sociology short answers

Most Of the questions are answered by notes and key points, and what you need to do is just:

1. Combine these notes and points into a short essay answer style that no more than 250 words.

There are only 8 questions not answered and you need to write.

Reading 1：“Some Social Implications of Modern Technology” by Herbert Marcuse ( 3 questions)

1. Why does Marcuse think that critical thought has become more or less powerless (he calls it socially impotent) in contemporary society? Try to explain what he means using the example of social media and its critics.

a. Marcuse was a Marxist

i. Liked to think when there's a force in society another one will rise to challenge it; an opposition force

i. Marxist dialectic

1. Example: Social media

ii. People don't push back on social media because we're all connected like we've never been before; it is an extremely valuable and quite incredible tool

1. People recognize the flaws but also know that it does what it does so well

1. Example:

2. We wouldn't expel cars from society because we don't walk enough

2. How has individualism and rationality been transformed through modern technology? Explain all the transformations and give examples.

a. Standardizes life; technology makes life predictable, routine, and uniform. Waze example. We follow map route, we might not know where it’s taking us, but we trust in its entirety that it’s going to get us from point a to point b. Rationality has gone out the window - just trust in apparatus. 

b. Erodes creativity, Capitalism rewards technocrats and computer geeks because they are the "experts" that execute the "efficiency imperative" - they maintain and guard the cage.  

c. Tech becomes a tool of reification under capitalism

3. For Marcuse, how does technological development, specifically standardization and specialization, influence bureaucracy?

a. ·  How government has to break apart into different agencies; sub agencies department of commerce and dep of labor; sec of state, FBI; they’re all using technology in that given field; i.e. FBI uses tech to fight crime on a federal level  

c: Some notes: Marcuse Notes from Discussion:

1. In Marcuse’s thinking, what are and what is the difference between individualistic rationality and technological rationality? Explain how rationality connects with the “mechanics of conformity”?

1. Marcuse: (mar-kooz-uh)

1. Moving on from Weber, we now have technological rationality

2. He was a Marxist

3. Thought about Nazis and used them to explain his work

1. Holocaust

1. People went along with it because they trusted the scientific/technological rationality of eugenics

1. Then biologists actually realized it is not a race issue and that there's no scientific basis as to execute an entire race of people; so they stopped.

2. Examples:

1. Trying to get from UCLA to SaMo

1. Options:

1. Asking a person along the way for directions

2. Plugging in your destination to google maps

2. "Matter of Factness"

1. Technology presents itself with this "matter of factness"

1. Consequences result from this "matter of factness" for the rest of society

2. This is tied to conformity

2. We assume that is true because it usually is, if not always is

1. We know there's a massive technology with algorithms behind the small screen so it's almost always correct; there's very little room for error

3. Individualistic rationality

1. Calculated

1. Ex. Economic agents

2. Accomplishing goals as efficiently as possible

2. To be still searching what we know not, by what we know, still closing up truth to truth as we find it (for all her body is homogeneal and proportional)

4. Technological rationality may easily be placed into the service of such control: in the form of "scientific management," it has become one of the most profitable means for streamlined autocracy

5. The "mechanics of conformity" spread from the technological to the social order; they govern performance not only in the factories and shops, but also in the offices, schools, assemblies and, finally in the realm of relaxation and entertainment

1. Example: Mapping yourself to Seattle. Google maps will say take the 405 to the 5 and drive all the way up.

2. Because technology is right, it will tell everyone who uses that map to go to that way and everyone will  drive that way because they do not doubt the technology.

1. This way, no one thinks to take alternate scenic routes or go through other states for fun, etc.; they conform

3. Individuals are stripped of their individuality, not by external compulsion, but by the very rationality under which they live (145)

4. The apparatus to which the individual is to adjust and adopt himself is so rational that individual protest and liberation appear not only as hopeless but as utterly irrational (145)

2. In what way does Marcuse believe that bureaucracy is an example of technological rationality. What role does specialization (of occupations) play in this?

