Intro Theory Make-up Exam 2 in Wooten 121 today at 3:30pm

The Make-up Exam for mid-term 2 in Introduction to Sociological Theory will be held today in Wooten 121 at 3:30pm

This will be the only chance for a make-up, if you missed the exam.

Intro Theory: Make-up Exam 2: ROOM CHANGE

The make-up exam for Mid-term 2 will be held this Thursday (tomorrow), at 3:30 pm, in Whooten Hall room 1210. The exam will be closed-book and closed-notes.

Intro Theory Make-up Exam

Students wishing to take the make-up exam for midterm 2 will meet at my office, Chilton 397 in the sociology department, at 3:30pm this Thursday, November 29. The exam will be short-essay format, and will be based on the same review sheet used for the regular midterm 2.

This will be the only chance for a make-up.

Lecture Notes for Exam 2, Intro to Sociological Theory

Cultural Theory

We have mentioned culture a few times already. Along with functionalist theory and conflict theory, cultural theory is one of the big theoretical perspectives in sociology.

Also, the textbook’s definition of society itself includes the concept of culture.

And in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber argued that Calvinists’ culture, and not only technology, economics, or power, contributed to the success of capitalism.

When we talked about differences between different countries, students said that different countries have different cultures.

But What is Culture? What does the word Culture mean?

One definition is that it is different from economic and political processes.

This might help, but it’s not a very good definition.

Most discussions of Culture start with the idea that people are different from animals because people have culture. Some animals use tools and some teach each other how to do things. But overall, non-human animals operate by instinct.

What are animals’ instincts? What are human instincts?

Food, water, sex, friendship, play, take care of young, aggression

Unlike most animals, humans are born incomplete; we need other people to teach us how to live. Our instincts are not enough. “Human nature” is not enough.

e.g. Blinking vs. Winking

instinct vs. culture

For example, in the 19^th century scientists found feral children—wild children who grew up by themselves in the forest. They could not speak, and did not know how to live or how to interact with other people. No one taught them how to be social, how to eat, how to speak, how to read or write, etcetera. These were some of the only people ever found who had no culture.

Second definition: Culture is something we have to learn from people in our society (family, community, nation).

Social scientists talk about two kinds of culture:

1. material culture

tangible things people make in a society

cell phones, worry beads, houses, cars, clothing, food

2. non-material culture

ideas, meanings, beliefs, values, utopias, moral judgments

Components of culture, or What counts as culture and what doesn’t?

Blinking is not culture, winking is

Roughly five things are thought to count as culture

1. Symbols (or signs) (the difference is not important)

Anything that carries meaning for people who share culture

e.g. The Turkish flag is a symbol; it is meaningful, but it means different things to different people

e.g. a blink is not really a sign; a wink is a sign

Symbols and signs have two parts:

A. The signifier (e.g. the winking eye)

B. The signified (e.g. flirting)

2. Language

Languages are systems of symbols

Without language, there would be no culture, because we could not pass on our culture to our children and to other people

Does language shape reality?

Two famous anthropologists, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, thought so.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: Language shapes the way we think

different languages have different ideas, categories, distinctions

e.g. Hopi Indians had one word for everything that flies, including insects, planes, pilots

but there’s a different word for birds

e.g. Inuit Indians (eskimos) have many different words for different kinds of snow

Many words from one language cannot be translated into another language

What are some Turkish words or ideas that are hard to translate into other languages?

e.g. words for emotions are different in different languages

German Hindi

Angst Ludja

Shoddenfreude

3. Values and Beliefs

Beliefs are specific statements that people think are true

e.g. God created the universe

Humans evolved from Apes

Values are standards about what is right and wrong

e.g. individualism versus collectivism

family values

tolerance

freedom

4. Norms

Rules about appropriate behavior

e.g. How do you treat guests? If you are a guest in someone’s home, how are you supposed to act?

5. Material Culture

Physical differences between cultures, e.g. in clothing, architecture, how people eat

THINKING ABOUT CULTURE

High versus Low

high culture (elite culture)

popular culture (mass culture)

cultural capital (culture used for social climbing; Pierre Bourdieu)

Subcultures and Countercultures

alternative cultures within a nation; small cultures; cultures that rejection the mass culture

e.g. youth cultures; professions; street culture; ethnic groups

Ethnocentrism

The idea that your culture is the main, central, or best culture

Seeing reality only through your own culture

Judging other cultures based on your own culture’s standards

e.g. Indian Suttee; homosexual rituals in New Guinea; eating dogs in China

Hard to avoid

Relativism

Trying to understand other cultures on their own terms

The belief that different cultures have different truths and different ways of being moral, and that no one culture is better than others

Cultural Lag

The idea that material changes in society occur quickly, while culture (ideas, values, customs, habits, norms) change more slowly.

Sociologist William Ogborn, 1920s and 1930s

Example of deforestation, slow shift to conservation methods

e.g. high price of gas, gradual shift in preferences toward small cars

2 THEORIES OF CULTURE

Functionalism (again!)

combines functionalism that we saw before (structural-functionalism) with idealism (cultural functionalism)

different societies have different basic values

societies and cultures work hard to preserve these basic values.

pieces of culture (symbols, norms, language, material culture, etc.) function to preserve these values

e.g. Why do the Amish refuse to use high technology? Are they dumb?

