T/H Chapter Outlines

The institution of education has many manifest purposes: cultural transmission, socialization, preparation for future careers, and for cultural innovation. In addition to this, education serves many latent functions: providing day care for children, delaying young adults entering the labor market and being an arena for dating and mate selection. Considering how much schools are asked to do and considering what politicians often say, one would think education would be a consensus top priority. But things are not necessarily what they seem.

A. Education in a Global Society

This section focuses on three systems of education considered to be among the best in the world, those of Great Britain, Japan, and the United States. The basic definition of education is the institutionalized process of systematically teaching certain cognitive skills and knowledge and transmitting them from one generation to the next.

1. A Proper British Education. Those who hope to attend university must pass an A-level exam. Higher education has been predominantly for the rich and the elite. The Dearing Report made recommendations to change British higher education, including ending free tuition for full-time students.

2. Kanri Kyoiku in Japan. Japanese schools extol the importance of kanri kyoiku, defined as rigid regimentation. Many attend jukus (cram schools). The expression “Pass with four, fail with five” refers to maximum hours of sleep allowed to pass the exams. Once in college, Japanese university students experience a period of “decompression” before they enter the pressure-filled work world.

3. Education in the United States. There is no national educational system in the United States. Many argue the need for national educational goals, standards and curricula.

B. The Role of Education: A Functionalist Perspective

From a functionalist perspective, education serves several manifest (intended) and latent (unintended) functions.

1. Cultural Transmission. This is the process by which culture is passed from one generation to the next. Most Americans agree on the basic cognitive skills of the “Three R’s“: reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic. There is debate, though, on the other “Two R’s“: right and ‘rong and how they should be taught. There is also some concern that most American teachers come from white, middle-class and Protestant backgrounds while many of their students do not.

2. Anticipatory Socialization. This means teaching the knowledge and skills necessary for successful fulfillment of future roles and statuses.

3. Social and Cultural integration. Social integration refers to bringing people together from diverse social backgrounds so that they share common experiences and commonly held norms, attitudes and beliefs.

-----a. Education for Assimilation. The purpose of mandatory school attendance laws during the period when immigrants were pouring into America was to assimilate or to culturally integrate them into the American way of life.
-----b. Education and Racial Desegregation. The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision ended legal (de jure) segregation. It did not end defacto (in fact or in practice) segregation.
-----c. Education and “Americanization.” Education in the USA promotes the assimilation of basic American values.

4. Innovation and Cultural Change. In educational institutions, preserving the status quo must be balanced with promoting social innovation.

5. Latent Functions of Education. The education system has the unintended functions of: maintaining and supporting the system of social inequality, delaying people’s entrance into labor markets, babysitting or child care, dating markets, and the creation of social networks.

C. Education and Social Stratification: A Conflict Perspective

Unequal Access to Schooling and Educational Inequality. Social critic Jonathan Kozol showed the inequality and lack of change in 25 years of the American educational system in his book Savage Inequalities.

-----a. Unequal Access to Schools. Federal programs like Head Start help some children but research shows that poor kids need long-term help.
-----b. Inequality Between Private and Public Schools in the United States and Russia. Both in the U.S. and Russia, research evidence points out that private schools are superior to public ones. Private schooling, though, is beyond the reach of most lower- and middle-class families.
-----c. Inequalities Within and Among America’s Public Schools. In the classic Coleman Report, James Coleman showed that the “separate but equal” idea did not happen and that white schools were better equipped, funded and staffed. A 1995 General Accounting Office (GAO) survey indicated that over one-third of schools were in need of serious repair.
-----d. Unequal Access to Higher Education. In the United States, family income is the most important factor in determining access to higher education.

2. Educational Credentials: Schools as a Screening Device. Few obtain the advanced degrees, thus screening some people out of selected positions.

-----a. The “Hidden Curriculum”. The hidden curriculum in American education is designed to teach dominant values and norms of society (such as Eurocentrism) and reinforce the status quo.
-----b. Screening in America’s Public Schools. Jonathan Kozol and Edgar Friedenberg argue that schools are biased screening devices, filtering out students at different levels to fill unequal positions.
-----c. Tracking. This is social grouping or placing students of similar abilities in the same class.

3. Education and Occupational Opportunities in the United States. Randall Collins strongly criticized America’s obsession with credentialism, which is an overemphasis on educational credentials.

D. Education and Everyday Life: An Interactionist View

Since such a large proportion of a young person’s time is spent in schools, interactionists are interested in how day-to-day life in schools affects socialization, self-image, and role taking.

