Soc_ Concepts, Issues and Research PDF

Lecture 1 [Culture and Religion] Culture is a social phenomenon that is both inside/outside us and produced us and is reproduced by us. Stuart Hall: culture is expressed through encoding [providing meaning to a symbol] and decoding [receiving and interpreting meaning] Culture can be expressed: Sym...

Lecture 1 [Culture and Religion] Culture is a social phenomenon that is both inside/outside us and produced us and is reproduced by us. Stuart Hall: culture is expressed through encoding [providing meaning to a symbol] and decoding [receiving and interpreting meaning] Culture can be expressed: Symbolic: symbols/icons/images, language/words [important, since we both think and express through it], narratives/stories/myths. Through practice: rituals/traditions/customs, habits/routines, demeanors/looks/bodies, organizations/institutions [bring everything of a culture together]. Materialistic: artifacts/relics/heirlooms, arts, goods/tools/food, buildings/cities/landscapes. There are 3 views on what culture does: A structural-functionalist perspective [associated with Durkheim, and with symbolic expression] on culture states that culture creates Cohesion, because it can unify people through shared goals, understanding and values, and through collective values, we become part of a group, share a sense of belonging, and feel together. Durkheim states it can lead to collective consciousness, which can lead to shame, guilt, etc, but also pride and cohesion. Benedict Anderson states that people have imagined communities on a national level, meaning people imagine the realness of the community they live in, leading to shared senses of their culture. A conflict perspective [associated with Marx, and with materialistic expression] on culture states that culture produces Conflict but can also strengthen and facilitate power [think of class]. Michele Lamont spoke on social boundaries [based on economic, material and spatial conditions] and symbolic boundaries [based on cultural conditions] leading to inequality. An interpretive-substantive [associated with Weber, and with expression through practice] perspective on culture states that culture offers Meaning, purpose and direction, being a resource to people to help navigate life. Max Weber speaks on interpretive meaning that is shaped through the scope of a certain culture. Culture is not only in our heads, but also around all of us. We do not have one sense of culture in ourselves, we also take bits from other cultures. Culture is both inside us [thoughts], as well as outside of us [our environment]. Religion is a cultural system that combines sets of symbols and practices and beliefs, etc, in a spiritual manner, making the distinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’. When something bad happens, we look for a ‘scapegoat’ to put the blame on, this is done a lot in society. Think back to Durkheim’s work on totemism: he states that religion can lead to collective effervescence, which leads to a shared sense of reality and collective consciousness. Marx stated that religion is the ‘opium of the people’, because while it keeps the oppressed in a bad situation, it also offers them relief and helps them cope with their suffering. He states that the ‘bourgeoisie’ uses religion as a tool to keep the power-relations they benefit from in place. Weber states that religion decides what people find ‘bad’ or ‘good’ and influences people’s behavior. But referring to modern society, he states that we live in a disenchantment of the world, meaning it is less spiritual. religious and philosophical, and moving more towards a scientific view of reality. In many societies, nowadays, religion is way less strict than it used to be, but it is still active. William James makes the distinction between first-hand religion [spiritual experience and emotions that give a sense of purpose ‘in our solitude’ as humans] and second-hand religion [doctrines, rules and institutions, coming from churches, priests and religious texts]. IMPORTANT FROM THIS WEEK [tutorial]: - Culture. - Religion. - Ways in which they are expressed [symbolic/practical/material]. - Three different perspectives one can use to make sense of culture. - The role of religion in contemporary society related to dynamics of symbolic boundary drawing, globalization, etc. - Weber, Durkheim and Marx’s thoughts on religion and culture.  Lecture 2 [Power & The State] Power is a concept that acts in multiple directions: - Power-to is the capacity for action, or possibility to do something = agency. - Power-over [the focus of this lesson] refers to situations where A makes B do something that B would not otherwise do. - Power-with entails a wider collaboration between actors that facilitates joint power-to = collective action. There are 3 main views on power: Max Weber sees power as coercion or authority. Coercion: use of physical or psychological violence to dominate others and steer their behavior against their will. Authority: power that is agreed upon by individuals/groups because it is seen as “legitimate”, leading to obedience. Weber spoke on 3 types of authority: ❖ Traditional authority is seen as legitimate based on custom or tradition [using the ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’]. ❖ Charismatic authority emerges from the perceived character or personality of leaders. People follow them because of style, arguments, similarity, etc. ❖ Rational-legal authority is grounded in [legal] rules by which people are governed. Legitimacy comes from law, commands and decision-making