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James Spellacy
Sociology Notes:
Week 2 (Ch1): Understanding the Sociological Imagination

The Promise of Sociology:

Peter Berger:
- It is not the excitement of coming upon the total unfamiliarity, but rather the excitement
of finding the familiar becoming transformed in its meaning. The fascination of sociology
lies in the fact that it’s the perspective makes us see in a new light the very world which
we have lived our lives. This also constitutes a transformation of consciousness,
Albert Einstein:
- The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were
at when we created them.
James Baldwin:
- The purpose of education is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for
himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to
decide for himself weather there is a god in heaven or not. To ask questions of the
universe, and then learn to live with those questions in a wat someone achieves one’s
own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What
societies really want are citizens to follow the laws. If a society succeeds in this, it will
perish. The obligation of anyone of himself as responsible to examine society and fight to
change it – at no matter the risk. This is our only hope society has. This is the only way
societies change.

Mills: The Sociological Imaginations:

- Mills believes it is the intellectual capacity:
- To connect our lives and our individual biography with large social structures around us.
- Biography vs History
- Grasp interplay between human beings and society, and biography, and history and the
relations between the two within society.
- Main questions:
1) What are the structures of this society like?
2) Where does this society fit int the broader picture of human history?
3) How do the structures of this society and the historical period of which I am a part
influence me and those around me.
- If we get our lives are tied to our society, and if we can understand the questions; we can
begin to develop our sociological imagination.
Sociological Perspective:
Peter Berger:
- Seeing the general in particular
- Discern between a common sense (uncritical, uninformed) perspective and a sociological
perspective (a view on society based on the dynamic relationships between ind and the
larger social networks in which we all live.
- Sociological Imagination vs Perspective: Imagination coined by Mills, Perspective is a
broader term on society and individuality. z
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Common Sense vs Sociological Perspective:
Many women are in caring profession; because caring comes naturally for them (common sense
idea of women).
- Telling us that they are genetically predisposed for such a profession, large numbers
Sociological perspective:
- Women at an early age are streamed to such professions from socialization processes
embedded in social institutions.
- Barriers continue to exist in professions considered “male”
Sociological Perspective Illustrates:
- Class, gender, age, ability, etc… can be sources of privilege & marginalization.
Increase a better sociological perspective by:
1) Marginalized
2) Living through social crisis.
The Power of Sociology:
- Sociology: systematic study of human groups and their interactions.
- Allows us to see personal choice in social contexts & assess the truth of “common sense”
- Helps see opportunities and constraints in our lives.
- Empowers us to be active participants of society
- Live in a diverse world.
Social Structures:
- They are a network if relatively stable opportunities and constraints influencing
individual decisions and behaviours.
- Main Types
1) Microstructures: Patterns of intimate social relationships formed during face-to-face
interactions
2) Macrostructures: Overarching patterns of social relationships
3) Global Structures: social structures that lie outside and above the national level.
Three Revolutions: how sociological imagination began.
1. Scientific revolution: 1550: Encouraged the view that conclusions about society must be
based on evidence.
2. Democratic Revolution (1750 ): suggests that people create society and intervention can
solve social problems.
3. Industrial Revolution (1780): created a host of social problems that attracted the attention
of social thinkers
Week 3 (ch2): Classical Sociology Theories
Classical Social Theories:
- Confusions: role modeling, better for a leader to engage in moral acts that he sits fit,
rather than make a bunch of laws to enforce.
- Systematic Study: Ibn Khaldun (first social scientists).
Theory: statement that tried to explain how certain facts or variables are related in order to
predict future events.
Theoretical Approaches:
- Functionalism
- Conflict Theory
- Symbolic-Interactionalism.
- ^all classical theories
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- Modern Theories: Feminist, Post-Structuralist Theory, Queer Theory.

Functionalism: A macro-level approach that see the social world as a complex, dynamic system
whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability.
- Vision as stable and ordinary. Interconnected parts like a moving clock.
- Assumes natural order and focuses on stability at the expense of understanding conflict
generated by inequalities.

Conflict Theory: Macro-level approach that assumes that society is grounded on inequality and
competition over scarce resources that ultimately result in conflict, which often inspires social
change.
- Karl Marx – key founder.
- Intellectual routs: Hobbs, Rousseau, DuBois.
- Ignores how shared values and mutual inter-dependence can unify society.
- It insistence on the primary and driving role of economics and materialistic
interpretations of social life ignores other relevant major factors.
Symbolic-Interactionalism: A micro level focus on specific social interactions in specific
situations.
- Product of everyday interactions of individuals.
- Max Waber, Meed, Gothman.
- Micro-analysis, ignores social structures, effects of culture and factors such as class,
gender, ethnicity and race.

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917):

- Suicide research: collective issue, suicide rates, why certain groups are more likely to
commit.
- Suicide rates are strongly influenced by social forces that exert pressure on the individual,
forces such as collective feelings of normlessness, identified by Durheim as anomie.
- The more social solidarity a group has – the more firmly anchored individuals are to the
social world (less anomie) – less likely people are to take their own lives.
Key Concepts:
- Social facts.
- Collective conscience
- Anomie
- Social solidarity
- Mechanical Solidarity
- Organic Solidarity
- Founder of Modern Sociology.
Collective Conscience:
- Totality of beliefs and sentiments that are common to the average person in society.
- Drives our behavior.
Social Facts:
- General social features that exists on their own and are independent of individual
manifestation
- Provide the context to our thinking
- Can limit and control passions
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Karl Marx (1818-83):
Key concepts:
- Base
- Forces and Relations of production
- Social class
- Class conflict
- Proletariat/Bourgeoisie
- Alienation
- Exploitation
- False consciousness
- Class Consciousness
- Superstructure
Society and Production:
- Forces of Production: The physical and intellectual
resources a society has with which to make a living
- Relations of Production: Relationship between
workers (proletariat) and owners (bourgeoisie).
Refers to how material production isn’t socially
organized. It is characterized by relations of
economic subordination and domination
- False consciousness: belief in and support the
system that oppresses you. As a result of
ideological control, the proletariat – and other
classes – are misled about the social relations of a
product that oppresses them.
Conflict and History:
- For Marx, conflict is the engine that drive social change.
- Earlier hunting and gathering societies were based on highly egalitarian primitive
communism.
- With technology advance comes social inequality.
Capitalism and Class Conflict:
- Class conflict: When the interests of one class are in opposition of the other. Antagonism
between entire classes over distribution of wealth and power in society.
- Class consciousness: Recognition of domination and oppression and collective action to
change it. Recognition by the workers of their unity in opposition to capitalism itself.
Capitalism and Alienation:
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Week 4: Contemporary Social Theories:

Anti-Blackness: is one way some black scholars have articulated what it means to ne marked
black in an anti-black world. It’s more than just “racism against black people”. That over-
simplifies and defangs it. It’s a theoretical framework that illuminates societies inability to
recognize black humanity – the disdain, disregard and disgust for black experience. Kihana
Ross.

Web DuBois (1868 – 1963):

Theorized double consciousness within the context of American racism and white
supremacy:
- It describes “the sense of looking at one’s self through the eyes of others” that for black
americans results in a sense of two-ness.
- Double consciousness creates an internal conflict that shapes the black American
experience, but also imparts a unique view into white power structures. White
Americans, on the other hand, have a single consciousness.
Feminist Theories :
- Theory of double consciousness is a recurring theme in feminist theories, emphasizing
the epistemic advantage (knowledge) afforded to those forces conceptually to straddle
both sides of an opposing social divide. Insider/outsider, outsider within.
Second Wave Feminism:
- At it’s core; second wave created theorizations that characterize women as a coherent
social group with a common experience as women.
- Women were seen to be united in their experiences, and this unified experience was the
basis for a political project of emancipation.
- Women were theorized to have a single, shared voice that adequately represented all
women in their struggle against patriarchy.
- The focus on homogeneity – all women sharing a similar experience of oppression –
underlies much of the third wave critique of second wave feminism.
Third Wave Feminism:
- Rather than a singular voice, third wave argued attention to the multiplicity of womens
voices was needed.
- The coherence of categorizing women was challenged and critiqued
- Womens differences based on race, social class, sexuality needed to be equally
recognized alongside gender. Laid foundation for intersectional theory
Antonia Gramsci: Key concept: Hegemony.
- Accepted Marx’s analysis of class struggle, but disagreed how capitalists maintain power.
- Marx: Capitalists use for or coercion to dominate working class (police, military)
- Gramsci: they also manipulate ideas as a more subtle form of control to create consent.

Forms of Political and Social Control:

Hegemony: domination through ideological control and consent
- Ideological control: dominant ideas reflect capitalist interests, masks social inequalities.
- No regime can rule using force alone.
- Stability requires consent of the ruled
- Social institutions established hegemony (school, media, religion).
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- Beliefs are internalized by masses and appear common sense over time.
Post-Structuralism:
- Is concerned with how knowledge is socially produced.
- Examines language and cultural objects (texts and films) to see how power manifested in
its production.
- Challenges the view that absolute truth or fact about the world can exist.
- Argues scientific knowledge or ideas about absolute “truth” cannot stand outside power
relations.
Michel Foucault: 1926-1984, French philosopher (post structuralism), how power works in
society.
- Marx: A resource you do or don’t have; wielded to oppress/exploit.
- Foucault: A network dispersed throughout society. Exercised in daily life by everyone;
produced within social relations.
- Power: We must cease once and for all to describe the negative effects of power in
negative terms: it excludes, it represses, it censors, it abstracts, it masks, it conceals. In
fact power produces; it produces reality, it produces domains of objects and rituals of
truth.
Power and discourse:
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Week 6: Research, Methodologies and Ethics:

Theory: Not just any explanation – a theory comes into being when a series of ideas come to be
held and accepted by a wider scholarly community.
- Theory doesn’t happen in isolation from research. It can inform the research process and
it can develop from it.
Research: Systematic approach to gathering data using an agreed upon set of methods.

