Self, Culture & Society Course Kit (AP SOSC 1140)

369 Pages·2016·117.36 MB·English

by  Cameron Johnston

York University Bookstore

AP/SOSC 1140 9.0B/C

Self, Culture and Society: Critical Perspectives

Fall/Winter 2016-2017
Course Director(s): Cameron Johnston
COURSE KIT

Course Kits are non-returnable
SOSCl 140 9.0: SELF, CULTURE AND SOCIETY
Fall/Winter 2016-2017
Course Director: Cameron Johnston ;•!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS : |!;
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1. Anderson, Karen L. “The Sociological Perspective.” Thinking About Sociology: A Critical 1
Introduction. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2012. pp. 4-14.
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2. Mills, C. Wright. “The Promise.” The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University 13
Press, 1959. pp. 3-15, 23-24.
3. Social Order Chari ;
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4. Lee, Dorothy. “Individual Autonomy and Social Structure.” Freedom and Culture. Englewood
Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1959. pp. 5-14.
^£5. Diamond, Stanley. The Search for the Primitive. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1974. 31
pp. 118-123; 131-165; 171-175.
6. Mill, J.S, On Liberty. Arlington Heights: Crofts Classics, 1947. pp. 1-16. ii:
7. Boldt, Menno and J. Anthony Long. “Tribal Philosophies and the Canadian Charier of Rights and
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Freedoms.” The Quest for Justice: Aboriginal Peoples and Aboriginal Rights, ed. Menno
Boldt and J. Anthony Long. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985. pp. 165-172.
/IT) Bowles, Edwards and Roosevelt. “Capitalism Shakes the World.” Understanding Capitalism, 73
^ Third Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. pp. 3-9, 14-30. I
9. Engels, Frederick. “Theoretical.” Anti-Duhring. Herr Eugen Duhring's Revolution in Science. 97
International Publishers, 1939. pp. 292-310.
10. Plumb, J.H. “The Great Change in Children.” Horizon. Vol. XIII, No. 1. Winter, 1971. 107
11. Schachtel, Ernest G. “On Memory and Childhood Amnesia.” Psychiatry: The Journal of the 115
Biology* and Pathology of Interpersonal Relations. Vol. 10. February, 1947. pp. 1-12, 24-25.
129
12. Freud, Sigmund. “The Psychical Apparatus.” “The Theory of the Instincts.” An Outline of Psycho-
analysis. James Strachey, tTans. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1989. pp. 13-21.
137
13. Freud, Sigmund. “The Dream-Work.” Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Trans. James
Strachey. London: Penguin Books, 1973. pp. 204-218.
145
14. Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and its Discontents. Trans, and Ed. James Strachey. New York: W.
W. Norton, 1961. pp. 10-36 (Chapters I and II). :=
159
Heilbroner, Robert. “The Economic Problem.” The Making of Economic Society. Englewood ;i
Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1993. pp. 1-15. ■:
olanyi, Karl. “Societies and Economic Systems,” “The Self-Regulating Market and the Fictitious 167
“Commodities: Labor, Land, and Money.” The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press,
1957. pp. 43-55, 68-75. :
181
ehart, James W. “Alienation and the Development of Industrial Capitalism in Canada.”
“Solutions to Alienated Labour.” The Tyranny of Work. Toronto: Harcourt Brace, 1996. pp.
23-60, 153-156 (Chapter 3 and Selections from Chapter 6).
18^\Bendix, Richard. “Aspects of Economic Rationality in the West.” Max Weber. New York: Anchor 205
Books, 1962. pp. 49-79 (Chapter 3).
) ( 19?)Rifkin, Jeremy. “Introduction.” “The End of Work.5> «Crossing into the High-Tech Frontier.” “The 221
Fate of Nations.” “Re-engineering the Work Week.” “A New Social Contract.” The End of
Work. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995. pp. xv-xviii, 3-5, 59-60, 177-180, 198-207,
221-223, 236-239,267, 286-293 (Selections from Introduction and Chapters 1,4, 11,13,15,
16, 17 and 18).
20. Jenkins, Iredell. “Art for Art’s Sake.” Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Phillip P. Wiener. 245
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968. pp. 108-110.
21. Adorno, Theodore W. “Popular Music.” Introduction to the Sociology of Music. New York: 251
Continuum, 1976. pp. 21-38.
22. Tepperman, Lome. “Media and Mass Communication.” Starting Points: A Sociological Journey. 261
Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2011. pp. 396-412.
23. hooks, bell. “Introduction: Come Closer to Feminism.” “Feminist Politics: Where We Stand.” 279
Feminism is for Everybody. Cambridge: South End Press, 2000. pp. vii-x, 1-6 (Introduction
and Chapter 1).
24. Adamson, Nancy, Linda Briskin, and Margaret McPhail. “Feminist Practice: Organizing for 287
Change.” Feminist Organizing for Change. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1988. pp. 165-
195.
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25. Harris, Marvin. “Why Women Left Home.” Why Nothing Works. New York: Simon and Schuster, 303
1981. pp. 76-97 (Chapter 5).
26. Kallen, Evelyn. “The Anatomy of Racism: Key Concepts.” Ethnicity and Human Rights in 315
Canada. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1995. pp. 41-57.
27. hooks, bell. “Introduction ” “Racism: Naming What Hurts.” Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory* 325
and Practice. New York: Routledge, 2013. pp. 1-25. (Available as ebook through York
Library: https://www.library.yorku.ca/find/Record/3157216)
28. Reich, Charles A. “The Coming American Revolution.” The Greening of America. New York: 327
Random House Inc., 1970. pp. 1-19 (Chapter 1).
29. Roszak, Theodore. “Introduction.” “Waking Up. Being Real: The Mindscape of Single Vision.” 337
“A Dead Man’s Eyes.” Wliere the Wasteland Ends. New York: Anchor Books, 1973. pp. xix-
xxxiv, 74-99, 142-163.
30. Tuttle, Will. “Our Culture’s Roots.” The World Peace Diet. New York: Lantern Books, 2005. pp. 373
17-28 (Chapter 2).
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PART I THE SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE AND ITS CORE KNOWLEDGE BASE
INTRODUCTION: THE SOCIOLOGICAL

