Sociology 105 09 17 2014 Lecture 1 C W Mills If you do not specify and confront real issues what you will do will surely obscure them If you do not alarm anyone morally you will yourself remain morally asleep If you do not embody controversy what you say will be an acceptance of the drift to the coming human hell Discussing state of modern life People feel trapped because they don t understand how the world is changing quickly feel like they have no control Faced with fear uncertainty comes from lack of understanding Sociology is a way to free ourselves from the traps Biography history of your life History everything that s happened worldwide Look at context of yourself in history Personal history tied with societal history Everybody has connections to everybody and everything Private troubles vs public issue o Private personal level o Public entire society o Ex of both one person gets divorced but divorce is a nationwide statistic Agency vs structure o Agency means power degree to which an individual has power and what they do with it o Structure no one person or group controlling it consciously o Agents have power and can change things social changes occur slowly but they do happen o Social structures do not have all the power Sociological Work Theory a map o How to answer a question to guide your research o Interviews case studies participant observation Qualitative research Quantitative research o Statistics All are equally important in doing sociological work People are organized into groups Language symbols Sociological constructions matter because they are collectively held ideas Lecture 2 Social Construction of Race Discourse the specific words that we use People of color vs colored people People of color is an important term Loretta Ross talks about relationship between the civil rights movement in terms of race and the women s movement in terms of gender People of color is a solidarity designation not a biological designation Choose to work with other people who are minoritized by oppression people of color all experience life differently than white people do but their experiences are all different based on their specific race It is a socially accurate term sociologist use it people of color is different from colored people because people of color was determined by those people themselves they stated their identity and they had power while colored people was a result of white supremacy people of color their color does not define them Different of arrangement of terms of white and nonwhite Definitions Constructions What is race Socially constructed and not biological not based on genetic differences there is greater genetic differences in one race in comparison to across races Arranged hierarchally more power more favor more represented Value certain categories more than others Starts socially and biology helps it persist Nobody is consciously trying to keep this going What is ethnicity self identifying culture nationality assigned an ethnicity How is race constructed constantly changing and it is very complicated How it appears and manifests has changed over time racial formation o one drop rule if anyone in your ancestry is black then you cannot be considered white This formed categories Is race real yes because it has the power to change peoples behaviors But it is not a natural law of the universe that we discovered But it is something that we created and that changes over time Prejudice and discrimination Related NOT interchangeable Prejudice Thoughts beliefs attitudes about race Ethnocentrism Racism as belief system Racism A system of power and oppression Occurs on level of institutions discourse massively Discrimination racism are not the same Discrimination how beliefs of race play out in terms of how you treat people and how institutions treat people Category of behavior The denial of rights Sometimes overt sometimes not Privilege Unpacking the invisible knapsack white people are overly represented If I should need to move I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systematic racism for their own daily physical protection I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race if a white person does well It is expected If a black person does well then they are remarkable I can worry about racism without being seen as self interested or self seeking I have the privilege of being unaware of my privilege Reverse Racism would only describe a society in which all the rules and roles were turned upside down That has not happened in the U S Hepshiba Instances of reverse racism can and have happened A system of racism reverse racism does not happen And society would look very different if it were true Poverty would be very different white people would be underrepresented in popular media ceo s and politicians would be mostly black It would involve such a radical reordering of how society works that we do not find reverse racism Race class matter a lot but when society breaks down then it does not matter Lecture 3 Intersectionality Reaction to perceived deficiencies with feminist theory Third wave of feminists Argument for intersections race class gender System of identities that intersect Everyone s experience of these identities are different More about the system than the individual The Matrix of Domination Power is important to this idea Power is a like a triangle few powerful people at the top more less powerful people at the bottom But socially power is like a web subject to different intersecting identities and experiences To what extent do we have power Different domains o Oppression maintained through all groups o Binaries oversimplify because they don t allow for a lot of variation o Race class gender sexual orientation disability Systemic not individual Socially constructed Constrained by their categories Change is possible make actions easier for some people but more difficult for others The lowest difficult setting This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise The default barriers for completions of quests are lower Your leveling up thresholds come more quickly You automatically gain entry to some parts