Sociology 3701: Outline--Week 10
I I. Artaud: "Human beings are beasts with stories on our backs." Or as O'Brien puts it, we are "living through stories"
A. Do our stories weigh us down, or do they liberate us? O'Brien: "We are able and inclined to make coherent stories out of even random information." ...would lead me to postulate a need for meaning
B. Do we write our own stories? Sociological social psychologists would certainly say no
1. Not that we can't make choices to resist stories, combine stories, modify stories.
2. The resisting, modifying, and choosing isn't by and large something we can do very effectively all by ourselves; we need support groups (also known as reference groups, or even that earlier term, primary group, may fit here).... think about the 'regulars" at Jelly's Bar who were mostly in low-pay, low-status jobs and perceived by larger society in negative ways... yet with help from the group as a whole they felt proud of themselves for their jobs and the way they fulfilled their responsibilities to their families... had to work very hard to maintain self-esteem, but mostly they did it.
3. How big a role is played by the mass media (television, advertising, magazines, billboards, and the like)? What are the stories we tell ourselves about these media, and how can we sort out the truth?
a. My daughter: didn't want to be thin, just "normal:" where did she get her idea of normal?
b. Certain "facts" that have to be accounted for: e.g., that 23% of the women in my 2007 social psychology class were very satisfied with their weight and their appearance, vs. 46% of men, despite the fact that these women spent 4 times as many hours per week as the men on their appearance and 60% more money
c. Is the culture somehow weighted against young women--and if so, how would you account for the greater success of women in high school, college, and graduate and professional schools? (Of course, if women are doing so well in those areas, another question why they aren't dominating the world of work).
4. How well do we stand up against the marketing and merchandising of big companies, given the billions of dollars they spend? Look at the level of sophistication in "The Merchants of Cool;" they even find a way to turn our desire to be free of corporate influence back on us. Is there any independent "youth culture" left?
5. Is the central story of our culture "individualism" and individual achievement? Or is the central story consumerism--"you are what you buy?" (or, as Bernard McGrath puts it: ""the insatiable belief that we need what we do not have") How many of you like to shop? Where would it rate in terms of a top 10 list of your favorite activities?
6. The role of social movements in opposing the dominant narrative(s)
a. Natural food cooperative movement--"Food for people, not for profits"
b. Feminism and the story of gender
c. Civil rights and the story of race...
There are always some groups battling the dominant stories; sometimes they even win. (Plug for Soc 4891: Social Movements, Protest and Change"
C. Breaching
1. As a form of protest, in which for-granted rules of reality tht are viewed as unjust are violated. In the case of social movements, as a form of protest that also embodies the desired change. in the case of "breaching experiments," as a way to improve our understanding of how unwritten norms are nevertheless quite powerful.
2. Harold Garfinkel and ethnomethodology: breaching experiment. A tool for building sociological understanding of how everyday social realities are maintained and reinforced..Wikipedia: " A method for revealing, or exposing, the common work that is performed by members of particular social groups in maintaining a clearly recognizable and shared social order . An extreme example: driving the wrong way down a busy one-way street can reveal myriads of useful insights into the patterned social practices, and moral order, of the community of automobile drivers ... and police. The point of such an exercise is to demonstrate that gaining insight into the work involved in maintaining any given social order can often, best be revealed by breaching that social order and observing the results of that breach - especially those activities related to the reassembly of that social order, and the normalization of that social setting"
3. Examples from O'Brien's classes and her related caveat: p. 343-344
D.Self-fulfilling prophesies: . Mark Snyder: "When Belief Creates Reality"... back to the sometimes subtle ways in which the dominant narrative is maintained...
1. The self-filling prophecy: dfn from O'Brien--"an event that comes true because we act in a way that brings about our intiial expectations." Also see Merton's definition, p. 398
2. The research question: Can a man's perception of a woman's physical attractiveness change his behavior toward her in a way that in turn shapes her response?
A very ingenious experiment, typical of the best psychological social psychology.... I will ask class members to describe the essentials, as well as the results
III. Study guide
IV. Exam Two