Sociological Theory 1 - Lecture Notes PDF

Lecture 1 - Social interactions and the formation of social reality Theories → describe some part of empirical reality ○ Empirical reality → observing (measuring, counting, describing, observing) it for further analysis The description of empirical reali...

Lecture 1 - Social interactions and the formation of social reality Theories → describe some part of empirical reality ○ Empirical reality → observing (measuring, counting, describing, observing) it for further analysis The description of empirical reality is about relationships between concepts When associations become intense (a lot of attention), people become more susceptible to creating new categories of understanding ○ Theories describe empirical reality using concepts → formal and generalized (abstract) ideas Theories indicate under which conditions a certain part of empirical reality appears/changes They describe empirical variations, and these descriptions can and should be evaluated Strict version of evaluation is falsification: ‘a their cannot be right if it cannot be wrong’ Examples of concepts Association (people acting together in assemblies) Categories of understanding (divisions of people use to make sense of the world) Studying old theories ○ Positivism → an approach to the study of society that relies specifically on scientific evidence, such as experiments and statistics, to reveal a true nature of how society operates Empirical observations are central Scientific debates should revolve around how empirical observations and analyses are done, not about theoretical assumptions Focus of progress Progress is (only) possible by improving the methods and techniques of empirical observation and analysis ○ Max Weber → believed scientific accomplishments will be outdated after a couple decades Developing sociological intuition ○ Social life always changes → cannot be formalized in universal statements Universal statements → conditional statements grasping an entire concept (eg. all swans are white) ○ Sociologists must learn to make theoretical (abstract) senses of empirical observation ○ Theorizing requires intuition → previous knowledge and experience created from observation  An ability to see something puzzling in familiar situations ○ The beginning of sociology The firsts sociologists struggled to make sense of phenomena which are still central issues in sociology As there was not much of a sociological tradition, they needed to improvise to develop their own theoretical language and concepts Therefore, studying classic texts in sociology is a good way to start to develop sociological intuition Colonialism Sociological works started in 19th century in Europe → time of colonialist exploitation and oppression ○ Sociology was shaped by colonialism ○ It contributed to colonialism through (re)producing s colonial episteme Episteme → ways of understanding the world that are considered legitimate knowledge of reality Legitimate → authoritative (hard to question) The colonial episteme was based on racism and creating divisions between people → similarities were not mentioned ○ Sociology was also shaped by men’s domination of women ○ Coloniality of time → the notion of evolution and progress (with the West/colonizers are the most advanced/superior) ○ Coloniality of being → the idea that white men were the most fully ‘huMAN’ and all others are ‘sub-human’ Decolonizing sociology ○ Both ideas produce differences and justify dominance, exploitation, and oppression → the colonial matrix of power ○ To decolonize sociology is to be aware and critical of the colonial episteme Lecure 2 - Social interactions and Interdepencies Social interactions → people reacting to each other, the action of the one relates to, is a response to the action of the other ○ The micro level of people doing and talking in the flow of momentarily experience Collins → Microfoundations of macrosociology ○ Micro-macro is a difference in extensiveness ○ Macro processes (eg. social inequality, culture) Weber → ‘Sociology is a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects’ ○ Liked cause and effect ○ Thinks sociology is the subjective meaning of behavior  ○ Believes social action is meaningfully oriented to past, present or expected future behavior of others ○ Highly believed in subjective meanings!!! Durkheim agrees with Weber → in transcendence, people have the ability to add something to the real (subjective meaning) Weber ○ Nomothetic → relating to the study or discovery of general scientific laws ○ Ideographic → relating to or dealing with something concrete, individual, or unique ○ Doesn't believe in universalizing generalizations in empiricism (research) → generalizations should stay at the conceptual level ○ However, he does believe nomothetic theory is true for interaction ritual theory The ideal type → theoretical construction where elements are highlighted and connected in a systematic way ○ Conceptual reality ○ Eg. four types of social action instrumentally rational, value rational, traditional, and affectional Ideal types of social action (Weber) ○ Instrumental rational → actions stemming from expectations are considered as means to attain the individuals rationally assessed ends ○ Value rational → actions stemming from a belief in the end as valuable in itself, whatever the prospect of success Involving the consideration of ultimate values for their own sake and a plan to attain them ○ Affective → actions stemming from the individuals specific emotions and feeling states ○ Traditional → actions stemming from ingrained, habitualized action; often automatic responses without reflection Durkheim on social reality ○ “Society is not a mere sum of individuals” ○ Social phenomena are emergent properties → cannot be reduced to the sum of all individual components ○ Sui generis → unique Sociology analysis social phenomena through empirical observation, not introspection (like in philosophy) ○ Durkheim’s positivism Sociology explains higher levels of social phenomena, not the lower levels (like organisms/individual in biology) ○ Argument for sui generis Social facts ○ Durkheim believed society is an external power that coerces control over us ○ Social facts are social reality ○ Can be studied empirically Lecture 3 - Durkheim conducts study of religion, and claims he has discovered how social reality comes about Durkheim's study of religion ○ Religion is ‘alive’ ○ “Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse” 1912 ○ He did not agree with the prevailing explanation of how religions develop Our ability to dream creates the idea that people have a spiritual identity (soul) which can transcend their body (animists) (spirit) ○ Durkheim claims that religious ideas are generated in a specific form of social interaction/rituals ○ He studied the most “pure”, “less elaborated” forms of religions, based on anthropological field work reports Durkheim's discoveries are about the formation of social reality ○ The scope of his study of religion is much broader ○ Main discovery: Categories of understanding: how we think about, understand, perceive, give meaning to and act upon our environment Collective representations: symbols that represent the group ○ Categories of understanding and collective representations are social facts (external and coercive), so what we consider social reality Other opinions ○ How do people create shared understandings of the environment while this environment empirically exists of a mass particulars Mass of particulars → something part of a group, but generalized as one thing Eg. laptops ○ A-priorists → categories of understanding are already given, study them by introspection Introspection → the process by which someone comes to form beliefs about their own mental states Durkheim did not want sociologists to study this way ○ Empiricists → categories of understanding are assembled by individuals who categorize and give meaning to their subjective experiences that arise from their engagement with the environment Durkheim → categories of understanding are the product of interacting