Sociology 100 summarize!!
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chapter_03.pptx©SAGE Publications, Inc. 2012
Chapter 3
Building Reality: The Social Construction of Knowledge
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What Makes Truth?
What is a healthy level of cholesterol?
What is Pluto?
What’s a bug?
What is your currency worth?
These ideas are social constructions.
In 2006 Pluto was reclassified as no longer being a planet based on new definitions of what constitutes a planet.
In 2004 federal health officials changed the cut-off point for healthy levels of cholesterol so that many people suddenly had unhealthy levels.
A “bug” is an insect or an illness – a flu bug
In Brazil, the government invented a “URV” (unit of real value) and changed everyone’s wages into URVs as a way of stopping out-of-control inflation.
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Social Construction of Reality
The process through which the members of a society discover, make known, reaffirm, and alter a collective version of facts, knowledge, and “truth”
Which is maintained and changed through
Culture
Language
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Culture and Language
Culture
Material
Non-material
Language
Vocabulary
Jargon
Euphemisms
Hanunoo people of the Philippines have 92 words for different types of rice – we have one. We have words for different types of cars – others have one (sedan, coupe, hatchback, stationwagon).
What does it mean to give directions using egocentric coordinates (things you see around) you vs using geographic coordinates (north, east, south, and west)?
What does it mean to say that someone is “homeless”? Living on the streets vs living with friends and relatives? How does that have an impact on statistics or services for the poor?
In our culture – getting paid for work increases your status; we distinguish between volunteer and “real” work
“sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me” – reflects the fact that words do hurt and have meaning and power (think of racial and ethnic slurs or homophobic slurs). Can you think of recent examples when someone in the public sphere used a derogatory word? How did the public react?
Jargon helps us to use a shorthand among people who have similar knowledge
What groups have their own jargon? Teens, professional groups, regional groups….
Euphemisms reflect areas of life we are sensitive about, values – words for death – what else? Where do we use euphemisms?
Pre-owned (used)
Seasoned (old)
Mature (old)
Misinformation (lies)
Postconsumer waste (trash)
Big-boned (fat)
Streamline (fire people)
Recent publication of Huck Finn without the N-word and with Injun written as Indian. How does that change our reality? How do you react to that decision?
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Shaping Reality
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968)
Placebo effect
Nocebo effect
Stereotype threat
Incorrigible propositions
Placebo – people think something will work even if it’s not the real thing, and so it does work
Nocebo – people think they’ll suffer from something even when it’s not the real thing, and so they do
Stereotype threat – people achieve according to the stereotypes about their group when that stereotype is activated for them (“Asians are good at math” “Blacks are good athletes”)
Incorrigible propositions – we refuse to stop believing something in spite of compelling evidence to the contrary – we say that this case is just different
Think about the vaccine vs autism research and why that one study held people’s confidence in spite of many studies to the contrary
Think about May 21, 2011 – The Rapture. When it didn’t happen, some people argued it was just the beginning, or that God had granted a reprieve, or that humans had gotten the calculations wrong.
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Thinking Sociologically
How does what is considered to be “true” or “reality” change from one culture to the next, and from one historical period to the next?
What examples can you think of that show how culture and reality have changed over time?
Think about fashions from the past and how silly they look now.
In the early 20th century in the U.S., pink was a color for boys and blue for girls. Pink was considered the stronger color and blue the daintier one. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls-Start-Wearing-Pink.html
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Who Controls Reality?
History
Conflict and power
Social institutions
Economy
Politics
Religion
The media
Moral entrepreneurs
History
Marx: People make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. (1869/1963)
Conflict and power
“People with more power, prestige, status, wealth, and access to high-level policymakers can turn their perceptions of the world into the entire culture’s perception.”
Health Care: defining what makes illness and therefore who can get help, what is covered by insurance (ADA, mental health, PTSD)
Economy: marketing medicines directly to the public
Politics: defining who can participate in the electoral system – who can contribute and what politicians can say and do (Obama’s birth certificate)
Religion: creationism in science textbooks
Media: choices the media make about what news to produce and how to show it – WMDs and Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s connection to Sept 11.
Moral entrepreneurs: Groups that seek to outlaw pornography, sexually explicit song lyrics, abortion, gambling, and homosexuality, as well as groups that promote gun control, literacy, awareness of domestic violence, and support for AIDS research, are crusading for the creation of a new public conception of morality. Examples: Westboro Baptist Church – protesting at military funerals; Tipper Gore – labels on record albums with explicit lyrics in the 1980s
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Conflict Perspective
Certain groups or people are more influential in defining reality than others
Reality is often based on the interests of powerful people, groups, organizations, and institutions
Moral entrepreneurs seek to shape their morality into law
TEXTBOOKS and TEXAS – new Texas rules about how to represent American history in textbooks (education, politics, religion); Texas is one of the biggest customers for textbooks, so publishers will cater to their decisions (economy). Which means that kids all over the U.S. will learn what Texas school boards choose to present (shaping reality for more than just Texas students).
