Introduction to Sociology (920:101:03) Department of Sociology Rutgers University Spring 2013

Transcription

1 Introduction to Sociology (920:101:03) Department of Sociology Rutgers University Spring 2013 Instructor: Paul McLean Lecture location: Beck Auditorium, Mondays and Thursdays 10:20-11:40 a.m. Office: Davison Hall, room 101A, Douglass Campus Office Hours: Davison 101A: M12:30-2:00, Th1:30-3:00; LSC: Th11:45-12:45; and by appointment Phone: Sociology is the systematic, scientific study of the patterns and processes of social life, touching on all of its major dimensions economic, political, religious, familial, and criminal, to name a few. Sociologists investigate social behavior and the organization of social life at the level of grand social and historical developments, and at the level of everyday, mundane interactions, as well as different levels in between. Sociology is concerned both with individual actors, and with the informal groups and formal organizations that populate the social landscape. Learning Goals This course cannot be comprehensive in its coverage of the discipline of sociology. However, it will introduce you to some basic concepts in sociological analysis, some fundamental arguments about the constitution of society and the individuals who comprise it, and important substantive topics and problems in a variety of subfields within sociology. What students should gain from the course in part is a toolkit of sociological concepts to apply to their own experience of social life interactions with friends, relationships with family members, membership in religious and political organizations, experience of the job market, and life in an economically advanced but stratified society in order to understand that life more fully and experience it more richly. In other words, my goal is to get you to think critically, and to help you begin to discern, analytically, broad patterns in our lives with each other. I will pose some of the big questions we face as social beings, and offer some of the most intriguing answers sociologists have provided. Grading and Class Format Grading will be based on the following factors: attendance and participation at lectures (10%); two tests during the semester (30% each); and a final exam during the examination period (30%). Taking attendance in a class this size is a major challenge, but I will try do so, unannounced, a number of times during the semester. I also will periodically monitor comments posted on sakai and ask you to identify yourself when you speak in class so I can get a sense of your engagement in the course. Each test will feature mostly multiple choice questions, but perhaps also some short answer portions, at my discretion. Bring a No. 2 pencil with you to each test/exam. The two tests are non-cumulative. The final exam will focus mostly on the last four and a half weeks of the semester. However, it will also include a cumulative portion, especially given that some important themes will recur throughout the course. The tests and exam will cover material presented in your textbook and sakai readings. However, please note that I expect you to be acquainted with concepts and arguments from the textbook even if I do not explicitly touch on them in my lectures. In addition, I will expect you to be acquainted with concepts and arguments from my Powerpoint slides, even if they are not covered in the textbook. As you may know, this is an SAS Core Class, satisfying the 21 st Century Challenges [21C] and Social and Historical Analysis [SCL] requirements.

2 Books and Other Readings There is one textbook for this course, and it is available for purchase at the Rutgers University bookstore. It is: Giddens, Anthony, Mitchell Duneier, Richard P. Applebaum, and Deborah Carr, Introduction to Sociology, 8 th edition (2012) [ISBN: ] There is a cheaper version of the book available with less colorful illustrations, and I believe there is an electronic version as well. I don t mind which one you get, but make sure it is the 8 th edition. I have also posted a number of short classic readings on sakai for you to read, as marked on the syllabus, and I may add a few more as the semester progresses. Classroom Policy The Department of Sociology encourages the free exchange of ideas in a safe, supportive, and productive classroom environment. To facilitate such an environment, students and faculty must act with mutual respect and common courtesy. Behavior that distracts students and faculty is NOT acceptable. Such behavior includes cell phone use, surfing the internet, checking , text messaging, listening to music, reading newspapers, leaving and returning, leaving early without permission, and discourteous remarks. Courteous and lawful expression of disagreement with the ideas of the instructor or fellow students is of course permitted. If a student engages in disruptive behavior, then your instructor, in compliance with the University Code of Student Conduct, is entitled to direct that student to leave class for the remainder of the class period. Serious verbal assaults, harassment, or defamation of the instructor or other students can lead to university disciplinary proceedings. Students are furthermore expected to comply with the University s policies on academic integrity, a statement of which may be found at the following url: Lastly, students are expected to attend all classes. If you expect to miss one or two classes, please use the University absence reporting website to indicate the date and reason for your absence. More prolonged absences must be discussed with the instructor. Lecture Schedule and Weekly Reading Schedule Week 1 January 24: Introduction to the Course Beginning to Think Sociologically What does it mean to think sociologically? Hoe does thinking sociologically allow us to re-frame personal troubles as social issues? What are the four fundamental questions Giddens et al. pose that guide us towards sociological thinking? What are some of the key ideas or concepts embedded in these questions? What kind of motivations and/or large-scale forces can we imagine that work to shape our lives and our choices? What kind of examples can we think of that show linkages and/or gaps between small-scale actions and interactions (the micro level of social life) on the one hand, and large-scale phenomena (the macro level) on the other? Readings: Giddens et al., chapter 1 Peter L. Berger, Invitation to Sociology [sakai] C. Wright Mills, The Promise of Sociology [sakai]

