I. Pierre Bourdieu: Social Reproduction Theory
A. Theory and research: "Handing Down a Trade" (An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology)
1. The role of the research seminar: "A research presentation is in every respect the opposite of an exhibition, of a show in which you seek to show off and to impress others. It is a discourse in which you expose yourself, you take risks." "Nothing is more universal and univeralizing than difficulties."
A research seminar should include "all the false starts, the wavering, the impasses, the renunciations, and so one. Researchers whose work is at various stages of advancement will present the objects they have tried to construct and will submit themselves to the questioning of all the others who, in the manner of old compagnons, fellow workers of the trade... will contribute the collective expereicne they have accumulated over all the trials and errors of the past."
2. The role of theory: "The summum of the art, in the social sciences, is, in my eyes, to be capable of engaging very high 'theoretical' stakes by means of very precise and often apparently very mundane, if not derisory, empirical objects." "The sociologist could well make his or hers Flaubert's motto: 'To write well about the mediocre.' "
a. Goffman's work on "the minutiae of face-to-face interaction"
b. Bourdieu's own work "on what a certificate (of illness, of invalidity, schooling, etc.) is and does
1. From Marx: life as competitive struggle between groups, especially classes
2. From Weber: the symbolic dimensions of that struggle as reflected in Weber's notion of status groups
3. From both: the ways in which the groups that dominate enlist those they dominate in the social production of domination (what Marx calls false consciousness; what Weber calls legitimation)
1. Field: "a system of social positions, structured internally in terms of power relations" ...e.g., economy, government, university system
2. Types of capital
a. Economic
b. Social
c. Symbolic or Cultural
1) habitus: "schemes of perception, conception, and action common to all members of the same group or class."
2)Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1984)... on the International Sociological Association's list of the ten most important books of the twentieth century
3. Power in different fields depends on different types and mixes of capital
4. Social reproduction theory
a. Distinctive cultural capital within each social class
1). Code of the streets, or even respectable working class culture, vs middle class culture, and its impact on who goes to college... who goes to community college vs four-year college (community college as a way of "cooling out the mark"
2) Middle class culture vs upper class culture in terms of who goes to the elite colleges and graduate schools (remember the movie about The Groton School)
b. School systematically values middle or upper-middle or upper class culture and devalues lower class culture, which has a major impact on who gets which degrees, or in fact, on who even graduates, and on how they are "tracked"
c. Corporations and other large organizations translate educational degrees into job qualifications.
d. The whole system APPEARS to be based on qualifications--talent, merit, skill.
Note : Bourdieu recognizes that privilege is also passed along more directly, through inheritance of property and wealth (economic capital) and through connections (social capital)
III. Jay MacLeod: Ain't No Makin' It: the role of aspirations in social reproduction of social class inequalities
A. The Hallway Hangers
B. The Brothers
Ten Years later
IV. Bourdieu and social change
IV. Video: "Taking Back the Schools"
High School completion rates, 2000
Jane Mercer, Labeling the Retarded
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
I. Background and central concerns
A. France's instability and Durkheim's concern to preserve democracy
B. The Dreyfus Affair: Catholics vs. Jews and nonreligious. Novelist Emile Zola: J'Accuse
C. His struggle to change the university system and add sociology
II. Durheim's Sociology of social cohesion/stability
A. What holds society together? (the issue of social cohesion)
1. Answer from economics and philosophy: Social contract--I see that it is in my own self-interest to give up part of my sovereignty to the group; rational choice on my part.
2. Durkheim: The Division of Labor in Society: Trust must precede rational choice.(Would it have been in Moslems self interest to give up part of their sovereignty to a democratic Indian state in 1949?) I can't give up my independence to a collective power in which I have no trust.... the economists and philosophers are beginning from the individual, but historically (and in terms of individual biography) it is more realistic to start with the group
3. Collective conscience
a. Mechanical solidarity in primitive societies: Group is sacred (literally, in terms of what religion really means, according to Durkheim)
b. Organic solidarity in modern societies: Individual is sacred.
c. Preface to the Second edition: Need both kinds of solidarity even in modern societyHEALTHY SOCIETY REPRESENTS A BALANCE OF THE COMMUNAL AND THE INDIVIDUAL.
NOT AN EVOLUTION FROM MECHANICAL SOLIDARITY TO ORGANIC SOLIDARITY, BUT SOME WAY OF PRESERVING BALANCE...
4. HIS PRESCRIPTION FOR MODERN SOCIETIES SUFFERING FROM AN EXCESS OF INDIVIDUALISM: MORE VITALITY FOR INTERMEDIARY GROUPS: CHURCH, GUILD, FAMILY, SCHOOL, UNION, PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION
B. Role of sociology: "The progress of a science is proven by the progress toward the solution of the problems it treats." Sociology's contribution is to help us understand the social bases of cohesion and conflict, and in particular, how to maintain enough cohesion to maintain civility in the face of many centrifugal corces.
C. DEVIANT BEHAVIOR AND SOCIAL PATHOLOGY: IN FRANCE: REVOLUTION DESTROYED MUCH OF THE POWER OF THE BOTH THE CHURCH AND THE FAMILY... VARIOUS PATHOLOGIES ON THE RISE
1. SUICIDE
a. METHODOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE: SOCIAL FACTS VS. PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS
b. "CRUCIAL TEST" VERSUS PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES OF THE DAY... NO CORRELATION OF SUICIDE RATES WITH RATES OF MENTAL ILLNESS (How can we explain this in relation to modern theories about the role of depression and other mental illnesses?)
c. 4 MAJOR VARIETIES OF SUICIDE
1) ALTRUISTIC SUICIDE
2) FATALISTIC SUICIDE
3) ANOMIC SUICIDE
anomie = without meaning
Role of the collective conscience in providing individual meaning
a) Periods of rapid change. Society's regulation of individual desires breaks down... out of balance...Economic downturns but also economic booms
b). Business occupations
"Here the state of crisis and anomy is constant, and so to speak, normal. From top to bottom, greed is aroused without knowing where to find an ultimate foothold."
4). EGOISTIC (INDIVIDUALISTIC) SUICIDE
PROTESTANTS VS. CATHOLICS
MORE EDUCATED
URBAN
SINGLE PEOPLE
CHILDLESS MARRIED COUPLESA SECOND CRUCIAL TEST: FRENCH JEWS --
URBAN, HIGHLY EDUCATED, OFTEN IN COMMERCIAL OCCUPATIONS, BUT AT THE SAME TIME, VERY GROUP ORIENTED
2. CRIME
a. NORMALITY OF CRIME: "Imagine a society of saints."
b. FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF CRIME
1). MORAL/SOCIAL COHESION
2) SOCIAL CHANGE