch02
...
If you don’t know how a car works, you’re going to have a very
hard time fixing it — and the same principle applies for society
...
(In fact, that was one of the reasons sociology was invented —
more about that in Chapter 3
...
Sociology can be tremendously liberating when you apply it to the society (or
societies) you live and work in every day
...
You
don’t have to obey those rules, but if you don’t, you risk social disapproval or
even — if you break a rule that’s been written into law — imprisonment
...
But unlike the rules of physics, the rules of society can change
...
Not only can sociology help you to see different possibilities, it can
actually teach you effective strategies for bringing change about
...
06_572368-ch02
...
It’s here not just because it “has to be,” but because it actually has
to be: Understanding how sociology was developed will help you understand
how sociologists go about doing their thing today
...
I briefly tell you about the
lives of the three most famous and influential sociologists — Karl Marx, Emile
Durkheim, and Max Weber — and tell the story of how sociology traveled
across the Atlantic, becoming more “down to earth” in the process
...
So
...
Isn’t it enough to understand what sociologists do
today? Why bother with learning what people used to think about society?
Well, the following list gives you a few good reasons to learn at least a little
bit about the history of sociology:
✓ Understanding why sociologists think the way they do and ask the
questions they do: Even if sociologists today know a lot more than their
predecessors did, they have the same essential concerns about society
and social organization
...
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40
Part I: The Basic Basics
world — a scientific, systematic approach — developed by the first
sociologists continues to provide the foundation of all sociology
...
✓ Understanding “old” arguments and ideas that are still useful today:
Over the course of sociology’s history there have been some pretty
smart people who have come up with ideas and arguments that are
still very useful today
...
Emile Durkheim’s argument that cultural
values change as a society grows and roles differentiate has become all
the more important as societies around the world have become bigger
and more diverse
...
The concepts developed by Marx,
Durkheim, and Weber are a common vocabulary that sociologists use as
they discuss society today
...
It’s a brilliant articulation of an idea about society — that
everything is there for a reason, which was a very compelling idea that
many of the world’s best sociologists were studying for years
...
Thinking about Society before
There Was Sociology
Sociology as we know it was developed in the 19th century, but it’s not like
it took people all those centuries just to notice that there is such a thing
as society! For all of human history, people have talked about society and
debated its organization
...
In this section, I explain how people first started thinking about society and
describe the seismic social changes that inspired the development of sociology in the 19th century
...
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41
People are the same everywhere you
go
...
Whether you were a tribesman on the African savannah, a citizen of ancient Athens, or a serf in medieval France, you might have looked
around and noticed that your group and the next group over and the group
beyond that had all managed to get themselves in some sort of order
...
But just because these constants are always present in society doesn’t mean
that they’re the same everywhere — there’s wide variation across social
groups
...
✓ Every society has families of some sort, but in some societies those families are small and in others they are large and multi-generational
...
✓ Every society has some form of religion
...
✓ Food and tools are produced and traded in all societies, but think about
the difference between traditional Native American cultures (many of
which had little concept of “property” in the modern sense of the word)
and capitalist society with its elaborate financial system
...
People have always been curious about social organization: Why is
society organized the way it is? Is it just random, or is there a method behind
the madness? If people could understand how society works, they thought,
maybe they could solve social problems like war and poverty
...
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Pre-sociologists: People with
ideas about society
For many centuries, people tended to focus on the similarities rather than
the differences in social organization
...
” But who was to decide right from wrong? What follows is a list
of people who have tried:
✓ Theologians: They argued that God (or the gods) had a plan for the
world, and sacred scriptures might reveal that plan as God (or, again,
the gods) intended it to be manifest
...
✓ Philosophers: Many philosophers believed that the key to successful
social organization lay in an accurate understanding of human nature
...
Plato’s Republic, one of the greatest works of classical
philosophy, lays out Plato’s vision of an ideal society
...
Many historians were almost sociological in their comparison of past
societies with present societies — in fact, the first sociologists were very
interested in historical change — whereas others looked to the past for
ideals to be emulated in the present
...
These theological, philosophical, and historical approaches were interesting
and, in some cases, quite useful — but by the late 1700s it became clear that
a new way of understanding society would be necessary
...
Political and industrial revolution:
Ready or not, here it comes
There’s no shortage of tragic conflict, shocking social upheaval, and stunning technological transformation in the 21st century — but even so, it’s
difficult for people today to understand just how profound and disorienting
were the changes that shook Western society in the 18th and 19th centuries
...
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long-held assumptions about human nature and social organization, and to
wonder whether the scientific method — which had been so useful in understanding the natural world — might not also be useful for understanding the
scary and exciting new social world they were living in
...
Political revolutions
The American Revolution of 1776 was certainly a wake-up call to the
entrenched European powers, but it was nothing compared to the French
Revolution and its associated conflicts, which tore across Europe from 1789
to 1814
...
And the French and Americans weren’t alone
...
More and more, people believed — and acted on their belief — that
things should be different, that just because the kings and dukes and bishops
had been in charge for centuries didn’t mean it had to be that way forever
...
Of course, the tricky thing about overthrowing one system of social organization is that you have to replace it with something — and that is no easy task
...
Complicating the whole process was the fact that technology
was also changing rapidly
...
Previously, life for most people had been fairly straightforward: you were
born into a particular family in a particular place, and you were more or less
destined to do a particular job — probably not a very exciting one, something along the order of planting and harvesting
...
You’d probably do some trading, but you’d likely build your
own house and grow much of your own food
...
They defined you
...
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With the arrival of industrial production, everything sped up and much less
could be taken for granted
...
Workers were paid in cash, which they had to use to buy everything
they needed, from housing to food to entertainment
...
On top of that, developments in transportation and communication technology
were making the world a smaller place
...
Everything was getting bigger, faster, more powerful — and revolution was in the air, with social arrangements that had lasted for centuries
being cast to the wind
...
What was right?
What was wrong? Was there any way to make sense out of the chaos?
Theologians and philosophers and historians were doing their best to figure
things out, but it was clearly time for a new way of understanding the world
...
Still, it took almost a century for sociology to be fully established as a legitimate field of study
...
Positivism in the philosophical
sense is not the same thing as “positive thinking,” but positivism is “positive”
in the sense that it represents an optimistic belief in humans’ ability to figure
things out and improve their circumstances
...
If the powers that be didn’t care for the suggestion that the earth
07_572368-ch03
...
In Chapter 2 I warn you to prepare
yourself for the surprises that sociology might have in store for you, and those
surprises can still hit with some of the shock that the early sociologists’ ideas
had for their readers
...
When sociologists today give people information that challenges their long-held beliefs, they meet similar resistance
...
They questioned whether the
traditional tools of their trades were really sufficient for the task of understanding the changing society they lived in
...
Historians saw patterns in the progression of social arrangements through time, and wondered whether scientific
theories might help explain human history the way, say, geology had helped
to explain the history of the earth
...
Over time, positivist thinkers from all these fields began to share certain
ideas about the social world, ideas such as the following that became the
underpinning for the new science of sociology
...
✓ Society was progressing in a manner that wasn’t random
...
✓ Although some amount of inequality might be unavoidable, inequality
on the basis of social class, place of birth, or parentage was not only
immoral but also inefficient
...
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Adventures in sociology
The Revolutionary Era was an exciting time to
be in Europe, and even though it was a dangerous time to be going around with bold new
ideas about society, it was also a time when
those ideas carried great weight and had real
urgency
...
Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caridal de
Condorcet, one of the founders of sociology
(though, preceding Comte, he did not call himself a “sociologist”), lived up to his fancy name
by pioneering the idea of the social thinker as
an en vogue cultural sophisticate and manabout-town
...
Condorcet
was what today you might call a “limousine liberal”: an aristocrat who nonetheless supported
the overthrow of the aristocracy
...
When things got ugly, he was
driven into hiding
...
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de SaintSimon (called Saint-Simon, not to be confused
with his student Auguste Comte), was another
man of action
...
He was imprisoned during the
French Revolution, which ironically made him
a rich man upon his release because, being in
prison, he hadn’t been able to convert his holdings into the Revolutionary currency that had
become severely devalued
...
Saint-Simon convincingly argued that only scientists could put Europe back together after
the destructive political revolutions it had
experienced, and he became a very influential
booster of social science
...
After Saint-Simon’s death in 1825, his most
ardent disciples formed a sort of cult, living
together in a commune and advocating progressive social ideas from women’s liberation
to collective ownership of property to free love
...
Sociologists, it seemed, weren’t
quite ready to run the world
...
Comte pointed out that if a village is settled on the bank of a river that
sometimes floods, it will be frequently devastated — unless, through scientific observation, the villagers learn to predict the floods
...
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shouldn’t it be the same with wars and other social conflicts? If people can
learn to predict these conflicts, they can be avoided — or at least minimized
...
Nothing is bigger or more complex than society, so
sociology (which Comte first called “social physics”) sat at the top of the
hierarchy as the most ambitious, most important science
...
” In other words, you can’t just look at the economy, or just look
at the government, and expect to really understand how society works
...
Comte’s argument is still the justification
for sociology as its own science — and it’s still controversial
...
Economics had already been established as
the scientific study of the economy, and psychology was being developed as
the scientific study of the human mind
...
Sociology’s Power Trio
From the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, just as sociology
was coming to maturity as an academic discipline and a way of seeing the
world, three men — working separately, but the later ones being familiar
with the earlier ones’ work — came up with a series of ideas that deeply
influenced sociology
...
One company has even sold
a sociology study guide that is a laminated card summarizing what Marx,
Durkheim, and Weber might each say about topics from education to crime
...
Karl Marx lived after Comte and had some hugely
important sociological ideas, but to his dying day he never called himself a
sociologist
...
In 1919,
three years after Durkheim’s death and almost a century after Comte coined
the term, the department of sociology founded by Max Weber was still the
very first one in Germany
...
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Part I: The Basic Basics
sociology departments were popping up left and right
...
Take some time to understand the basics of what each of these three men
thought
...
Karl Marx
Karl Marx, born in 1818 in what is now Germany, was the first of these three
great thinkers to come along
...
He started out studying law, became
involved in philosophy and history, and later worked as a journalist and
political activist
...
He was convinced there could be a better way, and he worked
to support the Communist Party, a group dedicated to creating a society
where everyone shared and shared alike
...
Marx, working with his close friend and colleague Frederich Engels, wrote copious amounts
...
It wasn’t until the 1930s that people truly understood everything Marx was trying to say
...
)
Sociologists consider Marx important for two main reasons: his general
theory of history and his specific ideas about power and exploitation
...
You may think of a “materialist” as someone who only cares about money and material things — and though Marx in
his personal life was the opposite of a greedy cash hound, he did think that
material goods make the world go ‘round
...
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For Marx, the most important forces in history weren’t ideas; they were
basically economic forces
...
Each mode of production (ancient
slaveholding society, medieval feudalism, and so forth) has its own inherent
conflicts among different classes, and those conflicts inevitably lead to the
failure of one mode of production and the beginning of another
...
Marx dismissed immaterial ideas as relatively unimportant
...
Marx on capitalism
Marx was particularly concerned with the mode of production that dominated his time (and, he would be disappointed to learn, still dominates ours):
industrial capitalism
...
✓ The proletariat: the people who don’t own much and are forced to work
for the bourgeois to feed their families
...
The proletariat, said Marx, are especially hurt by capitalism because they are
viciously exploited by the bourgeois
...
In a larger sense, though, Marx argued that everyone is hurt by capitalism
because it’s a system that trades real things (work, food, shelter) for an
imaginary thing: money
...
The
value of my labor isn’t measured by what good I do for myself or my society;
it’s measured by how much (or how little) money I make
...
Maybe
someday it will, but you probably shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for it
...
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Emile Durkheim
Halfway through this chapter that’s supposedly about the history of sociology, you may be wondering when someone is finally going to bust out and
call himself a sociologist
...
voila! The French scholar Emile Durkheim
spent his life not just practicing sociology, but trying — quite successfully —
to convince the world of sociology’s importance
...
His life
had much less excitement than Marx’s, but he was full of new and provocative ideas about society
...
Reading Marx, you almost get the impression that he thinks we’d all be better off on our own, living by the work of our
own hands
...
For Durkheim, humans are fundamentally social
...
It’s what makes us truly human, and that fact
is what makes sociology — the study of society — so important
...
Specifically, he said that the
job of the sociologist is to study social facts: facts that are true of groups of
people rather than individuals
...
✓ Thirty-four percent of men have beards
...
Those are facts about groups of people, and though they don’t tell you anything about any one individual — for example, whether any given man will
have a beard, or the income of a particular Porsche owner — they tell you
something specific about a group of people, who might then be compared
to other groups (for example, Toyota Camry owners)
...
Durkheim agreed with Marx that society was changing, but rather than a
growing chasm between the haves and the have-nots, Durkheim thought that
we were becoming more differentiated from one another in all kinds of ways
...
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Earlier in history, when society was relatively simple, there were just a few
different jobs people performed: hunter, gatherer, farmer, priest
...
This functional differentiation, thought Durkheim, was both
necessary and — in broad terms — a good thing
...
Sociology to die for
To prove the usefulness of sociology as a discipline, Durkheim chose to
study a topic that would seem deeply personal, much more the domain of the
psychologist or philosopher than the sociologist: suicide
...
In his book Suicide, Durkheim pointed out that though any individual person’s
decision to commit suicide was, of course, personal — a person’s reasons for
taking his or her life may be completely unknowable — in aggregate, suicides
seem to have shared social causes
...
Whatever combination of factors cause people to commit suicide, they
seemed to be greater in Sweden than in Spain; further, they were greater
among unmarried people than married people, and greater among men
than women
...
In a pioneering use of social statistics, Durkheim gathered lots of numbers
summarizing the suicide rates and other characteristics of many groups
and lined them up in tables to see which social facts seemed to be related
(see Chapter 4 for more on the use of statistics in sociology today)
...
For example, egoistic suicides
were more frequent in groups with weak social ties (for example, countries
with religious values emphasizing individualism) and altruistic suicides were
more frequent in groups with extremely strong social ties (for example, the
military)
...
Explaining an
individual’s behavior, according to Durkheim, is a different thing than explaining a group’s behavior
...
07_572368-ch03
...
It contains Weber’s argument that the values
spread by Protestant theologians like John
Calvin were very influential in Europe’s transition from traditional society to modern capitalism
...
The belief that time is
money, and money is good (because an abundance of it suggests that God favors you particularly) is foundational to the capitalist economy
...
Weber’s mother was devoutly religious, a strong believer in the moral value
of self-sacrifice, strict discipline, and hard
work
...
Weber’s work addressed this paradox: that
modern life has some of the ascetic self-
discipline of the monk — you must be at your
desk from 9 a
...
to 5 p
...
, fulfilling a precise list
of duties — and yet it has afforded us luxuries
and freedoms unimaginable to people who lived
in the pre-modern era
...
Whatever!
In The Protestant Ethic, Weber tells the story
of a landowner who hires some farmers to
work his land
...
If we all behaved that way, capitalism
would never work
...
Max Weber
Marx and Durkheim are easy to compare and contrast because their views
about what matters in society were so strikingly different
...
Marx
was concerned with the material world; Durkheim was concerned with the
world of ideas and values
...
If they had to choose which of the three great
sociological thinkers was most “right,” most sociologists today would say
Weber because Weber appreciated that social life is marked by both conflict
and cohesion
...
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...
Despite some serious mental health issues (he suffered from what were then called “nervous collapses”) and a troubled personal life (he married his second cousin, and while that made them kissing
cousins, they probably didn’t do much more than that), he had an amazing
work ethic
...
Both Marx and Durkheim had grand views of history; they both presented the
march of history as more or less inevitable
...
For Durkheim, developing technology and growing population had inevitably
led to functional differentiation
...
None of those
answers can be taken for granted
...
In your job, for example, you don’t have the responsibilities you have and get paid the amount you do just because you’re you —
those things go with the job, and if you quit, the next person to take your job
would perform the same tasks and get paid the same amount
...
He referred to modern society as an “iron cage,”
where for better and for worse we’re locked into well-defined roles
...
The development of a set of religious values
(specifically, Calvinist Protestant values) that promoted hard work and savings had worked, said Weber, like a “switchman on the tracks” to ensure that
European society would turn in that direction — and when the train went
down that track, there was no going back
...
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Part I: The Basic Basics
universities around the world
...
Sociology was born in Europe, but much of its explosive growth in the 20th
century happened in the United States
...
Taking it to the streets:
The Chicago School
The first sociology department in the United States was founded at the
University of Chicago in 1892
...
(“School” being used in the sense of “a school of thought
...
It’s not
the wealthiest section of town, and those neighborhoods also have more
than their share of conflict and crime
...
They emphasized the importance of on-the-ground
research methods like ethnography and participant observation (see Chapter 4
for more on these methods)
...
Chicago, similar to the rest of America, was in the midst of a massive wave of
immigration, and the Chicago sociologists saw people from completely different social backgrounds learning to interact together
...
(See Chapter 6 for more on symbolic interactionism
...
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Mass society: Are we, or
are we not, sheep?
In 1954, for the first time ever (and, so far, the only time ever), a sociologist made the cover of Time magazine: David Riesman, author of The Lonely
Crowd
...
His focus was on the big picture
...
This is still a concern often voiced about America (and other countries)
today, and it particularly resonated in the Ozzie and Harriet era, when it
seemed like everyone was moving to the newly-built suburbs to buy a house
that looked just like every other house on the block and have the same 2
...
Riesman’s compelling book introduced sociology to an unprecedented popular audience — it remains the all-time bestseller in sociology
...
Parsons shared Riesman’s interest in mass society, but unlike
Riesman, Parsons thought that it was by and large a good thing
...
In functionalism, social phenomena are explained by reference to the purpose they serve: If a certain
phenomenon, such as education or religion, is observed in many different
societies, it must be there for a reason
...
(If this sounds a lot like biological evolution, that’s no coincidence
...
”)
Parsons was one of the most ambitious sociologists of all time
...
His 1951 book Toward a General Theory of Action was his manifesto, a 500page attempt to Explain It All
...
For a while,
it almost seemed like Parsons was realizing Comte’s dream of creating a kind
of owner’s manual for society
...
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The Power Elite: Marx’s revenge
If the Chicago School had brought sociology down to earth, Parsons brought
it right back up into the theoretical stratosphere, with everything explained
from the sociologist’s perch on high
...
Parsons’s quest for a grand
unified theory of society hit the rocks, though, as an increasing number of
sociologists criticized his theory
...
Although social institutions such as government and education may be necessary because of the tasks they perform,
sociologists today recognize that social institutions are created by people,
not by functions — and although people may have society’s interests in mind,
they also have their own personal motivations
...
Because of his belief in social evolution — in other words, survival of the
fittest societies — Parsons became a defender of the status quo
...
One sociologist, C
...
Reminding his readers and students that the whole reason sociology was
founded was to change society, Mills pointed out that society was still rife
with social problems such as poverty, crime, racism, and to say these things
were “necessary” or even “normal” was absurd
...
Sound familiar? If Parsons was a Durkheimian, Mills was a resolute Marxist
...
Both were brilliant thinkers, but
they represented completely different approaches to understanding society
...
Parsons fired back that Mills himself was empirically wrong,
that there was no such thing as a unified “power elite” that somehow secretly
conspired to run the world
...
07_572368-ch03
...
Marx’s ideas about the
evils of capitalism and the redistribution of
wealth have inspired political revolutionaries
including Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, and
Fidel Castro, thus shaping the lives of billions
of people in the communist societies they
founded
...
In the decades following World War II, the United States and the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U
...
S
...
)
waged a “Cold War” in which they battled
for economic and military dominance
...
Strangelove, satirizes the panic that characterized that era, with
characters taking the real-world concern over
a “missile gap” (one country having significantly more warheads than the other) to absurd
levels, worrying about a “mineshaft gap” (a gap
in provisions to protect citizens underground)
and a “doomsday gap” (one country having a
doomsday machine and the other not)
...
Though it was known that the Soviet Union was
a repressive regime that severely limited certain of its citizens’ freedoms, the U
...
S
...
was
a huge and powerful country organized along
fundamentally different principles than Western
democracies
...
Russians were known (accurately or not) for
adhering to a rigorous work ethic and putting their country ahead of themselves; had
Americans grown lazy and complacent in the
prosperous 1950s? Had Americans lost the
drive, vigor, and individual initiative that had
made their country great? It was these concerns that helped pique average Americans’
interest in books like David Riesman’s The
Lonely Crowd and William H
...
Both books — especially
Riesman’s — are still widely-read today
...
When you read sociological books and articles, look out for sociologists who
use convoluted language
...
Wright Mills criticized Talcott Parsons for writing
sentences like, “Coordinate with the importance of order as formulated in the
hierarchy of control and the place of normative culture in action systems, is
the pattern of temporal order imposed by the functional exigencies of systems
...
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Part I: The Basic Basics
in a way you can’t make any sense of
...
Sociology Today
No individual or institution today dominates sociology as completely as the
Chicago School did in the early 20th century or as Talcott Parsons did in the
mid-20th century
...
Robert K
...
Merton argued that sociologists should
focus on “theories of the middle range” — that is, that sociologists should
ask questions they can actually answer
...
There are still sociologists who
pursue grand theories, but that tends to be an exercise for experienced sociologists who’ve earned tenure and have time to write fat books
...
Sociologists work with physicians to study the spread
of disease, with businesspeople and economists to study corporate organization, with psychologists to study small-group interaction, and with anthropologists to study cultural change
...
Huge sets of survey data are publicly
available, and with the right software, any personal computer has the capacity to perform highly sophisticated statistical analyses
...
For now, suffice it to say that though answering sociological questions has become a lot
easier since the time of Comte, asking the right ones is just as tricky as it has
always been
...
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Chapter 4
Research Methods: Because You
Can’t Put Society in a Test Tube
In This Chapter
▶ Examining the steps of sociological research
▶ Choosing a research method
▶ Using analytical tools
▶ Watching for potential pitfalls
S
o what happens when the rubber meets the road? How do sociologists
actually go about devising and conducting research studies? It’s important for you to know how sociological knowledge is created even if you never
intend to conduct your own research study
...
Without empirical research, sociology would just be a lot of theories
that may or may not be true
...
(When I was a graduate student in sociology, Professor
Barbara Reskin used to wear a white lab coat just to make the point that sociologists are “real” scientists, too
...
Society is enormously complex and constantly changing, so making generalizable statements about the way society works is a tricky matter that requires
precise thinking and careful research methods
...
I also outline the analytical tools available to sociologists and highlight some of the many things that can go wrong
in the complex process of gathering and interpreting sociological data
...
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The Steps of Sociological Research
In this section, I run through the essentials of conducting sociological
research
...
You can’t put society in a test tube — you normally can’t conduct experiments in sociology like you can in chemistry, physics, or even psychology
...
Ask your question
Sociologists sometimes envy scientists who work in disciplines — like, say,
astrophysics — where the phenomena being studied are so far removed from
everyday life that laymen have a hard time even understanding what they do
...
When a sociologist talks
about their work, sometimes it seems like everyone has an opinion
...
Sociological studies begin with a hunch about the social world, a sociologist’s idea about how a certain process might work, or a question about why
people seem to behave in a certain manner
...
Whyte)
✓ Why are people in wealthy neighborhoods more likely than people in
working-class neighborhoods to hang abstract art in their living rooms?
And do they care if it matches the couch? (David Halle)
08_572368-ch04
...
But for sociologists, these are empirical questions that can
actually be answered
...
A sociologist may not
agree with the values or decisions of the people they study, but they are
curious about those values and why people make the decisions they do
...
This hypothesis, whether you realize it or not,
rests on a theory about how the world works
...
Check the literature
When sociologists have an interesting question worth pursuing, they head to
the shelves (or, more often, the Internet) to see what has been published in
“the literature” that may be relevant to their question
...
They mean the peer-reviewed scientific literature in their discipline
...
In sociology, peer-reviewed publications include:
✓ General sociology journals: Journals such as the American Sociological
Review and the American Journal of Sociology contain studies so important that they’re worth the attention of all sociologists
...
✓ Books: Sociologists also sometimes publish books, which are peerreviewed if they come from an academic press
...
08_572368-ch04
...
Sociologists normally search the literature for all these types of material:
✓ Sociological studies specifically on the topic they’re interested in
researching
...
)
✓ Sociological studies on similar topics
...
)
✓ Sociological studies using methods or approaches that may be useful
...
)
✓ Articles or books not in the sociological literature that are nonetheless informative about the topic at hand
...
)
It’s always a possibility that you’ll discover someone’s “scooped” you — has
already conducted the study you were interested in conducting
...
You
then have to decide whether you have the information and/or resources to
answer them
...
As I explain in Chapter 2, what distinguishes an empirical sociological question
from a theoretical question or a moral question is that you can actually find
an answer to it — but that doesn’t mean finding an answer is easy! To operationalize a question means to turn it from a general question (for example, are
fans equally supportive, or critical, at men’s sports and women’s sports?) to
a specific question that you can actually find an answer to (for example, how
many audible player criticisms per fan are heard at each of 20 men’s basketball
games, and how many at each of 20 women’s basketball games?)
...
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63
The word data refers to pieces of information (one datum; multiple data)
...
But we don’t live in a perfect world, and what happens more often is that you find the best data available and then operationalize your question as precisely as the data allow
...
A colleague and I were curious about which subjects had become more frequently studied in universities
around the world over the past century
...
The United
Nations had collected some data on student enrollments, but it didn’t go back
very many years — and anyway, some other researchers were already looking
at those data
...
We
thus were able to operationalize our question as
Which subjects have seen the most growth in the number of faculty members studying them since 1900?
After we found useful data and operationalized our question, it was easy to
find an answer: We just started counting!
Finding data sounds like the most boring part of sociological research, but
it can be one of the most creative
...
S
...
Collecting original data is time-consuming and can be expensive, but it makes
your study automatically interesting, even for readers who don’t agree with
your analysis of your data
...
✓ Newspapers and magazines: You might search for articles documenting some kind of activity or showing people’s perspectives on the social
world
...
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Part I: The Basic Basics
✓ Original surveys: You might conduct your own survey, trying to capture
as many respondents as possible for a few key questions
...
(Later in this chapter, I provide more information on specific types of data
and analysis
...
In other words, your data need to actually be relevant to the original question you asked
...
(More on that in the last chapter of this section
...
Imagine you want to know whether you remembered to let the dog
in
...
For data, you
open the door and look out in the yard
...
There’s the answer to that particular empirical question
...
What you usually
end up with is hundreds of pages of interviews or a massive spreadsheet of
survey data
...
Later sections in this chapter cover specific analytical methods in more
detail; for now, I’ll just say that in almost all cases, you’re going to need to
analyze your data to find an answer to your question
...
you just need to get at it
...
Interpret your results
Okay, you’ve found your data, operationalized your question, and conducted
your analysis
...
But
08_572368-ch04
...
It means thinking about what you’ve learned and how it relates to
the sociological literature
...
You probably began your research process with a hypothesis: a guess about
what the results of your study are
...
Depending
on your question and your data, there’s probably still some room for doubt,
but now at least now you have some important new information on the subject
...
Say you believe that the wage disparity between U
...
men and women has
shrunk since 1950; that is, that men and women in the United States today
make salaries that are more similar than the salaries of men and women
in 1950
...
This result supports your
hypothesis and provides sociologists with important new information about
men’s and women’s salaries
...
What if you find that women’s salaries crept closer to men’s for 40 years, but in the past 20 years the disparity
has been growing again? Does this support your hypothesis? Yes and no
...
What happened to
account for that change? You need to suggest a possible explanation
...
But wait! How do you know that happened across the United States, not just in New York? You don’t know — and
further, you have no idea what happened in other countries
...
When you present your research, you need to acknowledge this need for more data — but
that doesn’t mean you’re just going back to square one! You can pat yourself
on the back for finding important new information that helps inform sociologists’ understanding of gender and wages in the United States
...
That’s
just the way it works: the world is big, and sociologists will never know everything there is know about it
...
In the previous
example, sociologists needed to know what happened (whether or not the
wage disparity has decreased) before they can ask how it happened
...
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Part I: The Basic Basics
Choosing a Method
Getting an accurate picture of the social world is tricky business, especially
because it’s a moving target! Society changes every day — usually not too
quickly
...
In this section, I explain what those choices are
...
qualitative
The most fundamental decision you have to make is whether your study is
going to be a quantitative study or a qualitative study
...
A quantitative study is a study
where data are gathered as, or translated into, numbers
...
When are sociological data too old?
When a colleague and I studied college attainment, we were lucky to have a very large set of
survey data collected by the U
...
Department
of Education from 1988 to 1994
...
She was very interested in our
study — until she learned that our data concerned students who had started college in
1993
...
article on college attainment, I can just summarize the results of one or two recent studies, interview a couple of kids who are on their
way to college this fall, and I’m done
...
We couldn’t just call up 14,000 kids who were
going to college in 2007, such as the government did in the early 1990s
...
And yet our study was published in a good sociology journal
...
Also, as I note in Chapter 2, sociologists are
interested in the fundamental patterns of social
interaction
...
That’s why a
historical sociologist can study something that
happened in the 1800s, or even in the 1200s, and
discover that a large number of their colleagues
are interested if the study is done well
...
First, a journalist can write an article based on
far less data than you typically need for a sociological study
...
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67
Quantitative analysis
In a quantitative study, data may be gathered as numbers
...
For example:
✓ Annual income, in dollars
✓ Test scores
✓ Unemployment rates
Other information can be fairly easily translated into numbers
...
or vice-versa)
✓ Race or ethnicity (1=Latino, 0=non-Latino)
✓ Marital status (1=unmarried, 0=married)
Still other information is trickier to translate into numbers, but it’s possible
to at least try
...
With statistical analysis, you can easily analyze a
huge amount of information
...
)
Qualitative analysis
In a qualitative study, data are gathered as statements, experiences, or
impressions and are usually recorded as words
...
✓ An ethnography, where you spend weeks, months, or even years in a
particular social setting and write about your experiences
...
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...
The benefit of qualitative research is that it allows for a much more in-depth
understanding of a situation
...
Cross-sectional vs
...
In other words, a
sociologist asks whether or not one thing causes another
...
Certain research methods
can make this easier — but at a price
...
Longitudinal data allow sociologists to make more confident statements about causality, but they can be difficult to gather
...
Psychologists have
the benefit of using a laboratory setting: If you take two groups of randomly
selected people and have one group play violent video games while the other
group play peaceful video games, and the first group gets more violent than
the second, you have a good idea that the games caused the violence
...
If people who are more violent are also more likely to play violent video games, how do we know that
the games made them violent — rather than that they chose to play violent
games because of the violent nature they were born with? We don’t
...
In a
cross-sectional study, data are gathered across multiple groups at one point
in time
...
From this information, you do your best to infer
what the relationship might be between media use and children’s behavior
...
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...
For example, if you revisit those 1,000 families
five years later, many aspects of their lives will have changed
...
If it has, that’s a much more convincing finding than a
finding from cross-sectional data
...
It takes a lot of resources to conduct a
sociological study, and conducting a longitudinal study takes at least twice as
many resources — plus, of course, you have to wait around while people live
their lives
...
)
Hybrid methods
Increasingly, sociologists appreciate that the ideal is to use both qualitative and quantitative, and both longitudinal and cross-sectional, methods to
answer a question
...
For example, I used all these methods in my study of children’s media
...
That was a quantitative, longitudinal study:
I retrospectively “followed” a number of publications over time, and
translated their content into numbers on a spreadsheet
...
That was a qualitative, cross-sectional study: I talked with people
from two different social groups, and wrote about what they said without
turning it into numbers
...
Conducting a sociological study is kind of like fixing a car: You’d better bring
your whole toolbox because you don’t know ahead of time what (methodological) tool is going to be the best one for the job
...
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Part I: The Basic Basics
Analyzing Analytical Tools
Whether your data are quantitative or qualitative, cross-sectional or longitudinal, you’re going to have a whopping task in front of you when you sit
down to analyze them
...
When used correctly, these analytical tools can lead to
astonishing insights
...
” It usually means that someone doesn’t want to have something bad
happen that will add them to a tally of highway casualties, drug addicts, or
other people in undesirable circumstances
...
Statistics aren’t just about tallying disasters; they’re
about taking account of the full range of observed circumstances and helping
to spot trends and patterns
...
You can observe a lot of members of
that population and see whether a pattern or trend is present in that group
you observe
...
If you have a bag with an equal number of black
and white marbles, you might reach in and grab a handful of marbles that
happen to be all white
...
Statistics
can help to tell you just how improbable it is that the patterns you observe in
your sample are representative of patterns in the total population
...
Say you’re curious to know whether, in your country, boys drop out of high
school more frequently than girls
...
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71
every high school student in the country
...
Maybe you know that there were 15 boys and 15 girls in your freshman homeroom, and that by senior year 2 boys and 1 girl had dropped out of school
...
So imagine you find data on your entire school, and learn that of 354 boys and 373
girls who started high school with you, 32 boys and 20 girls dropped out
...
but just how confident? Maybe you can find data on your whole school district, and learn that of 4,909 boys and 5,012 girls who started freshman year,
489 boys and 318 girls failed to graduate
...
But where do you stop gathering data? When can you be confident enough?
Here’s where statistics come in
...
99 percent confident
that, in fact, in the general population of high school students, boys drop out
more often than girls
...
That’s just a very simple statistical test; programs that can be run on an ordinary personal computer are capable of performing much more complex analyses on huge sets of data
...
You can never be 100 percent
confident, but with a few thousand cases you can often be 90 percent, or
even 99 percent, confident
...
A crucial assumption is that you’re testing a representative sample of the population
...
You would need to take a broader sample, from a wide range of different school districts, to get a representative sample
...
It
will happily carry on applying tests and reporting results, trusting you to interpret those results appropriately
...
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...
When you believe that something
is true, you are more likely to pay attention to
information that supports your belief than information that contradicts it
...
Of course Kim would try
her best to accurately specify just how muscular (on a 1 to 5 scale) any given model was, but
I was concerned that if Kim tried to publish her
research, critics would say that she may have
conveniently “seen” more muscle on models in
later ads so as to support her hypothesis
...
This was what I advised my
student Kim to do when she proposed a study
of women’s bodies as they appeared in advertisements over several decades
...
What to do? I advised Kim to enlist a classmate
to serve as backup: Each ad was evaluated for
“muscularity” by two people whose scores
were then compared and averaged
...
”
It turned out that Kim and her classmate were
usually in close agreement on just how muscular any given model was, so Kim could present
her results with confidence
...
The answer is: yes!)
The problem, though, was in deciding just how
muscular any given body was
...
In a quantitative study, you might ask someone a series of ten
multiple-choice questions about their life; in a qualitative study, you might sit
down with them and ask a few open-ended questions that they take an hour
or more to answer
...
There’s no real shortcut for analyzing qualitative data: You have to go over
your notes carefully, multiple times, and take note of trends and patterns
which you then present to readers or listeners, usually with representative
quotes from your interviews or notes
...
(In fact, they rarely do
...
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73
Some computer programs are now available to help researchers analyze
qualitative data
...
These programs can’t conduct
your analysis for you, but they can help you work more quickly and efficiently as well as help you to collaborate with colleagues who may be looking
at the same data
...
But again,
you need to be cautious lest you fall into one of these traps
...
But in the
imperfect world we actually inhabit, you often need to settle for the best data
available
...
Your data (the information
you gather) need to match your theory (the question you’re asking, and your
hypothesis about it)
...
What if, instead, we had taken
a measure of whether they had graduated from college? That would have
been a data/theory mismatch because it would have missed all the kids who
enrolled in college and then dropped out
...
What makes students more or less likely to graduate
from college after they enroll is an interesting question — but it’s a different
question from the one we were asking
...
It can
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...
You don’t want to overgeneralize
...
Often, the most interesting result of a study will be
a kernel of data that jumps out of one of several regression analyses; you
have a responsibility to explain to your readers and listeners that the effect
you’ve discovered may vary depending on what analysis you conduct or the
presence of a certain situation
...
The world is a
complicated place, and it’s okay to acknowledge that when you present the
results of your study
...
Although this doesn’t make the discovery invalid — indeed, if a researcher is
properly attentive to details and analyses, it makes the discovery especially
valid — it does mean that any quick-and-dirty summary of the findings, such
as you might find in the media, is bound to leave out important details
...
You notice that the children of these parents, on average, earn unusually low grades given their standardized test scores
...
In your paper, you write:
These findings suggest that parents who vocally advocate for their
children may reap a reward in terms of higher grades awarded to those
children
...
Further research should focus on the
content of parent-teacher conversations and the context in which they
occur
...
Your research is then
reported in a two-paragraph newspaper blurb with the headline sociologist:
minority parents hurt their kids by refusing to grade-grub
...
That
kind of thing happens frequently in media coverage of scientific findings, and
scientists sometimes play into it by presenting their work in such a way as to
make their findings sound especially “sexy” — that is, intriguing and important in a way that even a layman can understand
...
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...
Sociologist Felix Elwert was curious about
the effect of cohabitation — living together as
romantic partners — on marriage and divorce
...
The
conclusion? Cohabitation makes divorce more
likely
...
But Elwert pointed out that there was a major
data/theory mismatch in that conclusion
...
What about all
the couples who moved in together and later
decided to break up, without ever having been
married? If they had not been permitted to
live together without marrying, some of them
surely would have been married, and probably
would have divorced
...
The data didn’t prove that cohabitation caused divorce
...
The missing links
When you sit down to analyze a large data set, it may seem like you have way
more data than you know what to do with
...
Even so, there’s still a lot more you don’t know than you do know
...
The two major categories of missing
information are missing data and missing variables
...