Why do some Indian communities practice Suttee?

Because cultural practices reflect basic values.

e.g. individual freedom, hard work, community, family, tradition

Like Weber (at times), cultural anthropologist view culture as a system.

Their analyze “cultures” in synchronic, not diachronic, terms. This is part of what makes cultural anthropology unique.

Their approach and methods are interpretive; they see cultures as texts that are open to interpretation, and contain recurring themes and symbolism

Cultural anthropology can tend to be functionalist in its thinking.

Everything in a culture serves a function

Everything in a culture is part of an integrated whole

Society is a system of mutual interdependence that must be kept in equilibrium

Cultures are necessary for human life, serve concrete needs:

For rearing and socializing children

For creating social solidarity and harmony

An implication of these functionalist views is that indigenous cultures should be protected or preserved

i.e. if Westerners tamper with one part of an indigenous culture, they may destroy the whole thing

This view was crucial for anthropology during its early years in the 20th century, when Western powers still operated systems of colonial control in “3rd world” countries.

Conflict (again!)

Marx: culture is determined by whomever has control over the means of production

Critical theory (The Frankfurt School): Mass culture (pop music, films, tv) is created by the culture industry, and is like an opiate. It keeps people from thinking too much.

The Frankfurt School

a group of intellectuals who were associated with a research institute in Frankfurt in the 1920s, but were dispersed with the rise of Nazi Germany

I will focus on Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno

They were members of the German cultural elite, and Adorno moved to Los Angeles in the 1940s

saw Nazi populist propaganda, then in America television commercials, popular newspapers and films

A and H, in The Dialectic of Enlightenment, argued that the project of the European Enlightenment had reached an end, and had led to a world of narrow pragmatic rationality and a mass society of passive, uniform consumers

Popular media produced by the culture industry appeals to the lowest common denominator, simple likes and dislikes, in the interest of maximum profits

“No independent thinking must be expected from the audience”

Audiences are zombie-like and amused, but unthinking and gullible

Classical and avante-garde art, however, is much better

Antonio Gramsci (Italian Communist): Elites, and especially the state, have hegemony (total power) over popular culture. This allows them to rule the people without using too much force. Hegemony creates consensus.

Individual psychology and meaning

Peter Berger (influenced by Max Weber)------a Catholic sociologist, is one of the most famous sociologists of religion

The need for MEANING is unique to humans, and is only addressed by culture/religion

His perspective is similar in some ways to Durkheim’s, but where Durkheim looks at communities and societies, Berger looks more at individuals

For individuals, religion provides a “sacred canopy” of meaning in an otherwise meaningless and dangerous world

Humans need life to be meaningful, and need to know what is sacred and what is profane; this is thought to be a basic need of humans, but not of other animals

So Peter Berger expects people to turn to religion during times of personal difficulty and uncertainty

When life is difficult, religion gives a sense of security and permanence

e.g. people turn to religion during times of illness, natural disasters, and war

e.g. people turn to cults and new religions because of the stresses and difficulties of modern society

Weber’s sociology of religion/culture

Religious cultures provide comprehensible ideas of theodicy and salvation for laypeople

Why did these societies become more rationalized than others? Why did they develop industry, capitalism, democratic governments, corporations, factories, and high technology earlier than the rest of the world?

Why not the Ottoman Empire? Why not Catholic Europe? Or China or Japan?

These were all massive, powerful empires. Before the early 19^th century, these areas were much more powerful than Northern Europe.

Marx does not have a strong answer to this question, but Weber does.

Weber argues that rationalization is associated with capitalism. It is important to keep in mind that capitalism is different from buying and selling things to make a profit. How is it different?

It is different because in capitalism, the money you make is saved up and then invested in new business ventures. This money that is saved and invested is called capital. Since money was invented in Mesopotamia and Egypt, individuals who made money would spend it on themselves and their family, or they would give it to the church.

Weber’s answer lies in Protestant Christianity, specifically Calvinism, a sect of Protestantism. Weber’s mother was a devout Calvinist, so naturally he knew a lot about this religion.

Most religions in the world at this time were other-worldly

Good moral behavior in this world is rewarded by going to heaven when you die.

For example, in Catholicism, if you paid enough money to the Church, you would be allowed to go to heaven.

Or if you gave money to poor people, you would make God happy.

Or in Hinduism, by having a good reincarnation.

Calvinism was founded by the 16^th-century writer and preacher John Calvin. It is different from most religions because in Calvinism, God is all-powerful. Humans cannot change their fate by changing their behavior or paying money to the Church. God decides what will happen to you. You cannot change your fate.

This idea is called predestination. Your destiny is preordained. This is a bit tough on people, because they have no way of knowing whether they will go to heaven or hell. And even if they knew, there would be nothing they could do about it.

So people wanted to know whether they would go to heaven or hell. And they came to believe that an individual’s material success in this world was a sign from God. God must have made some people rich because those people were chosen to go to heaven. So making money became a sign of being chosen by God.

What about poor people?

They are poor because God has not chosen them.

So rich Calvinists did not give their money to the poor. It’s not because they were mean or greedy. They thought God would not want them to give money to people he had chosen to go to hell. It would be a sin to give money to the poor.

It would also be a sin to be self-indulgent, to live a life of luxury. One’s life should be devoted to God, not to oneself.