1. Socialization: Personal and Social Development. Beyond cultural transmission and encouragement to conform, schools provide an important social environment for young people. That social environment is created in the interaction between the student culture and the institutionalized culture of the school.

2. Labeling Students: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. The Pygmalion effect occurs when teachers who expect students to succeed and excel are motivated to ensure they do. Two psychologists, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, studied labeling and found, even though there was no difference in student groups, children labeled more intelligent had far greater academic gains.

3. Student-Teacher Interaction. Peer group and student-teacher interactions are the daily fabric of school life. What makes a student popular through elementary, middle, and high school years is not necessarily academics as much as conformity to idealized images of masculinity and femininity.

4. Schools as Bureaucracy: Dehumanization of Education. Max Weber helped us see bureaucracy as an ideal type and as a characteristic pattern of modern “rationalized” society. Bureaucratic notions of reasoned, formalized standards, hierarchical status ranking, and goal-specific curricula are being applied to schools.

-----a. The Advantages of Bureaucratic Structure. Standardization and academic specializations can be advantages of using bureaucratic procedures.
-----b. Disadvantages of Bureaucratic Education. The educational experience is somewhat dehumanized, and many students, teachers and administrators feel alienated from the educational process.

E. Contemporary Trends in American Education

Most Americans are aware of the problems in American schools: inadequate funding, increased violence, drug use, and weak academic performance. Americans have turned toward technology as a “fix,” as the use of computers has become a universal trend across the United States.

1. Mass Education and Utilitarianism. Educational philosopher John Dewey guided American education with his emphasis on how education pragmatically affects people’s everyday lives. In recent decades, our schools have become arenas for addressing social problems. Sociologists have been skeptical about the effectiveness of “social policy” interventions.

2. Year-Round Education. The traditional U.S. school calendar was set up for a farming society and, at 178 days a year, is far less than Japan’s 240 days a year.

3. The Home Schooling Movement. This is where children receive their formal education from one or both parents. It is often done to avoid the problems of public schools and to provide an education in morals. Sociologically, there are problems with home schooling, especially with the lack of interaction with other children of different backgrounds.

4. Diversity and Multicultural Education. Because of our nation’s diversity, multicultural education has become a prominent feature in most public school systems. It recognizes cultural diversity and promotes an appreciation of all cultures. Critics like Robert and Solomon think multiculturalism is not based on solid research and is “silly.”

5. Dilemmas in the Schools and in Higher Education.

-----a. Inadequate Funding. The bulk of school funding has always come from state and local levels. One of the most popular way to fund schools is ad valorum taxes (property).
-----b. Lack of Discipline. A large portion of teacher’s time and energy each day is expended in simply maintaining enough order to allow some kind of teaching to occur. In Japan, their taibatsu (corporal punishment) fits their culture, but would be too extreme for ours.
-----c. School Violence. School shootings and other violent acts across the country have led many schools to emphasize more security.
-----d. Drugs in Schools. There have been some absurdities of the “zero tolerance” anti-drug policies.
-----e. Declining Test Scores and Poor Academic Performance. The authors of A Nation at Risk (1983) summarized their findings by writing that American education was suffering from “a rising tide of mediocrity.” In a survey in the late 1990s, it was found that 80% of high school students with at least a B average indicated they cheated to enhance their academic performance.
-----f. Teacher Shortages. Finding adequate numbers of teachers is becoming difficult and the Department of Education predicts nearly half of the nation’s elementary and secondary teachers will retire by the year 2010.

6. Mass Media, Computers, and the Technomedia.

-----a. Mass Media and Education. Research evidence finds that American children spend more time watching television than in any other single activity. The mass media and technomedia play an ever-increasing role in education.
-----b. Computers in the Classroom. The best use of computers in schools seems to be as a supplemental tool, not as a replacement for human contact.
-----c. Technomedia and “Multimedia” Education. Robert Abel’s interactive multimedia mixes audio, video, and text to explore a multitude of topics.

F. Looking to the Future: Education in the Twenty-First Century

In order to be viable, the educational institution must shift its focus to the future in order to be viable. Recent trends suggest that technological developments, especially in computers, mass media and technomedia, will have a dramatic impact on the future of American education. Changing demographics and increasing global awareness will lead to changes in curricula. It is likely that there will be an increase in older students enrolled in adult education classes.

The most basic social institution is the family. While some form of “family” is found in all cultures, the guidelines for kinship patterns, reasons for getting married, attitudes about children, and even rules for number of spouses varies across cultures. The conditions within industrial and postindustrial societies are forcing families to change, adapt and begin the twenty-first century in different ways.