If your data over-represent any particular group, then your data
don’t really tell you about the whole population
...
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Part I: The Basic Basics
Traditionally, surveys have been conducted by phone
...
This has never been a perfect method because
often people aren’t home or, if they do answer the phone, they refuse to
participate
...
Today, this problem is compounded by the problem that
more and more people are trading their landlines for cell phones, which don’t
appear in the phone book — so a sample of people who are home, have a
phone, answer the phone, and agree to participate in a survey is looking less
and less like a sample of the general population
...
What if
someone takes a 100-question survey and refuses or forgets to answer 5 questions that figure in your analysis? Do you throw out that person’s response
entirely? Do you try to guess what they might have answered, based on what
other people like them answered? There’s no obvious answer as to the right
way to handle that situation, but on many surveys, a huge fraction — even
most — of the respondents have missing data on some variables, so it’s
potentially a big problem
...
What if there are important questions that
you simply forget to ask people? Usually, you just don’t know
...
For example, say you’re called in to consult for a company that wants to
improve its employees’ reliability
...
and how often each employee misses work
...
You report this to the company, which assumes its younger
employees are simply partying too much and instructs the human resources
department to screen more carefully for serious-minded applicants
...
What if younger employees are less likely
to own cars and more likely to rely on public transportation, which may be
unreliable
...
Again,
there’s no obvious way to avoid this problem — you need to be mindful of
the possibility that there’s important information you don’t have, which may
cause your analysis to suggest that some variables are more important than
they actually are
...
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Statistical snafus
Fortunately, expert statisticians have developed a range of sophisticated
mathematical techniques for addressing these problems and others
...
Missing data? No problem! Just use this exciting
new imputation technique
...
These techniques are indeed powerful, and in the hands of a knowledgeable
statistician, they can help solve some very tricky problems
...
Each of those techniques depends on certain assumptions being true and yields results that need to be carefully interpreted, and a
sociologist with a less than perfect understanding of statistics may misuse or
misinterpret them
...
but you don’t even know that they are!
How does this become a problem? Let’s say you’re an expert in the sociology
of education, with working knowledge — but not expert knowledge — of statistics
...
You mention
this to a colleague, who says, “Oh, have you tried the Blahdeblah technique
for solving that problem?” It sounds good to you, so you run your data
through the Blahdeblah analysis on your statistics program, and it spits out
some results that look intriguing
...
The editor sends it to two sociologists who are experts on education but not on statistics; they like your paper
and just have to take your word that you’ve used the Blahdeblah technique
correctly
...
What if you misused that technique
or misinterpreted your results? No one except a statistics expert would know,
and they’re all busy reading statistics journals — not education journals
...
It’s a serious problem
...
just plain oops!
And then there are those mistakes that are just plain bloopers
...
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...
Herrnstein and Charles Murray
...
This
conclusion was so outrageously counterintuitive that social scientists looked
very carefully at Herrnstein and Murray’s analyses
...
In the end, many of Herrnstein and Murray’s analyses and conclusions were
shown to be seriously flawed
...
You can’t actually have fewer than zero years of education
...
) Um
...
but they might never have been discovered if the book’s
conclusions hadn’t been so implausible
...
The research process is complicated, and
there are a lot of things that can go wrong — but that doesn’t mean you
ought to go around mistrusting everything a sociologist tells you! It means
simply that you need to be aware that just because a conclusion happens
to be backed by fancy statistics or comes from a sociologist at a prestigious
university, the study is not necessarily flawless or infallible
...
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...
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O
In this part
...
No matter what you
study in society, you have to know what culture is (and
what it isn’t), how to connect big social structures with
everyday person-to-person interaction, and how to make
sense of social networks
...
09_572368-pp02
...
It
also means that they share a common culture
...
I
explain how sociologists have developed strategies for studying everything
from hip-hop music to fashion to first names to our deepest values and
unquestioned assumptions about the world
...
Understanding how this process works means understanding that you’re not
born into a single culture, but actually into many cultures: the microculture
of your family; the intersecting cultures of your neighborhood, church, and
school; the broader cultures of your city, region, and country; and even the
global culture shared, in some part, by nearly every single person on Earth
...
Some
socialization happens through the media and people you encounter at work
and school, but the most important way you learn about culture — and your
place in culture — is at home
...
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...
When you think of the
term culture, you likely envision shared ideas, norms, and values, all of which
sociologists consider to be the broader sense of culture
...
✓ Structure: The fundamental organization of society into its institutions,
groups, statuses, and roles
...
Although the idea that the broad sense of “culture” has a subcategory called
“culture” can be confusing, different sociologists handle the broad definition of
culture in different ways
...
To
help you understand the breakdown further, in the next sections I explain what
culture and structure mean as well as how they may even overlap
...
Understanding how they correlate to one another
and how others might define them is essential to understanding sociological
arguments
...
People are allowed or even encouraged to
hold these ideas and values for themselves, and those same ideas and values
may change over their lives
...
Everything in your
head that you somehow share with other people — whether you talk about it
or not — might be considered culture
...
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✓ Tastes in music, movies, books, and art: Do you prefer classical music
or rock music? Who’s your favorite actor? Who’s your favorite author?
(Records, movies, books, and paintings themselves are referred to as
“cultural products
...
Of course, if these elements of culture can change so easily and vary so
widely, you may wonder if they even matter
...
Even moral values, which are deeply important
to each individual, don’t directly affect the overall organization of society
...
For more on the
debate, see Chapter 3
...
” When those terms are used, ideal culture refers to the values that
a society professes — for example, that college students shouldn’t drink
alcohol — and real culture refers to the values that a society actually acts
on — in this example, that drinking is generally understood to be a normal
part of the college experience
...
Breaking down structure
In sociology, the word “structure” (or “social structure”) refers to the fundamental organization of society
...
Your status in the social structure determines
what rights and responsibilities you have
...
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Part II: Seeing Society Like a Sociologist
“Status” update
Status isn’t just something you update on
...
A status is a place in the social structure
...
Here are just a few of my own statuses:
✓ Boyfriend
✓ Male
✓ 33-year-old
✓ White
✓ Graduate of St
...
As opposed to “culture,” things referred to as “structure” are things that
people in the same society tend to agree on, things that form the fundamental organization of society
...
The foundations of social structure include:
✓ Technology: A technological change — for example, the invention of the
automobile — can spur tremendous changes in the way we live and the
culture we share
...
Even if you don’t drive a car, cars affect your
life every day
...
”
✓ The economy: When the economy is booming, there are many jobs and
resources to share; when the economy is hurting, unemployment is high
and everyone has to make do with less
...
Even the leader of a country can’t snap his
or her fingers and turn a national economy around — the economy lies
deep in our social structure and is difficult to change
...
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✓ The government: Democracies are organized a certain way; communist
governments are organized another way; and military dictatorships
are organized yet another way
...
The statuses available to people in the Soviet
Union were very different than those available to people in Russia today
...
✓ The military: Those who have access to weapons and command over
armies can often force their will on others
...
A group or an individual with enough military power
can overthrow a government and bring about a new way of life (for
better or for worse) for millions of people
...
Technological revolutions, economic
upheavals, and military coups can transform social organization in ways that
may or may not be welcome, but are hard to control or predict
...
It’s helpful to make a distinction between culture and structure, but keep in mind that the word “culture” can be used to
describe even the kind of basic understandings that change slowly and vary
relatively little
...
The thousand-dollar bills in
my wallet are real, but their value is a social construction — they have value
only because the people in my society agree that they have value
...
Our economic system is a basic component of our social structure, but still, in some ways it behaves like the things we call “culture
...
Some sociologists consider “culture” to be only
relatively frivolous things like fashion and style; other sociologists consider
“culture” to include everything that’s in your head
...
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...
You’ve seen
plenty of hairstyle trends come and go in your lifetime, and you may even
have converted from one religion to another — but unless you’ve moved
around the world, how many different economic systems or types of government have you lived under? Here’s another example: over the past century,
America has welcomed millions of immigrants who have brought diverse
religious views and lifestyles to our country and significantly changed our
culture — but our social structure has remained, fundamentally, that of a
capitalist democracy
...
Are language and symbols (like red for “stop”) culture or structure? It’s confusing because they’re widely shared and resistant to change like structure, but
they’re also kind of arbitrary — what language you speak doesn’t matter, so
long as you get your meaning across
...
”
Cultural – most variable, most subject to change and debate
Art (paintings, music, books, movies)
Religion (beliefs about the spiritual world)
Politics (political leadership, policy debates)
Law (system of government, basic legal principles)
Economy (economic organization, currency, trade patterns)
Language (fundamental basis of communication, widely understood symbols)
Figure 5-1:
The
structureculture
continuum
...
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87
Culture and the end of slavery
Slavery in the United States officially ended
with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 —
a change in the law of the land
...
All were important
in bringing an end to slavery, but notice how
change came most quickly (yet least decisively)
at the culture end of the continuum
...
✓ Religion: Many spiritual leaders took up
emancipation as a religious issue, arguing
that holding human beings as property was
morally wrong and displeasing to God
...
Abraham Lincoln was elected president without the support of a single southern state
...
S
...
✓ Economy: Slavery was fundamental to the
economy of the southern states, and it
took decades for those states to adjust to
emancipation
...
✓ Language: One significant barrier to former
slaves’ upward mobility was the fact that
many slaves had not been taught to read
or write, and had relatively little experience
with the vocabulary and speech patterns
of people of influence
...
✓ Technology: By the 1860s, the ongoing
development of agricultural technology
making unskilled labor less valuable to
farmers certainly didn’t hurt in convincing northerners and southerners alike to
accept the idea of a world without slavery
...
Cultural sociologists argue that it’s crucial to separate the production of culture from the reception of culture
...
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...
Other angles on culture
Sociologists don’t have a monopoly on the study of culture, but there are
important differences between the sociological study of culture and the
way other writers and thinkers approach the subject
...
Understanding how other disciplines study culture will also help you understand what’s distinctive about the sociological approach generally
...
Rather than becoming deeply familiar with any one culture
to the exclusion of others, sociologists want to see what the commonalities
and differences are across a range of cultures
...
Looking at how other academic disciplines in the following list study culture
helps in understanding how sociologists study culture:
Anthropology
Anthropology is a discipline that is all about understanding culture
...
Anthropologists appreciate that social values and perspectives may
vary widely from one society to another, and when they set out to study
any society, from a rural Chinese village to a bustling neighborhood in central Berlin, they are careful to question their preconceptions about what is
“right” and “wrong
...
The
emphasis of most anthropologists is on precisely observing and really getting to know the groups they are studying
...
Sociologists and anthropologists share a
desire not to take anything for granted, but most sociologists would rather
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...
Cultural studies
In the field of “cultural studies,” scholars are similarly thorough and analytical in examining cultural practices and products
...
They’re similar to the kind of questions that a sociologist might ask, but as
with anthropology, the emphasis is more on achieving a deep understanding
of a particular place and time than on making comparisons across places and
times
...
Liberal arts
Of course, there may be no one more interested in culture than those people
producing cultural products like books, movies, and music
...
Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and songs like Grandmaster Flash’s “The
Message” have a great deal to say about culture and society — but writers of
fictional stories and song lyrics are not scientists, and they don’t want to be! An
artist’s goal is to say something with emotional impact and broad resonance,
not to prove a point using systematic observations and analyses
...
As with any scientific study, a sociological
study can be supported or challenged when new evidence comes to light
...
Sociologists working in this field have shown
that structural changes behind the scenes can have a huge impact on the culture that we see
...
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One classic study of the production of culture was conducted by the husbandand-wife team of Harrison and Cynthia White, who studied the rise of
Impressionism in French painting
...
If Monet had come along 100 years earlier, he would have been out of luck
...
As communications technology has developed, allowing culture created by a small group of people to
quickly reach a very large group of people, understanding the production of
culture has become increasingly important
...
The reception of culture
Studying the reception of culture means looking at how people use and
interpret culture — especially cultural products like books and TV shows
...
People seek them out for different reasons and make their own interpretations of what they see, hear, and read
...
The
show centers on a character named Archie Bunker, an intolerant bigot who
often gets into fights with his more progressive family members
...
On the other hand, though, viewers
who were themselves bigots thought Archie Bunker was the hero of the show
and that the producers meant to make fun of his foolish family!
This demonstrates why it’s a mistake to assume that a certain cultural product will have the same effect on everyone
...
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...
But there are some things that come close! There are some
very widely shared cultural norms and some very popular cultural products:
things that just about everyone likes — or, at least, knows about
...
In this section, I explain how mainstream culture can be a common point of reference, even for people who
disagree with it and are trying to tear it apart
...
Even if people in a given society have different interpretations of, say, a popular book or television show, certain cultural products, ideas, and values are
so widespread across society that they form mainstream culture: culture that
has relatively wide agreement and awareness across a society
...
These things may, in fact, seem
downright boring, but mainstream culture includes some of a society’s most
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...
Even in societies that have
many different cultural traditions, products, ideas, values, and practices in
mainstream culture can provide common touchstones that help everyone get
along — and have something to talk about around the water cooler or over
the backyard fence!
What’s the difference between mainstream culture and structure? It’s a good
question
...
The difference is that mainstream culture is still culture — it’s not necessarily foundational to the way a society is organized, and like all culture (in
the sociological sense), it sometimes changes quickly
...
It would be a lot
easier to get along having your own unique fashion (culture) than having your
own unique currency (structure) — but still, most people tend to follow popular fashions
...
That’s the power of mainstream culture
...
Values and practices associated with a
subculture will often seem odd to people who aren’t involved with that subculture, and they may even cause outrage
...
A good example of a subculture that caused outrage can be found in the
1970s punk subculture in England
...
Punks pierced their lips with
safety pins, spiked and dyed their hair, and — most offensively — used the
British flag in subversive and disrespectful ways
...
Not all subcultures are so forthrightly political, but all subcultures depart
from mainstream culture in some combination of ways
...
What makes a subculture a subculture (rather than just a different culture
entirely) is that members of a subculture aren’t ignorant of mainstream
culture — they know exactly what mainstream culture is, and they deliberately reject it
...
For example, some religious groups who disapprove of mainstream movies
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...
Someone who’s not in that subculture,
on the other hand, could just walk into any cineplex and buy a ticket to anything that looks good
...
An example of this is the “straight edge” movement in punk rock: a
group of punks who dress like punks and act like punks but who share a commitment not to use alcohol or drugs like punks do
...
When subcultures reach a certain level of popularity, they may be absorbed
into mainstream culture, thus ceasing to be different or shocking
...
Microcultures
Subcultures reject mainstream culture, but there can’t be such a thing as a
subculture if there’s no mainstream culture to reject!
Developments in communications technology — the invention of the printing
press and, later, radio and television — have been responsible for the spread
of mainstream culture, and further technological developments may be helping to bring it to an end
...
When there were only a few radio stations on the dial, almost
everyone listened to the same music; now, Internet radio allows you to easily
listen to any of thousands upon thousands of different radio stations
...
Given these dramatic changes, sociologist Jason Kaufman has argued that it
makes less and less sense to think of there even being anything like “mainstream culture
...
Kaufman says
that we are increasingly living in a world of microcultures, where people can
seek out small groups of like-minded people and spend nearly all their time
interacting with them — rather than sharing the norms, values, and practices
of people in their immediate surroundings
...
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...
Whether or not that
was actually true, it seemed plausible because
almost everyone would be watching the same
movie
...
Now that most households have cable
TV with dozens of channels — not to mention
access to millions of videos on the Internet —
every single person in every single house on the
block could be watching something different
...
On
the other hand, today’s technology allows
people to make new kinds of social connections: If you’re not watching TV with your mom
in the living room, you might be on the Internet
connecting with friends across the country
...
Was life better back in the day when everyone watched the same shows and listened to
If it’s true that we’re moving towards a world of microcultures, it will have
important implications for everyone’s lives
...
Socialization: Where You
Connect in Culture
Despite all the different perspectives on culture, there’s one thing everybody
agrees on: Culture is not something you’re born with, it’s something you
learn
...
Like all learning, socialization
happens especially quickly when people are young, but it’s a process that
continues throughout life
...
Some socialization is very deliberate; for example, when companies have
diversity training sessions meant to teach employees to value the fact that
their coworkers come from different social backgrounds
...
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95
however, happens by pure osmosis
...
(See the beginning of
this chapter for definitions of “values” and “norms
...
Nature vs
...
Normally sociologists are interested in large groups of people (that is, how
human society works) while psychologists are interested in people as individuals (that is, how the human mind works)
...
Social psychology is the study of how people as individuals
learn from and interact with the people around them
...
nurture
...
Nurture stands for everything that happens to
us as we grow and learn through interactions with other people
...
But even identical twins, who have exactly the same DNA, develop
different personalities and interests
...
Then I transferred to another
school, and on the first day of second grade I
finished my lunch and stood up, only to realize that no one else was standing
...
” I blushed and sat back down
...
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differently than everyone else did I realize that I
had been socialized into a different set of norms
than the kids around me
...
(For example, a student might
board a city bus and try to negotiate with the
driver about the fare
...
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There’s no one right answer to the question of nature vs
...
Although it’s not an inclusive list, Table 5-1 gives
you some examples of how you grow and learn through nature, nurture, and
the interaction of the two
...
Skills and interests
You are who other people think you are
Through interpersonal socialization (see sidebar, “Not-so-secret agents”)
people learn the values and norms of the group they’re born into, but they
also learn who they are as individuals
...
In An Inconvenient Squirrel, a children’s play by Joseph Scrimshaw, the
squirrel of the title is “inconvenient” because he refuses to accept a name
like “Really Important Squirrel” or “Master Thespian Squirrel,” a name that
defines his identity
...
”
Evil Genius Squirrel wasn’t the first one to figure this out
...
Cooley emphasized the importance of each person’s “primary group” — the
group of people with whom you interact most
...
You implicitly learn norms and values from the members of
your primary group, but you also notice how you’re different from them
...
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If you’re seen as “the quiet one” in your family, this becomes an important
part of your identity, even if your family members generally are nonstop chatterboxes compared to the family next door
...
They may run away, rebel, or otherwise
behave in a manner completely contrary to the way they were raised
...
Not-so-secret agents
Sociologists use the term agents of socialization to refer to the various people and groups
that socialize an individual into his or her
culture(s)
...
Think about how they’ve affected
the way you think about yourself and the world
around you
...
Your family has
likely shaped everything from your habits to
your moral values to your sense of humor
and — most fundamentally — your sense
of yourself
...
✓ A church (or sacred place generally) is a
place where people go to connect with
the spiritual world, but also — often very
deliberately — to be socialized
...
Religious
services often include solemn rituals and
have dress codes marking them as unusually important
...
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religions, but they remain forever affected
by the socialization they have received in
communities of faith
...
Teachers and administrators typically make no bones about the fact that
their socially-designated job is not just to
transmit knowledge but to transmit culture
...
School is also a prime site of socialization by peers
...
As I explained
earlier in this chapter, people are active
viewers, listeners, and readers who watch,
listen to, and read media for many different
reasons and learn different things from the
same songs, shows, or books
...
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What sociologists seek to understand is how human groups behave in general, and what is true in general is that most people’s individual identities
are very strongly shaped by their primary groups
...
Culture Paradox: Pulling Us Together
and Pushing Us Apart
When people think about themselves in their social groups, they tend to
notice cultural differences rather than cultural similarities
...
When Garfinkel’s students tried to negotiate bus fare, they made clear that
despite all the many cultural differences among people riding on a city bus,
they share at least one powerful norm: the norm of equality, that each person
should pay the same amount for the same bus ride
...
You have to understand
culture if you want to understand society, and you have to understand culture
if you want to understand yourself
...
Think of
all the social groups you’re a member of: your family, your neighborhood,
your peer group, your sports teams, your clubs
...
So
socially as well as biologically, you’re unique!
Uniting through culture
It’s because of our shared culture that people are able to get along as well as
they do
...
In this view, culture is like the nervous system — it connects everything and makes sure that every part of the organism is working together
...
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...
They don’t argue over bus fare, fight over whether they have to stop at red
lights, or debate whether people should be allowed to have private property
...
It’s thanks to all these shared values that people are able to build and maintain great cities, to work together to find cures for diseases, and to make and
distribute movies and songs that are loved by millions
...
Imagine having a business meeting where there was absolutely no small talk,
where you felt absolutely no identification with the people you were meeting with
...
It’s just
about the most important thing we humans do with our relatively supersized
brains, and it may be our crowning achievement as a species
...
Wars have erupted over differences of religion
and tradition; in some neighborhoods, you might be shot for dressing a certain way or speaking a certain language
...
He
would say that it’s nice to think that people are all working together for the
collective good, but in fact most people are working for the benefit of the few
lucky ones who control what gets done and what doesn’t
...
By this
logic, all of mainstream culture might be considered an “opiate
...
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Other sociologists have pointed out that cultural differences can reinforce
and even strengthen structural differences
...
No matter how qualified you are, you’ll be at a disadvantage applying
for many high-paying jobs if you show up speaking with a certain accent, or
wearing the wrong brand of suit, or admitting that you know nothing about
fine art
...
)
But cultural divisions aren’t always class divisions
...
In some neighborhoods, different ethnic groups don’t mix: they
keep separate social groups and are suspicious of one another even though
they live amongst each other, have very similar jobs, and face similar challenges that they could work together to solve if they weren’t divided by cultural differences
...
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...
This is called microsociology because it’s the study of
society at its “smallest” — as small as two people interacting
...
How do you deal with the social rules that guide you, and
how do you use them to your advantage? What do you do when you encounter someone who plays by different rules than you do?
Just as understanding society helps to understand the choices individuals
face, so do sociologists need to have some idea of individual psychology to
understand how society works
...
In general, sociologists find that people are fairly predictable on average — but that doesn’t
mean that their choices always “make sense
...
In this chapter, I explain how sociologists think about the individual person
in society — how and why a person makes the choices he does, and what
effect this has on his society
...
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...
In this section, I first explain
how “social facts” are the sum of individual actions, and then discuss how
your social knowledge can serve as a toolbox to help you do well in different
contexts
...
By definition, a social fact is true of your society, but
it doesn’t say anything about you
...
Your
actions help make up the aggregate facts about your society, and your beliefs
both influence and are influenced by your society’s norms and values
...
but it’s a lot easier that way
An aggregate fact is a summary fact about a number of smaller things
...
An aggregate trend describes how an aggregate fact is changing over time
...
✓ Jobs: People typically hold several different jobs over the course of
their working lives
...
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...
It doesn’t tell me about your personal history or the choices
you personally will make in life
...
To understand how facts about society in general can affect your own personal life, think about these points:
✓ Marriage: When deciding whether to marry someone, you do so with the
understanding that, however you may personally feel about marriage, in
your society generally marriage is very often impermanent
...
Consciously or unconsciously, the fact that divorce
is socially acceptable may influence you to make a riskier marriage
decision than you would in a society where divorce is not considered
acceptable
...
It may just be, but that would not be the norm
...
This means that you probably won’t look for a job that will last a lifetime — you’ll look for a job
that will serve you well over the next few years
...
Everywhere from TV programs to dentists’ offices to nightclubs, you’re much more likely to hear pop, rock, or R&B than classical
music
...
For this reason, you may choose not to listen to classical music, or to listen to it only in private
...
Norms, values, and laws
In Chapter 5, I describe the continuum of social understandings and agreements, running from “structure” to “culture
...
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...
Laws are social norms
that are seen as being so important that they’re written down and made
formal, so that if you break them you can be punished — with punishments
ranging from a small fine to a death sentence
...
) For example, you can’t just
✓ Make up your own currency and expect it to buy you anything at the
store
...
✓ Break the law and expect to not be punished
...
For example:
✓ Current fashions and styles, such as whether or not it’s acceptable to
wear socks with sandals
✓ Religious principles and rituals, such as Bar Mitzvahs or the baptism of
children
✓ Social traditions, such as shooting off fireworks on certain national
holidays
You don’t have to follow any of these social norms, but if you don’t, people
around you may find your behavior confusing or even rude
...
In fact, no single
person did
...
No individual person makes social norms, but every single person helps perpetuate and enforce them
...
You can try to buck the trend, but you’ll almost certainly face resistance
...
)
Use a tool (from your social
repertoire) — don’t be one
Your life as an individual in society is shaped by trends, norms, values, and
laws, but what are you supposed to do when you don’t know what to do?
Societies today are diverse, and in the course of your daily life you may move
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...
For this
reason, life in society can be very confusing, not to mention frustrating —
even dangerous
...
Your cultural knowledge is
like a toolkit because you don’t always use all of it — but it’s ready for you
when you want or need to use it
...
For example:
✓ You might dress in a suit and watch your language at work — but then
slip into jeans and a t-shirt for your after-work softball game, where you
can freely drink beer and swear
...
✓ You might know to clap and cheer after an impressive solo at a jazz
show — but not at an orchestral performance
...
Prudence Carter, a sociologist of education, talked
to inner-city teens and found that they were able to succeed at school and at
home by knowing how to talk and dress in one way to impress their teachers
in school, and in another way to impress their peers at home on the block
...
The trick is managing all those different roles
...
You’ve
probably been advised to “just be yourself” — but who you are comes, in large
part, from your society
...
If you wear a suit to work and do a job you’re proud of, and
then go home and sit on the couch watching TV in your sweats, in which context are you being most “yourself”? Some sociologists have gone so far as to
say that the idea of “being yourself” only makes sense in a social context
...
A friend of mine has a son who recently started playing with a team in the
National Football League
...
The
day his son was scheduled to play in the team’s starting lineup for the first
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...
My friend and his brother-in-law flew out to the city where the game was
being played and headed for the stadium wearing jerseys with his son’s name
and team on them
...
Seeing the visitors’ jerseys, the fans jeered and
shouted threats at my friend — some even threw themselves in my friend’s
path and asked him what he thought he was doing
...
The two pressed on, though, and
finally made it safely to their seats
...
It’s not against the law to cheer for a visiting team; in fact, it
would be illegal to try to stop someone from doing so
...
He was free to
ignore that norm — and he did — but it was at his own peril
...
Understanding social norms is one of the things that
sociologists do best
...
that’s the meat
and potatoes of sociology
...
Other sociologists,
though, have argued that a sociological theory is incomplete if it doesn’t
explain how social facts play out at the individual level
...
Spain doesn’t “decide” to have a certain suicide rate; individual Spaniards decide for themselves whether or not to take their lives
...
Sociologists don’t need to become psychologists, but they do
need to have some idea of why people make the choices they do
...
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107
Making rational choices —
or, at least, trying to
To understand how or why a person makes choices in society, it makes sense
to begin with the assumption that everyone at least tries to be rational in his
or her decision-making
...
In the following sections,
I explain how what sociologists and economists refer to as rational choice
theory (or, sometimes, rational action theory) works in situations from car
shopping to date shopping
...
For centuries, economists
have operated under the basic assumption that people are rational creatures
who will, in general, make the choices they feel are best for themselves
...
They
believe that even in cases where someone’s actions seem inexplicable, there
is probably a self-serving motive behind those actions
...
It’s obvious what this means in economic terms: People will — or at least,
they’re supposed to — choose the savings account with the highest interest
rate, or buy a product from the retailer who offers the lowest price
...
Say you’re shopping for a car
...
Even then, a certain amount of money — say, $25,000 — might buy any of
dozens or hundreds of different cars
...
For example, you might consider:
✓ How much is it worth to you to have a new car versus a used one?
✓ Would you rather have a very reliable car, or a very high-performing one?
✓ How much does it matter whether your car is fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly?
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...
Applying rational choice to non-financial decisions
What about decisions that fall outside the strictly economic realm, though?
What about the decisions you make that have nothing to do with money as
such? Are those decisions “rational,” too? Indeed they are, many economists
and sociologists believe
...
In many ways it seems like you don’t
“choose” your partner; rather, a relationship just happens
...
”
The fact of the matter is, though, that unless you live in a society where marriages are 100 percent arranged by parents and family, you do have a choice
in whom you marry
...
“I’ve been looking for
someone like you,” someone will say, and the response may be, “I was hoping
you would offer to take me out on a date, and I knew I would accept your offer
...
✓ Do you want someone who has a similar job to yours, or a different one?
✓ Does it matter to you how much money the person makes? (Be honest!)
✓ Does it matter to you how much education the person has, or what they
studied?
✓ How much does physical attractiveness matter to you? (Again, be
honest!) Are there certain characteristics, like hair color or height, that
especially matter to you?
✓ Does it matter whether your partner shares your religious background,
or comes from the same area you do?
✓ Does it matter whether your partner shares your race or ethnic background?
✓ Does it matter who your partner’s friends and family are?
✓ Does it matter what your partner’s leisure interests are? Is it important
that they be similar to yours?
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...
How do
people even begin to place a value on a painted
canvas that serves little purpose beyond hanging on the wall?
discovered that at the high end of the car
market, buyers and sellers talk about cars less
as though they were cars and more as though
they were works of art
...
It turns out that they place a high degree of
importance on knowing who the artist is
...
By contrast, if you’re buying a relatively cheap
car that will just get you from place to place,
you probably won’t be sitting around with the
seller talking about the model’s history and pedigree
...
Paul’s thought was to respond,
“The answer to your first question is: five hundred dollars
...
”
Sociologists Joel Podolny and Marya HillPopper studied the market for cars, and they
Of course these things do matter, and online matchmaking sites take
advantage of that fact to pair their members with one another
...
The rational choice theorists might seem to have it all sealed up: Even when
it comes to something as intimate and personal as love and marriage, people
are rational decision-makers who make choices that will give them maximum
value
...
Can rational choice theory explain bad decisions?
D’oh! Making poor choices
Rational choice theory makes a world of sense when people are making
choices that actually make sense — but what about when they aren’t?
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...
Isn’t this a problem for economists and sociologists who believe
people are rational choice makers?
When I was a teenager my parents often found themselves questioning my
rationality — for example, when a friend and I tried to bicycle halfway across
Minnesota on the shoulder of an interstate freeway — but they weren’t the
first ones to notice that people sometimes make inexplicable decisions
...
Do people’s decisions make any sense at all?
Challenge #1: Sometimes people make sub-optimal choices
What does “sub-optimal” mean? It means that sometimes people make choices
that aren’t their best (that is, most optimal) choices
...
That’s not very rational
...
This view of rationality is called bounded rationality: You make the best decisions you can, based on the information you have time to collect
...
One of the decisions you have to make
when you’re making a purchase, or a career choice, or a choice of spouse, is
how much time you can afford to spend learning about all your options
...
Sure,
you may have found a better bargain if you visited the next dealer down
...
There is, after all,
somewhere you want to actually go in your car!
Challenge #2: Sometimes people deliberately make irrational choices
What if you know you’re being irrational?
Millions of people around the world gamble, putting billions of dollars at risk
at casinos, in lotteries, and with bookies
...
Sure, you might hit it big at the slots or in the lottery, but probably you’ll
lose
...
You know that, and you still choose to gamble
...
Many people, though, don’t see it that
way — they play to win, even if they know that on average they won’t
...
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111
People are sometimes irrational in ways like this — but they’re also predictably irrational
...
You know that every time you
put a dollar into a change machine you’ll be rewarded with exactly four
quarters
...
Credit card companies understand this principle, and they have great success offering huge amounts of immediate
cash in exchange for long-term payments that may end up being over
double the amount of the original loan
...
If you see a celebrity you admire drinking a
particular brand of soda, you place a greater value on that soda even if
you wouldn’t choose it over a competitor in a taste test
...
They can be incorporated into theories about human behavior;
even when people are irrational, they’re often still very predictable
...
You would certainly think you could count
on him to be rational
...
He rode in airplanes twice when he was in the
military during World War II, but after his discharge he never again flew anywhere
...
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your chances of being killed in an accident
are significantly greater if you drive across the
country than if you fly the same distance
...
On the other hand, Asimov is
an exception
...
Whether or
not sociologists think of themselves as believers
in “rational choice,” all of sociology rests on the
assumption that on average, people’s behavior is
at least somewhat predictable
...
What about emotion? Don’t people do things such as:
✓ Marry for love, even when it doesn’t make “sense”?
✓ Strike out in anger without stopping to think about the consequences?
✓ Overeat to fill emotional needs?
✓ Respond to emotional appeals for money and other support?
✓ Have a hard time working because they’re very sad about something
that’s happened to them?
How can anyone claim to understand human behavior without taking account
of emotion?
An economist or a sociologist who believes in rational choice models of
human behavior might respond to that challenge by pointing out that emotion actually plays less of a role in our decision-making than it might seem
...
Stories about star-crossed lovers who pursue their romance against
all odds make for great plays and movies, but most people, most of the time,
don’t fall helplessly into doomed love affairs — they conveniently fall in love
with coworkers or classmates with whom they have a lot in common
...
(Oddly,
this also works with beliefs and actions — people’s beliefs often follow their
actions rather than vice-versa
...
) So although
it certainly sometimes happens that people get carried away with emotion
and commit self-destructive acts or do things that seem to make no sense,
social scientists have observed that on average, people do in fact act rationally — or at least, predictably
...
When people find that their emotions are tending to get
the better of them, causing them to make choices that harm themselves or
others, they often try to manage that irrationality and put themselves back
on track
...
When you offer a service or a gift
with no thought of reward, that is pure altruism
...
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113
not pure altruism
...
Of course, most people are not Mother Teresa
...
For example:
✓ A major donor to a museum or a college may be rewarded by having a
building named after them, and may be given a seat on a board of directors, yielding valuable social and professional connections
...
✓ When you volunteer your time to an organization, you are gaining
potentially valuable experience and the social prestige of being seen to
give your time away
...
All this being true, it’s still the case that often people do act altruistically in
ways that are hard to understand from a rational-choice perspective
...
In fact, some sociologists argue that living peacefully and constructively in
society requires constant acts of generosity on everyone’s part
...
Think about what it would be like if every storekeeper had to assume that every single customer would steal if given any
opportunity, or if no one ever let anyone else merge into a crowded lane on
the freeway
...
So why don’t they? According to Durkheim, it’s norms and shared values
that hold society together
...
People
internalize the norms of society so deeply that they regularly act in ways that
would seem to be contrary to any selfish motives
...
To understand the decisions a person makes, you have to understand the society they come from
...
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...
At certain times,
with great ceremony, men present their sisters
and daughters with gifts of yams
...
In other words, among the Trobrianders, a ceremonial gift of yams is purely a gift given for the
sake of giving, in a ceremonial exchange that is
virtually mandatory
...
So why, then, the yam exchange? Isn’t it just a
big waste of food? Regardless of how it came
about, the yam exchange serves to make social
ties visible and to remind everyone of their obligations to one another
...
They both have a
lot of importance in our society, and that’s why
your mother told you to say “thank you” for all
your gifts
...
)
Symbolic Interactionism: Life is a Stage
Symbolic interactionism is the term used to describe the study of individual
human interaction in its social context
...
The fact that people don’t always agree
on the meanings of particular symbols makes life interesting, as each person
tries to achieve their social goals by using the symbols to their advantage
...
That sounds complicated
...
In the remainder of this chapter I explain how microsociologists understand individual
interaction, what they pay attention to when they observe humans interacting face to face
...
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115
When you, or anyone else, use words, clothes, or other symbols to communicate, you know (or you should know) to take into consideration that different
people will interpret them in different ways
...
Play ball! The rules of the game
As I explain in Chapter 3, microsociology was largely developed by early
American sociologists, especially those in the Chicago School
...
One of the most important thinkers in this tradition was George Herbert
Mead, a Chicago philosopher who influenced many sociologists
...
(For more on
socialization, see Chapter 5
...
Each position has a defined goal,
which can be accomplished only through certain means
...
Similarly, the pitcher’s job is to keep the batter
from hitting the ball, but the pitcher isn’t allowed to hang onto the ball and
make the batter try to steal it — it needs to be thrown over the plate so the
batter has a fair chance
...
Your status in society is similar to your position in a baseball game: It defines your relationship to other
people and comes with certain freedoms and responsibilities
...
Why bother distinguishing between statuses and roles? Because they can both
change from one situation to another
...
In one family,
the father may have the role of disciplinarian, whereas in another he may have
the role of nurturer
...
But if there are different statuses in different social situations, what happens
when they come into conflict — when you have to play multiple different
positions at the same time? It’s a frustrating situation, but you can try to
avoid it by framing the situation to your benefit
...
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Frank Abagnale: A true player
The Steven Spielberg movie Catch Me If
You Can stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank
Abagnale, a crook and a fraud who repeatedly eludes capture by the authorities
...
(He even claims to have once posed as a sociology professor
...
He walked right onto
planes wearing a stolen pilot’s uniform, won the
trust of doctors and nurses just by presenting
himself as an authoritative physician, and easily
cashed invalid checks because he so convincingly acted like a wealthy individual who would
never need to forge a check
...
You may dress a certain way
for work, to portray yourself as competent and
respectable; or you may act falsely aloof when
you’re trying to impress a potential date, creating the impression that you’re a highly soughtafter partner who has no shortage of other
romantic possibilities and will really need to be
impressed if you’re going to ask someone out
...
Most of the time, the roles associated with our various statuses are perfectly compatible
...
But once in a while,
a person’s statuses will come into conflict
...
Anticipating this kind of possibility, many companies have rules
preventing people from supervising anyone they have a family tie or close
personal relationship with
...
Roles are often ambiguous, and it’s up to each
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...
Unless they’re
very familiar with your identity and status(es), people around you are relying
on you to communicate to them what your role is so they can respond appropriately
...
The sociologist best known for writing about this is the late Erving Goffman,
author of the 1956 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
...
When a person behaves a certain way in a certain social setting, Goffman
said, it’s like wearing a mask: You’re acting a certain way to convince the
people around you that you occupy a certain social position and ought to
be treated accordingly
...