that is regarded as legitimate and applicable in all of society. Another view on power is seeing power as domination [oppressor] over the dominated [oppressed] which is a relational understanding of power that looks at the unequal distribution of resources and means among groups of people. It sees power as conflict, focusing on social groups and on power-over through struggle, conflict and exploitation through violence. Karl Marx speaks on the power struggle over economic and material resources, he sees society as a result of a historical class struggle [think back of ‘bourgeoisie’ and ‘proletariat’]. He states that those who ‘hold the means of production’ have all the control and power. He states that economic power is the most important power to structure society. Pierre Bourdieu states that while economic power is important, society is also structured by symbolic power, which is more than an expression of economic power but has an independent effect on the structuring of society. It is the power to shape cultural expression and ‘ideal’ interests. The groups who hold symbolic power have the ability to - create divisions/categories: create how we see things and categorize thing [EG: art critics having the symbolic power to determine how we think of art] - construct social reality: the power to make these divisions ‘real’ things [EG: art critics having the symbolic power to determine what makes it into museum and what does not]  - be taken for granted, to be almost ‘invisible’: being viewed as legitimate makes people not think about their power and take it for granted [EG: ‘taken-for-granted power of the state, where people do not stand still to think about how much power the state actually has over them]. Decolonization theories see power as conflict by speaking on colonization as a global, economic and symbolic system of power systems, by means of coercion [invasion of countries, enslavement, military, etc], economic power [unpaid labor through slavery, occupying land/resources, colonialism, etc], symbolic power [racialization and dehumanization, ideologies of white supremacy, etc]. They state that capitalism and colonialism is one and the same system, because race plays a role in your position in a capitalist society which needs to be recognized. For example, Edward Said stated that colonists often used symbolic power to defend the colonization by speaking poorly about the people being colonized, and Franz Fanon stated that black people have less symbolic power than white people, which forces black people to ‘look through the eyes’ of the white people to know how to behave. Michel Foucault states that power is everywhere and spoke on disciplinary power. He states that power expresses less through constraining [punishing] but more through enabling [shaping] the subject, making people control themselves, getting self-control. He says power is used to steer people’s desires to control them. He talks on governmentality: a form of government where the mental state is formed and shaped = creating a mentality so people are easily governed. He speaks on 4 key aspects of disciplinary power: - Surveillance: we are constantly being watched to manage us, making us act the right way. Always being checked, being watched by a certain ‘Gaze’ of the government, but not knowing when exactly they watch you. A very famous example of this is the Panopticon: the concept of a prison where there’s 1 guard looking at all the cells, making the prisoners not escape because of the possibility that the guard is looking their way, even though they don’t even know if the guard is looking or not. - Bio-power: managing a ‘population’ as a biological entity through ‘bio-power’: a form of power executed by a state that sees its citizens as a population that needs to be identified, checked, monitored, kept healthy, grow in the right way, protected from “unhealthy” influences, as if the population is a living specimen and controlling it’s health. This uses bio-political techniques: identity cards, statistics, health campaigns, experts, etc. - Discourse: a system of categories, words, statements and knowledge that support a certain ‘truth’ and contain a certain system of power [cultural expression of power]. This means power is expressed in knowledge, by deciding what we hold as the “truth”. - Confession: practice to make people express a discourse. Making people ‘confess’ what they do wrong [EG: Christian confession, but also visiting a therapist or posting on social media]. Bourdieu and Foucault both focus on categories, invisibility of power, techniques of populations, etc. But Bourdieu states that symbolic power of the state is held by few people and benefits those the most, while Foucault states that power is everywhere and that we are all both products and producers of this system. The “State” is a centralized power structure that holds the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force and infrastructural power within a population living in a territory. The State has 3 main components, following Dobratz: 1. The state is compulsory: unless you actively resist, you cannot escape the state once within its boundaries. You are stuck because your mobility, identity and property, are all bound to the state and its power. 2. The state has monopolies: the state can use physical force and can decide what physical force is acceptable and by who, and the state also has monopoly over infrastructural power by holding the right to interfere in other spheres of life [EG: monopoly over taxation, over issuing money, over accreditation, over legal rights, over public and environmental planning, etc]. 