A. What is a Family?

1. Family is defined to be two or more people who are related by blood, marriage or adoption or who are part of a relationship in which there is commitment, mutual aid, support and often a shared residence.

2. The family of orientation is the type of family into which one is born, versus the family of marriage, which is the one that a person forms at his or her marriage.

B. Family Diversity: A Global Portrait

1. Descent Patterns. The varieties of real or “constructed” kinship include: consanguineal, affinal, adopted, and fictive.

-----a. Bilateral Descent. Where descent is traced through father’s and mother’s families.
-----b. Patrilineal and Matrilineal Descent. Patrilineal refers to descent on father’s side; matrilineal refers to mother’s side.

2. Family Patterns. The nuclear or conjugal family consists of parents and their children who live apart from other kin. It is, in many ways, a product of industrial society. Throughout much of human history, the most common family form was the consanguine or extended family. Extended families consist of two or more closely related families who share a household and are economically and emotionally bound to others in the group.

3. Courtship, Marriage, and Divorce Patterns. In spite of interesting exceptions, such as required brother-sister marriage for the ruling class among the Inca, in Hawaii, and in Egypt, the incest taboo is found universally.

-----a. Exogamy and Endogamy. Endogamy requires that one many within a certain group while exogamy is a norm requiring one to find partners outside his/her own group.
-----b. Monogamy and Polygamy. Monogamy has not been the dominant marital pattern among all peoples. It means that one is allowed only one spouse. Polygamy means several spouses, and there are three forms: group marriage (several husbands and wives), polygyny (one husband, several wives), and polyandry (one wife, several husbands).
-----c. Dissolving Marriages. This includes divorce or setting the spouse aside. Much controversy surrounds no-fault divorces in the U.S.

4. Residence and Authority Patterns. When a husband moves to the home of wife and kin group it is called matrilocal, and when the wife moves to the home of the husband’s kin group, it is called patrilocal. The most common residence patterns for Americans is the neolocal, where a new residence is formed.

C. Sociological Approaches to the Family

1. Functionalism and the Family. The family is seen as the foundation of the social order in the functionalist perspective. This perspective tends to focus on the six vital functions fulfilled by the institution of the family and how family adapts to a variety of ecological contexts.

2. The Family from the Conflict Perspective. Conflict theorists view the family as rooted in social inequality. Friedrich Engels saw family as an instrument of oppression by men at the expense of women and children. Randall Collins explained the origin of the word “family’s as coming from the Latin term famulus, which means “servant.”

3. Social Exchange. Social exchange theory views marriage and family from a micro level perspective using the language of the marketplace. This perspective sees people bargaining to make the “best deals.”

4. Symbolic Interactionism. The main emphasis of the symbolic interactionist is that marriage and family relationships are negotiated during social interaction.

D. U.S. Families in the Life Course

The family life course has become more dynamic and complex than at any time in the past.

1. Dating and Mate Selection. The search for romantic love may be more important than ever in our uncertain social climate of rapid social and economic change.

-----a. Demography and Courtship. Courtship is related to the supply of males and females and propinquity, the nearness in space.
-----b. Homogamy and Heterogamy. A spouse with social characteristics similar to one’s own refers to homogamy, whereas heterogamy relates to the social characteristics different from one’s own.
-----c. The stimulus-value-role theory comes from Bernard Murstein and maintains courtship passes through three distinct stages: stimulus, value, and role.

2. Cohabitation: A New Courtship Stage? Living together without legal marriage is cohabitation. Cohabitation rates have increased dramatically in the USA with the majority of marriages or remarriages beginning as cohabitation relationships.

3. Singlehood. The number of single adults has dramatically increased and this is a trend throughout the industrial world.

-----a. Singles: Postponing Marriage. The median age of first marriage has increased substantially since 1955.
-----b. Widowhood, Divorce, and Singles. Divorce produces the majority of singles.

4. Marriage and Divorce Rates. Most Americans still plan to marry and more than 90% will do so at least once.

5. Families in the Middle and Later Stages of Life. Richard Gelles sees parenthood as involving one of the most total and abrupt changes in responsibility.

-----a. Families in Later Life Stages. As people live longer and people delay marriage, there are more multigenerational families.

E. U.S. Families: A Portrait of Social Diversity

1. Families of Myth and History. Taking an historical view, the much heralded traditional nuclear family has not been typical in America.