Later, Goffman used the term frame to describe social situations — as in
a frame that you put around a picture
...
Sometimes situations
are naturally framed by the timing or location of an interaction, but in many
cases frames are negotiated among people, with each person trying to apply
the frame that most benefits him or her
...
After you’ve struck up
a little chat, the situation is framed as an interaction between acquaintances rather than between strangers
...
✓ If you want to know whether a coworker might be interested in you
romantically, you might ask one of their friends to accompany you on a
coffee break
...
This helps remove the interaction from the frame of the office — where
only official business information is normally exchanged — and puts it in
the frame of a social outing, where personal information is more readily
exchanged
...
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...
Even
though they’re not forced to donate, when they are at a counter taking
a ticket, it’s a situation so similar to situations where they’d be required
to pay that it’s likely they’ll choose to donate much more often than if
the situation was framed differently
...
That’s the paradox of society: you control it
...
The
great insight of the symbolic interactionists is that society fundamentally
exists inside people’s heads; it’s something they negotiate among themselves
every day
...
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Chapter 7
Caught in the Web:
The Power of Networks
In This Chapter
▶ Seeing society as a network
▶ Examining the strength of weak ties
▶ Gaining insights from network sociology
O
ne of the most important new ideas affecting sociology in the past few
decades is the idea that society can be seen as a network, with each
person being connected to a certain number of other people by professional
or personal ties
...
In this chapter, I explain the basic insights of network sociology and describe
some of the most important thinkers and studies in this tradition
...
Finally, I explain some of the specific ways
network sociology might change the way you see your world — and how Web
sites like Facebook and MySpace have made us all network sociologists
...
In this section, I
explain how sociologists have learned to use the tools of network analysis
...
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It’s all about you: Egocentric networks
In Chapter 6, I discuss some of the ways sociologists have studied individuals
in their social world, While many sociologists continued — and continue —
to focus on big-picture social facts, as Durkheim did, microsociologists have
looked closely at individuals and how they negotiate a world of social symbols and norms, with its maze of rules to learn, remember, and use
...
Network
analysis, which grew out of the microsociological tradition, helps to connect
the dots between the individual and society
...
Think about your personal network
...
✓ Your friends, old and new
...
✓ The web of acquaintances you encounter in your day-to-day life: the mail
carrier, your dentist, the barista at your favorite coffee shop, the guy at
the bus stop
...
People who know the people you know — especially people
who are close to people you are also close to and who you might hear
about through them — might be considered a part of your network as well
...
These are the people who in effect define “society” for you
...
Through mass media and other means, you may be able to collect information from — and spread it to — people beyond your social network, but it’s
the people in your personal network who constitute your most important
conduits of information
...
That doesn’t necessarily mean you have a big head; it’s a technical term referring to a social network as perceived from the standpoint of one individual
...
If you’d actually listed the people I referred to
in the previous list, I’d have a map of your egocentric network
...
)
12_572368-ch07
...
brother #2
spouse
sister
friend
friend
But what about the people your contacts are connected to — the people you
don’t know personally, but who you know through other contacts?
The game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” in which players are challenged to
connect Kevin Bacon to any given actor in Hollywood via chains of costars, is
inspired by a longstanding conjecture that every person in the world is fewer
than six degrees away from any other person, with each “degree” being a
connection by personal acquaintance
...
It’s a
tough theory to test, but a number of different studies have found that it’s at
least roughly accurate
...
But does it matter?
Yes and no
...
When I was applying to graduate school at Harvard, I asked
an acquaintance who is a Harvard alumnus whether he would be willing to
write me a letter of recommendation
...
sure,” he replied
...
”
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...
In a study of a large banking corporation,
Gibson first surveyed the bank’s employees
to map the various social connections among
them
...
You
might expect that the people who knew each
other best would feel most free talking with one
another and would exchange the most information, but Gibson found that in fact that was not
the case: A lot of conversation went on among
people who were not closely connected
...
A good way of predicting which employees
knew one another best, Gibson found, was to
see which employees took one another’s turns
in conversation
...
You can observe this effect at parties
...
They’ve become so close that they’re
essentially functioning as a single conversational unit
...
now that would be rude!
Sociologists often study networks of individual people, but network analysis
can also be applied to networks of groups or organizations
...
The tools and strategies used to study networks of individuals
can also be applied to networks of groups
...
In
fact, it probably doesn’t even include everyone in your company or school, in
your neighborhood or apartment building, or all the people you’re related to
beyond first or second cousins
...
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Imagine drawing a network map of your school or the company where you
work
...
You can imagine that
there would be clusters of tight-knit groups — cliques of friends or coworkers who all know one another well — and that each person in a cluster would
share some number of connections to people outside the cluster
...
(See Figure 7-2
...
12_572368-ch07
...
Those connections link your organization to many more organizations, and ultimately to every other company or school on Earth
...
Your
position in a network is a limitation as well as an asset
...
and actually, it doesn’t always work that way on the
Internet, either
...
One of
the most important insights of network analysis is that it’s that small circle
of people, rather than the total number of people who belong to the social
groups you’re nominally a part of, who really define your social situation
...
You
can see any given individual’s place in the social structure, and you can
see exactly where their lines of information and influence are arranged
...
In this section, I describe some important discoveries sociologists have made
about social networks; and the discoveries’ implications for individuals who
want to strategically position themselves in their own social networks
...
Granovetter was studying the process of job seeking: How do people find jobs?
It’s a natural subject for network analysis because jobs are very often found
through personal connections
...
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In Chapter 6 I explain the concept of bounded rationality in markets: You
don’t have perfect information about all the products available for purchase,
so you need to decide how much time it’s worth taking to gather information
...
Many jobs are publicly listed online or in newspapers, but many are publicized to only a limited audience, so there are a large number of jobs you’re
not going to find out about by surfing Craigslist
...
That person can both supply you with detailed information about the
job and, often, increase your chances of being hired by recommending you to
the hiring committee
...
✓ Strong ties are your most intense personal connections: your connections to your closest family members and friends
...
✓ Weak ties are all your other social connections: your connections to
people you know, but don’t know particularly well
...
Granovetter’s finding — which, like many important sociological discoveries,
was surprising at the time but seemed like common sense after it was established — was that for job-seeking purposes, your strong ties are actually not
all that valuable to you
...
If there’s a job opening they
know about, you probably know about it already
...
From a network perspective, your strong ties are redundant
...
For example, your spouse may have introduced you to all their friends and family when
you first met, but after years of marriage, you’ve formed your own connections
with those people
...
From a network perspective, it might be worse to lose your socialite friend,
with whom you have only a weak tie but who connects you to many people
you might never encounter otherwise
...
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when you look for a job because they are connected to many people you
have no acquaintance with and they can, therefore, supply you with much
more information
...
Think, for example, of a cousin who lives in another neighborhood and whom
you see only once a year at the annual family reunion
...
When you’re looking for a job,
you can call on them to help you out
...
Of course, just because information can flow through a network tie doesn’t
mean that it does
...
People may have a reason to
hide information from you — they may have a stake in keeping that information to themselves — but more likely, they just don’t think to tell you
...
If you want to activate your network of weak ties,
you’re probably going to have to put some effort into it
...
It may seem odd to think that
anyone would need an incentive to tell a job-seeking friend about a good
opportunity, but in fact there are several reasons you might fail to spread
information about job openings at your own company
...
Most people have hundreds of acquaintances that they rarely speak to; if
you haven’t talked with someone in a couple of years, it may be awkward to
pick up the phone and suggest that they apply for a job at your company
...
This is why companies feel the need to offer incentives to help motivate their
employees to pick up the phone and let their friends know about job openings
...
Why? Because a position with very
specific qualifications (say, someone familiar with a specific programming
language) requires a very specific type of applicant
...
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127
fire any immediate light bulbs in your head, and you may need a little more
incentive to reach out to potential candidates for that job
...
You may see your neighbor every day and
be acutely aware of when she gets a new haircut or buys a new car, but have
no idea of what her job qualifications may be — whereas you may be familiar
with a former coworker’s job qualifications but have no idea whether he has
a new haircut, a new spouse, or even whether he’s living or dead
...
Find a structural hole and jump in!
You’re probably already starting to see the tremendous value of network
analysis for businesspeople
...
Where does this information
come from? You might catch it on TV or in the newspaper, but that’s information everyone knows
...
And it isn’t just information that travels through network connections — it’s
influence as well
...
So clearly, any businessperson wants to increase their personal network
...
For one thing, you
can’t productively maintain an overly large number of social ties (even weak
ones), so you have to pick and choose
...
Good luck
exercising influence in that situation!
The question, then, becomes which network ties you want to build and maintain
...
”
What’s a structural hole? Think about a network map, with dense clusters of
people who know one another well and just a relatively few ties connecting
those clusters
...
For Burt,
these places where not many ties exist are structural holes — gaps in the network structure
...
12_572368-ch07
...
Her timing was
extremely good because shortly after Stewart’s
divestment it was announced that a key product
ImClone was developing had not been approved
by the U
...
Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) — news that caused the stock price to
plummet
...
Stewart’s decision later attracted scrutiny because her friend
Sam Waksal, ImClone’s CEO, had known about
the FDA decision before it was made public
...
Why would it be a problem if she had received
a tip from her friend? Because in the United
States and most other countries, it is illegal to
exchange certain kinds of information about
publicly held companies
...
The law against “insider trading” is, in effect,
the government’s official acknowledgement
that network ties can be a source of profit
...
Through her friend Sam,
Martha Stewart had a network tie bridging that
structural hole: a tie that she allegedly cashed
in on to the tune of about $50,000 at the expense
of the people she sold the stock to, people who
didn’t have access to the information she did
...
especially the ones you keep to
yourself
...
You don’t actually need to know that many people, Burt’s work
suggests, or even know them very well, just so long as they don’t know each
other
...
You have information both groups want, and you can sell
that information at a profit
...
A double-agent superspy is certainly filling a structural hole
...
✓ Realtors: connecting house buyers and house sellers
...
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...
(This is why so many former legislators become lobbyists —
they’re essentially selling their personal connections to sitting legislators
...
You pay them to bridge network holes
that you want to cross
...
Say you’re a teenager looking for a party
...
To find the best parties, you’d rather have five acquaintances at five different
schools than ten close friends at your own school
...
The connections among people in a social group form a structure, along
which information and influence can be traced
...
The difference between “your
society” and your society
Network analysis has been an important tool for sociologists in recent
decades because it opens up a whole world of inquiry that didn’t previously
exist
...
✓ Top-down, or macrosociological, analysis is the study of social groups
considered as entire units
...
When Emile Durkheim said sociologists needed to focus on “social facts,”
he was saying that they should pay attention to the big picture rather
than individuals in society
...
)
12_572368-ch07
...
The Chicago School studies of people from different groups interacting on the street were studies in microsociology,
and when Erving Goffman wrote about the different “masks” we wear in
different social contexts, that was a microsociological argument
...
)
Network analysis allows sociologists to focus on the connective tissue
between individuals and society
...
That’s pretty vague! Where does this influence come from? Do you
somehow inhale it, or get psychic vibes from the fifth dimension?
It’s true that there are some forms of social influence that affect people
across an entire society (for example, mass media), but the most important
influence comes from the people you know personally and directly encounter
...
”
Here’s an example of how this insight has been put into practice
...
There are a
couple of society-wide (no pun intended) culprits that are probably involved:
Unhealthy food is becoming ever cheaper and more available relative to
healthy food, and advertising campaigns for unhealthy food downplay the
risk of obesity
...
Christakis and Fowler discovered
that obesity could be observed to spread through social networks
...
As more and more people become overweight, obesity spreads through their
networks to become a growing epidemic
...
If you’re trying to stay fit, it doesn’t help
that your grocery store will sell you a box of cookies for less than the price
of an apple, that you see ads everywhere for unhealthy foods, or that your
job probably involves you sitting still at a desk for eight hours a day — but
what’s really devastating is when the people around you are practicing
unhealthy behaviors, overeating, and under-exercising
...
12_572368-ch07
...
The significance of social networks in this respect is in some respects an inconvenient truth
...
If a problem is spread through social networks, though, you’d have
to cut the network off to keep the problem from spreading — like digging a
trench around a forest fire
...
It’s also important to remember, though, that just because one person — or
even many people — you’re connected to behaves a certain way, you’ll automatically “get the message” and act on it
...
In a study of teenagers in Boston, sociologist David Harding found that it was
true that teens who made risky decisions were getting messages consistent
with those decisions — for example, their friends might be telling them that
staying in school wasn’t worth it — but they were also often getting “the right
messages” from their teachers, their parents, and even many of their friends,
who encouraged them to graduate and get jobs or go to college
...
” The problem was that they were getting mixed messages, giving
them different scripts to follow (as Goffman might say) in challenging situations
...
Kids who weren’t
getting those mixed signals had a much easier time sticking to one course
of action
...
What happens when our social
connections send us mixed signals? It’s an empirical question that sociologists
conducting network analyses may be paying a lot more attention to in the future
...
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Opening the channels of communication
If information and influence spread through social networks, is there a way to
spread messages more efficiently?
In the great sociologist Emile Durkheim’s classic study of suicide (see
Chapter 3), he basically took for granted that all members of a given society
shared a set of norms and values
...
Durkheim has been criticized for committing the ecological fallacy, which is
to assume that because something is true of a system it’s true of all that system’s members
...
But those
data didn’t actually tell him that: How did he know that it wasn’t the minoritygroup Catholics committing suicide — maybe as a result of persecution by
the majority-group Protestants? He didn’t
...
(We’ll never know
...
The German sociologist Georg Simmel, whose most important work came
shortly after Durkheim’s, was a big influence on microsociology and has
come to be regarded as one of the fathers of network analysis
...
The moral for those with a message to spread is that it may be a waste of
energy to try to broadcast it over an entire social group
...
This implication of network analysis has been appreciated not only by sociologists studying the spread of ideas and behavior (see previous section), but
by marketers looking to sell their products
...
If you play a free CD and enjoy it,
you may play it for your friends and introduce them to the artist as well
...
Many
companies sponsor parties or concerts for young people, in the belief
that young people can influence older people to use a product — but not
vice-versa
...
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133
✓ Using social media (for example, networking tools such as Facebook
or Twitter) to encourage individuals to willingly spread marketing
messages
...
”
These techniques can obviously be used to make profits, but they’ve also
become popular with nonprofit organizations promoting health, environmental awareness, charity, and other good causes
...
In journalist Malcolm Gladwell’s popular book The Tipping Point, he writes
about the phenomenon by which an idea or behavior (like, say, wearing Hush
Puppy loafers) quickly goes from being relatively rare to being wildly popular
...
Gladwell’s book isn’t a sociological study, and he provides only examples
(rather than systematically analyzed data) to make his point, but sociologists
have read and appreciated Gladwell’s book for its compelling argument that
social networks are profoundly important in the spread of everything from
clothing fads to musical tastes to business practices
...
A connector is
a person who knows many different people from many different groups, so
they are in a position to spread ideas or trends from one group to the other
...
When an idea or behavior
spreads to multiple different social groups, it’s become a social epidemic
...
Social networking online: Making
the invisible visible
If you’re a member of a social networking site like Facebook or MySpace,
you’ve probably thought about it multiple times while reading this chapter —
and, in fact, while reading this entire book
...
12_572368-ch07
...
The result is a visible display of something that’s normally invisible: a social network
...
Next time you’re on your favorite social networking site — whichever it
may be — consider how people’s behavior on the site illustrates these
sociological ideas
...
A user’s profile is a perfect example of this
...
They can choose
which pictures to display, what information to divulge, and which acquaintances to acknowledge
...
A friend might post
something on your profile that you would prefer not be visible, your mom
might post an embarrassing photo from when you were an awkward teenager, or your boss may see pictures of you doing something, oh
...
All of these things get in the way of your attempt to filter
the information about you that is known by the world
...
On Facebook, for example, as of this writing you can be a “fan” of a public
figure, can specify that you’re a son or daughter or mother or father of one of
your family members, and can be in one of several flavors of involvement (“In
a relationship,” “Engaged,” “Married,” “It’s complicated”) with one significant
other — but beyond that, everyone you’re connected to is just a “friend
...
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Someone you have a huge crush on
Your ex-boyfriend
Your ex-boyfriend’s sister
Your best friend from kindergarten who you haven’t talked to in 15 years
In reality you have very different relationships with all those people, but on
Facebook they’re all your “friends
...
You can’t publicly note that your relationship to her is not
“friend” but rather “crazy second cousin once removed
...
”
In other words, if you have a close social tie, your other close friends are
liable to “catch” that tie
...
(See Figure 7-3
...
Social networking sites can speed the “healing” of forbidden triads
...
well, maybe it’s your own fault for not introducing
your friends to one another
...
12_572368-ch07
...
If one of your friends posts a picture of you making out with
someone you met at a party, all your friends will know about it, more or less
immediately
...
The principle that most information spreads most efficiently and effectively
through social networks was true before the development of the Internet;
although the Internet has made it theoretically easier to broadcast something
to a mass audience (everyone in the world could read your personal blog
right now if they wanted to), it’s also made social networks more important
because it’s increased the efficiency of spreading information through them
...
All you have to do is log on
...
Ever since the telephone was
invented, people have been concerned that
technologies that make it easier to connect
with people far away will distract from people’s
relationships with others who are nearby
...
Historical and sociological evidence from the past century suggests
that as technology makes communication
easier, what happens is that there’s simply
more communication
...
12_572368-ch07
...
Who do you talk
with most on the phone, trade the most texts
with, chat with most online, and trade the
most Facebook wall posts with? Chances are,
it’s your girlfriend or roommate or best buddy:
someone you often see in person
...
You’re probably
just supplementing them with far-flung friends
...
but
in general, people seem to use those technologies to grow closer to a wide range of people
they value
...
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Par t III
Equality and
Inequality in Our
Diverse World
13_572368-pp03
...
ny society is made up of many parts — and which
“part” you belong to isn’t always obvious
...
13_572368-pp03
...
In the book, animals in a barnyard drive the
farmer out and try to create a social order where all animals are equal
...
”
The story rings true because no society, ever, has been completely equal
...
First, I explain how sociologists think, in general, about inequality — and why
it may be a necessary feature of society
...
Finally, I look at how
inequality changes over time — both for individuals (social mobility) and for
entire societies
...
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Excavating the Social Strata
The word “stratification” is a geological term referring to the way that layers
of earth and rock are stacked on top of one another
...
In this section,
I discuss how sociologists think about social inequality in general, and then
explain the debate over whether inequality is necessary
...
In other words, you
and I are unequal if one of us has, or is able to get, more of some desirable
resource than the other one has
...
✓ Money: Currency or credit that can be exchanged for goods
...
✓ Prestige: Interested and respectful treatment by others
...
These are resources that you might reasonably want in society, but that you
probably have less access to than others
...
As it happens, having more of these resources puts you in a better position
to get more of them — in most societies, advantages are multiplicative, meaning that if you’re relatively high in the stratification order, you have access
to a lot of resources that will help you stay there
...
People with a lot of money, for example, are able to invest in business
ventures that can earn them even more money; people without money have
to work for pay and take whatever their employers pay them
...
There are many different bases of social inequality —
people are where they are in the stratification order for a number of different
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...
141
reasons that may persist no matter how much power or money they have
...
(See sidebar, “Locking the Gates
...
These are all
ways people may be different from one another that may lead to having different positions in a society’s stratification order — but not all differences
among people lead to differences in stratification
...
Some people may find it ugly and some people may find it attractive, but
either way it’s probably not going to make it any easier or more difficult for
me to find a job or to influence others
...
Some of these differences are formal differences (that is, differences written
into the legal system and organizational rules, like whether or not slavery is
legal) and others are informal differences (that is, rules that are not written
down but are nonetheless meaningful, like whether or not racism pervades
a society)
...
Sociologists divide bases of stratification into two categories
...
Achieved bases of stratification are attributes over which you have at
least some control: your job, your social connections, your education,
your wealth
...
To make things even more complicated, different bases may matter in different places and at different times, and they may interact with one another
to determine your place in the stratification system
...
Social
stratification is quite complex, but it’s worth taking the time to understand
because it’s so very important to everyone — in any society
...
” The word “class” is
typically used to refer to differences in a society’s stratification order, whatever that may be
...
If you’re
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...
When people use these terms in
reference to modern capitalist society, they’re generally referring to money
matters
...
But class is about more than money, even in industrial capitalist societies
...
Even more factors could be considered
...
The fact of the matter is that
in most societies there’s no hard-and-fast definition of the social order that
everyone can agree on, so the question of what “classes” are — and which
people belong in which class — will always be a matter of some debate
...
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a society where everyone is equal —
where no one is privileged over anyone else?
Among sociologists, Karl Marx most famously called for the creation of a
society where everyone would be equal
...
People would receive the resources they needed to meet
their basic needs and have whatever luxuries might be available, but no one
would reap rewards on the backs of others
...
”
But how would the dirty work get done? It would ideally be like in a family:
when you see something that needs doing, you do it and then no one else will
get stuck with the job
...
Anyone who’s ever lived in a family, though, knows that’s not always how it
works
...
Not only is it questionable in theory, what empirical
evidence exists suggests that it’s untenable
...
”)
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...
143
Locking the Gates
Henry Louis Gates Jr
...
He draws an
appropriately handsome salary, and he owns a
house in a wealthy neighborhood in Cambridge,
Massachusetts
...
Gates came
home to find that he’d accidentally been locked
out of his house
...
When the police arrived, they asked Gates to
provide identification proving that he owned
the house
...
Gates accused the white police officer who
arrested him of racism, igniting a national
debate
...
Gates — could get arrested just
for being black? It’s impossible to know if the
incident would have gone differently had it
been a white man breaking into his own house,
but in the wake of the incident many AfricanAmericans came forward to cite examples of
racial discrimination they faced every day
...
All of those attributes matter, though just
how much they matter varies from one situation
to the next
...
Moore
...
If someone has a brilliant
mind and an exceptionally steady hand, it might benefit thousands of people
for that person to become a surgeon
...
Further, Davis and Moore pointed out, after a person is in a job, they need
to be motivated to work hard — and there’s no motivation like the threat of
losing your job and ending up on the street
...
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...
You have to
observe whatever situations happen to occur,
and do your best to figure out why and how
things turned out the way they did
...
No country has ever become the
kind of perfect communist society that Marx
imagined, but many have tried to hew to Marx’s
values by strictly limiting the amount of money
any one person can earn while guaranteeing
certain things — food, shelter, employment —
to all
...
Communist China is a world superpower,
and many countries — for example, the
Scandinavian nations — have had great success levying high taxes and guaranteeing many
benefits, thus limiting social inequality even
though they remain essentially capitalist
...
The Soviet Union fell, and its constituent republics have largely become capitalist democratic countries rather than remaining
communist
...
“Freed from the
fear of unemployment and lacking adequate
material incentives,” writes Lenski, workers
didn’t willingly pitch in as Marx thought they
would
...
” In other words, maybe
people do need some financial incentive such
as the threat of losing their jobs to do everything
that needs to be done in a society
...
Motivation means reward
...
Because there need to be people who are rewarded more than others,
there needs to be inequality
...
Why? Many sociologists believe
Davis and Moore’s argument justifies the status quo
...
)
Just because people may need some motivation to work hard doesn’t mean
that the amount of inequality present in most societies is necessary or
humane
...
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...
There are also vast
inequalities by ascribed attributes (see the section “Understanding social
inequality” for a definition of ascribed attributes) — it doesn’t make any
sense to reward someone simply for having been born a white male
...
The Many Means of Inequality
When some people end up near the top of the social ladder and others end
up near the bottom, there are many reasons for the disparity
...
However, there are many other reasons that some people end up
privileged over others in any given society
...
This, though, isn’t a
complete list; any difference among people can result in social stratification
...
The fact that it’s relatively easy to measure (the amount of money
you have is a number that is usually beyond dispute) is another of the reasons
it’s often used by social scientists
...
In advanced capitalist societies, money is almost like magic: you can turn
it into just about anything you want, from cars to houses to food to drugs
to sex
...
Crucially, it also buys security and freedom
...
Further, as I previously mentioned, with discipline and patience, money can
be turned into more money
...
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risked in ventures that may result in vast profits
...
Whether or not Marx was right that money and wealth constitute the fundamental basis of social inequality, he was absolutely right that people with
more money can exercise direct power over people with less money
...
Many people in capitalist societies find themselves with many job options to
choose from, but people with no money and few specialized skills (see section, “Specialized knowledge”) may have to consider themselves lucky to get
any job
...
Yet even beyond this “magical” power to buy anything, money has a second
important influence: people with lots of money are typically treated better —
and thought better of — than people with just a little money, even in situations
where money isn’t directly involved
...
This means that people with more
money can exercise power and influence without having to spend a dime
...
Occupation
If money is important, then jobs are important — if for no other reason than
the fact that jobs produce income
...
It’s a little rude to start a conversation at a party by asking someone what
they do — but people often do exactly that because knowing what someone
does for a living tells you so much about them
...
The simplest way to measure “social class” (see section, “Understanding
social inequality”) is to consider income or wealth, but another way many
sociologists measure social class is by measures of occupational prestige
...
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...
What makes an occupation prestigious? It turns out to be a combination of
factors
...
Further, people tend to respect occupations seen as caring or doing
good in the world
...
Similarly, despite the multi-millions made by some professional
athletes — and the adoration lavished on a few high-performing stars — the
general occupation of “athlete” is about as prestigious as the occupation of
“computer programmer
...
Besides yielding money and respect, your occupation also may equip you
with important social connections and specialized knowledge that may come
in handy down the line
...
Exactly what skills are useful may vary from society to society, but most societies have some way for people to turn inborn gifts into money, influence,
and respect
...
Athletic skills can be advantageous, and
instinctive social skills can be tremendously useful
...
That
doesn’t mean that you will succeed; you’ll need support, education, and
opportunity to make the best use of your skills
...
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...
All of those qualities derive from a
number of different causes, so you shouldn’t assume that someone who is particularly successful or esteemed in society was somehow born with a genetic
silver spoon in their mouth; or, conversely, that someone who has relatively
little money or prestige was somehow born to fail
...
To some extent, the causes of any individual’s motivation are unknowable
...
In some ways, though, behavior that might be called “motivation” varies
among people from different backgrounds, for predictable reasons
...
On the other hand, parents who are less well-to-do tend to teach their children to be obedient and
respectful, and not to rock the boat
...
)
Each attitude will serve children well in some situations and not in others;
in that case, it’s not a question of how much motivation a person has but
rather what kind of motivation
...
If
it’s not clear what behavior is best, people can only guess at what will be
rewarded, based on what they’ve been taught
...
You’ll only ask for a raise, for example, if you think the
possibility of getting one outweighs the possible annoyance or embarrassment of asking and not getting one
...
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...
149
I is for initiative
...
My friends and I made fun of the sign because
we thought it was highly unlikely that a goofy
sign on the wall would motivate an underachieving student
...
William I
...
For example, if it is believed that
someone is incompetent, that person won’t
even be given the chance to succeed
...
They won’t be placed in college-prep classes
or challenged to join academic honor societies
...
This danger
is one reason for the widespread institution of
affirmative-action policies, which are designed
to ensure that everyone is given a chance to
succeed
...
When I was a teenager and told my dad
that I was going to bicycle across the state of
Minnesota, his skeptical response only made
me more determined to do it
...
) To say that the encouragement and
expectations of influential others are important
is not to say that any one person — or any millions of people — can determine the choices
you will make in life
...
The better-placed you are to get information from and exercise
influence on people in your society, the more power you have
...
You may be a naturally social person who has a knack for making the right
connections, but the number, nature, and strength of your social connections
is also a function of how you stack up on the other variables listed in this section
...
If you have
little money, it will be relatively difficult for you to meet people who
have a lot of money
...
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✓ You may make a large number of social connections through your job;
these will continue to be valuable to you even if you lose your job or
switch jobs
...
(The importance of classmate connections is
demonstrated by the very fact that you’re reading this — it was through
a friend from graduate school that I learned of the opportunity to write
this book!)
The critical importance of social connections for an individual’s place in a
stratification order has only been recognized relatively recently by sociologists, and it’s one of the reasons research into social networks has received
so much attention over the last few decades
...
Credentials
A credential is certification by some known body that you have a skill, an
experience, or another valued attribute
...
Examples of credentials include:
✓ A school degree
✓ An award
✓ Membership in an organization
✓ Employment for a company, whether past or present
Credentials are typically earned by the performance of some feat at some
point in time, so they’re typically meaningful with respect to a person’s abilities or experiences — but they can also be misleading or outdated
...
well, you’re still a college graduate!
Given this fact, why do credentials matter so much? In large part, it’s because
they’re relatively easy to communicate
...
Jobs typically aren’t granted on the strength
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...
151
of credentials alone, but an impressive credential may earn you an interview;
on the other hand, a lack of impressive credentials may disqualify you before
the interview process even begins
...
Going to
school means earning a diploma (a credential), making connections, and
...
actually learning things
...
On the other hand, education costs money
...
College can cost tens of thousands of dollars each year, but that
cost likely includes room and board, access to world-class researchers, and
amenities ranging from workout facilities to mental health counseling to
private security
...
In most societies education is one of the most important determinants of who
gets ahead
...
My father, for
example, doesn’t have the credential of a college degree, but after decades of
work he has certainly earned an “education” through on-the-job training
...
D
...
J
...
!”
Specialized knowledge
“Knowledge is power,” wrote the philosopher Francis Bacon
...
”
What’s the difference? The most powerful knowledge in society is knowledge about topics that are regarded as useful or important
...
Sociologists distinguish between two kinds of specialized knowledge that
may give a person a leg up in a stratification system, and refer to them both
as “capital” — because like financial capital, they’re valuable assets
...
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Human capital
The term human capital refers to useful skills that a person has learned
...
✓ The ability to fix a car
...
✓ Understanding of a country, state, or city’s legal system
...
These are skills that might be learned through schooling, through job experience, or through self-education
...
Cultural capital
The term cultural capital was coined by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (see
Chapter 5)
...
What counts as “high-status culture” varies from one society to the next, but
Bourdieu emphasized that the most consequential forms of cultural capital
involve specialized knowledge that is you’re not likely to be convincingly conversant in unless you were raised in an environment where that knowledge
was taught and valued
...
✓ An interest in art that may look ugly to most people (for example, a photograph of a car wreck) but is considered fine art by museum curators
and their wealthy patrons
...
None of this knowledge has much practical value — if your car breaks down,
knowing who wrote the Eroica symphony is not going to help you fix it — but
it’s all evidence that you were likely raised by relatively wealthy, well-educated
parents
...
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...
153
Race/sex/caste discrimination
Discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or caste is a prime example of
ascribed stratification, (mentioned earlier in this chapter): stratification that
depends on a characteristic that you were born with and is virtually impossible to change
...
This is a central topic in sociology, and it has its own chapter — Chapter 9 —
in this book
...
In societies around the
world, throughout history, people’s sex and the color of their skin have been
social statuses that have had vastly determinative effects
...
Today, explicit slavery (that is, slavery openly identified as such) is virtually extinct, and discrimination by race and gender is happily on the wane
in most societies
...
Another means of ascribed stratification, and one being hotly debated
around the world today, is sexual orientation — whether a person is sexually
attracted to members of the opposite sex, the same sex, or both
...
Age discrimination
Age discrimination is another means of ascribed stratification — but unlike
race, sex, or caste, age does obviously change over a person’s lifetime
...
The role of age in social stratification can be difficult to sort out because
unlike race or caste, age does correspond to real differences in a person’s
experience and abilities
...
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through adulthood and into old age, people gain skills and experience but
eventually lose physical and, possibly, mental endurance and agility
...
(I say “normally” because although race and sex
do not correspond to differences in ability, they may be relevant characteristics for certain specialized jobs
...
This has become an increasing
issue in contemporary society as people’s work lives have become longer and
jobs have become less stable: A person who is middle-aged or older may find
themselves losing a job to a younger person who is no better qualified
...
Comparing inequality internationally
If different societies vary in the ways that their members are stratified, it only
makes sense that some societies would actually be more equal than others —
that inequality would be more severe in some societies than in others
...
It’s not just the degree of inequality that varies among societies, though
...
Grusky, a leading expert on inequality, notes that social stratification systems vary along a number of dimensions, including:
✓ Type of assets
...
✓ Classes
...
✓ Degree of inequality
...
In our advanced industrial society, says Grusky, the
degree of inequality is in between those two extremes
...
How much social mobility does a society allow? A traditional
caste society, where people are born into inflexible social classes, allows
virtually no mobility; hard as it sometimes seems to “get ahead” in
modern capitalism, it does happen
...
”)
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...
155
Thinking about stratification this way makes clear that even if modern industrial capitalism is no bed of roses — especially for people on the bottom of
the social hierarchy — it’s far more open than most societies, for most of
human history, have been
...
Globalization and international development has made the industrial capitalist model near-universal
around the world; few countries today are dominated by the kind of rigid
stratification systems that were previously common
...
(See Chapter 16 for more on social
change
...
Their jobs may be wearying, but their fingers aren’t worked to
the bone, and they likely even have some managerial responsibilities and
freedoms
...
Some sociologists, though — especially those who tend to agree with Marx that
capitalism leads to exploitation — have observed that the prosperity of the
developed world is built on the back of the developing world
...
A factory worker in Michigan can afford a lifestyle that’s absolutely
prince-like compared to what a factory worker in rural China can afford
...
The difference in earning power, even for undocumented immigrants without the legal right to work, can be so much
greater that men and women will leave their families for months or years
at a time so they can send a portion of their earnings back home
...
)
✓ Outsourcing of industrial production and, increasingly, skilled labor
to the developing world
...
Because more and more work is able to be done in the developing world, more and more work is being outsourced — despite the fact
that it’s led to the loss of millions of jobs in the countries doing the
outsourcing
...
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Some sociologists, collectively called “world-system theorists” — a term
inspired by the work of the sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein — believe that
the bourgeois have only managed to stave off worldwide revolution by outsourcing the worst, most exploitative jobs
...
Will that happen? It’s impossible to say for sure
...
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...
They’re not “supposed” to matter any
more, but of course they still do
...
What they make of that information varies from place to place —
and has of course varied dramatically through history — but there’s no getting around the fact that race and sex still matter, and they’re going to keep
on mattering for the rest of your life and the rest of mine
...
Sociologists also study all the other subjects in this book —
religion, education, politics, business, and the economy — but if you’re a
journalist or a policymaker, sociologists are most likely to be filed in your
Rolodex of experts under the subject race and sex discrimination
...
I then explain what sociologists have
learned about race specifically, and then what sociologists have learned about
sex
...
”) Finally, I explain why even in the
post-feminist, post-Civil-Rights era, race and sex still matter — very much so
...
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Bias and Discrimination:
A Two-Sided Coin
You’re special
...
You know this because your mom probably
told you so, and umpteen children’s TV shows certainly told you so
...
There are, however, millions
or billions of other people who are the same race as you are, and even more
people who are the same sex that you are
...
When those assumptions affect the decisions
they make regarding you, that is discrimination
...
So do I
...
Do you think I’m wrong about you? Aren’t you biased? Don’t you discriminate? Okay, maybe you don’t
...
If you’re an English-speaker in Shanghai
looking for directions and you see only one person on a crowded street who
doesn’t have Asian features, it makes sense to pick that person to ask directions
...
The millions of AfricanAmericans who were especially supportive of the presidential campaign of
Barack Obama because he’s black probably don’t think of themselves as
having been inappropriately “racist
...
You had no control over the
color of skin and the sex you were born with, and yet people routinely judge
you on the basis of those characteristics
...
The
previous examples show that the subject gets complicated when identities
become involved — when people take ownership of those characteristics
...
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159
In those cases, these ascribed statuses become points of pride
...
The subjects of race and sex are very complicated, and it does no one a favor
to simplify them
...
These laws are far
from universal, and far from universally effective in areas where they exist,
but they’ve gone a long way towards eliminating the most heinous abuses
and inequities
...
Most people
are proud of their race and proud of their ethnicity, and many are proud of
their sex and their sexual orientation
...
Thousands
parade down city streets in celebration of women’s rights or queer pride
...
Making things more complicated is the fact that members of each of these
groups disagree — sometimes violently — about what being a member of
a particular race or sex means
...
There may be leaders within these communities, but it’s not for any one person to determine what it is to be AsianAmerican or female or gay
...
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...
You can choose your ethnicity,
but you can’t choose your race
In sociological terms, race refers to an ascribed status: something determined by others based on the physical characteristics you were born with
...
Race
Every society has its own set of racial groups that its members understand
and react to
...
In other societies, the differences may not be so dramatic to
an outsider but are easy to recognize for those who are raised in those societies: Relatively subtle differences in skin shades or facial features can lead
to just as much bias and discrimination as differences that are objectively
much more marked
...
As an example of this, consider what it means to be “black
...
In the United States, though, “black” people have historically been people of
African descent, their families often brought unwillingly to America as slaves
...
If they discover that a “black” person is actually an immigrant from the West
Indies, Americans often treat that person differently
...
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161
the immigrants as outsiders who are — despite the color of their skin — not
“really” black
...
This example shows the complexities of race, and the frustration that can be
experienced by both racial minorities and members of a racial majority as
they try to gain acceptance and avoid discrimination
...
In common usage, the term
“ethnicity” is often used to refer to a national or cultural heritage that isn’t
necessarily associated with distinctive physical features
...
(American newspapers from the turn of the 20th century are full of derogatory references to, for example, “the Irish race
...
As I noted earlier in this chapter, your race is something others decide for you, whether you like it or not
...