PERSPECTIVE AND Ii Tf C2* CORE KNOWLEDGE BASE
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core sociological Becoming a sociologist involves learning that the taken-for-granted perspective we use every­ 1
knowledge base day to understand the world around us is neither natural nor common to everyone. It also
A set of fundamental entails adopting a different core knowledge base that will equipjjs to think differently about
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concepts, skills, and the world and better confront.challenges. While there is much that separates sociologists in
topics, available to in terms of theoretical orientation and research areas of interest, contemporary sociologists
ail sociologists, that
share a common core knowledge base.
enables sociologists
think differently about '
the world. Core Concepts

Sociological concepts, like the concepts we use on a daily basis and out of which we form
our taken-for-granted understandings, draw heavily on the cultural context in which they
appear and are used. What sets sociological concepts apart from our everyday, common-
sense ones j$ that they arc deliberately constructed as tools to help sociologist$ reflect on
the meaning and significance of the social world in which we live. J’hese concepts act as
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An Indonesian boy sleeps on the street of a Jakarta slum. Can you imagine how your interpretation of this scene
using an everyday perspective might differ from your interpretation from a sociological perspective?
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shorthand descriptors for complex social phenomena or for complex ways of understanding
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human social behaviour.
Sociology as a discipline is simultaneously conservative and potentially subversive. On the
one hand, sociologists are concerned with gathering and analyzing data—empirical evidence
they draw on to define, describe, and explain or theorize social existence as it is experienced
in a given society at a particular point of time. It is the job of sociologists to gather those data
as accurately as possible in order to produce a clear and reliable understanding of whatever
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they study. This is what makes sociology conservative.
On the other hand, many sociologists recognize that whatever the members of a given soci­
ety experience, those experiences (and the way those experiences are interpreted and under­
stood) are socially constructed. As such, experiences and understandings are capable of being
challenged and changed (or subverted). Not only do sociologists study social phenomena in
order to gather empirical evidence, many often use that evidence to address and provide solu­
tions to social issues and problems.
Core sociological concepts that we will take up in this and later chapters include the following:
the social construction of reality
the sociological imagination
social institutions
society and social facts
i social class
socialization
culture.
Core Skills

; All sociologists rely on three inter-connected skill sets:
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• complex and critical thinking skills
• research skills
• theorizing skills.
The last of these includes the ability to develop and apply appropriate theories and the abil­
ity to explain the outcomes of research.
Core Topics