2. Media Families: Compounding the Myths? Television has become a “virtual member” of the family. The World Wide Web, e-mail, cellular phones and video cameras have added new options and new information at the family’s disposal. Likewise, chat rooms and the Internet have added new threats to family stability.

3. Families in the United States: The Reality. The essential reality behind the actual American family today is diversity.

-----a. Family and Nonfamily Households. Nonfamily households have more than doubled in the past few decades, but family households still account for more than two-thirds of all U.S. households.
-----b. Nuclear Families. In 1970, married couples accounted for 70% of households, by 1995, this was down to 54%.
-----c. Non-traditional families and their diverse styles.

--------1. Child-Free Families. In two-thirds of the families today, no child is present.

--------2. Coprovider (Dual-Earner) Families. This describes about 50% of families today, and this percentage is increasing due to the economic pressures on families.

--------3. Blended Families. This accounts for about one family in six.

--------4. Single-Parent Families. Have made the most gains in the past few decades. More than 70% of these result from divorce.

--------5. Minority Families. Especially among recent immigrant families, subcultural differences exist.

--------6. Gay and Lesbian Families. In 1996, Congress passed the Defense of Family Act, which withheld federal recognition of and many economic benefits of same-sex marriages.

F. Family Transitions and Family Problems

1. Domestic Violence. Richard Gelles and Murray Straus believe family violence is on the decline or at least becoming less severe.

2. Divorce. The U.S. has one of the highest divorce rates among industrialized and post-industrial nations, even though the divorce rate has been declining since 1981. The primary reasons for the high rate in the U.S. are higher expectations today and a decline in moral, legal and social constraints against divorce.

3. Balancing Family and Work. On a global scale, American men rank somewhere in the middle in regards to sharing child-care and domestic work with their wives. The government could be doing much more to help working families with children. The Family Leave Act of 1993 shows this reluctance; it took almost a decade to pass and it provided few substantial benefits.

G. Looking to the Future: Families in the Twenty-First Century

In the future, families will probably become more diverse and shift from patriarchal to egalitarian models. Developments in reproductive technology and aging baby boomers also challenge traditional understandings about courtship, marriage, parenthood, and the family. There will probably be an increase in the sandwich generation, meaning those who provide for children and for their parents.

This chapter introduces you to sociological perspectives on the nature of power in its various forms. You will gain an overview of how power may be managed, mismanaged, and how the mismanagement of power too frequently leads to armed conflict.

A. Power and Authority

Power is the ability to get one’s way, including influencing other people. Authority is a form of power that has social approval because it is seen as legitimate.

1. Power and Politics. Politics is all about power; political institutions are relatively stable relationships that distribute and exercise power.

B. Types of Authority

Max Weber identified three major types of legitimate power: traditional, legal-rational and charismatic.

1. Traditional Authority. It is based on tradition and habit.

2. Legal-Rational Authority. This is based on explicit rules and procedures that define who has power and how it can be exercised.

3. Charismatic Authority. This is based on unique personal qualities, which includes the ability to excite and inspire followers.

4. Expertise. This fourth form of authority, though not identified by Weber, is derived from possession of specialized knowledge.

C. Politics and Influence

Influence is the ability to affect the behavior of others through persuasion, rewards, inducements and appeals to reason.

1. Propaganda, Censorship, and Ideology. Propaganda is the communication of facts, ideas and opinions not for the audience’s sake but to benefit the propagandist.

2. Politics, Influence, and the Mass Media. Elites rely on the mass media and personalized media to influence audiences. According to political scientist, Larry Sabato, the media and their “feeding frenzies” have damaged the political fabric by cheapening the public discourse.

3. Technomedia, Influence, and Contemporary Politics. While technomedia has “broken down government’s monopoly on information,” the access to technomedia is limited by wealth and educational levels.

D. Globalization and Political Systems

Nation-states are governments that have a unified administration that reach across large territories over which sovereignty is claimed. More than 200 nation-states currently dominate the global political landscape.

1. Authoritarian Systems. Globally, many nations are ruled by authoritarian regimes whose power is concentrated in the hands of a single leader (dictatorship) or rule by a few (oligarchy) in an elite group.

2. Democratic Systems. These are based on the popular participation of citizens in the decision-making.

-----a. Conditions for Democracy. The book lists four requisites for a democracy.
-----b. Contemporary Democracies. Greek democracy was participatory or direct democracy where all (free and male) citizens met and voted ‘on all important issues, in contrast to representative democracy, where voters delegate the decisions to elected representatives.
-----c. Democracy and Women’s Political Rights. Women are in more political positions, but at the current rate, it may take centuries before women are equivalent to men in global politics.
-----d. Democracy, Social Rights, and the Welfare State. Many Western-style democracies offer legal and constitutional protection for people’s civil rights and social rights.