3. The state holds legitimacy: it always needs some form of authority, making people believe that the state has the right to govern based on rational-legal authority [see Weber’s view on Power]. By having legitimacy, the state can make laws and rules, and decide who is considered a citizen, and have power over legislation, judicial and execution of power. It is often gained by giving the impression of living in a democracy where there is political representation. Bourdieu states that State Power is rarely enforced through coercion because it is taken-for-granted, making it almost invisible, making obedience not a physical act but a cognitive one. He states we internalize many categories of the state [through socializing institutions such as schools, media, museums, etc] and that the state is a “structuring structure”, producing order. Bourdieu says that symbolic power of the state is achieved because citizens have to pass “rites of institutions” to be acknowledged as citizens and to be acknowledged in a certain role. People are expected to have certificates, permits, diplomas or credits that are issued, supported and “stamped” by the state. [EG: Birth certificate, permit for building, residence permit for immigrant, diploma for highschool, PHD for professor, etc.]. Circa 1820-1920, there were a lot of military-aristocratic states. From the end of the 19th century, many industrialized countries started to evolve toward a welfare state, leading to increasing interdependence, rising power of holders of labors, two world wars, etc. This change increased social rights for [‘ordinary’] citizens, and made for collective protection against social risks: social problems to the well-being of the population [Communities and Markets also help against these risks]. Welfare states are based on people holding ‘social rights’: rules based on notions of equality [like access to education, health service, housing, employment, etc]. Welfare states have/are the 3 components of the state: compulsory, monopolies, legitimacy. They are also based on mechanisms of power, like discourse, rites of institutions, and bio-political techniques. But welfare states are not accessible or equal to all: there is exclusion, and social rights are often connected to labor market participation, and the state does not always equally redistribute. But around the 1970s, welfare states started to dismantle due to economic crises, de-industrialization and change in political discourse, making room for neoliberal states: Markets and Families are more important to society than the state, and should be [nearly fully] left alone by the state. The three main aspects of neoliberal welfare policy are privatization, cutbacks in/elimination of social welfare programs, and focus of new disciplinary discourse: economic rationality, personal responsibility, responsibility towards others. Neoliberal welfare states kinda push the responsibilities of the welfare state over to the people themselves, leading to more [economic] freedom but also more responsibility. IMPORTANT FROM THIS WEEK [tutorial]: - Coercion and authority [Weber]. - Rites of institutions [Bourdieu]. - The taken-for-granted power of the state [Bourdieu]. - Bio-politics [Foucault]. - Surveillance and panopticon [Foucault]. - Confession [Foucault]. - Discourse [Foucault]. - State components [Dobratz]: Compulsion, Monopoly, Legitimacy.  Lecture 3 [Economy & Work] [Western] economies have had massive transformations. There are three main economic sectors: - primary: growing and extraction [framing, mining, etc.] - secondary: industrial manufacturing of goods [factories] - tertiary: offering of knowledge, services, relations, or mental capacities [teaching, transport, human resources, counseling]. Over time, the amount of people working in the primary economic sector, because more work in that sector is taken up by machines. The secondary kinda stayed the same, and the tertiary sector grew. This transformation can be categorized in periods: An aspect of this is industrialization: Mechanization of production, and turning into mass production, leading to centralization of workers [workers all work in one building] (leading to cities being built), all fitting together with the rise of the Capitalist economy: society is split between holders of labor and holders of ‘means of production’ [Marx]. This industrialization leads to new types of energy and technologies, organizing work, and as Marx said, leads to a change in social relations between people: people’s ways of making a living changes and they get different relations to people. Industrialization leads to new ways of organizing work and new types of “labor relations”. Organizing work: Adam Smith posed the question why some countries are richer than others: he stated that some countries use “division of labor” [like using factories for certain parts, etc] which betters these countries’ people’s dexterity and skill, makes them save time, and leads to innovation and efficiency; this is why some countries are richer than others. Frederick Winslow Taylor stated that through scientific management of labor, production can be increased through rational means; by using the study of time-and-motion, breaking down tasks and turning them into rules, and creating a mutual understanding among workers [working as one body], performance and productivity of labor can be increased. Through division of labor and scientific management of labor, we steer further and further from one-man’s craft and autonomy and we integrate into a