sociology midterm

Key Terms and Questions

FOUR TYPES OF ALIENATION:

1) Alienation from the product of one’s labor

2) Alienation from the act of production

3) Alienation from their species being

4) Alienation from other people

THEORY OF HISTORY:

History can be divided up unto stages based in their mode of production. History is created by the succession of modes of production.

RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION:

The ways people relate to each other. Classes

MEANS OF PRODUCTION:

The things we use to produce any given product of good

MODES OF PRODUCTION:

How we go about producing the things we need to survive (through the feudal system etc)

USE VALUE:

What you can do with a commodity. A qualitative aspect.

EXCHANGE VALUE:

What we can trade a commodity for

TWO ASPECTS OF MODE OF PRODUCTION:

1. Relations of Production 2. Forces of Production

FORCES OF PRODUCTION

The tools and technology/nature we use to make things

Key Terms:

Power

· Situation in which a group of people impose their will against others

Class

· Groups of people that share the same interest and culture divided against other groups which creates a hostility.

Status Situation

· Prestige/Honor that can not be bought usually a community (style of life)

· Shared privileges

Social Order

· Social order is the distribution of social honor, among typical groups participating in this distribution

· Social order is conditioned upon economic order to a high degree in turn reacts upon it

· Men in same class situation may make error about their class interests (ex. Like the poor whites in the south)

· Social order derives from the Invisible Hand of people pursuing self-interest

Party

· Forms of collective organization to achieve a certain good.

Economic Order

Communal Action

Societal Action

Mass Action

1. How does Weber’s definition of class differ from Marx’s?

Weber defines class as someone’s economic status, but it does not make all people within that class the same. So, for Weber, black and white people can be in the same class, but that doesn’t mean they work together or in unison (their class is NOT their identity).  For Marx, your class IS your identity, and he believes all people within the same class should work together and, see themselves as members of the same group.

2. According to Weber, under what conditions do people in the same class situation act collectively in their class interest?

· People must have class consciousness

· There also has to be the factor of sudden economic change

· Someone has to tell one which class they belong to, thus people will organize (such as when Marx told the working men that they needed to organize)

3. What are the characteristics of a status group?

· You CANNOT buy status

· Honor (social recognition)

· Mannerism, leisure activities

· Constitutes a community

a.   What are examples of “privileged” and “negatively privileged” status groups?

· New money vs. Old money

· King pins have a lot of money but have low status, Lecturers

4. How do status groups emerge? Under what conditions are they more likely to become important?

· Usurpation, they claim status and if others believe/recognize it and dont contest it then you get to keep your keep your status

5. Are the economic order and social order related to one another? How?

a.  Are there high-class, low-status groups?

b. Or high-status, low-class?

6. For both Du Bois and Weber, race/caste is a key status distinction. Compare their analyses of a) how such distinctions emerge, and b) how they are related to the economic order.  

       

· DuBois sees the separation between black and whites as a strategy from the rich whites.

Weber says that divisions happen when economic classes become equalized and society turns to honor/status to differentiate themselves. .