Term
Mills’s “sociological imagination” |
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Definition
-The Sociological Imagination thus: it is the political task of the social scientist-as of any liberal educator- to continually translate personal troubles into public issues, and public issues into the terms of their human meaning for a variety of individuals. It is his purpose to cultivate such habits of mind among men and women who are publicly exposed to him. To secure these ends is secure reason. -C. Wright Mill's term. He urged that all social scientist should exercise the sociological imagination, by which he meant the ability to trace the links between biography (the individual) and history (culture), those things that connect the intimate environment of milieu with the broader one of sociological issues. - the sociological imagination can sometimes reveal ways of transforming troubling situations. |
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Gordon: the “haunting theme” exposes the violence of modernity & the mechanisms of its form of domination |
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Definition
The trans-formative power of sociology lies in the capacity to reveal what has been silenced and denied. Gordon points out that the separation of story telling (as fiction)and social science (as fact) wrenches apart much that belongs together because good sociology is about "both the production and the interpretation of stories of social and cultural life. |
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Marx’s quote: “Men [and women] make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past” (explain/discuss) |
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Matthewman, “Consuming” and “Trading” -discuss how we have relationships with and through things (ex.?) |
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Definition
Sociologists insist that consumption is really about social distinction. We consume to show status and group identity and in so doing to mark our difference from outsiders (who are characteristically from a different class) -Consumption has been first and foremost about staying alive -The relationship between the West and the Rest is laid bare: the former are so rich because the latter are so poor. THROUGH MEDIATED LIVES |
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Matthewman, “Consuming” and “Trading” -passive vs. active consumers? (def./ex.?) |
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Definition
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Matthewman, “Consuming” and “Trading” -postmodern view of simulations/virtual realities (def./ex.?) |
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Matthewman, “Consuming” and “Trading” -“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society...” (Marx and Engels) |
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Definition
For Marx identity was determined by class, and classes by their relationship to the means of production. From Marx we get the idea of production as the source of identity. These days it is more common to argue the reverse: that consumption is the prime source of personal identity. |
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Matthewman, “Consuming” and “Trading” -discuss how/why “Capitalism is predicated on the commodification of everything”; [and] how “a social relation between persons becomes an objective relation between things” (Marx) (ex.?) |
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Matthewman, “Mediating: Technology” -mediated lives (def./ex?) |
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Definition
Daily life takes place within complex socio-technical systems that frame everything we do. Few of our activities are done alone, even we are trying to be alone. -When you add to the list to the list ATMs, self serve booths on subways and at airports, plus the slew of online services now available, you realize that you are able to filter practically all human interaction. Ex: caller id, pick and choose who you want to talk to as opposed to having to answer every call that came your way |
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Matthewman, “Mediating: Technology” -life is mediated = domination of social life (def./ex.?) |
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Definition
Life is mediated. Increasingly, technologies are replacing people. We have relationships with and through things.Neither technology nor mechanization is a new development. The novelty lies in their total domination of social life. "Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology whether we passionately affirm or deny it" Heidegger |
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Matthewman, “Mediating: Technology” -discuss Heidegger’s quote: “Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology” |
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Definition
The reason why we remain unfree and chained to technology as, Heidegger states, is because we willingly give ourselves over to technology. Our social lives are dominated by living with and through various technological networks such as Facebook and twitter. |
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Matthewman, “Mediating: Technology” -Virilio’s 3 technological revolutions & accidents & generalized accident (def./ex.?) |
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Definition
Virilio elucidates Bloch’s observation. It is of paramounr importance to analyse acceleration as a major political phenomeonon, a phenomenon without which no understanding of history. HISTORY that is in the making. In characterizing modernity, he notes 3 revolutions in speed and their exemplerary technologies: 1.) transportation movement across territory (enshrined on the engine: steam internal combustion jet rocket.) 2.) Transmission movement independent of territory (Macroni Edison radio television electronics). 3.) transplantation: inwards movement of techonology. Miniaturization and invasion of the human body ( cardiac stimulator, memory implants, the ‘biomachine’). |
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Matthewman, “Mediating: Technology” -Urry’s automobility and unintended consequences and decentralizing tendencies (def./ex.?) |
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Definition
The only element of culture, the only mobile element: the car. Sociology, like the car, allows for new ways of seeing. Urry articulated many meanings of the automobile. In his discussion, autmobility is used in preference to the car. This denotes both movement of motor vehicles and the interactions of person, machine and traffic system. Cars are static when used, and they have no meaning without us. We need, therefore, to be thinking about a powerful relationship. Automobility is a complex amalgam of interlocking machines, social practices and especially ways of in habiting not a stationary home but a mobile, semi- privaticized and hugely dangerous auto- mobile capsule. Central component of contemporary life. Article of consumption; a commanding socio- technical assemblage; the commonest for of persona; mobility; a culture in its own riht and consequently an important source of status; and the biggest cause of environmental resource depletion. ] Car industry- fordism- low trust factory system based on a fixed hierarchial division of labour in which head is separated from hand. Labour is speacialized and production is standardized through assembly line practices. Fordism is bassed on fluid hierarchies and openness to communication and participatio. It stresses corporate citizenship through jobs for life. Compared to fordist model, it provides a high- trust, organized workplace, with wide autonomy for production units and individual workers. In America, the production maintenance selling and servicing of automobiles is responsible for 1/5 of nations economic activity. Movement becamse a measure of hope and American culture became car culture. Car’s decentralizing tendencies were more commonly observed. Desirability of cars made them the targets of theft; speeding was a problem, and in the words of 1 juvinle court judge: the autombile has become a house of prostitution on wheels. 30 girls had been charged for sex crimes in the year. Lynds wrote “ the autombile appears to some as the enemy of the home and society. Leisure became an expectation, the norm rather than the occasional luxury. Vastions increased in frequency and spontaneity.