Issues of difference and inequality hold top place among topics considered important to
address in an introductory sociology course. Among the most significant aspects of differ-
enceand inequality that sociologists study are:
• race and ethnicity
• social class and stratification
• gender
• sexuality and sexual orientation
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• popular culture and mass communications
• social media.
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PARTI THE SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE AND ITS CORE KNOWLEDGE BASE =»
The first four items of this list probably won’t surprise you; the last two, however, might.
Later in this textbook, we will look at the ways sociologists study difference and inequality
from these vantage points.
Finally, many sociologists are concerned that students be shown ways in which sociology
can offers insights relevant to their own lives. I share their concern that students in the pro­
cess of becoming sociologists should learn how sociological insights can be applied to help
improve their own lives, as well as the lives of others (Schweingruber, 2005; Berger, 1963).
/■\ CORE SOCIOLOGIC NCEPT: THE SOClAi

'INSTRUCTION OF REALITY

social construction One of the core concepts t hat make up the sociological perspective is the social construction
of reality of reality’. Reality, in everyday usage, means ‘everything that exists'. In its most inclusive
A concept introduced by sense, the term refers to everything that is, whether or not it is observable, accessible, or
Berger and Luckmann
understandable by science, philosophy, theology, or any other system of analysis.
(1966), who argued that Addressing the questions What is reality( and Where is reality found? is a complex endeav­ ■
human experience—the
our, and trying to answer such questions in an all-encompassing way would pull us into 1
way we understand
'reality*—is shaped by philosophical debates that arc well beyond the scope of this textbook. Instead, we are going to
the society in which we look at the notion of reality only from the perspective of a sociologist. But. to do that, we begin
live; our experience of our inquiry into the social construction of reality, rather far from sociology proper, with the
reality may therefore be i
northern leopard frog (rami pipiens).
challenged and changed.
In the second half of the last century the American government—more specifically, the
army and navy—put a fair bit of money into funding research on vision and other senses in a
variety of non-human species. Among the work funded was research on frog vision. Just how,
and what, do frogs see? (For those of you interested in some of the details of this research,
I suggest you start with the study of frog perception and cognition by Lettvin, Maturana,
McCulloch, and Pitts [1968]). It turns out there is a world of difference between what a frog
‘sees’ and what a human ‘sees’. A frog can visually distinguish:
• light from dark
• up from down (i.e. a horizon)
• small, dark objects that move
• larger objects that cast shadows.
Unlike humans, a frog does not see the details of the stationary world around it—it will
starve to death if surrounded by flies if the flies don’t move. A frog flees his enemies only by
leaping toward areas that are darker. A frog can remember something that moves only if the
object stays within his line of vision and he is not distracted.
The visually rich world that is available to sighted humans is simply not there for frogs.
The trees, flowers, birds, bulrushes, lily pads that are ‘there’ for humans, are not perceived
as being ‘there’ by frogs. Reality for a frog is a product not of what is ‘out there’ but of the
extraordinary interaction between the individual frog (with a frog’s embodiment, including
a frog’s eye and a frog’s brain) and the ‘not-frog’—the environment, the external world.
Humans are like frogs in that we are biological entities that interact with an environment,
and the nature of that interaction is shaped (in part) by our physical embodiment. But we
are also not at all like frogs. Human beings cannot exist for long in isolation, in a world that
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CHAPTER 1 THE SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
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■ Chances are, this leopard frog wouldn't even see you unless you were moving. Could
you survive with such a limited perception of reality?
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is self-reflexive only. To be a human being means to be oriented to an external world that
contains other human beings. In that sense, we can say that there is no such thing as a single
reality across all species. Reality is species-spedlie.
i What constitutes reality for us as individual humans is not just the product of our embodi­
ment and the physical environment in which we exist (as it is for a frog); it is also a product
of the fact that, we are social creat ures, with a wide variety of socially mediated experiences.
So, for humans, reality is an even less immediate thing than it is for the frog. The reality that
humans experience is strongly shaped by the social world in which we are raised and live.
One of the clearest statements of this perspective—at least as it can be applied to humans—
comes from American sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. In 1966 the two
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collaborators published The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of
s’! Knowledge. There are two propositions from this text that are important to consider.
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Proposition i: Society Is a Human Product