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1973276,00.html
Scopes trials in 1925 – teaching evolution in schools
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Media
News is a constructed reality
Economics: Who owns access?
By 2009 six companies owned over half of all media outlets
Time: What gets left out?
Spin: Whose perspective is represented?
Text discusses the possible filtering by government, network executive, corporation owners, editors and reporters.
The example in the text discusses coverage of the War in Iraq as an example of what is left out:
The Pentagon required embedded journalists to sign a contract giving the military control over the content of their stories (Jamail, 2007). According to one study, 80% of early embedded reports included no commentary at all from soldiers (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2005).
Information on Blackwater and other private security firms has also been considered one of the news stories of 2007 to receive little to no media coverage.
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Moral Entrepreneurs
Individual (and small-group) efforts to control the construction of reality
Not necessarily wealthy or influential
Good at using publicity and public relations
What examples can you think of?
Legalizing marijuana
Abstinence-only sex ed
Pharmacists and morning-after pills
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Thinking Sociologically
Conflict perspective and the media
Whose voice is not heard?
Whose perspective is not represented?
How does this shape reality?
Discuss the way less powerful groups, marginalized groups are not allowed access to the media and their voices are less likely to be heard.
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Doing Sociological Research
Casual research vs. empirical research
Probabilistic research
Looks at the likelihood of an event occurring (probability)
Rarely makes absolute predictions
Tries to take into account exceptions and variations
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Casual vs. Empirical
Casual research
What we do every day as we observe our surroundings and draw conclusions about what we see
Empirical research
Seeks generalizability (representative sample)
Systematic, controlled observation
Theoretical basis for method of study
We all do casual research all the time – it’s how we make sense of lots of situations in our lives; casual research can be really, really wrong!
Example: you join a study group to improve your test scores. On the next test, your score goes up. You attribute that change to the study group. Could be, but also could be you just grasped the material better or had a better sense of what would be on the test.
Researchers evaluate each others’ work to try to find weaknesses and make our efforts stronger and clearer. Usually research doesn’t get published until it has been “peer-reviewed” by other experts to validate the study design and the likelihood of the results. Then other researchers replicate studies to see if the same results happen time after time.
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Approaches to Sociological Research
Qualitative
Research based on non-numerical information that describes social life (text, written words, phrases, symbols, observations)
Quantitative
Research based on the collection of numerical data that utilizes precise statistical analysis
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Key Terms in Social Research
Theory
Hypothesis
Variables
Independent: the one that may cause the change
Dependent: the one you are looking at to see what happens
Indicators
Spurious relationships
Theory – the perspective you use to approach the problem or research question
hypothesis - your best guess about the answer to your research question
variable Any characteristic, attitude, behavior, or event that can take on two or more values or attributes
indicator Measurable event, characteristic, or behavior commonly thought to reflect a particular concept
independent variable Experimental variable presumed to cause or influence the dependent variable (works independently)
dependent variable Experimental variable that is assumed to be caused by, or to change as a result of, the independent variable (depends on something else)
Spurious relationships – two variables appear to be related but in fact they are each associated with a third variable. Example: shoe size and reading ability among children. What is the third variable that is related to each?
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Kinds of Research
Experimental
Field research
Non-participant observation, participant observation
Unobtrusive research
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Experiment
A research situation designed to elicit some sort of behavior under closely controlled laboratory circumstances
Advantages
Able to study causal relationships
Easy to replicate
Disadvantages
Not a natural environment
Hard to measure many sociological concepts in a lab
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Field Research
Direct observation of people in their natural settings
Advantages:
Provides detailed and descriptive understandings of people’s everyday lives
Generally inexpensive to conduct
Disadvantages:
Time consuming
Difficult to replicate
Difficult to generalize to other groups
Reactivity: the Hawthorne effect
Particularly susceptible to ethical issues
Hawthorne effect – subjects responding to the research environment (factory lights raised and dimmed)
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Unobtrusive Research
Researcher does not have direct contact with subjects
Analysis of existing data
Content analysis
Historical analysis
Visual sociology
Analysis of existing data – use the Census
Content analysis – looking at films or other communications
Historical analysis – looking at historical records for trends
Visual sociology is a method of studying society through photographs, video, and film.
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Research Tools
Surveys
Existing data
Representative samples
Sampling – whole theories devoted to sampling
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Surveys
Data collected through questionnaires or interviews
Advantages
Large population can be studied
Random, representative samples
Results can be generalized
Disadvantages
Little in-depth information about people’s behavior or experiences
Questions need to be correctly worded
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Trustworthiness of Social Research
Samples
Indicators
Type of research
Values, interests, and ethics
How representative were the samples used?
How appropriate were the indicators?
Was the choice of research approach appropriate for the question?
Values, interests and ethics –what kinds of research gets funded? What kinds get published? What is ethical research? IRB/Human subjects; Patricia Adler’s work with drug trafficking
Tendency of media not to report research that doesn’t have positive results – think again about vaccine vs. autism – maybe the press didn’t report the studies showing no connections strongly enough? Think of the culture of fear article and how social institutions and culture may influence research
