SOCI 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Social Constructionism, Biological Determinism, Coronary Artery Disease
3 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Midterm Exam
- Tips are uploaded on myCourses
- Key ideas/concepts in readings
Biosocial Approaches to Sex and Gender
- Socialization/ forms of social learning contribute to what the world expects of you
- Complex systems theory allows for (not one holistics idea) an indication that we need
to consider a number of different factors for gender as a social phenomena
Gender Beyond the Bio/Social Divide
- Interactions of Social and Biological Factors
- Rejection of polarized approaches to gender
- Biological determinism/ essentialism vs. (strong) social
constructionism
- Biosocial approaches and embodiment
- Complex systems theory and social embodiment
The Bio/Social Divide
- Gender is biological!
- Reflects natural, biological sex differences
- Concordant with sexual diphormism
- SD is assumed as being absolute
- Gender is Social!
- Gender is a social construct
- The differences we see between men and women and males and
females represents socio-cultural phenomena→ produced through
social learning over time
- Are there alternatives to polarized thinking/ theorizing about gender?
- Social is one side, bio is one side→ determining gender differences and
social inequalities
Gravlee (2009): The case of race
- “Race=biological (genetic)”
- Reference biological (genetic) differences between groups
- But, what about within-group variations?
- Race becomes biology
- Differential social treatment of different social groups becomes
biological
- This disrupts the stability of biological as a category separate
from the social so moves us towards biosocial thinking
- Debate over racial inequalities is one of the most important venues for advancing our
understandings of human biological variation and accompanying social differences
and inequalities
- “Race=social (sociocultural)”
- Argue that race is socially constructed category
- But, what about biological differences between groups?
Document Summary
Socialization/ forms of social learning contribute to what the world expects of you. Complex systems theory allows for (not one holistics idea) an indication that we need to consider a number of different factors for gender as a social phenomena. Biological determinism/ essentialism vs. (strong) social constructionism. The differences we see between men and women and males and females represents socio-cultural phenomena produced through social learning over time. Social is one side, bio is one side determining gender differences and social inequalities. Differential social treatment of different social groups becomes biological. This disrupts the stability of biological as a category separate from the social so moves us towards biosocial thinking. Debate over racial inequalities is one of the most important venues for advancing our understandings of human biological variation and accompanying social differences and inequalities. Argue that race is socially constructed category. Genetic differences and differences at the biological level.