Berger and Luckmann argue that ‘society’ is very much a product of men (and women) work­
ing together. The social environment is not the immediate result of our biological constit u­
tions. To be recognizable as a human being means that we are, first and foremost, social
beings. In fact, an existence in a "state of nature’, without social influences or contact, is
impossible. Human existence is always existence in the context of order, direction, and stabil­
ity And that order, direction, and stability, which are social constructs, precede the existence
of any given human. We are all born into a society that is itself a product of human activity
Moreover, our biological makeup requires that this be so. A newborn infant, left to his own
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PART I THE SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE AND ITS CORE KNOWLEDGE BASE
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■ • Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luekmarm ;1
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Peter Berger (b. 1929) and Thomas Luckmann (b. 1927) theories. Together, Berger and Luckmann wrote The
both emigrated to the United States from Austria fol- Social Construction of Reality (1966), which has become .
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lowing the Second World War. Both men studied at the a classic study in sociological thinking. In that text Berger
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New School for Social Research :n New York. Berger and Luckmann develop their theory of society as both
went on to become professor of sociology and theology an objective and a subjective reality. They explain how
i at Boston University, while Luckmann taught sociology an individual's understanding of what constitutes day-
at the University of Constance in Germany. Both soci- to-day reality is the product of her interaction with her
ologists have focused their research, writing, and teach* society. Humans produce new ideas and new social insti-
ing on the sociology of knowledge and the sociology of tutions that then become part of the everyday, taken-
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religion. Both men, separately, have written many books for-granted reality and are often no longer recognized
examining the sociology of religion and sociological as human creations; this process is known as reification. !
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devices, cannot survive on his own. Unlike the frog, we have no inherent internal mechan­
isms that would allow each of us to produce, out of our biological resources alone, a stable !
environment for our individual existence.
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Proposition 2: All Human Activity Is Habituaiized ■ ;

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and this Habitualization Is the Groundwork for 1

Institutionalization
Humans form social groups, and these groups learn to do certain actions in specific ways. ■:
Once a human activity is repeated over and over again it becomes habit—well established,
regularized, and adopted widely across groups of social actors-When this happens, patterns ■
of behaviour take on an objective status and become institutionalized (Berger & Luckmann,
1966/1987, p. 70). Social institutions always have a history—they are not created instantan­
eously. Once established, though, they control human behaviour by setting up predefined i
patterns of conduct.
Social institutions channel and control our behaviour through a variety of social control
mechanisms. For example, most first-year sociology students will come to the first day of :
classes at their university or college already well versed in how to behave in a classroom. From
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very early on in their lives, they have learned to take a seat and, unless otherwise instructed,
to remain in it during the class period. Students also know that a certain amount of defer­
ence and politeness should be paid to the teacher. There are social control mechanisms in
place to make sure that students conform (more or less) to these standards of behaviour. In a
large lecture hall, for example, professors will resort to a few mild forms of social control if
they feel it necessary: they may stop lecturing, look directly at students who might be caus­ :
ing a disruption, and ask them a question, for example. Rarely does a professor invoke the
sanction of having disruptive students kicked out of class, or out of the course, in order to
maintain control over what is going on in the classroom. So, behaviour in a lecture theatre
is not controlled by the actual expulsion of disruptive students—that may never occur.
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Behaviour is controlled by the institutionalization of education, which gisres professors the
authority to invoke certain sanctions.
! Are you now beginning to see how complex ‘reality’ is for humans? How much ‘reality’
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is shaped not only by what humans are as biological beings, but also by what we are as social
beings? It s a lot simpler to be a frog that has no social world with which to contend! As humans,
not only are we confronted with a biological reality, we also have to contend with a social world.
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; On a day-to-day, moment-by-moment basis, the reality we perceive is considered by each of us
II to be nothing less than the world as it actually is. From our first moments of life we learn how
to make sense out of the world we encounter in ways that are consistent with the perceptions of
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others around us. As children we are taught how things are and how things are done.
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Most oi us never really question this. We simply accept that the ‘reality’ that we are born
into and that we experience as we grow up is an ‘objective reality’—that it is simply the way
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things arc. And why, in the normal course of our lives, should we ever question this? All real­
ity appears to us like the air we breathe: it is just always there. But, as Berger and Luckmann
remind us, 'It is important to keep in mind that the objectivity of the institutional world, how­
ever massive it may appear to the individual, is a humanly produced, constructed objectivity’
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(Berger & Luckmann, 1966, p. 48). Berger and Luckmann also point out that that humans and
their social worlds interact and co-produce each other. As children we are all taught about the
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social world we live in. We learn to make that world a part of ourselves. But we also act back on
that world, and sometimes, in co-operation with others, we alter it significantly.
THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

