Sept.

20, 2010

Intro. Sociology

-Lots of Canadians have food where there are a lot of

Canadians that are lacking access to food

-Lots of students are lacking the necessities and are

struggling to gain access to them

-This textbook is mainly concerned with our lives (the lives of

average people)

“Inventing the Social World”

-Everything is inter-related and inter-dependent on each
other

-Reading about how to do Sociology rather than reading

about it

-Perception- the value of things and how we invent our

world
>The value we assign to something
> Ex: Value of the $
- Without belief in the value of things in the social world they
are simply not there

*Women’s movement has helped to establish women in

universities
>This movement was created to change the pre-
conceived social order

-The connection between our personal issues and the larger

social problems

-----

Chapter 1: “Welcome to Social Analysis”

-Practice sociological analysis

-Asking questions about why things are the way they are

-Sometimes participating in social movements that wish to

make social change

What is Social Justice?

-There are all kinds of ways people are trying to work

towards social justice

-Minimum wage is an example of a social justice movement

-We are not just pawns we make things happen

-We are still developing as a society so we are constantly

evolving
>Change is always happening

-We are always making the university

-We need to ask questions in order to understand what is

taking place within society

Sept. 22/ 2010

Intro. Sociology

-Everyone is stuck in different traps

-The Sociological Imagination

C.Wright Mills

The Series of Traps

-Personal problems are connected to bigger social issues

 >Connecting individual situations and problems and
connecting them to bigger social issues

-Bureaucratic forms
> Ex: Student loan forms

-If Irving paid taxes in New Bruinswick than there would be

more government funding for the university

-Traps and the connection between personal biographies and

social and historical issues

-We can start with our own lives and develop a big picture of
society

-Just because we are student’s means we don’t understand

the causes of the social traps

-When something is wrong we look at it eventually and we

try to solve it

Inventing the Social World- Huge amounts of Social

Construction in this world
>Social Construction of Racism
> Social Construction of the Value of Money

-Constructing Social Change will help deal with the problems

that exist within society

-We need to treat problems in society as being real and keep

doing it until we resolve them

October 4, 2010
Intro Sociology
-Reflection of a social issue can be seen through personal
problems
Where Does the Word Economics Come From?
-A Greek word for household management and a word used
to describe a person who did this
-Economics has now changed dramatically
-If things were like they use to be we would all know where a
food came from and everyone pulled their own weight
-Childhood as an invention
-There are huge amounts of money that move around due to
events that we deem as tragic/accidents
Does Our Economy Make Sense?
>Huge gaps between rich and poor and this gap gets bigger
>How much does the Irving’s contribute to New Brunswick
through taxes?
>Nothing
-The prospect of going to university keeps people quiet,
happy and working hard
Pg. 40 1st Columns
-It’s a lot of work to be poor
>Trying to sustain themselves and their family
(shopping around to save money)
-You don’t have extra time to try and fight against your
circumstances
-Non-labor market work is not counted because it can’t be
measured in dollars and cents
-It’s hard to conceptualize that we are now in such a place
that we are scared to stand up/fight/revolt
-Things to get changed through political activism

October 6, 2010
Intro Sociology
The Meatrix- Website research
>Develop analytical viewing guide of the website
-Write in narrative form
>Access through the class wiki or www.themeatrix.com
-Issues of industrialized food production
-Lost in the Super Market Article
-When you’re writing notes- think of someone you are writing
it too
How is Our Food Produced in Our Modern Society?
Article on Tomatoes
-NAFTA- North American Free Trade Agreement
-What process is involved in getting our food to our table?
>From Mexico to Canadian Grocery Stores
Pg.36
*Read the article and make a really good analytical reading
guide
-Scientific Evolution and Colonialism
-Cultures coming together and having different values for
the Earth
-Abstraction of land as something that can be sold rather
than the physical thing
>Separating the land from the Earth to put a price on it
>Money makes it abstract
>Treating the land as it being useless
Pg.41- Industrialization of Food and Transportation
-Political underlying dynamic of the tomato
-Early 1900’s use of trains now the use of a large trucking
system
>Shifting from a train system which was less
destructive on the environment to a trucking system which
was considerably more destructive on the environment.
-Our food is killing us and our environment and this is quite a
major problem
*Read the first half of the article seriously
-The Journey of the Corporate Tomato
-1st half goes up to page 33
-The next reading is linked to the wiki which is a link to an
article at the library

