Course Themes Week 2 Sociology has a distinctive way of understanding human experience Week 3 This distinctive understanding is based on the claim that.
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Course Themes
Week 2 Sociology has a distinctive way of understanding human experience
Week 3 This distinctive understanding is based on the claim that there exists patterns of social organisation and interaction, the social structure, that affect our behaviour
Week 4 This social structure does not involve humans alone but also animals. Further it is based upon our biological structure
Week 5 How does the social structure organise and direct our biological structure?
Week 6 Why might the social structure be seen as fragile and, despite this, why are our social relationships relatively stable
Social Order and Social Change
Last week: noted the social processes that bring order to the potentially disruptive effects of emotion.
This indicates the significance to Sociology of the problem of order; how to explain the persistence of social order the stable pattern of expectations and social structure that exist in any society; the maintenance of those patterns (Jary D & Jary J Collins Dictionary of Sociology)
Self & Society
• This week:
• How do problems of social order in modern society affect interaction and the construction of self identity
Fragility of social order in modern society:
1. Occupational complexity
Division of Labour Task specialisationLeads to the relative
absence of shared experiences
Encourages the emergence of divergent and opposed interests
Creates problems of coordinating a widening range of activities
Encourages awareness of the differences among people rather than the similiarities
Consequence: Alienation (Marx)
• An individual’s feeling of estrangement from a situation, group or culture
• Collin’s Dictionary of Sociology
• Loss of meaning or sense of purpose due, typically, to the exercise of coercion over one’s activities
Fragility of social order in modern society:
1. Occupational complexity
2. High levels of social and geographical mobility
Social Mobility The movement of individuals
between different positions in the hierarchy of social stratification as measured by status, wealth prestige etc.
Social mobility may involve movement up (upward mobility) or down (downward mobility).
It both presumes an unequal distribution of social ‘goods’ but also enables more equal access to those goods.
Social Mobility and Everyday Life
It typically transforms the identity of those with whom we interact
It creates opportunities for self re-definition
Consequence: Anomie (Durkheim)
• a condition of society or of personal relationships in which there exists little consensus, a lack of certainty on values and goals and a loss of effectiveness in the normative and moral framework which regulates collective and individual life
• Jary & Jary Collins Dictionary of Sociology
Fragility of social order in modern society:
1. Occupational complexity
2. High levels of social and geographical mobility
3. Urbanisation
Urbanisation
Growth of large centres of population
Replaces the typical face to face interaction of villages and small towns with short term superficial encounters.
Consequence: Isolation (Me)
We live in a society of strangers. We typically interact with others of whom we know little (and vice versa)
Interaction with strangers becomes normal and yet (perceived as) potentially dangerous
The problem of trust in the absence of personal information
Fragility of social order in modern society::
1. Occupational complexity
2. High levels of social and geographical mobility
3. Urbanisation
4. Impermanent and impersonal social relationships
Consequence: Anonymity
Interaction is typically with anonymous others
We ourselves become anonymous.
We typically present ourselves to dominant institutions (health, education, welfare agencies) as ‘cases’ not persons
The development of a fragmented identity
Multiphrenia• The splitting of the individual into a
multiplicity of self-investments. (competing parts)
• You see singularity but reality comes in multiples
• We risk being overwhelmed by a multiplicity of disconnected relationships and identities. Our self-identity becomes socially saturated
• K. Gergen The saturated self
Fragility of social order in modern society:
1. Occupational complexity
2. High levels of social and geographical mobility
3. Urbanisation
4. Impermanent and impersonal social relationships
5. Growth of individualism
Individualism
A set of beliefs and actions that stress the importance of the individual over groups.
These emphasise the autonomy of the individual human being in social action and affairs.
Individualism emphasises the differences among persons e.g. fashion
Fragility of social order in modern society:
1. Occupational complexity
2. High levels of social and geographical mobility
3. Urbanisation
4. Impermanent and impersonal social relationships
5. Growth of individualism
6. Normality of change
The Normality of Change
• Social change has been a central topic of research for Sociology from its origins in the 19th century.
The taken for granted expectation of progress
Impermanence of what were formerly stable aspects of everyday life e.g. family, work, residence
Fragility of social order in modern society:
1. Occupational complexity
2. High levels of social and geographical mobility
3. Urbanisation
4. Impermanent and impersonal social relationships
5. Growth of individualism
6. Normality of change
• These are interconnected processes
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