Your ethnicity, on the other hand, refers to the cultural group with which you consciously identify
...
When
I say that my ethnicity is “German-American,” that means that I identify
with a group of people who lived in one area in Europe for many generations, then crossed the Atlantic to the United States
...
My
grandmother grew up in New Ulm, Minnesota, speaking German, eating
German food, and celebrating German-Catholic holidays
...
✓ Symbols and distinctive styles of dress
...
(No, I’ve never worn lederhosen — but if you saw me in a
pair, you’d certainly know what my ethnicity is!)
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...
In cases where ethnicities are not
closely associated with a set of obvious physical characteristics, or where
a certain physical appearance might plausibly be associated with any of a
number of ethnicities, ethnicity may become almost entirely elective
...
The title refers to the fact that although African-Americans or AsianAmericans or Hispanic-Americans are typically obviously identifiable as such,
Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, or Norwegian-Americans are not
...
Ethnicity is so flexible, in fact, that in the modern world, people might choose
to identify with groups and traditions that you wouldn’t necessarily think of
as “ethnic” but are used that way
...
In this way,
being “a Domer” (an alumnus of the University of Notre Dame, which has a
building with a golden dome), a Californian, or a New Yorker can be a person’s primary “ethnicity
...
Obviously this is illogical in the sense that a person’s physical features tell
you nothing about their abilities, personality, or background
...
And yet, they do — and they do, and they do, and they
do, again and again and again
...
but it happens, consciously and unconsciously
...
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...
A caste is an inherited class status, one you’re born into if you live
in a society that subscribes to the idea of caste
...
Societies around the world have had castes of
one sort or another
...
An inherited monarchy or aristocracy is another form of caste,
with ruling power being passed on from mothers and fathers to sons and daughters
...
Castes share some features of races and ethnicities: Biological inheritance is central to
caste membership, as it is to membership in all
racial groups and many ethnic groups
...
Because a
caste system means that power (or lack thereof)
is inherited rather than earned, most people
today see strict caste systems as unfair and
undesirable
...
(You wouldn’t normally
hear the term “caste” used to describe the
British aristocracy, but in a sociological sense
it is indeed a caste: Like any other caste status,
royalty is a class position one is born into and
cannot lose
...
Conscious
Through the course of human history, many — in fact, probably most —
people have consciously discriminated by race
...
This
has been so widespread that the unfortunate tendency to interpret physical
appearance as being a significant predictor of a person’s abilities and personality seems to be a basic feature of human nature
...
It’s not pretty, but there it is — there’s no mystery about why racism started in
the first place
...
Today, biological anthropologists understand that there’s really no such thing as “race” in the sense of
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...
For
centuries, though, it was widely believed — and documented in highly questionable texts — that there were fundamental differences among the “races of
man,” and that those differences made it only logical to treat different races
differently
...
Without excusing the millions of people who have actively participated in
outright and unapologetic racial discrimination around the world, it’s worth
pointing out that the example of racism illustrates the power of society to
influence people’s beliefs and actions
...
And, of course, if you’re
a member of a group that benefits from racial discrimination, it can be very
convenient not to question this received wisdom
...
In societies where racism has been scientifically debunked and socially deplored, it should end
...
but it doesn’t
...
When
I was growing up as a middle-class kid in St
...
Beyond that, though, unconscious racism continues to be widespread
...
This continues to happen for at least three different reasons: the
weight of history, the self-fulfilling prophecy, and basic human nature
...
The world’s history of racism is too vast to be completely
wiped out — and in fact most people would say that the past must be remembered to avoid repeating it
...
In some cases, these influences and others may lead people to act
or think in a racist manner without even realizing it
...
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The self-fulfilling prophecy
In Chapter 8, I cite the sociologist W
...
Thomas, who said that a situation
defined as real is real in its consequences
...
In the United States, for example, African-Americans were initially enslaved and
then subjected to many decades of explicitly discriminatory practices and policies
...
There is a persistent gap between the average academic achievement of
African-Americans and white Americans, and blacks — especially black men —
are incarcerated at a significantly higher rate than are white Americans
...
This is one reason for the widespread adoption of pro-diversity policies: Undoing centuries of conscious
discrimination may require an equally conscious effort
...
This doesn’t make it okay, but it
does mean that fighting racism is probably going to require constant vigilance
as long as people are people
...
”
The “model minority” is an idea that’s been used to underplay or dismiss the
continuing significance of racism
...
The example most often mentioned
is Asian-Americans, a racial minority in the United States who, despite the
fact that many families initially arrived as immigrants with few resources, are
now on average as comfortably situated financially as are white Americans —
and are, on average, now better educated
...
If
Asian-Americans did it, they say, so can African-Americans and HispanicAmericans
...
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Sociologists, though, have pointed out that there are vast differences among
minority groups, and though there are some patterns and similarities in
minority groups’ experiences, in no way is it accurate to say that one group
can be a “model” for another
...
Here are a few specific reasons the
“model minority” concept is misguided:
✓ Not all racism is the same
...
Immigrants
from East Asia have had to fight hateful stereotypes and have been
denied jobs, housing, and schooling on the basis of their physical
appearance
...
✓ Different groups come from different circumstances
...
Compared to, say, AfricanAmericans, Asian-Americans are on average relatively recent and
relatively well-educated arrivals to the United States
...
Not all immigrant groups have had
these advantages
...
AsianAmericans come from many different countries, and came for many
different reasons; this is true of any racial or ethnic minority group
...
Hmong-Americans, for example, are by
and large recent arrivals who fled their homelands in the wake of violent conflicts
...
To sweep Hmong-Americans under the
“model minority” rug and deny that their circumstances are exceptional
and might require exceptional support would be to do them a serious
injustice
...
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...
Still, almost all sociologists interested in race and ethnicity find themselves
looking closely at the experiences of immigrants
...
The turn of the 20th century saw a wave
of immigration to the United States that transformed America’s social landscape, and that transformation was most visible in big cities like Chicago,
where the new arrivals went looking for work
...
” The word assimilation means to be absorbed into, to become
one of
...
The theory of assimilation has it that people arrive speaking their native
languages, wearing their native styles of dress, and otherwise practicing the
traditions of their home countries; over time, they are “assimilated” into their
new community, adopting that country’s language and traditions
...
As sociologists have spent more time studying immigration, though, they’ve
come to understand that it’s just not that simple
...
Sociologists of immigration
today appreciate that there are at least three things wrong with the basic
“assimilation” theory:
✓ Assimilate to what? If immigrants are assimilating to something, to
what, exactly, are they assimilating? The United States and other countries do have mainstream cultures (see Chapter 5) containing some
quintessential features, but modern societies are so diverse that it’s
impossible to even describe what a fully “assimilated” person would
look like
...
Imagine three immigrants to the
United States from China
...
Another learns perfect English but
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...
Another makes several
Mexican-American friends and learns fluent Spanish
...
Joining a new society can mean a number of different things, and
they don’t necessarily all go together
...
Some
immigrants enthusiastically do anything they can to adopt the ways of
their new country, but others prefer to keep doing things as much as
possible the way they always have
...
Many immigrants live
in ethnic enclaves where they are able to continue speaking their native
language and associating with fellow immigrants from their country, and
they are perfectly and justifiably happy with that choice
...
” You have a general idea of what
a “Latino” is — they probably are descended
from Spanish-speaking people, and may have
the skin colors or facial features associated
with residents of Mexico or Central America —
but you probably don’t know exactly what a
Latino is, even if you are one yourself!
and in Puerto Rico, and found that many of the
people she talked with didn’t identify themselves as “Latinos;” they considered themselves “Dominicans” or “Puerto Ricans
...
For all
of these reasons, “Latino” would hardly seem
to make any sense as a category
...
It’s a term of convenience used to describe people with either
of the characteristics I mentioned, or who are
descended from residents of Latin American
countries
...
A man living in
Brazil, a woman in Alaska whose grandmother
was born in Mexico, a Spaniard whose father
came from the Dominican Republic
...
”
And yet it does, and it’s become widely used
and adopted — in part, says Roth, because of
international television stations like Univision
that promote the idea of a common identity
among Spanish speakers
...
This example illustrates the complexity
of race and ethnicity
...
Sociologist Wendy Roth studied Latinos in
the United States, in the Dominican Republic,
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...
Sex and Gender
Just as “race” and “ethnicity” are often used interchangeably but mean different things from a sociological standpoint, such is the case with the terms “sex”
and “gender
...
Gender
is a more complicated term that refers, like “ethnicity,” to a role that a person
identifies with; it may or may not correspond to a person’s biological sex
...
“You’ve come a long way, baby”?: The
women’s movement and its discontents
Women can have babies
...
After the babies are born, women can
nurse them
...
The basic biological differences between men and
women have always led to them having different roles in societies
...
This played out differently in each society, but in most societies around the
world, it was made difficult or impossible for women to take formal leadership roles
...
As with racial discrimination, sex discrimination came under increasing challenge as the principle of equality that fueled the revolutions of the 18th and
19th centuries (see Chapter 3) spread, and as science made increasingly clear
that there were no significant differences between men and women in intellect
or ability
...
But even as formal distinctions between men and women fell away, many
informal distinctions remained
...
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home while their husbands went off to bring home the bacon
...
A wave of influential thinkers — Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and others —
called for a complete rethinking of the roles of women in society, and millions
of women around the world actively resisted being pigeonholed in the role of
passive nurturer
...
Today, many young women prefer not to identify themselves as “feminists
...
Some feel that the new challenge for feminists is to advocate for
woman-friendly and family-friendly laws and corporate policies that make it
easier to take time off work for childbearing or family responsibilities
...
Women’s earnings are still not as high as those of men with comparable experience, and women are still underrepresented in executive suites
...
A few of the most important include:
✓ Direct discrimination
...
This discrimination continues to happen for many of the same reasons
that racial discrimination continues to happen (see previous section)
...
Though parental leave is today widely available
for fathers as well as mothers, women remain more likely than men to
take time off for childbearing — and to take more time off when they do
...
✓ A segmented labor market
...
On average, male-dominated fields are higher-paying
...
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...
The woman at the desk was thrilled to get my
application — they almost never, she said,
received child care applications from men
...
” Why? “Because when a parent calls
me, I’ll give them three names: yours, and the
names of two women
...
” She was right; I never did get a call from
any parent who was given my name through
that service
...
Why would the parents — likely, professors
who considered themselves open-minded
people — act that way?
When it comes to their children, any parent
is likely to be very risk-averse: There’s nothing in the world that’s more important than the
happiness and safety of one’s children
...
From the standpoint of an individual
parent, it makes all the sense in the world not to
take a chance on a man when you have qualified women who might babysit your children
...
This is an illustration of Thomas’s maxim that
a situation defined as real (men are unsuitable for child care) becomes real in its consequences (few men seek or find employment in
child care)
...
This being true, women are quickly catching up with men; in education, they
have already surpassed men in most of the developed world
...
Just as surely as
women, men find themselves with a stereotypical role to play, and may be
punished in the form of scorn or discrimination if they fail to play the role
as they’re “supposed” to
...
If someone chooses a role or lifestyle that’s considered “traditional” for their
gender doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve been brainwashed
...
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...
Some members of the GBLTQ community identify
with one of these terms, some identify with multiple of them
...
So the term
“GBLTQ” (or, sometimes, simply “GBLT”) is used to include everyone whose
sexual orientation is other than — or at least broader than — heterosexual
...
But it’s
become necessary as societies around the world have increasingly come to
see sexual orientation as something that individuals are free to determine
for themselves
...
The widespread recognition of sexual orientations other than heterosexual
as valid and healthy is relatively new — it wasn’t that long ago that most
psychologists considered homosexuality to be a mental disorder — and it’s
still unclear where laws and customs regarding sexual orientation will go in
the future
...
From a sociological standpoint, the
debate over GBLTQ rights can be seen as the next step in the overall debate
over sex and gender
...
However you
feel personally about the matter, the fact that sexual orientation is increasingly regarded as a matter of personal choice is consistent with what sociologists would expect given many of the other sociological ideas in this book
...
I mean to say that from a social and legal
standpoint, people are increasingly allowed to say for themselves what their
sexual orientation is rather than being told by someone else what it is
...
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✓ Sociologists of culture (see Chapter 5) are seeing a transition to “microcultures,” where groups of people who identify with one another are
able to come together from across a range of social backgrounds
...
✓ Sociologists of race and ethnicity (see earlier sections in this chapter)
have seen that “race” is losing legitimacy as a category people are born
into and that determines what they can or should do with their lives
...
✓ Sociologists studying social change (see Chapter 16), from Durkheim
to Weber, have all observed that individuals are increasingly seen as
having the right to say for themselves what they’ll do and with whom
they’ll associate
...
It’s often said that governments are getting “out of the bedroom,” but sociologist David John Frank, who has studied international changes in sex laws,
says that that’s not exactly true
...
On the
other hand, some sexual activities that were once permitted — for example,
a husband forcing his wife to have sex with him — have been increasingly
made illegal
...
Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and Gender:
Why They Still Matter
If it’s true — and it is — that in societies around the world, all individuals
increasingly have the right to choose for themselves what they will do, with
whom they will do it, and what identities they will choose, are ideas like
race, ethnicity, sex, and gender outdated? Does it even matter what race or
ethnicity or sex or gender you are? Why even bother having an ethnicity or a
gender, or a particular sexual orientation? Some people feel this way; in fact,
there are people who identify their sexual orientation as “omnisexual,” claiming complete freedom to be intimate with anyone they happen to be attracted
to
...
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...
Those concepts are grounded
deep in the fabric of every society, and saying that they don’t matter any
more is simply false
...
Ethnicity may be an “option” for some people, but although ethnicity (unlike
race) is not determined by how others see you, that doesn’t mean it’s easy
to renounce the ethnicity you were raised in — even if you want to
...
Similarly, sex and gender are increasingly complicated categories that remain
just as meaningful to individuals as they were when they were simpler
...
If you’re confused or frustrated trying to understand your own race, ethnicity,
sex, or gender, you’re not alone! Many groups exist to help people find support and advice about their identity, no matter what it is
...
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...
I wasn’t sure
that Catholicism was entirely “right,” but I figured they couldn’t all be right
...
”
I soon realized that my professor was not going to tell us which religion was
right; whatever her personal religious beliefs, they weren’t the point
...
It’s the
job of theologians and philosophers to study the hereafter; social scientists
study the here and now
...
Every day, billions of people
around the world pray and gather to share their faith, whatever that might
be
...
So sociologists have studied religion, just
as they’ve studied every other major feature of society
...
Then, I explain the difference between religious beliefs or values and
the organizations that support people’s religious practices
...
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...
Karl Marx,
Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber all had ideas about the role of religion in
society
...
(For more on
Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, see Chapter 3
...
Most sociologists believe that religion is mostly, if not
always, a constructive force in society
...
The most famous of those sociologists is Karl Marx
...
” If I own the field that you need to grow food, or
the machinery you need to build a home, or the company you need to work
at to earn money, I have power over you
...
Marx was personally a skeptic, and his social theory reflected his belief that
any promise of divine reward for hard work and a “good life” was empty; that
people without power in the here and now should not count on justice being
done in the hereafter
...
If a person is barely getting by, working hard all day and being given only a
fraction of the profit their work is earning for their employer, that is wrong,
thought Marx — and if a person’s religious belief that they would reap rewards
in heaven deterred that person from fighting for fair treatment on earth, that
would be bad
...
It lulls people to sleep and keeps them from recognizing the injustice of
their surroundings; that’s why he called it “the opiate of the people
...
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Most sociologists today find Marx’s views extreme, and you might too — but
his ideas are important to think about
...
That
could include all or any of these phenomena:
✓ Advertisements for expensive products that you “need to have”
✓ Politicians who say that people who have different policy ideas than
they do are “unpatriotic”
✓ Traditions that keep members of a certain sex or race in a subservient
position because “it’s always been that way”
Whether or not they agree with Marx, sociologists do agree that it’s hard to
understand the social world if you approach it with a set of preconceptions
about how things are “supposed” to be
...
Some communist governments based on Marx’s ideas have tried to eradicate
religion altogether, but they haven’t been entirely successful
...
Emile Durkheim: A metaphor for society
Emile Durkheim didn’t agree with Marx that religion was a destructive
force in society
...
Durkheim believed that religion must serve a function in society, must do
something to help people work together happily and productively
...
Durkheim agreed that
religion helped encourage people to trust others, but unlike Marx, Durkheim
believed that this was by and large a good thing
...
Sharing religious beliefs, values, and practices helps people recognize what
they have in common, and helps encourage them to set aside their differences and make personal sacrifices for the good of society
...
Durkheim’s ideas about religion are especially interesting with respect
to social change
...
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of evolution from relatively simple tribal societies to complex industrial
societies, even if they don’t follow that path at the same pace
...
If a society is changing, and religion is at the heart of that society, then religion needs to
change too!
Durkheim believed that religion helped societies maintain their solidarity
...
In this way, religion is a metaphor for society itself
...
Durkheim called this mechanical
solidarity because people need to “mechanically” follow very specific rules,
or the society could be in danger
...
Sure enough, noticed Durkheim, religious beliefs in simple societies tend to
be very specific and ritualistic
...
There may be a rain god who will be angered unless a
specific ritual is followed, or a war god who has clear ideas about how territorial incursions ought to be dealt with
...
For Durkheim, this was the essence of mechanical solidarity
...
People’s lives become much more diverse, and if everyone followed the
same very precise set of rules and rituals, the social system would grind to a
halt
...
Durkheim called this organic
solidarity because people in complex societies need to organically adapt their
behavior to the particular situations they’re in
...
Members of these
societies are less likely to believe in gods with human-like personalities making
concrete demands on mortals; instead, members of big, complex societies are
likely to believe in gods who are at a greater remove from humanity
...
In general,
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...
This, for
Durkheim, is what organic solidarity is all about
...
It encourages cooperation and
mutual respect
...
To understand how this works, consider the separation of church and state,
which was a core belief of the founders of the United States
...
To this day,
citizens of the United States are free to practice any religion without interference from the government; government leaders are not allowed to make laws
that favor one religion over another
...
but it hasn’t always been that way
...
In many cases, religious leaders essentially were
the leaders of governments
...
Horrible
though this was, Durkheim would say that in societies bound by mechanical solidarity it made sense
...
In this kind of society, it’s hard for
people of different faiths to live and work together
...
Don’t kill
...
Be honest
...
People with this kind of
religious belief have a much easier time living and working together, and it
makes sense for governments to allow them to do so without following the
exact same religious traditions
...
That’s a relatively rare
situation, but it does happen — you can probably think of some examples —
and it can cause a flurry of debate, even violent debate
...
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Max Weber, the last of the “big three” early sociologists, agreed with
Durkheim that religion changes along with society — but he didn’t think
there was necessarily anything “mechanical” or “organic” about it
...
There’s no question, agreed Weber, that
religious beliefs and values fundamentally affect the way that people lead
their lives — but whereas Durkheim believed that changes in the social structure would more or less inevitably lead to changes in religious beliefs, Weber
believed that it often worked the other way around: that religious beliefs and
values led to widespread social change
...
” Specifically, Weber wrote about the importance of the Protestant
values of hard work and thrift in the development of modern capitalist society
...
It’s not that Luther and Calvin exactly wanted to bring about a capitalist society, but the values they preached nonetheless led to that outcome,
said Weber
...
”
Weber used the “switchman on the tracks” metaphor to acknowledge that
not all outcomes are possible in society — there are distinct sets of “tracks”
that a society might follow, depending on how things turn out
...
(See
Chapter 5 for more on culture
...
✓ Like Marx, though, Weber also understood that religious values don’t
always line up with social realities — and that they can lead to unnecessary conflict
...
Weber understood that
both of those perspectives might be correct
...
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As much peace and happiness as religion has brought to people, as much as
religious ceremonies and rituals are among the most treasured moments in
people’s lives, it’s also true that (sincerely held, if distorted) religious values
have served as the basis for some of the worst atrocities in human history —
from the 15th-century Inquisition to 21st-century suicide bombers
...
and in Practice
When studying religion, sociologists distinguish between the religious beliefs
that people hold and the organizations that they form to facilitate their religious practices
...
Religious ideas, ideology, and values
For any one individual, personal religious beliefs are often at the core of their
religious experience — often, indeed, at the very core of everything that’s
important to them
...
This is true of sociologists
as well, most of whom are people of faith and practice some form of worship
with their families in private
...
That’s
what separates religious beliefs from other beliefs: they are matters of faith
or philosophy rather than matters that can be tested with empirical observations
...
) To study religion from a sociological standpoint, you need to focus
on aspects of religion that can be observed in the here and now
...
What you can observe is what they say, what they write, what they
read, and what they do
...
What they found — and what many other sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and other scholars of religion have found — is that religious beliefs and
values, intensely personal as they feel to any given individual, are generally
shared by people in particular times and places
...
So why do they change over
time? Why do they vary among different societies?
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...
Marx believed that religious values change to suit the interests of the
powerful
...
Weber believed that religious values, as propagated by charismatic religious leaders, both influence and are influenced by social change
...
After all, many people of faith believe that religious belief
is a kind of antidote to social change, providing a compass for the faithful to
sail by regardless of which way the prevailing cultural winds are blowing
...
After all, the
essential reason sociologists are interested in religious values is precisely
because they do influence action
...
What makes religious belief a matter of interest to sociologists is the fact that
people’s religious values do — or, at least, can — influence their actions
...
In Weber’s example of the “Protestant Ethic,” this meant that people who
might have worked only as hard as they needed to get by day to day decided,
instead, to work as hard as they could, to scrimp and save and to amass
wealth
...
So for this reason (plus out of simple curiosity), sociologists are interested in
why and how religious values change — and they have discovered that religious values do change, and change in ways related to changes in society
...
That
may well be the case, but sociology studies the world as it is, not as anyone
believes it should be, and the empirical reality is that religious beliefs are not
constant
...
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Open the church: Religious organizations
When you were a kid, someone might have taught you the game where you
clasp your hands together and recite the rhyme, “Here is the church, here
is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people,” wiggling your fingers
to represent the congregation
...
This means that in large part, the sociological study of religion is the study
of religious organizations
...
(In fact, in most
countries they are considered nonprofit organizations
...
As I mention earlier in this chapter, in centuries past (and in many societies
today) religious organizations essentially were governments, taking direct
responsibility for not just holding worship services but also managing the
economic system, waging war, and enforcing laws
...
Many, though, set more ambitious goals
...
✓ Martin Luther King, Jr
...
✓ In almost every country, religious groups are among the most important
groups offering aid to the needy through shelters, food shelves, and economic assistance
...
✓ It’s common for religious groups to advocate for one side or another
of a civic political issue — anything from health care to international
relations — and to mobilize support for that position
...
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...
In
1990, there were 152 murders in Boston, but in
1999 there were just 31; for a period of two and
a half years in the late 90s, there were exactly
zero teenage homicide victims in Boston
...
”
Why did this happen? The Boston Police
Department points with justifiable pride to
a unique program that began in the early
1990s, where cops joined forces with AfricanAmerican religious leaders to fight youth violence
...
Many of the kids
got the message, and many of those who didn’t
were apprehended and imprisoned — with the
cooperation of people in the communities they
were terrorizing
...
S
...
What Winship thinks may be most impressive
about the Boston partnership is the way that
it’s helped to minimize specifically racial violence in a city that saw terrible racial tension
the 1970s and 1980s
...
The success of the Boston partnership — which
continues, successfully, to this day — shows
the continuing importance of religious organizations, especially in communities where other
civic organizations are mistrusted
...
In the lives of believers, religious organizations may play a role well beyond
facilitating worship
...
Recent decades have seen the rise of
suburban “megachurches,” massive structures housing huge congregations
...
Especially for people who feel that
their values aren’t reflected in mainstream culture, it can be very satisfying
to have a place to gather where they know they will be surrounded by people
who share their beliefs
...
My father grew up in St
...
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185
but in terms of Catholic parishes, which is how he grew up thinking about the
city’s geography
...
Marks,” he’ll say, or “she bought a house
down there in Nativity
...
(“People say we didn’t have any minorities in St
...
“Of course we did
...
This gives religious organizations a special power that can
be tremendously constructive — as with organizations that help hold communities together in times of war or strife — or tremendously destructive — as in
the case of corrupt cults that exploit their members financially and otherwise
...
Faith and Freedom in the World Today
In today’s world, where most societies maintain a separation between
church and state and where immigration and other factors are leading to
increasing religious diversity everywhere, religion is an especially complicated subject
...
Shopping for God
Sociologists distinguish between faith (or beliefs, or values) and action
...
These are both
important indexes of religiosity, but they measure different things
...
In the United States, for example,
a large majority of people say they believe in a higher power, and nearly
half say they regularly attend religious services; this has declined in recent
decades (especially if you look at whether people actually attend services
and not whether they say they do), but not as quickly as in Europe, where the
rate of belief is falling and the rate of attendance is falling faster
...
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Conservative Christian culture: A world apart
One of the most striking developments on the
religious landscape over the past several
decades has been the emergence of a coordinated, well-defined coalition of conservative
Christians
...
The movement is also distinctive for having
given birth to a vast array of consumer products aimed at those who don’t feel mainstream
products reflect their values
...
Even on the Internet,
there are Christian search engines, Christian
social networking sites, and a Christian video
site called “GodTube
...
Members of the movement have argued that
removing religious symbols from government
buildings and forbidding judges and lawmakers
to invoke religious beliefs in their deliberations
has potentially disastrous consequences for
American public life
...
In other ways, though,
the movement embraces the realities of mainstream politics and entertainment; its members
are enthusiastically using the freedom contemporary society affords them to choose their own
faith, their own entertainment, their own social
world
...
This may seem like a heretical, or even offensive, way to look at something so profoundly personal, but it does describe the behavior religious
organizations have been demonstrating — and, in fact, the way many people
think about religion
...
Most religious organizations welcome converts,
and they realize that people may be swayed by many factors when choosing
a religious orientation generally and a particular community specifically
...
✓ The family and tradition in which they were raised, possibly preferring
an organization with beliefs, rituals, and a structure that mirror the ones
they grew up with
...
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✓ The social values of a denomination or a congregation, preferring to
worship among people who share their commitment to a set of social
policies or public service interests
...
✓ Geography, preferring to attend service in their own neighborhoods
...
Religious organizations recognize that people have a choice in their religious
affiliations, and the organizations often respond by advertising themselves
in ways ranging from flyers at the back of the sanctuary to billboards or even
radio and TV ads
...
Do people actually think about religion this way? Do they actually think about
faith as something to be shopped for, like cereal or a winter coat?
In some ways, of course not
...
That said, it is true that in societies where people do have the freedom to
choose their faith and the ways in which they practice it, they tend to exercise that freedom
...
Another 9 percent switched faiths at some point before returning to their childhood faith
...
As network sociologists (see
Chapter 7) and those studying social movements (Chapter 13) have discovered, it’s rare that people change their behaviors out of thin air
...
Often,
action follows belief
...
Belief, action, and everything in between
So, again, why do sociologists care about religion? What business of theirs
is it to whom people pray, or where people expect to go after they die? It’s
because religion is not something that exists merely in your head or your
soul; it’s also, typically, something you do
...
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✓ You might join a religious organization, which may be of pivotal importance in your community
...
✓ Religion can affect your social networks, which in turn affects everything
else you do
...
But does
faith directly affect people’s actions? From a sociological standpoint, does it
matter what you believe, beyond it simply mattering that you believe?
Of course it does
...
All the major sociological theories about religion emphasize that faith somehow influences people’s actions — not just by influencing them to build buildings and form organizations and buy books, but by influencing them to take
specific actions in this world consistent with their beliefs about the next world
...
Marx was
particularly wary of faiths that offered the promise of heavenly rewards
because he believed that people who expected to be rewarded in heaven
might be less likely to demand their just desserts on Earth
...
He believed
that religious teachings and ceremonies teach people how to get along in
society, and make it less likely that people will pursue personal goals that
are at odds with larger social goals
...
Weber believed that religious values could influence people’s actions in
any number of ways
...
Religious
values, for Weber, don’t completely determine the direction a society
will take; nor do they necessarily change to match a social structure
...
In all these theories, specific religious beliefs and values directly influence people’s actions beyond the walls of the church or the synagogue
...
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189
the perspectives of Marx or Durkheim because Weber has more appreciation
for the complex interactions among religious institutions and other social
institutions
...
Religion can be profoundly important in people’s lives, influencing all the
actions they take
...
A person can claim no religious affiliation, and have personal beliefs about the hereafter (or lack thereof) that have no bearing on
their actions in the here and now
...
In other societies, religious institutions are completely separate from the state, and have little political clout
...
That makes it harder to generalize about the role of religion in social life, but it doesn’t make religion any less important
...
Every week, billions of
people around the world gather in living rooms, public squares, and private
houses of worship to share their faith and share their community
...
It links them to a larger
social world and, according to their beliefs, to a spiritual world as well
...
In some cases, this violence is a direct extension of faith —
some people genuinely believe that they have a divine imperative to act in a
hostile manner towards those who do not share their beliefs — but in most
cases, religious distinctions merely serve to highlight and exacerbate other
divisions
...
Social activists interested in working towards a just world have
always seen it as downright tragic that distinctions of religion and race can
divide people who might otherwise find common cause in a shared economic
or political situation
...
The suggestion is one that it’s hard to argue with: that people of different
faiths should learn to get along and tolerate the differences among themselves
...
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...
There’s change in the extent of people’s religiosity, in the distribution of religious beliefs, and
in the beliefs and practices of particular faiths
...
Anthropologists and historians have traced the
tremendous spread, change, fragmenting, and
consolidation of religious traditions
...
Among
Christians alone, there are the Catholics, the
Eastern Orthodox Catholics, the Lutherans, the
Methodists, the Baptists, the Mennonites
...
Besides the fragmentation of religious traditions into new and separate faiths, there are
new faiths that are created by the intermixing
of different traditions
...
The Liberal Catholic Church blends Catholic
theology with the insights of mystics and seers
...
This intermixing happens as people seek to find
or create religious practices that both soothe
their souls and speak to the circumstances of
their lives
...
Religious
change is not just something decided by groups
of spiritual leaders meeting in solemn congress;
it’s something that happens in every city, in
every country, every day
...
Your religious affiliation is a social
status like your race or your sex or your class, but it’s different than any of
those because it corresponds to a whole set of values and beliefs that you
may believe are dictated or influenced by a force higher, more powerful, and
more important than any human being or social institution
...
From this perspective, it may be disappointing that religious differences are
behind some of today’s most bitter, brutal conflicts — but it shouldn’t be a
surprise
...
Managing the transition to a society of increasingly diverse
religious beliefs, for all its obvious benefits, is not an easy thing to do
...
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Chapter 11
Crime and Deviance: I Fought
the Law
...
On
the one hand, it’s obviously a very practical thing to understand
...
For this reason, sociologists often receive funding to collaborate with other scholars and with law
enforcement authorities to investigate why crime occurs and how it might be
minimized or prevented
...
Societies may be incredibly diverse and tolerant of a wide range
of behavior, but those behaviors defined as crimes are where societies draw
a line in the sand and say you may not
...
Understanding how
and why those lines are drawn can tell you a lot about how a society works in
general
...
First, I
explain the difference between “deviance” and “crime”; then, I go through different explanations of why criminals commit crimes
...
Finally, I look at teenage drinking as a case study in crime
...
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All Crime is Deviance, but Not
All Deviance is a Crime
Every social group has its norms
...
There’s no
official agreement about what’s supposed to happen to you if you stray from
these norms, but if you do, people will probably notice and might well punish
you in one way or another for failing to heed them
...
✓ Keeping secrets among friends
...
✓ Getting married in your twenties and having kids in your thirties
...
When you violate any social norm, sociologists call it deviance
...
That sounds harsh, but it’s okay — you’re a deviant, and so am I
...
Sometimes
you feel bad about this (for example, if you’re rude to a friend), sometimes
you feel proud of this (for example, if you violate a social norm against having
friends who are gay), but deviance is just part of social life
...
You may impress a fellow “deviant” (for example, someone who agrees with you that a particular unusual style of dress is
attractive), you may save time or money (for example, by waiting until the
last second to merge on the freeway, saving you time but slowing everyone
else down), and you may inspire social change (for example, a girl who tries
out for a football team may make it easier for other girls who are interested
in playing football)
...
You will draw attention to yourself, and
people may avoid you, make fun of you, or even attack you for being different
...
Everyone
makes these calculations every day when they consider the social consequences of their actions
...
These are norms
that are publicly stated (usually put in writing), and that may have an officially determined consequence
...
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...
✓ A school rule that students have to wear a certain uniform
...
✓ A state law that you can’t exceed posted speed limits on the highway
...
Breaking a law is deviant — and it’s also
a crime
...
There may be benefits to crime (money,
power, thrills), but there are also obviously costs — costs that may include
fines, imprisonment, or even death
...
What counts as “deviant” may
vary from one social group to another, and within that general category of
deviance, what counts as a “crime” is something that has to be sorted out by
government agencies
...
Criminals in Society
So who are these criminals? Why do people commit crimes? In his book
Sociological Insight, Randall Collins looks at different reasons why a person
might think criminals fall on the wrong side of the law; in this section, I discuss the two main theories Collins offers — they’re just bad people, and
they’re driven to it — before explaining why sociologists think some crime is
simply normal
...
)
When you see the word “criminal,” the images that may come to mind are
pictures of brutal men and women: cold-blooded murderers, street thugs,
and furtive child molesters
...
In fact, they often look downright evil
...
Are
people like this just plain evil? Isn’t that why people are criminals — there’s
just something wrong with them?
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...
They may have severe psychological
disorders, or just a flat lack of regard for the feelings of others
...
But that can’t possibly work as a satisfactory explanation for all crimes
...
For one thing, there is a wide range of crimes, from those that involve grievous harm to others (murder, rape, assault) to those that involve milder forms
of harm (theft, libel, disturbing the peace) to “victimless crimes” that involve
harm, if any, only to oneself — illegal drug use, or failing to fasten one’s own
seatbelt
...
Further, crimes are committed in different circumstances
...
Some people
steal to feed their families whereas others steal to feed their taste for expensive clothes
...
The world just isn’t that simple, and the law just isn’t that infallible
...
)
If it’s not adequate to understand crime simply in moral terms (criminals are
bad, law-abiding citizens are good), then maybe it makes more sense to think
about it in rational terms
...
Setting aside the people who choose
to commit crimes because they have a psychological disorder or have completely renounced any sense of obligation to others, maybe the rest of the
criminals are reluctant ones
...
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Certainly, this describes a large proportion of criminals
...
Kids who join gangs to get the protection law enforcement can’t
offer them, or people who steal to feed their families when they can’t find
work to earn a proper living are clearly reluctant criminals
...
Rational choice
explanations are popular among economists, and in fact there have been
many economic studies of crime demonstrating that “criminal” acts and
transactions — from drug trafficking to prostitution — are an important
part of the global economy
...
A
person who generally respects the rule of law may still choose to break specific laws because their circumstances otherwise would be dire
...
In most cases, committing a crime somehow makes sense to the criminal — that is, it’s not
completely irrational or illogical — but it’s hard to understand why people
feel “driven to” break the law in very different circumstances
...
Other people
commit crimes where they don’t stand to make any personal gain: vandalism
or assault
...
Some crime is simply normal
Some criminals are just bad people
...
Many criminals feel driven to it
...
But neither of those explanations is
really a satisfactory explanation for all the various crimes committed in every
society, everywhere, since the beginning of history
...
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Emile Durkheim, as I explain in Chapter 3, believed in the survival of the
fittest societies; as among plants and animals, he said, if a given feature is
observed in many societies across a range of situations, there must be a
reason for it
...
Crime occurs, without exception, in every society
...
It’s just going to be there, whether you
like it or not
...
In this section,
I first explain why crime is virtually inevitable, and possibly even useful
...
It’s
normal for people to accidentally stub their toes every now and then; it’s
normal for hurricanes, tornadoes, and tsunamis to occur; and it’s normal
for some people to step outside the bounds drawn by their society
...
That might mean a very minor offense — say, being late for
prayers or letting a few weeds grow in the garden — but nonetheless, it will
count as a “crime” in that particular society
...
It would obviously be a serious problem if every single person in a country decided to take one particular day off
work, but there are no laws forcing people not to all take the same day off
because it’s so extremely unlikely that it would occur
...
At the same time, laws are written to cover situations where there is actually
some chance where the laws will be enforced
...
so
there are no laws against simple rudeness
...
” It’s not necessarily guaranteed that a society will have
murderers or embezzlers (think of Durkheim’s hypothetical community of
saints), but it is hard to imagine a society with no crime whatsoever
...
If crime can’t be eliminated, if crime is inevitable, why
bother hiring police officers?
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Well, for one thing, enforcing laws does make it less likely that those particular laws will be broken
...
If there’s a behavior that people in a society want there
to be less of, putting cops on the case is a good idea even if they can’t stop
every single criminal
...
Besides the fact that everyone else sees the law upheld
and is taught to think twice before breaking the law themselves, the enforcement of laws can be something that brings people together
...
Whether it’s petty crime in a neighborhood or sensational crime that makes national headlines, crime gives
everyone something to talk about and to agree on
...
In ancient Rome, crowds would fill the Coliseum to watch criminals be thrown
to the lions; in medieval society, public hangings were popular entertainment
...
The Social Construction of Crime
Although some crimes (for example, kidnapping) are very widely outlawed
and others (for example, pumping your own gas) are outlawed only in a few
places, all crime is socially constructed in that each society has to decide
for itself what counts as a “crime
...
In the courts
In 1692, over two dozen people in Salem, Massachusetts were executed, or
died in prison, as part of a series of events that became known as the Salem
Witch Trials
...