individuals, they are eternal to and exert coercive force on individuals, created The sacred-profane distinction ○ All religions make a distinction between the sacred and the profane Sacred objects gain transcendent meaning → rise above common life/have an elevated status Eg. a cow, holy water, totem Have special powers The use of sacred objects is governed by specific rules  All other common objects, are profane All religions make a distinction between the sacred and the profane This distinction offers a categorization of the world, a category of understanding Rituals ○ All religions involve religious practices → rituals Collective, repetitive behavioral patterns, the form of which is not necessarily related to their content Assemblies with a shared focus on an object (which may become sacred) Eg. being baptized in holy water A process that can be generate intense group feelings, collective representations and categories of understanding → creates a feeling of collective effervescence Effervescence → vivacity and enthusiasm Durkheim's analysis of the rituals of Australian indigenous people → the totemic principle ○ Based on other anthropologists research ○ Process A loosely connected family ‘clan’ (nomads) gathers around their totem They conduct rituals of singing and dancing They enter a state of trance, and become engulfed with the collective emotion At that point, they experience the divine power of the totem Durkheim says that this experience is not a divine power, but just being part of a group → collective effervescence Religion and categories of understanding ○ Durkheim → the first categories through which people gave meaning to the world were produced in religious rituals Sacred/profane became them/us, environment time Such categories are often dichotomies Dichotomy → a division or contrast between two things ○ Eg. men and women ○ He believed all later knowledge and beliefs (ideological, political, scientific) ar based on these first religious categories of understanding ○ All of the knowledge and beliefs is called social reality The totem as carrier of group feelings ○ Are religious beliefs about reality? ○ Durkheim believed that the experimental evidence of participants is very real, and that rituals make them feel good, strong, and confident Once the participant leaves, they feeling of ecstasy will slowly flee The sacred objects that were celebrated are now connected with special memories and are charged with group feelings → the secondary experience of the group feeling Lecture 4 How the totem becomes a collective representation Totem → a material object in which the group collectively worships Totem as a carrier of group feelings ○ The practice that occur concerning the totem have meaning to the participants which then gives them the euphoria of a group feeling ○ Once they return, the ecstatic feeling wears off ○ The sacred objects they have celebrated (the focus if attention) now are related to the special memories of the group → secondary experience of the group feeling ○ Sacred objects become collective representations → group emblems, often in the form of material symbols ○ Durkheim believes that rituals and collective representations, society (the group), revives itself Examples of political effervescence ○ Obama's election result Similar movements and chanting → collective effervescence ○ Hitler becoming chancellor Randal Collins → Interaction ritual theory Peter Burger and Thomas Luckman’s elaboration of Durkheim’s study of religion → “the social construction of reality” ○ The biological equipment of human beings requires a social order → institutionalization ○ Humans and other animals differ in how they relate to their environment Humans adapt to their environment and their needs They collectively transform the world-openness that characterizes their relationships with their environment into a relative world-closedness → behaving more like animals (self-limiting)  Institutionalization → A social order emerges which provides direction and meaning to people Externalization and typification ○ In social interaction, especially face-to face interaction, the other’s subjectivity is maximally available for me to apprehend ○ Others externalize themselves to me, and so do i, to them ○ Note, this is not the case for myself, I must stop acting if i want to make myself available to myself ○ Institutionalization starts when people reciprocally typify habitualized externalizations (actions) of each other ○ Typification is double → typical actions and ‘types’ of actors ○ Typification schemes develop that people use to understand and deal with others → common sense Institutionalization, socialization, and objectivation ○ Socialization → the process of learning to behave in a way that is acceptable to society ○ Objectivation → the conversion of a concept or abstraction into an object ○ Institutionalization → is in full progress when these typifications are learnt by other who were not involved in the original habitualization of action (socialization) Becomes external ○ So that they experience them as existing over and beyond them, as a given, compelling external reality of its own (objectivation) Marriage is a set of actions that is expected to occur. The social rules are institutionalized ○ Institutions have two dimensions Knowledge (in the form of typification schemes) Actions (in the form of the actualization process of typicatory schemes in roles) Objectivation and signification ○ Institutions are human made, objectivated human action ○ Signification is a special form of objectivation ○ Signs Have as their only function the indication of meanings They are clustered in systems of signs And they can be detached from face-to-face situation ○ Language (vocalized signification) is the most important sign system in human societies Legitimization ○ As part of the institutionalization process, people produce a body of knowledge that justifies the existence of the institution and its value ○ Legitimations are truth claims about reality, and deviations from it are considered as departures from reality Social variations of institutionalization (including reification) ○ The degree to which different institutions exist for similar kinds of habitualized action (eg. schooling)  ○ The degree to which different institutions are integrated into a more or less coherent universe of meaning (eg. being christian and going to a christian school) ○ The degree to which institutions are perceived as non-human facticties (reification) ○ The paradox of reification → people are able to forget they have made the world they live in, to produce a reality that denies themselves ○ Reification has important consequences for the opportunities that people see to change their world Lecture 5 - George Herbert on ‘The self’ as social process Social behaviorism → thinking is taking the role of others towards us, an internal dialogue Mind and idea of self emerges from the social act of communication and that people develop ideas about themselves through interactions with others. ○ Behavioral psychology → stimulus-response model ○ How can we study consciousness/mental processes? ○ Social behaviorism (Mead) → consciousness is behavior, a social process Active, takes in the form of a conversation Thinking is a social process Mental process do not just emerge from the brain → it needs (social) input for it to be able to create consciousness The experience of the self ○ There is an immediate experience, our habitually, unthinkingly moving about in a world that is simply there Eg. cycling is mostly automatic The world of particulars ○ There is also the way we organize, and understand these experiences ○ Opinions For Mead, both of these are how we experience the self → ‘The Self’ makes sense of the world For Durkheim, this is about the categories of understanding Two approaches to how people add ideas - social reality - to the empirical world of particulars The self as both a subject and object ○ Characteristic of the self is that it can take itself as an object (acts upon itself) → both subject and object ○ Comparison → Berger & Luckmann objectivation (habitualization) Humans become an object to themselves by taking the attitudes of other people towards them Social process → you can only see yourself through the eyes of others  They internalized meaningful social interaction How humans and other animals interact → gesturing ○ Gestures → bodily actions of an organism which evokes a reaction in another organism Eg. one animal cries out, all the other animals cry out The gesture of the one is a stimulus for the other, and the other’s response is a stimulus for the first Seen in Berger & Luckmann habitualization Individuals with no prior knowledge create a habit off of one another Human gesturing often takes in the form of talking Meaningful interaction ○ Meanings are an emergent property of people interacting (gesturing) ○ Meaning arises in ‘the relation between the gesture of one individual to the adjective response made to it by another, in its indicative capacity as pointing to the compilation of resultant of the act it initiates In that reaction to the stimulus response, we find meaning The meaning of the gesture being the response of the second individual to it The meaning is actualized Meaningful interaction involves symbols ○ When people talk, they use ‘significant symbols’ Because the meaning of the symbol is not necessarily related to its form, people can use significant symbols to transcend the here and now/add to the world People use symbols to… Produce meaning To talk and think about the future and the past To talk and think about others not present To talk and think about divine beings Significant symbols and the development of society ○ Significant symbols are crucial importance in the development of society as they allow for an increase of the participants in the interaction Eg. peace symbol in the 70s It increases opportunities to transfer knowledge across time and space It also allows to envision a different world and make a plan to attempt to change it How people turn meaningful interaction inward ○ Significant symbols are the development of Self Significant symbols call out a mental image (which is not necessarily related to the specific form of the symbol itself) In the ones who produce them In the ones to whom the gesture is oriented Significant symbols allow to take the attitude/role of the other in myself, calling out a response in myself Eg. when you speak, it may seem unconscious, but once its spoken, you are aware of the meaning of the words  This allows us to talk to ourselves and create mental conversations to represent our realities (sequences of stimuli and responses) So we can use significant symbols to take yourself a san object (creating meaning) to yourself Interaction with others and ourselves ○ We are changing our own address to other people by understanding what we are saying and using the understanding to continue the conversation. This requests a certain response in another and that changes our own action (to keep talking) ○ We can turn this process internally, and have internal dialogues A stream of thought → same as the flow of a conversation The emergence of the self → it is a social process ○ Learning to see oneself as an object This can be done by learning to take the attitudes/roles of others Eg. the play stage ○ Different roles are taken one by one, separately ○ Eg. playing the mom doll talking to her child doll The game stage ○ Different roles are taken simultaneously ○ Rules organize the various responses and roles ○ Eg. playing the referee In the play stage, people learn to take the role of particular others, in the games stage they learn to take the role of the generalized other ○ The self is the interaction between Me and I The Me → the self people are aware of, when they take themselves as an object to themselves (internal dialogue) The I → the acting self → a response to a social situation, an answer to the attitude others take toward me Mead [pg. 175] → the I is the response of the individual to the attitudes of the others, the Me is the organized set if attitudes of the others in oneself The freedom that action offers, the meaning that consciousness provides ○ The I is in the moment of acting, it gives a sense of freedom and initiative, we can surprise ourselves as we act ○ The Self is the social processes of “I” and “Me” This allows for a conscious responsibility Lecture 6 - Herbert Blumer Blumer ○ Main premises Human beings act on the basis of meanings Meanings are produced in social interaction Meanings change as people engage with their world and interact ○ Symbolic interactionism is grounded on Weber’s notion of Verstehen → understanding the subjective meaning (aims, intentions, motives) people give to a social act social action is meaningfully oriented to past, present, or expected future behavior of others The symbolic in symbolic interactionism is about these actions meaningfully oriented towards others How are meanings produced? ○ Interpretative process To give meaning to our surroundings is to make indications to oneself Eg. knowing what a lecture hall is and how to behave Self-indication → about considering the relevance or importance of an object (including others and their actions) for the line of action people are pursuing and fitting to those of others → the object becomes how it is indicated, what meaning it gains given the ongoing action Eg. making sense of what is happening Self-indication implies that humans have ‘selves’ ○ Symbols The point of symbolic interactionism is the relationship between symbols and meaning We use symbols to create meaning in the world Eg. language Shows how similar objects and actions gain different meanings depending on how people interpret them Weber’s meaningfully oriented action towards the action of others is symbolic interaction Non-symbolic interaction → when we directly respond to another's action without interpret that action Eg. blushing What happens when people interact ○ They take into account what the other person is doing/about to be doing → they try to fit their lines of actions to each other Eg. moving out of the way when someone comes towards you ○ They do so by seeking meaning of others actions ○ Social interaction is also an ongoing process of self-indication, the construction of action through producing meanings, of the situation, objects, and of the actions of other (what they try to do) ○ For Blumer, society is a vast and continuous process of people trying to fit their actions to each other  How do we understand each other? ○ A gesture gains its meaning as a part of the larger sequences of gestures us a part that makes up an activity ○ A mutual understanding of shared meaning is socially established in the connection between stimulus and response When my gesture is indicating what I am planning to do/what I would like you to do or understand → established in your response to that The triadic nature of meaning (Mead) Action Meaning Change Emphasis on interpretation ○ Blumer does not believe everything is always up for interpretation Most social interactions are repetitive and pre-established → they emerged from a background of previous actions and schemes of interpretation already there Institutions New problems may arise that require the production of new meanings Eg. accepting new types of marriage Every institution must be actualized by people fitting their lines of action to one another Learning from symbolic interactionism ○ Issues in sociology Blumer says prevailing approaches ignore the importance of meaning and action They overlook the interpretative process in which people make indications to themselves → they ignore that humans have ‘selves’ Instead, they invoke factors to explain behavior and overlook that meaning is produced in action Social factors → status position, norms, values, culture Psychological factors → motives, attitudes, psych traits For Blumer, daily life is about meeting a flow of situations in which people have to act, based on how they indicate, give meaning to, the world surrounding them Lecture 7 - Social Interactions and the Formation