At the beginning of this chapter, 1 suggested that sociology, as a discipline, was both con­ sociological
servative and radical. Nowhere are these two faces of sociology heller represented than in the imagination
work of the American sociologist C. Wright Mills, author of another of the core sociological As defined by C. Wright
concepts, the sociological imagination. Mills, an orientation
! In The Promise, an essay first presented to the American Political Science Association adopted by a sociologist
to recognize 3nd
in 1958 and later published as the first chapter of The Sociological Imagination (1959), Mills
understand the
famously writes: ‘Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be under­
connections between
stood without understanding both’ (Mills, 2000 [ 1959], p. 3). Mills goes on to point out that individual experience and
for ordinary people, the task of coping with the ‘larger worlds’ they confront requires both larger social structures.
‘skills of reasoning’ and a ‘quality of mind’ to help them to cogently understand what is going
:: on in the world, and how it affects their lives. It is this ‘quality of mind’—the capacity to relate
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history to biography, the personally experienced milieu to larger social structures, or one’s
personal troubles to public issues—that Mills calls ‘the sociological imagination’:
The sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger his­
torical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career [
of a variety of individuals. It enables him [sic] to take into account how indi- I
vjduals, in the welter of their daily experience, often become falsely conscious \
\ of their social positions. Within that welter, the framework of modern society >
is sought, and within that framework the psychologies of a variety of men and (
women are formulated. By such means the personal uneasiness of individuals 1
is focused upon explicit troubles and the indifference of publics is transformed \
into involvement with public issues. (Mills, 2000 [1959], p. 3)
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10 PART I THE SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE AND ITS CORE KNOWLEDGE BASE =
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C, Wright Milk (19x6-1962)
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to politics, a man of substance acutely cog­
nizant of style, he was not only a guide but .
an exemplar, prefiguring in his paradoxes .
some of the tensions of a student movement
that was reared on privilege, amid exhausted
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ideologies yet hell-bent on finding, or forging,
the leverage with which to transform America
root and branch. (Gitlin, 2000, p. 229}
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Mills was born in 1916 in Waco, Texas, the

son of an insurance broker father and a stay-at- !l
home mother. He earned his PhD in sociology
in 1941 from the University of Wisconsin and
in 1946 took up a teaching post at Columbia,
where he was popular with students but ■
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clashed frequently with colleagues. He married ■'
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three times and had a child with each of his
In the introduction to this textbook I suggested that wives. Along the way he published many influential stud­ : 1
sociology, as a discipline, is both conservative and rad­ ies focusing on social class and its political impact, includ­
ical. Nowhere are these two faces of sociology better ing The New Men of Power (1948), White Collar (1951),
represented than in the work of the American sociol­ and The Power Elite (1956). The Sociological Imagination
ogist Charles Wright Mills, author of one of two core was published in 1959, a year before Mills travelled to
concepts—the sociological imagination—that together Cuba, where he interviewed Fidel Castro, Che Guevara,
make up the sociological perspective. Mills, who died in and other Latin American revolutionaries. Mills died of a \
1962 at the age of 43, has been described as 'a bundle massive heart attack following a trip to Europe in 1962.
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of paradoxes' by American sociologist and culture his­ Mills's brilliance lay in his understanding that we live
torian Todd Gitlin (2000, p. 229): in small worlds, whether as children or as adults. Because
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of this, it is usually difficult to understand the larger social
He was a radical disabused of radical traditions, a forces affecting us. The more powerful these social forces
sociologist disgruntled with the course of sociology, are, the less equipped we are to comprehend them with­
an intellectual frequently skeptical of intellectuals, a out some significant extra work—hence the role of the
defender of popular action as well as a craftsman, sociological imagination. A champion of egalitarian pol­
a despairing optimist, a vigorous pessimist and all itical principles, Mills saw the sociological imagination as :
in all, one of the few contemporaries whose intelli­ being for everyone, not just the purview of trained soci­
T?1 f gence, verve, passion, scope—and contradictions— ologists. As a pragmatist, Mills believed it necessary that
seemed alive to most of the main moral and political we all take action to confront both 'personal troubles' and
traps of his time. A philosophically-trained and best­ 'public issues' in order to achieve 'the all-around growth
I selling sociologist who decided to write pamphlets, of every member of society'. (For a short biography
a populist who scrambled to find what was salvage­ of Mills, see www.sociological-imagination.org/short_
able within the Marxist tradition, a loner committed biography_of_c_wright_mill,htm.)
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