1) So early Calvinists became very good at making money, because they saw it as a sign of being chosen by God.

2) They did not share their money with the church or with poor people.

3) They did not spend their money on luxuries.

4) They accumulated money and reinvested it in their businesses. And they kept careful accounts of their money, because they believed that making money was a holy endeavour. They made money the way an Imam reads the Koran or a Jewish Rabbi reads the Torah. With total religious intensity.

5) Later generations of Calvinists lost the old religion as they encountered science and modern thought (Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Freud, sociology, psychology, etc.) and as they became wealthy and urbanized and cosmopolitan.

They lost their Protestant Ethic, but kept a strong work ethic.

So capitalists were really good at making money, saving money, and doing accounting.

This led to a general rationalization of society in Protestant countries. After all, Calvinists were so good at making money that they ended up owning lots of factories and businesses. And they became powerful in politics. They were in charge.

They owned factories and integrated them, creating large-scale organizations that were independent of the Catholic Church. In Europe before Calvinism, the Catholic Church was nearly all-powerful. Only the King could compete with the Church for power. Now capitalists could compete too.

Calvinists encourage personal discipline among all workers. Individuals should be disciplined internally, not by force.

Calvinists encourage precise time scheduling.

They encourage technical competence.

They encourage impersonality in business. Social connections are less important than individual discipline and technical competence.

Keep in mind how different this argument is from Marx’s understanding of society, where religion is an effect of economic processes, not a cause of economic processes.

The Sacred and the Profane

Emile Durkheim, the father of French sociology, explained religion sociologically. All societies and all religions, he thought, divided the world between the sacred and the profane

The Sacred The Profane (in Latin, profane means “outside the temple”)

Pure Things that are normal

Magical, have special powers Everyday things

Holy Nothing special

Clean Can be dirty; doesn’t matter

Set apart

Contagious—makes you sacred Contagious—makes you unholy if you tough it

Inspires awe, fear, reverence Boring or disgusting

e.g. in Hinduism, cows are sacred; Brahmins are more sacred than untouchables, who are profane and dirty

in Judaism and Islam, pigs are profane

The Koran and the Torah are sacred

Mosques and Synagogues are sacred

Communities, not individuals, draw lines between what’s sacred and what’s profane

These lines are social and cultural

Different communities draw different lines

Communities do rituals so that they can show themselves what is sacred and what is profane

e.g. Baptists, who are a Christian sect in America, dunk people under water to cleanse them of sin

Hindus bathe in the Ganges River every 12 years

Muslims go to Mecca

Christians drink the wine and eat the wafer, which symbolize the body and blood of Christ

Durkheim’s functionalism

Durkheim defined totems as objects a community defines as sacred

They can be anything: a piece of wood, a book, a place, a mountain, a building, an animal, a word, even a person

Religions are based on totems, rituals, and on the distinction between the sacred and the profane

Together, these things create a religion, and religions have several functions for society. Religion turns individuals into a community.

1. Social cohesion

religion unites people

defines what is ethical, defines the rules of the game of life

religion channels our emotions (love, hatred)

2. Social control

Elites can control people through religion

Religion encourages conformity

Religion makes the political system seem legitimate

3. Meaning and purpose

For individuals, religion makes life meaningful

We are all going to die, and we are all going to suffer many times in our live, even the lucky ones like us; religion makes death and suffering meaningful and thus less painful

For Durkheim, “God” is another word for “society”

The date of the Soc of the Arts and Pop Culture exam is Friday, November 16

The date of the Soc of the Arts and Pop Culture exam is Friday, November 16

Students have the option of turning in a 4- or 5-page paper in class during the exam, or beforehand, rather than taking the exam. Instructions for the paper are in an earlier blog.

GI

Soc of the Arts and Pop Culture Lecture Notes for Exam II

“Neo-Weberians”

Samuel Huntington, Cultures Count and Lawrence Harrison, “Why Culture Matters”

Huntington: author of the “Clash of Civilizations”

Culture changes much more slowly than the economy, technology

Economic and tech’l modernization can occur without modern, liberal, Western cultural values

The contemporary scholars most directly influenced by Weber’s book insist that culture, usually national cultures, i.e. “culture as system,” continues to affect the economic growth of modern nations.

To get their point, imagine, if you will, that we are living in the 1950s or early 1960s. Countries across the world are becoming independent, that is they’re rejecting colonialism. Optimism abounded, and serious scholars believed that economic growth would be more or less uniform in most developing countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East.

N. Africa was predicted by many to grow most quickly, because of its proximity to Europe and its pool of cheap labor.

JFK and other American leaders were openly concerned about Brazil’s economic development, its ability to compete with the US

50 years later, what happened?

There have been some notable economic successes: Germany and Japan rebuilt their shattered economies into world powers, and Spain, Portugal, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong have entered the “first world,” more or less. But what about the rest of the world, especially Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East?