E. Democracy: American Style

Edward Lehman outlined four levels of power, with the state at the top, political parties on the next level, and interest groups and unorganized citizens at the bottom. Political Participation and the American Voter. Even presidential elections only attract 50-65% of the eligible voters.

-----a. Voter Behavior and Class. The poor vote less.
-----b. Voter Behavior and Age. The oldest voters are more likely to vote.
-----c. Race, Ethnicity, and Voting. Minority voter turnout is lower than white voting.
-----d. A Gender Gap? Women vote more often and differently than men.

2. Interest Groups. An interest group is an organization that seeks to influence government policy and public opinion. They can be single interest groups with narrowly defined causes (e.g. N.R.A.) or Public Interest Groups. Through Political Action Committees (PACs), corporations, labor unions and citizen groups funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to candidates and may skew the election process.

3. Political Parties. Political parties are enduring coalitions of individuals who organize to win elections and shape public policy.

-----a. Third Parties. Over 1000 have made brief appearances in America.
-----b. Parties and Proportional Representation. Proportional representation is where each party gains seats in parliament based on its share of the popular vote.
-----c. Winner Take All. The outcome of American elections is based on plurality or where the winner takes all.

4. Who Governs? Models of State Power. There are different approaches to the structuring of polity --the relationship between governing agencies and those governed.

-----a. The Organizational Approach. This approach sees the state as being composed of many organizations that differ in their capacities to exert influence. Theda Skocpol and Edwin Amenta argued that government bureaucracies are “partially autonomous actors.”
-----b. Functionalism and the Pluralist Approach. The functionalist view stresses the vast proliferation of interest groups; some are veto groups that can prevent larger groups from getting their way.
-----c. Conflict Approaches. These maintain the real power is concentrated in the hands of small, unified segments.
-----d. The Power Elite. C. Wright Mills made the point that the Power Elite, a small group of top corporate, military and political leaders, dominates American politics.
-----e. The Governing Class. G. William Domhoff and Michael Useem see the ruling elite as a “governing class” of predominantly upper-class people.

F. War, Nuclear War, and Society

The sociological definition of war is “sustained armed conflict among politically organized groups that involves large-scale violence and many fatalities.”

1. Perspectives on War. The basic sociological perspective looks at the political and social contexts for the causes of war.

2. The Development of War. It has been observed that the twentieth-century is unprecedented in its level of organized violence. In the Soviet Union alone, for example, there were in excess of 20,000,000 mortalities as a result of World War II. In general, it seems to be the case that the scale of war has kept step with the scale of military engagements permitted by technologies of transportation, communications, and weaponry. There have been no total wars since 1945, but many limited, guerilla, proxy, and unilateral wars have broken out.

3. The Military Industrial Complex. President Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans of the dangers of the military industrial complex, made up of the cooperative coalition of leaders of military, corporate leaders, and heads of various government agencies. While the military industrial complex has altered military spending and wars, David Altheide claims that telecommunications, computers and high-tech weaponry has altered warfare also.

4. Nuclear War and Society.

-----a. Mutually Assured Destruction. President Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, promoted a costly policy of mutually assured destruction that dominated strategic planning for over 30 years.
-----b. Society in the Nuclear Age. The likely aftermath of a nuclear exchange between major powers would be shock, lawlessness and a breakdown of the social guidelines.
-----c. The Doomsday Clock. The Doomsday Clock has recently been reset to 14 minutes to midnight due to the recent proliferation of nuclear weapons.

G. Peace Organizations and Peace Movements

Peace is not simply the absence of war. It is a process by which politically organized groups develop and maintain positive, constructive, and mutually beneficial relationships that enable them to transcend collective violence.

1. The United Nations and the Search for Peace. The United Nations includes a Security Council giving permanent members a veto power over decisions.

2. Peace Movements. Some believe that the best chances for peace exist outside of the nation-state in emerging global, political organizations, and peace movements that seek to demilitarize society and remove the conditions that contribute to conflict and violence.

H. Looking to the Future: Global Politics in the Twenty-First Century

Theodore Caplow maintains we should concentrate on “peace games” and not “war games.’ As the world moves from nation-state power to international or global capitalism, the future will see warfare, terrorism and peace assuming new meanings and forms.