1. Bureaucracy does not always make things more efficient

1. However he does think specialization can make things more efficient; gives people in specific roles that "matter of factness" in their opinions

1. Ex. A person in engineering isn't going to question a person in marketing because that's their specialization just as someone in marketing would not question an engineer for they are far more knowledgeable in that topic

1. Issue here:

1. not being able to think for yourself

2. Narrows your range of possibilities

2. Nazis

1. Have big bureaucracies that went sideways

1. When one person is given so much power, bad calls can be made

3. Marcuse

1. Loves the united states

2. Thinks this is the whole value of democracy

1. Leaders are electable not permanent

2. There's a "you can fix it" idea

3. You get advantages of expertise but can also remove that "expert" should they act up

Reading 2: “Intellectuals and Hegemony” by Antonio Gramsci

Other Gramsci notes:

1. Gramsci spends a lot of time thinking about the connection between theory and praxis. What is the difference between the two concepts, and why does he think that praxis is so important?

1. The act of turning theory into practice is called: Praxis

1. Understanding your place in a social system

2. taking a theory and applying it to your own life and finding meaning through that

2. Post colonial writing talks a lot about Praxis

1. How do we help countries go from states of colonialism to living in a post-colonialist world

2. How do we recognize the patriarchy and move forward with feminist values

1. According to Gramsci, how can we differentiate between intellectuals and non-intellectuals?

a. Vc    Intellectuals vs. Physical Laborers

i. Everybody in their life does both, but you spend more time doing one

1. Intellectuals

ii. They do more than think

ii. It's the activity of trying to sort out your place in the universe

2. You understand your situation based on what social class you are

2. People who think about their social circumstances

ii. What access you have to education; whether you are upper class and can afford it

3. If you were lower class, you'd send them (your kids) to work rather than school (1920s in Italy)

3. Working classes don't have the time or money for school so they don't get to develop the same intellectual capacities 

2. How does the production of various branches of intellectual specialization occur?

??

3. What are the two super structural levels in society, and how does this relate to his main argument about the role of intellectuals in the political process and social hegemony?

??

4. What is an intellectual, according to Gramsci? What is their relationship to social classes?

a. Intellectuals are the members of society that possess the technical ability to garner and sustain the support of its groups' members by being able to bridge the gap between themselves and the dominant groups. The relationship is that they bridge the gap between different social classes offering an opportunity for class improvement. 

Reading 3: “Dependence in an Interdependent World: The Limited Possibilities of Transformation within the Capitalist World-Economy” by Immanuel Wallerstein

1. How is Wallerstein defining the structure of the capitalist world economy? What are the relationships between its different sectors?

He defines the structure of the capitalist world economy with a tri-model (3), namely the core, the semi-peripheral, and the peripheral. The core countries export high-wage products to the peripheral countries (e.g. electronic products), the peripheral countries export low-wage products (e.g. metals) to the core countries. This results in  “unequal exchange” between the two sectors, in which a peripheral worker needs to work many hours to obtain a product produced by a worker in a core country in one hour. This also leads to their interdependence, that the peripheral countries depends on the core to develop, and the core depends on the peripheral to stay comfortable. The semi-peripheral stands in between, trading in both directions. In other words, The core geographical area dominates the capitalist world-economy and exploits the rest of the system. The periphery consists of those areas that provide raw materials to the core and are heavily exploited by it. The semiperiphery is a residual category that encompasses a set of regions somewhere between the exploiting and the exploited.

a. Wallerstein

i. Colonialist expert

i. Thinking of GB, Netherlands, France, etc.

i. Thinking peripheral as North America, South America, China, etc.

1. World systems:

1. Not talking about cultural systems or politics, he is talking about the economy

2. Core countries, Semi-Peripheral, Peripheral

1. Core:

1. 1st world country

2. Highly developed

3. Strong economy

1. Produces high cost goods

2. They import low cost goods

3. If you're rich, you stay rich

2. Semi-Peripheral

1. 2nd world

2. Share both the characteristics of core and peripheral

3. They're a middle man between the two

1. They get both high cost goods and low cost goods

3. Peripheral

1. 3rd world

2. Disadvantaged the most

3. Not industrialized

4. Rely on core countries for capital

1. Produces low cost goods

2. Import high cost goods (like cell phones, weapons)

1. Stay poor because they buy the expensive stuff and make the not expensive stuff

2. If you're poor, you stay poor

3. We need the semi-peripheral because:

1. We can't have the world being polarized with JUST the core and peripheral

2. The semi-peripheral exists to be a middle man because without it, the peripheral would rebel against the core

2. What relationship is Wallerstein proposing between the capitalist system and the political institutions? How does this relationship influence the reproduction of social stratification?