production process. One of the first companies that used these methods [especially division of labor] was Ford, who could then mass-produce cars. This led to long-term commitment from workers, leading to Ford being able to increase salary, leading to them consuming from Ford. That’s why the period in which mass-consumption and mass-producing came up heavily through the organization of labor, is often called “Fordism” [or “Taylorism”]. The critique on organizing labor: - Deskilling of workers [not crafting but just doing simple tasks]. - Redundancy of workers. - Loss of autonomy and control of workers. - Alienation: workers become estranged/disconnected from labor and it’s products [Marx]. After this period, a period arrives called the Post-Industrialist/Post-Fordist era. This era has 5 important aspects: Economy centered around knowledge. Technology- and Data-driven. Globalization. New forms of management. Flexibilization of labor relations. In this era, economy is centered around knowledge: Daniel Bell stated that we moved from “economics of goods” to an “economics of information”. This leads to increasing roles of education, tech and science, and cognitive and service work becomes more important, “human capital” is used as a company resource, and a new class is created, a “middle” economic class [middle classed people]. This era is tech and data driven: computers are introduced, digital info and communication technology is important, designs of objects are customized [instead of mass production of plain products], and this all lead to company using a mindset of “Toyotism” [instead of Fordism]: looking at every aspect of the production chain of your product, and seeing if it can be improved and if it’s efficient and worth it, not doing certain things “just in case” but just making everything efficient so there’s no extras in your production chain that cost you extra time and money. This era includes a focus on globalization: using trans-national services and production, creating an international labor market competition, and leading to the rise of international retail platforms [amazon, bol.com, etc], increase and standardization of global transportation. This era also includes new forms of management: it steers away from scientific management or Fordism, with less hierarchical authority and more individualized management, using peer supervision and surveillance [remember Foucault], leading to more psychological management and new discourse [‘you should love your work, it is a part of your identity’]. Lastly, this era come with flexibilization: Think of neoliberal market policies and new employment / labor market relations. [SEE NEXT PAGE].  Critique on Post-industrialization: - Western-centric and risk of forgetting global variations. - Overgeneralization of industrial production in previous periods. - Assembly lines / Sweatshops are still all over the work. Labor / Employee relations: “The system of material and immaterial terms of employment and working conditions.” Meaning, how do we sell and buy labor, and under which conditions. Labor relations are about agreements between employees and employers, on: Tasks and responsibilities [EG: what is expected and how much]. Status and rankings systems within the organizations [EG: career progressions]. Authority [EGL who holds control]. Working climate and conditions [EG: lighting and sanitary facilities]. Sharing of information [how will communication flow]. Social security [benefits and protections]. In the 19th and early 20th century, there were mostly unregulated labor markets, with no standards on work safety, no protection against unemployment or sickness, no restriction on age, etc. Until people started making Labor Unions: collective organization of workers to address working conditions and better the labor relations [for the workers]. These unions politicized social risks, turning it into a political issue instead of a personal one, by holding protests and strikes, creating political representation for them and building solidarity among workers. This made for the collectivization of social solutions, meaning people acted in solidarity to create support; like creating financial support for union strikes, holding collective healthcare programs and organizing unemployment benefits. The goal of these unions is collective organization of workers and creating means of resistance, and gaining “Bargaining power”, making workers being able to change the power-balance between employer and employee, and to defend themselves against the structurally more powerful position of the employer. [The state is often the middle-man between employer and employee in the struggle for bargaining power during the negotiation of collective labor agreements [[Like CAO]]]. Labor unions are often successful when political parties help and represent them, they have national coordination, and they can get direct administration of benefits. Yet, nowadays, most labor unions have way less power than they used to have: has to do with the decline of industrial jobs, economic recessions since the 1980’s,and the rise of neoliberal ideology and politics [remember last lecture]. The rise in these politics lead to neoliberal labor relations: - temporal contracts are normalized, - cut-backs in employment benefits and employee protection, - privatization of risk, - increase of contingent workers and flexible work. This is called the “flexibilization of the labor market”.  