and Social Reality Performances and situations Erving Goffman Emic and etic → complementary ways of understanding human behavior  ○ Emic → phonemic (how sounds are used in a language) Focus on how people construct meanings, and how they understand the world Insider’s perspective (emotion) (internal, subjective, and contextual aspects of human behavior) ○ Etic → phonetic (how sounds are produced in a language) Focus on the researchers’ meanings, concepts, theories, and classification schemes Outsider's perspective (external, objective, and measurable aspects of human behavior) Self and situations ○ A situation develops when people are physically co-present and are mutually aware of each others’ presence ○ We have a situation going on when we start to react to each other ○ Focused or unfocused Focused → the creation of intersubjectivity, a sense that we develop a mutual understanding of what we are doing Intersubjectivity is a process, it is Mead’s triadic development of meaning as participants of the situation to one another Eg. asking a question and answering it, rather than being distracted by the attending of the person The self as a sacred object ○ Goffman → “Many gods have been done away with, but the individual himself stubbornly remains as a deity of considerable importance” ○ Recognition of the self by others is very important to people says goffman ○ In fact, selves can only exist in so far as they are recognized by others, intersubjectively ○ Your belief in the self, must be sustained by others Performing a self ○ People can't just do whatever they want to do in a given situation without risking being seen as socially incompetent… they attempt to present a self that fits with the definition of the situation (Goffman) Eg. knowing how to behave in a lecture hall ○ How does this relate to Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann? Typification (ideas of types of behaviors that fit to the situation) Goffman’s question ○ For Goffman the issue is not so much whether people are faking or whether they show their ‘real self’ ○ His sociological question is how people convince others that the self they present fits the definition of the situation Presentations of yourself in socially defined roles for different situation He emphasizes how society ‘offers’ these roles and therefor you feel pushed into them → sanctioned and upheld by others Society forces us to present ourselves appropriately Goffman’s dramaturgical approach → people typically use impression management to show that they uphold societal or cultural norms and expectations ○ Impression management → safeguarding the role Eg. barista knowing how to brew coffee  ○ demeanor/manner → behavior that fits a role (a claim) ○ Deference → the recognition of the role by others ○ Appearance → indicators of social status ○ Props → attributes which help people to play their roles ○ Backstage → the place where people prepare for or reflect on their performance ○ Front stage → the place where people perform ○ Tact and teams → ways to help each other to attain a successful performance (definition of the situation) The Self to Face ○ Face Interaction ritual (Goffman) In social encounters, people tend to act out lines and a face Lines are patterns of acts that express participants’ view of: The situation and where it is heading toward The participants Themselves (their face) Face is the positive social value a person claims A social face can be one’s most personal possessions, but it is ‘on loan from society’ Lecture 8 - Performance and Situations Expressions ○ Physiologically and biologically, humans can portray a diverse face of emotions ○ Humans are different from animals because we can show a wealth of emotions (eg. doubt, sadness, belonging) Face work - Goffman ○ Following Goffman, people try to make whatever actions consistent with their face ○ They succeed to maintain face when the lines they act out are supported by others ○ Goffman thinks that in most interactions, especially face-to-face encounters, participants tend to establish a mutual working of acceptance of lines Find mutual understanding that fits the situation ○ He calls this the interaction order (next step is the working agreement → people put in effort to make that situation work (create friendship, match, etc)) Saving face ○ People tend to be emotionally attached to their own and other’s faces ○ Embarrassment is a central emotion for Goffman Faux pas when someone does something  It encourages repair of face, protective (the other’s face) and defensive (one’ own face) ○ Goffman seems to think people are fearful of disruptions of the situation The ‘problem’ of disruption ○ Goffman emphasizes the accomplishment of intersubjectivity and participants’ concerns about presenting a self and maintaining face Eg. not telling people that you failed the driving test ○ Intersubjectivity requires some interruptions, going back and forth between smoothness and repair of interruption (Tacory, 2018) ○ Instead of disruption of, a disruption for interaction ○ Disruption is a variable property of interactions, depending on, among others: Anticipated futures → the way people deal with disruptions (eg. with bf or with stranger) Expectations in interaction ○ Meaning is created in stimulus-response interactions ○ Expectations of what will happen in the future co-construct meaning in interaction ○ A study of unwanted sex (Ford, 2017) Women sometimes went through sexual encounters unwillingly with men because they feared violent rape Their expectations were that the situation could get worse Even when there was no signs in the interaction that it would turn violent, women sensed that if they would try to stop them, it would get worse Men would then take this as ‘consent’ (or toleration) For women, rape was constantly looming in this imagined future of the interaction Three types of future in interaction (Tavory, 2018) ○ Protentions (next turns) (eg. people take turns in conversations) ○ Trajectories (eg. daily projects, long term programmes) ○ Temporal landscapes (eg. taking for granted, general ideas about time) Goffman on civil (in) attention Self and others in public spaces ○ Civil inattention (unfocused) → people are aware of each other’s presence but they pretend they are not ○ Uncivil inattention (unfocused) → people are aware of each others’ presence but one party neglects (the needs or desires of) the other Eg. the lecturer ignoring a student asking a question ○ Civil attention (focused) → people orient their attention towards others to bring about a shared definition of the situation, creating intersubjectivity ○ Uncivil attention (focused) → people orient their attention to the other party to dominate or exponent the other Civil inattention and social differentiation ○ The variation of roles that people can actualise and the diversity that people can find themselves in ○ The point about civil inattention is that people show they are aware of others’ presence, but remain indifferent to them  Keeping the distance should be done tactfully → your looking should not express that the other arouses fear or shame in you Your looking at the other should express that there is nothing special or wrong about that other The interaction form of civil inattention is typical of urban life in which people encounter many stranger Civil inattention and social control ○ How do people regulate the behavior of others when it becomes inappropriate? ○ People impose social control by minor and major infractions of civil inattention Minor → staring Major → verbal expressions The unequal distribution of civil inattention Some people can be looked at longer than others Some people can look longer at others (and those others are not allowed to look back that long at them) A threat to self and the situation → stigma (Goffman) ○ Virtual social identity → what people are expected to be in a social role ○ Actual social identity → Who the person actually is, their biography and physical features ○ Gaps between the virtual and social identities which undermine the first are stigma Which can be a discredited