Deductive & Inductive Logic:

- Deductive logic is a top-down theory-driven approach that concludes with generalizations
based on research findings – theory to data
- Inductive logic is a bottom-top approach that begins with observations and
characteristically ends with theory construction – data to theory.

Theoretical Perspectives & Research Questions:

Kinds of questions depending on the theoretical perspective:
- Functionalist Theory: questions focus on functioning of
society.
- Conflict theory Questions focus on socioeconomic
exploitation and capitalist expansion.
- Symbolic interactionist Theory: questions focus on
meanings people use to facilitate social life.
- Post-structural Theory: questions focus on cultural
production, power relations and ideological struggles.

Method and Methodology:

Method: Actual techniques and strategies for gathering data.

Methodology: Theory and analysis of how research does or should proceed.
- Two broad Methodological approaches: Quantitive and qualitative

Quantitative Research:
1) Tends to be programmatic (deductive)
2) Scientific objective is the goal.
3) Involves converting aspects of social life into numbers
4) Analysis is accomplished by means of statistics.
5) Usually involves large samples.
Positivism: Comte
1) Belief that the unity of the scientific method – the logic of inquiry is seen across all
sciences (social and natural)
2) The goal of research is to explain and predict
3) Scientific knowledge is testable. Research can be proved only by empirical means, nit
argumentations.
4) The relationship between theory and practice must be objective.
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Anti-Positivism:
- Theoretical approach that considers knowledge and understanding to be the result of
human subjectivity.
- Is more consistent with qualitative research
Quantitative Sociology: Definitions
- Concept: a mental construct that represents some part of the world in a simplified form.
- Variable: a concept whose values change from case to case – characteristics of objects,
people, or groups of people that can be measured.
- Measurement: a procedure for determining the value of a variable in a specific case.
Operational Definition: Description of something that allows it to be measured (providing a
description of how a variable is to be measured).

Reliability vs Validity:
- Reliability: consistency given to a result (consistency in measurement)
- Validity: Accuracy of a given measurement (actually measuring what one intends to
measure).
Relationships Among Variables :
Cause and effect:
- A relationship in charge in one variable causes change in another.
Types of Variables:
- Independent: Variable that causes the change.
- Dependant: Variable that changes.
Correlation: a measure of how strongly two variables are related to eachother.

Spurious Correlation: A false correlation between two or more variables, even though it appears
to be true. Use control to see effect of variables.

Objectivity, Error and Bias:

Objectivity: Defined as a state of personal neutrality when conducting research.
Error: Unintentional and unpredictable, random error.
Bias: Systematic inaccuracies in the data or analysis. Acquiescence bias, social desirability bias.

Qualitative Research:
- In depth, rich examinations.
- Smaller samples, but more contact with participants.
- Inductive
- Interpretive
- Common methods: interviews, participant observations, content analysis, secondary
analysis, participatory action research, multiple research methods.
Week 7: Culture
Culture: A complex collection of values, beliefs, behaviors and material objects shared by a
group and passed on from one generation to the next. It is a human construction.

Components of Culture :
1) Nonmaterial Culture: The intangible and abstract components of society, including values
and norms.
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2) Material culture : The tangible artifacts and physical objects found in a given society.
- Includes symbols, language, values, norms.
Culture is;
- Learned, shared, transmitted, cumulative, human.
Symbols: something that stands for or represents something else (ex: flag)
Symbols are powerful:
- Affect how we view and define ourselves and others.
- Shapes how we think about different categories like female and male, and how we define
race.
- Greatly impact our views and beliefs about people and how we relate to them, (which can
affect people’s access to resources).
Language: shared symbol system of rules and meanings that govern the production and
interpretation of speech and communication.
- People create realties of meaning through language and other symbolic systems.
- Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Argues that language influences how we perceive the world.
- Strong Version (linguistic determinism)
- Weak version (linguistic relativism)
Values and Norms:
- Values: Culturally defined standards by which people define what is desirable and
undesirable., good or bad,
- They are beliefs about ideal goals and behaviors that serve as standards for social life.
- Norms: Culturally defined rules, based on values that outline proper behavior for a
society’s members (laws and sanction).
Ethnocentrism: Tendency to view one’s own cultural as superior to all others.
Cultural Relativity: Appreciating that all cultures have intrinsic worth and should be evaluated
and understood on their own terms.

Mercator Map:
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Week 9: Gender

Sex: A determination of male or female on the basis of a set of socially agreed-upon biological
criteria.
Gender: Refers to the social meanings associated with being male or female.
- One’s biological sex establishes a pattern of gendered expectations that are not
necessarily true or just. Ex: The notion that there are only two genders is a social
construct.
Intersexed: individuals born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that does not fit the binary
definitions of male or female.
- Treated as a medical problem as a result of homophobia, the fear of a difference and the
cultural tendency towards gender binarism. The belief that there are only two sexes which
are opposite to each other.
Transgender: Umbrella term that includes intersex, tomboys, agender, genderqueer and non-
binary.
Cisgender: Gender you we’re born into at birth.

Gender as a social process:

- Through a process of social interaction gender is created and this consequently creates
the social differences that define men and women.
- Process begins with the assignment of sex on the basis of what genitalia looks like at
birth.
Gender a social stratification:
- Gender is stratified differentially and unequally in terms of access to power, status and
prestige.
- Differential ranking and value placed on what women (feminimity) and men
(masculinity) do have how they are expected to behave.
Gender Roles: Some Changes (1950s – 1990s)

Intersectional Analysis:
The simultaneous influence of multiple social relations, including race, gender, ethnicity and
class.
- Gender and race, ethnicity, class, sexuality all work in shaping social outcomes
- Ex: Wage gap for racially marginalized women is greater due to racial inequaity/racism.
- Wage gap between for black men is greater – 33246$ for black men versus 34878$ for
non-black women.
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“Once we realize that there are few pure victims or oppressors, and that each of us derives
varying amounts of penalty and privilege from the multiple systems of oppression that frame our
lives, then we will be in a position to see that need for new ways if thought and action. To get at
that “piece of the oppressor” which is planted deep within each of us; we need at least two
things. First, we need new visions of what oppression is, new categories of analysis that are
inclusive of race, class and gender as distinctive ye interlocking structures of oppression.”
Patricia Collins.

Gender display: the process whereby we preform the roles expected of us by social convention.
- It is from gender displays that advertising borrows so heavily.

Theoretical Frameworks of Gender:

How gender is understood as a system of inequalities or as a system stratification or even how
gender itself is conceptualized depends on the theoretical approach used;
- Symbolic Interaction: Examines the meanings of male/female and of
masculinity/feminimity. Gender is created from social interaction.
- Feminist Theory: Gender is viewed as a socially constructed concept that has significant
and at times negative consequences for both men and women.
- Post-Structuralists: (ex: Judith Butler) argues that there is no coherent or essential self
behind our performances – our identities are fragmented, contradictory, and always in
flux.
- Our “performances” are driven by discourses of power that shape the limits of
possibilities for the construction of out identities. Gender is but one of these
performances.
- Conflict Theory: Gender conflict theorists examine gender by redefining Marx’s concept
of class to refer to groups identified by sex and/or gender, They focus on how gender
affects one’s control, and access to, scarce resources. Ex: Engels argued that in capitalist
societies, private property produced gender stratification.
Week 10: Socialization
Social Experience:
- Socialization: The lifelong social process by which we learn our culture, develop our
personalities and become functioning members of society.
- Personality: Someone’s relatively stable pattern of behaviors and feelings.
- Nurture is our Nature
Nature vs Nurture:
- Nature: Biology, actions and feelings stem from biological roots.
- Nurture: Socialization; We are a product of our socialization.
Social Isolation:
Impact on nonhuman primates: Harlow’s Experiments
- 6 months of complete isolation was enough to permanently disturb development.
Impact on children: Anna, Genie, Orphans
- Years of isolation left children damaged and after intensive rehabilitation effort only
capable of approximating a normal life.
- Anna was permanently damaged, genie’s language remained that of a child.
- Orphanage study shows socialization is a matter of life or death: 1/3 orphans died.
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The Self: Our identity, comprising a set of learned values and attitudes that develops through
social interaction and defines one’s self-image.
George Herbert Mead:
- Self develops with social experience
- Social experience is the exchange of symbol: use
of symbols allows humans t conceive themselves
in relationship to others.
- Understanding intention requires imagining the
situation from the other’s POV; by role-taking, we
become self-aware.
- I: the element of the self that is spontaneous,
creative, impulsive and at times unpredictable.
- Me: helps control the I, the self-reflective part of
the consciousness that thinks about how to behave.
- Generalized other: the attitudes, viewpoints and
expectations of society that we internalize.
Charles Horton Cooley:
Looking glass self:
- Others represent a mirror in which we see ourselves.
- Our self-mage us based on how we think others see us.
- First images of self comes from significant others, who are a part of our primary group.
Du Bois :
- Double consciousness: A sense of self that, in part, defined by others.
- Du Bois applied this term to African Americans specifically.
Agents of Socialization: The individuals, groups, and social institutions that together help people
to become functioning members of society:
- Family
- Education
- Peer Groups
- Mass Media
- Also includes religion, state institutions and economic institutions.

