Political Science

  Question 1 Paul Ryan is leaving his position as Speaker of the House at the end of this year. What are the duties of the Speaker of the House? What important duty might be negatively impacted by his departure and potentially damage the Republican's chances of keeping their majority in November's midterm elections? 1 ½ pages 5 sources academic – non academic Read below and define the term status – see picture attached Question 2 Ch 5 Key Words Social Structure & Institutions 14 KEY WORD DISCUSSION> Ch 5 Social Structure & Social Interaction Key Words 120 Word MAX SUGGESTION THIS WEEK: for a change of pace, you can use the photographs, charts, graphs to explain. There are several photos of college students and the issues they face, which you might identify with. 1. Choose a term, a chart, graph or photo to explain. You can use the lecture, as well as the textbook. I. Social Structure When I was in Sociology 1 and the teacher mentioned "social structure," I pictured some enormous cement structure, but then I realized that social structure referred to the invisible but real qualities about society. Social structure refers to organized patterns of behavior which govern human relationships within a society. Social structure is then an abstraction, a way to discuss how a society is "structured," with expectations for social interaction between people. The social structure of a society makes social interaction predictable. Humans can plan for their lives. We arise in the morning with assumptions about how our society is organized and what we need to do to be part of it. People dancing in a circle, a dance group posing. I do international folk dancing weekly. These are two structures, one with traditional outfits and one in America, where everyone does "their own thing." The term social structure refers to a society’s framework. Society has a structure, ways of thinking, doing and behaving which have consistency over time. Different types of society have different kinds of structures. Social structure refers to the type of society we live in and it is principally responsible for who we are, what we value, believe and strive for. The individual’s location in the social structure affects his or her perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors. When we speak of a society's social structure, the fundamental elements we use for our analysis are the following: social status, roles, groups, and institutions. Error! Filename not specified. Error! Filename not specified. II. SOCIAL STATUS A social status is part of the basic framework of society and refers to the position you occupy at any point in time; I could be a student, a daughter, a teacher. In sociology we distinguish between ascribed status and achieved status. ASCRIBED STATUS - refers to statuses at birth: gender race, sex and social class ACHIEVED STATUS -refers to a status you chose, such as becoming a doctor or teacher. III. We speak of status inconsistency in sociology when one status is "inconsistent" with another. A typical example is the case in recent years of a women who decided to have a baby with artificial insemination at 58 years old. In this case, her age an ascribed status, was inconsistent with the idea of motherhood. Given her age, we would assume she was a grandmother. However, were she mothering a small child, let's say because her son died or was incarcerated, that would be understood as a grandmother mothering a grand child, which while not common is accepted as "consistent.' Left picture: a painting from the Renaissance of formal interactions of the elites. Right picture: traditional African dress and ritual hunting stance. Whatever or wherever, societies have rituals, patterns of interactions. IV. Role We use the term role in sociology to talk about the societal expectations which come with a role: mother, daughter, teacher, fireman, priest. I can be a tourist one day, a patient in a hospital the next, a college instructor and a friend at a wedding - all within a a short period of time. I know that I need to behave one way when I am a patient in a hospital and another way as a friend at a wedding. Without carefully defined roles, society would be chaotic and no one would know what to do or how to understand each other. Role performance and role conflict - a example. One day I was studying in a study hall with several other women student's in a large beautiful room with several other student which had two huge, expensive oriental Persian rugs on the wall, estimated at $10,000 each. On that day some men dressed in white work clothes came into the study hall, rolled up the two beautiful oriental rugs and took them away - to clean, we assume. We were wrong, they stole them right there in the open. This was a rich school and we assume that everything was in order and safe, so we assumed they were workers - because they wore work clothes. They got away this this $20.000 theft because they played their roles so well. Good acting job, you guys! In this case, their role performance was convincing. IV Role Conflict Roles can also lead to role conflict as the text explains, when we occupy two roles which come into conflict, that could be if for example a teacher has her own child in a class, she would have conflicting expectations at times as both teacher and mother and this would lead to role strain, a more constant form of role conflict. Role conflict happens to all of us. You are a consumer/shopper at Trader Joes, you see that a product has GMO canola oil in it and you go to the management to complain, now you are a political activist! We have many roles with many expectations which sometimes conflict and if they conflict habitually, we feel stress, role strain. A mother in a professional suit nursing her baby while working on here computer. Here is a mom presumably working and nursing, being a mom and an "executive." We find it