3 Week 2 January 28: Using Foundational Ideas in Sociology to Frame Our Project Who are some of the most important figures who have shaped the basic terms of inquiry in sociology, and what are their most important ideas? How do those ideas differ from each other? Readings: Finish Giddens et al., chapter 1 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party [sakai] Robert K. Merton, Manifest and Latent Functions [sakai] January 31: Scientific Methods of Measuring and Studying Social Life What do we mean by science? What makes sociology a science? What particular difficulties do the social sciences face relative to the physical sciences, for example? What are the ideal steps in the research process, and what can go wrong? How do we distinguish correlation from causation in our explanations? How can it be exciting to conduct social research? Most importantly, what are some of the main techniques for making a scientific study of social life? Readings: Giddens et al., chapter 2 Week 3 February 4: More on Methods, and the Challenge of Linking Observation with Arguments Today we will finish talking about a variety of methodological approaches for conducting sociological research, and focus on the particular difficulties of knowing what to study, what to measure, and what the findings mean, even when we think we know what our basic question is. Readings: Finish Giddens et al., chapter 2 February 7: The Culture Concept and the Social Construction of Reality What do social scientists mean, or what variety of things do they mean, by the term culture? How does culture constrain our choices and our conception of reality? Culture may be thought of, among other things, as sets of rules, recipes, symbols, values, and so on, that shape our understanding of the world. Sociologists are concerned with how the cultural features of the groups to which we belong determine social outcomes. Then, how does globalization affect our changing understanding of culture and individuals relationship to culture? Readings: Giddens et al., chapter 3 Horace Miner, Body Ritual Among the Nacirema, [sakai] Week 4 February 11: Socialization as the Master Concept for Understanding Cultural Acquisition Is socialization evenly distributed across the life course? Where does socialization take place? How is socialization linked to imitation, and how is it linked to sanctions or punishments? What other kinds of mechanisms might be elements of the socialization process? How are roles critical to the landscape of socialization, and how are social roles related to individuality? Readings: Giddens et al., chapter 4 George Herbert Mead, The Self [sakai]

4 February 14: Social Interaction: Norms, Violations, the Unspoken, Impression Management A great deal of interesting stuff happens when human beings interact. People socialize each other through interaction, but also people can reveal they come from different cultures when they interact. Interaction can be a venue in which group boundaries are established and/or maintained. Interacting with diverse others can affect one s construction of identity and selfhood. People can get carried away in social interaction, but in many cases they also put a great deal of self-conscious effort into interaction. All of these aspects of interaction are worthy of study and reflection. Readings: Giddens et al., chapter 5 Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self [sakai] Week 5 February 18: Social Structure as a Foundational Sociological Concept Society can be thought of as being composed of many independent individuals, or as a unitary thing in itself. But in between society as a whole and individuals (who themselves are hardly unitary entities) are myriad kinds of social formations groups, classes, age cohorts, formal organizations, network structures, and so on that together reveal that social life is structured, or organized. Social structure(s) can affect our lives, not only as the bearers of culture and socialization processes, but also by virtue of their size, the distribution of groups within them, the connections out of which they are forged, and the pattern of flow of resources through them. Today we focus on small group dynamics, and on the network as a fundamental concept for understanding important patterns in social life. Readings: Giddens et al., chapter 6 Georg Simmel, The Triad [sakai optional] February 21: Formal Organizations as a Special Class of Social Structure Formal organizations, which have only surged to global prominence in the last one hundred and fifty years, create stable linkages among groups to accomplish massive tasks whether those tasks be productive, administrative, regulatory, educational, or anything else. But the propensity for organization runs very deep. Ancient societies that organized the production of food, or collection of water, or provision of transportation, or practice of warfare, quickly gained an advantage vis à vis their neighbors. Organization is power. What are the consequences of the fact that we live in a world thickly populated with formal organizations? How do these organizations affect the conduct of our lives? How can we keep in mind that they, and not simply the people who supposedly run them, wield power? How might we think about weakening that organizational power for our own good? Readings: Finish Giddens et al., chapter 6 Max Weber, selection on Bureaucracy [sakai] Week 6 February 25: FIRST EXAMINATION Bring a sharpened number 2 pencil February 28: Deviant Behavior, and Theories of Crime What kinds of acts are regarded as deviant and why? Is it possible to provide a general definition of crime? How can we distinguish deviance from crime? Are crimes committed by typical sorts of people? What various theories purport to explain when and why crime occurs? How does society punish crime, and what is the aim of punishment? What links exist between the punishment of deviants, and the socialization of non-deviant persons?