Economy and politics go hand in hand - in fact, they overlap. A country’s status as a core or peripheral country has a large influence on world politics. For example, within the United Nations, a country’s wealth and economic status is a major factor in determining the amount of influence and power they have over the decisions made. These differing levels of power directly affect the social stratification of society, as some people are in positions of power while others must follow in line with their decisions.

3. Countries like China, South Korea, and India are all examples of countries that have moved from one category to another over the past several decades. Explain the three strategies Wallerstein identifies for countries hoping to move up from one category to the next in the world system.

a. Three strategies:

i. Seizing the chance

1. About looking for a moment when the entire world economy is weak and doing everything in your power to reconstruct your economy to be stronger

i. Strategy of promotion

2. The same idea of you trying to restructure your economy

2. Instead of waiting for moments of weakness, you rather look for external sources to invest in your economy

2. Don’t have to wait for a global recession

1. Strategy of self reliance

c. When countries recognize that they're apart of a big system where they are exploited and say fuckkkk that

c. They branch off and remove themselves from the world economy

c. Much less common, far less likely to succeed

Reading 4: “Theory of Communicative Action” by Jurgen Habermas

Other Habermas notes from discussion:

1. In Habermas, what is the lifeworld and what are its constitutive parts? Why does it need to be reproduced over time and how is that accomplished?

1. Lifeworld:

1. Micro

2. Individual actor

3. Kind of what symbolic interactionists mean when they talk about social situations about interpretation

4. Where we get our interpretations, how we understand our situations, how we understand the broader social sphere we belong in

2. System:

1. Macro

1. Habermas had a political project; thought we all needed to sit down, chat, understand what our issues are and decide how to collectively fix them

1. COMMUNICATION AND SHARED DEFINITIONS = HABERMAS

2. Thinks that the rationality people use is very fundamentally different from the logic formal organizations use

1. Constitutive parts:

1. Culture

2. Society

3. Personality

1. Not talking about structure, thinking about society and culture in the way Bloom and Meade would---it's inside your head

2. He also acknowledges that while stuff happens in our head, a lot of us come to the same conclusions, assumptions etc. because of culture and context

2. Why does it need to be reproduced over time? How is that accomplished?

1. We need to refresh interpretations so moment by moment we can understand what that means; if this doesn't happen our interactions will fail and then we will splinter off into

2. Communication depends on shared interpretations so we need to update them every now and then in order to effectively communicate 

1. How does Habermas define communication? What does it consist of?

Habermas defines communication as individuals communicating by relating to each other in 3 different worlds - the objective, social, and subjective worlds. They use this “reference system” as a framework on how to interpret and define situations   It transmits cultural knowledge, social integration, solidarity, and personal identities. 

2. What other scholars is Habermas building off and what are the distinctions between Habermas’ arguments and those of previous scholars?

??

3. What does Habermas mean when he says that the constitutive parts of the lifeworld have become uncoupled from the system as a result of rationalization?

a. The problem is the different rationalities aren't supporting each other anymore; super logical decision making at the top is conflicting with morality etc.

a. The thinks that the system will colonize the lifeworld

a. The more commodification the more it changes those relationships

a. Example:

iv. Dating apps/websites vs. meeting people in real life

1. You can now be way more calculated

Reading 5: “A Sociological Theory of Postmodernity” by Zygmunt Bauman

1. According to Bauman, what are the most conspicuous features of the postmodern condition?

??

2. What distinguishes the postmodern condition from the modern condition?

i. Post modern condition is different from the modern condition in the sense that postmodern condition is a site of constant mobility and change, but no clear direction of development. Also, the post modern condition is both undetermined and undermining. It ‘unbinds’ time; weakens the constraining impact of the past and effectively prevents colonization of the future. (431)

ii. The theory of postmodernity differs from previous sociological theories in the sense that it is bound to reverse the structure of the cognitive field. The focus must be now on agency; more correctly, on the habitat in which agency operates and which it produced in the course of operation. (431) Also, the post modern context agents are constantly faced with moral issues and obliged to choose between equally well founded (or equally unfounded) ethical precepts. Under the postmodern condition, the agent is perforce not just an actor and decision maker, but a moral subject. The performance of life-functions demands also that the agent be a morally competent subject.(440)

examples: i.what post modernism is about is challenging social structures, such as challenging challenging race in all aspects/ institutional structures (the work force, the education force, political force, etc)

ii. the idea of the family: 

      - modernism would look the “idea of family” as central unit of social order: model of the middle class, nuclear family 

    - post modernism would look at family in alternative family units, hence alternatives to middle class marriage model, multiple identities for coupling and child raising. 