humorous that she is maintaining two roles: mother and professional. (Personally, I wonder how safe this is for the child to be so close to the computer. We don't know yet, when will we know). V. SOCIAL INTERACTION Section 5-4 discusses a variety of theories within sociology which have attempted to create a framework for viewing social interaction. Symbolic interactionism, which you already learned about is a long-standing theory about social interaction which goes back a century. In the last several decades, a few other approaches for observing human interaction have arisen to deepen our understanding. These newer approaches are: - the social construction of reality (Becker) - ethnomethodology (Garfinkel) - dramaturgical analysis (Goffman) - social exchange theory (Homans) - feminist theories (Hochschild) These approaches are NOT "mutually exclusive," which means that you can use more than one. Yet, sociologists tend to favor one over the others depending on the point they are trying to make.The same is true in the other social sciences. Social scientists of all stripes, are constantly looking for language and approaches by which to deconstruct human interaction, which is infinitely complex. Therefore, to adopt one approach does not invalidate the other. VI. Social Construction of Reality A child in India is pouring fa cup of something on the ground, he is beginning the process of learning how to be part of society and how to use its tools and when. What is the social context for this act? Here is an example, a man has his hand inside a woman's vagina he has only known for 5 minutes. What is your interpretation of this interaction? Rape? a fast date? What if we change the context or definition of the situation and say that this man is a gynecologist and the woman a consenting patient.Suddenly, the behavior in question becomes not only legal, legitimate, but commendable. How we define situations according to the social constructionists greatly affects how we perceive situations. Conflict in social interaction arises when humans hold different interpretations of a situation. Most situations are socially defined and we tacitly consent to the social construction of our reality. Another example given by my professor in grad schoo. Two brother have both killed 3 people: one receives a metal of honor, one is given life in prison. What is different is that one did it in war for his country, now a hero. The other is a deadly criminal who killed three other gang members. Both thought they were in a war, both thought they were doing the right thing: not everyone agreed. . VII. In the seventies, as I was studying sociology in college, a sociologist named Erving Goffman wrote a book called The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life in which he laid claim to a new approached called "dramaturgical analysis." In this book, he borrows terms from theater, as I did above: actor, stage, scene, role, performance, play, impression management, back stage, front stage. To avoid any misinterpretation of his approach, he is NOT saying that humans are insincere or phony. In fact, these theories are not judging humans or "actors," nor are they claiming that social beings have an awareness of these sociological approaches. To the contrary, humans beings are not sociologists; they are doing life, going to the market, to work, to the gym. Sociologists who are trying to make sense of human interaction use these terms. The reason is that sociologists are STUDYING social reality, an act quite different from going to the market. As a student of sociology, you are no longer merely a shopper, but an observer of shoppers. All of these approaches to interaction have had their popularity, some have waned and some have been integrated into mainstream sociology; they have enriched our observational and explanatory abilities. We are a young science, increasing our efficacy with new ideas. VIII. Feminist theory arrived shortly after the women's movement. As we will discussed in the chapter on social movements, the women's movement changed forever how "we" both sociologists and many ordinary people "see" meaning understand social interaction. Up until the second wave of feminism in 1969, women were accepted as second class citizens the world over. This is not to say that this is no longer the case, but that we saw interaction change with the women's movement. While many women the world over suffer violence and discrimination, it is also true that much progress has been made in seeing inequality in human interaction between the sexes. IX. Nonverbal Communication, Personal Space Sociologists have been fascinated with nonverbal communication for along time - facial expressions, body language, visual cues, gestures (page 91 finger gestures by country), eye contact, touching and personal space. All of these forms of nonverbal communication are themselves embedded in the definition of a situation, a social context and can be view using any of the approaches we discussed above. Indeed, my example above of having the manager of a movie theatre touch women (on the shoulder, the head, arm) whenever he felt like it was possible in a world in which men were far more powerful legally than women. The issue of personal space has been similarly changed. Each society has different definitions of what is acceptable personal space. Typically issues of personal space and touching take place within a social context which is not only affected by gender, but by social class. Elites typically are allowed greater range with respect to personal space; sociologists know this from doing research, where they can both violate and seek distance from others. Again, studying social reality using sociological methods is not the same thing as being in society. Even though some of us are very observant and enjoy watching people, still this is not the same thing as using time-tested methods.