The word “economy” comes from a Greek word meaning “household.” Through economic activity we produce what we need to survive, thrive, and maintain our households. Every society has some kind of economy, some way of “making a living.” In the sociological view, economy and work are of fundamental importance because they link us to our social worlds. In the USA, our occupational roles are often master statuses in providing our social identities.

A. Sociology and the Study of the Economy.

The economy includes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. It has an impact on virtually all aspects of social life.

1. Production. Production is usually divided into three types: primary, secondary, and tertiary.

2. Distribution of Goods and Services. The allocation of goods and services to societal members.

3. Consumption. This is the process of accumulating and using goods and services. Thorstein Veblen created the term conspicuous consumption to represent the buying of goods and services to express a person’s social standing.

4. The Economic System. This includes the ideology, values, norms and activities that regulate an economy.

B. The Global Economy

In today’s global economy, products are made and sold throughout the world. Currently, there is a global economic boom. This could make economies interdependent and therefore vulnerable.

1. Capitalism. In this, the means of production are privately owned. Economic Theorist, Adam Smith, argued private ownership promotes greed, but also the basis for wealth and prosperity or “common good” of entire nation. He thought the “invisible hand” of consumer choice would positively guide the marketplace.

2. Socialism. Here the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.

3. Mixed Economies. Most societies mix elements of capitalism and socialism. Both the U.S. and Sweden have mixed economies, but the differences are striking.

4. Transnational Corporations and the Global Economy. Global manufacturing is now dominated by large corporations. Today, national and local economies are part of a massive global economy dominated by transnational corporations that manufacture, distribute, and sell goods and services around the world.

C. The American Economy and Work

1. From an Agrarian to an Industrial Economy. The industrial revolution brought perhaps the greatest and most lasting change of American society. Advertising and mass media played a very important role in this change.

2. Advertising and the Media. This involves the creation of a mass market for capitalism.

-----a. Print advertising. Magazines dominated advertising in the early 1900s.
-----b. Radio and Television. Radio became a dominant advertising form by the 1920s but it was largely replaced by television by the 1960s.
-----c. Advertising and the Technomedia. Advertising expanded to the Internet.
-----d. Taking a Closer Look at Advertising. There is debate on the manifest and latent functions of advertising and whether advertising creates a false’ consciousness of the quality of life in the U.S..

3. Postindustrialism and Service Work. There is evidence that the American economy is undergoing a “second industrial revolution” and becoming a postindustrial economy dominated by service industries and the manufacture of information and knowledge.

4. Blue Collar, White Collar, and Pink Collar Occupations. Work in the American economy is differentiated into a secondary labor market, characterized by blue-collar and pink collar occupations, lower-level management and white-collar jobs. Sociologist Jessie Bernard added the occupational classification of pink collar occupations for those heavily dominated by women, especially clerical work.

5. Primary and Secondary Labor Markets and the Rise of Professions. Primary labor markets are comprised of middle- and upper-level management positions and professions that provide high income, prestige and extensive benefits to workers. The secondary labor market jobs provide low wages and few benefits. According to Ritzer, there are four qualities that characterized a profession: theoretical knowledge, self-regulation, authority, and community orientation.

6. Self-Employment. The USA has gone from three-fourths to less than 10% of Americans are self-employed.

7. Unemployment and Underemployment. According to Richard Barnet; the Fortune 500 corporations laid off an average of 340,000 workers per year between 1979 and 1992.

----a. Unemployment. Many blue-collar and those in the primary labor market lost their jobs as American companies moved their plants to areas with cheaper labor. John Kasarda observed that urban labor markets polarized due to postindustrialism and that cities are not longer centers for production.
----b. Underemployment. Temporary employment agencies are among the fastest growing businesses in America. At the same time, about 30% of Americans work less than full time.

8. America’s Hidden Economy. The USA has a large hidden economy, which involves a variety of work and other economic activities that take place “off the record.”

D. Work as a Social Phenomenon

Look for four sociological dimensions in this section: work role, how work is a linkage to the social structure, work as social identity, and worker satisfaction.

1. Work as a Social Role. Work roles are learned through the processes of socialization, but there are distinct sociological perspectives on just what that means.

----a. A Functionalist View. This perspective focuses on the manifest and latent functions of work. Robert Merton described socialization in medical school as a process of steady and incremental change in attitudes and behavior.
-----b. The Interactionist Perspective. Howard Becker studied socialization in medical school by looking at social interactions.
-----c. A Conflict/Feminist Approach. Jane Leserman studied the differences between males and female experiences in medical school
-----d. Occupational Specialization. This is where people become experts in a narrow area of work.