or discreditable stigma The stigmatized, the normal, and the wise Elijah Anderson 2015. The White space ○ The experience of ‘Afro-American’ young men when they enter White spaces in the US Note: in the US racial relations are fraught with tension ○ Afro-American people monitor the presence and proportion of other ‘Afro-Americans’ ○ While ‘Whites’ take the whiteness of a space for granted ○ An indication of dominance: ‘Afro-Americans’ have to navigate White spaces, but ‘Whites’ often do not need to enter Black spaces Black space is seen as ‘ghetto’ space (Anderson) ○ The Afro-American ‘ghetto’ is a strong negative symbol in the US, a source of prejudice, fear, disgust and pity ○ The symbol of the ‘ghetto’ remains an important identifier of ‘Afro-American’ young men in the US, whether they reside in such areas or not ○ The emergence of highly deprived, crime ridden, unsafe neighborhoods due to large scale processes of structural marginalization Anderson on the consequences of ghettoization ○ The code dominates demeanor in public space in crime ridden neighborhoods ○ Displaying aggressive reputations of being able and ready to use violence at the slightest provocation ○ Enforcing ‘respect’ and ‘reputation’ as protection → results in spirals of violence The ‘white’ space  ○ As ‘Afro-Americans’ – notably young men - navigate White space, just their appearance as ‘Afro-American’ can already be seen as a transgression ○ Class – status – race tension ○ The need to perform a ‘dance’: being ‘Afro-American’ but not ‘ghetto’ ‘Can I help you’ (uncivil attention dressed up as civil attention) In White space, the acceptance of young ‘Afro-American’ men is provisional and depends on how others judge them What is the stigma concerning the ‘white’ space? ○ The negative ‘ghetto’ stigma undermines ‘Afro-Americans’’ moral authority, notably when navigating the White space ○ Due to this stigma, ‘Whites’ feel less restraint to offend ‘Afro-Americans’, leading to emotionally acute, traumatizing expressions of racism ○ Think in terms of Mead: ‘Whites’ are less likely to feel shame or restraint as they perceive themselves in the eyes of the public (Generalized Other) ○ Note that similar White spaces appear in other parts of the world as well: consider ‘Roma’ in Hungary ○ Lecture 9 - Emotions and social connections Human evolution ○ Inside our brain The emotion controlling parts of the brain (amygdala) are the parts that first process information Awareness of the brain → outer parts of the brain ○ Emotions and neural traffic All sensory informations enters our brain first in the older brain parts This is the place where fear and anger are generated if needed and attached to these impressions (3F) Signals then (possibly) move further to the outer newer brain parts (neocortex) → allows us to create mental images of the impression, to verbalize it and to think about it We are also able to create mental images of emotions → feelings Feelings are therefore socialized emotions → our awareness of emotions (feelings) can only happen using the tools of society (eg. language) Human evolution and emotions (Massey & Weenink) ○ The more human-like creatures started to live in larger groups and were able to live in more diverse environments, the more diverse set of sensory information they had to process The people who prepare, hunt the food, etc → also developed more diverse and complex thinking This process went together with an expansion of the set of emotional reactions in humans The evolutionary order, automatic system A newer, more differentiated system of emotions Eg. sadness + fear + anger → guilt (newer type of emotion) Of all animals, humans stand out of their capacity of generating a large diversity of emotions ○ Each increase in the complexity of the social environment generated an increase in neural emotion networks Grooming (indicates connection and belonging), then gesturing, then verbal language The increased complexity of communication went together with the formation of newer brain parts and the increasing differentiation and complexity of the brain allows human beings to develop a richer set of social interaction (rituals, singing, dancing, drawings) ○ The more complex social environments also require a larger memory → the brain grew larger especially the emotional wiring in it ○ Stored experiences (memories) gain an emotional loading → our memories always have an emotional ‘color’ (hippocampus) ○ The upward neural traffic, from the older sub cordial parts to the neocortex is much faster and larger than the downward traffic  Implies that emotional processes influence mental processes much more than vice versa Emotions and mental/cognitive awareness ○ The distinction between ‘rational’ and ‘emotional’ is false, given how our brain works and how it evolved ○ Emotions guide our mental processing → they indicate which experiences are related mental images are relevant and important to us, and they offer intention and motivation Interplay between mental processes, ratio, and … So, emotions guide categories of understanding, collective effervescence (Durkehim) Emotions link individuals to society Emotions in sociology ○ Shilling Emotions as a problem for sociologists → are they located in the natural or the cultural world? How to avoid an oversocialized view and do justice to the fact that human beings lead an embodied existence? Durkheim → humans are double (homo duplex), they combine a bodily, sensorial existence with a social existence We combine a bodily, biological capacity of emotional arousal with feelings, socialized emotions Society requires socialized emotions ○ Durkheim thinks that people are unfree by nature → their ‘passions’ (needs, desires, urges) are endless and egotistic, if they are not tamed by society ○ How are people able to reach beyond these limitless ‘passions’ and learn socialized feelings? ○ Effervescence provides the behavioral conditions that transform passions into socialized feelings The problem that rationalization brings ○ Rationalization → the increasing importance of what Weber called instrumental rational social action ○ ‘Modernity’s one-sided emphasis on rational planning failed to take account of people;s extra-rational passions’ (shilling) ○ Without a certain degree of commonality, or the effervescent attachment of individuals to the collective, society may enter a state of anomie (normalness) ○ Anomie → lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group Durkheim’s solution for anomic times ○ If society enters a state of anomie → the tension between their passions and socialized feelings become apparent to people ○ Moral education is Durkheim's answer People could possibly lose their sense of connection Shame in self in society (Scheff 2003) ○ How to avoid negative emotion instead of looking for positive emotions ○ The vernacular meaning of shame → ○ Scheff → shame is a category of emotions that emerge when a person experiences a loss of the social bond with others  ○ Shame experiences generate increased self-awareness and at the same time disable the self ○ Shame is potentially present in every social interaction (therefor, sociological shame is different from common understandings of shame) Forms of shame (Scheff) ○ Shame can be more or less intense, and of longer or shorter duration (eg. humiliation or embarrassment) ○ Shame covers a wide array of varieties → emotional experience of abandonment, isolation, neglect, rejection and guilt Self and shame (Scheff) ○ If we take ourselves as object to ourselves, we do so through the eyes of others, we imagine how others would perceive us ○ This often goes together with some form of evaluation → we can call out feelings of shame/rejection and pride/belonging in ourselves ○ Shame comprises emotions that emerge when we see ourselves negatively through the eyes of others ○ Mead neglected this emotional aspect Shame as the master social emotion (Scheff) ○ Shame signals a moral transgression → we feeling like we have done something wrong, doesn't always mean its wrong but it's just not morally approved Society tells