SOCI 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Primordialism, Orthodox Marxism, Class Consciousness

• School: Memorial University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOCI 1000
• Professor: kathyfitzpatrick

Document Summary

Theories of race and ethnic relations: social psychology theory: focus on how prejudice and racism satisfy the psychic needs of certain people. The frustration-aggression thesis is a variant of this theory. It explains prejudice and racism as forms of hostility that arise from frustration. It suggests that people who are frustrated in their efforts to achieve a desired goal respond with aggression. From this point of view, ethnic prejudice and racism are ways of maintaining social boundaries. Racism is used by capitalists to mystify social reality and justify the exploitation of and unequal treatment of groups of people: race and the split labour market: Developed by edna bonacich because of limitations of orthodox marxism in analyzing racism. She argues that orthodox marxism assumes that the capitalist class is all powerful and that the other classes play no role in the development of racist thinking. This is inaccurate as racism is found in all classes to varying degrees.