2. Work and the Social Structure. Work links people to others with whom they interact both on and off the job.

----a. Occupational Subcultures. Where co-workers share common values, norms, and attitudes not only toward work but toward life in general.
-----b. Labor Unions. Perhaps the crowning blow to unions was President Reagan’s 1981 action against the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Association.
-----c. The “Team” Concept. In the team concept, workers participate as a group that builds a product from start to finish.

3. Work and Identity. James Carper noted that occupational titles carry important symbolic meanings that become incorporated into people’s social and personal identities.

4. Worker Satisfaction. A theme of Studs Terkel’s book, Working, is the negative feelings and dissatisfaction many people experience on the job. There is high worker satisfaction among the white-collar workers.

E. Taking a Closer Look at the Economy and Work

1. A Functionalist View. This looks at the manifest and latent functions of the economy with respect to the society at large.

2. The Conflict Perspective. This points out that the economic system contributes to social inequality and work involves exploitation of workers by the elites who control the means of production.

3. An Interactionist Approach. Interactionists point out that work is an important part of our social identity and that people define and re-define the world of work through social interaction and meaningful symbols.

F. Looking to the Future: The Economy and Work in the Twenty-First Century

Current trends and patterns indicate that there will be dramatic shifts in the workforce in the twenty-first century. More minorities, especially African-Americans, Hispanics, and women will enter the labor market. There is a consensus among sociologists and economists that, in the future, an interdependent, global economy will have an increasingly dramatic impact on the lives of individuals, groups, and nation-states. Transnational corporations will increasingly dominate the global economy.

Religion, in some form, has been found in every culture encountered by human scientists. Yet, defining religion and what it means is among the more challenging puzzles facing sociologists. This chapter introduces you to how religion may be understood through the lens of sociological inquiry.

A. Defining Religion

Religion is a system of socially shared symbols, beliefs, and rituals directed toward a sacred, supernatural realm that addresses the ultimate meaning of life.

1. The Sacred and the Profane. For Emile Durkheim, religion pertains to the sacred (the uncommon and extraordinary) in contrast to the profane (the ordinary). In Durkheim’s view, sacredness is not inherently in something but bestowed by a community.

2. Religious Symbols, Beliefs, and Rituals. Religious symbols (holy icons), beliefs and rituals (formal stylized enactments) detach people from the “ordinary” and focus their attention on the sacred.

3. The Difference Between Religion and Magic. While religion is a belief system that may ask supernatural for aid, magic is designed to compel the supernatural to act in one’s behalf.

4. Religion and Ultimate Healing. Stark and Bainbridge contended religious groups owe their existence to the fact the society’s population has less rewards than they would like, so people compensate with religion.

B. Global Religious Diversity

Religious belief systems can be categorized into four ideal types: animatism, animism, theism and ethical religions.

1. Animatism. It is easy to confuse animatism with animism. Animatism sees supernatural forces rather than beings (gods or spirits) are the dominant power in the universe.

2. Animism. This is the belief in spirit beings that inhabit the same world as humans but on another plane of existence.

3. Theism. Theism focuses religious sentiment and practice on the idea of gods or of a single God. In fact, though, religious systems that recognize multiple gods often recognize a single “high god” that may sometimes, “stand behind the scenes,” remaining mysterious and even unnameable.

-----a. Polytheism. The belief in many dieties.
b. Monotheism. The belief in one diety.

4. Ethical Religions. These are philosophical ideals that show people how they may achieve enlightenment, peace, and harmony in this world.

-----a. Buddhism. Based on the teachings of Siddharta Gautama. He taught self-discipline and meditation as the true paths to understanding and happiness.
-----b. Taoism. Founded by Lao Tzu, where spiritual advancement is by withdrawing from the world and following The Way or The Path.
-----c. Confucianism. Based on the teachings of Confucius or K’ung Fu-Tzu, it emphasizes piety to one’s parents, elders, and ancestors.

C. The Social Organization of Religion

Sociologists classifying religious organizations into the following four types: ecclesia and denominations tend to be formally organized bodies, while sects and new religious movements tend to be smaller and exist in negative tension with society.

1. The Ecclesia. This is a formally organized religious body that includes most societal members and is supported by secular and state powers.

2. The Denomination or Church. An established, socially accepted religious organization that maintains tolerant relations with other denominations.

3. Sects. These are small and less formalized groups that are usually separated from a denomination and are in negative tension with society. Sometimes sects begin because of a charismatic leader (authority due to unique personal qualities), but may experience the routinization of charisma, or where the passion and dynamism of leaders changes into formal rules and procedures.