them something is wrong → moral authority can oppress and regulate people in a strict manner ○ Shame signals that something is wrong in the social relationship (maybe it is in need of repair) It is a response to (a threat of) the loss of the social bond with other ○ Shame regulates the expression and awareness of all other emotions Eg. is our anger accepted? When shame goes underground ○ Shame signals a threat to social relation ○ Scheff thinks that in individualized societies, shame goes ‘underground’ Required to repress it, instead of expressing it In individualistic societies, the dependence on others is shameful Shame is a internal control → allows us to have a moral compass Bypassed, unacknowledged shame ○ Triple shame spirals Shame → ashamed of others → ashamed to cause shame in others ○ Shame related to macrosociological inequalities and oppression → a shameful self- image generated by the dominant group Lecture 10 - Schutz’ phenomenology The experience of social life ○ Phenomenology → how people experience the world around them and how they produce these experiences  ○ Schutz investigates the experience of social life gains a certain order Our experience of social life gains a certain order People take the order they give to the world they experience for granted, as a given The life world ○ How we create order based on interactions with others Being in a social world is a relational and intentional process Oriented towards others and the environment Oriented towards engaging in a line of action in the environment (an intention to act upon the world) The order we experience in everyday social life is generated in the life-world (can be online or in person) The life-world is where social action takes place, where people relate themselves to others intentionally ○ What happens Our experience is specific and focused on the interaction As people act in the life-world, they (often) experience themselves as ‘complete beings’ Intersubjectivity in the life-world ○ Mutual adjustment in the life world I know that you know the meaning of this situation I also know that you know that i know the meaning of this situation You and I assume that we give the same meaning to the situation We believe that the other believes in the same reality we believe in This is the intersubjective moment ○ Eg. What happens in this lecture? I imagine a future in which you give meaning to my vocalizations, trying to take your perspective into account I produce a series of vocalizations which apparently seem to be directed at you You transform these sounds into words and give meaning to them by relating them to one another, trying to grasp my intentions given this situation we call ‘lecture’ Based on the meanings you could infer from the sounds you heard me making, you reproduce a future which has been imagined be my in the past ○ Tension of intersubjectivity We are never 100% certain that we understand each other To overcome tension Suspension of doubt Assumption that we are sharing perspectives (and reciprocity) Assumption that we are working towards the same goal Garfikel’s ethnomethodology ○ Ethnomethodology → the methods people use to making things understandable ○ Principles of ethnomethodology  Study how real people in real interactions create an interaction order, how they organize the interaction and their understanding of it This social order is similar to Durkheim’s social facts, only it is locally done by individuals Directs attention to the method’s participants (‘competent members’) to render their actions understandable as they interact Ethnomethod is not expressed explicitly ○ Taken for granted social reality Participants take their methods of producing an interaction order for granted and they are mostly unaware of them Seems like common sense Because they are involved in co-producing social interaction and not in explaining how and why they do the things and say those things Skipping steps because we want to get to the point Eg. saying ‘flat tire’ and not asking how flat the tire is To study ethnomethods, sociologists need to treat things strange that everybody else takes for granted → breaking interaction down How do we produce social reality? ○ Accountability → to make available and understandable actions to oneself and others Participants take the methods for granted but also try to making it clear what they are trying to convey Eg. asking if the car was repaired skips acknowledges the flat tire but also skips some other ‘obvious’ questions Accounts emerge from the social organization of the interaction → social action and accounts are always simultaneously and ongoingly co-produced Adjacency pairs → Indicates the implied response of another Eg. “hi” → “how are you?” Violence contingency forewarnings ○ Eg. “let's take this outside” → saying that the next step is a violent act (conditional) Relates to Mead’s triadic nature of meaning ○ Ethnomethods are conditional Loose prescriptions cannot be spelled out completely, and they are conditional Conditional as depending on the ongoing accomplishment of organized practices of everyday life ○ Indexicality as ethnomethod → the understanding of indexical actions Indexing → refers to something, but it isn't all spelled out A lot of information that participants use to organize social interaction remains unsaid → we are able to fill in the gaps To understand indexical actions, we need to know about things that are not directly available in the action itself Eg. a person's biography, the situation, the relationship between the participants Indexical actions are checked as participants build up the interaction Lecture 11 - Goffman on the Interaction Order and Collins on the Microfoundations of Macrosociology Interaction rituals cf. Goffman Interactions are rituals ○ Face is an idea about oneself, about who you are in a situation, so its invested with feelings ○ Face is a sacred thing, and it requires that expressive order of interactions to sustain it ○ Therefore, interactions are rituals (Goffman) Rules in interactions ○ Eg, saying sorry → showing to be capable of taking the role of the others, displaying that one is still a responsible participant and that the rules broken are still sacred ○ Challenge → offspring → acceptance → thanks Interaction rituals, society & human nature (Goffman) ○ Societies must learn their members to be self-regulating participants in social encounters ○ To become human is to become able to participate in interaction rituals → to be able to express a self through face and lines of action, to have feelings attached to the self, and to be considerate to others’ faces ○ People transform into humans by learning the requirements of the ritual organization of social encounters ○ Universal human nature for Goffman is ‘not a very human thing’, but if there is one, it is the ability to interact Goffman doesn't really believe in human nature The interaction order ○ Goffman said that “presidents are led to feel that they are representative of something, and that this something is just what their (intellectual) community wants represented and needs representing” → referring to Durkheim being ‘president’ ○ Becomes the embodiment of a community ○ Goffman’s claim → face-to-face encounters as a separate area of inquiry (cf. Durkehim’s claim for sociology - social facts) Features of Interaction order (Goffman) ○ Interaction order is about active social life (not factors); it is embodied and emotionally charged ○ It has a ‘promissory, evidential’ character: lines of actions are claims about face and meaning ○ The interaction is ritualized, rules of bodily/vocal behavior must be maintained  ○ Shared focus of attention, and knowing each other’s knowing of this (mutual awareness) ○ Categoric and individual identification eg. class, age, race information that society divides type of people Individual identification → as we encounter others, our image of the other develops during the encounter. The image is changed, readjusted or perhaps reinforced. ○ Personal territory issues (the potential confrontational nature of social situations) In