Walking for please became practically extinct, while gardening became ever rarer. Lawns had to give away to driveways and garages, and as the automobil came to rival the home itself as the premier status symbol, residential sections became smaller. 5% use public transportation. Personal air may be better inside vehice thanks to air condition, effect on environment is WORSE. Cars also emit ozone. HUMAN DISEASE and crop loss who buys cars? Young rathe than the old, poor rather than rich, south than north, pedestrian not driver. 1.2 million people have died in 1 year on roads
-Giddens’s ritual of “doing coffee” (reveals a lot about social, historical, and global relations) -ex. symbolic, geographical, and historical component(s) of consumption (discussed in last lecture) |
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School-to-Prison Pipeline -ACLU weblink and notes |
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Definition
"school to prison pipeline," a disturbing national trend wherein children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.Many of these children have learning disabilities or histories of poverty, abuse or neglect, and would benefit from additional educational and counseling services. Instead, they are isolated, punished and pushed out. "Zero-tolerance" policies criminalize minor infractions of school rules, while high-stakes testing programs encourage educators to push out low-performing students to improve their schools' overall test scores. Students of color are especially vulnerable to push-out trends and the discriminatory application of discipline. |
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The School-Prison Pipeline (lecture) -the right to education?; Brown v. Board of Education (1954; Brown II, 1955) |
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Definition
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which allowed state-sponsored segregation. |
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The School-Prison Pipeline (lecture) -ruling in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973) |
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Definition
San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973)[1], was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a school-financing system based on local property taxes was not an unconstitutional violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. The majority opinion stated that the appellees did not sufficiently prove that education is a fundamental right, that textually existed within the US Constitution, and could thereby (through the 14th Amendment to the Constitution), be applied to the several States. The Court also found that the financing system was not subject to strict scrutiny. |
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The School-Prison Pipeline (lecture) -3 important right-to-education considerations for litigating |
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The School-Prison Pipeline (lecture) -why are some attorneys citing Human Rights Law in Pipeline Right-to-Education Cases? |
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Kozol, “Confections of Apartheid” --American public schools are in “the process of continuous resegregation”; 4 most segregated states for black students?; “systems of incentives” and “rewards and sanctions” (Skinnerian approaches/Behavior Modification); explain his meaning of “‘Taylorism’ in the classroom” (ex.?) |
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Definition
The 4 most segregated states for black students are California New York Michigan Illinois. - “systems of incentives” and “rewards and sanctions” (Skinnerian approaches/Behavior Modification) commonly used in prisons and drug rehab programs. Reinforcement is the key element in Skinner's Stimulus Response Theory. (Rewards and Punishment) -Taylorism in the classroom: forcing students to line up and march to class when a the recess/lunch bell rings |
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Term
Matthewman, “Straying: Deviance” -deviance (def.) |
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Definition
Non conformity to norms that act as a dominant currency for shaping what should or should not be done in social life. This may be viewed positively neutrally or negatively and treated correspondingly via reward indifference or sanction |
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Matthewman, “Straying: Deviance” -norms (def.) |
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Definition
A constellation of values that shapes social life, a common pattern. Most commonly realized only when they are breached. |
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Matthewman, “Straying: Deviance” -without deviance there would be no social change (explain/discuss) |
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Definition
Without deviance there would be no social change because what is referred to as deviance is the non conformity to the social norms. Deviants can be said to the be the rule breakers and at times the rules being broken are done with the intention of reform or a social change. |
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Matthewman, “Straying: Deviance” -Becker’s labeling theory & relate to constructions of deviance |
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Definition
"The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behavior is behavior that people so label." A fundamental insight here is that deviance is a 'social construction,' that is it does not exist out there in a world independent from human action. Deviance must be treated as a social action. |
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Democracy Now!, “Angela Davis Speaks Out on Prisons and Human Rights Abuses...” (video) - discuss how the institution of the prison & its practices produce the kind of prisoners that (seem to) justify the expansion/growth of prisons; what does the prison industry produce? (Davis and Dent, lecture) |
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Definition
It’s the connections that we begin to see in the 1980’s, when the social programs begin to be dismantled and when globalization of capital begins its ascent. And so capital money, instead of being focused on the needs of people increasingly goes into profitable areas. And, so there’s no resources for health care, there’s no resources for housing subsidies, so then what happens is that these huge surpluses of — of — of populations who have no place any more, because there are no jobs for them. A lot of the factories have gone abroad, gone to the global south. And so people have no way to make a living. And so, I mean, it is not as if there was a conspiracy, but it was a kind of systematic conspiracy without people actually deciding this is what was going to happen.