Week 11: Social Inequalities

- Occurs when attributes such as gender, “minority” status, and class affect a person
access to socially valued resources (money, status, power, healthcare, education,
political representation).
Defining Social Stratification:
- As a societies hierarchical ranking of people in social classes. But, stratification occurs
not only through social class;
- It is an institutionalized and structured form of inequality in which categorise of people
are;
- Ranked in a graded hierarchy of superior and inferior ranks.
- These rankings are based on arbitrary criteria.
- These criteria serve to create and perpetuate unequal access to rewards, resources,
privileges and life changes in a society.
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Social Differentiation and Social Inequality:
Difference is a key feature in social stratification;
- They contain no inherent basis for inequality – society evaluates and ranks certain
characteristics and attributes that are perceived/contracted as different.
- Race, class, gender, sexual orientation etc are all dimensions of differential ranking and
an integral feature of social stratification in Canada.
- All systems of stratification are accompanied by a prevailing system (cultural beleifs and
values that justify and support particular social arrangements, including pattern of
inequality).
Mediocracy:
- A system in which resources are distributed fairly on the base of merit.
- It is a myth that propagates the false idea that democratic choice is equally available to all
and people achieve what they deserve and work for
- Contributes to people blaming the victim
Variations in Systems of Stratification and Inequality:
- Closed systems: allow for little change in social position. A social system in which status
is based on characteristics ascribed at birth.
- Open systems: permit much more social mobility. A social system in which status is
based on ascribed status (class).
Caste System: Hindu Caste System:
- Pure caste systems are closed and based on ascription, at birth.
- Each caste is clearly defined and membership determines one’s occupation and social
role.
- Caste rules are strictly enforced
- Caste systems are usually strongly buttressed by
religion.
Class System:
- Refer to social stratification based on both birth
and individual achievements (ascribed and
achieved) characterized by class stratification.
- Social class generally refers to a group of
individuals sharing a position in a social hierarchy.
Max Weber: Class, Status groups and party:
- Class: Classes are stratified according to their
relations to produce and acquisition of goods
- Status groups: People who share similar social
status, lifestyles, world views, occupations, and standards of living are stratified
according to their consumptions of goods
- Party: Organization that attempts to achieve certain goals in a planned and logical manner
– has power to influence social action and change.
- These three distinct but connected systems of stratification can result in status
inconsistency (occupying several differently ranked statuses at the same time).
Social Inequality: The Economy and Capitalism
- The economy: Social arrangements that organize the production, distribution and
consumption of goods. Reflects structures and relations of power and inequality.
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Neoliberalism:
- Can be thought of as an ideology, a mode of governance, a policy package and economic
model.
- As an economic model, rose to prominence in the 1980s. It advocates the transfer of
control of economic factors from public to private sector.
Capitalism:
- Is a social and economic system grounded on the private ownership of the means of
production. 3 distinct features:
1) Private ownership of property.
2) Ability to peruse personal gains and profit.
3) Competition and consumer choice.
Corporation:
The primary organizational structure in capitalist economies is the corporation (corporate
capitalism).
- A legal entity that has rights and liabilities that go beyond those of its individual
members (referred to as shareholders)
- An oligopoly exists when several compagnies control an industry.

Week 12: Race and Racialization:

Race: The Power of an Illusion:

Social inequality is premised on social stratification;
- In a socially stratified system people are ranked in a grader hierarchy of superior and
inferior ranks.
- These ranks are based on arbitrary criteria.
- These criteria serve to create and perpetuate access to social rewards and resources.
- “race” is used as a criteria for this ranking; like gender, social class.
- We live in racial smog. This is a world of racial smog. We can’t help but breathe that
smog. Everybody breathes it. But what’s nice is thay you can recognize that you are
breathing thats the first step… But, it is the first step that requires a major paradigm shift
– a shift in perspective. Alan Goodman,
- Race is defined as; A category of people who have been singled out as inferior or
superior, often on the basis of real or alleged physical characteristics, such as skin colour,
hair texture, eye shape, or other subjectively selected attributes.
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Most scientists believed (erroneously) that races were real and objective subdivisions of homo
sapiens, based on a combination of unalterable physical or genetic characteristics such as;
- Skin colour
- Hair texture
- Body and facial shape
- Genetic disease and metabolic rates
- Distribution of blood groups.
The Great Chain of Being:
- Colonial theory of race (1579)
- Dominated idea about race and racial purity, superiority and inferiority.
- Posited so-called “natural” categories on a hierarchy argued to be established by God or
nature.
Types & Development of Man:
- Note the only women depicted in this is a woman of European descent (white).
Race Defined:
An ideology that maintains that one “race” is inherently superior to another (textbook def)
- Ideas and/or ideals that assert and/or imply the normality or superiority of one social
group over another; together with the institutional power, these idea/ideals are put into
practice in ways that control, exclude or exploit those defined as culturally different or
racially inferior.
- Prejudice accompanies racism but the two aren’t the same.
- Includes processes of racialization; which can include negative and/or “positive”
racialization.
Racialization:
- Described as the process of attributing complex characteristics (athletic ability,
intelligence) to racial categories.
- Processes of racialization can be negative and or positive (i.e. includes color symbolisms
of black-negative and white-positive, which becomes associated with human groups).
Racial classifications of humanity are:
- Arbitrary
- Humans are the most genetically similar of all animals, we share 99.9% of our DNA with
each other.
- There is no correlation between race, genetics and behaviour.
- There are no genetic markers of “race”.
- Our human ancestry can be traced to Africa.
- Our physical diversity appeared among our human ancestors as the result of migration
and living different geographic regions of the world, but also due to mixing.
- Thinking of race as some kind of genetic fact is not only scientifically wrong, it is
socially, politically and psychologically harmful.
Week 13: Sexualities:

Why sexualities rather than sexuality?

- Sexuality includes one’s sexual orientation, sexual identity, sex acts, sexual relations,
sexual commodification and labour, sexual politics and sex health.
- Patterns, norms, mores and regulations (including laws) about sexualities vary over time
and across societies and cultures.
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- There are multiple forms of partnerships that may exclude sexual relations.
- Distinguish between sexual behaviors and sexual identities.
- The meanings and implications of sexual identities and behaviors vary over time and
cross-culturally.
Attitudes about sexuality (countries):

Different Sexualities (A range of sexual identities and behaviors):

