SOC 502 – SOCIAL THEORY

UNIT 1 REVIEW

Origins of Sociology:

• European stages of history (Classical, Dark/medieval, Renaissance, Age of Science, The Enlightenment)
• What was the key question that social thinkers addressed when examining these era’s?
• Role of the French revolution in social thought

Auguste Compte:

• His positions on the role/purpose of social science
• Social Physics
• Law of 3 stages:
  • Theological Military
  • Metaphysical Judicial
  • Scientific Industrial/Positivistic
• The development of the sciences
• Course of Positive Philosophy
• His place as a methodological founder
• Social statics and social dynamics
• Organismic analogy
• His impact on current social thinking

Herbert Spencer:

• Evolution of society
• Society as an organism
• Influence of Malthus
• Overpopulation’s impact
• Darwin
• Survival of the fittest

Emile Durkheim:

• Social Facts
• Invisible social world/social influence
• How do we know things are socially influenced?
• Religion
  • Essential qualities
  • The sacred and the profane
  • What is it?
  • It’s role in all societies
• Moral order
  • Relation to social structure
  • Crime: Meaning; as normal; as a consequence of…
• Division of Labor
  • As a new basis for social order
• Suicide
  • Egoistic/altruistic/anomic
• Anomie
• Mechanical and Organic Solidarity
  • Know definition of each; how this transition occurs
  • Bases of social order
  • Individual autonomy and increasing interdependence
  • Common consciousness

Karl Marx:

• Ideology
• Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat
• Commodification of labor
• False consciousness
• Fettishism of commodities
• On religion
• Surplus value
• Alienation (from…)
• Communist Manifesto
  • Materialist history

Georg Simmel

• Early vs. Later work
• How is society possible?
• Web of group affiliations
• Study of society analogous to…
• Social differentiation
• Simmel vs. Marx

Max Weber:

• Similarities and differences from Marx
• The Spirit of Capitalism and the Protestant Work Ethic
  • Role of Martin Luther
  • The “Calling”
  • Calvinism
  • How can individuals achieve salvation?
  • Evaluation of money, profit, and leisure
  • What was the connection between religion and the economic system
  • What was needed for the transition to capitalism
  • Example of another cultural basis that aided the transition to capitalism
  • New vs. traditional sense of work
• Rationalization
• Bureaucracy
  • Characteristics of a bureaucracy
    • Examples from Office Space
  • The McDonaldization of Society

UNIT 2 REVIEW

Early American sociology:

• First: Soc. Dept? First college course?
• How was early American sociology different than European sociology?
• What were the major influences on the development of American sociology?
• Why was Spencer so influential?
• Pitirim Sorokin

Talcott Parsons:

• Significance of The Structure of Social Action
• Structural Functionalism’s place in American theory
• Consensus and Conflict theories
• Parsons’ Four Functional Imperatives for all Action Systems:
• How does Parsons explain deviance?
• Four characteristics of all systems (The AGIL scheme):
  • Adaptation
  • Goal Attainment
  • Integration
  • Latency
• Action Systems
  • Behavioral Organism
  • Personality system
  • Cultural System
  • Social System
• Basic unit of the social system?

Merton:

• DEF: of FUNCTION
• Manifest and Latent Functions:
• Dysfunctional
• Merton’s Strain Theory
• Five modes of adaptation
• 2 kinds of deviance

C. Wright Mills

• What did Mills note about power in American society?
• The Power Elite
• Crackpot Realism
• Notes about the White collar worker
• The Cheerful Robot
• The “over developed” society
• Sociological Imagination

The Chicago School:

• Why is Robert Park important?
• Who is Albion Small?

Cooley:

• How did Cooley differ from Mead?
• Looking Glass Self
• Primary Groups

W.I. Thomas:

• The Polish Peasant in Europe and America
• The Thomas Theorem
• Definition of the situation

George Herbert Mead:

• Influences and co-workers
• Jane Addams’ Hull House
• Pragmatism
• Important Definitions:
  • Consciousness
  • Generalized Other
  • Significant symbols
  • Language
  • Self
• “I” and “Me” phase of the self
• Key points in Mead’s Theories (as listed in handout)

Goffman:

• Dramaturgy
• Impression Management
• Front and back stage
• Use of symbols
• 2 aspects of language: Content & Style
• Audience reaction to content and symptomatic action
• Cynical and sincere performances
• Dramatic realization and the dilemma of expression
• Realistic and idealistic role expectations
• Stigma

Garfinkel:

• Ethnomethodology (what is the main idea?)
• How does it differ from other sociological perspectives?
• Explanations of social order:
  • Functionalism
  • Marxism
  • Interactionism
  • Ethnomethodology

• The documentary method
• A "taken-for-granted" reality
• Breaching Experiments:
• Criticisms of ethnomethodology (RE: relativism)
• Ethnomethodology is a very good method for…

·         3 major concepts associated with ethnomethodology:

o       reflexivity

o       accounts

o       indexicality

Blumer:

·         Coined the term symbolic interaction

·         From Mead, Blumer emphasized the importance of:

o       social interaction

o       significant symbols

o       meaning

o       communication

o       taking on the view of the other

o       the self as process

·         Blumer expanded on

o       the importance of meaning to the individual as an acting entity

o       the primacy of direct empirical observation as a methodology

o       and the centrality of the "definition of the situation" introduced by W. I. Thomas.

• The sociologists who developed and have continued this perspective…

·         Some of the characteristics of the symbolic interaction perspective are:

o       an emphasis on interactions among people,

o       use of symbols in communication and interaction,

o       interpretation as part of action,

o       interpretation or definition rather than mere reaction

o       response based on meaning

o       self as constructed:

§          by individuals and others

§         in flexible, adjustable social processes through communication and interaction. 

·         Symbolic Interactionism rests on three primary premises.

o       First: Human beings act towards things on the basis of the meanings those things have for them

o       Second: Such meanings arise out of the interaction of the individual with others

o       Third: That an interpretive process is used by the person in each instance in which he must deal with things in his environment (know the process by which this takes place)

·         Importance of  interpretation