TEST
Chapter 1
What is sociology? – The Study of society, Sociologists will
examine public issues not personal issues. Ex) marital
issues, depression, financial, health. Public issues,
depression, financial, health. Public issues will effect a group
in society as a whole. A major player in the introduction to
sociology is C. Wright Mills.

3 questions to ask yourself:

-What is the structure of society?
-What has changed socially?
-What are the characteristics of the groups in society? (how
are they different/ treated differently)

Structure- Norms, beliefs, values, organization

Different institutions in society:

-Military
-Government
-Legal
-Schooling
-Economic

*When society changes, institutions do too

Common sense- comes from personal experience, you learn

from the feedback of other and it is also a bias from your
own personal experiences.
Ideology-comes from a set of beliefs and values, it is person
from your personality and beliefs, and usually believe it is
the only “good” belief because you believe it so strongly

To work in sociology you have to be able to look outside

yourself to explain what is going on : Ex) the war on 9/11
started in Afghanistan because that’s where bin laden was
believed to be, so George bush went there to try to change
their beliefs because he believed he was right about his.
When the USA moved to raq no one went with the USA
because they didn’t believe they were justified reasons to
go. So george bush said “if you arnt with us your against us”
So he wrongly assumed that the values of other countries
were there same as his because of ethnocentrism.

Sociologist have trouble being objective because you have to

set aside your own beliefs.

Chapter 2

Auguste Comte- Father of sociology

General approaches in sociology:

- structural (everyone feeds off of one another and how
things are supposed to be)
- Agency (we created it )

Four sociological perspectives :

1) Functionalism/ Systems
2) Conflict/ Marxism
3) Social Construction
4) Feminist

Functionalism-Emile Durkheim, structural, suggests society

is interconnected and that everyone plays roles and has
values. “role theory”

Marxism- Karl Marx , structural, suggested that society is

divided up into two main classes being the bourgeoisie and
proletariat . The bourgeoisie own the means of production
and the proletariats are the ones who work for them. They
usually ended up alienating their workers. “class theory”

Social Construction- Max Webber, Charles Horton Cooley ,

Howard Becker, Erving Goffman, Harold Garfinkle, Agency,
Suggested that everything is an interpretation and that
everything is an on going accomplishment (Max Webber).
That everything has a label, and you look at yourself how
you think other “significant” people will look at you (charles
Horton colley). We label people depending on their behavior
we either spiral upwards or downwards (howard becker). We
are very concerned about the first impression because we
went people to think highly of us (erving Goffman). We
analyze life at a day to day level, we need to break the rules
that we think exist, for the example: “how are you doing?”
how am I doing what?!” “interpretive/ Interactions theory”

Feminist- both, school of feminist theory : liberal, Marxist,

Social, Radical, Cultural.

Homogenous groups: all women’s problems are the same

migrant workers: come from other countries to do a specific
job, you couldn’t bring you family with you and you have no
rights in that country

Liberal Feminism-Stresses women’s right to anything society

has to offer, popular to introducing women’s right

Marxist Feminism- Right to intellectual/ moral equality. If you

own the production you have power, and most women didn’t
own power. No such things as a breadwinner salary
anymore.

Socialist Feminism- focuses upon both the public and private

spheres of a woman’s life and argues that liberation can only
be achieved by working to end both the economic and
cultural sources of womens’s oppression.

Redical feminism- Focuses on the theory of patriarchy as a

system of power that organizes society into a complex of
relationship based on an assumption of “male supremacy”
used to oppress women.

Cultural Feminism- It is an ideology of a “female nature” or

“female essence” that attempts to revalidate with cultural
feminists consider undervalued female attibutes. It is also a
theory that commends the difference of women from men.