3. How should the theory of postmodernity differ from previous sociological theories?

??

4. Bauman argues that we should see society as a complex system. What does he mean by that? And what are the consequences of seeing things this way for sociological research?

a. Complex system: if you have lots of different interactive parts, they can become unpredictable really quickly; small changes in a complex system can become extremely unpredictable

i. Butterfly effect: butterfly flaps his wing and a hurricane comes out the end

1. What does he think this means for methods and research?

ii. Talks about how statistics is useless because there are no generalized laws in the first place

ii. Even if you run a model and come up with great results right now, in 2 years they can become obsolete because society has changed

ii. We need to focus on a rigorous qualitative approach that focus on complexities of how we form identities, groups, etc. 

Reading 6: “Panopticon” by Michael Foucault

1. What is the main effect of the Panopticon for Foucault?

· Panopticon is the idea that everyone is watching each other and feels like they are being watched. Think of the guard in the middle of a prison example everyone senses they are watched even if they are not. It is important in the larger society since we need it to keep it in check. By people feeling that they are under a microscope they act within the boundaries. Otherwise we get chaos and rioting.

· Page 374: “The major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power”

· Page 377: “In short, it arranges things in such a way that the exercise of power is not added on from the outside, like a rigid heavy constraint, to the function it invests, but it is so subtly present in them as to increase their efficiency by itself increasing its own points of contact”

a. Major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power 

i. Power is visible and unverifiable

1. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower for which he is spied upon

2. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at any one moment but he must be sure that he may always be so

3. Why is the Panopticon an important mechanism in our larger society? How is power exercised through this model across societal applications?

a. Foucault’s idea was that this process is supposed to be generalizable to society

a. All you need is a threat of some type of punishment and the possibility that you are being watched in order for you to self regulate

Reading 7: “Simulacra and Simulations: Disneyland” by Jean Baudrillard

1. What is a simulation, according to Baudrillard, and how is it different from a symbol?

a. Simulation is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality; an operation to deter every real process by its operational double

a. Definition watered-down: the utopian versions of all these symbols that come together to simulate reality; they don’t quite hit the rock bottom of reality or point to an object

ii. As seen in this lil figure below, words and symbols just point to one another in a simulation, there is no absolute reality

1.

iii. Simulation threatens the difference between “true” and “false,” between “real” and “imaginary” 

1. Representation starts from the principle that the sign and the real are equivalent 

1. Simulation is the (1) reflection of a basic reality as it (2) masks and perverts a basic reality It, then, (3) masks the absence of a basic reality and (4) bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum

d. Symbols:

4. The representation of actual reality

4. Example: the world tree symbolizes the object of the tree

4. Word → object

3. Also referred to as the map/territory relationship

3. Word (signifier) → object (signified)

2. Why is simulation problematic? Explain his example about Disneyland.

Simulation is problematic since it is no longer operational and practical. It operates in a hyperreal state that is impossible to be existent in a rational/irrational world that exists in society outside of the simulation (366) 

Disneyland is a simulation within the park.When you are there you experience out of the world things within the park. When you step outside you return to society and are a forgotten member of what you just had happen. 

Quote on 368: “But this conceals something else, and that “ideological” blanket exactly serves to cover over a third-order simulation: Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the “real” country, all of “real” America, which is Disneyland (just as prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipotence, which is carceral).” 

Simulation is problematic because it becomes hard to tell what is real and what isn’t. Baudrillard makes the argument that Disneyland hides the fact that America isn’t real. It is a simulation. These imaginary worlds conceal the fact that America and Los Angeles are hyperreal. 

a. Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the “real” country, all of “real” America, which is Disneyland

i. Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation

1. Disneyland becomes our reality, even with the childishness that the environment creates

Reading8: “Structures, Habitus, Practices” by Pierre Bourdieu

1. Bourdieu gives two definitions of “habitus” in the first two pages. What are they, and what do you think the habitus actually is?

 i.  the two definitions are 1) routine practices & 2) product of history & norms  ii. we think that habitus refers to the norms, values, attitudes, and behaviors of a particular social group (or social class)  iii.  Example: for example, members of the intellectual elite often prefer the ballet while members of the middle class prefer to attend sporting event

· Habitus is the means by which mutually reinforcing schema-resource sets constitute human subjects with particular sorts of knowledge and dispositions.“Habitus,” is our knowledge of how to act in the world: it gives rise to tastes, opinions, and conversational styles. Habitus is our intuitive sense of how to act in society: “systems of schemes of perception, through and action.” You develop it unconsciously by growing up in a certain family or social class. It refers to the physical embodiment of cultural capital, to the deeply ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions that we possess due to our life experiences. 