- Heterosexual
- Homosexual
- Bisexual
- Pansexual
- Asexual
Historical and Cultural Variability of Sexuality:
- Sexual orientations change fort individuals and societies through space and time.
- There have been and/or are cultures in which homosexuality was/is accepted, even
exalted in some circumstances.
- There are cultures where it is common for sexual practices to vary through the stages of
life, for example, homosexuality in youth, heterosexuality in adulthood.
Variety of Sexual Relationships:
- Monogamy
- Serial Monogamy
- Polygamy, polygyny, polyandry
- Non-monogomy
- Polyamory
- Note the great variability among societies and within societies (class, ethnicity, religion)
in terms of norms and values related to these different forms of sexual relationships.
Class, Gender, and Social Norms, Values and Regulations:
Social norms, values and regulations regarding appropriate sexual behavior is deeply influenced
by social variables like class, gender, age and culture.
- All societies have an incest taboo buy it is not the same everywhere or overtime (not
biologically determined)
- Sexual double-standards between men and women.
- Honor and shame systems.
- Harems, mistresses, consorts of wealthy or aristocratic men
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- Regulation, the legal system and sex work.
Conclusions:
- Multiple sexualities and the norms, values and regulations that influence and govern
sexualities varies through time and across societies and cultures.
- While all societies need ways t ensure biological reproduction takes place the norms,
values and regulations regarding sexualities are all influenced by relationships of power.
Sex: Biological category that distinguishes between females and males.
- Chromosomes: XX for females and XY for males
- Primary Sexual Characteristics: Sex organs involved with the reproductive processes and
which develop in utero.
- Secondary Sex Characteristics: Develop at puberty and are not directly involved in
reproduction; pubic hair, enlarged breasts and facial hair.
- Sex isn’t binary; Intersex: People who are born with sex characteristics that don’t fit
typical binary notions of man and women.
- Klinefelter Syndrome: Having XXY chromosome pairings.
- Triple-X syndrome: XXX chromosome pairings.
- If intersex; body can respond differently to hormones and/or genitals aren’t fully
developed.
Intersex In Society:
- Some accept them as a natural variation.
- Western culture understand sex as an immutable binary; so, we’re seen as in need of
correction.
Gender: Set of social and psychological characteristics that society considers proper for males
and females. (Masculinity and Femininity)
- Gender and Sex are different.
- Minor, average, biological differences are used to justify the widespread gender
stratification.
- Self-presentation
- Gender Expression: Gender as a performance; what you wear, your personality traits and
other factors play a role in one’s gender.
- Gender Identity: A person’s internal sense of their gender.
Sexuality: Shorthand for everything related to sexual behavior: Sex acts, desire, arousal, the
entire experience that is deemed sexual.
- 10% of the US have engaged in same-sex activities and attractions.
- Symbolic Interactionalism: Sexuality is socially constructed.
- Is oral sex just sexual? No lol. Among the Sambia of Eastern Highlands of Papa New
Guinea, young boys perform oral and older men as a rite of passage into adulthood.
- Physically identical acts can have radically different social and subjective meanings.
- Sexual Scripts: Cultural prescriptions that dictate the when, where, how and with whom
of sex, and what that sex means when it happens.
- Structural Functionalism: Since sexual reproduction is necessary for the reproduction of
society, sex has to be organized in some way in order for society to function (by using
sexual scripts to organize sexuality).
- Social Conflict Theory: Regulating sexuality is also a matter of creating and reinforcing
inequalities. Traditionally built on heteronormativity.
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- Heterosexuality is just as socially constructed as any other; as it is majorly more
normalized in society (through law, religion, etc) it makes heterosexuality seem natural,
with other sexualities being alienated.
- Queer Theory: Shows how gender and heterosexuality are tied together.
- Heteronormativity: Based on the idea of two opposite sexes that naturally fit together.
Sexualities: Regulation and Resistance in Canada:
The State of Sexuality:
- Age of consent
- Incest
- Marriage and divorce
- Canadian Labour Code
- Sex Trades
Sexual Violence in the Justice System:
- Treatment of sexual violence within justice systems is one of the most significant
examples of why intersectional analysis is essential.
- Sexual violence has been an element of social domination ck troll, and humiliation
throughout human history.
- It has overwhelmingly been used by men against women, adults, against children, or
heterosexual men against homosexual or transexual.
- It has been intertwined with other aspects of inequality like property law, status and class.
- All the above is intertwined with racialization and ethnic differences.
Sexual Assault and Harassment in Canada:
- Women self-reported 553 000 sexual assaults in 2014.
- Women are 10x more likely to be victims of a police reported sexual assault in 2008.
- Although both men and women experience sexual assault, women accounted for 90% of
victims of police reported sex ass.
- Since 1999, rates of sexual assault have remained relatively unchanged. While the rate of
sexual assaults has remained stable, rates of robbery and physical violence have gone
down, and men are more likely to be victims of these crimes.
- Between 2009 and 2013, rates of police reported sexual assault of women by intimate
partners rose by 17%.
- Each year, sexual assaults cost Canadian society billions of dollars. In 2009, dealing with
sexual assault and relating offenses cost the Canadian economy an estimated 4.8 billion
$.
Sexual Violence and the Justice System:
- Until the 1980s, a conviction on a rape charge required either a confession from the
perpetrator or a witness.
- Until 1984, it was not a crime to sexually assault
one’s spouse.
- Un wake of the MeToo and Time’s Up movements
police and sexual violence support centers have been
seen in large increases in sexual assault reports.
Significant dates in state regulation of homosexuality:
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LGBT Activism in Canada:
- During the 50s and 60s, a “fruit machine” test was used to eliminate homosexual from the
civil service, the RCMP.
- RCMP kept 9000 suspected homosexuals.
- 1969: Stonewall Riots.
- First Gay March in Canada: 1971
- 1974: The Brunswick 4.
- 1977 raid on Le Mystique and Truxx bathhouses demonstrations and the change of
Quebec law.
- 1981: Operation Soap – Toronto Bathhouse raids.
- 1980s Svend Robinson (first openly gay MP) and the struggle for the rights of LGBT.
Law and Sex Trades in Canada:
- English vagrancy laws in England criminalized “prostitutes” at the time Canada was
formed. A women who could not account for her presence in a given location could be
charged as a common prostitute.
- In the first two decades of the 20th century, a moral panic about “white slave trade” led
religious groups, social pursuits, and early feminists to demand tougher laws about
prostitution.
- 1913 Criminal Code: Amendments regarding procurement and bawdy-houses.
- After 1920s it was not until the 70s that prostitution became a national issue again.
- 1972: Vagrancy laws repealed and replaced legislation with criminalized public
solicitation for the purposes of prostitution. The definition of a prostitute as female was
removed.
- Urban clean up and gratification led to police raids and closures on cabarets and other
places where sex trade workers piled their trade pushed it onto the street.

Week 14: Families

The Sociology of the Family:
- This is the study of human sexual reproduction is institutionalized and of how children,
which are the product of sexual unions, are assigned places within a kinship system.
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What is a Family?
- Census family: Couple married or living in common-law with or without children, or a
lone parent with one child living in the same dwelling. ‘Children’ included grandchildren
living with grandparents.
- Economic Family: Two or more persons living in the same dwelling relate blood,
marriage, common-law or adoption
- Household: A group of persons who occupy the same dwelling, do not have a usual place
of residence elsewhere. It may be collective or private dwelling.
Persons per Household in Canada 2016 Census:
- 1 person; 28.2%
- 2 persons; 34.4%
- 3 persons; 15.2%
- 4 persons; 13.8%
- 5+; 8.4%
- Avg: 2.5 persons
Distribution of private households by number of people in Canada (1941-2011):

Factors Contributing to decline of household numbers:

- Decline in the number of farm and farm families
- Decline in birthrate after post-war – baby boomer.
- Increased female labour force participation rate since the 1970s.
- Increase in rates of divorce and separation since “no fault” divorce laws.
- Increase in wealth
- Longer lifespan.
- But note recent increases in 3 generation households.
Families and Marital Status in Canada 2016 Census:
- Total census families: 9 480 730
- Married couples :65.8%
- Common-law couples: 17.8%
- Lone-parent families: 16.4%
- Female parent: 12.8%
- Male parent: 3.6%
Person per Census Family in Canada 2016:
- 2 persons: 50.9%
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- 3 persons: 21.4%
- 4 persons: 19.4%
- 5+: 8.3%
Kinds Of Families:
- Nuclear: Two parents with children
- Extended: Multiple Generations – cousins, aunts and uncles.
- Polygamous: 2+ people.
- Polygyny: 1 man and other wives
- Polyandry: 1 women and multiple husbands.

Family of Orientation:
- Close family (mom, dad, kids, grandparents:
Family of Procreation:
- The individual and his offspring.

Variety of Kinship Systems:

- Multiple types
- 6 basic systems.
- Can create conflicts in terms of cultural diversity.
The Law, Families and Kinships in Canada:
- Legal system in Canada reflects a kind of bilateral kinship system that anthropologists
refer to as an Inuit Kinship System
- Why does this matter? ;
- Parental responsibility and rights: child custody, legal guardianship.
- Taxation: legal dependents and income splitting.
- Employment benefits: who is included
- Inheritance: Spouse and children’s rights.
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- Immigration laws: Family Class immigration.
Kinship Systems:

Social Theory and the Family:

- Structural Functionalism: Use of family? Biological and social reproduction of society.
Primary institution of socialization for children; learn norms around behavior, incest
taboo, sexual/behavioral norms. Within the family, learning certain roles and behavior,
trained for future of adult life. Parsons’ understanding of family: Institution in modern
western societies, provide stabilization to society. Father plays instrumental role, mother
plays expressive role, emotional well-being. Men worked outside, women stay at home,
domestic part of life. Balanced organization, senseful organization of behavior.
- Conflict Theory: Power structures, family isn’t a haven in a heartless world. Structured
by inequalities. Power dynamics. Why does the women need to support emotional and
men to support instrumental role – power dynamic. Gender inequality found in broader
society. Inside families, they can be dangerous. Domestic violence, child violence, sexual
abuse, incest within families. Control over resources, who does the work?
- Symbolic Interactionalism: Symbols, meaning of things. Society is like a play, and we’re
all actors, play roles, stage and backstage aspects of a role. What is the symbolic meaning
of different roles people play in the family? Family is key institution, play roles in how
society reproduces. 30% of any economy is domestic.
Week 15: Health, Aging and Disabilities
- Longer lifespans due to control on infectious diseases, safer food, higher sanitary
expectations and other non-medical social improvements.
- 1880-1920 was the highest years for rapid increase in lifespan.
WHO 7/28/2009: Inequalities are killing people on a grand scale:
- Political, social and economic factors as well as environment is propagating worse off
health due to inequalities in the health sector.
- Health and wellness in society is based on social factors.
- Life expectancy can decline; like during the financial crisis of 2008, or the fall of the
Soviet Union.
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11 Leading Causes of Death:

Social Theory on Health, Aging and Disabilities:

Functionalism:
- Healthcare is one of various institutions to maintain the stability society.
- What does the healthcare system do for modern society? :
- Ensures biological reproduction of the society
- Maintaining a healthy population of workers (paid/unpaid)
- Helping manage health crises originating in disease, disaster, war, social inequalities.
- Contributing to political and economic stability by mitigating things like human
suffering, including that caused directly or indirectly by political, economic, or other
institutions or systems in society.
- Functionalist Perspective
- Healthcare system itself can be viewed as an organic whole with parts contributing to the
stability and maintenance of the whole;
- Division of labour distributes individuals based on skills and abilities (doctors, nurses,
pharmacists, researchers, managers, PSWs, janitors.
- Division of labour distributes responsibilities among health care institutions: acute care
hospitals, pharmacies, clinics, long-term care homes.
- Hierarchies and authority structures (doctor/patient, doctor/nurse) ensure rationality and
efficiency. ‘
Conflict Theory and the Health System:
Power differentials based on ownership and control over material and symbolic resources explain
how the health system relates to other aspects of society and how these differentials play out
within the healthcare system. Material and symbolic resources include;
- Physical and intellectual property
- Knowledge and credentials
- Status based on citizenship, class, racialization, ethnicity, gender, ability.
Physical and Intellectual Property Issues in Health Care:
- Owners and managers of health care facilities versus patients, clients and workers.
- Owner of patients and drugs manufacturing compagnies versus clients and workers.
- Capitalist health care compagnies’ first responsibilities is to their shareholders (the
owners). They have a specific interest in increasing their market (prescription drugs,
technological advances) and reducing costs (downsizing care staff in LTCH.
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Knowledge and Credential Issues in Health Care:

- Percent distribution of physicians by specialty and gender 2000-2019

- Medical students, compared to the census population, are more likely to have grown up in
high-income households and parents who are professionals with high levels of formal
education. Medical students are less likely to be black, aboriginal, and to have grown up
in a rural setting
Conflict Theory: Knowledge and Credential Issues in the Health Care

Class and Status Issue in Health Care:

- There are many social determinants of health.
- Health is related to variables such as employment, income, place of residence and these
are influenced by social class, racialization, ethnicity, gender and others.
- Health care services administered are received related to all of the above.
- Power differentials within the health care system (Dr vs Nurse)
Symbolic Interactionalism: Poststructuralism and Health & Illness
- What is the “script” for the various roles in a health care system?
- Whose understanding of normal goes into perception of health and ability?
- Health often us understood through a male and abled lens
- Difficulties encountered by those who have certain disabilities can be eliminated or
mitigated by changes in the built environment, the organization at work.
- The presentation of symptoms is influenced by culture, that in turn reflects class, rase,
ethnicity, gender and sexual differences.
Post Structural Theories of Discourse and Health
- Discourse and creation of ideas about normal health and illness: those with “cultural and
symbolic capital” get to define what is normal.
- The way illnesses are described and expressed vary. Those who know how to speak and
represent themselves in terms that doctors, nurses and other health professional use are at
an advantage. This may be true for mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, or
pain.
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Social Detriments of the Impact of Covid-19: Public Health Ontario.

- Elderly in long term care homes have been impacted heavily. Controversy within these
care homes, with how the conditions are there for the residence aided the contraction
among the most vulnerable population.
- Early findings report and unequal social and economic burden of covid-19
internationally.
- Social determinants of health; gender, socioeconomic position, race, ethnicity,
occupation, race, ethnicity all play a role in the risk of infection. Namely, when they limit
ways to physically distance
- Existing social inequalities of health increase risk of severe covid-19 outcomes through
increased prevalence of underlying medical conditions or decreased access to health care.
- In the US, 33% of hospitalized covid-19 patients were black, when 18% of the local
residence are black.
Week 16: Religion

Sociological definition of Religion and its fundamental characteristics:

- A set of organized beliefs about the supernatural or spiritual worlds that guides
behaviours and joins people into a community of believers.
- Beliefs based on faith.
- Involves supernatural forces or spiritual worlds.
- Involves rules or guidance for behavior.

Types of Religious Beliefs:

- Animism: Attribution of a soul to plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena.
- Shamanism: Consists of a practitioner that is believed to interact with a spirit world
through altered states of consciousness, like a trance.
- Polytheism
- Monotheism
Types of Religious Orientations:
- Asceticism
- Mysticism
- Inner-worldly
- Other-worldly
Max Weber’s Classification of World Religions:

Sociological Types of Religion:

1) New Religious Movements
- Informal group
- Little or no structure
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- Often counter-cultural
- Based on charismatic and sometimes authoritarian leaders
- Eclectic and syncretistic
- Many are apocalyptic or millenarian (the end of the world and a new heaven or earth will
replace it. (The Peoples’ Temple, The Order of the Solar Temple, The Branch
Dravidians, The Southcottians, The Ghost Dance
- Often short-lived but most major religious begin this way.
2) Sect:
- Small groups
- Routinized Charisma (after the death of the original charismatic leader)
- Voluntary membership based on conviction
- Often dissidents from an established church.
- Many Christians denominations begin this way
3) Church
- Formally organized institution
- Integrated into society
- May have professionally trained clergy
- Denominational churches may be related parts of a larger religion in the sociological
sense (this catholics, Anglicans, episcopalains, Methodists, shias or sunnis)
Church and State:
- Ecclesia: State religion (Anglicanism in the UK, Roman Catholicism in Italy,
Lutheranism in Sweden)
- Theocracy: God or supernatural being or their earthly representative is the head of state
(Vatican is a theocratic absolute monarchy or Iran is sometimes labeled as a theocratic
republic)
- Civil/Secular Religion: Sacred religious symbols and some ideas integrated into the State
and broader society.

Sociological Theories of Religion:

Functionalism:
- Emilie Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912).
- Durkheim’s Core Ideas:
1) Religion is a human creation
2) Beliefs in god and supernatural powers or forces are human projections and extensions.
3) These extensions or projections create a collective conscience of shared values and
meanings that reflect human powers and society.
4) Through this it provides a sense of social power that can inspire collective action – what
he called collective effervescence.
5) All societies divide the world into two binary categories; The Sacred and Profane.

Other Basic Functions of Religion:

1) Religion provides meaning and a sense of purpose in life.
2) Religion provides moral values and behavior.
3) Religion promotes social stability and a sense of belonging
4) Religion promotes and provides (in institutional terms) social service.
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Conflict Theory:
- “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul
of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people” Karl Marx.
- Core Ideas:
1) Religion is a human invention
2) Religious ideas are part of the ideological “superstructure” of societies.
3) Religious beliefs offer an inverted consciousness of the world.
4) Religious beliefs offer a theory of the world in popular form, including moral sanctions,
consolations and justifications.
5) Religion is a form of expression and protest against real suffering.
6) True happiness demands that people see through illusions to understand how the social
and natural world really works.

Durkheim vs Marx on Religion: Who is Correct?

1) Religion is and can be a justification for inequality and oppression.
2) Religion does offer hope and motivation in struggles against oppression and inequality. It
can be an expression and protest against real suffering.
3) Humans clearly do classify the world on a continuum between the sacred and the profane.
4) Religion does offer meaning/purpose to life, an explanation of the world.

Feminist Theory and Religion:

- Like conflict theory in the emphasis on how the manor religions have patriarchal and
masculinist features;
- All powerful male goes or images of gods as male at the top of hierarchies.
- Male prophets
- Domination and control over female and the feminine
- Fundamental religions oppose female issues; like divorce, abortion, sexual freedoms,
equality of status and occupation.
Symbolic Interactionalism, Poststructuralism and Religion:
- Focus on religion as a meaning-making through ritual
and discourse.
- Rites of passage
- Language and ritual as creator of social reality;
christening, bar mitzvah, marriage, funeral.
- Bodily discipline and embodiment.
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Week 17: Education

Part 1:
- The process by which particular knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that seem
admirable in a given society is transmitted from one generation to the next.
- Early education, informal, mimicry.
- Language learning is informally and unconsciously in the early years.
- Children pick up behavior by mimicking those around them.
- Highly developed and formalized systems of education.
- Kids between 6-18 spend most time in a formally institutionalized setting.
- Immigrants: Formalized language learning is important.
- Sociologists of Education: Relationship between sociable variables and context and the
kind of experience a person has, and thus how knowledge would develop.
- Why is some knowledge more practical that others? Social and cultural knowledge to be
a professional in a given setting.
- Knowledge;
- Howard Gardner: 8 different forms of intelligence: linguistic, logic-mathematical,
musical, spatial, bodily, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic.
- Why some societies might value some knowledge, and the social implications.
Part Two:
Functionalism and Education:
- Parsons: To see the educational system has a mechanism for sorting people into the
various kinds of positions and functions a society must have.
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- In liberal democracies; individuals are sorted.
- Critisisms:
- Is society a meritocracy. No, it isn’t.
- Who determines the division of labour, wages/salaries, organization of work? Those with
a higher influence or financial assets will normally have an ability to influence how the
rest of society is set up.
- Who determines curriculum, assessment techniques, and grading systems?
- Any educational institutions resourced equally.
- Biggest determinate of which social class we will end up in is dependent on the social
class of your parent and wider social changes that take place in society.
Conflict Theory: The Explicit Curriculum as Ideology
- Canada is a meritocracy
- Success or failure is an individual’s responsibility
- Anyone can make it if they try. Hello
- The law is blind
- Capitalism is the best economic system.
The Hidden Curriculum:
- Obedience
- Respect for authority
- Conformity
- External reward system
- Identity stereotypes
- Time regimentations
- Follow rules.
Criticisms of Conflict Theory:
- What social class are teachers and administration in a public school system?
- Is the professional middle class necessarily on the side on owners and managers in
capital.
- Are nit skills such as reading, writing, math, and science knowledge necessary of critical
thinking.
- Are nit skill such as cooperation and time management skills in their own right.
- Do not students have some agency?
Symbolic Interactionalism and Education:
- What are the scripts and roles taught and learned in the interactions within schools?
- Labelling theory and self-fulfilling prophecy: Within the school systems, students get
labelled, teachers must make decisions based on presumptions.
- Interactions between people in the system and meanings their interactions take on.
Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Social and Cultural Capital:
- Social capital is social connections and relationships.
- Cultural capital is knowledge of the symbolic goods, tastes, and dispositions of a given
social class or social milieu?
- Teachers and administrators tend to come from or have learned to become members of
the professional middle class with a distinctive set of tastes, dispositions and social
connections.
Basil Bernstein: Language codes and education:
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- Elaborated Codes: Children from families where parents have a higher education have
developed a higher vocabulary that is consistent with what would be taught in school
systems.
- Restricted Codes: Children from working class or lower-class backgrounds tend to
develop
Feminist Critiques of the Education System:
- Gender Stereotyping
- Gender Streaming
- Gender bias in extracurricular programs and funding decisions.
- The gender ceiling in the teaching and educational professions.
IRS: Residential Schools
- 1880s-1996
- System designed to assimilate aboriginal people into broader white population of Canada.
- Education as a system of social control.
- Cultural Genocide
- United Nations: Should cultural genocide be added to the broader terms of a genocide.
- 150 000 children separated from families.
- Death Rate: As high as 60%.
- Trained to become low-level workers.
Mass Education in Canada:
- New phenomena in global terms.
- Education took off after WW2
Literacy Development (1800s-2016)
- 1800: 88% was illiterate.
- South Asian/African countries have much lower rates
Week 18: Media