It’s one of the most shocking episodes in American history, and it’s been
widely studied and discussed; Salem itself remains a popular destination,
especially around Halloween, for tourists curious to see the town where the
trials took place
...
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Many accounts portray the witch trials as a sort of inexplicable craze that
overtook an otherwise normal town, but sociologist Kai Erikson wrote an
entire book (Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance) explaining why the trials, though tragic, make sense in social context
...
What’s more, their legal system gave individual judges tremendous
leeway in interpreting and enforcing the law
...
S
...
Today, an event like the Salem Witch Trials is almost unthinkable;
although it was exceptional even in colonial America, the legal system at that
time was constructed such that an event like it may have been a very real
possibility in any number of communities
...
An activity — witchcraft — that
most Americans today don’t even believe is possible was genuinely feared
in colonial America, and it was considered the proper business of the courts
to stamp it out
...
What counts as a “crime” varies from year to year — even day to day — as
societies officially change their minds and change their laws
...
If they decide one way, the activity in question becomes
a crime, and those who engage in it are subject to punishment
...
Complicating matters even further is the fact that no law is completely unambiguous; it’s up to courts to decide whether the law applies in any given situation
...
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...
In Minneapolis, for example, the city where I live, there is a law against
keeping as pets animals that are “wild by nature
...
Are parrots somehow, by nature, domestic? What about a
turtle, or a fish?
As it happens, the law was intentionally written to be ambiguous, so that
courts could have leeway to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the keeping of a particular animal is inappropriate
...
Paul,
meanwhile, decided to take action to prevent what its city council saw as a
potentially dangerous fad, and explicitly outlawed the keeping of sugar gliders
...
Today, proudly self-described witches run
souvenir shops there
...
but if I were to take my pet across
the Mississippi River to St
...
“Crime” is what people say
it is — nothing more and nothing less
...
But how do they decide how best to keep people safe: which laws to
enforce, and when, and how? It’s not always obvious
...
They may come across a theft in
progress, or witness an egregious violation of someone’s rights, or be called
to an urgent situation that demands immediate action
...
Even in well-policed societies, it’s impossible to enforce every law
...
✓ Most jaywalkers would be shocked to be stopped by a cop
...
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...
✓ Few people reach legal drinking age without ever having known the taste
of alcohol, and at college campuses across the United States drinking
is a primary social activity despite being nominally illegal for the large
majority of undergraduate students
...
Other laws, though — for example, laws against murder, rape, violent assault,
and large-scale theft — are written to be enforced as universally as possible,
and possible violations can merit exhaustive investigations
...
This adds another level to the social construction of crime
...
If I know I’m not going to be caught at a crime, it de facto
becomes not a crime at all
...
” In many cities, riding a bicycle on the
sidewalk is de jure a crime (insofar as there are laws against it) but de facto
legal (insofar as you’re unlikely to pay any penalty for it)
...
For example, many women believe that male
police officers will be less likely to give them speeding tickets if the women
cry when they’re pulled over
...
A song by the
group Spearhead says that “it’s a crime to be black in America”; the truth
behind the lyric is that in many neighborhoods, racial minorities are viewed
with suspicion and are apt to get away with a lot less than whites
...
People dressing a certain way, or having
a certain color of skin at the wrong place in the wrong time, unfairly risk mistreatment or undue suspicion
...
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Don’t touch that file
Minnesota mom Jammie Thomas, like millions
of Americans, used file-sharing software to
exchange music over the Internet — an activity that’s illegal in the United States when it
involves copyrighted files, as almost all popular music files are
...
Thomas refused, and the RIAA took
her to court
...
Instead of being overturned, the judgment was
increased — to almost two million dollars
...
Even people who acknowledge the
necessity of copyright law question whether
individuals who share music with no intention to profit by it deserve to be held liable for
monetary damages — much less multi-milliondollar damages
...
The Thomas case and the international discussion about it show that people know the law is
a blunt instrument and that “crime” is what you
get caught for doing
...
It was unfair, they
said, to so strictly enforce a law that millions of
people reasonably assume every day that they
can get away with breaking
...
Becoming Deviant
Like all sociologists, those who study crime and deviance have come to
appreciate the wisdom of W
...
Thomas’s dictum that a situation defined as
real is real in its consequences
...
In the 1970s, sociologist Robert W
...
Balch
asked the students to guess how a teacher would treat the boy if he were
considered any of several things including a “troublemaker,” a “good quiet
student,” or a “hippie
...
” In fact, they guessed that teachers would be harder
on a reputed troublemaker who’d never actually broken the law than on a
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...
In effect, they told Balch that the way
a situation was defined — whether or not a boy was a troublemaker — was
more important than the actual truth of the situation, whether or not the boy
had committed a serious offense
...
In any of those situations, you
might come to feel like you can’t win
...
That adds to your disciplinary record and essentially
makes you “more deviant” than the people who did the exact same thing
but got away with it
...
If you figure you’re going to get in trouble whether or not you obey the
rules, why bother obeying them?
The irony is that slapping someone with a “deviant” label is often intended
to shame them into reforming whatever behavior caused a social group or
authority figure to define them as deviant in the first place
...
A kid in school may actually have caused some trouble, and a man or woman
on the streets may in fact have committed a serious crime
...
For that reason,
it’s not illogical or unreasonable for teachers, police, and other authorities to
pay attention to that label
...
Still, the fact that “deviant” labels can have such serious consequences
means that anyone concerned with fairness ought to be concerned with
applying them, and with jumping to conclusions about someone’s behavior
based on any label they may have
...
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Fighting Crime
Just because the idea of “crime” is socially constructed doesn’t mean that
crime is okay, or that crime is nothing to be worried about
...
In this section, I explain how sociology can be used
to help prevent crime — as well as to figure out what to do when people do
commit crimes
...
People in
the community said they had absolutely no warning — but was that true? All
these things were known about Carneal before the shooting occurred:
His school work was sloppy, and his grades had recently dipped
...
He was routinely subject to public humiliation, he had poor social skills,
and he was a prankster who had thrown a stink bomb at school
...
He had abnormal fears, and he had written disturbing essays
...
He stole guns and money
and kept rifles at a friend’s house, he threatened his peers and physically
hurt at least one classmate, and he openly fantasized about taking over
the mall and the school
...
Anyone in the community would have done anything to prevent the tragic
shooting, and yet no one had been able to put together the pieces and prevent the crime
...
S
...
With psychologists already investigating the problem of school shootings,
Congress approached a sociologist because they understood that preventing
crime is about more than just understanding “the criminal mind
...
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commit crimes — especially violent crimes — but law enforcement officials
can’t get inside the heads of all possible criminals, and they can’t solve everyone’s problems
...
A sociologically informed approach to fighting crime will focus not on the
individual criminals but on the circumstances in which crimes are committed
...
Sampson and Stephen Raudenbush’s finding that fixing
broken windows isn’t the best use of police officers’ time because people’s
perceptions of disorder have more to do with the people around them than
with their physical surroundings (Chapter 2), and Christopher Winship’s
study of how a partnership between the Boston Police and black religious
leaders helped to dramatically lower the rate of violent crime in Boston
(Chapter 10)
...
Of course they have to do a lot of that, but to only do that is to buy into the
theory that criminals are “bad people” who just happen to be that way
...
It’s also not enough to just keep tabs on the people who seem to have the
strongest motives to commit crimes
...
If
understanding and fighting crime was as simple as figuring out which people
might have motives to commit crimes, cops’ jobs would be much easier and
detective novels would be much more boring
...
When the Boston Police partnered
with ministers in the community, they built a trusting relationship with allies
who shared their interest in preventing violent crime and could help share
influence and information
...
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The way I opened this section was, intentionally, a little misleading — I mentioned a number of things that were known about Michael Carneal
...
All of those facts emerged after the shooting, when
authorities, journalists, and scholars investigating the case talked to everyone who had any contact with Carneal
...
Think about how insights from
these sociological perspectives might help administrators understand and
prevent school violence:
✓ Microsociology
...
Erving Goffman, though, clearly points out that people can wear
very different masks to different people
...
The “real Michael” was all of those people,
and it’s important to remember that you can’t count on any one individual to really know what a potential criminal is capable of
...
✓ Network analysis
...
If you’re teased at school in the big city,
you might go home to a completely different neighborhood with people
who think of you differently, but in a small town, you’re trapped
...
Sociologists who have studied organizations
also understand that a dense network of social ties doesn’t necessarily
translate into a free flow of information
...
Sometimes there are important things that, whether for good reasons or not, you don’t tell even
your closest friends and coworkers
...
Violent acts like homicide and
suicide rarely take place without warning; the trick is seeing, and responding
to, the signs
...
”
If you have any indication that a person you know is at risk of harming themselves or others, talk about your concerns with a trusted authority figure or a
mutual friend
...
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...
Farberman
set out to study the market for used cars
...
He soon realized, though, that he’d
stumbled upon a fascinating case study in the
sociology of crime: a social situation where
criminal behavior was all but guaranteed by the
rules of the game
...
They had the power to license dealers and to determine how much inventory those
dealers were forced to keep on hand
...
Further, the profit to
be made on each new car sale was very thin
...
That meant the
wholesalers needed cash to pay the bribes, and
they earned it by conspiring with their customers to defraud the government by receiving a
portion of their payments in (untaxed) cash
...
But, Farberman’s observations showed,
if any individual dealership obeyed the law, it
would go out of business; and if every dealership obeyed the law, the entire industry would
collapse
...
Farberman’s study
provides an example of a social situation where
fighting crime could not be a matter of simply
arresting all the criminals; to end crime in the
retail car market, the way that market operated
would have to be fundamentally changed
...
The remarkably high incarceration rate in the United States
today is a subject of much discussion by sociologists and criminologists, and
by the end of this section it should be clear why
...
There are at least three reasons for this
...
)
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✓ Deterrence
...
The harsher the punishment, the greater the disincentive to
commit the crime
...
✓ Prevention
...
Imprisoning criminals helps keep them from committing
more crimes
...
If a person commits a crime, there may be something that
can be done — psychological therapy, for example, or job training — that
can help change the circumstances that led the person to commit that
crime
...
Does punishment work? Does it help prevent crime? To some extent, absolutely
...
Obviously there are some people
who are prone to commit terrible acts of violence, but many others will also
commit petty thefts or otherwise behave selfishly in the absence of a rule of
law
...
But how much, and what kind? That’s the hard question
...
A potential fine
of two million dollars would seem to be enough to keep people from sharing
a few songs, but millions of people are apparently unconcerned and do it
anyway
...
”) For four decades the American
government has waged a “war on drugs,” dramatically increasing fines and
prison sentences for drug-related crimes; it’s had so little success at actually
reducing recreational drug use that President Barack Obama’s administration
has decided to stop using the term “war on drugs” to describe America’s antidrug efforts
...
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...
Maintaining jails, prisons,
and probation officers is a huge expense that normally must be borne by the
innocent taxpayers who populate a society
...
How many people must be imprisoned, and for how long, to keep
a society reasonably safe? Money spent on prisons might also be spent on
police officers, hospitals, or scientific research
...
The theory is that
prisons are places where offenders learn life skills and repent of their crimes,
but often the reality is that prisons are places where convicts are under the
negative influence (sometimes, the abuse) of other offenders, coming out
more crime-prone than they were when they went in — plus, having a grudge
to bear against the society that put them behind bars
...
Most employers, for most
jobs, in most places, are allowed to investigate the criminal records of potential employees — not just determining whether a potential daycare employee
is a convicted sex offender, but asking whether a potential grocery clerk or
auto mechanic has ever been convicted of any crime whatsoever
...
Having
been in prison gives a person a label of “deviant” (as explained earlier) that
blazes like a neon sign, giving that person an uphill battle to earn trust and
opportunities both in and out of the workplace
...
To some extent this is reasonable
and unavoidable — who wouldn’t want to know if a potential employee had
been in prison? — but it’s important to bear in mind when considering how
many people to imprison, and for what crimes
...
S
...
To some extent that observation is neither here nor there because the United
States may be unique — maybe Americans are especially crime-prone, or
maybe there would be much more crime if there weren’t so many potential
offenders in prison — but many sociologists and criminologists are concerned, and they believe that changes in U
...
policy are overdue
...
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...
S
...
To the extent that imprisonment does have a negative effect on the
imprisoned, minority communities are bearing the brunt of that negative
effect
...
Many people believe that crimes should be punished, if for no other reason,
for the reason that it’s “only fair” — that is, that if someone hurts another
person, the offender should have harm done to them in return
...
(If
you think that incarcerating criminals will make others hesitant to commit
crimes, that would be considered a deterrence argument, as mentioned elsewhere in this section
...
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...
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All Together Now:
The Ins and Outs
of Social
Organization
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...
ocial organization: It’s a noble goal, and sometimes it
actually works
...
In this
part, I explain what sociologists have learned about the
workings of social organizations
...
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Chapter 12
Corporate Culture: The Study
of Organizations (and
Disorganizations)
In This Chapter
▶ Connecting sociology and the world of work
▶ Understanding why bureaucracy works — and doesn’t
▶ Being human in an inhuman organization
▶ Opening and closing organizational boundaries
▶ Searching for a purpose
I
f I asked you to name a society, you’d probably name a country — the
society of Kenya, or the society of Vietnam, or the society of the United
States
...
(See Chapter 2 for more on what a “society” is
...
and redesigned, and re-redesigned
...
I first introduce the general sociological approach to
organizations, then explain how sociologists have come to appreciate that
organizations are rational systems with purposes
...
Of course,
that might be something you don’t need a sociologist to tell you
...
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The Corporate Conundrum: Making
a Profit Isn’t as Easy — or as
Simple — as it Sounds
Sociologists — working in collaboration with economists and other organizational analysts, for example those at business schools — want to understand
how organizations work, and that means acknowledging the reality that
people in organizations are facing complicated choices and great uncertainty,
and that they’re working with limited time and information
...
Most organizations do some of each
...
New
products, new advertising campaigns, mergers, acquisitions, executive
retreats and skit nights…sometimes it seems like companies are running
to stand still, or running and still managing to move backwards
...
Take Starbucks, for example
...
” Could they be any more ambitious? What’s wrong with
just selling coffee?
There’s nothing wrong with just selling coffee — but corporate life is rarely
that simple
...
Seems straightforward
...
Where are you going to sell your coffee? Are you going to operate stores,
or are you going to have a mail-order operation, or both? Are you going to
sell brewed coffee, or just the beans? If you’re selling brewed coffee, are you
also going to sell espresso drinks? Will you stock flavored syrups and three
kinds of milk? What about hot chocolate? Tea? Snacks? You could reasonably
extend your product line into all of these areas:
✓ Frozen drinks
✓ To-go drinks
✓ Drinks sold through grocery stores
✓ Coffee-flavored ice cream
✓ Coffee mugs
✓ Coffeemakers
19_572368-ch12
...
Then, after you’ve decided on a product line and an expansion strategy, you
need to put into place a team to manage your employees
...
And what about training? Then there’s
the question of your corporate culture; you want to make your employees
happy
...
Are you going to own your stores, or franchise them out? From whom are you going to buy your coffee, and how are
you going to make sure they keep up with your demand at a price you can
afford? Are you going to manufacture your own paper coffee cups, or are you
going to hire another company to do that? If you’re facing competition from a
smaller coffee company, should you try to buy that company?
At every level of organization, there are many, many difficult choices — and
the bigger your organization gets, the more choices and possibilities you
have
...
That gives the
company a lot of options, and potentially a lot of frustrations
...
Weber’s Big Idea About Organizations
The great sociologist Max Weber, as I explain in Chapter 3, believed that over
time, society has become more and more rational — that is, that society has
become increasingly based on formal rules that are carefully planned and
documented, are rigorously followed, and that apply to everyone regardless
of who they are, where they come from, or what they believe
...
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easier if people would just focus on solving problems instead of nit-picking
about every little thing
...
Weber’s definition of a bureaucracy is in many ways the starting point for
today’s sociology of organizations
...
A bureaucratic organization may have many different parts, but the relationships
among those parts are defined in the rules — which also define the
limits of the organization
...
✓ Positions in a bureaucracy are organized in a hierarchy, where it’s clear
who has authority over whom
...
✓ Everything a person in a bureaucracy needs to perform their job is supplied to them by the organization — which, then, owns those supplies
...
The people in bureaucracies are essentially parts
in a machine — and if a part in a machine breaks, it gets replaced by another
part that’s going to do the exact same thing
...
A group of friends is a social organization, with members working together to achieve goals (throw a party, go
out on the town, share information about other groups) — but it’s an informal organization, where who you are is intimately tied to what you do in that
organization
...
You don’t leave an empty
“position” in your group of friends; they may or may not bring in someone
new, and if they do, that new person will have different possessions and
qualities to bring to the group
...
A company is a bureaucracy: a permanent, formal organization that follows a set of rules
...
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217
Getting a leg up on bureaucracy
For my niece Madeline’s second birthday, my
mom gave her a small table and chairs that
came in a box sealed from the factory
...
Mom called the
company and asked if they would please send
a replacement leg so that the table would stand
properly
...
But, my mom said, it would be incredibly inconvenient to do that — and anyway, she’d already
thrown all the packing material away
...
Mom tried again: What if the company opened a
box with a complete table and chairs, took a leg
out of the box, and sent it to Mom? The result
would be the exact same as if Mom returned
her set: The factory would have a table without
a leg, and Madeline would have a table with
four legs
...
They couldn’t
do that
...
Because of the
company’s bureaucratic organization, it was
easier for them to do that than to break the rules
and open a sealed box or take a table leg off
the assembly line
...
Many companies consider it better to be a little wasteful than
to allow employees to break any rules and risk
the resulting disorganization and confusion
...
(See sidebar, “Getting a leg up on bureaucracy
...
Banks may refuse loans to good, reliable people because they don’t have
any credit history; bars may refuse to admit a grey-haired senior citizen who
doesn’t have a driver’s license to prove he’s over 21; and an ATM machine
may eat your card because you accidentally mistype your security code
...
Even if bureaucracies seem to be acting in an absurd
manner, it may collectively benefit the entire company to set up firm rules
and expectations from which employees are not allowed to deviate
...
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A friend of mine was given a troubleshooting job at a top software company precisely because she didn’t have much experience with programming — the company had learned that when it hired technical whizzes for that troubleshooting
position, the whizzes would come up with inventive solutions that no one else
could understand, which made the software impossible for anyone else to fix
when something else went wrong
...
Furthermore, the fact that bureaucracies (officially, at least) don’t discriminate
can be for the better
...
Still, being caught in a bureaucracy can seem uncomfortably impersonal —
because, after all, it is
...
”
(See Chapter 3 for more on Weber and his “iron cage
...
Scott’s Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems
...
Every organization is rational, natural, and open; I’ll explain what each of
those terms mean, one by one
...
”
In Scott’s typology, “rational,” “natural,” and “open” are three different ways to
understand organizations, not three different kinds of organizations
...
Measuring the shovels: Efficiency!
Efficiency!
The term rational system refers to the fact that any organization is typically
designed to work as efficiently as possible at accomplishing some set task
...
In this sense,
almost all formal organizations — that is, organizations with rules and
defined membership — are rational systems
...
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rational doesn’t mean they aren’t designed with a goal in mind, or that they
don’t generally accomplish that goal in some form or to some extent
...
He recognized that organizations weren’t always rational, but he thought that was a problem that ought
to be fixed
...
Taylor had exactly this view of organizations, and in the
early 20th century he actually undertook to study particular organizations
and help their owners or administrators make them work better
...
”
He would visit organizations and study every detail of how they worked,
then recommend how their operations could be revised to make them work
better
...
✓ Select employees based on precise qualifications, and train them in the
most efficient work practices rather than leaving them to figure things
out for themselves
...
✓ Give managers the job of designing efficient work methods and supervising the workers who actually accomplish the tasks
...
He even went so far as to study the size of
shovels used by workers and determine what size shovel allowed a worker to
scoop the most coal over the course of a workday
...
Taylor appreciated the role of financial incentives and argued that his system fairly compensated dedicated workers — he
held up one particular steel worker, Schmidt, as an example, and pointed out
that Schmidt was working more efficiently under Taylor’s system and making
more money to boot
...
thus, scientific management was a win-win proposition
...
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Many workers and labor advocates, though, saw Taylor’s methods as dehumanizing and brutal
...
Plus,
it seemed to assume they were too stupid to know how to do their own jobs
...
but for doing 362 percent more work
...
Sociologists today agree that Taylor wasn’t fundamentally mistaken in his
belief that evaluating work processes objectively, especially in situations
where tasks are rote, is a better strategy for efficient production than allowing each worker to independently create a work plan
...
Even when there’s fair pay for efficient work, people are not machines and
they’re apt to balk when it seems like there’s no room for individuality, variety, or personal initiative in their work
...
but
it’s not exactly right, either
...
In many cases,
organizations and the people who work for them have to deal with ambiguous situations that change from week to week, day to day, or even moment
to moment
...
Workers have to be flexible and make decisions
based on changing circumstances
...
For example, you might tell a manager
not to give any customers special accommodations unless it seems like
they’re about to switch their business to another company
...
For example, many stores have designated returns departments with people who are specially trained to
accept returns — so busy cashiers don’t have to make decisions about
whether or not to accept returns
...
19_572368-ch12
...
(I explain more about the general problem of dealing with the environment in the section on open systems
...
Imagine you’re running
the coffee business I describe in the first section of this chapter, and you’re
trying to decide where to open your next location
...
How do you know when you’ve gathered enough information to make the best decision about where to open your
next store?
Herbert Simon, one of the all-time great scholars of organizations, coined the
term “bounded rationality” to refer to the fact that the rationality of human
decision-makers is “bounded” by the amount of time they have to gather
information and make decisions — as well as, needless to say, by the limited
computing power of their human brains
...
)
Simon’s work has been a major influence on management consultants, who
are today’s Frederick Taylors
...
Not only do management consultants have to consider the bounds on the
rationality of the people at the companies they’re studying, they need to consider the bounds on their own rationality
...
When I asked why they didn’t
spend more time, he explained that they could spend a lot more time — but
that probably wouldn’t result in recommendations that were dramatically
more useful
...
The success of management consultants would seem to vindicate Taylor and
his overall approach: Objective, scientific study can help improve business
operations by a great deal
...
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There are a few good reasons for this, but one of them is that sometimes
people are more willing to listen to an outsider than to someone who they
know well
...
How can you objectively decide which of your employees’ jobs to eliminate
when you’ve become friends with all of them? People’s rationality is limited
not only by their time and brainpower, but by the fact that they are human,
with human relationships and human needs
...
Natural Systems: We’re Only Human
As the limits of Taylor’s “scientific management” became clear, sociologists
started to realize that understanding organizations means understanding the
people who make up the organizations
...
well, like
human beings
...
(Richard W
...
)
Making people feel special: The Hawthorne
Studies and the Human Relations Movement
In the 1920s and 30s, a team supervised by Elton Mayo, a professor at
Harvard Business School, undertook a Taylor-like study of productivity at the
Hawthorne works, a manufacturing plant near Chicago
...
In their experiments, the investigators tried changing many aspects of the
working environment:
✓ They changed the levels of lighting, from especially bright to especially
dim
...
✓ They varied the length of breaks the workers were given
...
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223
✓ They tried giving the workers food on breaks
...
This went on for years, and the researchers were confounded to see that no
matter what they did, just about every variation they introduced improved
productivity! At least in the short term, almost every change made to the
work environment caused the workers’ productivity to increase
...
Even though in most circumstances the workers weren’t being rewarded
for the additional productivity, their behavior changed simply because of
the way they felt about the situation
...
This discovery — which later became known as “the Hawthorne Effect” —
provided Mayo and other sociologists with direct evidence that Taylor had
been mistaken in thinking that the best strategy for increasing productivity
was to take away employees’ individual initiative, to tell them how to do their
own jobs
...
(If you’ve ever been treated that way at a job, you
understand why it doesn’t help workers’ motivation!)
This insight provided the genesis of what was called “the Human Relations
Movement
...
Many people believe that the most important factor in
job happiness is not the nature of your work but rather the nature of your
coworkers: If you like the people you work with and feel respected by them,
you’ll give the job your all
...
This meant, said Mayo, that both sociologists and CEOs needed to pay attention to these aspects of corporate life:
✓ The relationships among workers, the social groups they form that overlap with their working groups
...
19_572368-ch12
...
Workers need to feel
like they have a personal stake in the company, like their experiences and
opinions are heeded and respected
...
✓ Managers’ skill as leaders
...
A manager who doesn’t win their employees’ respect and admiration isn’t a good manager, no matter what their level of technical skill
and professional judgment
...
Today’s corporate culture movement is as
much about cultivating workers’ feelings toward their employers as it is about
actually giving them a voice in their work situations
...
None of these things have anything to do with getting a job done — in fact, they all seem like perks and activities that are liable to
be distractions
...
Today,
owners of corporations appreciate that if workers aren’t happy, they won’t be
productive
...
The dot-com boom of the 1990s saw astonishingly open workplaces sprout up
19_572368-ch12
...
The Google corporate campus is famous for its open plan, its
comfortable feel, and its amenities like food, drink, and exercise equipment
...
” Some of
these studies are very practical — how many parties should a company hold
each year? — and some of them are abstract and academic, looking for parallels between the way corporate culture works and the way culture works generally (see Chapter 5)
...
”
One danger with attending to “corporate culture” is thinking that a surface
layer of attention to employees as individuals is good enough — that it can
remove the need for an organizational structure that actually gives those
employees a voice in how things are done
...
In his five years as president of Harvard
University — ironically, the same institution
where Elton Mayo founded the Human Relations
Movement — Lawrence Summers learned the
hard way just how important “soft skills” are
...
He was
a brilliant economist who had been one of the
youngest people ever tenured at Harvard and
then had served as Secretary of the Treasury
under President Bill Clinton
...
Harvard’s governing
body hired Summers because they knew he
would have the tenacity to push for a major
campus expansion they viewed as important
...
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...
Cornel West, a professor of AfricanAmerican studies who was one of the university’s
most popular faculty members, abruptly left for
Princeton University when Summers offended
him by suggesting that West was neglecting his
academic research
...
Eventually, the arts and science faculty voted that they had no confidence in
Summers, and he resigned in disgrace
...
As Elton Mayo knew,
a leader who fails to inspire is a leader who fails
...
He doesn’t allow his workers to display any personal belongings; their
bare desks are arranged in perfect rows
...
When an unusual chain of circumstances leads
to Coleman being absent from the office for several weeks, Parton and two other employees —
played by Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda — sign
his name to memos changing office policies
...
Coleman is flabbergasted when he
returns, but before he has time to change anything back, the chairman of the board arrives
and personally praises Coleman for the dramatic rise in productivity Coleman’s brought
about with “his” new policies
...
The movie reflects
companies’ growing understanding that workers are not interchangeable, and that running
a workplace based on standards of pure “efficiency” is actually not all that efficient
...
(Executives are
then mystified when it’s revealed that there are major problems with their
operation — “Why didn’t anyone tell us?”) Mousepads, polo shirts, and flashy
performance awards are no substitute for corporate policies that genuinely
respect all members of an organization
...
In this
section, I discuss the topics of setting organizational boundaries, seeing organizations as networks, institutional isomorphism (a
...
a
...
19_572368-ch12
...
Think of a very simple organization: two kids running a lemonade stand
...
These
kids need a steady supply of lemonade mix from the kitchen cupboard or
the grocery store; and they need an equally steady supply of customers who
will buy the lemonade
...
First, they have their suppliers
...
Frederick Taylor might be able to walk into a
Starbucks today and come up with an ideal workflow and organization, but
that might all change tomorrow if circumstances change
...
One relatively straightforward way to minimize uncertainty is to absorb
uncertain elements of the environment right into your organization
...
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Coffee suppliers giving you a hard time and changing their prices often? Buy
a farm and grow your own coffee! Franchisees getting hard to negotiate with?
Then operate your own stores! Landlords giving you headaches? Buy your
own building!
The logic is appealing, and in fact many large companies do expand to own
almost the entire chain of production
...
The company that owns the Gap mid-price clothing
retailer, for example, also owns the high-end Banana Republic chain and the
low-priced Old Navy chain; whether sales sag at the high end or the low end
of the market, Gap, Inc
...
Some
companies, known as “conglomerates,” even go so far as to buy completely
unrelated businesses — like diversifying a stock portfolio
...
Companies often
find it more efficient to outsource operations like cleaning, transportation,
and security, rather than try to run those things themselves
...
The best answer is rarely obvious, but it’s a question that all organizations need to consider
...
Understanding the complex nature social networks is key to understanding
organizations
...
If you read that chapter and the earlier sections of this chapter, you can see how network analysis fits well with the natural-system view
of organizations
...
19_572368-ch12
...
This distinction
becomes important when you consider that professional information can
flow through personal networks just as quickly, if not even more quickly, than
through professional networks
...
Many of
these connections have little or nothing to do with your professional work,
but many of them do — companies are connected by complicated webs of
personal ties in addition to all the professional ties they need to maintain
...
Institutional isomorphism: If that company
jumped off a cliff, would your company
jump off a cliff, too?
If you’ve been reading this chapter from the beginning, you’ve seen how
the tidy world of Frederick Taylor has come unglued as social scientists
have revealed one reason after another why understanding organizational
life isn’t like understanding a machine
...
When organizations face so many choices about what to do and how to do
it, it can be hard to see what they’re “supposed” to be doing
...
You walk into the place with a general idea of what you’re supposed to be doing, but there’s still a lot you don’t know and you’re not going
to be explicitly told
...
Organizations — from governments to retailers to nonprofits — have the
same problem, and often they solve it in the same way: by doing what everyone else is doing
...
19_572368-ch12
...
Powell note that there are three different reasons why companies behave in an isomorphic manner — in other
words, why they copycat one another
...
For
example, a country that doesn’t respect certain human rights will find
itself facing economic sanctions from the rest of the world — if it drafts
children into its army or denies women the right to vote, it will be ostracized from the global community
...
Say that hypothetical coffee company doesn’t know
whether or not to sell tea; it might be profitable, or it might not
...
Though individual health clinics, in a
private healthcare system like in the United States, compete with one
another for patients, it’s in the interest of the entire medical field for
doctors and nurses to be trained only at certain accredited institutions
...
Sociologist John Meyer has spent his career studying institutional isomorphism, and he believes that the pressures for organizations to conform are so
great that they’ll often converge on the same way of doing things even when it
seems completely illogical
...
Again, this may remind you of your own behavior — have you
ever spent money on a status symbol when you really ought to have used it for
something else?
In Chapter 5 I explain the sociological difference between “culture” and “structure,” and the debate over the role culture plays in society
...
In many cases, though, cultural ideas about what
they’re “supposed” to be doing actually define how organizations see themselves and set their priorities
...
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231
The world’s smartest sheep
A colleague and I spent several years studying
universities around the world; specifically, we
looked at changes in the academic subjects that
were taught and studied there
...
The social sciences (especially sociology!)
became studied much more frequently around
the world, and the humanities much less frequently
...
Why did all these universities change in the
same ways? All three of the mechanisms identified by Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell
(see “Institutional isomorphism” section of
this chapter) were at play
...
It’s an especially interesting example of isomorphism, we think, because universities claim
to present the truth
...
The fact that university curricula are becoming more and more similar around the world is
evidence, we believe, that people in different
countries are becoming more and more similar
in the way they see the world, in what they think
is important to know and do
...
)
Mission drift: Searching for a purpose
If you need any further evidence that social organizations are more than just
machines doing set jobs, consider how often their missions drift from what
they were originally “designed” to do
...
The current Republican Party in the United States is the
same party that President Lincoln was part of in the 1860s, but it’s not
certain that Lincoln would consider himself a Republican today
...
For example, when the success of Starbucks demonstrated how much customers
were willing to pay for a cup of coffee, Dunkin’ Donuts switched its business model and now makes most of its profits not from doughnuts but
from coffee
...
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✓ Charismatic leaders may sway the focus of an organization
...
As several sociologists have noted, when established, organizations tend to
focus on preserving themselves rather than on fulfilling their mission; if selfpreservation leads down a different road than the organization initially followed, it will tend to go down that road
...
One function that used to be performed is no longer performed, and one new
function is added
...
Before
you know it, the organization is doing something very different than it was
doing in the first place
...
In fact, some sociologists wonder whether it even makes sense to think of complex organizations
as having any real “purpose” in any meaningful sense of that word
...
Cohen, James G
...
Olsen
invented what they called the “Garbage Can Model” of organizations
...
There are any number of actions the organization
can take at any time, and they’re taken almost randomly, as though they were
being pulled out of an overflowing garbage can
...
Cohen, March, and Olsen’s classic example was a university: There are so
many different things a university can do — regarding teaching, research,
administration, public outreach, student life — that might qualify as part of its
mission, and a university’s decision-making structure is often so sprawling and
decentralized, that a university can seem to be doing a little bit of everything at
once, without a clear purpose to any of its actions
...
”)
All this may make it sound like organizations are completely ineffective —
and indeed, it often seems that way! But in fact they are not; they’re powerful means to accomplish collective goals
...
well, that’s how people act individually
...
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Chapter 13
The Rules of the Game:
Social Movements and
Political Sociology
In This Chapter
▶ Understanding the role of government in society
▶ Thinking about power: how it’s shared, and not shared
▶ Getting social movements off the ground
W
hen you’re paying your taxes or applying for a passport, it may seem
like government is all-powerful
...
With all these rules, regs, and restrictions, it seems
like “government” and “society” are the same thing
...
But government is only a part of society: Government is affected by social
forces outside itself, and it often changes
...
Political sociologists study not only the way government works, but the way
it interacts with other social institutions
...
Then I explain how sociologists think about power in society, and finally I summarize what sociologists
have discovered about social movements formed to effect change in government and society
...
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Government: Governing
and Being Governed
So what is government, and how does it work? Those are big-picture questions, and sociologists who study them have to step way back and consider
many different societies at many points in time
...
Social structure and the state
The United States uses the term “state” to refer to one of the 50 little governments that make up the nation, but sociologists and political scientists use
the term “the state” to refer to the overall government
...
k
...
“the government”) is something people know
when they see it, but it can be slippery to define
...
In other words, a government is, fundamentally, that
organization in society that reserves for itself — or has delegated to it — the
ultimate right to use force to compel people to behave in a certain way
...
Beyond this basic, defining characteristic, governments take many different
forms
...
Some governments
are pure dictatorships, where a leader enforces their will over a group of
people simply because they have influence over the army and the police and
20_572368-ch13
...
Most, though, at least nominally govern with the consent of the governed — in other words, they have
the support of the majority of the people in their power
...
Political scientists and legal scholars are specifically interested in the workings of government, sometimes very particular governments
...
The core questions political sociologists ask about government are:
How does government work, and
...
It includes several different
types of government, such as theocracy, monarchy, and communist republic
...
Is it just a coincidence that China is a communist country, Canada
is a democratic republic, and Iran is a theocracy? (A “theocracy” is a country
where religious leaders also control the government
...
or maybe
there’s something about each of those societies that caused those different
types of government to arise
...
They’d also like to know how each of those different types of government
interacts with other social institutions, such as the economic system and the
educational system
...
✓ They can’t control the economy, though they can influence it (also see
Chapter 5)
...
✓ They can’t control the outside world (governments, like other organizations, are open systems — see Chapter 12)
...
That’s what the rest
of this chapter is about
...
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The big takeover: Causes
of political revolution
When it comes to government, political revolution is about the biggest
change there is
...
Political revolution has been a hot topic among sociologists from the very
beginning, in part because sociology was born in a world wracked by revolution (see Chapter 3)
...
After 200 years of investigations, sociologists still haven’t come up with a
“recipe for revolution,” but their investigations have made clear just how
precarious governments really are
...
Think about all the actions that can destabilize or topple a government:
✓ An environmental catastrophe, like a drought or natural disaster (for
example, the Rapanui of Easter Island who ran short of resources and
fell into disastrous conflict with each other)
✓ An outside attack by an aggressive neighbor (for example, European
nations in the Second World War)
✓ Internal fighting or disorganization among the people in the government
(for example, the American Civil War)
✓ Too much economic inequality, which can cause the have-nots to rise
up and take over (for example, the French Revolution)
✓ A cultural challenge to the justification for the system of government
(for example, the Russian Revolution)
In large, complex societies with relatively elaborate governments, there is
rarely any one single cause that can be isolated as the reason for a revolution
...
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...
Various world powers that have tried intervening to topple other
governments have further learned that there’s no magic trick that can induce
a revolution, either
...
It’s not easy, but
there are some common principles sociologists and other social scientists
have established as being important for a government to gain and keep the
support of its citizens
...
A functioning government that
successfully balances the needs of a large, diverse group of citizens requires
the trust and support of those citizens — and in the wake of war or turmoil,
or if a previous government was corrupt or irresponsible, people may be
very wary and reluctant to trust the official powers
...
Does it deserve your support? Your government needs to
earn your trust and support, and the trust and support of your neighbors,
every day — when governments are unable or unwilling to make their citizens happy, things start to get ugly
...
You may be able to think of contemporary examples of
governments that fail to meet their citizens’ basic needs and yet still stand
strong — why? It may be that there is no sufficiently organized opposition, or
it may be that they’ve manipulated their citizens into believing that there is no
superior alternative
...
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But how do they know?
To ask what factors cause political revolutions
is to ask a big question
...
If I want to
know what factors cause a person to vote one
way or another, I can survey millions of people
(providing I have the time)
...
What’s
more, if I’m surveying individual people, I can
survey a bunch of people who are all living at
the same time, in very similar conditions
...
That
can make them hard to compare for similarities
and differences
...