And so, the idea is to build more and more prisons to serve as receptacles for those people who no longer have a place because there is no longer jobs for them, there’s no longer education for them, there’s no longer welfare for them, there’s no longer health care for them. |
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Democracy Now!, “Angela Davis Speaks Out on Prisons and Human Rights Abuses...” (video) -relate to Project Innocence (def./significance?), Deadline (clips) |
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Definition
An Innocence Project is one of a number of non-profit legal organizations in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand dedicated to proving the innocence of wrongly convicted people through the use of DNA testing, and to reforming the criminal justice systems to prevent future injustice. |
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Section readings: -“Patients, ‘Potheads,’ and Dying to Get High” |
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Definition
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Section readings: -“Accessing Assets: Immigrant Youth’s Work as Family Translators or ‘ParaPhrasers’” “The Making of Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity among Asian American Youth” |
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Section readings:-“Embodying Chinese Culture: Transnational Adoption in North America” |
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Matthewman, “Gendering” and “Sexualizing” -analyses of gender (def. and discuss 3 perspectives including West and Zimmerman’s “Doing Gender”) |
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Definition
Def: Gender is typically used in contrast to the biological term 'sex' to show the socially constructed aspects of masculine and feminine identities. Gender norms (what is considered appropriately feminine and masculine) change across contexts, cultures, and time. Three perspectives: gender as a difference, gender as a division, & gender as something we do -Perspective 1: Gender as a difference: Judgements about which attributes 'belong' with (biological) sex and which 'belong' with (social) gender depend on the ways knowledge is socially constructed. Sociologists agree that 'difference' between men and women are not 'natural' and that the precise character of these varies across time and between cultures and contexts. -Perspective 2: Gender as a division: The division comes from a hierarchy genders are placed in. Women are often at a disadvantage due to the patriarchy and also commonly give the more caring and comforting jobs. -Perspective 3: Gender as something we do (West and Zimmerman): gender can be seen as a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment guided by social expectations and notions that particular ways of doing gender are the most 'natural'(Garfinkel) we are expected to adhere to the codes of appearance, activities, talk, dress, attitudes, and emotions considered appropriate for our gender. ex: nurse, florist = feminine & firefighter, construction worker = masculine |
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Matthewman, “Gendering” and “Sexualizing” -explain why “gender as a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment” (West and Zimmerman) |
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Definition
We 'do gender' in the actual presence of others, we are likely to continue with many of the same behaviors even when nobody is present. This is partly because our modes of talking, walking, and acting 'like a woman' or 'like a man' become ingrained, but also because we are always regulating our own behavior to make sure we are doing our gender correctly. We exercise surveillance over ourselves in private as well as in public, in order to ensure the consistency of our presentation. We must ensure our competence by appearing as a 'culturally correct' boy/girl or man/woman. |
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Matthewman, “Gendering” and “Sexualizing” -DSM and GID/GD |
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Definition
DSM: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association provides a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders -GID/GD ender identity disorder (GID) is the formal diagnosis used by psychologists and physicians to describe persons who experience significant gender dysphoria (discontent with their biological sex and/or the gender they were assigned at birth). |
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Matthewman, “Gendering” and “Sexualizing” -Prelinger Archives, “Are You Popular?” |
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Definition
One of the best examples of post-World War II social guidance films, with examples of "good" and "bad" girls, proper and improper dating etiquette, courtesy to parents, and an analysis of what makes some people popular and others not. |
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Matthewman, “Gendering” and “Sexualizing” -Nordberg, “Afghan Boys Are Prized, So Girls Live the Part” |
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Definition
Afghan families have many reasons for pretending their girls are boys, including economic need, social pressure to have sons, and in some cases, a superstition that doing so can lead to the birth of a real boy. Lacking a son, the parents decide to make one up.In a land where sons are more highly valued, since in the tribal culture usually only they can inherit the father’s wealth and pass down a name, families without boys are the objects of pity and contempt. Even a made-up son increases the family’s standing, at least for a few years. A bacha posh can also more easily receive an education, work outside the home, even escort her sisters in public, allowing freedoms that are unheard of for girls in a society that strictly segregates men and women. But for some, the change can be disorienting as well as liberating, stranding the women in a limbo between the sexes. |
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Matthewman, “Gendering” and “Sexualizing” -Matthew Shepard Foundation (three short videos): |