every social interaction, the other person can somehow offend you (physically, intimidating, rudeness) Most encounters are not confrontation (even less are violent), but there is the potential ○ Cognitive relations, which are extra-situational what we assume to know about the other and what we assume about what the others know Related to categorical identification About the situation we are currently in and what the purposes are and what we can attain with it Already available knowledge About order ○ The ‘order’ is not realized through social contract or internalized norms ○ Also, ‘order’ is not about equal distributions of rights or risks… Meaning that there is a pattern ordering society signaling who can talk to whom for example May have negative interactions (eg. police violence, social inequalities) ○ ‘But about a multitude of arrangements that allow a great diversity of projects and intents to be realized through unthinking recourse to procedural forms’ Think of face-work, the rules of encounters → how to use face in an encounter You have to internalize the rules and norms, but in order to bring it about, they must use it in interactions The interaction order and macro sociological structures (Goffman) How the interaction order is related to macrosociological structures ○ Direct connections from interaction to macrosociological structures in organizations The repetitive sequences of social situations in organizations by particular persons (engaging in the interaction order) Face-to-face organizational work People-processing encounters (eg. being accepted at the uni) ○ Repetitious face-to-face encounters by many heterogenous participants who try to attain working understandings Durkheimian ‘interface effects’ Done by organizations (institutionalization) Eg. women put more time taking care of people (the repetitive acts are produced in these encounters, not given)  Egalitarianism as a lens ○ Structures of inequality: the sociological four dimensional grid Age, class, gender, race ○ ‘a nonexclusive linkage between interactional practices and social structures...a membrane selecting how various externally relevant social distinctions will be managed in the interaction’ Once encounters create more visibility towards diminishing inequalities, once they become more public, people consider it something to include in their daily life, it becomes part of the interaction not to emphasis hierarchy and to be more conscious towards others Membrane is about social interactions filtering parts of these inequalities and how they are enacted → how are the inequalities managed in the interaction ○ Equal treatment: ‘what is sustained is the blocking of certain externally based influences at certain structural points’ Inequality needs to be reduced in these axis People are now aware that inequalities should not be included Eg. how the sociology curriculum is being decolonized Goffman wants to say that these inequalities at a larger scale become less salient until they become inappropriate in these encounters ○ Egalitarianism as a lens (just one of many) to look at micro-macro connections Our task for studying larger scale process ○ Eg. inequality, oppression ○ Study human social life naturalistically → how it is actualized ○ Never give up → ‘the bent to sustain in regard to all elements of social life a spirit of unfettered, unsponsored inquiry, and the wisdom not to look elsewhere but ourselves and our discipline for this mandate’ (Goffman) Don't rely on other subjects, be a sociologist Lecture 12 - Richard Jenkins on the Interaction Order in the digital age and Erika Summers-Effler on Self, rituals, and social change Interaction order in the digital age (Jenkins) The interactional consequences of ICTs ○ Face-to-face interactions remain important ○ In face to face interaction, mobile ICT devices:  Have become part of impression management (eg. when your phone always buzzes, people get the impression you’re a liked person to talk to) Are often used to record and circulate face to face interactions (secondary rituals → sending the pics after the interaction) Do not deem to affect people’s ability to uphold civil inattention in public space ○ ICT mediated interaction (Jenkins) Introduction of new conversational themes (‘i am now…’) There are rules and procedures in interactions depending on the person The rules aren’t as clear over the phone Increased immediacy (texting back immediately) of ICT devices allow for writing in conversational style (turn taking) → leads to the development of non-verbal facial cues (emoticons) Most ICT mediated interactions is complementary → usually between people who also meet in face to face interaction The forms of ICT mediated face work and impression management depends on the category of interactats (strangers, friends, etc) (Jenkins uses the ideas from Goffman here) Ict mediated interactions allow for more deception but also new forms of face work (netiquette) ○ New about ICT and interaction The boundary between digitized and physical interaction is permeable (influence one another) Face to face interaction remains the basis reality of interaction, but it’s heavily complemented but ICT mediated impression management (eg. sexting) Physical co-presence → for the experience of co-presence time (immediacy) seems nearly as important as space Space makes us feel close, but also the time of the reactions has also been important for closeness → texting can be immediate now Offers new opportunities for sociability and impression management, but people continue to engage in face work Microfoundations and micro sociological structures (Collins) Casual power of micro- and macro- processes ○ Causality → certain conditions bring something about ○ The active agents and energy in sociological explanations are mainly found at micro level ○ Empirically, we can only be in micro situations ○ Casual power at the macro level: People acting upon reifications and abstractions History of micro repetition (routines) (mentioned by Goffmann and relates to typification by Berger & Luckmann) The distribution of individuals across time and space and the number of individuals involved (eg. a tiny political rally is less influential)  How micro sociological processes (interactions) bring about macrosociological structures (Collins) ○ The structures emerge from repeated micro situations that happen around a limited routines and in a few physical paces with the particular people encountered there (eg. talking with people at the lecture while sitting down and getting ready to take notes) ○ Proves that the social structure is made, manifested, and enacted in repetitive behaviors around particular places and objects ○ Routine → occurs because the world is too complex for us to renegotiate all behaviors for certain situations This relates to Berger & Luckmann institutionalization argument (habitualization) Why are sociological processes structured this way? (Collins) ○ Social emotions → rituals generate group feelings (relates to Durkheim) Interaction ritual chain theory (Collins) ○ ○ Cultural resources → contexts that help you understand a particular topic (eg. english as a language) Interaction rituals as markets, the markets of interaction rituals ○ The participation and positioning in interaction rituals is determined by two ingredients that people bring to the interaction ritual Cultural resources Emotional energy ○ Generalized cultural resources → abstractions from the immediate and local situation ○ Particular cultural resources → specific places, people, and things ○ Increasing social differentiation then increases differentiation of interaction ritual markets Macro structural effects of interaction ritual markets ○ Shifts in generalized cultural resources Specialization and monopolization (people trying to gain this skill for themselves) (eg. the stock market) Broader diffusion → boom then decline of organizations based on these resources ○ Shifts in particularized cultural resources (good and bad reputations → charisma [especially in dramatic events]) ○ Shifts in emotional energy  