What is Media?
1) An intervening or intermediate agency or substance.
2) Conscious technical (human) senses such as hearing, vision, touch.
3) Modern sense, such as a newspaper or broadcasting service as a medium for something
else such as advertising, distributing info.
Media and Communication:
- All animals have forums of communication, but humans have unique capacities for
linking specific meanings (signifiers: sound, image, touch, smell)
- Human language is unique in the variability of connections between images (written
symbols) and sounds and meanings.
- Species usually don’t have different languages but homo sapiens sapiens does. There is a
school of linguistic thought and research that investigates (linguistic relativity) – how
language influences perception and cognition.
Mass Media, social media, and Mass Communication:
- Mass media: devices designed to communicate messages to a mass audience.
- Mass communication: the transmission of messages by a person or group through a
device to a large audience.
- Social media: devices that allow users to create and share information quickly and
broadly while offering the potential to build social communities.
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Origins of Human Communication:
- Various ways to communicate, but the complexity of human speech is unique.
- Scientists debate when homo sapiens developed thus ability.
- 300 000-2 mil years ago.
- For most of human history we lived in an oral culture.
Origins of Writing:
- Prehistoric cave art: at least 40 000 years ago, people were making visual representations
including using abstract symbols.
- Cuneiform: Writing begins with clay tokens that seem to have recorded numbers of
livestock or other objects. In this sense, writing might begin as money.
- The evolution into the flat clay tablets used by the Sumerians circa 3500 BCE.
- Chinese writing dates back about 1600 BCE during the Shang Dynasty.
- Alphabet invented circa 1500 BCE in the Sinai region.
- Physical media: Cave walls, bones, pottery, clay tablets, metal, papyrus, wood, animal
hides, paper.
- Paper:
- Papyrus isn’t paper
- Paper is made from a solution that results in interlocking of cellulose fibres.
- Invented in china more than 2000 years ago.
- Spread through middle east starting around 800 AD
- First Papermill in Europe built in Muslim Spain in the 11th century.
- Italy becomes important paper making country in 1300s. Invents animal-based sizing and
watermarks.
Paper and the Print Press Changes Everything:
- Block Printing (China 9th Century BCE)
- Moveable type printing press (Germany 1450)
- Gutenberg bible and shortly after the first
published music.
- Books become wildly available for the first time.
- First newspaper date to 1605.
Electronic Forms of Communication:
- Telegraph in 1840s
- Phonograph in the 1870-1880s.
- Motion pictures in 1895
- Radio invented in 1927 but takes off in 1950s
(CBC)
- Internet invented in 1967 but really takes off
during the 1980s especially after 1989 with the
creation of the world wide web.
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Means of Communication
- Media fundamentally changes the way individuals interact.
- Harold Innis: You can distinguish media based on time-based media (representations of
certain media) – stone kind of constructions. Tends to enforce traditional ways of doing
things, as it transcends generations. Space-biased forums of media: Can take it with you,
spread this information.
- Rise of Nation-State: Rise of newspaper very important.
- David Harvey: Space-biased media creates space time compression. Much smaller world
because of new communication techniques. Worries about the depth of information being
extremely shallow.
- Marshall Mclewin: Hot Media (a lot of information) vs Cold Media. Passive Media
where you absorb it.
Week 19: Work and Political Economy:

Classifications of Societies and Economies:

- Hunting and gathering.
- Horticulture
- Agriculture
- Industrial
- Post-industrial
- Domestic Mode of Production
- Slave Mode of Production
- Feudal mode of production
- Capitalist mode of production
- Socialist/Communist mode of production.
- Modes of production:

Classification of Systems of Exchange or Distribution:

1) Reciprocity (positive-balanced-negative) – Based on principles of kinship, affection
and/or friendship.
2) Redistribution: Based on principles of kinship and/or political structures.
3) Market: Set price market (price determined by custom (sacred or profane) and politics.),
Price-making market: Price set by supply and demand.
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- Price-making marketing exchange was not the dominant form of exchange.

Economic Activity is Embedded in Society and Culture:

- Production, distribution, and consumption of economic goods instituted and embedded in
social culture practices.
- Gift exchange, feasting, and celebration related to calendrical and other rituals and
ceremonies (Christmas, wedding, marriage, graduation). These collectively are major
drivers of demand in the economy.
- Karl Polanyi: Production, distribution and consumption vary historically and cross-
culturally depending on social and political structures. Friendship and kinship reciprocity.
Center authority (state or non-state) and redistribution. Both continue to be important.
- Mark Granovetter: Even in societies dominated by price-making markets economic
activities rely on social relations. Trust, malfeasance and the structure of firms. Labour
markets and strong and weak social ties.
Tensions between price-marketing and society:
- Price-making markets linked with profit motive
- Price-making markets require certain political and legal environments.
- Price-making markets tend to treat labour, land, and money as they are like any other
commodity.
- Human beings and nature have agency.
- As the economy becomes disembedded from society to meet demands of price-making
markets, humans and nurture react.
Conclusion:
- Okiomania: Ancient Greek, refers to household management.
- Household or societal management versus so called “laws” of the economy and the
market.
- There is no economy without society without systems of production, distribution, and
consumption. Thus, the “economy” and society must be studied as interrelated systems.
Mark Granovetter on Social Networks and the Labour Market:
- Biggest source of inequality is differences in the rewards to different jobs people have.
- Professional, technical & managerial = higher white-collar work.
- Survey of Workers: Initial (100 ppl), Second survey (182 ppl)
- Findings: 56% of workers found new jobs through personal contacts. 75% in highest
income categories found jobs through social networks. Difficulties changing jobs when
worked for 5+ years. Easier if 2-5 years.
- If there’s a group that has poor representation in an occupation, then its harder for that
group to break in.
- Social Policy: Makes use of natural social networks. If only white men bring in other
white men to their work via natural social networks, than they are advantaged.
Work and Labour:
- Work a general term for activity and the product of activity.
- From old English wrycan (verb) and weoric (noun)
- Now often restricted in meaning paid employment.
- And often a sense of something unpleasant, toil.
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- Hence, the working class as a category of people must sell their ability to work (labout
power) at tsks many of which people prefer not to do.
- “the [root word] is uncertain buy may be related to slipping or staggering a burden”.
- Note that association with pain, and trouble. The birth is still described as “going into
labour”.
- Divisions of labour, labour power, the labour market, cost of labour, and the labour
movement.
Division of Labour in Society:
- Durkheim and mechanical versus organic solidarity: Functionalist. In simple societies, it
was mechanical solidarity because people we’re together because people did everything.
Once you got to industrial society, we start developing organic forms of solidarity. As the
division of labour gets more developed, systems and institutions like trade organizations
would help develop organic solidarity.
- Adam Smith; Division of labour, and labour productivity. The more sophisticated the
division of labour becomes, the more productive an economy could be. How does the
division of labour impact social categories?
- Harry Braverman; Division of labour in society can be used as a way of separating
conception versus execution. Deskilling. When conception and execution are separated,
deskilling occurs.
- Karl Marx: Theory of Alienation: Property relationships and ownership relationships. In
capitalism: workers are politically and legally free, but given we don’t own the means of
production, we must sell our labour power to be used by workers. 4 dimensions of
Alienation: Product of labour, process of labour, others, self.
Domestic Labour Debate:
1) How much unpaid labour goes into supporting the economy?
2) What does unpaid labour?
3) Who directly benefits from unpaid labour?
4) Who indirectly benefits from unpaid labour?
Labour Force Participation by Gender:
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Work, Labour, and Social Issues:

- Child Labour: International Labour Organization – 218 million children (5-17) work, 152
million are victims of child labour.
- Slavery and bonded labour: The world anti-slavery organization says approximately 40
million people are in slave or bonded labour.
- Employment Equity: Unequal access to paid employment and equal pay for equal work
continue to be issues in Canada and on a global scale.
- Workplace safety: ILO estimates 2.3 million deaths from work-related accidents and
diseases every year (6000/day).
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Week 20: Globalization
- The world-wide exchange of money, goods, and services as well as the sociocultural
changes that occur with increased trade and human contact.
- Globalization is about intensifying planetary connectivity.
Forms of Globalization:
- Each are unique, but overlap one of another.
1) Embodied Globalization:
- The movement of people across the planet.
- Oldest form of globalization.
- Migrants, travelers, etc..
- In 2019; 1.4 billion overseas arrivals throughout the world, 7 billion international and
domestic trips. In 2018; travel was worth 12.33 trillion USD.
2) Disembodied Globalization: The extension of social relations through the movement of
immaterial things and processes.
- Words, images, text messages, etc…
- “Perhaps the dominant form of globalization today – the era of “digital globalization”.
3) Object-Extended Globalization: The global movement of objects across the planet.
Market and non-market forms of distribution and exchange of goods (raw materials,
agricultural products, manufactured goods from steel to plastic, to clothing, to toys,
etc…)
4) Organization-Extended globalization: The extension across the planet of economic,
social, and political organizations.
- Transnational corporations
- Fast-food operations
- World Trade Organizations
- United Nations
- Doctors without borders and other transnational NGOs.
Globalization Through History:
1) Embodied Globalization:
- “Out of Africa” 60000-100000 years ago at least but highly debated.
- All continents but Antarctica peopled 10000-13000 BCE at least.
- Large flows of historically known peoples – Germanic, Turkic, Hunnic.
- The African slave trade forcibly moved at least 12 million people to the Americas.
- “Great Atlantic Migration” form Europe to NA 1840s to the 1960s 50 million plus.
2) Disembodied Globalization:
- Spread of major language families – eg. Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asiatic.
- Spread of various systems of writing from circa 4000BCE
- Spread of mathematical knowledge, technological knowledge, and major religions.
3) Object-Extended Globalization:
- Ancient Trading Routs:
- Silk Road: silk, porcelain, spices, fur, amber.
- Indian Ocean Trade: Silk, spices, gold, food stuffs.
- North American Trade Routs – The Bruce Trail: furs, copper, stone.
4) Organization-Extended Globalization:
- Ancient empires
- Ancient religious organizations.
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- Guilds.
- Ancient colonies – Roman Brittan, Viking settlements in other parts of Europe, Iceland,
Greenland and NA.
Globalization in the 15th Century:
- The European “Age of Exploration and Discovery” 1450 onward.
- The fall of Constantinople in 1452 and the serving of the Silk Road.
- The rise of capitalism: private property, price-making markets, profit motive.
- Origins of multinational and transnational corporations
- Major early commodities: slaves, sugar, gold, silver, fish, fur.
- European colonies and then colonization around the world.

Is Globalization Improving or Undermining Human Well-Being:

- Globalization transfers wealth from poorer areas to richer ones.
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Global Poverty:
- Global extreme poverty rate fell to 9.2% in 2017, from 10.1% in 2015. This is equivalent
to 689 million people living on less than 1.90$/day. At higher poverty lines, 24.1% of the
world lived on less than 3.20$/day and 43.6% on less than 5.50$/day.

Alternative Measures of Human Well-Being:

- United Nations Human Development Index: life expectancy, expected years of schooling,
mean years of schooling, gross national income per capita (GNI).
- UN World Happiness Index” GDP per capita, life expectancy, generosity, freedom from
corruption, having someone to count on. Freedom to make life choices.
- Life satisfaction index: Mood, satisfaction with relationships, achieved goals, self-
concepts, and self-perceived ability to cope with daily life.
Week 21: Society and the Natural Environment
- Environmental Sociology: The study of interactions between societies and the natural
environment.
Human Orientations to the Natural World:
Nature as a warehouse for human use and domination.
- Note the connection to religious orientations Max Weber labelled “inner-worldly”
- Note the link to productivism.
Nature as a sacred and spiritual value of which humans should be stewarts and protectors.
- Connection to religious orientations Max Weber labelled “other-worldly”.
- Connection to animism.
Natural Environment and Human Society in Harmony
- Sustainable development
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Is Sustainable Development an Oxymoron:
How do we achieve sustainable development?
- Answer 1: Marketize nature - give everything a price either directly by privatizing air,
soil, etc; or indirectly through taxation.
- Answer 2: Overturn capitalism as an economic system.
Criticisms 1:
1) Individual capitalists, corporations, or governments benefit from increases in
consumption - where is the incentive to reduce consumption?
2) Value is only defined in economic terms – what about the essential non-economic value
and characteristics of nature?
3) How do we determine the “real” economic value of nature given that markets are prone
to capture by special interests?
Criticisms 2:
- The alternatives to to date have also been premised on growth and have produced
ecological disasters.
Ending the “Treadmill of Production”:
- The contradiction between promises of endless economic growth and sustainability,
- How do we measure growth?
- How much consumption is enough?
- What is human well-being and happiness?
Anthropocentrism and Human Exceptionalism:
- The view that human beings are separate from, and above, the rest of the natural world
and natural processes.
Environmental Issues and Social Inequality:
- Environmental racism.
- Class-based exposures to occupational and other
dangers to health.
- Global inequalities in production of waste and
pollution
- Graph: Global warming has increased global
economic inequalities.

GDP:
- The unduplicated value of goods and services produced during a period that is available
for final domestic consumption. The National Economic Accounts record value of GDP
from two perspectives, as income arises from production and as final expenditure on
gods and services produced. In real terms (that is, adjusted for price change), GDP is
representative of the volume of economic activity given period. The national production
account provides a measure of gross value added by industry – toral output (or sales)
LESS INTERMEDIATE consumption.
What is Counted in GDP:
- Product will only be covered once in its life time.
- Current transactions involving assets and property produced in a previous period won’t
be in the current GDP.
- Not included: government social security and welfare payments, current exchanges in
stock and bonds, changes in the value of financial assets.
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- Since GDP measures the market value of goods and services, economic activates that do
not pass through the regular market channels are excluded in. the computation of GDP. It
doesn’t include activities that go in black market channels. This is particularly important
to note when looking at third world countries that may have a significant part of their
economy involved in the sale of black market goods, in which case their level of
production wouldn’t accurately reflect the GDP.
Theories of Value:
- Neo-classical economics: Value = price X quantity.
- Labour theory of value: Value is = to the amount of direct and indirect labour inputs
required to produce a good.
- However, nature also produces value, but we cannot really appreciate that unless we get
beyond current measures of value.
- Use Value: Value determined by physical characteristics, what makes it useful.
- Exchange Value: Value that comes when a use-value is exchanged for something else,
it’s value as a commodity.
Nature as a Fictitious Commodity:
- “To allow the market mechanisms to be the sole director of the fate if human being and
their natural environment would result in the demolition of society. For the alleged
commodity “labour power” cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left
unused, without affecting also the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this
particular commodity. Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and
landscapes defiled, rivers polluted… the power to produce good and raw materials
destroyed. Undoubtedly, labour, land, and money are essential to a market economy. But
no society could stand the effects of a system of crude fictions even for the shortest
stretch of time produced against the ravages of the satanic mill” Polanyi.
Other problems with valuing the environment based on exchange value:
1) Discri9mination against future generations and the poor.
2) Neo-colonialism, racism and the externalization of costs.
3) EDP and environmental disasters
4) In short term, therefore, disasters have a negative impact on output, income, and
employment. Measured by GDP, recovery spending may lead to higher output and
employment after a period of time. Even this positive effect, however, is somewhat of an
illusion because GDP typically doesn’t account for all economic losses after a disaster,
notably loss of capital.
Week 22: Crime, Law, and Regulation