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Definition
http://www.matthewshepard.org/our-story http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbLcXVpDFV0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiGyWi2eBV4&feature=related |
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Matthewman, “Gendering” and “Sexualizing” -Carl Hulse, “House Votes to Expand Hate Crimes Definition” |
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Definition
The House voted Thursday to expand the definition of violent federal hate crimes to those committed because of a victim’s sexual orientation, a step that would extend new protection to lesbian, gay and transgender people. The new measure would broaden the definition to include those committed because of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. |
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Matthewman, Informing: Media” -def. mass media and ideology |
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Definition
Mass Media:Mass media: sociologists examine the role of the media in constructing reality and informing the individual of their existence within that reality. There is a disagreement over whether the media reinforce or resist ideologies of (in particular) dominant social groups in a society or are in fact neutral. Media: the methods and organizations used by a specialist social groups to convey messages to large, socially mixed and widely dispersed groups (trowler) see media as a set of institutions that convey ideologically infused messages to large populations on behalf of powerful social groups. debate whether the relationship between media and the audience produces passive or active consumers; many think that reality lies somewhere between these 2 extremes. Ideology: Shared ideas, beliefs, and discourses in a social system that attempt to structure and interpret the world where there are structural inequalities. Ideologies legitimate the position of those in power and thereby further their interests and perpetuate their dominance. |
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Matthewman, Informing: Media” -define and discuss how the mass media (and government-sponsored media) often helps construct reality and present ideologically infused messages |
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Definition
Various interpretations of media output attribute differing levels of interpretative power to the individual media consumer, as a member of the wider audient. In some cases, audience is seen as passive- a mass of spectators who are manipulated by the ownersof media instiutions as they puruse their own needs. At other extreme audience are seen as active force, who can select from media image and texts and reinterpret them according to their own wants and needs. Also new media such as the internet, mobile phones, and computer games despite their different form, they share a characteristic the capacity to deliver ideas, information and/ or entertainment for large –scale public
consumption. MEDIA: methods and organizations used by specialist social groups to convey messages to large, socially mixed and widely dispersed groups.’ - in actuality, neither of these 2 extremes capture the complexities of both the encoding and decoding of meaning that accompany the production and consumption of media. - reading for a text may exist, where various techniques (cropping of photographs, editing of news footage and so on) used by media producers to influence their perceptions of the audience. - consumer is able to manipulate media products. Internet communication and distribution tool.. convergence has led to the emergence of a significant number of ‘virtual communities hat are formed on the basis of a common interest in particular computer games from sims anddoom 3. Media content is able to influence the beliefs that people hold: research into the effects of Hollywood movies on historical knowledge in Britain found that some 10% of people though Hitler and chirchill were fictional characters - impact that media can have on people’s beliefs then semiologists and post- modernists have preferred to focus on the meaning inherent in the content of the media rather than the relative passivity or activity of audience reception. Used content analysis to examine press coverage of political issues in Germany and with American wartime propaganda. 5 steps: coding basic tool- unit of analysis is selected and counted in the selected text, categorizing- process by which meaningful descriptive categories are selected into which the basic units can be grouped ex. Pornographics as opposed to erotica, classifying use of independent subjects to test the reliability of categories, ensuring that that there is agreement between the researcher and others as to applicability of categories , Comparing: occurs between terms in the same text ( the use of conflict versus conciliatory references in a speech) or between txts and concluding- theorical relevance of the ontentand the context within which it appears, such as stereotyping of gender, ethnicity, and sexuality in mass media and relationship with wider social relations and dominant ideologies. - number of problems have been identified with content analysis when it is used in isolation fro methods, especially in terms of the more qualitative steps of categorizing and concluding semiology- ascribes the power and ability to decode meaning to the individual expert for example sociologist. POST MODRNISM- PROCESS HAS BEEN DISPERSED THROUhout the whole audience. Both perspectives treat media content as a product of wdier social relations and are thereforeable to account for influence of ideology in practices of encoding and decoding meaning: |
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Matthewman, Informing: Media” -news production as gatekeepers? |
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Definition
In relation to news production, sociologists are interested in the extent to which media institutions, such as news disseminating organizations, set agendas, and serve as gatekeepers. Clearly the operational practices and work relationships
