Sociology 3701: Outline--Week One
A. layout of the two texts
1. O'Brien: a text and a reader combined... we'll use the whole "text" and parts of the "reader"
2. Tavris/Aronson: a whole book dealing with applications of my favorite theory in cognitive social psychology, namely, cognitive dissonance theory
Notice the references and citations in both books... social psychology the product of a scientific community, sharing their results and critiquing each other... you could get a particularly good sense of this from the endnotes in T/A.
B. Preface and introduction in O'Brien: Read together--p. xii, pp. 3-5, p. 8
II. Social Psychology as the intersection of Sociology and Psychology... you
can get credit in both departments for this course if you have a double major
in sociology and psychology or if you have a major in one and a minor in the
other.
A. Other connections:
1. Anthropology. At UMD, Anth 4616: Personality and Culture
Geertz "Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs
of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and
the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of
law but an interpretive one in search of meaning" (from "Thick Description:
Toward and Interpretive Theory of Culture," chapter one of THE INTERPRETATION
OF CULTURES).
2. Cultural Studies.
Current description:
"The cultural studies minor is an interdisciplinary program that focuses on how culture and power intersect everyday life. Cultural studies work specializes in creating and practicing methods of critical thinking that can be applied to the study of popular culture. The program makes "theory" and scholarly research a participatory project. Students develop expertise in critical cultural analysis, especially in the workings of gender, race, social class, different abilities, and sexual orientation in everyday life."
Statement from the program's first year: "The... Cultural
Studies minor at UMD has as one of its goals to make these everyday practices
problematic--that is, to make us aware of them and allow us to consider our
participation in them, including the processes by which we are created (and
create ourselves) as consumers." This includes:
1. Standards of beauty and comfort
2. Meaning of work
3. Shopping as an activity
4. Symbolic meaning of what we wear
5. Evaluation of other people based on what they consume...
standards of "taste"
3. Biology, including especially Sociobiology
4. Linguistics and Communication.
B. Gordon W. Allport's (1954) definition of social psychology: "an attempt to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behavior of individuals is influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others"
C. Distinguishing characteristics of social psychology as a subfield in sociology
1. Micro emphasis: face to face interactions
2. Often a focus on groups
3. Characteristic research methodologies
a. Experiment, including field experiments... more prevalent in psychological
social psychology... see Mistakes Were Made, as well as the reading by Mark Snyder (O'Brien, 404-409)
b. Qualitative research: participant observation and intensive interviewing...
more prevalent in sociological social psychology... see most of the other
readings in O'Brien
D. Journals
1. Psychology: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
2. Sociology: Social Psychology Quarterly
E. Professional organizations
III. Who Am I? 20 answers exercise. Afterwards, pair up with somebody else (it can be three of you if necessary) and see if you can develop any generalizations about how people answer this question.
Return to class as a whole
Day 2
IV. Humans as social creatures: an overview
A. The first premise of social psychology is our social nature... Humans who are raised in isolation suffer dire consequences.
1. Examples: feral (or more likely, abused) children (Truffaut, "The Wild Child"; Nova--"Secret of the Wild Child"))... children discovered in their early teens with efforts to socialize them and teach them language that come to a sad end...
Your text includes a reading by Kingsley Davis titled (it's in your reading assignment for next week): "Final Note
on a Case of Extreme Isolation," comparing the experiences of two children. The first child, Anna, had been described in greater detail in an earlier report, which had also reached very pessimistic conclusions about the chances of undoing the severe damage caused by years of isolation.
a. Anna, an illegitimate child, kept for most of her first six years on the second floor of her grandfather's home by her mother who did not want to anger the grandfather by bringing the girl downstairs... her mother did the work of the farm and often went out at night... "Ordinarily it seems that Anna received only enough care to keep her barely alive. She appears to have been seldom moved from one position to another. Her clothing and bedding were filthy. She apparently had no instruction, no friendly attention."
b. Isabelle, also an illegitimate child, born one month later than Anna and kept in seclusion by her deaf mother, communicating only by means of gestures, for her first six and a half years. At that age
"Her behavior toward strangers, especially men, was almost that of
a wild animal, manifesting much fear and anxiety. In lieu of speech, she
made only a strange croaking sound."
"Even on nonverbal tests her performance was so low as to promise
little for the future.... The general impression was that she was wholly
ineducable."
And yet: see pp. 78-79
2. Culture: a design for living passed from one generation to the next;
origin of this term in anthropology
3. We can restate the first premise by saying that culture shapes human
beings in very fundamental ways.
B. Culture and Socialization
"From the moment of his birth, the customs into which he is born shape
his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk (or sign), he is the little
creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown, its habits are his habits,
its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities." Ruth
Benedict, Patterns of Culture
"Everyone who comes into contact with a child is a teacher who incessantly
describes the world to him until the moment the child is capable of perceiving
the world as it is described. Only then is he a full member of society."
Castaneda, Teachings of Don Juan
1. Socialization: a. The process of learning the culture; b. the process
of developing an identity or identities (why the plural here?)
2. Norms: rules defining typical situations and appropriate behaviors. Culture
consists of norms, and norms are organized in terms of statuses and roles.
3. Status: position in society, including occupational positions but also
positions like father, mother, husband, wife.
4. Role: ways of being and ways of behaving expected of someone occupying a particular status
5. Role set:
the circle of people whose expectations help to define that position is called the role set
C. Additional observations about culture and socialization
1. Notice that cultural norms are not necessarily recognized or taught at
a conscious level. For example; handling of emotions (my family); body language
(Suttles, The Social Order of the Slum)
2. Notice that this whole socialization process does not involve someone
saying: "I need to teach this child his/her cultural heritage."
Instead, it takes place as parents, other adults, or even older children,
try to equip the child to cope successfully with the situations they expect
that child to encounter in his/her life.
3. Notice that while this process begins with the family, when you are very
young (and the relationship between the generations is therefore an important
theme for social psychology), sociologists are convinced that it continues
into adulthood. We're not quite as susceptible then (why not?), but we continue
to be shaped and reshaped by a similar process.
4. Notice how some of us continue to struggle with issues arising out of
those very first relationships within the family. I Never Sang for My Father:
"Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship..."
5. Finally, notice the dilemmas in socializing your child "to know
her place" if you are part of a group that faces systematic discrimination...
V. O'Brien: "What is Real?"
A. How readily our attributions can change: The Te of Piglet (read from p. 2 in O'Brien)... my experience as general manager at Common Health Warehouse: understanding and interpreting the people I supervised and particularly the conflicts that sometimes developed between employees or departments . "Who was responsible" for the problems we sometimes had with out-of-stocks? Purchasers, truckers, warehousers, suppliers, or unrealistic member/owners.
B. Defining the situation: W.I. Thomas--"What men (people) define as real is real in its consequences." my brother's suicide
C. The role of cultural beliefs and how stubbornly we defend them, even in the face of contrary experiences... my experience teaching sociology of the family at North Seattle Community College, during "the best years of your life"