· Habitus also extends to our “taste” for cultural objects such as art, food, and  clothing.

· Ex. if you grew up in wealthy family, probably would be able to value fine art because have been exposed to it 

· Habitus- skills, habits, and dispositions that we possess due to our life experiences → allows us to successfully navigate social environments 

· Ex. if you grew up in rough, crime ridden neighborhood, would have street smarts necessary to survive and steer away from violent confrontations

a. Habitus:

i. Something inside of you and it's collection of practices and dispositions. Functionally it acts like a structure

1. (similar to Blumer & Habermas - somewhere inside of you, you've internalized norms and act accordingly)

i. Components:

2. Structured structures

1. All of the things that get in our head through situations we live through; the things that work get into our heads, then it goes into other people's heads and then their actions go back into your head, etc.

1. Example: Gender

2. We learn gender when someone says "be a man" or "be a lady"

2. We learn gender when we break gender norms and people judge you

2. We learn gender from what toys we are given as kids: dolls vs. trucks

1. Structuring structures

ii. Our actions create objective conditions; we recreate the new objective conditions that created us

1. We'll expect people to act according to their gender too, so the structure in our head is now structuring the world outside of us too

1. Practices and dispositions

1. Objective conditions

iv. Every day we move through different situations and as we move through them, we want to get things done; we want to get work done, we want to work on impression management (let people know you're a good person)

1. Adaptation

v. You're adapting to the objective conditions

v. You face real problems and you come up with solutions that get stuck in your habitus that are adaptations in your environment

v. Gender exists to solve gender imbalance

2. Why do some people wind up with a very different habitus, and why do some people have a very similar habitus?

· The habitus: embodied history, internalized as second nature and so forgotten as history- is the active presence of the whole past of which it is the product. As such, it is what gives practices their relative autonomy with respect to external determations of the immediate present 280

· People have various habitus based upon their social status, upbringing, and other social factors that lead them to go through different circumstances. Some people have similar habitus because they come from a similar background. People from the same class might have similar habitus because it is more likely that they have shared experiences. 

· EX: People who are brought up in Upper Class background typically are more fiscally conservative and favor the capitalist society. While, the middle class will tend to side on the opposite end going for more government intervention and redistribution of wealth. 

· “In short, being the product of a particular class of objective regularities, the habitus tends to generate all the ‘reasonable’, ‘common-sense’, behaviours (and only these) which are possible within the limits of these regularities, and which are likely to be positively sanctioned because they are objectively adjusted to the logic characteristic of a particular field, whose objective future they anticipate. At the same time, ‘without violence, art or argument’, it tends to exclude all ‘extravagances’ (‘not for the likes of us’), that is, all the behaviours that would be negatively sanctioned because they are incompatible with the objective conditions.” p.279

· “The habitus, a product of history, produces individual and collective practices - more history - in accordance with the schemes generated by history. It ensures the active presence of past experiences, which, deposited in each organism in the form of schemes of perception, thought and action, tend to guarantee the ‘correctness’ of practices and their constancy over time, more reliably than all formal rules and explicit norms.” (page 278) 

· This is why people end up with similar habitus; it’s because they live through different situations; some people say, “oh it’s such a different culture,” but it’s not--it’s just a different habitus

· You haven’t lived the same way as them, so you haven’t had to adapt and solve problems that they’ve had to solve so of course you’re going to be different

·

3. How does the habitus help to explain the ways in which society reproduces itself?

??/

Reading 9: “Bodies that Matter” by Judith Butler

2. According to Butler, how does the notion of gender performativity relate to this conception of materialization?

3. What is Butler’s definition of a “body” or “matter” (treat them interchangeably here)? How is this different from the conventional view in her opinion?