WORK: Work has many complexities: Commodified work is labor that you receive economic benefit for. This can be in the form of an Employee, or Self-Employed, etc. Commodification is transforming what we do, have or know into an economic value or “anything that is intended for exchange”. In a capitalist economic system employment is the commodification of our bodies, time, energy, knowledge, emotions or skill, in other words: our “labor power”, in exchange for economic benefit. This labor power can consist of ❖ Manual work: physical tasks demanding muscle power ❖ Cognitive work: intellectual tasks that demand mental abilities ❖ Emotional work: interpersonal tasks that demand emotional restrain and engagement ❖ Aesthetic work: bodily tasks that demand use of appearances ❖ Relational work: interactional tasks that demand making connections with people There is a distinction between Formal work: Work that is administered and regulated by the state [usually paid work]. Informal Work: work that is not administrated and nor regulated by the state [can be paid or unpaid work]. Informal work is often ignored and viewed as residual and inferior, but in is still an important part of the economy, because: 1. Informalization of work affects all countries worldwide and mainly in certain employment sectors [EG: care, manufacturing, agriculture, etc]. 2. Informal work is strongly intertwined with gender, race, class and citizenship status [migration], because the most vulnerable social identities more often move back and forth between formal and informal work. Informal work can be monetized because it’s undeclared work, at-home work, or illegal work. Gender work: During the Post-industrialization Era, there was a historical shift, in which women were allowed to work again, after they didn’t really work before that. This was because of the Wars, labor regulations, male unemployment, higher household income needs, and feminism and emancipation. This had complexities, because the “house-work” was often done by women, meaning [informal, unpaid] tasks in the household. The problem of not seeing these tasks as ‘work’, is that it was often naturalized that women should do this type of work. This led to women doing a kind of second shift of work when they came home, doing “house-work” after their ‘normal’ work. Another problem regarding genders in work is that women make [on average] a lot less than men, even when performing the same labor. People often talk about their “work-life balance”, meaning they think they can split their work lives and personal lives, but meanwhile work often spills over in private lives through the use of personal networks for work, the use of private resources for work, and the effect of work on mental and physical well-being. And, the other way around, private lives often spills over in work lives; job status effects personal relations, people rely on their work to determine their identity and worth, and households can function as a singular economic unit in which the acceptance of paid work is based on if the others in the household are working or not. Neoliberal labor market policies impact the boundary between work-life and normal-life: - more emphasis on labor market participation, making work-life more central, - family life becomes more critical in terms of managing social risks, making normal-life more central, - flexibilization of work blurs the boundary between work-time and private-time. Allison Pugh states that people are “tumbleweed”, meaning they ‘blow in the wind’ from one job to the other and everything is temporary to them, blurring the boundaries between work and private lives, and living in a “one-way honor system” in which employer’s benefit from labor and have power, while employee’s don’t, or barely do. IMPORTANT FROM THIS WEEK [tutorial]: - Labor/employee relations - Formal/Informal work - Commodification of different types of labor power - The historical changes in economy and work, regarding: different sectors, different ways of organizing work [scientific management, Fordism, Post-Fordism], different labor relations and the role of labor unions. - How the rise of neoliberal policies affects labor/employee relations, boundaries between work and private life, and the difference between formal and informal work.  Lecture 4 [Environment & Climate] Sociologists make the distinction between what is ‘nature’ and what falls under ‘society’, but this is hard, because they are ingrained in each other. There are many views on what nature could be: ‘Gaia’ idea [everything is nature], nature is what is wild, nature is what is unchanged, etc. We as humans have a changing relationship with nature: surviving, fighting, taming, etc. Nature is not a passive or stable background but acts and reacts to human [or all] life. Nature is part of our ecosystem [the environment that supports our existence]. While nature in general cannot be destroyed, but the ecosystem we live in can. Right now, there is an emergency: our climate ecosystem is breaking down. Earth has an insanely long climate history. Right now we live in the period of human species: the “Holocene”. Global temperature has been rising rapidly since the industrial revolution. This is mostly due to the Cumulative Greenhouse effect: we create CO2, which gets stuck in the atmosphere, making the Earth warmer and warmer. In physics there is a discussion if we are still in the “Holocene”, or if we are currently in a period known as the “Anthropocene” in which humans are the dominant force and decide the change of our ecosystem. Looking at climate change, we often look at it through Elizabeth Shove’s model, the ABC MODEL: [Attitude + Behavior + Choice] Social change depends upon values and