SOCI 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Alice Goffman, Structural Functionalism, Research Question
6 Nov 2018
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Becoming a member of society: part 1
Continuation of Participant Observation
Alice Goffman controversy
Research question: What happens in the lives of individuals that
are hyper-policed in areas of high incarceration? How does this
affect the fabric of everyday life in these areas?
Different paths of adulthood
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Power imbalance
What does it mean to be in a position of power
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Positionality
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Inconsistencies in her stories
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Compromises her subjects, may cause them harm
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Reinforcing stereotypes
What's being said isn't recorded, therefore might just be her
interpretation
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Potential engagements in felonies
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Socialization
The lifelong process of developing a sense of identity and self, as well as
of inheriting and transmitting norms, customs, and ideologies that
provide the skill and habits required to participate in society
From the textbook
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Society is built on and maintained by interactions
Requires an understanding of norms, customs and ideologies
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Culture (dominant, sub-culture, etc.)
Dominant
Able to impose it's values and beliefs on society
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Trappings and expectations of behaviours and space
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Sub-cultures
Different from the dominant but don't oppose the dominant
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Three main perspectives
Structural functionalism
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Associated with Durkheim and Parsons
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A theory that, by looking at how societal structures or institutions
work together to create consensus and social cohesion, focuses on
explaining how society functions effectively
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Societies create individuals, it makes us human
Organizes us by language, institutions
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We have what we have because it keeps society functioning
in the optimal way
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Parts of society are parts of human body, the body can't
function without these structures
Society's purpose is to survive□
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Top-down, social roles
Swishing people into relatively set social roles
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Social roles are taught
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We have a certain sense of solidarity which predisposes us
to a sense of self
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Conflict theory2.
The idea that human behaviour and social relations result from
the underlying conflicts that arise from the power differences
between competing groups in society
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Associated with Marx
Determines social outcomes and where society is going in
the future
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Carried over and applied to different groups
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Children from a very young age are socialized into these groups
Example: girls are taught to be women, boys are taught to
be men, women and men are in conflict with each other
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Top-down
People are having identity based on a group imposed on
them
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Conflict theorists see this as a negative thing
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It maintains social inequality and recreates them
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Symbolic interactionism3.
A theory that argues that meanings do not naturally attach to
things - we derive meaning from and come to understand our
society and our role in it through interacting with other people
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Associated with Herbert Blumer and 3 basic premises
Humans act towards things based on the meaning they
assign to them
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the meanings of things arise from social interactions
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Individuals learn to interpret and modify based on these
interactions
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Mead (stages of role-taking)
Prepatory - interact and mimic
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Role taking - dressing up and pretending to be others
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Take on the role of the generalized other - they take the
perspective of the outsider
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Cooley (looking-glass self)
Other people are mirrors to how they understand us
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Example: someone with an eating disorder
They see people look at their body and they interpret
the reaction as a negative evaluation and base their
actions on that
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Bottom-up process
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Differences: role of individual and normative assessment
Normative: statement about whether something is good or bad
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Lecture 5
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
10:06 AM
Document Summary
What does it mean to be in a position of power. What"s being said isn"t recorded, therefore might just be her interpretation. The lifelong process of developing a sense of identity and self, as well as of inheriting and transmitting norms, customs, and ideologies that provide the skill and habits required to participate in society. Society is built on and maintained by interactions. Requires an understanding of norms, customs and ideologies. Able to impose it"s values and beliefs on society. Different from the dominant but don"t oppose the dominant. A theory that, by looking at how societal structures or institutions work together to create consensus and social cohesion, focuses on explaining how society functions effectively. We have what we have because it keeps society functioning in the optimal way. Parts of society are parts of human body, the body can"t function without these structures. We have a certain sense of solidarity which predisposes us to a sense of self.