It’s a careful analysis of revolutions in France
(1789), China (1911), and Russia (1917)
...
Sociologists point out that you would never try
to build a theory of job change based on studying only three people, so how can you build
a theory of revolutions based on only three
countries? Don’t you have to look at many more
examples to see what the patterns are?
There’s no easy answer to that question:
Ultimately, every sociologist has to decide for
themselves what counts as valid evidence
...
Sharing (or Not Sharing)
Power in Society
Questions about the state and social movements tend to boil down to questions about power in society
...
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...
This is probably the most “common sense” way to think about power: If I have a lot of
power, I have the ability to compel a lot of other people to do as I want them
to
...
This is what’s known as a zero-sum view of power
...
Either you have power over me, or I have power over you
...
Naturally, in this view, power is something that everybody wants
...
The best-case scenario for me would be to
have all the power for myself, and that way I can call the shots
...
I might have power
because of my money, for example, while you might have power because
you’re ridiculously good looking
...
We each have some
power, and each of us can be especially influential in different situations
...
If all
three of us run for elected office, we can each try to use our power to win:
I can buy lots of ads for my campaign
...
Don can work his connections and try to get influential people to persuade voters on his behalf
...
In a zero-sum model of power, power may have different sources,
but it all ultimately comes down to the basic question of who gets their way
...
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Sociologists who think this way about power are often called conflict theorists
because they theorize that everyone is in conflict with everyone else, pretty
much all the time
...
If this is how you think about power, you likely think of a
political party as an uneasy coalition of people who make a truce to put a candidate in power, but might otherwise have nothing in common
...
In fact, this kind of
theory about the social or political world is often called a Marxist theory
...
Marx distrusted money because it’s like liquid power: It flows easily from
one person to another, and it can be easily used by one person or group of
people to gain advantage over others
...
Precisely as Marx would have feared, when the Soviet Union ended and
Russian citizens were given large sums of money representing their share of
formerly state-owned enterprises, many were quickly cheated out of it and
were left with nothing
...
In fact, Marxists tend to see the government as essentially a tool of the wealthy, something that exists at the
pleasure of — and for the convenience of — people with money
...
Should wealthy candidates (and candidates with
wealthy supporters) be allowed to spend as much money as they want
on their political campaigns, or should there be laws to equalize funding
among all candidates?
✓ Lobbying and gifts
...
Should officeholders be able to stay in office for as long as
they can gain the majority of the vote, potentially accruing more and
more power and influence with each term and becoming harder and
harder to beat — or should officeholders be subject to term limits, preventing them from serving beyond a certain amount of time?
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...
They reflect a concern that the government will use its
power for the good of one or a few rather than being fair to all
...
”
The question, in other words, is whether the government actually has any independent influence and power in society, or whether it’s strictly a tool of other
interests
...
This was
a view shared by 20th century Marxist C
...
The government, after all, has the guns;
even the wealthiest members of society must obey the government’s laws,
or they’ll find themselves on the wrong side of a set of jail bars
...
In many countries,
people with high incomes pay a greater share of their income in taxes than
do people with low incomes
...
Pluralist models: Fair is fair
The Marxist C
...
Parsons thought that modern industrial
society actually worked pretty well — in fact, better than any previous form
of society — to meet people’s needs
...
Parsons believed that power was not zero-sum: that giving power to some
didn’t necessarily mean taking it away from others
...
If no one has the
power to make decisions, then no decisions get made
...
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...
The “cox” doesn’t row at all; they just sit at the end of the boat and coordinate the rowing by calling out to the rest of the team
...
By giving power to the cox, all the team members gain power
over their opponents; if each team member kept for themselves the “power”
over when and how to row, the whole team would lose
...
When
things aren’t going your way, it may seem like the world’s conspiring against
you…but is it actually? If your boss yells at you, your dog pees in the house,
and your son gets in trouble at school, does that mean they all had a secret
meeting somewhere and decided to do everything they could to make your
day miserable?
Political sociologists with a pluralist view of power point out that when you
closely observe actual working societies, it’s rare to find power concentrated
in the hands of a few, and — far from conspiring to work to their collective
advantage — the people who are in positions of power often argue among
themselves
...
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Median voter theory and “common sense”
The median voter theory, first formulated by
economist Duncan Black, holds that where
voter’s political preferences range along a
continuum from very liberal to very conservative, in a two-party election candidates will end
up gravitating towards the middle rather than
taking extreme positions that risk alienating
moderate voters
...
but that sounds like a fancy name for
simple common sense
...
Sure, to an
American used to a two-party system, the idea
of a political spectrum running from right to left
with two more or less centrist candidates sitting in the middle seems very familiar, but there
are all sorts of ways the median voter theory
could be wrong — or, at least, incomplete
...
And what if voters’ preferences don’t fall in a
bell curve — what if there’s a big group of very
conservative voters and a big group of very
liberal voters, and few in the middle? What if
voters abandon a candidate who strays too
far from their ideals? What about third-party
candidates — when do they make an impact?
These are all questions that challenge or complicate median voter theory; theories that seem
like “common sense” aren’t always right
...
If this is starting to sound like everyone’s in a rowboat without a cox, that’s
exactly — a pluralist might say — why society delegates authority to particular people to make particular kinds of decisions
...
Some voices may be louder
than others, but in the long run, most people get heard
...
There are dictatorships and other types
of society where, in fact, the power is concentrated among a very few people
...
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...
Wright Mills in the 1950s and 60s
...
Dahl scoffed at the idea that any kind of secret
cabal was running New Haven — instead, he argued, the city government did
its best to balance the competing interests of all the different people it governed
...
”
Dahl and other pluralists believe that’s the way government works, at least in
democratic societies: by helping large, diverse groups of people work in their
own best interest
...
It never quite seems to
work out that way, though — in part because there is no such thing as a perfectly democratic society, and in part because many of the most important
institutions in society are not governmental at all
...
In this section, I explain how social movements get off the ground and mobilize supporters — and how and why they succeed
...
Social movements can be very small, or they can be very large; they
can be very successful, and they can be complete failures
...
They typically represent people who feel
that their voices are not being heard through other channels; that they don’t
have the means to get through to the powers that be without an organized
effort to make their demands known
...
From community-organizing groups like ACORN to religious groups
like the Christian Coalition to lawless groups like the Ku Klux Klan, a social
movement is any group of people organizing to bring about social change
...
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Social movements often target governmental officials and agencies, but they
sometimes also target corporations or influential individuals
...
Social movements’ efforts may take many forms
...
✓ Coordinated demands: Letters, e-mails, or other messages to the movement’s target(s)
...
✓ Civil disobedience: Members of a group defying the law to show
how strongly they feel about their cause, especially when their cause
involves a law they find unjust
...
Groups within a social movement may also disagree on the means of achieving a goal: For example, some groups may believe that violent vigilante efforts
are justified and necessary whereas other groups believe that efforts should
be exclusively peaceful
...
After all, everybody
wants something in society, but not everybody is going to go down to City
Hall and picket over it, write letters about it, or even tell anyone else how
they feel about it
...
Relative deprivation theory
One answer that seems to make sense goes by the name of relative deprivation theory
...
In other words, if society is setting a group
of people up to think that they ought to have something, but then doesn’t
give it to them, they feel “relatively deprived” and are inclined to take their
grievances to the streets
...
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As an example, think about the women’s suffrage movement of the late 19th
century and early 20th century
...
This effort
definitively succeeded with the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the
Constitution, guaranteeing all women the right to vote
...
Why was there no major suffrage movement in the 18th century, or
in the early 19th century? Certainly there were plenty of women who were
unhappy about their lot during those times, but they didn’t form a major suffrage movement until later
...
As
the 19th century neared its end, the idea that any group could be legitimately
deprived of the right to vote was under increasing attack from all sides
...
(Jim
Crow laws, sadly, kept African-Americans in many places from actually voting
until decades later
...
S
...
All this meant that a woman in 1900 who was living in a state where she was
unable to vote could read about plenty of other examples of women who did
have the right to vote
...
A useful aspect of this theory is that it’s helpful for explaining why there are
just as many social movements in wealthy societies as there are in poor societies
...
If relative deprivation theory still seems confusing, think about a child whose
father spontaneously decides to buy him a one-scoop ice cream cone; now,
think about a child who is given the same one-scoop cone while his sibling is
given a two-scoop cone
...
Not only are there just as
many social movements in wealthy societies, note those sociologists, when
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...
These sociologists — in
fact, most sociologists studying social movements today — prefer a theory
called resource mobilization theory, a term coined by sociologist Douglas
McAdam
...
Just because a significant number of people feel deprived of something doesn’t mean that they’ll be able to get together and coordinate a social
movement
...
✓ Communication resources, like mailing lists, phone trees, computer
networks
...
✓ Social resources, such as contacts in the government, the media, and
other spheres of influence
...
Those resources are all more readily available in wealthy societies, so it’s
easier for people to mobilize social movements in wealthy societies than in
resource-poor societies
...
It’s not necessarily the case that people involved in
big, elaborate social movements feel more aggrieved than the people whose
grievances don’t lead to social movements — it’s just that some people are
better able to access the necessary resources for a social movement than
others are
...
Marxists point out that it’s exactly the people who
already have many advantages who are able to mobilize social movements to
give themselves even more advantages, whereas the people with relatively
few advantages — the people who have the most basis for demanding social
change — are also the people with the fewest resources to mobilize social
movements
...
Think about how much easier it is to start a social movement now than it was
before the development of the Internet
...
This is an illustration of why sociologists emphasize the importance of resource availability in the generation of
social movements
...
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Rounding up the posse
If one question is how social movements get started, another question is how
people become involved in them
...
Why?
One answer comes from microsociology, and points to the importance
of frames
...
What I think my role is in a given social situation — including how,
and whether, I need to act — depends on the frame around that situation
...
This becomes especially important when you consider the fact that sometimes the grievances social movements fight for are quite removed from
the lives of the people whose support the movement needs
...
In other cases, it’s not so clear; to mobilize supporters, social movements need to convince as many groups of people as possible that the movement’s cause is something the groups have a stake in
...
There are many
different organizations involved in that movement, with different goals and
methods, but the general goal is to end practices that harm or cause suffering
to animals
...
✓ To attract supporters who are concerned about the environment, advocates portray animal rights as an environmental issue: raising animals
for food, they point out, requires more resources and creates more pollution than raising grains and vegetables does
...
✓ To attract supporters who are pet owners, advocates portray animal
rights as a moral issue: they spread photos and videos of animals being
mistreated to win the sympathy of people who would never want their
pets to be treated that way
...
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...
Why? Because the building supervisor
was concerned, justifiably based on his past
experiences, that ardent activists might try to
break into the building and free the caged monkeys used for psychological experiments
...
All major social
movements, from the Civil Rights movement to
the environmental movement, have involved
some significant elements of lawlessness
...
Is violence in a social movement justified? That
all depends on whether or not you agree with
the movement’s goals
...
but then again, it sometimes backfires
and embarrasses more moderate members
of the movement, especially when people get
hurt
...
Social movements can sometimes seem ridiculous, and sometimes they invite ridicule by using
humor or intentionally extreme methods to get
their point across
...
Sometimes that may seem hard to
justify, but at other times, doing too little seems
even worse
...
Interestingly, sociologists have also found that it’s often the case that people
active in social movements did not necessarily have strong pre-existing
beliefs in line with the movement’s principles — that is, that belief may follow
action rather than vice-versa
...
S
...
He knew that many millions of Americans believed
that abortion was wrong under most or all circumstances, but he also noted
that only a small fraction of those people became active in what was known
as the “pro-life movement,” the organized movement to prevent abortion
with the ultimate goal of making it illegal
...
He was surprised to discover that many of his supporters reported that before
they became active in the pro-life movement, they had not had strong views
on the issue at all — in fact, some even said that they would have considered
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...
What happened in these cases was that people typically became involved in the movement through friends and family: licking envelopes or making signs to support
someone they cared about
...
Even, it seems, when it comes to an issue as personal and where views are
held, by many people, so strongly, people can more easily be induced to act
than to believe; after they start acting, their beliefs may follow
...
What it means for a social movement
to be successful
Some social movements quickly meet with success, some find success only
after many years, and some social movements meet with no success at all
...
After careful study,
he concluded that (you’ve heard this before!) it wasn’t quite that simple
...
Gamson offered at least four different outcomes that social movements can
meet, depending on whether or not they’re accepted as legitimate organizations and whether or not their material goals are met
...
When a movement is recognized as legitimate and
achieves its goals, it’s unquestionably been a success
...
In the United States, Martin Luther
King, Jr
...
✓ Preemption
...
Music fans who have organized
digital file-sharing networks to pressure record companies to loosen
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...
In this
way, the goal of their movement has been “preempted” by the record
companies
...
This happens when a social movement wins recognition,
but doesn’t actually meet its goals
...
✓ Collapse
...
For example, the movement to re-legalize
polygamy in the state of Utah has failed to either change the law or to be
recognized as legitimate
...
The success of a social movement is sometimes a matter of having a charismatic leader, sometimes a matter of successful framing and mobilization, and
sometimes a matter of raw resources — but often it’s a matter of whether or
not the society is disposed to accept the movement’s demands, and whether
or not there’s a genuine opportunity for those demands to be met
...
” For a
social movement to succeed, the time has to be ripe — that is, it has to be the
right “day” — but the movement must also successfully mobilize supporters
to fight for its cause
...
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...
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Chapter 14
Urban Sociology and
Demographics: (Ain’t No) Love
in the Heart of the City
In This Chapter
▶ Understanding urban society
▶ Changing neighborhoods
▶ Making cities happy and healthy for everyone
I
don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a sociology textbook that has a
photo of a small town on the cover
...
Why is that? After all, a village is a society, too
...
As you can read in Chapter 3, sociology
was founded at a time when cities were growing rapidly as people moved in
search of jobs and new opportunities
...
When you’re among people who are similar to you, it’s easy forget about the
fact that you’re all operating under a set of assumptions and expectations
about the social world
...
It can easily
make you curious about society, and about how all those different people can
possibly get along together
...
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In this chapter, I begin by talking about classic sociological studies of the
city
...
Can cities remain peaceful, productive places
for everyone to live? Sociologists believe they can, but they acknowledge that
there’s always going to be tension, always going to be diversity and change
...
Sociology in the City
Sociologists have always looked to the heart of the city for people and situations to observe
...
(It’s often a challenge just to live it!) In
this section, I explain how 19th century sociologists understood city life, and
how 20th century sociologists threw themselves right into the thick of it
...
Hundreds or thousands of people may be in the same
place as you, but if don’t or can’t relate to them, it can feel very isolating —
even frightening
...
On a bus or subway car, you may have your face jammed into
the armpit of someone who’s completely ignoring you
...
The sociologist who’s best known for writing about why it feels different to be
in a city than in a small community was a German named Ferdinand Tönnies,
whose most important work was published in the late 19th century
...
”
For Tönnies, Gemeinschaft characterizes a community that feels like a community
...
You naturally feel a kinship with other people in Gemeinschaft because you have a set
of shared interests and, for that and other reasons, you do many of the same
things
...
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✓ Farming communities
✓ Families
✓ Religious communities
Gesellschaft, on the other hand, characterizes a group of people who come
together by choice, usually for very specific practical reasons
...
Examples
of these groups include:
✓ Urban business centers
✓ Corporations and trade cooperatives
✓ Universities
✓ Political parties
In Gemeinschaft, when you encounter someone you can safely assume that
he or she has a lot in common with you and is, or wants to, share a personal
relationship — in other words, that he or she is your friend
...
In fact, in some such groups (for example, in
business ventures), close personal relationships may be discouraged or even
outright forbidden!
In Gemeinschaft, bonds among people are intimate and personal
...
Groups characterized by Gemeinschaft are generally much more comfortable,
and if you ever read Tönnies’s writing, you may get the feeling that he prefers Gemeinschaft and wishes there could be more of it
...
In most social situations today, the fact is that you just
don’t have much in common with the people around you and it would be silly
to pretend that you do
...
Paul — the quieter,
less crowded city where I grew up — came to visit, and as we walked through
downtown Boston he turned to me
...
Paul? Yes, but for a reason
...
If you stop to say hi to everyone, you’ll essentially be wasting breath that could be saved for the people you are friends with
...
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Tönnies believed that society, over time, was increasingly characterized by
Gesellschaft: it’s becoming more urban, more diverse, and more bureaucratic
...
Gesellschaft is something people are going to have to learn to live with
...
Diverse urban life is full of surprises: new people, new experiences, new ideas
...
Street corner society
Look on any city street at any given time, and you’re apt to see people buzzing about, going to and fro, jumping in their cars and hopping out of cabs,
selling things, buying things, arguing, making out
...
It may seem like there’s no
pattern, no sense to be made of it at all
...
William Foote Whyte was the sociologist whose
participant observation was the basis for his
classic book Street Corner Society; William H
...
William H
...
They made a number of fascinating
findings, and they had the video evidence to
back them up
...
)
Even in the crowded city, Whyte and his
team found many urban spaces were usually
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...
Why? Because the most common activity
among people observed by Whyte’s team
turned out to be — that’s right — watching
other people
...
Further, people
having private conversations would stand in the
middle of the sidewalk, forcing people to step
around them
...
Even people who are “alone” really
aren’t: They’re relating to all the people around
them in ways that fit the circumstances of the
city
...
You’ll notice
the shopkeeper who always comes out for a smoke break at three specific
times each day, the bus driver who helps the little old lady up the steps with
her shopping cart each Tuesday morning, the kids who come home from
school every weekday and pass by the musician playing his guitar
...
There are
rules and regularities to even the most chaotic urban neighborhood
...
From the Chicago School on down (see
Chapter 3), this has been an enormously productive pursuit that has yielded
some of the most important studies in all of sociology
...
Over the course of
several years in the 1930s, Whyte lived among the predominantly ItalianAmerican residents of an inner-city neighborhood in Boston
...
”
✓ Local politics, with officeholders and candidates for office working to
win the allegiance of important individuals and families
...
The most memorable, and poignant, aspect of Street Corner Society is Whyte’s
description of the complex relations among a gang of “corner boys”; he captured the way they had to balance their personal friendships and relationships with complex social forces
...
Books like Whyte’s — and, to be sure, there have been many more excellent
studies along these lines — demonstrate the complex nature of urban life,
even in communities that look desperate and disorganized
...
Street Corner Society was also pioneering in Whyte’s use of the research
method known as “participant observation,” in which the researcher joins
a social group and participates in activities along with its members
...
) The method has its drawbacks — it can be hard to objectively
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...
Changing Neighborhoods
Cities aren’t static — they’re always changing
...
Sociologists have long been interested in how and why neighborhoods change their character (and their
characters)
...
It’s 10 PM
...
TV shows,
political campaigns, and Currier & Ives prints of community ice rinks send
the message that your neighborhood is very important, and that your neighbors ought to be your bosom buddies
...
There are indeed many communities that are tightly knit, but there are many
more that aren’t
...
They each probably know a few people who they happen to come across or
who they’ve borrowed sticks of butter from, but they don’t really see their
streets as being their streets
...
In certain pockets, multiple families may have lived on the
same city block for decades or even generations, but that kind of stability has
never been universal, or even the norm — especially in urban neighborhoods
as opposed to rural communities
...
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Some aspects of urban life, though, have indeed changed over the past several decades:
✓ Transportation and communications technology allows people to have
much more frequent and meaningful interaction than in the past with
others who are far away, and though in general this supplements rather
than replaces interaction with people who they see in person, it is certainly true that sitting on the porch and watching the world go by isn’t
quite as compelling as it was 50 or 100 years ago
...
✓ Rising wealth and living standards around the world mean less sharing
of community resources — including housing
...
✓ From grocery shopping to entertainment, more activities are done at large
urban or suburban centers and fewer are done at small neighborhood
establishments
...
✓ For a number of reasons (both parents working, increased participation
in educational programs, safety concerns), children are much less frequently encouraged to play in the areas directly outside their homes —
especially unsupervised — than was formerly the case
...
It’s very easy to know almost nothing
about your neighbors — to come and go in your car and possibly even to
live in a home for years without having any significant interaction with those
living near you
...
True, many neighborhoods are only loosely connected — but
many neighborhoods are very tight-knit, with neighbors socializing and supporting each other
...
In relatively wealthy neighborhoods, residents may have
more resources to communicate among themselves, to host events, and to
mobilize around causes like street repair and public safety
...
The importance of your neighborhood goes beyond just the influence of the
people you share it with
...
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educational and work options; it may even directly impact your health if pollution or housing quality are significant factors
...
Neighborhoods on the tipping point
You don’t need a sociologist to tell you that neighborhoods change over
time
...
Urban sociologists have spent decades studying patterns of neighborhood change, and
they’ve come up with some interesting theories about what’s going on
...
Robert Park, a major figure in that crowd,
espoused a model that became known as the invasion-succession model
...
In my neighborhood in Minneapolis, for example, you
might say that there is one social “species” of older, wealthy people who own
large homes
...
These two “species” exist together in harmony
...
Any of the following
things might happen:
✓ The neighborhood might somehow find a way to accommodate this new
“species” of resident
...
✓ The entrepreneurial “invaders” might cause the longtime residents to
move out, making more room for new business-oriented “invaders,” who
would ultimately succeed the former residents and create a new local
“ecosystem
...
If a neighborhood has predominantly residents of one race, then if
residents of another race move in, the existing residents may feel threatened
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...
This model of neighborhood change seemed to make a lot of sense in the
early 20th century, when open racism was still common; in some ways it’s
still useful today, whether it’s used to describe changes in neighborhoods’
racial composition (unfortunately, many neighborhoods are still racially segregated, and residents of a different race may feel unwelcome) or changes
in the occupation or income level of residents
...
For an interesting and controversial look at neighborhood change today, take
a look at Bill Bishop’s book The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded
America is Tearing Us Apart
...
Others would argue that it’s for the better if
people feel they have a lot in common with their closest neighbors
...
The sociologists who invented the life cycle model believed that neighborhoods went through repetitive cycles of change
...
As it attracted more residents and more development, a neighborhood would enter its prime — but
eventually, the neighborhood’s infrastructure would start to decay, the quality
of life there would start to decline, and residents would move out in pursuit of
newer, nicer neighborhoods
...
This model makes a lot of sense: If you think about your own city, you can
probably identify neighborhoods that seem to be in each of the “stages” of
neighborhood life
...
In the case of the latter neighborhood, you have probably heard calls for “renewal” and “redevelopment
...
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Part IV: All Together Now: The Ins and Outs of Social Organization
This way of thinking about neighborhood change acknowledges that urban
life is more than just a big game of Risk, with “invading armies” of different
groups trying to “take over” different neighborhoods
...
The life cycle model also takes into account
the importance of neighborhood infrastructure: building quality, local services and amenities
...
Still, sociologists realize that this way of thinking about neighborhood change
also has its limitations
...
for better or worse”) have made
clear that you can’t just hit the restart button on a neighborhood — that
neighborhood change is a complex process that involves location, infrastructure, demographic change, social networks, and many other factors
...
Paul
...
Life is relatively easy in Eagan, and that’s why most
Americans prefer to live in communities a lot like it
...
Many inner-city residential
neighborhoods started out as suburban areas when the cities were smaller,
and older cities like London and New York City have inner-ring suburbs that
are themselves hundreds of years old, with beautiful (and hugely expensive)
historic houses
...
The highway system means that a person can reasonably commute
to work in, say, St
...
The suburbs built in the United States after World War II seemed to promise
“the American dream”: on a single income (usually the father’s), a family could
have a freestanding house with its own yard
...
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...
for better or worse
The life cycle model of neighborhood change
(see section “The life and death of neighborhoods” earlier in this chapter) inspired a wave
of calls for “urban renewal” in the middle of the
20th century
...
Sometimes this worked,
but often it didn’t
...
Starting in the early 19th century, Boston’s
Scollay Square neighborhood was a buzzing hub
of commerce and entertainment — including,
especially after 1940, the kind of “entertainment” that involved women wearing lots of
sequins and feathers with not much underneath
...
The development has been widely criticized for replacing
a vibrant neighborhood with a cold, windswept
expanse where no one really wants to go
...
People come from all over to
stroll among inviting gift shops, entertaining
street performers, and vendors selling seafood
and other local specialties
...
A
lesson from Boston’s experiences is that just
because a neighborhood strikes some people
as unsavory doesn’t mean it’s “dying,” and that
when a neighborhood is destroyed, you can’t
grow a new one overnight no matter how much
money you spend
...
✓ Sociologist William H
...
✓ In The Levittowners, a study of the first new-model American suburb,
sociologist Herbert J
...
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...
Whyte’s study of a growing suburban community in The
Organization Man shows how many residents were kept almost dizzyingly
busy with schedules of card games, church meetings, and other social functions
...
Far from being isolating, the
suburbs were intensely social
...
At first, sociologists like Gans were concerned at the “white flight” represented by suburban growth, with relatively wealthy — often white — city
dwellers abandoning urban neighborhoods for the shiny, safe suburbs
...
Many well-to-do families have left older suburbs like
Levittown; some heading for the newer, shiner “exurbs” that lie beyond the
suburbs and others heading back into the city, where they contribute to the
process of gentrification (see the section “Gentrification and the new creative
class” later in this chapter)
...
Some are home to thriving enclaves of immigrants from places like Africa and
East Asia
...
Life in the City: Perils and Promise
As they have always been, cities are places of great hope, great promise,
and — like any place — real dangers
...
In this section, I address the conflicts
and tensions inherent in city life
...
Some neighborhoods are
primarily occupied by wealthy people who own lavish homes or high-rise
condominiums, some are primarily occupied by working-class people who
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...
As I note earlier in the section “Changing Neighborhoods,” an essential
insight of urban sociology is that your neighborhood isn’t just a place where
you live, it’s a place that affects your life
...
In theory, these things should all be available to all residents of a city —
but in reality, poorer neighborhoods tend to lack those amenities
...
At home, they may face
physical danger and other challenges
...
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...
Sociologist William Julius Wilson, in his
1987 book The Truly Disadvantaged, argued that members of the urban underclass are those left behind when people who could afford to fled the city for
the suburbs
...
Though a disproportionate share of the underclass are minorities, Wilson
believes that the challenges of the underclass have less to do with racism
than with simple economic realities
...
The disappearance of middle-class blacks might,
in some ways, have created much more of a challenge for inner-city AfricanAmerican communities than did the disappearance of middle-class whites
...
Many Northton residents could be described as members of the underclass,
and Anderson notes that the community is home to fewer and fewer role
models as the guru-like “old heads” of the neighborhood die, move out, or are
simply marginalized as young people in the community fall under the sway of
less constructive influences
...
The challenge faced by the Village
is the challenge of gentrification
...
Gentrification is the process by which neighborhoods become steadily wealthier, especially innercity neighborhoods that have long been relatively affordable
...
Think about a neighborhood
in your city where the “creative types” have been moving — the artists, the
single professionals, the people who enjoy living where “the action” is
...
The new residents move there because it’s affordable and
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...
This can create tension
between the new residents and the longtime residents, who not only see the
character of their neighborhood changed, but also find themselves increasingly priced out of their own communities
...
”
According to Florida, members of the “creative class” are becoming increasingly central to economic life in developed countries
...
They may be software engineers, businesspeople, artists, or filmmakers
...
Where do they find these communities? Often, in inner cities
...
Order and disorder on the streets
Chances are that today, your city looks a lot like mine, Minneapolis
...
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...
They’re still a place to be, but not the place to be
...
Much of the city’s new-home construction is happening here
...
Most importantly, though, the
suburbs feel safer
...
Sampson
and Stephen Raudenbush that surprisingly challenged the idea that small
signs of seeming disorder in a neighborhood — for example, broken windows in houses — cause people to think those are lawless places where
anything goes
...
Specifically — and unfortunately — they
tend to associate a significant minority presence in a neighborhood with
“disorder
...
)
Of course, all cities are disordered to some extent; that’s part of their
appeal
...
If you live in the
city, you’re going to have at least glancing interactions every day with a
lot of people who are quite different from you and whom you may see only
once in your life
...
” He and other New Urbanists believe that cities worked best
before they were so sharply divided into commercial and residential zones,
when urban areas had a mix of uses
...
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✓ Affordable housing integrated with more expensive, luxurious housing
...
✓ Pedestrian-friendly public plazas
...
Can New Urbanism bring diverse, lively environments to the inner city?
In some cases it’s worked, but in other cases — for example, a Disneysponsored New Urbanist city called Celebration — it’s fallen flat
...
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...
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Par t V
Sociology and
Your Life
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...
nough about the whole wide world — what about
you? What does sociology have to do with your life?
As it turns out, quite a lot
...
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...
B
...
The actors were, or were made to
appear to be, in their 60s
...
The actors should have been in their 40s!
As with all other social norms, it’s easy to assume that the way things are in
your society is the way they’ve always been, or the way they are everywhere
else
...
Different people,
at different times and in different places, have had widely varying ideas about
what makes “a good life
...
First, I discuss the social construction of age (at both ends of the spectrum,
childhood and old age); then, I explain how demographers study the life
course
...
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...
To say that “age” is socially constructed is to say
that people’s ideas about what is necessary and appropriate for people at
each stage of life varies from place to place and from time to time
...
The “invention” of childhood
A historian named Phillippe Ariés made headlines (well, academic headlines)
in the 1960s with his bold assertion that the idea of childhood was “invented”
in the Middle Ages
...
As soon as possible, kids became involved in the economic and
productive life of society; they weren’t regarded as needing any kind of special treatment just because they were below a certain age
...
Still, Ariés was on to something: For most of human history, childhood
wasn’t nearly as distinct from adulthood as it is now
...
✓ Children are not allowed to work for pay (except for teenagers, within
strict limits), and they are forced to attend school
...
For much of human history, none of those things were seen as being true
...
They were needed to help support their family by working on the family farm (or, later, in factories), and
the skills they’d be learning in school (even reading and writing) were seen
as luxuries, not necessities
...
many people, including
the Puritans who settled America, believed that children were fundamentally
sinful, and were in need of strict discipline to mold them into responsible
adults
...
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Interestingly, along the way children acquired some specific rights that they
did not previously have
...
Plus, it’s increasingly the norm in
educational and family settings to allow children a lot of say in what they do
and when
...
Why the change? Has society simply become more
...
As a society develops, industrializes, and urbanizes, it eventually undergoes
what demographers (people who study trends in population) call a “demographic transition
...
This
happened in the United States and in Europe between 100 to 200 years ago
...
This means that they need to be supported by their parents
for many years — instead of supporting their parents through their work,
as was formerly the case
...
They’re not loved any more than they used to be — parents throughout
history have always loved their children — but they are the focus of more
schooling, more money, and much more attention
...
Are kids today spoiled? If being “spoiled” means being doted upon by overly
accommodating adults, then that’s a matter of judgment
...
then yes, they’re spoiled rotten
...
Today, by contrast, the cost of raising and educating a middle-class child in the United States can exceed $250,000
...
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Part V: Sociology and Your Life
Dad, can I take the car?
Anyone who’s read Jane Austen’s Pride and
Prejudice, or seen a film adaptation of the story,
has an idea of how courtship worked before
the 20th century
...
What you did as a teenager may have surprised
your parents, but it would have really mortified
your great-great-great-grandparents
...
Modern adolescence was born in the early
20th century, as attending high school became
widespread and technology (notably, the
automobile) gave young people a measure of
independent mobility
...
Ever since then, “adolescence” has been
expanding to fill more and more of the life span
...
It’s hard to do homework when
you have a toddler walking around
...
People in the final decades of life have always been an important part of society, serving as leaders and mentors and supporting younger people as they
raise children and take up leadership positions
...
For one thing, there’s simply much more of life than there used to be
...
She’s
already lived over 30 years longer than most other American girls born in
1919
...
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in 2007 — can reasonably expect that she and most of her peers will easily
reach the age of 80
...
Additional social changes that have changed the experience of being past
“middle age” (whatever that is) include:
✓ Economic changes that have made things both easier and harder for
senior citizens
...
Further, Baby Boomers have now reached what used to be considered
“retirement age,” but many are finding themselves without the pension
plans their parents had and thus forced to continue working, at least
part-time
...
This means that not infrequently, people reach their 60s still supporting their children in college
or grad school
...
✓ Changes in relationships — including a divorce rate around 40 percent —
and reproductive technology (yes, Viagra) have meant that more and
more seniors are dating and leading active sex lives
...
The title of this section — “18 again” — is
tongue-in-cheek, but it’s not a joke
...
(In fact, increasing numbers of seniors are going back to school and becoming college students
...
and do more drugs
...
Though people over 50 didn’t grow up with the Internet, they’ve
learned quickly and are fueling much of the growth of social networking sites
and other online communities
...
With families being small and economic times being tight, seniors
can’t count on their children to support them — in fact, they’re having to
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...
Most of
them have not had life-long jobs, and robust pension plans or retirement savings accounts are fewer and fewer
...
What this means is that not only are seniors able to live active
lives, many of them have to live active lives — they need the income
...
Social scientists project that over the next few decades, the number of
people age 65 and over will grow at three times the rate of the population
generally — so seniors are going to become a bigger and even more important part of society
...
In this section, I explain how sociologists,
demographers, and other social scientists study the incidence and timing of
life-course transitions
...
If you’re interested in TV, you may have heard the term used in connection
with ratings
...
Here are the kind of information advertisers want to know:
✓ How many people watch a program?
✓ Where do they live?
✓ How old are they?
✓ Are they men or women?
✓ Are they married or unmarried?
✓ How much money do they make?
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...
Demographic information is also essential, however, for many other organizations
...
S
...
Corporations need to know where
to open new electronics stores, bakeries, and day care centers; and nonprofit organizations need to know where to focus their efforts to support
single mothers, or elderly Lutherans, or people with HIV
...
Demographers, and sociologists interested in demography, tend to be particularly interested in life-course transitions
...
Some transitions (aging,
for example) are gradual, but most are quite abrupt: Even if they’re a long
time coming, they happen more or less instantly
...
These are the essential signposts of life, though,
and with these transitions come enormous changes in people’s activities and
goals
...
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...
Demographic data are
gathered by a variety of means, none of them
perfect
...
The U
...
census
aspires to survey every single American resident, but it’s impossible to reach that goal
...
and that’s just for the bare headcount
...
That doesn’t mean the long form data are inaccurate, but it does mean that there’s greater
room for error there — and there’s even more
room for error in smaller, privately administered
surveys
...
Many sociological studies derive from
just a few big surveys where data are publicly
available; few sociologists have the resources
to survey thousands of respondents
...
That’s easier
said than done (and as you can see by the
last sentence, it’s not even that easily said)
...
Different shapes of the circle of life
The average American man graduates from high school at 18, moves out of
his parents’ house at age 22, gets married at age 27, and has his first child at
age 32
...
Those are averages calculated from data on many thousands of men, but each individual American man follows his own course
...
They describe the
normative life course in American society
...
Americans know about what those averages are, and men know
that if they go through those transitions earlier or later than average — or
not at all — they’re unusual
...
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Of course, “American men” is a vast group, comprising well over 100 million
people
...
Each of
those groups has its own averages, and for various reasons they’re all different
...
This may include asking questions like:
✓ Why do people whose parents are college graduates become financially
independent at a later age than people whose parents are not?
✓ Why do women typically marry at a younger age than men?
✓ Why do divorce rates vary among races and ethnicities?
✓ Why do people in some states retire at earlier ages than people in other
states?
✓ Why are small towns typically populated by older people than are big
cities?
Just starting to think about what the answers to these questions might be,
you can see how life course transitions are deeply tied to all other aspects of
society
...
If
it varies — as it does — from group to group, that’s typically for a range of
good reasons, and it falls to sociologists and other social scientists to sort
those reasons out
...
Another task that keeps sociologists and demographers
busy is figuring out why those transitions vary over time
...
why? Since 1883, the shape of life has
changed
...
The very nature of life course transitions changes over time
...
Retirement, for example, was not too long ago regarded as a hugely significant life transition
...
Today, that life
transition is disappearing
...
23_572368-ch15
...
One result of this is that they’re less
likely, among other things, to save money for retirement
...
Just a few decades ago, a couple who lived together
before marriage was seen as exceptional, and “shacking up” was something
you might not even talk openly about
...
In acknowledgement of this as well as of the
increasing prevalence of couples who openly live together in same-sex relationships, invitations to events are now more likely to say “partners invited”
than “spouses invited
...
Taking Care: Health Care and Society
No matter what bad things happen to members of our family, my grandma
has a single response: “At least you have your health!” Not just for her, but
for many people, health is the fundamental concern in life: Without your
health, it’s hard to enjoy anything else
...
Sociologists have found, however, that “health” can mean different things to
different people — and that providing health care is a matter of making hard
decisions, both for individuals and society
...
Deciding what counts as “healthy”
It may seem absurd to think of health as something that’s socially constructed
...
That’s of course true, but if you’re asked whether or not you’re
“healthy,” you could answer that question in many ways, and in doing so
you’ll consider what is normally considered healthy in your society
...
Think about all these
different examples of people seeking medical treatment:
23_572368-ch15
...
✓ A 41-year-old man has an appointment with a counselor to talk about
emotional problems he’s been having since the end of a relationship
...
✓ A 12-year-old boy has broken his collarbone skateboarding, and his
mother takes him to the emergency room to have the bone set and a
cast put on
...
✓ A 37-year-old woman is having back pain after childbirth and receives
acupuncture to relieve the pain
...
Why does the definition of what counts as “healthy” change over time and
from place to place?
One obvious factor that changes is technology
...
Today, medical
professionals have the ability to replace missing teeth, excise unwanted fat
deposits, do full-body cancer scans, and perform thousands of other treatments that would have been impossible just a few decades ago
...