For the most part, low economic growth and its social correlates:

severe economic stratification

Illiteracy, especially among women

Poverty

High birth rates, population growth rates

Corruption is near-universal

Why? Some explanations:

Colonialism had deleterious effects of all sorts, e.g. drawing arbitrary borders around “nations” (as in Africa)

“Neo-colonialism” Post-colonial theory

continuing dependency: countries on the global economic periphery, e.g. Latin American countries, are beholden to core countries such as the U.S., and provide us with raw materials only

Systemic Racism: economic development disproportionately benefits white men; the global economic system is inherently racist and oppressive to minorities and women

These explanations are unsatisfying to lots of people, certainly to H&H. So Neo-Weberians look to cultural values, including

1. equality

2. civility

3. individualism

4. time orientation

5. religious outlook

6. optimism versus pessimism

7. “trust” and social capital

8. “rationality”

Later in their book, Harrison and Huntington explore the idea that cultures should be reprogrammed and modernized, that this would be better than simply giving financial aid to poor countries. And they find support among generally western-educated scholars and NGO workers from Africa, Asia and elsewhere.

Cultural Anthropology

Like Weber (at times), cultural anthropologist view culture as a system.

Their analyze “cultures” in synchronic, not diachronic, terms. This is part of what makes cultural anthropology unique.

Their approach and methods are interpretive; they see cultures as texts that are open to interpretation, and contain recurring themes and symbolism

Cultural anthropology can tend to be functionalist in its thinking.

Everything in a culture serves a function

Everything in a culture is part of an integrated whole

Society is a system of mutual interdependence that must be kept in equilibrium

Cultures are necessary for human life, serve concrete needs:

For rearing and socializing children

For creating social solidarity and harmony

An implication of these functionalist views is that indigenous cultures should be protected or preserved

i.e. if Westerners tamper with one part of an indigenous culture, they may destroy the whole thing

This view was crucial for anthropology during its early years in the 20th century, when Western powers still operated systems of colonial control in “3rd world” countries.

Ruth Benedict, “The Diversity of Cultures” (Spillman)

From her undergraduate work, she had a background in literature, and in the various ways of studying a text to grasp its various levels of meaning.

She did not concern herself as much with history as did her peers. Rather, she was looking for repeated themes, for the importance given various values and beliefs, and for how all of this fit together (or didn’t).

Benedict's Patterns of Culture (1934) was translated into fourteen languages and was published in many editions as standard reading for anthropology courses in American universities for years.

Culture-and-personality:

The essential idea in Patterns of Culture is “her view of human cultures as “personality writ large.’”

Each culture, Benedict explains, chooses from "the great arc of human potentialities" only a few characteristics which become the leading personality traits of the persons living in that culture. These traits comprise an interdependent constellation of aesthetics and values in each culture which together add up to a unique gestalt. For example she described the emphasis on restraint in Pueblo cultures of the American southwest, and the emphasis on abandon in the Native American cultures of the Great Plains. She used the Nietzschean opposites of "Apollonian" and "Dionysian" as the stimulus for her thought about these Native American cultures. She describes how in ancient Greece, the worshipers of Apollo emphasized order and calm in their celebrations. In contrast, the worshipers of Dionysus, the god of wine, emphasized wildness, abandon, letting go. And so it was among Native Americans. She described in detail the contrasts between rituals, beliefs, personal preferences amongst people of diverse cultures to show how each culture had a "personality" that was encouraged in each individual.

Other anthropologists of the culture and personality school also developed these ideas—notably Margaret Mead in her Coming of Age in Samoa (published before "Patterns of Culture") and Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (published just after Benedict's book came out).

“modal personality”—cluster of traits most common to a traditional culture/social group

In Patterns of Culture she expresses her belief in cultural relativism. She desired to show that each culture has its own moral imperatives that can be understood only if one studies that culture as a whole.

Morality, she argued, was relative to the values of the culture in which one operated.

Critics have objected to the degree of abstraction and generalization inherent in the “culture and personality” approach.

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword

This book is an instance of Anthropology at a Distance. Study of a culture through its literature, through newspaper clippings, through films and recordings, etc., was necessary when anthropologists aided the United States and its allies in World War II. Unable to visit Nazi Germany or Japan under Hirohito, anthropologists made use of the cultural materials produced studies at a distance. They were attempting to understand the cultural patterns that might be driving their aggression, and hoped to find possible weaknesses, or means of persuasion that had been missed.

Benedict's war work included a major study, largely completed in 1944, aimed at understanding Japanese culture. Americans found themselves unable to comprehend matters in Japanese culture. For instance, Americans considered it quite natural for American prisoner of wars to want their families to know they were alive, and to keep quiet when asked for information about troop movements, etc., while Japanese POWs, apparently, gave information freely and did not try to contact their families.

In more recent years however, Benedict's "national character" approach has been criticized as being subjective, and at times even demeaning -- she characterized Dobu people, for example, as mean-spirited and paranoid.

Anthropologists were now eager to get away from imposing their own culturally created value judgments on other societies. And Benedict appeared to have gotten caught up the mentality of her era, a mentality that wanted to see people of different nationalities in stereotyped ways. Additionally, her approach has always been criticized for not putting greater emphasis on class differences.

Clifford Geertz

Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture (Spillman)

In the 1970s, Geertz becomes the public “ambassador” of anthropology, much as Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead had been before him. However, while Benedict was read by the educated public, Geertz is read mostly by graduate students and academics.

Like Benedict, Geertz conceptualizes culture as a text that can be read and interpreted in terms of recurring themes and symbolism. This is in stark contrast to Marxist and neo-Marxist (materialist) approaches.