specialization and monopolization Broader diffusion → social changes related to new forms of dramatization (rise of new ideological movements using sports festivals like techniques) (eg. trump rallies were in sports stadiums to relate to the effervescence of sports) Summers-Effler Micro-rituals and macro sociological change (Summers) ○ Explaining the subordination of women and feminist resistance in terms of interaction rituals and the distribution of emotions; energy ○ Focus on women and emancipation ○ A micro sociological explanation of macrostructural changes Emotional energy social position ○ Interaction ritual changes → cumulative experiences of gaining or losing emotional energy, related to being (or not being) accepted and recognized as a full member of a particular group ○ People's history of day to day interactions reflects macro-level inequalities ○ People who often find themselves in marginalized positions are more likely to have learnt to avoid non-recognition and rejection they tend to minimize emotional energy losses rather than seeking to maximize it They also are influenced by a generally lower emotional energy level within their marginalized group (and vice versa for people in powerful positions) …. Why is resistance less frequent than expected? ○ However, for many women, this was often the most favorable option As they had to face unfreedom in many interaction rituals, there was not much of an alternative (where a community of women producing positive emotional energy was lacking) Asymmetrical interdependencies (Summers) ○ Women were (are) more dependent on men than vice versa, notably with regard to economic and political bonds So, avoidance was nearly impossible Resistance would lead to a greater loss of EE; so instead of maximizing EE, the inclination was to minimize emotional energy losses When their subordination was pervasive, women might well stay in emotionally draining relationships: their past chain of interaction rituals indicated to them that staying in the relationship may prevent them from further emotional energy losses Feeling rules and deviant emotions? (Hochschild) ○ Emotion management → regulating potential conflicts between experienced emotions and feeling rules ○ Feelings that result from longer term subordinate positions often conflict with feeling rules ○ Deviant emotions: a conflict between I and the (longer term) emotional energy strategies of Me Eg. sexist joke  Reducing the clueing function of emotions How do the tensions turn inward in feeling rules and deviant emotions? ○ Given the asymmetrical interdependencies, many women were motivated to preserve social bonds to avoid further loss of EE ○ Thus turning the deviant emotions (I) inward, rather than dealing with the tension between what is expected socially and what is actually felt ○ Macrostructural inequality had turned into conflicts between I and Me Note the bodily disciplining involved: many women were (are) taught to move and arrange their bodies in minimizing/submissive ways How can conflict move outwards? (Summers) ○ Engaging in interaction rituals in which the focus is on we, the collective, rather than on the individual ○ Development of a new Me: moving the identity toward the group and away from the prior self ○ Women now started to see the larger patterns which created individual experiences of fear, inadequacy, lack of fulfillment, depression.... their subjugation to feeling rules ○ And now formerly deviant emotions became sources of solidarity rather than threats to the social bond: from shame to anger What is the relationship between interaction rituals and resistance? (Summers) ○ If a group manages to organize regular interaction rituals, sanctions from broader society represent less of a threat to participants’ emotional energy levels and their sense of self This frees participants to express their deviant emotions, creating new categories of understanding (cognitive frames) And a new Generalized Other Emotional energy provides the emotional source for change, it generates empowerment What are the social conditions conducive to critical awareness and resistance? (Summers) ○ Opportunities for redirecting Emotional Energy: pioneers often experienced less emotional energy drains and could focus more on a specific part of their lives in which they gained emotional energy (first feminists being upper middle-class women) ○ Macrostructural changes: changes in the labor market helped to diminish asymmetry of interdependency and to establish critical awareness ○ Opportunities to organize intense interaction rituals: women could now focus on themselves and their emotions ○ Charismatic leaders: women who had the resources and the know-how to organize interaction rituals ○ A group which does not gain from the strategy to minimize emotional energy losses: stigmatized women whose emotional energy balance may more easily shift toward resistance; they had ‘nothing to lose’ (notably unmarried women with children) ○ Intergenerational subculture: providing interaction rituals chains that generate a durable Me that is less critical of deviant emotions... Do you know what this is about? Core concepts Week 1 Causality; Concept (ah yes concept is a core concept); Decolonizing sociology; Emergent property; Empirical variation; Emergent property; (Colonial) Episteme; Falsification; Ideal type; Idiographic; Interpretative; Macro; Micro; (Colonial) Matrix of power; Nomothetic; Positivism; Social action (cf. Weber); Social interaction; Social facts; Sui generis; Types of social action; Verstehen Week 2 Week 3 Factors; Game stage; Generalized other; I; Internal dialogue; Interpretative process; Lines of action; Me; Play stage; Self; Self-indication; Significant symbols; Social behaviorism; Subject and object; Stimulus-response model; Symbolic interactionism; Taking the attitude of the role; Triadic nature of meaning Week 4 Actual social identity; Appearance; Back stage; (Un)Civil (in)attention; Code of the street; Deference; Demeanor; Disruption of/for the interaction; Emic; Etic; Face (Goffman); Face-work; Front stage; Ghettoization; Impression management; Infractions of civil inattention; Interaction order; Intersubjectivity; Master status; Lines; Props; Protensions; Saving face; Self as sacred object; Situation; Social differentiation; Structural marginalization; Tact; Teams; Temporal landscapes; Trajectories; Stigma (Goffman); Virtual social identity; White space Week 5 Accountability; Adjacency pair; Anomie; Appearance; Cynical performer; Dramatic realization; Effervescence cf. Shilling; Ethnomethod; Forms of shame cf. Scheff; Front; Homo duplex; Human evolution of group size and emotions; Impression management; Indexicality; Individuals becoming persons cf Goffman; Intentional; Intersubjectivity; Life-world; Manner; Misrepresentation; Neural traffic; Oversocialized view; Phenomenology; Rationalization; Relational; (Forms of) Shame; Self and shame; Shame as master emotion; Shame spirals; Sincere performer; Socialized emotions; Socialized Self; Statusposition cf. Goffman; (Overcoming the) Tension of intersubjectivity; Violence contingency forewarning Week 6 Alienation; asymmetrical interdependencies; Categoric and individual identification; Causal power at macrolevel; Clueing function of emotions; Cognitive relations; Deviant emotions; Egalitarianism; Emotion work; Emotional labour; Exchange value; (types of) feeling rules; Emotion management; Feeling as offering; (features of the) Interaction order; Four dimensions of inequality; ICT in face-to-face interactions; ICT in ICT mediated interactions; Immediacy and co-presence; Interaction order and macrosociological structures (3 types of relations); Interaction rituals cf. Goffman; Interaction rituals cf. Collins; Interaction rituals as markets; Human nature cf. Goffman; Markets of interaction rituals; Macrostructural changes and markets of interaction rituals Particular and generalized cultural resources; Personal territory issues; Procedural form of interaction order; Transmutation; Social conditions conducive to critical awareness and resistance