That’s not to say any given family
can necessarily afford to have those things treated or would choose to have
them treated, but the possibilities are there
...
”
Having conspicuously visible fat in the belly and elsewhere has been regarded
in many societies as being especially healthy; in most societies today, it’s considered healthier to be on the thin side rather than the heavy side
...
✓ Material circumstances: Because of changes in agriculture, transportation, and food-processing technology, it’s now more expensive to eat
a healthy diet of vegetables than to eat a poor diet of junk food
...
✓ Culture: Prominent opinion-makers in the media and in social networks
have promulgated the idea that thinness is attractive
...
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Part V: Sociology and Your Life
Is ADHD socially constructed?
After decades of debate, psychologists have
arrived at a definition of a disorder now called
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD),
a condition in which individuals experience
inattentiveness and/or impulsive behavior to
an extent that interferes with their daily lives
...
ADHD has been diagnosed with increasing frequency in recent years, especially among children, and has become a matter of much debate
among parents and educators
...
Others — both
children and adults — have found that taking
medication has completely transformed their
ability to get work done and has significantly
enhanced their lives
...
It’s hard to blame people for being suspicious
of the medical establishment, which has not
always worked well in the past (as recently as
the 1950s, doctors were appearing in cigarette
advertisements to tout their favorite brands)
...
Definitions of health and sickness have always
changed, and will always do so
...
Still, unless
you’re ready to write off the medical establishment entirely — and some are! — the best you
can do, in medicine as in sociology, is to find
the most reliable data and interpret them as
well as you are able
...
Right now, the
best evidence suggests that, though it’s not for
everyone, medication can be enormously helpful for many people who have ADHD
...
At
the extreme, mental states like schizophrenia that may be regarded as dangerous or unhealthy in some societies may be regarded as special or blessed
in others; short of that, though, opinions may vary widely from one society
to the next about whether it’s desirable to seek treatment for depression,
attention deficit disorder, learning disabilities, or anxiety
...
(See sidebar, “Is ADHD socially constructed?”)
When families are making decisions about health care, they are influenced by
the attitudes in their society — and, if they have immigrated, in the society
from which they came — as they decide whether to pursue preventative medicine, emergency medicine, traditional or holistic medicine, or nothing at all
...
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The complex challenges faced by families in making health-care decisions are
also challenges faced by governments, as they decide where, how, and when
to devote resources to their citizens’ health care
...
Everyone
wants the best possible care for themselves and their loved ones, but the
best possible care is extremely expensive
...
If your family finances have ever
been strained by the cost of health care, you understand the challenges
that leaders in your government are facing
...
Sociologists often study health care both to help improve
it and because the medical establishment is a fascinating social institution
...
(See Chapter 3 for more on those perspectives
...
Talcott
Parsons believed that “sick” is a particular role in society, a role that
varies among societies of different sizes and at different stages of development
...
If a
society defines too few people as sick and fails to attend to basic health
needs, it will suffer in the long run
...
Providers and insurance companies want to provide as much care as possible providing they’re generously paid for it,
but the patients want that care provided at low or no cost
...
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...
For example, hospitals or insurance companies
find themselves under siege when they deny lifesaving care to children; that
care might be vastly expensive, and the children’s families may be unable
to pay the cost of that care, but there’s a strong social norm discouraging
anyone from allowing a child to die if there’s anything that can be done to
prevent it
...
I explain in Chapter 12 that organizational life is about much
more than just “getting the job done,” it’s about managing the people in the
organization as well as managing the organization’s relationship with its
surroundings
...
Medical professions — especially the profession of physician — are deeply
institutionalized: To become a doctor or a nurse, you have to go through long
training that provides not just an education in how the human body works,
but an education in how to be a doctor or a nurse
...
Consider that when training to be a doctor, residents (young doctors learning the ropes) often work for shifts of over 24 hours
...
Doctors have more extensive training than do nurses, and have traditionally
been the authorities in medical settings
...
”
Medical professionals can be just as hesitant to believe evidence that contradicts their beliefs as everyone else is
...
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...
As such, they’re subject to the same forces that make it
alternately inspiring and frustrating to be a part of a complex organization
...
Families Past and Present
Have you ever noticed how many books, movies, and TV shows are about
family life? Families are at the heart of most people’s lives, and they’re endlessly fascinating to people trying to understand the human condition
...
In this section, I first describe
the history of the family and then explain what social scientists know about
families today
...
That’s become the default image of “the
family” that pops into many people’s minds, but it’s certainly not representative of most families today — and there were many, many families it wasn’t
representative of even then
...
Many men were
returning home after fighting in World War II, and they were settling down
with their partners to start families in the so-called “Baby Boom
...
Since then, there have been many conspicuous changes in family life
...
These changes are sometimes portrayed as a decline in “family
values
...
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Part V: Sociology and Your Life
You’re entitled to your opinion about what the best family structure is, and to
argue for government policies that promote that structure, but be careful
when using phrases like “family values
...
As I explain in Chapter 5, cultural change and structural change almost
always go hand-in-hand, and it can be very difficult to sort out what caused
what
...
Whether or not you regard this change as something bad, it’s important to be
aware that there have been some real structural changes — that is, changes
in basic social conditions — since the post-war era:
✓ The economy is more turbulent, and it’s much more challenging for a
single individual to secure and hold a job that will support a family over
several decades
...
✓ Developments in law and corporate policies, some spurred by the efforts
of same-sex couples unable to marry, have made it easier for unmarried
couples to enjoy some of the practical benefits — insurance coverage,
shared child custody — of marriage
...
)
✓ Though sociologists of gender still see a “glass ceiling” (see Chapter 9),
implicit and explicit discrimination against women in educational and
professional settings have sharply declined, making it easier for women
to pursue careers on the same terms as men
...
✓ Advancements in contraceptive technology — most notably, the refinement and legalization of the birth control pill — have given men and
women the option to be sexually active without conceiving children
...
So change in family life has definitely happened, for a number of reasons —
but that said, the 1950s were not the idyllic time they may seem to have
been
...
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...
The divorce rate, though it’s risen since the 1950s in most countries, plateaued at about 40 percent and has now remained stable for many years
...
Coontz and other historians of the family also point out that in the big picture, the 1950s were a very unusual decade — probably for reasons having
to do more with the economy and post-war social policy than with people’s
values
...
Many
changes in family life — from women’s increasing economic and social freedom to the removal of children from the workforce — that are often seen
as originating in the 1960s actually began a century earlier, in the Industrial
Revolution
...
Often, there’s a divorce or death that
leaves one partner with custody of children;
sometimes grandparents or other relatives take
custody of children whose parents can’t care
for them; in other cases, people choose to have
children while single; and then, of course, there
are accidental pregnancies
...
That’s
not to say that life is always a bowl of cherries for
partnered parents, but single parents generally
have fewer financial and personal resources to
draw upon as they raise their children
...
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up in poverty and to suffer the consequences of
that difficult situation
...
Some find
it unfortunate that single parenting is more
socially acceptable today than it was in the
past, but the past shouldn’t be romanticized
...
In
their small farming town, Grandma sensed a lot
of uneasiness about her unusual situation — in
fact, she felt somewhat stigmatized — and she
ultimately sought out other single parents; they
bonded together for mutual support
...
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Family life, like every aspect of social life, has always changed and will continue to change
...
Each family is different, for better
and for worse
...
Usually
families are connected by blood ties as well as emotional and financial ties,
but as the saying goes, family is as family does
...
Work — at home and outside the home
The division of labor in families has been a topic of contention for as long as
there have been families; in recent decades in particular, the growing number
of two-career families have been struggling to figure out an efficient and equitable way of dividing the tasks that have to be done in the home and out of
the home
...
What especially frustrated many of the women
Hochschild talked with was that their husbands nominally accepted the
idea that household labor should be equitably divided
...
Happily, evidence suggests that in the years since 1989, men have done a lot
of catching up: Their household contributions now come closer to matching
the work they admit they should do
...
Women still do the majority
of household labor, but the gap is closing
...
but getting things taken care of around the home is
tough for any working family
...
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travel from poorer neighborhoods (and even countries) in search of higher
wages
...
Wealthy countries are “exporting emotional
labor,” says Hochschild
...
Kids today! They grow up so
...
Just 200 years ago, most children contributed significantly to their family’s livelihood, often by helping out on the family farm or by taking paying
work
...
Children in low-income families often still contribute significantly to their
households by caring for younger siblings or by contributing income to the
family, but most children in developed countries work only to earn experience and discretionary spending money
...
As I note in the sidebar “Dad, can I take the car?”, the semi-autonomous
state associated with adolescence is becoming increasingly the norm for
children both young and old
...
This is a big
change in family structure, and families are still trying to figure out how to
handle it
...
Having not completed their education, teenagers need to
seek jobs that don’t require complex skills or training, and those jobs are
often the first to dry up when the economy goes south
...
A large majority of people, in
societies around the world, still aspire to make a public lifelong commitment
to a partner; most do marry, many more than once
...
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That said, the meaning of marriage is changing
...
A spouse is still, in a sense, a business
partner; but he or she is also now expected to be a lifelong love and a best
friend
...
It
works well for many couples, but the increased emotional expectation put
upon marriage has surely been one of the factors leading to the increasing
divorce rate over the past century
...
Out-of-wedlock
births have been rising sharply in the past few years, and a big part of that
growth has been accounted for by committed couples who begin families
together without bothering to get married
...
Among them are millions of gay and lesbian couples who are
not legally able to marry
...
Notably, older adults are increasingly marrying, whether for the first time or in the wake of divorce or widowhood
...
(Or remarried
...
)
A return to the extended family
Among the many unrealistic aspects of the Dick-and-Jane image of the family,
perhaps the most unrealistic is the suggestion that the nuclear family is an
island unto itself
...
Dick and Jane’s parents couldn’t
have done it by themselves, and neither could yours or mine
...
Throughout history, families
have lived together in compounds, houses, or apartment buildings
...
The idea that a couple should live alone with their young
children, support themselves financially, and do everything else themselves
is relatively new, and it’s already crumbling
...
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All the developments outlined in this chapter — extending adolescence,
more school, later marriage, fewer children, longer lives, economic
pinches — add up to an increasing reliance on extended family members
for emotional and logistic support
...
It all gets a little crazy sometimes
...
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...
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Chapter 16
Future Passed:
Understanding Social Change
In This Chapter
▶ Understanding why societies change
▶ Predicting what comes next
▶ Considering the future of sociology
F
rom the very beginning (see Chapter 3), sociologists have wanted to
understand, predict, and influence social change
...
and if you understand those processes, you should be able
to predict what’s going to happen in the future!
Wouldn’t that be nice? In practice, of course, it’s very difficult to predict how
societies will change, no matter how much you understand about society
...
The
forces determining the weather are simply too complex and subject to unpredictable variation for meteorologists to do much better
...
If the 6
o’clock news on Wednesday says it’s going to rain on Friday, it probably will
...
In this chapter, I first explain the Big Three sociologists’ (Marx, Durkheim,
and Weber, for those who haven’t been paying attention) views on social
change because they set the terms for all future sociological debate on the
subject
...
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...
Understanding their views
on social change is a good starting point for understanding how sociologists
today think about the subject
...
Marx: If it’s not one revolution, it’s another
In all things, Karl Marx emphasized the importance of the material world and
the distribution of resources
...
Marx was what’s known as a “stage theorist”: He thought that social change
happened not gradually, but relatively suddenly
...
Further, he believed that the
basic progression of stages was essentially universal and inevitable — just
as all human beings go from being infants to toddlers to young children to
adolescents to adults, Marx believed that all societies have to work through
certain conflicts on their way to a final utopian stage — which, he believed,
all societies would eventually achieve
...
Similar to Durkheim and Weber, Marx did a tremendous amount of historical
research
...
The
nature of those classes changed, thought Marx, from time to time — slaves
and slave owners, feudal lords and serfs, merchants and farmers
...
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...
In a perfect
society, everyone would work together happily and harmoniously to grow
food, build houses, and do everything else that needs to get done
...
That’s never happened
...
One of your friends
might hop on the pegs on the rear wheel, another might jump on the handlebars, and maybe someone even tries to sit on the bike’s crossbar
...
For Marx, every mode of production has in one way or another been like that
...
Eventually, the exploited people can’t take it
any more and rise up in opposition or otherwise sabotage the system
...
The rebuilt
system — the next mode of production — will be superior to the previous
mode of production in some ways, but it will have its own problems that will
eventually lead to its downfall
...
Marx believed that the
proletariat, who are being exploited by the bourgeois, would one day revolt
and overthrow the inequitable system to replace it with a perfectly fair communist system, in which each person contributes what they can and takes
what they need
...
For all its imperfections and injustices, capitalism has actually been
spreading around the world since Marx’s time
...
S
...
R
...
Where’s the revolution?
There are at least a couple of different answers
...
(For example, exporting inequality — see Chapter 8
...
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Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader believe that people in power are oppressing
the disadvantaged just as much as they ever were, that the system is just as
corrupt as it ever was, and that revolution is necessary, perhaps inevitable
...
Technological progress has lifted the standard of living around the world, so everyone is objectively living better than
they were in the 19th century
...
If this situation persists,
the revolution Marx anticipated may not come about because the circumstances Marx saw have changed dramatically
...
Marx believed that when a communist
utopia is finally achieved, social history will essentially come to an end
because there will be no more conflict to drive social change
...
(See Chapter 3 for more on Durkheim’s
life and work
...
That’s happening for a number of interrelated reasons
...
For tens of thousands of years of human history, people had to work very
hard all the time at procuring the basic necessities such as food (first by
hunting and gathering, later by farming) and shelter (from the elements and
from each other)
...
In a hunting-and-gathering band, it isn’t really constructive to have a wide-ranging and vigorous debate about where the band
will roam next — much less about what language should be spoken or about
the meaning of life
...
If you didn’t like it, you could leave and try to go join another band
where you’d inevitably be doing just about exactly the same thing
...
A
small farming community might have specialists in raising crops, specialists
in raising animals, and specialists in facilitating trade
...
Eventually,
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...
There started to be genuine
diversity: The life of a farmhand was wildly different from the life of a shopkeeper or a knight-errant
...
My cousin’s husband works at an auto plant, where some days he
does nothing but screw dome lights into trucks’ ceilings
...
I’m writing a book that might be of interest
to some people studying a particular academic discipline, very few of whom
will take their studies in that discipline far enough to earn a living from it
...
All three of those people exist in the
same global society, but they couldn’t even speak with one another if you put
them in the same room together
...
This diversity makes society stronger — not just in the
sense that you get to meet interesting new people, but in the sense that when
people organize themselves into a division of labor, they’re able to accomplish more
...
If everyone in society did the same job,
that job would be farming or hunting, and everyone would be right back
to the prehistoric days — complete with comfy rock floors to sleep on and
handy flint knives to prepare food with
...
As the division of labor increases, profound social change comes with it
...
All aspects of society change to accommodate the
increasing division of labor
...
✓ Governments — and all other social organizations — become more open
and democratic rather than closed and hierarchical
...
✓ Religions become more tolerant, more ecumenical, and less dogmatic
...
)
✓ Social statues and roles become much more flexible
...
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Durkheim identified this change as the transition from “mechanical solidarity” to “organic solidarity
...
Unlike Marx, Durkheim
believed that what fundamentally drives social change is people cooperating
to bring about a better world rather than groups competing for a share of the
world that exists
...
Marx would certainly say so! Still, consider the fact that an international group of researchers recently showed that
global conflicts have been declining over the past half-century, both in overall
number and in the number of fatalities
...
Weber: Into the iron cage
Max Weber came after Marx and Durkheim and was familiar with their work
...
(See Chapter 3 for more
on Weber, who many sociologists today consider the most insightful sociologist of all time
...
He agreed with Durkheim, though, that conflict over material things wasn’t the bottom line; that ideas and values could
be even more powerful than hunger
...
For Weber, history was a little bit like a mystery novel that you open on the
last page
...
The butler’s dead, but was he killed by the rich heiress because he
knew too much? Or was he killed by the maid after he was unfaithful to her?
Or perhaps was he killed accidentally by a person who mistook him for someone else? The ending may not seem to make any sense, but of course if you
went back and read the story from the beginning, it would all become clear
...
That’s a lot
of information to sift through, but somewhere in there is the explanation for
why society is the way it is
...
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...
Weber thought that historical change happened for
a reason, but that its end was not predetermined and that future events
could not be foretold, they could only be guessed at
...
If Marx or Durkheim read the last page of that novel, they would say the
butler obviously had to die
...
Marx might guess that it was because the heiress killed him in every
one, and Durkheim might say that no, it was the maid in every case — but the
point is that they would both say the outcome was really never in question
...
To illustrate his point, Weber cited the examples of different countries
...
If they were on two different planets, they might look
even more different than they do today
...
Broadly, Weber believed that the world is caught up in
a cycle of “rationalization,” where tradition, custom, and local identity are
giving way to systematization, standardization, and planning
...
Anyone whose neighborhood coffee shop has been replaced by a
Starbucks, or whose independent bookstore has been put out of business by
Amazon, probably understands a little bit about what Weber meant
...
What Comes Next?
At the beginning of this chapter I liken sociological forecasting to meteorological forecasting — it’s impossible to predict exactly what’s going to happen
...
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do sociologists have a fair sense of what the most important changes affecting societies are, and they can make an educated guess about how things
will shake down
...
Finally, I mention what we can learn
from the past about looking to the future
...
” Obviously
that’s not literally true: What it means is that advances in transportation and
communication effectively bring people and places around the world closer
to us
...
In the following sections, I discuss advances in transportation; advances in communication; and the social effects of globalization
...
Today, you can fly around the world in a tiny
fraction of that time: just a couple of days
...
The prevalence and relative affordability of passenger air travel means that a
middle-class citizen of a developed country can comfortably manage to visit
other continents at least a few times in their life, and can fairly routinely fly
around their own continent
...
Today, if you’re not flying
you can drive from city to city at speeds ranging from 55 to 90 miles an hour
...
For example, here in Minnesota, towns that are today considered suburbs of the Twin Cities were considered way out in the country
when my dad was young
...
Just as profoundly important as increased human mobility is the increased mobility of things
...
I was surprised — but not shocked — to learn later that the glasses
had been made in New Zealand and shipped to Minnesota in frozen form
...
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303
company to manufacture all its ice glasses at a central facility in New Zealand
and ship them to ice bars all around the world than to freeze the glasses at
each individual ice bar
...
They’re in Indiana, I’m in Minnesota
...
That’s something, of course, you could do by standard mail,
but we’d never be getting this entire book written and edited in six months if
we were doing it that way! And if we were using standard mail, it would certainly matter how far away I was; with e-mail, I could be sitting in Hong Kong
and things would get done just as quickly
...
The daily delivery of standard mail to average households may soon be a thing of the past
...
Massive volumes of information ricochet around the world in virtually no time, at relatively tiny cost
...
Each has created such a
seismic change in the way people live that they’ve taken decades to adjust to
...
There’s no substitute for personal contact — and, as I note in Chapter 7, most
of your communication via phone and Internet is probably with the people
you see often in person anyway — but the world is now available to you with
an immediacy that would have made Jules Verne’s head spin
...
” The impact of globalization is already apparent — after all, it’s been
happening for thousands of years
...
One absolute certainty is that places around the world will become more similar to each other
...
Language, culture, customs, food — all those things are becoming more and
more similar around the world
...
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This may seem depressing, but it’s happening for a reason, and not necessarily a bad reason
...
Paul are both hurting financially and have been laying workers off left and right, in part because
more and more people read news online, often reading out-of-town papers
like the New York Times or the Guardian of London
...
Paul Pioneer Press could compete with the
New York Times for quality and quantity of coverage of national and international issues
...
Of course, that’s the Durkheimian perspective — that globalization is fulfilling
a function
...
There’s truth to that as well, but it’s worth observing that technology
is multiplying everyone’s choices
...
Today, you can read
virtually any newspaper in the world for free online
...
(Often, of course, we do
...
)
Globalization isn’t just about cultural choices, though: It’s about structure
as well, about jobs and governments and the economy
...
As I write, the United States is just emerging from an economic recession that
affected the rest of the world; there’s no way it could not have! Today, all
countries around the world are tied in a global economy
...
Globalization is tying
every single person on Earth more and more tightly to every single other
person, and that process is only going to accelerate in coming years
...
24_572368-ch16
...
Even as globalization is making places more
similar to each other, it’s also making them more diverse
...
One of the results of globalization has been an acceleration of the pace of immigration
...
Paul over just a few years’
time, as has happened in recent years, markedly changing the Twin Cities’
social landscape
...
It’s worth repeating: The world has always been diverse
...
Tension, sometimes productive and sometimes destructive,
among different groups living in the same place has always marked human
society
...
Whereas some societies remain stubbornly intolerant, overall, societies around the world embrace diversity much more fully than they did in the
past
...
Further, communication and transportation technology has allowed for
the formation and maintenance of what sociologists call transnational communities: groups of people who identify and communicate with one another
despite the fact that they are geographically spread around the globe
...
Paul home, my friend Julia maintains a Web site for news and
discussion about issues related to the Kenyan community, a community that
is far larger than the people actually living in Kenya
...
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all connect and share their views
...
Further, like many emigrants, Julia returns to Kenya every
couple of years
...
But “diversity” is about more than just national, ethnic, and racial diversity:
It’s about everything people share and don’t share
...
✓ They can each plug in their headphones and listen, over the Internet,
to streaming audio of almost any kind of music
...
✓ They are more likely to be a mixed group of men and women
...
✓ They are more likely to have different employment histories
...
✓ They can go down to the bar after work and each choose from a wide
array of domestic and imported beverages
...
Those are just a few examples of how the world is growing more diverse
...
People are more likely to have come from different places, but
the experiences they had in those different places are more similar than
they would have been in the past
...
You can go to the multiplex and choose
from among a dozen movies instead of just one, but they’re the same dozen
movies that are showing in multiplexes across the country and, increasingly,
around the world
...
That
may be confusing to wrap your head around, but here’s the bottom line: Your
identity is less and less closely tied to the place you were born or the color
of your skin
...
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...
When I mentioned that I was working on this chapter, one of my friends asked
in only a half-kidding way, “Why don’t you just summarize Guns, Germs, and
Steel?” You may be familiar with that book by geographer Jared Diamond, in
which he argues that the history of the world has essentially been shaped by
technology and geography
...
The social world that exists today would not be possible without the technology that has been developed over the past millennia — notably including
the communication and transportation technology referenced earlier, but
also including medical technology, agricultural technology, manufacturing
technology, and, yes, weapons technology
...
Geographers like Diamond correctly point out that a great number of tragic
human conflicts have been caused or exacerbated by resource shortages:
food, water, fuel
...
Barring almost unimaginable technological developments, they cannot
all live at the standard currently enjoyed by residents of the developed
world
...
In the future of global society, much will depend on how
successfully famine and disease can be fought using technological development and other means
...
Eventually the fuels
will run out, and many of the technological benefits we currently enjoy — cars,
gas heat, electricity — will be out of reach unless we develop other means of
power generation
...
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So on a global scale, the priorities for technological development are clear
...
Watch any old sci-fi movie to see how
difficult it is to guess how the world will look in the future
...
The growth of the middle class
If you ask them, most people will tell you that they’re members of the “middle
class
...
Also, the “middle class” is where people want to be: It doesn’t have
the stigma of the “lower class,” but nor does it sound as hoity-toity as the
“upper class
...
It’s been growing over the course of
that period, and it’s probably a good thing if it continues to grow
...
✓ A middle-class family can comfortably afford food and shelter, and can
further afford a modest number of luxuries like vacations, boats, and
home entertainment systems
...
✓ A middle-class individual likely owns a fair amount of personal property
(house, car, furniture) but doesn’t have enough assets to draw significant income from investments
...
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The growth of the middle class is something that Marx did not see coming;
he believed capitalist society would continue to polarize between the haves
and the have-nots
...
They may feel like they’ve been unfairly deprived of something or other at
some point, but they probably don’t think it would be a good idea to fundamentally change the structure of the economy
...
)
From an economic standpoint, the key to the growth of the middle class
has been the increasing importance of skilled labor
...
By developing a useful skill of any
sort, a person can lift themselves into the middle class if (and this is a big if)
an appropriate job is available
...
Will the middle class stay happy, and grow, in
future years? That’s a big, and a very important, question
...
For a long time, middle-class
parents have been able to reasonably expect that their children will have
bigger houses, better food, and in general a more comfortable lifestyle than
the parents did
...
Middle-class jobs require more
training and experience than ever, and there is more and more competition
for those jobs
...
It seems
clear that developed countries are going to have to re-imagine themselves to
remain economically competitive in the global economy, but it also may be
the case that their residents are going to have to accept a significant decline
in their standard of living
...
Technological advances can improve everyone’s
standard of living — as has been the case for millennia — but technology
can only do so much
...
Among them:
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...
Everyone daydreams of a life of luxury, but very few people expect to
achieve it
...
They
don’t expect to have a mansion, but they expect to have a nice home
...
They don’t expect to run a big company, but they do expect to work in a job
where they’re needed and respected, where they learn valuable skills and
use those skills to help their employer get ahead; and to be fairly compensated in return
...
Right now, it’s a reasonable lifestyle for most
people in the developed world, and an increasing number of people in the
developing world, to expect
...
A lesson from the past: Work
for change, but don’t panic
The past few sections may seem a little scary
...
Other scary possibilities for the
future include disastrous warfare, possibly on a global scale
...
In fact, the
people whose hands they’re in now might well use them — they have before
...
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...
A machete is scarier than a
nuclear warhead if it’s held by someone who’s threatening you or someone
you love
...
Fortunately, a third world war may not occur; nor may environmental catastrophe or a global economic depression
...
There is, however, one thing
that’s guaranteed about the future: In your lifetime, you will see social change
of some sort
...
If you’re old enough to be reading this book, you already have seen social
change — and maybe you didn’t much care for it
...
✓ Maybe there’s something new that everyone seems to be doing all of a
sudden — dressing a certain way, or talking a certain way, or using some
new device
...
✓ Maybe you’ve seen violence flare up in a previously peaceful neighborhood, city, or country
...
Sometimes things do change for the worse, and any kind of change can be
stressful and worrisome
...
If you’re still relatively young, just wait and see what
happens
...
(It will surprise me, too
...
Whatever world you
want to see in the future, you can help make it more likely that it will come
about
...
Another thing worth paying attention to in history books, though, is that
they are similarly full of people who thought the world was going to hell
in a handbasket
...
You know people like that; in fact, you might be a
person like that
...
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...
Babies are still being born, teenagers
are still disobeying their parents, people are still falling in love (and out of
love, and in love again), people are working hard at jobs they’re proud of, and
fighting and praying and laughing and crying and, eventually, dying
...
You’re probably living in a place
where most people are happy most of the time, but even if you’re living in a
place where some terrible things are happening, you probably have hope for
the future, hope that things will get better
...
Sociology in the Future
Enough about the possibility of world peace or global catastrophe
...
What’s the future of sociology? In this section, I look
in the direction(s) sociology itself might be heading in decades to come
...
Why wouldn’t it be useful in the future? I think it will be,
and I think sociology will be around for a long, long time
...
”
There’s no question that the sociological worldview has become more and
more common since sociology was founded in the 19th century
...
(See Chapter 3 for more on these thinkers
...
Today, it’s safe to say, the basic premise of sociology is taken for granted
...
Further, disciplines ranging from history
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...
As long as human interaction is studied scientifically and systematically, sociology will be around in some form
...
There are political scientists — what’s the use of
“political sociologists”? There are economists — what’s the use of “economic
sociology”? There are social scientists working in schools of education —
what’s the use of “sociologists of education”?
There’s a real possibility that “sociology” could go the way of “philosophy
...
” The ancient Greek
and Roman “philosophers” studied everything from society to art to medicine
to astronomy
...
D
...
But who,
today, actually calls themselves a “philosopher”? Only a relatively few people
studying the history of philosophy and highly abstract, theoretical questions
...
For now, though, sociology is standing strong
on the basis of its claim to be the only social science that studies all aspects
of social life
...
To see those connections,
you have to be open to studying wildly diverse situations, places, and times;
you have to be open to looking, scientifically and systematically, at politics
and education and the economy and the family and the church and everything else about human life
...
It’s not easy, but it’s tremendously, sometimes unexpectedly, rewarding
...
That sounds
like a good thing, but it can also be a challenge
...
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...
Of course, sociologists still don’t know everything, but as more and more of
the world moves online, they know vastly more than they could have imagined knowing before
...
As I write, you can use your Facebook account to log on to
many other sites — which means that information about what you do on
those sites, to some extent, exists on the Facebook servers
...
and what they don’t know, their colleagues at Google
or Microsoft may well know
...
✓ When you buy your car, and when you subsequently take it in for service, its vehicle ID number is recorded
...
✓ Cell phones enabled with GPS can be tracked around the world, and
there’s serious discussion of implanting trackable microchips under
children’s skin
...
)
What this adds up to is an almost inconceivable amount of information about
human activity being — or potentially being — gathered
...
In the not-too-distant
future, there could be in existence a minute-by-minute record of the average person’s life
...
So once the world has all this data, will the mystery of human life be
solved? Not likely — without the help of sociologists to draw useful information from that mountain of data, those gajillions of bits of data will be about
as useful as a phone book that isn’t alphabetized
...
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...
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In this part
...
to be precise, 30 of them
...
25_572368-pp06
...
You’ll probably have a better experience, however, and
possibly even learn more if you start with one of the many sociological books
that are fun and interesting to read
...
In each of these books you’ll find interesting, eye-opening
observations; many of them also tell compelling true stories
...
(See Chapter 4 for a description of the
distinction between qualitative and quantitative research
...
Randall Collins: Sociological Insight
Randall Collins is a preeminent sociologist in his own right, but he’s also
helped to communicate sociological theory — thorny as it sometimes is — to
a wide audience of students, researchers, and general readers with his publications Four Sociological Traditions and Sociological Insight
...
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Sociological Insight is the book that got me hooked on sociology
...
The very readable chapters range over topics such
as crime, relationships, and power; in each case, Collins shows why thinking
about the topic sociologically lets you understand it in a way you might not
otherwise
...
How is being in a romantic relationship like
owning property? What is the true nature of power in society? Why is crime
inevitable, and maybe even good? You come away from Sociological Insight
feeling like you’re in on a secret — that because of sociology, you now understand the world in a way that most other people don’t
...
William Foote Whyte:
Street Corner Society
This 1943 book is one of the most important books in American sociology
...
Whyte conducted the research for this book while he was a fellow at Harvard; he spent
four years living in Boston’s “Little Italy” and got to know the community
intimately
...
(See Chapter 14 for more on William Foote Whyte and his place in
urban sociology
...
Before sociology, people looked to great philosophers
or the ancient Romans for models of how society “should” work
...
By writing about the tremendous richness and depth of society in a neighborhood
some might have called a “ghetto” (and that Whyte himself called a “slum”),
Whyte proved that society is just as fascinating when viewed from the
bottom up as it is when viewed from the top down
...
The corner boys
do a lot of bowling, and it turns out that the boys held in higher esteem at
the moment also tend to score the highest at bowling
...
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...
Whyte: The
Organization Man
This thick but readable 1955 book is more of an extended essay than a traditional sociological study, and in part for that reason, it’s more dated than
other sociological bestsellers of its time
...
Like other sociologists of his time (including David Riesman, author of The
Lonely Crowd), William H
...
He believed that “the organization man,” a
man concerned with conformity more than enterprising individuality, was
becoming the new model for the American worker
...
” Almost against his own will, though, Whyte documents the vibrant, bustling social life among the young families who enthusiastically populate the suburban homes of which he’s so suspicious
...
Whyte and his views on suburban life, see Chapter 14
...
Like a good novel, it reads as though it were written in one sitting, with ideas
and inspirations spilling out of Goffman as fast as his fingers could type
...
That idea is at least as old as Hamlet, but what
Goffman brings is an acute sociological eye and a drive to push his premise
as far as it will go
...
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...
Anderson writes about two Philadelphia neighborhoods: the gentrifying “Village” and the tough, impoverished “Northton
...
) Both neighborhoods are facing serious challenges, and
Anderson takes the reader deep inside each neighborhood, offering greater
understanding but not promising any easy solutions
...
Many of the best sociology books are about communities, but Northton
and the Village may be more recognizable to you than a Depression-era slum
(Street Corner Society) or a 1950s suburb (The Organization Man)
...
Anderson’s claim that the disappearance of “old head” role
models has contributed greatly to the destructive behavior of younger generations has been criticized by some as an argument blaming the young victims
of poverty and racism for their own circumstances
...
Arlie Hochschild: The Second Shift
You’ll definitely recognize yourself, or your parents, or other people you
know in Hochschild’s stories of couples managing their household labor
...
(See Chapter 15 for more on Hochschild’s observations about gender
and household labor
...
Just because men agree
that women deserve equal treatment doesn’t mean that they actually treat
women equally, or that they’re willing to take on responsibilities traditionally
allotted to women
...
Viviana Zelizer: Pricing
the Priceless Child
A real eye-opener
...
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321
prior to the 20th century, and how quickly it changed in just a few decades
as rates of childbirth (and also of child death) dropped quickly and children
were yanked out of the workforce and off the streets
...
Once children were no longer economically valuable, they became emotionally “priceless
...
)
Pricing the Priceless Child is also an excellent example of historical sociology,
a method where historical records serve as the evidence to answer a sociological question
...
Michael Schwalbe: Unlocking
the Iron Cage
Although The Second Shift shows that even “sensitive men” can be awfully
insensitive, Unlocking the Iron Cage shows that even “manly” men can be
surprisingly sensitive
...
Media reports of sweat lodges and drum-beating made
the participants sound like insecure sexists, but Schwalbe found that most
participants were actually committed feminists who wanted to be as proud of
their own gender as their wives, mothers, and daughters were of theirs
...
How
can sociologists avoid being biased by their personal feelings about their
subjects? Suggest Unlocking the Iron Cage to your book club; you’ll want to
debate about it with someone when you’ve finished reading it
...
Country music is often spoken of as “real” music, a music that somehow taps
into the heart of America; in this book, Peterson shows that what “real” (or
“authentic”) means has changed over time, from the music’s early hillbilly
days to the present, when “real” country musicians wear cowboy hats
...
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Creating Country Music is a fascinating look behind the scenes of country
music, showing that what’s “authentic” is actually, in a sense, quite artificial
...
” What counts
as “authentic,” Peterson shows, is whatever people happen to decide is
“authentic” at any given time
...
In this book, she tells the stories of
the working poor: people who work sometimes grueling jobs but still have a
hard time getting ahead
...
As Whyte did in Street Corner Society, Newman reveals a complex world of
pride, prejudice, struggle, and success among a group of people who are
often ignored or dismissed by those who benefit from their labor
...
By getting up close and personal (or, in some cases,
down and dirty) with their subjects, sociologists repeatedly discover that
choices (for example, working at McDonald’s — or not working at McDonald’s)
that seem hard to understand actually make a lot of sense to the people who
are making them
...
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Chapter 18
Ten Ways to Use Sociological
Insight in Everyday Life
In This Chapter
▶ Using sociology to gain a new perspective on your own life
▶ Understanding how sociology affects your daily life
W
hat’s the point of studying sociology? For passing sociology tests,
sure
...
But for your life, when you’re not
in a sociology class or writing laws? You bet!
Sociology is useful because it can change the way you think about the world
...
In this chapter, I list ten ways that you can use sociological insight to influence your life
...
In other ways, it can help you know what to worry about and
what not to worry about
...
The more you know about sociology, the more you
know about yourself and the world around you
...
In other
cases, you may be inspired to read further about a particular topic — or perhaps even to conduct your own sociological research on that topic! There’s a
huge body of sociological literature in libraries and online, but with a subject
as complex as society, there’s always room for more
...
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Think Critically About Claims
That “Research Proves” One
Thing or Another
You can hardly turn on the TV or read the news without stumbling across a
claim that “research proves” one product works better than another, or
that drinking certain beverages or eating certain foods is good for you
...
To be clear, sociologists definitely appreciate the value of research
...
It’s precisely because sociologists so greatly value high-quality research that
they want to see it done as well as possible
...
Having seen and conducted many research studies, sociologists know just
how difficult it is to conduct a convincing study
...
When someone tells you that “research
proves” something, don’t be afraid to ask what that research is and how it
was conducted
...
but there are also many statements people make about society that are
totally unprovable
...
The kind of unprovable statements
you typically hear about society are those that are so vague that it’s almost
impossible to imagine how you would go about verifying whether or not
they’re correct
...
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325
✓ “Life used to be simpler
...
” What does it mean to “be a boy”? Boys have Y
chromosomes, yes, but is that really what this statement means? Or
does it mean that there’s a particular type of behavior associated with
being a boy that boys always do and have always done? What behavior
is that? Can you prove it?
✓ “The government should stay out of it
...
Data can help determine what
works and what doesn’t, but there’s no clear answer to the question of
what any given social institution (government, education, the family)
“should” or “shouldn’t” do
...
Is there an objective way to answer the
question with evidence? If not, then it’s something that simply must be taken
(or not) as a matter of faith
...
In this sense, everyone has faith in something: You may have faith in your friends, or have faith that things will work out
in your romantic relationship
...
Understand Barriers to Effective
Communication
You may have heard it said that everyone’s human, and that deep down
inside people are the same
...
This doesn’t just apply to the kind of intercultural differences you’d find
between, say, someone from downtown London and someone from the
Australian outback
...
27_572368-ch18
...