Like Neo-Weberians, Geertz takes on the mantle of Max Weber. Geertz is one of the most famous and influential anthropologists ever, and as we will see, Richard Shweder, another anthropologist and a critic of the neo-Weberians Huntington and Harrison, takes on the mantle of Geertz.

Geertz’s famous phrase, quoting Weber: “Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs…”

The analysis of culture is therefore not an experimental science in search of law, but an interpretive one in search of meaning.

Studying culture for Geertz thus involves doing ethnography, living with people in their communities, interviewing them, taking notes, and doing “thick description”

Thick description involves thinking about culture, that is thinking about what things mean in a social setting

Thin description, by contrast, involves simple physical description of what is happening

Interpretive understanding is as important as causal understanding

Geertz’s most famous study is of cockfighting on the Indonesian island of Bali

He argues that the system of betting reflects the status hierarchy and macho culture of the Balinese men.

The cultural practice of cockfighting “reflects” deeper truths about Balinese society.

Balinese men wager irrationally high stakes because of the social meaning of the cockfight and its outcome. People don’t remember the money they won or lost, so much as the status order of the winners and losers.

“The culture of a people is an ensemble of texts, themselves ensembles, which the anthropologist strains to read over the shoulders of those to whom they properly belong”

Richard Shweder, Moral Maps, "First World" Conceits, and the New Evangelists

Shweder writes in the tradition of Clifford Geertz, and so also of Max Weber, but his position is quite different from that of the neo-Weberians we discussed above.

He is, to put it bluntly, a strong relativist and he refutes notions of cultural superiority, certainly of western cultural superiority, or as he puts it the culture of northwestern Europe.

Nonwestern cultures are not something to be denigrated or reprogrammed, rather westerners have much to learn from nonwestern cultures and societies.

Harrison and Huntington are wrong because theories of “national culture” have long been discredited, because different cultures place different relative importance on different values, and because people from nonwestern societies who want to change their own cultures’ values do not reflect their own cultures, but rather certain western values.

We can all learn from all different kinds of cultures, from experiencing life in different cultures, so we ought to respect and preserve different cultures, which have lasted for thousands of years.

For example, Shweder applauds the rejection of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights by the American Anthropological Association in the 1940s. They argued that it was an ethnocentric document.

Cultural Reception and Production

Pierre Bourdieu, Snobs, and Omnivores

Bourdieuàsymbolic boundaries, quantitative techniques for sociology of culture (compare with cultural anthro)

Working-class background, studied the Kabyle in Algeria while a soldier

Became more politically active later in his career: anti-globalization, anti-Americanization to some degree

Rejected Marxism, but also post-positivism

Main ideas:

Forms of capital (social, economic, cultural)

Social Space or Field

Habitus: bodily and cognitive imprint of social position

Why workers don’t like to eat fish (removing bones too dainty) or work on keyboards

Categories of refined/unrefined versus masculine/feminine

Symbolic Violence, Symbolic Domination

Distinction (excerpt)

Pierre Bourdieu is perhaps the most influential sociologist alive today. Like Foucault before him, in France he is widely regarded as a “master thinker,” although he is unlike Foucault in that he is a tried-and-true sociologist, who uses numerical data and advanced statistics in his research.

For the purposes of this course, we’ll cover some of his work on Structure, Habitus, and Social Space, and then we’ll move on to Michele Lamont’s revision and extension of his ideas.

Social Space and Social Classes.

Bourdieu's Opponents:

(1) A break with Marxists: (I.e. 'objective' reality). Bourdieu is interested in RELATIONSHIPS, on more levels than just the economic, and argues that how people

interpret and make sense of their relations matters (this is the subjective element).

(2) A break with "intellectualism": The theoretical class (i.e. the one we as scientists define) is not necessarily the class that exists in-the-world.

(3) A break with Economics: There are more dimensions to the social world that just economics.

(4) A break with “Objectivism” in favor of a symbolic understanding of social structure.

He also has s definite focus on POWER STRUGGLES.

Social Space: A geographic/mathematical metaphor for how people are arranged in society. Bourdieu defines social space as:

"a (multi-dimensional) space constructed on the basis of principles of differentiation or distribution constituted by the set of properties active in the social

universe under consideration, that is, able to confer force or power on their possessor in that universe." (p.229).

The points to keep in mind with this def:

(1) Social space has multiple dimensions (ex economic, educational, cultural, etc.: n dimensions) These dimensions can usually be categorized as a form of

Capital.

(2) "...constructed on the basis of principles of differentiation or distribution..." This mean that how

much and what kind of the particular capital one has is the basis for sorting along the dimensions.

(3) "...by the set of properties active in the social universe under consideration, that is, able to confer

force or power on their possessor in that universe." The quantity or quality (i.e. point 2) of a given good only matters to the extent that the good in question

is 'active' in the social world of interest. This part of the definition implies an element of contextual specificity. Two groups' relative position depend on the

particular 'field' that is active. If we're dealing in the economic field, then the relative position of $$ matters, if we're dealing with the educational, then

that's what matters. [note, that this discussion is about one dimension at a time, Bourdieu does not think that way - this is for illustration only, the point is that in

some struggles, the relative value of a given dimension will change.].

Power follows from the ability to mobilize capital.

The social space is a field of forces -- the system of relations, alliances, and power struggles. His vision of social space is NOT one that is (necessarily)

static, but instead constantly infused with power struggles. Thus we see the world as a system of 'objective power relations.'