Criminology: The body of knowledge regarding crime as a social phenomenon. It includes

within its scope the process of law making, breaking laws, and reacting to the breaking of laws.
- Development of criminal law and its use in defining crime.
- The causes of law-breaking behaviour.
- Societal responses to crime and criminal behaviour.
Crime vs Deviance:
- Crime: Behaviour ir actions (including negligence) that requires a formal response
through social control and warrant some social intervention.
- Deviance: Behaviour or actions that violate certain social norms that may or may not be
illegal.
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- Howard Becker: Whether or not an act is deviant depends on the people’s reaction
Classical Criminology and Rational Choice Theory:
- Criminology developed in the 19th century as part of the broader move to apply scientific
methods to the analysis of societies.
- It was influenced by the philosophy of utilitarianism as espoused by people such as
Jeremy Bentham
- The theory that actions are right in so far as they tend to promote overall happiness.
- People are rational creatures with free will who peruse their own pleasure
Basic Beliefs of Classical Criminology:
1) Crime is a rational choice that people make – they have free will and this can choose
whether or not to break the law.
2) Criminality is the result of a cost/benefit analysis regarding the effort and reward
following or breaking the law.
3) Fear of punishment is what controls a person’s choices.
4) Society’s ability to control criminal behaviour is based upon the measured severity of
punishment, certainty of punishment, and the speed with which justice is applied.
Biological Determinism and Crime:
- Rational evil versus fated evil.
- Cesare Lamborso (1935-1909): criminal man can be identified by his anatomical
characteristics - asymmetrical face, large ears, eye defects.
Social Constructionism vs Rational Choice Theory and Biological Determinism:
- Since criminal law regarding crime varies historically, socially, and culturally, there are
no biological determinants of criminality.
- Linkages between anatomy and criminal behaviour have been disproven.
- Rationality depends on context.
- The notion of reward and punishment is socially determined
Sociological Approaches to Crime:
- Ecological distribution of crime
- Crime and social change
- Interactive nature of crime itself.
Functionalism and Durkheim’s concept of anomie:
- Anomie: norms are confused due to social and economic changes.
- Robert Merton’s Strain Theory: Mid-range theory, culturally defined goals cannot be
achieved through legitimate means.
- Social structures thus generate criminal behaviour.
- Cloward and Ohlin Illegitimate Opportunity Theory: Mid-range theory, deviant learning
environments, differentiation among gangs: criminal, conflict and retreatism.
Conflict Theory:
- Legal system protects the dominant class in society.
- In capitalist societies this means the owners of the means of production.
- Concept of equality before law hides the fact that those who don’t own or control the
means o production have fewer choices than those who do.
- Laws that defend social and economic inequalities create criminogenic environments.
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Symbolic Interactionalism:
- Differential Association Theory: Mid-range, criminality is learned behaviour – social
interactions with friends, peers, family. Critique: what about crimes of passion
- Labelling Theory: Mid-range, labels are internalized, labels are recidivism, critiques:
what about so-called secret deviants and criminals.
Feminist Theory:
Focus on social norms including criminal law that is oppressive for women;
- Abortion, domestic violence and rape and sexual harassment laws.
Representation and Treatment of Female Criminality:
- Female criminals as mad or irrational
- Social conditions (the criminogenic environment) some women face: sex workers,
poverty, racialization.
Sociology of Law: The analysis of laws, regulations, legal decisions, and the administration og
criminal justice in a social context.

Canadian Law:
- Guiding principle is the ‘rule of law’: no person is above the law, and the power of the
stare shouldn’t be applied arbitrarily
- Procedures should promote fairness and equality
- Rules should be applied uniformily across society.
Politicians’ Careers Raise Questions for our Democracy:

Identity of Law Makers: Federal Politicians (2019 Election):

- Visible Minority: 50 MPs comprising 14.8% (versus 22.3% of pop.)
- Indigenous: 10 MPs comprising 2.9% of MPs (vs 5% pop.)
- Gender: 98 women were elected comprising 28.9% of MPs (versus 50.4% of the pop.)
- LGBTQ: 4 elected (down from 6 in 2015) comprising 1% of MPs (vs 3% of pop.)
Gender and Policing:
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Race, Ethnicity and Policing in Canada:

- In 2018, 8% of police officers identified as
visible minority
- In 2018, 4% of police officers identified as indigenous
- 62% of officers in First Nations policed services were indigenous.
- % of Indigenous Officers in stand-alone municipal forces, the OPP, RCMP, or SQ ranged
from 1-8%.
- According to the 2016 Census of Canada 22.3% of the population identified as a visible
minority and 5% identified as Indigenous
Some of the Big Issues in Law and Society:
- Differential enforcement of the law: BLM, Murdered Indigenous Women, Protection of
LGBTQ, white male overrepresentation in police force.
- Unequal access to justice: Legal aid, corporate money, unrepresentative judiciary, just-in-
time-justice, differential sentencing.
- Corporate vs Public Interest: Shareholders and banks vs Workers, tax loopholes and tax
havens, estate taxes.
To begin, a way in which social welfare and prison reform are linked is to privileges. Namely,
the idea of the Ontario government rehabilitation plans was to remove any sort of item that
would be seen as a privilege, this included video games, smoking, television, and other
commodities (McElligot, 2007). Programs like these were made to create a negative environment
for individuals who are relying on government assistance, as these individuals are treated worse
off compared to those in a higher working class.

Week 23: Social Change and Collective Behaviour

- Social change: Changes in the typical gestures of a society over time.
- Collective Behaviours: Behaviours that occur when people come together to achieve a
meaningful short-term goal.
- Social Movements: Collection of people who are organized to bring about or resist social
change.
Life Cycle of Social Change:
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Casual Factors in Social Change and Social Theory: Technology, demography, economic,
conflict and war, ideas, government, individuals, social movements.

Social Theory and Social Change:

1) Functionalism and Equilibrium Theory: Societies try to maintain themselves, stability.
Reproduction is necessary. If something changes; the idea is if something changes in one
area, it will change in other areas as well due to a necessity to maintain equilibrium.
Problem: societies change a lot, the thought of equilibrium can be troublesome, change is
inevitable.
2) Conflict Theory and Class Struggle: Marx; Major conflicts that drive social change?
Major conflicts are economic; leads to class struggle. In domestic mode of production
might be a generational struggle. Different modes of production create different class
struggles.
3) Evolutionary and Neo-evolutionary: Darwinism and Technological Determinism: Dark
and negative, human societies are constantly in competition, at odds. Darwin was highly
influenced by capitalism. Change is inevitable.
4) Cyclical Theory: sensate and ideational webs and flows.
Collectivity’s:
- When humans are in groups, we exhibit a behaviour we wouldn’t do in other
circumstances, in large groups.
- Localized collectivity’s: Casual crowd, at a same place for non-personal reasons.
- Conventional Crowds: Ways that people must behave, specific cultural gathering. How
you dress and behave. Can be formal or semi-formal. Code of conduct.
- Expressive Crowds: Crowds that get together to express emotions/feelings about a
specific phenomenon or issue. Ex: Protestors. Can sometimes turn into a mob, then a riot.
- Dispersed Collectivity: Social media aided the development. Physically dispersed groups
that share information, participate in online events. Rumours. Attempt of social control.
- Physical Collectivity: Crowds in physical spaces.
- Being in a group has an impact on individual behaviour.
- Le Bon’s Contagion Theory: Idea of when you’re in a crowd, you develop a sense of
anonymity; so, the normal self-control is changed. Because of others; we are more
suggestible to others behaviour, mimicry at times. Criticism: become a different person
from crowds. Hard to prove.
- Convergence Theory: Takes a certain kind of person to be in an environment. It isn’t the
crowd that changes behaviour, rather, it’s the people with certain interests to certain
behaviours are drawn to situations where those behaviours might happen.
- Symbolic Interactionalism: Emergent Behaviour Theory: Human’s sense of meaning and
significance are worked through interactions with others. As such, these interactions
generate the norm. Important area of research: we do tend to live in large groups.
Technology provides a means for dispersed collectivity’s to interact.
Social Movements:
- Political rights and social protections that are taken-for-granted today that we’re the result
- Elimination of slavery, right to vote, right of due legal process, right to organize unions,
regulations regarding the length of the workday and work week, employment insurance,
public education, public pensions, public health insurance.
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Formal Social Movements:

- Not localized
- Bureaucratic oriented
- Outside existing power structures
- Integrated into society
- PETA.
Informal Social Movements:
- Local, short lived
- Often charismatic local leader
- Members have personal stake in outcome.
Revolutionary Social Movements:
- Seek a complete reorganization of society
- Typically emerge when previous efforts to bring change failed or proven inadequate.
- Ex: Arab Spring.
Reformist Social Change:
- Work within the existing social structure to address specific issues
- Ex: BLM, MADD
Reactionary Movements:
- Often reacting to social, economic, or political reform
- Seek a return to past
- Ex: Tea Party
Life Cycles of Social Change:
1) Emergence/incipience
2) Coalescence
3) Bureaucratization/Institutionalization
4) Decline/Disillusion
5) Learning/Reflection
6) Re-growth
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Relative Deprivation Theory:
- Sense of well-being and justice is subjective
- Based on comparison to others
- Problem: Those who are objectively deprived are not necessarily driven to complain or
protest. – so what actually drives the relative sense of deprivation and fairness?
Mass Society Theory:
- Industrialization, urbanization and mobility.
- Diminished social ties
- Increased sense of alienation and vulnerability
- Social movements provide a sense of belonging and community.
- Problem: How disconnected are people? Social connectedness contributes to group
efforts.
Value-Added Theory (Neil Smelser):
1) Social conduciveness: Identification of source of problem or issue.
2) Social strain: People’s expectations are not met.
3) Growth and Spread of a Generalized Belief: Peoples belief’s causes of a solutions to
problems
4) Precipitating Incident: Spark
5) Mobilization of Action: Readiness for action
6) Social control: Involvement of formal agents of social control.
- Problem: These are conditions, not causes.
Resource Mobilization and Political Process Theory:
- Successful movements effectively acquire and manage resources (money, time, space)
- Charisma
- Interactions with the existing political system
- Problem: Identification conditions, not causes.
New Social Movement Theory:
- Distinction between old and new
- Old movements such as the labour movement products of industrial society and working-
class struggles about economic issues.
- Demands focus on working conditions, public health, pensions, union rights and wages.
- New social movements: Peace, environment, LGBTQ, civil rights.
- Post-industrial, middle class, identity focused.