Attitudes [A], which drives the kinds of Behavior [B] that individuals Choose [C] to adopt. Focused on the individual Cultural values, beliefs and norms are only inside people’s head and make people “do things”. [Sociologists disagree] People always make conscious and rational choices. [Sociologists disagree] Economic and psychological models [based on ABC] are dominant in climate policy proposals, but these are, like the ABC model, individual models that ignore societal structures and dynamics. These models state that climate change can be solved by convincing/motivating people to change their actions and ultimately make more sustainable choices. There are multiple problems with the ABC model: - There is often a value-action gap [we say we value one thing but choose the other and are hypocritical]. “What we say does not always directly correlate with our choices”. - Many of our behaviors are automatic and not made by choice or power structures, but by our automatism. - Shane herself states that the model is too basic: we do not just need to look at the individual, but also at the structures of power and practices that affect them. Sociology can allow us to understand how and why people do what they do, making it important on the matter of climate change. Sociology studies how social behaviour creates pressure on the environment, how the effects and impact are distributed, the relationships leading to climate change, etc. There are two main perspectives in environmental sociology: ❖ Social Constructivism: People make social reality real. “How do people understand their surroundings and how do they construct such an understanding?” This is focused on culture [beliefs, norms and values]. ❖ Critical Realism: “To understand the tangible and observable effects of our social lives, we need to understand the hidden structures that generate them.” This is focused on material and economic structures and power positions. THEY ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, AND ARE OFTEN COMBINED BY SOCIOLOGISTS!!!! Constructivists look more at meaning within climate change, while Realists look more at causality and structures within climate change. For example, John Urry asked the constructivist question of “how do people view the problem of climate change?”. His answer: Catastrophism: action now [CC is immediate threat, we need radical solutions now at all costs] Gradualism: adapt and transform [CC is real but gradual process, we need solutions within our existing socio-economic framework] Skepticism: not real / too unsure [CC is not real / not caused by humans, no solution necessary] Environmental racism: People with certain races have to suffer under climate change more than others due to unfair distributions of climate change’s / pollution’s consequences. [This is often an economic issue, and it is often looked at by critical realists]. Everybody deals with Risks: ★ External risks: natural disasters and biological processes ★ Manufactured risks: through our knowledge, technology, and behavior The question is, do we accept uncertainty, contain it, or calculate possibilities? How do we deal with risk? Do we take individual responsibility? Do we distribute it over society? Do we exploit unequal dangers? Ulrich Beck - ‘Risk Society’: Beck states that we live in late “modernity” with - secularization - the rise of science - industrialization and technology - individualization Beck states that this type of society becomes a ‘Risk Society’; we are all on our own, dealing with risks that are technologically / industrially produced. [EG: nuclear attacks as a risk]. In this society, risk takes center stage, due to loss of certainty, more manufactured risks, difficulty to detect risks, more universal risks. This makes it possible for humanity to self-destruct. This new societal reality of constantly dealing with risks leads to irreversible and/or institutional problems, and a paradox of science being both the culprit and the savior. Beck’s theory has two big problems: He’s speaking from a western-centric approach, and risks might be universal, but the resources to defend ourselves from it are not. But why are we not acting on climate change? - Collective action problem: free-riders when a group must work together to find a solution. - Giddens’ Paradox: Disjunction between structural position, experience, and agency [power-to] to change. There is a vicious cycle because there is a disconnection between current experiences and future risks. - Political polemics and position taking: Leftwing VS Rightwing ideas on climate. “You are for, so I am against”. - Enforcing international agreements: Global issue but no real global legislation, no global ‘state’ to enforce global actions - Problem of social responsibility: Who is responsible? Personal or collective responsibility? South of the world, or the North? So where do we go from here? We need to have sustainable goals, limit the growth of climate change. A good example of a possible solution is the Doughnut economy, a model for economic decision taking into account both planetary limits and social needs. Here, we would not simply see “economic growth” as a healthy economy, but would also look at climate change and our planet. Ecological modernism: We need to keep on progressing and develop new solutions for climate change. We should go through an ecological transition through progressive innovation. This could lead to a new stage of capitalism, with changing investments and new resources and possibilities. This idea has 5 pillars: Science [to innovate] Economic markets [to