Is this paranoid? Overdramatic??

This allows us to see the social world in two ways, as the positions themselves thusly: (take culture and econ as examples)

Hi Culture

|

| A

|

|

Poor ---------------------------- Rich

|

| B

c |

|

Low Culture

In this picture, the three groups are arrayed on these two dimensions (thus C is poor and holds mainly 'low culture' values, A is rich with 'high culture' , etc).

Because these positions are at the same time relations, because domination follows from the ability to utilize this capital, we could instead view this picture

as:

A -> B-----> C

\ _____/

Where A dominates (a little) B, and both B and A dominate C. What Bourdieu wants to claim is that these systems of relations are in constant contest -- not ONLY

in who gets to be WHERE, but what having a certain quantity/distribution of a good GIVES you, ie what it MEANS.

The dimensions are the elements that give power (education, money, social contacts, etc) in general, these elements form types of CAPITAL. The four

general types of capital for Bourdieu are:

1.Economic Capital: How much money one has.

2.Cultural Capital: The systems of value and meaning a person can draw on, what counts as 'good' for a group. (the main distinction is between

high and low culture for Bourdieu, thus the difference between a person who listens to Garth brooks and goes to the bowling alley every weekend versus a

person who reads Shakespeare, drinks fine wine, and goes to the museum all the time).

3.Social Capital: The set of relations one can draw on: who you know that MATTERS.

4.Symbolic Capital. : the extent to which one has the power to institute, to NAME, to define who is who. Symbolic power rests on RECOGNITION, i.e., give or take, legitimacy (Weber).

Bourdieu argues that each of these types of capital is transformable (to some extent), i.e. able to be converted and reconverted, one to the other. Thus if you have enough money you might get to know a new

set of important people, etc.

The two dimensions along which each type of capital are arrayed is Volume and composition. Thus the AMOUNT of money one has, and the TYPE of

money matter (i.e. cash vs stocks vs gold vs land).

Classes on Paper:

On the basis of the distribution of the various forms of capital, we can find groups of people who have 'similar' distributions. These are 'classes' in the

logical sense -- people who occupy the same cell in a cross-tabulation. BUT, we can't necessarily assume that these classes are self-recognized. This is the

long standing differentiation between classes in-themselves vs. classes for themselves.

What exists is a space of relations, out of which may or may not emerge a class per se.

We can compare this to Marx’s theories of class, in which he assumes that groups form from similarity, but it does not explain how the groups form. Instead, through a theoretical ‘slight of hand’, the

essential questions are spirited away:

We don’t ask about the political work needed to organize and created a self-recognized, mobilized class

Don’t explain how the formal ‘classes’ of social scientists are related to the actual, living classes in society.

Classes and class fragments develop “habituses”—roughly but not quite subcultures

The Perception of the social world and political struggle.

One must account for how actors see the world to make sense of how they act. That is, we ned to look to the social construction of identity.

One's perspective in the world is due to two things:

1) 'Objective': People see the world differently because they occupy a different space in the world.

2) 'subjective': The tools brought to bear, the language used, are all the products of previous struggles, and influence the meaning of the very dimensions

that people array themselves along.

Thus, not only are people seeing the world from different spaces, but the very view of that space, the relevant value of any given quantity/quality

distribution is different depending on a group's past history of struggle.

While Bourdieu argues that people TEND to accept the position they find themselves in, there is social change, and it comes from struggles for power related

to (1) and (2).

in an earlier essay, Bourdieu writes

“Knowledge of the social world and, more precisely, the categories which make it possible, are the stake par excellence of the political struggle, a struggle

which is inseparably theoretical and practical, over the power of preserving or transforming the social world by preserving or transforming the categories of

perception of that world.”

These are social categories: racial, social class, economic categories, that change over time

So being able to define the dimensions of status, to identify the subject of political debate and shape the way issues are seen to be related are all symbolic actions,

and they are the means through which politics are carried out. Thus, being able to control these means gives one control of political outcomes. The power of

naming is crucial.

Examples:

? Political rhetoric about abortion: proponents use ‘right-to-choose’ language, opponents use ‘rights-to-life’ language.

? Use of the word ‘Liberal’ in presidential campaigns

Symbolic Capital: Any capital when it is perceived by an agent as self-recognized power to name, to make distinctions.

It follows that objective power relations reproduce themselves in symbolic power.

The power to create titles

Citizenship is bestowed by the government,

The definition of ‘adult’ or ‘graduate’

“It is the most visible agents, from the point of view of the prevailing categories of perception, who are the best placed to change the vision by changing the

categories of perceptions. But they are also, with a few exceptions, the least inclined to do so.”

Why? Because they benefit from the current arrangement. That those in power control the means to power creates a cycle, whereby they reenforce the power

that they have. Bourdieu refers to this as the “circle of symbolic reproduction”.

Symbolic power rests on legitimate recognition your brother-in-law can’t declare you a graduate of the university. The title ‘graduate’ can only be made by

those with legitimate control of symbolic power.

Symbolic order and the power of naming.