within media organizations function to shape public opinion, through what and how they report as a news content, and what they leave out. Criteria known as ‘news values’ influence the inclusion and exclusion of particular events from the news headlines. |
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Matthewman, Informing: Media” -in contemporary consumer society = no longer any distinction between imaginary & real = state of “hyper-reality” (def./ex.?) |
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Definition
Hyper-reality: According to Baudrillard, contemporary consumer society is so saturated by mediated signs that any |
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Matthewman, Informing: Media” -existence is experienced as “simulacra” = total simulation dominates contemporary life and social experiences |
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Definition
- hyper- reality- a state of affairs, where existence is experienced as a complex web of representations, or simulacra that refer not to some external reality but ONLY to other representations. Hyper- reality is for Baudrillard, the culmination of the 3 rd order of simulacra. -example of hyper- reality include the delivery of flowers from fans to soap stars who are about to get married or have died on the show; staged events in ‘reality shows such as Survivor; the practice of touching up photographs of models and celebrities in magazine, the facts that television news foes not just report the news but also produces the news by virtue of selecting and reporting a particular event. -another example: Baudrillard argued that instead a ‘copy war’ had replaced which people fight and are killed. The copy war was beamed to televisions around the world and acted rather like a video game. As a result the USA was experiencing the illusion of war in which almost none of its citizens had actually participated in combat.
- existence is experienced as “simulacra” – total stimulation dominates contemporary life and social experiences The orders of Simulacra ( simulacra are copies of things that no longer have an original, or never had one to begin with) First Order: The relationship between the meaning of a sign and a copy, or counterfeit, is seen as natural, albeit wrapped in relations of power. Second Order: The birth of the industrial Revolution resulted in the ability to reproduce goods and signs in large numbers as copies of an original form. Third Order: The advent of hyper- reality where the relationship between a sign and its referring to other copies, which in turn refer to other copies and so on. |
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Matthewman, Informing: Media” -relate to Women in Defense, Duck and Cover |
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Definition
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Matthewman, “Educating” -sociologists of education tend to focus on what 3 issues? |
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Definition
Their project: the goals they sought to achieve through it Their location- the conditions under which they worked Their context- the political frameworks within which they worked |
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Matthewman, “Educating” -functions/roles of national education systems |
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Definition
- Education offers equal opportunities to all, it legitmates the capitalist system by placing responsibility for the lack of social mobility on the individuals. - for functionalist theorists, these relationships are explained on the basis that schooling enables the provision of differentiated technical skills, where economic
rewards are based on the level of technical skill attained. Because these different levels of reward are based on different levels of education achievement, education provides the possibility of fairer distribution of social and economic rewards, which in turn produce greater social cohesion because the process is supported by a value consensus on the relationship between ability, |
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Matthewman, “Educating” -3 promises of education? |
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Definition
-Institutional means of delivering all these promises, it represents the most powerful and extensive example of the nation state-another key institition of modernity- intervening in the lives of its subjects. -offered the possibility of simultaneously improving economic development, social efficiency and social justice through social mobility. However, there are major tensions between these objectives. -Education has offered the possibility of simultaneously improving economic development, social efficiency and social justice through social mobility. o Partly in recognition of and response to this promise, the dominant redemptive project of sociological studies of education has driven them in the direction of … into the extent to which education’s promise to bring about greater social equality and social justice through serving the links between social origins and destination have been derived, and thus the relationship between the structures, processes and practices of education, and its outcomes. o Greater social mobility with increasing numbers of people from working class origins taking up econ- manual occupations. |
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Matthewman, “Educating” -relate to Mendez v. Westminster (video; read essay and view video excerpt from Sandra Robbie’s [2002] documentary film); def./explain significance http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/osi04.soc.ush.civil.mendez/ |
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Matthewman, “Educating” -relate to Brown v. Board of Education (ruling/language/effects?, def./significance?) |
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Matthewman, “Educating” -PBS Frontline, Digital Nation (video) |
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