Why Sociology?

I asked my students to begin their semester-long blogging project by sharing what draws them to sociology and how they might use it in the future. I figured I'd answer the same question. The short story is that when I was introduced to the sociological perspective by my wonderful Introduction to Sociology teacher, I had an "aha" moment. The topic was food insecurity and public versus private responses to food insecurity. I was someone who had been hungry on occasion and who understood well what it meant to be worried about my ability to provide food for myself and my children. I had also had dealt with public institutions such as the Dept. of Social Services and private organizations such as food banks. So in this Intro class, I learned about how the federal poverty line, which is used to determine who is eligible for assistance. I learned about public policy regarding food insecurity (or the lack thereof), and I learned about the constraints and limitations of the private charity system which has tried to fill in the gaps left by our public policy response to food insecurity (we read Sweet Charity, which remains on my bookshelf to this day). This structural perspective enabled me to begin to understand my experiences as an individual when I had applied for assistance with food at both public and private institutions.

And that is the definition of sociology - the ability to move from thinking about personal experience as an individual problem to seeing that personal experience within a larger social system. C. Wright Mills, who coined the term, "the sociological imagination," to describe how sociologists view the world, defined it as the ability to distinguish between personal troubles and public issues. While it is certainly the case that individuals have agency, that is, they make choices that affect their everyday lives and their life chances, they don't do that within a vacuum. We exist within a larger social system that influences what choices we have and how we behave. Therefore, the benefits of the sociological perspective are that by examining the social system, we can see where inequalities are created and maintained - such as ways that public policies fail to provide adequate solutions for food insecurity - and can suggest alternative policies.

Week Five Blog Prompts

This week we continued our survey of topics that sociologists study by examining the sociology of health and the sociology of family.

Option 1:
In this article, the author tells a story about the life and death of a poor white woman. Read and analyze this article using the sociological concepts we discussed in class. Specifically, identify and use the elements of social determinants theory, psycho- social, materialist, and the fundamental causes theories, to explain Crystal Wilson's life and death? Finally, be sure to consider the author's analysis - what might you add or argue with (if this is difficult, identify some further questions we should ask).
http://prospect.org/article/whats-killing-poor-white-women


Option 2:
In this audio and written article, the author queries the phenomena of stay-at-home dads with breadwinner moms. Read and listen and then discuss. First, why is this a "hot topic?" What gender roles and ideas about the family are being challenged by families such as those profiled (include some specific evidence from the article/audio)? In your answer, be sure to discuss the myth of the traditional family and the division of labor. Given what you've learned in class, what questions might you ask these families if you had the opportunity?
http://www.npr.org/2013/05/15/180300236/stay-at-home-dads-breadwinner-moms-and-making-it-all-work

Week 3 Blog Prompts

This week we have covered the Introduction to Deviance and Social Control and the Sociology of Stratification and Poverty. You may choose one of the THREE following prompts for your blog this week.

Option 1

This week we discussed the social construction of deviance, which we conceptualized as formal deviance (violation of laws) and informal deviance (minor transgressions of social norms). We also learned about the construction of social control, or the mechanisms that create normative compliance. Parallel to how we think about deviance, we can categorize social control mechanisms as formal and informal.  For example, if you are at the amusement park you are the subject of formal control mechanisms in that you are expected to abide by park rules that are clearly enforced by the presence of security guards and sometimes police. You are also subject to informal social control; for example, the moms with children who are ahead of you in line might turn the hairy eyeball on you should you and your friends be cursing too loudly! At the same time, you're acting as an agent of social control when you  complain when someone cuts in the line in ways that violate your sense what is normative. As you mentioned in class, there is some amount of "cutting", or perhaps "a way of cutting" that is considered allowable; but you have a sense of this boundary and will notice and call out someone who is doing it incorrectly. Thus, you are both an object and an agent of social control.

Prompt 1: Choose a setting with which you are familiar and consider some ways that you are both an object of social control and an agent of social control. Be specific and clearly define your terms. Then, define the functionalist approach to deviance and social control and discuss how it might explain your behavior.

Option 2

We also discussed deviance and social control in terms of labeling theories and Dr. Victor Rios' theory of the "youth control complex," where the institutions concerned with policing (the police, probation, etc.) and educational institutions combine to control the lives of young Black and Latino men in the inner-city and, by so doing, mark these young men with negative labels that close off opportunities to succeed in school and life, effectively tracking them from school to the criminal justice system. In this article, John Whitehead provides links to many stories that illustrate the ways that zero tolerance policies are being enforced in schools across the country and suggests that the consequences of these policies are causing more problems than they are solving.

Prompt 2: Read the article and discuss using the sociological theories of deviance and social control that we learned in class. Do these examples provide evidence for Dr. Rios' theory?

Option 3

Finally, we also spent time in class discussing stratification and the sociology of poverty. Class is a "fuzzy" concept that is difficult to define and equally difficult to operationalize. It means different things to different people; to say someone is of _____ class, suggests something about that person's status, their culture (attitudes, beliefs, social practices), and their economic means. We are often thinking of other's class in relationship to our own position in society's strata: are we hoping to move up (upward mobility) or hoping that we don't move down to their position? If someone is poor, what assumptions do we hold about that person?

Prompt 3: When and how did you first become aware of your class background? What role does class play in your life? Use a sociological lens and in particular, our discussion of the mechanisms of class reproduction (human, economic, social, and cultural capital), to discuss the ways that your class background has affected your life chances.

I will end with this food for thought. We discussed the four ideal types of systems of stratification: estate, caste, class, and the elite-mass dichotomy. We contrasted Pareto's argument that the elite-mass dichotomy system is positive because it provides the opportunity for the individuals who are the most talented and achievement oriented to become leaders (meritocratic ideology) with C. Wright Mills' counter-argument that power and prestige are what determine position within the society. For Mills' this is dangerous because the "power elite" are those who are in the top positions of the three main societal institutions: economic institutions, politics, and the military. Thus, decision-making power over the masses is consolidated in the hands of those individuals who have the money and prestige to achieve those positions. Whose interests are they looking out for?

Here's an article written by Davey D about the overlap between the private prison industry and mass-media ownership (thank you Maryam). Does this provide us with empirical support for Mills' argument? How might we think about the media's relationship to the power elite? Does this surprise you?