Symbolic power can be arrayed along a dimension of intensity/legitimacy:

Insult Official Naming

I-----------------------------------------------I

Low power High Power

We can think about the proliferation of titles in current work and occupations. This rise (sanitary engineer, executive assistant, vice president, e.g.) follows FROM the

desire of groups to NAME THEMSELVES, and thus make their own distinction. The move in contemporary society to provide all with a new name, is a struggle for legitimate power. Racial epithets are the imposition of place by a ruling class on a

ruled class, and when the POWER associated with those epithets can be reversed, then the group has gained the symbolic upper hand.

e.g. minority groups referring to themselves in terms of racial “slurs”—not just the N word—Chinese, Jews, immigrants in America (greenhorns, FOBs)

Bourdieu points out that rewards separate a title from a task. Thus, a part-time person doing the same work as a full time person will likely be paid less (even by the

hour) than the person who officially occupies the position. Or, for example, a nurse and a doctor often do exactly the same things, but the doctor will make

more.

Because symbolic power is a useful power, something that can be used to gain resources in multiple dimensions, it is clearly the subject of controversy.

Groups fight over the right to control the naming process.

“Every field is the site of a more or less openly declared struggle for the definition of the legitimate principles of division of the field.” (p.242)

Alliances in the Political Field

Those who occupy similar, but distinct social spaces (or who are in similar, but distinct patterns of social relations) tend to form alliances (though, again,

not necessarily).

How do people at the bottom of a symbolic power system gain capital to change the present point of view?

Bourdieu says it happens through alliances with those who have the ability to control symbols. For example, the intellectuals will ‘embezzle’ symbolic power for

the workers. These alliances occur where there is a similarity in their position in the structure, across dimensions of the structure. Thus, workers are the

dominated group in the production/economic realm, while intellectuals are the dominated group in the cultural realm. The one helps the other because of the

similarity of their situation. For Bourdieu, this was Marx’s error: to look only within the economic realm for the emergence of classes.

Critiques of Bourdieu (general)

too agonistic, too focused on struggle and competition

isn’t Bourdieu himself an example of why he is wrong?

too Parisian, too French, and perhaps too old

Michelle Lamont: Money, Morals, & Manners

Symbolic Boundaries and Status

The study of “symbolic boundaries” and “cultural repertoires” is an important theoretical area within cultural studies, and it is mostly a French-American venture.

Lamont’s research is especially qualitative and interpretive. Her writings are based mostly on interviews she has conducted over the years with, e.g., middle class Americans and French citizens, working class Americans and others.

Lamont is from Quebec, which is a part of Canada with a heavy French influence, so she has been able to investigate two cultures—the Anglo-American world and France and French Canada—from a unique perspective.

Her theoretical ideas:

“symbolic boundaries” the types of lines that individuals draw when they categorize other people

“high-status signals”

“boundary work” work of maintaining distinctions between one’s own group and other groups

Types of symbolic boundaries

moral boundaries

drawn on the basis of moral character

honesty, work ethic, integrity, consideration for others

socioeconomic boundaries

wealth, power, professional success

cultural boundaries

education, intelligence, manners, taste, command of high culture

People in different countries value these boundaries differently. For example in America moral and socioeconomic qualities are more highly valued, while in France culture is more important

In both countries socioeconomic boundary work seems to be on the upswing

e.g. New Yorkers seeing Midwesterners as parochial

Businessmen seeing intellectuals as unrealistic

accountants, bankers, marketing executives, realtors

Social and cultural specialists seeing businesspeople as materialistic

e.g. artists, social workers, priests, psychologists, researchers, teachers

French seeing Americans as puritan moralists

She compares American and French members of the upper middle class

Midwesterners versus New Yorkers

Parisians versus residents of Clermont-Ferrand

Businesspeople versus social and cultural specialists

So Bourdieu looks at the social world and sees groups in conflict over forms of capital, attempting to reproduce their capital in their children, and struggling over symbols that define their existence. Naturally, one wonders whether his ideas reflect social reality, say, in France, or if he’s right about France, perhaps the situation is different in the U.S. Does having “refined tastes” in art, music, wine, home decorations and so on mean as much in the U.S. as it does in France? Maybe it does in some regions more so than in others (e.g. rural versus urban areas, Los Angeles versus Boston).

Questions like these are Michele Lamont’s starting point. To answer these questions, she employs a number of concepts, most of which are not terribly original (and many of which overlap):

1) symbolic boundaries, boundary work

2) high-status signals

3) evaluative criteria, “criteria of purity” (Mary Douglas)

4) cultural resources versus structural situations

5) structures of thought that organize perceptions of others (think of Foucault’s modes of objectification and dividing practices, and of Berger and Luckmann)

Her method is the individual interview—not the statistical analysis of survey data: Bourdieu’s method—which tends to corroborate a view of “boundary work” that is more individualistic than Bourdieu’s analyses of “social space.”

Her main findings:

1) symbolic boundaries and “boundary work”

looser boundaries in U.S., less consensus

moral boundaries are important, and Bourdieu ignores them

moral and socioeconomic boundaries are more important in the U.S., but are on the rise in both countries

cultural boundaries are clearer and stronger in France

symbolic boundaries are nation-level phenomena: there’s less regional variation within countries than one would think (NY versus Indianapolis, Paris versus Clermont-Ferand)

“social trajectory” matters a lot in people’s evaluative criteria, i.e. upwardly versus downwardly mobile (Bourdieu does not overlook this at all, though)

cultural specialists versus for-profit workers: occupational area matters a lot more in the U.S. than in France; overall capital matters more in France

Much of this is likely due to the high level of geographical mobility in the U.S.