5 Readings: Giddens et al., chapter 7 Mitch Duneier, When You Gotta Go [sakai] Week 7 March 4: Varieties of Crime, and Ideas for the Prevention of Crime Can crime be prevented? What are some of the more successful strategies for crime prevention? What kinds of punishment are the most effective, and/or the most humane? Why do we punish some crimes severely though they cause little turmoil, while we hardly punish at all some crimes that wreak widespread havoc? Readings: Finish Giddens et al., chapter 7 March 7: The Pervasiveness of Social Inequality: Systems and Theories of Stratification Stratification--the tendency for society to become layered according to the relative status of different groups--is one of sociology's key concepts and most important areas of inquiry. What accounts for this widespread tendency? What criteria are important for determining status, and how do they differ across societies? How can we judge whether or not people are able to change their status? What are the consequences of occupying a particular status for one's tastes, interests, and opportunities? Readings: Giddens et al, chapter 8 Herbert J. Gans, The Uses of Poverty: The Poor Pay All [sakai] Week 8 March 11: Poverty and Economic Inequality in America Readings: Finish Giddens et al., chapter 8 From the early 1980s through to the present, economic inequality has grown in America, reaching historic levels comparable to what was seen in the 1920s. The late 1980s also witnessed a dramatic growth in concentrated poverty that is, the concentration of poor people who are disadvantaged on many dimensions in particularly blighted urban areas, where they have been isolated from mainstream America. Middle-class Americans today often feel they and their children are more likely to suffer downward mobility than economic improvement. What explains these phenomena, and what might the future hold? March 14: Exploring Global Inequality Despite the hopes of some developmental economists, and notwithstanding the improved economic performance of some developing nations, inequalities remain profound at the global level today. Different theories of economic development incline us to believe that global inequality is a structural phenomenon, and thus unlikely to wither away Readings: Giddens et al., chapter 9 SPRING BREAK MARCH 16 TH -24 TH ENJOY YOUR HOLIDAY! Week 9 March 25: The Pervasiveness of Gender Inequality Regardless of the presence or absence of other kinds of social inequality (based on wealth or social status, for example), social groups are very often internally stratified by gender. The traditional family is a highly patriarchal social formation. The difference between being male and being female is one of

6 the core factors in shaping how we are socialized and determining the opportunities we are given. At many levels of the class structure, women continue to be paid less for their work than comparably trained and identically positioned men. Why is this so? How doe s our culture produce and reproduce images of gender difference, how do these images change, and with what results? How does gender intersect with other kinds of inequalities either to worsen or improve a particular group s fate? Readings: Giddens et al., chapter 10 March 28: Race and Ethnicity as Quintessentially Socially Constructed Identities W. E. B. Dubois famously referred in 1903 to America s greatest problem as the problem of the color-line. Racial prejudice, racial segregation, and racial inequality remain major problems in contemporary America. What distinguishes the African-American experience from that of other racial and ethnic groups? What are the various significances of the veil separating blacks and whites according to Dubois? Is racism more of an economic structural problem, or a cultural/attitudinal problem? What will happen to the notion of race as more and more people identify themselves as biracial? Readings: Giddens et al., chapter 11 W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk [sakai] Week 10 April 1: Spillover session on Dimensions of Inequality and their Intersections Readings: no new reading from the textbook April 4: SECOND EXAMINATION Bring a sharpened number 2 pencil Week 11 April 8: Political Sociology: Power and the Concept of the State One of the most important lenses through which to understand society is power. While power evidently operates in many places the workplace, the family, the religious institution it is a specific feature of modernity that political power has evolved into its own autonomous domain. Perhaps the single most distinctive institution in this development is the modern (nation-)state. How should we understand the state? As an instrument of coercion, as a device of legitimate domination, or as the embodiment of the collective consciousness? Alongside the powerful modern state, though, we have also witnessed a spread of democracy, and a spread of political consciousness in the form of feeling nationalistic. Where do feelings of political identity come from? What kinds of ideas and practices animate democracy? What, besides government institutions, is needed to secure democratic government? Reading: Giddens et al., chapter 13 April 11: Political Action Outside the State: Social Movements At the same time that we have seen a massive build-up in the mechanisms of state power, there has also been a huge growth in ordinary people s capacity for public protest. What motivates people to join public demonstrations, or participate in other kinds of politically motivated activities that could be considered high-risk? What kinds of factors help to explain when protests can succeed and when they are likely to fail? Reading: Finish Giddens et al., chapter 13