The more you
learn about societies and traditions other than your own, the more respect
you have for those differences, and the more you appreciate that as difficult
as it is to achieve understanding among people from very different social
situations, it’s critically important
...
Know the Difference Between the
Identity You Choose and the
Identities Others Choose For You
Sociologists draw a clear distinction between race, which is something other
people look at you and decide to associate with you, and ethnicity, which is
something that you choose for yourself
...
(See Chapter 6 to read about Erving Goffman and his theory that
you’re an “actor” on a social “stage
...
The way you dress, what you say, where you live, who you associate with — those things do affect the way other people think about you, and
in turn do affect the way you think about yourself
...
Wearing
sneakers to a baseball game and wearing sneakers to a wedding are very different things, and as much as you might prefer not to be judged by what you
wear, clothes — along with other lifestyle choices — are symbols, and people
will think differently about you depending on how you look
...
Many sociologists believe that there is no “you” in any meaningful sense outside of your social context — that is, that you and everyone around you think
about you in terms of your society — so it’s not necessarily selling out to take
social expectations into account when making choices about your life
...
27_572368-ch18
...
Everybody knows what they like and, in general, what they don’t, but
they don’t always think very hard about why
...
Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but art is a social institution —
and like all social institutions, it makes a lot more sense when you consider it
in its social context
...
What you may not realize
is that the artist probably knows it will offend or confuse you and people like
you, and that may be part of why the artist is doing it
...
That doesn’t mean you’re wrong to
feel the way you do
...
Some works of art may be resonant to people for hundreds or even thousands of years, whereas others may
seem dated within a few months
...
It doesn’t mean you’re “wrong” when you say you don’t like a
piece of art or a certain song
...
Be Smart About Relationship-Building
“It’s all about who you know” sounds like one of those unprovable assertions,
but sociologists are appreciating its wisdom more and more every year
...
If you live in the United
States, then yes, in a sense the United States is “your society
...
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concrete, day-to-day basis, it’s the actual people who you know and interact
with who are truly “your society
...
My social tie to Whitney makes her much
more influential in my life than most people in my home city of Minneapolis
...
)
What does this mean for you? It means that it’s a good idea to be deliberate
about making and maintaining social connections
...
The more people you know, the
better your information is and the more powerful you are in those people’s
social context
...
Be sincere about relationship-building, but also be assertive about
making and keeping valuable social ties
...
Network sociologists agree that it’s good to exert some effort to meet people
and maintain social connections that you’ve made, but it’s not necessarily
beneficial to seem like an over-aggressive “networker
...
Your most useful social ties are those with people you genuinely
have something in common with
...
Still, appreciate that your society is the way it is for a lot of complex reasons
...
When dramatic
social change happens quickly, it’s typically because of very unusual (and
possibly quite painful) circumstances
...
27_572368-ch18
...
and if it does make sense, that
means you can figure out how to change it
...
)
A common phrase suggests that you “think globally, act locally
...
Making changes in
your everyday life can have a big impact over time, on you and on the people
around you
...
The Civil Rights Movement,
the movement to end child labor, the pro-recycling movement — all of those
had uphill battles to start with, but eventually they turned into spectacular
successes
...
In the middle of the 20th century, there was a big movement to get the United States to convert to the metric system (kilometers
instead of miles, Celsius instead of Fahrenheit) — that one didn’t turn out
so well, despite the fact that millions of schoolkids were made to memorize
the metric system and learn how to convert “standard” units to metric units
...
In social movements as in poker, it’s good to remember Kenny Rogers’s
advice: “You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em; know when
to walk away, know when to run
...
You’ll learn something about what strategies
might work and what strategies won’t
...
Consider all the different
ways you can connect with them and interest them in your cause
...
but be patient
...
27_572368-ch18
...
” If Scott is correct — and most organizational sociologists believe
that, at least in general terms, he is — your company is a machine, yes, but
a machine made up of human beings and a machine that does its work by
interacting with other machines
...
Is your company designed to do its job as
efficiently as possible? Does information travel accurately and quickly
from one part of the company to another? Is there any obvious waste?
Does everyone know what their job is?
✓ Your corporate culture
...
What’s going on among the companies
you deal with as suppliers, customers, and competitors? What are the
laws and policies that affect your business, and how are they changing?
Understanding just one — or even two — of these aspects of corporate life won’t
do it: You have to appreciate all these dimensions of corporate life
...
Understand How We Can All Be
Different, Yet All Be the Same
This is one of the many paradoxes of sociology
...
Sociologists love to question assumptions that are taken for granted in their societies: Some of your very deepest
values, beliefs, and customs are probably unique to your particular society
...
27_572368-ch18
...
That’s why sociologists interested in corporate life in
New York City in the 21st century might read books or articles about social
networks in Paris in the 18th century or about the spread of a fad across
southeast Asia in the 19th century
...
Sociology can surprise you by demonstrating just how very different people
are in some ways, but it can also — and just as interestingly — surprise you
by revealing unexpected connections between people living in very different
places at very different times
...
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...
Can you actually survive a fall from a
great height into a full dumpster? Can you make a bullet curve by flicking
your wrist while you shoot a gun? It’s very interesting — and social scientists
can do that, too!
Just as many people are convinced, despite all evidence, that tapping on the
top of a soda can will make it less likely to fizz over when it’s opened, many
people are absolutely convinced of the truth of some things about society
that are actually not entirely true
...
These myths range across the entire discipline of sociology — so if you’ve
been reading this book from the beginning, you’ll recognize some of them as
myths right away
...
Two centuries of sociological research have shown that long-held assumptions about the social world can actually crumble quite quickly when held up
to the light of scientific research
...
I hope this book inspires you to question
whether all the things you believe about society are actually true, or whether
they’re just faulty assumptions that you haven’t bothered to test or research
...
but sociology can help you to think about how they
can be put to the test
...
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...
Especially in established capitalist societies like the United States and Europe, there’s a widespread belief that by and large, people get what they “deserve” — that is,
that in general, wealth, income, and personal freedom correspond to how
hard a person has tried to get ahead in life
...
It is true that, in most cases, some effort and dedication and sacrifice are necessary to achieve material comfort
...
Saying that “anyone can get ahead” is a myth is not
to diminish the achievements of people who do work hard every day for the
money they earn, however much it is
...
For any
number of reasons, some people face challenges that others don’t
...
It happens
...
The more
poor you are, the harder it is to climb out of poverty no matter how hard you
work; and the more wealthy you are, the harder it is to fall out of that situation no matter how lazy you are
...
Nonetheless, the idea that people with more money must be somehow working harder or be more deserving than people with less money is a complete
and utter myth
...
Unfortunately, that’s not entirely true
...
It would be very convenient for the
28_572368-ch19
...
In fact, again and again and again social scientists
have seen that someone can, apparently in all honesty, tell you one thing,
and then turn around and do something completely different
...
This
certainly makes life interesting for novelists and poets, but it’s a complete
nightmare for social science
...
But there are many influences on people’s actions,
and their core beliefs are only one of those influences
...
and let’s face it, you’re a complicated
human being
...
The bottom line is that you can’t look at someone’s actions and assume
you know “who they are”; and vice-versa, knowing all about someone’s
beliefs and values tells you only so much about what actions they’re going to
take in the future
...
With tens or even hundreds of millions of viewers or listeners, it can seem
like TV hosts and radio personalities and pop stars have a huge amount of
influence
...
In fact, many
people believe that those charismatic figures are so influential that everyone
is essentially being brainwashed by them, that they can make people do just
about anything they want
...
Certainly, mass-media celebrities have great influence in certain respects: They can jumpstart trends and influence social attitudes
...
Sociologist Stanley Lieberson has found that first names for babies often
become popular due to the rising fame of celebrities with those names
...
Particularly in the present day, when people have an unprecedented number
of options, they typically choose to watch, listen to, or read media that are
consistent with their preexisting beliefs; if anything, media reinforce the
beliefs and habits people had in the first place
...
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media
...
and neither do your neighbors
...
That’s not to say there’s no such thing as “the truth” — it’s
just that there are different ways of telling the truth
...
Understanding Society is Just
a Matter of “Common Sense”
Among all these myths, the falsehood of this one should seem most obvious
to those of you who have read any or all of this book
...
There was once a time when it was “common sense” that certain races
should be subjugated to others
...
Should people with mental disabilities be locked away in institutions, or maybe even killed? That, too, was
once “common sense
...
Sociology challenges you to
question the beliefs you take to be common sense today
...
That’s not to say you have to discard them, but you have to keep an
open mind
...
They’re still out there — for
examples, see every other section in this chapter!
For lots of good reasons, it’s easy to get caught up in the assumptions and
biases of your own society — but it’s a certainty that some of those are
regarded as nonsense in other societies, and some of the beliefs that people
around you take for granted today will seem ridiculous 500 years from now
...
28_572368-ch19
...
In 2008, an African-American was elected
President of the United States
...
’s dream come true: that people may be judged by
the content of their character and not by the color of their skin?
It doesn’t diminish the amazing achievements of civil rights activists, and the
almost unbelievable progress that’s been made in social tolerance, but to
say that the idea that race “doesn’t matter any more” is a myth
...
What does this mean for social policy? It’s not obvious, except that “race
blind” policies, whatever their virtues in particular situations, are not necessarily consistent with the way people see the world
...
In Time, Immigrant Families Will
Assimilate and Adopt a New Culture
If the falseness of this myth doesn’t seem obvious to you, that’s okay; for a
long time, it didn’t seem obvious to sociologists either! For much of the 20th
century, sociological studies of immigration were dominated by the theory
that one way or another, over time immigrant families would melt into the
“melting pot,” that they would leave their culture behind and join the culture
of their new society
...
The biggest problem is its assumption that there’s some kind of
path from “less assimilated” to “more assimilated,” a path along which all
immigrant families can all be located
...
Further, it’s problematic to assume
that there is a single “receiving” culture into which families can assimilate —
any culture is really many different cultures, and it’s a mistake to think that
becoming “American” or “English” or “Japanese” means one thing in particular, one lifestyle or set of values or even one language to which newcomers
need to assimilate
...
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Further, though, the entire concept of “assimilation” suggests a kind of
absorption that erases the experiences and values families bring with them
...
Presuming otherwise can justify a
scientifically inaccurate and personally hurtful disregard for those families’
contributions
...
Bureaucracy is Dehumanizing
This myth is touched on in Chapter 12
...
Max Weber called it an “iron cage” that locks people
in its cold grip
...
Most obviously,
there’s the fact that bureaucracy allows people to do more, more efficiently;
Marx, Durkheim, and Weber all understood this and alluded to it in one way
or another
...
If business was still done through informal understandings and personal contact,
it would take much more time and be much more expensive to get anything
done, and accordingly, prices of goods and services would skyrocket
...
It may seem infuriating when you can’t get a human being on the
phone, or can’t convince anyone to bend a policy when you accidentally miss
a credit card payment — but that “dehumanizing” property of corporate
bureaucracy also makes it much harder for those companies to discriminate
or mistreat people for arbitrary reasons
...
In that way, bureaucracy can actually
allow you to be more human
...
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339
persistently misleading them about what the “right choices” are
...
Most people, however, in most societies, are getting a lot of messages from a
lot of sources
...
Sociologist David Harding’s study, mentioned in Chapter 7, shows that people
who get conflicting messages are often more confused and may have less predictable behavior than people who are hearing consistent messages; but everyone has a number of different sources of information to inform their decisions
...
but you’re probably getting “the right messages” as
well
...
Society Prevents Us From
Being Our “True Selves”
Some psychologists believe that the process of growing up is, at least in contemporary society, almost universally traumatic — that as people learn to
adapt to social expectations, they are forced to betray their “true selves
...
Who you are and what you do is fundamentally social, from the
moment you are born
...
For your entire life, even
your most intimate, personal thoughts are deeply wrapped in your social life
...
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...
And if you
don’t understand yourself, how can you understand anything else?
There Is Such a Thing
as a Perfect Society
Auguste Comte, the man who coined the term “sociology,” thought that one
day we’d get it all figured out, that with enough effort and study we’d achieve
the perfect society and that would be that
...
(See Chapter 3 for more on Comte
...
Never in the history of the world has there been a
society without inequality, conflict, crime, and unhappiness
...
Why? Because we’re not perfect people
...
Building a perfect society out of human
beings is like trying to build a cathedral out of Gummi Bears
...
But that doesn’t mean you should give up hope! With the help of sociology
and the other social sciences, we’ve come a long way since Comte’s time, and
you and I have every reason to think that social conditions will get better yet
...
By working together, and by asking tough questions
and demanding the best answers we can get, we can make the world a better
place to live
...
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...
See
also inequality; specific civil rights
movements
agenda-driven research, 29–30
agents of socialization, 97
aggregate facts, 102–103
“aggregators,” 303
All in the Family (TV sitcom), 90
altruism, 112–113
altruistic suicides, 51
American Journal of Sociology (journal), 61
American men, 280–281
American Psychological Association, 284
American Revolution, 46
American Sociological Association, 309
American Sociological Review (journal), 61
analysis tools, 58, 70–73
Anderson, Elijah (sociologist)
Streetwise, 266, 320
Angels in America (Kushner), 174
Animal Farm (Orwell), 139
answers, generalizing, 28
anthropology, 88–89
Ariés, Phillippe (historian), 274
29_572368-bindex
...
(sociologist), 201–202
The Bell Curve (Herrnstein and Murray), 78
bias, 158
bias-free outlook, 34, 72, 177
The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of
Like-Minded America is Tearing Us
Apart (Bishop), 261
birth control pills, 288
birth rates, 275
bisexuality
attitudes, evolution of, 172–173, 288
civil rights, 172–173
cohabitation, 282, 292
discrimination, 153, 159
gay pride festivals, 251
identity with, 173–174
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Sociology For Dummies
Bishop, Bill (sociologist)
The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of
Like-Minded America is Tearing Us
Apart, 261
Black, Duncan (economist), 243
books (literature searches), 61
“Boston Miracle,” 184, 204
bottom-up analysis, 130
bounded rationality, 110, 125, 221
Bourdieu, Pierre (sociologist), 100, 152
bourgeois, 49
“breaching experiments,” 95
Brokeback Mountain (Lee), 174
bureaucracies
corporate culture as, 218–222
shortcomings of, 217–218
Weber on, 215–216
Burt, Ronald (sociologist), 127
business
network gap filling, 127
product evolution, 231
business uses, 32
•C•
Calvin, John (Protestant clergy), 52, 180
Calvinist Protestant values, 52
campaign finance, 240
capital punishment, 198
capitalism
industrial, 155
“iron cage” of, 53, 218, 300, 301, 321, 338
Marx on, 49
religion as jump starter, 180, 188
Weber on, 52, 53, 146, 218, 300–301, 321, 338
careers
with ambiguities, 220–222
candidate referrals, 126
corporate culture
about, 18
as bureaucracies, 218–222
for-profit, 214–215
human elements in, 222–224
open systems, 227–232
perks of, 224–226
Weber as applicable to, 215–218
29_572368-bindex
...
See also inequality; specific civil
rights movements
about, 163
discrimination, 153
Castro, Fidel (politician), 57
Catholicism, 190
Celebration (Disney-sponsored city), 269
central city, 267
centrist candidates, 243
change, social
about, 20
breakdown, 41
diversity, 305–306
Durkheim on, 298–300
globalization, 302–304
lessons from the past, 310–312
Marx on, 296–298
middle class, 308–310
religious changes with, 177–178, 179, 180,
181–182, 183–185
strategies for, 38
technology, 307–308
Weber on, 300–301
charismatic leaders, 232, 251
charities
altruism, 112–113
religious, 183
Chicago School of Sociology
about, 54
ethnography studies, 257
immigration studies, 167
influence of, 13, 56, 58, 260, 269
members of, 96, 115, 149
child labor laws, 291
children
born out of wedlock, 287, 292
childbearing, 170, 277, 288
childhood, 274–275
2/23/10 6:10 PM
Index
cost of, 291
rights of, 275
Chomsky, Noam (linguist), 298
Christakis, Nicholas (sociologist), 130
Christianity
about, 190
Catholicism, 190
conservative, 186
products for, 186
Protestant ethics/values, 52, 53, 180, 182
Puritans, 197–198
views of, 179
churches
...
(sociologist), 232
29_572368-bindex
...
S
...
indd 344
structure, 83–85
study of
about, 87–88
anthropology, 88–89
cultural studies, 89
liberal arts, 89
production of culture, 89–90
reception of culture, 90
values, 104
culture-structure continuum, 85–87
•D•
Dahl, Robert (political scientist)
Who Governs?, 244
data
age of, 66
cross-sectional/longitudinal, 68–69
gathering/analysis, 63–64
theory mismatch, 73, 75
dating
adolescence, 276
senior years, 277
Davis, Kingsley (sociologist), 143–144
de facto, 200
de jure, 200
de Rouvroy, Claude Henri (sociologist), 46
death rates, 275
decision-making, 15, 221
demographic transitions, 275
demographics, 278–279
deterrence, crime, 207
Detert, Jim (sociologist), 226
deviance, crime as, 17–18
dialectical materialism, 48
Dick and Jane reading primers, 287
differentiation, Durkheim on, 51
DiMaggio, Paul (sociologist), 230, 231
discrimination
about, 158
age, 277
incarceration as, 209
institutionalized, 17
in law enforcement, 200
physical appearance, 160
race, 162–166
sex, 169–171, 288
2/23/10 6:10 PM
Index
distribution
of health care, 285–287
of material goods, 49
diversification, product lines, 228
diversity
about, 17
changes in, 298–300, 305–306
Chicago School of Sociology, 54
during the Industrial Revolution, 43–44
intolerance of, 188
neighborhoods, 262
of social ties, 134–135
training, 94
urban, 19
divorce
acceptance of, 288
rates of, 287, 288, 292
social facts, 103
Dobbin, Frank (sociologist), 36
Dobson, James (religious leader), 186
dot-com boom, 224–225
Dr
...
indd 345
345
economy
change in, 86–87
globalization in, 304
senior years, impact on, 277
in social structure, 84
turbulence of, 288
education
religious, 183
research for, 31
school shootings, 203–205
in social stratification, 151
socialization role, 97
universities
academic departments, 47–48, 50,
53–54
curricula, 29, 231
of women, 171
efficiency, workplace, 219–220
egocentric networks, 120–122
egoistic suicides, 51
Elwert, Felix (sociologist), 75
Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, 87
emotion in decision-making, 112
empirical questions, 26–27
employment
...
See also crime
Engels, Frederich (philosopher)
Communist Manifesto, 48
equality
...
See also inequality; specific civil
rights movements
about, 16–17, 161–162
definition, 160
identity with, 173–174
indigenous, 167
ethnography, 54, 257
European revolutions, 236
executive suites, women’s
underrepresentation in, 170
exploitation by the bourgeois, 49
extended families, 292–293
exurbs, 19, 264, 268
2/23/10 6:10 PM
346
Sociology For Dummies
•F•
about, 119, 135, 136, 314
identity on, 134
in networks, 129, 133
social movements on, 247
families
historically, 287–290
today, 290–293
family leave policies, 170
The Family That Preys (Perry), 174
family values, 287–288
Faneuil Hall Marketplace, 263
Farberman, Harvey A
...
Scott (author)
The Great Gatsby, 89
Flash, Grandmaster (musician), 89
flexibility, ethnic, 162
Florida, Richard (urban life scholar), 267
force
...
indd 346
Gans, Herbert J
...
(Harvard University
faculty), 143
gay pride festivals, 251
gay rights
attitudes, evolution of, 172–173, 288
civil rights, 172–173
cohabitation, 282, 292
discrimination, 153, 159
gay pride festivals, 251
identity with, 173–174
GBLTQ rights
...
See also inequality; specific civil
rights movements
about, 16–17
American men, 280–281
discrimination, 153, 169–173
identity with, 173–174
women
feminism, evolution of, 169–170
women’s suffrage, 159
gender roles, 169–170, 171
gentrification, 264, 266–267
The Geography of Nowhere (Kunstler), 268
Gibson, David (sociologist), 122
gifts to officeholders, 240
Giuliani, Rudy (New York City mayor), 36
Gladwell, Malcolm (author)
The Tipping Point, 133
glass ceiling, 288
GLBT rights
...
See also politics
about, 18–19, 234–235
church role in, 179, 183–185, 186, 189
conflict models, 239–241
pluralist models, 241–244
political revolutions, 236–238
2/23/10 6:10 PM
Index
research for, 30–31
in social structure, 85
Government Center, 263
Grandmaster Flash (musician), 89
grandparents as childcare providers,
277, 293
Granovetter, Mark (sociologist), 124, 135
The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald), 89
groups
networks of, 122
within social movements, 245
Grusky, David B
...
(sociologist)
The Bell Curve, 78
high school counselors, 128
“higher class,” 16
higher education
academic departments, 47–48, 50, 53–54
curricula, 29, 231
high-status culture, 152
highway system, suburbs as products
of, 262
Hill-Popper, Marya (sociologist), 109
historians, 42, 45
history
about, 12–13, 39–40
current developments, 58
1800s, 44–47
Marx on, 53
Marx/Durkheim/Weber, 47–53
1900s, 53–58
pre-1800, 40–44
Weber on, 53
Hochschild, Arlie (sociologist)
The Second Shift, 290–291, 320
347
ideal culture, 83
ideas, 82
ImClone, 128
immigrants
about, 167–169
dark-skinned, 160–161
health care attitudes, 284–285
illegal, 195
waves of, 155, 305
Impressionism in French painting (study), 90
In An Inconvenient Squirrel (Scrimshaw), 96
incarceration rates, 165, 206–209
income
discrimination in, 170
as status symbol, 145
indigenous ethnic groups, 167
Industrial Revolution, 43–44
inequality
bias and discrimination, 158–159
cross-cultural, 154–156
ethnic, 160, 161–162
racial, 160–161, 162–166
sex and gender, 153, 169–173
trends, 173–174
influence
over government, 240–241
network, 127, 130, 131
of religion, 179, 182
of workers, 224
informal norms, 192–193
information spread, through networks, 136
inherited inequality, 141, 145
29_572368-bindex
...
See specific aspects
of sociology
international development, 155
Internet
distribution, 133
matchmaking, 109
in social movements, 247
social networking
about, 133–136
Christian, 186
Facebook, 119, 129, 133, 134, 135, 136,
247, 314
MySpace, 119, 129, 133
Twitter, 133, 314
as technology advancement, 303
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (movie), 89
invasion-succession model, 260–261
“iron cage” (capitalism), 53, 218, 300,
321, 338
irrational choices, 110–111, 112
irregular reward patterns, 111
Islam, 190
isomorphism, 229–231
“it’s a crime to be black in America”
(Spearhead), 200
•J•
jails
cost of, 208
incarceration rates, 165, 206–209
29_572368-bindex
...
See jobs and employment
jobs and employment
with ambiguities, 220–222
candidate referrals, 126
corporate culture
about, 18
as bureaucracies, 218–222
for-profit, 214–215
human elements in, 222–224
open systems, 227–232
perks of, 224–226
Weber as applicable to, 215–218
dual-career families, 287, 288, 290
routine, 219–220
social facts, 102–103
timing careers, 170
journalism, 31–32
journals (literature searches), 61
Judaism, 190
jury system, 198
•K•
Kalev, Alexandra (sociologist), 36
Kaufman, Jason (sociologist), 36, 93
Kelly, Erin (sociologist), 36
King, Martin Luther, Jr
...
Strangelove, 57
Kunstler, James Howard (social critic)
The Geography of Nowhere, 268
Kushner, Tony (author)
Angels in America, 174
•L•
labor, division of, 290–291, 298–300
labor market, 291
labor-management tensions, 219
language
changes in, 86
of former slaves, 87
Latinos, 168
2/23/10 6:10 PM
Index
laws
about, 103–104
ambiguity of, 198–199
changes in, 86–87
copyright, 201
definition, 193
enforcement of, 31, 197, 199–200, 234
legal constraints
discrimination, 162
religious practices, 179
role of, 196
Lee, Ang (author)
Brokeback Mountain, 174
Left Behind novels, 186
legal constraints
discrimination, 162
religious practices, 179
legislators, research for, 30
Lenin, Vladimir (politician), 57
Lenski, Gerhard (sociologist), 143
lesbian relationships
attitudes toward, 172–173, 288
civil rights, 172–173
cohabitation, 282, 292
discrimination, 153, 159
gay pride festivals, 251
identity with, 173–174
The Levittowners (Gans), 263
liberal arts, 89
life course
adolescence, 276
childhood, 274–275
differences in, 280–282
health care, 282–287
senior years, 276–278
transitions, 278–279
life cycle theory, 261–263
life insurance for children, 275
literature searches, 61–62
lobbying, 240
loneliness of crowds, 254–256
The Lonely Crowd (Riesman), 55, 57, 263
longitudinal studies, 68–69
long-term rewards, 111
“looking-glass self,” 96
lower class, 141–142, 265
low-income communities, policing of, 204
Luther, Martin (Protestant reformer), 180
29_572368-bindex
...
(sociologist), 232
marches, 245
Marin, Alexandra (sociologist), 126
marketing strategies, 132–133
marriage
about, 291–292
cohabitation compared to, 282, 292
divorce
acceptance of, 288
rates of, 287, 288, 292
social facts, 103
social facts, 102–103
unmarried partnership, 288
Marx, Karl (sociologist)
about, 13, 47–49
Communist Manifesto, 48
as conflict theorist, 240
on government autonomy, 241
influence of, 40, 56, 57
on religion, 99, 176–177, 180, 182, 188
on social change, 20, 296–298
on society, 50, 99, 142
Weber compared with, 52–53
Marxism
on health care, 285
on the middle class, 309
on social movements, 247
materialism, 48
Mayo, Elton (business professor),
222–224
McAdam, Douglas (sociologist), 247
McLuhan, Marshall (media theorist), 303
Mead, George Herbert (philosopher),
115
mechanical solidarity, 178, 300
media, socialization role of, 97
median voter theory, 243
medical professions, 286–287
megachurches, 184
“melting pot,” 167
2/23/10 6:10 PM
350
Sociology For Dummies
men, American, 280–281
mental health, 112, 284
Merton, Robert K
...
Wright (sociologist)
about, 12
on government, 241–242
influence of, 57
The Power Elite, 56, 241
mimetic isomorphism, 230, 231
minority overrepresentation in prison, 209
missing data, 75–76
mission drift, 231–232
mixed messages, 131
mode of production, 49, 176–177, 296–297
“model minority” myth, 165–166
monarchy, 163
money
Marx on, 240
in social stratification, 145–146
Moore, Wilbert E
...
indd 350
MySpace
about, 119
in networks, 129, 133
myths
actions as values reflection, 334–335
bad choices, reasons for, 338–339
bureaucracy as dehumanizing element, 338
immigration, 337–338
media brainwashing, 335–336
on “model minorities,” 336
race, 337
rewards from work/determination, 334
on society, 336, 339–340
•N•
Nader, Ralph (attorney, activist), 298
nation building, 237
natural systems, 18
nature versus nurture, 95–96
near-term rewards, 111
The Negro Family: The Case for National
Action (Moynihan), 37
neighborhoods, evolution of, 258–262
networks
about, 15
analysis insights, 129–136, 204
within corporate culture, 228–229
egocentric, 120–122
power players in, 242
of relationships, 122–124
weak ties, strength of, 124–129
New Media and Society (journal), 61
New Urbanism, 268–269
Newman, Katherine (sociologist)
about, 203–204
No Shame in My Game, 322
Rampage, 204
Nineteenth Amendment to the U
...
Constitution, 246
No Shame in My Game (Newman), 321–322
nonfinancial decisions, 108–109
nonprofit organizations, 30
normative isomorphism, 230, 231
norms
about, 103–104
bias-free outlook, 25
breaking from, 95
definition, 82
2/23/10 6:10 PM
Index
formal/informal, 192–193
learning, 96
nostalgia trap, 288
nuclear families, 292
nurture, nature vs
...
(sociologist), 232
“omniethnic” identity, 173
“omniracial” identity, 173
“omnisexual” identity, 173
online
distribution, 133
matchmaking, 109
in social movements, 247
social networking
about, 133–136
Christian, 186
Facebook, 119, 129, 133, 134, 135, 136,
247, 314
MySpace, 119, 129, 133
Twitter, 133, 314
as technology advancement, 303
open systems/workplaces, 18, 224–226
“opiate of the people,” 99, 176, 177
organic solidarity, 178–179, 300
The Organization Man (White), 56, 57, 256,
263, 264, 319
organizations
about, 41
analysis, 204
behavior, 221
boundaries, 227–228
health care, 285–287
networks of, 122
religious, 183–185
Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open
Systems (Scott), 218
Orwell, George (author)
Animal Farm, 139
out-of-wedlock children, 287, 292
29_572368-bindex
...
See also government
change in, 86–87
lobbyists, 128
political parties, 231
power in, 242
religious involvement in, 183
revolutions, 42–43
Portnoy’s Complaint (Roth), 174
positivism, 44–45
post-World War II social policy, 289
Powell, Walter W
...
B
...
indd 352
purchasing decisions, 111
Puritans, 198
Putnam, Robert (sociologist), 94
•Q•
qualitative research, 14, 66, 67–68, 69, 72–73
quantitative research, 14, 66–67, 69
queer lifestyle
...
See also inequality; specific civil rights
movements
about, 16–17, 160–161
discrimination, 153, 159, 162–166
identity with, 173–174
neighborhood composition, 260–261
violence resolution, 184, 204
rallying public opinion, 30, 245
Rampage (Newman), 204
rational choice theory, 107–109, 110
rational systems, 18, 218–220
rationalization, 53, 301
Raudenbush, Stephen (sociologist), 36,
204, 268
real culture, 83
realtors, 128
reception of culture, 87–88, 90
recession, 304
Recording Industry Association of America
(RIAA), 201
redundancy of acquaintances, 125
reformation, criminal, 207
relationships
changes in, 277
networks of, 122–124
2/23/10 6:10 PM
Index
relative deprivation theory, 245–246
religion
change in, 86–87
Christianity
about, 190
Catholicism, 190
conservative, 186
products for, 186
Protestant ethics/values, 52, 53, 180, 182
Puritans, 197–198
views of, 179
churches
about, 183–185
role in government, 179
socialization role, 97
Durkheim on, 177–180, 182, 188
freedom of, 185–190
Haitian voudou, 190
Islam, 190
Judaism, 190
Marx on, 99, 176–177, 180, 182, 188
separation of church and state, 189
socialization role of, 97
Weber on, 52, 180–181, 182, 188
religious organizations
about, 17, 183–185
movie guides for, 92–93
“religious right,” 186
reporting, 31–32
representative samples, 70, 71
research
conducting, 25–28
methods
about, 13–14, 58
analysis tools, 58, 70–73
choices, 66–69
Durkheim’s approach, 51
pitfalls, 73–78
steps, 60–65
settings for, 29–31
uses for, 29–31
Reskin, Barbara (sociologist), 59
resources
inequality of, 140, 307
mobilization, 246–247
responses, social movements, 250
results, interpreting, 63–64
retirement, 281
29_572368-bindex
...
See gay rights
sampling, 70, 71, 280
Sampson, Robert J
...
(sociologist), 18
Organizations: Rational, Natural, and
Open Systems, 218
Scrimshaw, Joseph (author)
In An Inconvenient Squirrel, 96
search engines, Christian, 186
The Second Shift (Hochschild), 290, 320
2/23/10 6:10 PM
354
Sociology For Dummies
secondary deviance, 208
segmented labor market, 170
segregation, racial, 261
self presentation, 134
self-fulfilling prophecies, 165
self-preservation, 232
senior years, 276–278
separation of church and state, 179, 189
sex
...
indd 354
diversity, 305–306
Durkheim on, 298–300
globalization, 302–304
lessons from the past, 310–312
Marx on, 296–298
middle class, 308–310
religious changes with, 177–178, 179, 180,
181–182, 183–185
strategies for, 38
technology, 307–308
Weber on, 300–301
social class
conflict, 49
creative, 267
definition, 141–142
“higher class,” 16
inequality, 16
lower class, 141–142, 265
middle class, 142, 155, 266, 308–310
systems, 16
types of, 154
upper class, 141–142, 264–265, 266
social connections, 149–150
social epidemics, 133
social facts, 102–104, 106
social frames, 117–118
social issues research, 29–30
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
(White), 256
social mobility, 16, 154
social movements, 18–19, 244–251
...
indd 355
355
diversity understanding, 330–331
organizational management, 330
relationship-building, 327–328
self-identity, 326
social changes, 328–329
social movements, mobilizing, 329
sociology
...
indd 356
Suicide (Durkheim), 51
Summers, Larry (Harvard University
president), 225
supernatural crimes, 198
support groups, GBLTQ, 174
surveys, 280
Swidler, Ann (sociologist), 105
symbolic interactionism, 54, 114–118
symbols, 86, 161
•T•
targets of social movements, 245
Taylor, Frederick (efficiency expert),
219–220
teachers, research for, 31
technology
changes in, 86–87, 307–308
social connections with, 93, 94
in social structure, 84
teleological ends, 301
term limits, 240
themes of early sociologists, 45
theologians, 42
theoretical questions, 26
theory mismatch, 73, 75
think tanks, 29–30
Thirteenth Amendment to the U
...
Constitution, 87
Thomas, William I
...
See gay rights
transitions, life, 278–279
transitivity of social ties, 135
2/23/10 6:10 PM
Index
transnational communities, 305
transportation
changes in, 302–303
during the Industrial Revolution, 44
treatment of the wealthy, 146
The Truly Disadvantaged (Wilson), 266
Tubman, Harriet (abolitionist), 194, 195
about, 314
in networks, 133
•U•
uncertainties, corporate, 220–222
unconscious discrimination, 164
Underground Railroad, 195
unemployment, teenage, 291
universities
academic departments, 47–48, 50, 53–54
curricula, 29, 231
University of Chicago sociology
department, 54
...
S
...
S
...
indd 357
357
Verne, Jules (author)
Around the World in 80 Days, 303
Viagra, 277
“victimless crimes,” 194
video sites, 186
Vidmar, Neil (sociologist), 90
violence
religious, 189, 190
resolution of, 184, 204
“viral marketing,” 133
voting rights, 159, 169, 246, 250
voudou, Haitian, 190
•W•
Waksal, Sam (ImClone CEO), 128
Wallerstein, Immanuel (sociologist), 156
war on drugs, 207, 208
Washington, George (politician), 194, 195
Waters, Mary (sociologist), 160–161
Ethnic Options, 162
The Way We Never Were (Coontz), 288
Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology
of Deviance (Erikson), 198
weak ties, strength of, 124–129
wealth
definition, 145
government as tool of, 240
Web sites
online distribution, 133
online matchmaking, 109
in social movements, 247
social networking
about, 133–136
Christian, 186
Facebook, 119, 129, 133, 134, 135, 136,
247, 314
MySpace, 119, 129, 133
Twitter, 133, 314
as technology advancement, 303
Weber, Max (sociologist)
about, 13, 47–48, 52–53
on capitalism, 146
corporate culture, influence in, 215–218
on health care, 286
influence of, 40
2/23/10 6:10 PM
358
Sociology For Dummies
Weber, Max (continued)
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism, 52
on religion, 180–181, 182, 188
on social change, 20, 300–301
West, Cornel (Harvard University
faculty), 225
When We Are Married (Priestley), 273
White, Cynthia (sociologist), 90
White, Harrison (sociologist), 90
“white flight,” 264, 266
Who Governs? (Dahl), 244
Whyte, William Foote (sociologist)
Street Corner Society, 256, 257–258, 318
Whyte, William H
...
indd 358
Winship, Christopher (sociologist), 184, 204
witchcraft, 197–198
The Wizard of Oz (movie), 94
women
feminism, evolution of, 169–170
women’s suffrage, 159, 169, 246
world population growth, 307
“world-system theorists,” 156
“wrong” scripts, 131
•Y•
yam exchanges, 114
“You’ve come a long way, baby”, 169–171
•Z•
Zedong, Mao (politician), 57
Zelizer, Viviana (sociologist)
about, 275
Pricing the Priceless Child, 320–321
zero-sum view of power, 239
2/23/10 6:10 PM
Notes
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29_572368-bindex
...
indd 360
2/23/10 6:10 PM
Notes
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29_572368-bindex
...
indd 362
2/23/10 6:10 PM
Business/Accounting
& Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping For Dummies
978-0-7645-9848-7
eBay Business
All-in-One For Dummies,
2nd Edition
978-0-470-38536-4
Job Interviews
For Dummies,
3rd Edition
978-0-470-17748-8
Resumes For Dummies,
5th Edition
978-0-470-08037-5
Stock Investing
For Dummies,
3rd Edition
978-0-470-40114-9
Successful Time
Management
For Dummies
978-0-470-29034-7
Computer Hardware
BlackBerry For Dummies,
3rd Edition
978-0-470-45762-7
Computers For Seniors
For Dummies
978-0-470-24055-7
iPhone For Dummies,
2nd Edition
978-0-470-42342-4
Laptops For Dummies,
3rd Edition
978-0-470-27759-1
Macs For Dummies,
10th Edition
978-0-470-27817-8
Cooking & Entertaining
Cooking Basics
For Dummies,
3rd Edition
978-0-7645-7206-7
Wine For Dummies,
4th Edition
978-0-470-04579-4
Diet & Nutrition
Dieting For Dummies,
2nd Edition
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978-0-470-09584-3
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978-0-471-77383-2
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978-0-470-37602-7
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978-0-470-43061-3
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978-0-470-17569-9
Photoshop Elements 7
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978-0-470-39700-8
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Title: Sociology for dummies
Description: Sociology for dummies will help you get what you requare.
Description: Sociology for dummies will help you get what you requare.