Outline, Sociology 2111, Week 15
I. Feminist sociology:
Jane Addams: 20 Years at Hull House : the labor museum and the "south Italians"... applied sociology, but nevertheless a middle range theory behind it... you need to have ideas about the causes of social problems before you can formulate practical solutions
vs.
Thomas and Znaniecki: The Polish Peasant in Europe and the United States: Social Disorganization Theory .... their recommendations counter-intuitive... strengthen people's pride in their old world culture, even as they adapt to the new world... (Frederick Thrasher: The Gang)
The same underlying issue: how do these "new immigrants" make sense of their surroundings and what can be done to prevent parents' losing control of the next generation
II. Sociology of gender. One of the biggest effects of the rise of a feminist sociology lies in attention to the social construction of gender. In the past, I liked to use one of Jean Kilbourne's movies( "Killing Us Softly," "Still Killing Us Softly," "Slim Hopes") but by now I feel as if Jean has grown old along with me and more importantly, that most of the students in my sociological theory class are familiar with her work. Thus the transition to "Tough Guise" this semester.... Is this a feminist video?
Video: "Tough Guise"(UMD library: DVD 980)
LAST DAY: RETURN WORKSHEETS, BE SURE EVERYONE HAS STUDY GUIDES...FINAL COMMENTS ON "TOUGH GUISE" ... combination of symbolic interactionism and conflict theory that is very typical of feminist sociology
III. Dorothy Smith: Standpoint Theory
A. Her early career in sociology... came to Berkeley as a temporary faculty member, with two small children, while finishing her dissertation.
1. Berkeley, early 1970s... basically an all-male department
2. Relation of her personal life and her academic life at Berkeley: Two worlds, separate and at odds--and she accepted it at first
3. Began to see sociology (and the university more generally) as part of the "relations of ruling," predicated upon a particular socially constructed kind of person who does not have family obligations
4. No apparent relationship to sex discrimination but a strong gender subtext...women as at best supportive
5. You could only understand the Berkeley Sociology Department's role in the maintenance of gender inequality if you approached it "from the standpoint of women"
B. Sociology from the standpoint of women
1. Her project: "To create a way of seeing, from where we actually live, into the powers, processes and relations that organize and determine the ordinary process of that seeing."
2. Documentary practices... for example, the reports generated by caseworkers in relation to welfare mothers; grades, recommendations, transcripts in relation to students.
C. Standpoint of women also limited: "I came to understand that the critique claiming to be from the category of women in general had it own class and race subtexts."
D. Examples
1. Study by Smith and Griffith, 1984, of the work mothers do in relation to their children's schooling
a. "Home and parents, and mothers in particular, are also invisibly at work in the production of the child's documented school performance."
b. Began with open-ended interviews with mothers in two Canadian school districts, one middle-class, one working-class... six interviews in each...
"Our primary structuring device was to run through a day with them. They spoke very freely and fully and for the most part very concretely.... The terms they used were theirs and not ours... we had certain topics we wanted to cover but we were not held to specific questions."
c. Working class: Jamie's mother's effort to make homework Jamie's responsibility
d. Middle class: Amy's mother's acceptance of the idea that "Amy's studying is accomplished by both Amy and her parents, particularly Amy's mother
1. "... her recognition of the importance of being seen as a "concerned parent".."Does being a concerned parent contribute to their child's in school, over and above the ways in which their work contributes to Amy's performance."
2. her response to a note about a French assignment saying Amy didn't study hard enough... not willing to leave the teacher with this impression that Amy is not conscientious.
e. Later interviews with teachers and administrators, taking care not to adopt the viewpoint of the school.
2. Timothy Diamond: Making Grey Gold
a. Nursing home assistants: "How do you make it on just one job around here." Mostly minority women, often immigrants. He was the only white male.
b. "Where's my social security?"... the absence of most discretionary control for the patients, who are mostly women
c. "Why can't I get a little rest around here?"vs. "There's one thing you have to learn around here--to Wait."
d. Two standpoints in conflict
1) Management
a) "If it's not charted, it didn't happen."
b) "You used to work together. Now you're on your own." Cutting from four nursing assistants per floor to 3.5, as if it represented "progress"
2) Mother's Wit: the standpoint of the nursing assistants (and patients)
a) the community college teacher in the nursing assistant certification program who was fired
b) Most of the "caring" in spite of the directives, procedures, documentation
"Change that proceeds from mother's wit will probably have to do with activity relating to feeding, cleaning, teaching, laughing, comforting, holding, scolding--stopping to take the time to do any of them... It amounts to making into a home that which has been made into a hospital. Every day and night, in other words, the caretakers try to build a rest home. But each day the factory-like schedule starts up the production of patients and tasks and timed and measured units of service at the crack of dawn."