progress] Nation-states [to enable] Political lobbying [putting pressure] Ideology [to believe] There are critiques on ecological modernism, like how it is just based on business, how it is too expensive, or how it has too much trust in innovation and technology. Global Environmental Justice: States that burdens of climate breakdown and transition are not equal. We need to look at who is carrying the benefits and who is carrying the costs, and who is affected the most and why. There are differences in historical responsibilities in states and regions, we need to take this into account. To achieve change in Climate Change, large political processes are needed, helped by local social movements that have Indigenous Knowledge, and Ecological Citizenship. Indigenous Knowledge = knowledge about practices, norms and beliefs of indigenous people and the processes that change these. Includes knowledge passed down by indigenous people. It is important, and contrasts to Western-centric scientific knowledge. Ecological Citizenship = giving nature rights [EG: River has a right to stay unpolluted]. This includes the civil ‘duty’ to protect the environment [EG: Civil lawsuits against fossil fuel companies]. IMPORTANT FROM THIS WEEK [tutorial]: - ABC Model. - Anthropocene. - Responses to climate: Catastrophism, Gradualism, Skepticism. - Difference between Critical Realist’s perspective and Social Constructivist’s perspective. - How Racism, Injustice and Climate-change are connected to each other.  Lecture 5 [Being a Sociologist] Sociology gives you certain frames to look at things. Sociology comes from the words “Socius” [companion / society] + “Logos” [study / word]. The study fits in a long history of humans thinking about how humans live together and what patterns they follow, and how this can be changed. Sociology is very similar to other sciences, because like the other sciences, Sociology has - Logic: constitutes of theory, methods and empirical research. - Infrastructures: universities, departments, journals, conferences, etc. - Protocols: peer-review, transparency of data, validation of methods, etc. - Intertwined with other sciences: history, law, psychology, economics, biology, etc. Because of this last point, Sociology is sometimes called the “queen of science”. Despite all this, Sociology is also very different, because we ourselves are a product of what we investigate. “To understand what Sociology is all about, one has to look at itself from a distance”. Sociology also has multiple Paradigm’s [views] working together in one field. These Paradigm’s can shift over time [EG: view of people on gravity], which is called a “Paradigm shift”. The ‘task’ of Sociology is not always clear, Bourdieu says its to find out why people do the things they do and how certain things happen in society. Weber en Geertz state that it is an interpretive search of meaning. Mills states that it is about creating sociological imagination, with which you defamiliarize social reality and look at social structures causing societal issues. This constant questioning is why there are so many Paradigm’s: everybody has a different view. Norbert Elias says we have to look for how we as humans do not hurt ourselves [Engaging with changing society = Engaged Sociology], so Sociology has to study that and find out how our life as humans together really works. He states that his position [/history] shapes his view on sociology. This position shaping your view on something is called your Positionality [SEE NEXT PAGE] Elias also states that people’s wishes should not dominate their thinking [Reflecting on your thinking and your values = Reflexive Sociology] Lastly, he states that we have to get away from the continuous change of life; engaging with the meaning of life like this is called looking for your Existential Goal. There is a complex relationship between Value-free Sociology and Engaged sociology. Some think sociology should be Descriptive: explaining how the social world is, and some think it should be Prescriptive: telling how the social world ought to be / should be.  This relates to the debate between Weber and Durkheim: Weber: Sociology should be value-free and have Ethical Neutrality, because science will never give the answer to how you should live. Social sciences should be Empirical. Durkheim: Durkheim follows a committed sociology that Prescribes, viewing the world from an Engaged Sociology. He states that sociology can give people criteria of what they should do, and that science can shed light on practical problems while still remaining faithful to its own methods. Mary Romero stated that sociology stands for critical thought and it's also about forming opinions, it’s not just merely based on political opinion. Romero’s main point is that sociology should be used to fight for social justice based on scientific inquiry. Marx and Bourdieu agreed with her. Sociological engagements can lead to accusations of subjectivity/bias within research. These accusations come through: Apolitical conflicts: non-political conflicts about the hierarchy of credibility, where credibility and the right to be heard are unequally distributed throughout society. Political conflicts: politically based conflicts in which openly conflicting definitions of reality and sympathies are more clear and transparent. The takeover of bias and sympathies over the results are avoided through research techniques and theories, and our work must be inspected to see if our theories and methods don’t require bias/sympathy overtaking [Invitation to Reflexive Sociology]. On reflecting, Bourdieu