SOC 302 1st Edition Lecture 17Outline of Last Lecture I. Bureaucracy II.Reality of social constructionsa.Realistic (weak version)b.Unrealistic (strong version)Outline of Current LectureI.Strong constructionismII.Critical realismIII.Gender inequalityIV.Summers controversyCurrent LectureStrong constructionism has little persuasive leverage. It cuts against social systems that need deconstructing, but also against the moral commitments of the deconstructors. Moral commitments would come only from personal preference, arbitrary choice, and the power to enforce and impose. How would you even approach a subject of study that says your moral commitments aren’t real, but the ones you’re studying are? It isn’t really possible. Strong constructionism leads to either apathy or outrageous claims to power.Smith says that a critical realist approach is better than this strong constructionism. Critical realism is the search for the best human account of truth about the real. It assumes there are truths that exist, and that some accounts of reality are better than others. We look for truth because we think it exists. Critical realism includes scientific humility, open considerations of plausible alternative viewpoints, and reliance on persuasion and evidence to influence minds.Why else would we subjugate our own desires, preferences, ideologies, and politics to search for truth? Now we’ll transition into gender inequality, an ordinal hierarchy between men and women in material resources, power, and status. It has persisted in the US despite major transformations in the way that gender has been entwined with the social and economic organization of society. Many sociologists ask how much is gender inequality socially constructed? A strong constructionist would say almost completely. A critical realist would question whether there is something really real there. Baumeister would say that culture builds These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.on nature. Wives who put in an 8-hour day of work average 7.5 hours more childcare and housework per week than their husband. Mothers of dependent children suffer a wage penalty of 5% per child. The Summers controversy asks why there are a lot more men in the science school at Harvard than women? Summers puts forth a hypothesis that there might be a different availability of aptitude at the high end. Baumeister wants to evaluate what is going on. He would ask how much evidence there is for a male superiority complex. He would ask if men are coming together to sustain patriarchy, or male domination? He then says neither is happening. It’s about preferences and how men treat other men and how women relate to other women. Baumeister says that women were the goal, not the enemy. Men compete, in part, to attract women. Men are overrepresented in the top, but they are also overrepresented in the bottom, such as in prison, death row, mental impairment, battle deaths, homelessness, and autism. Therefore, in realty, we should expect to find the same abilities in men and women, but the bell curve for men has a larger standard deviation, meaning you should expect to see more men than women at the top and bottom ends. Women’s annual wages for full-time, year-round workare about 80% of men’s.Men, Baumeister claims, are more expendable than women. Culture “needs” more women than men. “Different but equal” theory contends that culture uses men differently than women. Equality happens through trade-offs: There are real differences between men and women, but abilities are often linked to dis-abilities. Culture typically builds on