7 Week 12 April 15: Work and Economic Life Most of us will spend a great deal of our lives in workplaces and/or doing work from home for which we are remunerated. In many instances, the workplace has to be understood as a social setting: as a venue for social interaction, and as a place where power dynamics play out. It is also true that economic production has been the number one locus for efforts at exploitation and social engineering on a global scale. What are some of the main features of the organization of economic production? Who controls that production and how? How are the circumstances of work changing in the twentyfirst century? Readings: Giddens et al., chapter 14 Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation [sakai] April 18: The Changing Function, Form, and Significance of the Family We take family as a fundamental social grouping for granted, but its meaning has changed dramatically over time. Furthermore, what it means and who it includes varies considerably in the present day. Its meaning and value can also be quite different for its different members. How and why has the meaning and organization of family changed? How do gender roles affect the practice and interpretation of the interactions occurring between spouses, or the treatment of male versus female children? How are alternative forms of family challenging or reinforcing family values? Readings: Giddens et al., chapter 15 Jessie Bernard, The Future of Marriage [sakai] Week 13 April 22: Education: Assessing its Social Value and the Reasons for its Unequal Distribution We are calling on educational institutions to do more and more kinds of work besides educating. Yet education remains wildly variable in the quality of its delivery. The distinction between public and private schools is a deep and glaring one. How does educational achievement differ by different groups within society? Can schools make up for deficits in socialization practices in other domains of social life? How are traditional educational institutions and procedures of learning being supplanted by new sources of information? Readings: Giddens et al., chapter 16 Jonathan Kozol. Savage Inequalities [sakai] April 25: The Surprising Importance of Religion for Contemporary Social Life Although we imagine religious belief to be a deeply private experience and personal choice, there are in fact important social determinants shaping the nature and extent of religious belief in a given society. What is the function of religious belief? How do ideas about religion spread? What relationships exist between individuals religious beliefs and organized religion? Why is religious belief more powerful in certain periods and among certain groups rather than others? How do religious beliefs imprint themselves on the conduct of life in the marketplace and other non-religious gatherings? Are there cycles of religious belief? Why has there been a remarkable resurgence of religion in many parts of the world in recent decades? Readings: Giddens et al., chapter 17 Emile Durkheim,. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life [sakai optional]

8 Week 14 April 29: Health, Illness, and Sexuality There is a growing literature on the sociology of the body today. Clearly questions of body image raise sociological issues related to gender and mass marketing, for example. Furthermore, though, while it might seem that physical sensations of pain and pleasure are physiologically determined, in fact what is painful or pleasurable is strongly determined by cultural norms. Traits we might consider to be genetically determined may be activated or de-activated by certain social experiences. From a more macro perspective, health and access to health care tend to be quite unequally distributed, much as other kinds of social goods are (like education). Can anything be done to address that inequality? Finally, we can use ideas from social network analysis to understand the spread of disease even diseases that are not communicable in some ordinary biological sense. Readings: Giddens et al., chapter 18 May 2: Urbanization and the Environment At least three out of four Americans live in an urban place, and urbanization has been the essential handmaiden of industrial development in Western civilization. How does living in urban places affect our behavior and our relations with others? How has the city been studied and understood by different generations of American sociologists? What kinds of dynamics characterize the flow of people into and out of cities? To what extent does the geography and the built environment of the contemporary city control the activities and mindset of its occupants? To what extent is the geography of the city determined by private interests rather than social welfare? Should we understand the world more as a network of global cities than a grouping of nation-states? Readings: Giddens et al., chapter 19 Louis Wirth, Urbanism as a Way of Life [sakai] Week 15 May 6: The Future: Is it Now? What will the future bring? What distinguishes postmodernity from modernity? What does it mean to live and work in a postindustrial society? What kinds of changes to culture, personal identity, social interaction, politics, and consumption are wrought by the Internet? What kinds of global flows of goods, persons, and ideas will we see in the future? Readings: Giddens et al., chapter 20 FINAL EXAMINATION: Friday, May 10, 8:00-11:00 a.m., Beck Auditorium