state that in order to do Reflexive Sociology, we need to: ❖ Recognize that sociologists are social beings, so the knowledge they produce is also socially constructed. ❖ Look for ways to Radically Doubt your knowledge and bracket our presumptions. ❖ Always think twice - thinking about our thinking - to produce social scientific knowledge. This all together is called the Epistemological rupture: continuously breaking the taken-for-grantedness of sociological knowledge, research, methods and theories = questioning the way we produce knowledge. Gouldner states that Reflexive sociology would need radical changes, really similar to what Bourdieu states. Positionality is about understanding your relation, positioning and stance of the researcher in relation to the social and political context of the study: structural dimensions and intersectionalities like ethnicity, class, gender, age, etc. Also in terms of the degree of commonality between researchers and what/who is researched. Positionality deals with the question “what is influencing my understanding and view of the study, topic, participants, etc.?” Positionality includes awareness of the Relationality towards the people you study; how you relate to them. Forms of Relationality: - Insider [researcher studies own practice] - Insider in collaboration with other insiders - Insiders in collaboration with outsiders - Reciprocal collaboration [equal insider and outsider teams] - Outsiders in collaboration with insiders - Outsider study - Outsider within: Going into another field as an outsider with the outsider background. P. Hill Collins looks at marginalized positions within social science itself: what does it mean for the knowledge that is not produced. She states that within sociology, nothing can be seen as “normal”, not even Sociology itself, making outsiders within Sociology useful because they may think about it differently. In relation to Sociology she strives for people to take an alternative Paradigmatic approach, while stating that sociological consensus and paradigms should not be at the expense of “human subjectivity”. Use subjectivity to understand other’s subjectivity. Collins outsider fits with Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology, but goes beyond Bourdieu’s view by stating that you should use your own subjectivity to actively uncover anomalies within sociology. Four types of sociology: ★ Policy Sociology: Sociology in the service of a goal defined by a client, not by the sociologist. Policy sociology’s goal for research is to provide solutions to problems that are presented to us, or to legitimate solutions that have already been reached. Not concerned with the ends of society but only with the means to reach those ends. (Sociology for Policy). ★ Critical Sociology: Examines and questions the foundations - both the explicit and the implicit, both normative and descriptive - of the research programs of professional sociology. [EG: Sociology of Sociology, Epistemological Rupture, Outsider Within]. (Sociology of Sociology). ★ Professional Sociology: Consists first and foremost of multiple intersecting research programs, each with their assumptions, exemplars, defining questions, conceptual apparatuses, and evolving theories. [EG: sociology journals]. (Sociology of Society). ★ Public Sociology: Traditional Public Sociologists instigate debates within or between publics, while not always participating in them [they write books, go on tv, give speeches, etc.. Organic Public Sociologists work in close connection with the public and participate in it [works with labour movements, neighborhood associations, protests, etc.] Concerned with a dialogue about the ends of society and the means to reach those ends. (Sociology for Society).  Knowledge for whom? Knowledge for what? Policy Sociology Policy actors. To provide and/or legitimate policy solutions within a predetermined problem/solution framework. Critical Sociology Fellow sociologists. To examine the normative and descriptive foundations of sociological research / knowledge production. Professional Sociology Fellow sociologists / [social] To strengthen sociology / [social] science. scientists. Public Sociology Various extra-academic To instigate/actively participate in audiences. dialogues, to interrogate the value premises of society. Instrumental knowledge: Knowledge that helps to solve [sociological] puzzles (professional sociology), or [policy] problems (policy sociology). Reflexive knowledge: Knowledge that emerges from conversation / dialogue and interrogates the value premises of society and our profession. This entails a dialogue within the academic community about the foundations of research programs (critical sociology), and between academics and the public about the direction of society (public sociology). Different audiences will respond differently to Sociology, and will therefore need different forms of Sociology. W.E.B Du Bois did this through educating people about sociology in many different ways [research, writing, teaching, organizing, activism, etc]. Sociology is often not taken as seriously because a lot of people find it to be “unimportant” because loads of people/scientists see people as individuals and focus on objective “truth”. IMPORTANT FROM THIS WEEK [tutorial]: - Public, Policy, Professional and Critical sociology. - Value-free research. - Hierarchy of credibility. - Outsider within. - Positionality, the impact it can have, and why it is important to keep in mind. - Reflexive sociology, and how it needs “epistemological rupture” and sociology of sociology.