1. C. Wright Mills and the Power Elite. How might Mills' analysis of the central goal of the power elite--creating a world safe for American business interests--inform our view of the U.S. role in the world, and in particular, our frequent support of nondemocractic governments? What about Mills' argument that the sociological imagination and an activist citzenry is ultimately the antedote to the anti-democratic tendencies of the power elite? .
2. Wallerstein: Capitalist World Systems Theory. .To what extent do we agree that the flows of resources, people, and profits among core and periphery, and the institutions that promote capitalism world-wide (World Bank, International Monetary Fund, NAFTA, GATT) are a major cause of continued and even accelerating poverty in countries of the periphery? U.S. businesses world-wide (e.g., McDonalds in Peking), U.S. factories... prosperity for educated middle classes, jobs at very low wages for unskilled
3. Marcuse: One Dimensional Man. What do we think of Marcuse's argument that the culture of capitalism and its creation of human beings as consumers has ultimately proved more powerful than Marx ever expected, so that any prospect of socialist revolution becomes more unlikely or at least more distant? What are the ways in which this one-dimensional consumerism ("you are what you buy") increases the credibility of cultural critiques by religious fundamentalists?
1. Parsons and the pattern variables. Is there the kind of connection between democracy and capitalism that functionalists like Parsons saw, as he analyzed the culture and values that he put together into a very positive vision of modernity? Is there, or should there be, an appeal to people in all societies and cultures for a value system that stresses universalism, achievement, and the like?
2. Merton and the subversion of functionalism. What are the dysfunctions of modernity--for individuals, for nations? For example, we know that a modern world economy leaves out small peasant farmers, who cannot compete with agribusiness. We also know that because of the vast oversupply of unskilled labor on a world-wide basis, the advance of world capitalism means increased inequality between the college educated, managerial elite, and the unskilled workers in every country, as well as between urban and rural workers
1. Events and policies that support a world-wide vision of the United States as "the first new nation" (Lipset)
a. The first country to experience a revolution against European colonialism: Declaration of Independence and Revolutionary War
b. A nation that has at least periodically been exceptionally open to immigrants. Last 30 years one of the peaks in immigration, including large numbers from Asia, Latin America, and Africa, averaging around 1 million per year. Center for Immigration Studies.
c. American students abroad in 2007: 242,791, up 50% in the last decade.
Foreign students in U.S. colleges: 582,984 in 2007(largest numbers from China, Japan, India)... tend to be middle and upper class
d. Extension of equality via social movements, legislation, court decisions (feminism, civil rights, gay and lesbian rights ).... a black president!
e. The American role in World War II and the Marshall Plan that followed ( more than 1.2% of GDP into the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe after WWII)... pretty old news by now
f. American role in the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
g. Role in the former Yugoslavia
2. Events and policies that support a view of the United States as a self-centered empire
a. U.S. and the United Nations
1) dues controversy during Bush presidency
2) refusal to participate in the World Conference Against Racism and Xenophobia (as well as the latest 2009 version)
3) failure to ratify the 1989 Treaty, Convention on the Rights of the Child
b. Foreign aid by the U.S. vs. other countries, in relation to the United Nations' targets
c. U.S. rejection of International Criminal Court. New York Times.
d. Opposition to: International Campaign to Ban Land Mines
1997 Nobel Peace Prize to Jody Miller and the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines
e. Withdrawal from Kyoto Accords
f. Tourism and lack of language skills... "the ugly American"
35,000,000+ on overseas flights per year (of course, many who travel multiple times, so this overestimates total # of Americans involved) (How many in our class have taken a foreign language in college?)g. U.S. military policies that are perceived as anti-Islam
1) US Troops In Saudi Arabia (How many of the middle eastern countries would vote for an Islamic government if they had the chance? )
2) Military support of Israel
h. Support for "free trade," whenever the consequences benefit "our" corporations. e.g., U.S. opposition to the World Health Organization's agreement with 171 countries to prevent the spread of smoking-related diseases. The WHO estimates 4.9 million premature deaths per year from tobacco-related illnesses. Where are the big tobacco companies headquartered? Maintenance of price support measures for agribusiness in the U.S.
3. More ambiguous aspects of American world involvement
a. Pop culture, sports, clothing, cds, videos
b. American (transnational) businesses overseas... e.g., Wal-Mart in China
1. U.S. intervention (with British) in Iran in 1953, after the election of Mohammed Mussadiq
2. Support for Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the Iraq-Iran War
3. School of the Americas