Diverse ways of experiencing high culture—more emotional, social, “self-actualization” in U.S.; more expressly intellectual in France

Excerpt from film “The Dinner Game”

Bethany Bryson

“Anything But Heavy Metal”: Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Dislikes

Music has many roles in social life, creating solidarities and encouraging political resistance.

People engage with music in many different ways in different areas of life.

Music becomes part of people’s identities, the way they identify themselves and draw closer to or else distance themselves from other groups and individuals.

While social exclusion is a well-understood sociological phenomenon, “symbolic exclusion” is the topic of Bryson’s paper. Symbolic exclusion is, in a word, taste.

Symbolic exclusion is a form of Lamont’s boundary work, the work of drawing lines between ourselves and others so as to establish our place in the social world.

Bryson examines musical exclusion and musical tolerance

From Bourdieu, we expect that elites will behave in a snobbish manner regarding music and musical tastes, excluding, or discriminating against, certain types of lowbrow music

Yet the opposite seems to be true: highly educated people are more musically tolerant than are people with less education, that is they are more open to more different kinds of music

Yet she finds that educated people are more tolerant generally but also very intolerant to low-status music, or music associated with uneducated people, such as country or gospel music in the United States

She calls this patterned tolerance

She refers to multicultural capital

Hypotheses

High Status Exclusiveness (wealth, education, occup prestige)à dislike more genres (not confirmed)

Educated Tolerance Educationà fewer dislikes

Symbolic Racism: Racist Whites will dislike non-white music (confirmed)

Patterned Tolerance: People who dislike few genres will dislike those types of music associated with people with less education

College students don’t listen to, or they say they dislike: heavy metal, rap, gospel, country

There exists a “Tolerance Line” between high-statues cosmopolitanism and low-status group-based cultures

Review Sheet for Exam 2: Introduction to Sociological Theory

Introduction to Sociological Theory

Prof. Gabe Ignatow

Review Sheet for Mid-term Exam 2: Cultural Theory

(November 15 in class)

The second mid-term covers only cultural theory, including Cultural Functionalism, Conflict Theories of Culture, Theories of Religion and Individual Meaning, and Durkheimian Cultural Theory.

You should be able to define and discuss all of the following terms:

Instinct vs. Culture

Meaning

Blinking vs. Winking

Symbols

Signs

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Linguistic Relativism

Linguistic Determinism

Linguistic Categories

Beliefs

Values

Norms

Material Culture

High Culture

Low Culture

Popular Culture

Cultural Capital

Subcultures

Countercultures

Ethnocentrism

Cultural Relativism

Cultural Lag

Synchronic Analysis

Diachronic Analysis

Cultural Functionalism

Cultural Anthropology

Critical Theory

The Frankfurt School

The Culture Industry

The “lowest common denominator”

Horkheimer and Adorno

Antonio Gramsci

Organic Intellectuals

Hegemony

Peter Berger

“Sacred Canopy”

The Secularization Thesis

Max Weber

“Railroad Switchman”

Theodicy

Salvation

Calvinism

Other-worldly religion

This-worldly religion

Predestination

Rationalization

The Protestant Ethic

Emile Durkheim

The Elementary Forms…

Aborigines and Native Americans

The Sacred

The Profane

Rituals

Totems

“Collective Effervescence”

Social Solidarity

Sociology of the Arts and Popular Culture: Review Sheet for Mid-term Exam II

Sociology of the Arts and Popular Culture

Prof. Gabe Ignatow

Review Sheet for Mid-term Exam II:

Neo-Weberians, Cultural Anthropology, and the Sociology of Culture

(November 14 in class)

The format of the 2^nd mid-term exam will be more-or-less the same as that of the first mid-term.

The exam will cover the following readings:

1. Samuel Huntington, Cultures Count and Lawrence Harrison, Why Culture Matters (handout)
2. Ruth Benedict, “The Diversity of Cultures” (Spillman)
3. Clifford Geertz, Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture (Spillman)
4. Richard Shweder, Moral Maps, "First World" Conceits, and the New Evangelists (handout)
5. Michele Lamont, Symbolic Boundaries and Status (Spillman)
6. Bethany Bryson, Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Dislikes (Spillman)
7. The lectures on Pierre Bourdieu

You should be able to define and discuss all of the following terms:

Neo-Weberians

“Clash of Civilizations”

Colonialism

Neo-colonialism

Economic dependency

equality

civility

individualism

time orientation

religious outlook

optimism versus pessimism

trust and social capital

rationality

Synchronic

Diachronic

Culture as text

Cultural Functionalism

Indigenous cultures

Cultural destruction

Cultural Relativism

Culture and personality

“national character”

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword

“thick description”

“thin description”

Recurring themes

Symbolism

Ethnography

United Nations Declaration of Human Rights

Distinction
Social space

Power field

Habitus

Social Capital

Economic capital

Cultural capital

Social reproduction

“The Dinner Game”

Symbolic boundaries

Boundary work

Moral boundaries

Cultural Boundaries

Economic boundaries

Symbolic exclusion

Musical exclusion

Musical tolerance

Patterned tolerance

Multicultural capital