4. New Religious Movements. H. Paul Chalfant and his colleagues, they prefer the term new religious movement rather than the negative label of a cult.

D. Religion and Society: Three Perspectives

Early sociologists, like Auguste Comte, thought society had advanced to the point of exiting the theological stage and moving into the positive stage.

1. Religion and Functionalism. Functionalists argue that religion provides meaning and social solidarity.

-----a. Durkheim and Religion. Durkheim thought he could discover the essence of religion by examining “primitive religions,” thinking totemism represented religion in its most basic form.
-----b. Modem Civil Religion. Civil religion is where a nation’s institutions, history, and values are associated with some ultimate or religious plan.

2. Religion from a Conflict Perspective. Conflict theorists contend that religion is an instrument of elite economic and political exploitation and oppression.

-----a. Karl Marx and Religion. He thought that religion’s promises of the future diverts people’s attentions from the present social inequities and injustices. He also thought “religion was the opium of the people.”
-----b. Religion’s Two Faces. In looking at union struggles in coal mining and textile mill regions, Dwight Billings identified two faces of religion and determined that religion might serve as a “mediating variable.” Billings found that in the mill towns, the minister failed to support striking mill workers.

3. Religion, Interactionism and Social Change. In Max Weber’s famous essay, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, he saw that the economy influenced ideology but argued that religious beliefs also may promote economic and social change. He found that capitalism rose fastest where Calvinists were predominant.

E. Religious Movements in Focus

The secularization thesis maintains that modernization inevitably leads to religious decline. Religion in America and in a global context, suggests that secularization also generates sects and new religious movements.

1. Early Revivals and Religious Movements. Several groups came from the historical Great Awakening.

2. The Holiness and Pentacostal Movements. They stress “personal holiness.”

3. Evangelical and Fundamentalist Movements. The evangelical movement emphasizes a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The fundamentalist movement, in opposition to progressive Protestantism, emphasizes that everything in the Bible is “literal truth.”

-----a. A Contemporary Fundamentalist Movement. The “Promise Keepers” has the goal of reimposing males’ traditional authority.
-----b. Contemporary Millenarian Movements.

4. Religious Movements in a Global Context. Irving Horowitz thinks that fundamentalism is not uniquely American, but part of a global pattern of popular religious movements against modernization, secularization and elite -visions of the future.

-----a. Islamic Fundamentalism. This hopes church leaders, like Ayatollah Khomeni, become state leaders as well as pushes for Islamic justice, honor and morality.
-----b. Liberation Theology. A militant reformist movement within Catholicism, largely a Latin American movement.

5. Religious Movements in a “New Age.” Some new forms or varieties of religion, including the Wiccan (modern witch or Neopagan) movement and Satanism. New Age religions are decentralized movements. Dick Anthony and Thomas Robbins studied New Age religion and its belief in the “totally restored community.”

F. Religion and the Media

Today, by employing virtually all forms of mass communication, including the Internet, Christian religious groups and other religious entrepreneurs reach across the globe to influence billions of believers.

1. Evangelical Media. The evangelical people have purchased over 90% of all religious broadcast time. While reaching out to the middle-class, the core constituency for televangelists is predominantly poor, elderly and disadvantaged.

2. Technomedia and Religion. Jeff Zaleski, in his book The Soul of Cyberspace, argued that new information technologies are altering aspects of religions.

G. Religious Diversity in the United States

The numbers and proportions of denominational membership in America and various poil studies show that Americans tend to be very much involved in religion.

1. Social Correlates of Religion. Membership in religious organizations correlates with a number of social characteristics: social class, age and political party.

2. Religion and Race: African-American Religious Organizations. The first national religious organization for African-Americans was the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) church.

3. Women and Religion. Women have tended to be most prominent in active church membership since the mid-nineteenth century, but not as ministers.

H. Looking to the Future: Religion in the Twenty-First Century

There has been a shift to “religious polarization” on the one hand, and “religious populism” on the other. The church-state boundary lines have been blurred and are less clear.

This chapter gives you a sociological perspective on health and illness both historically and cross-culturally. It takes a critical look at the healthcare system in the USA and its expense. The area of health, illness, and institutional medicine may provide the best example of all that things are not necessarily what they seem.

A. Health and Sickness: A Global View

Disease is a medically diagnosed illness. Health is the absence of disease and infirmity and the ability to effectively respond to one’s environment.

1. Health and Sickness in Poor Nations. Cultural definitions of health and sickness are closely related to a society’s wealth and technology and ability to meet the health needs of its population. An example would be the infant mortality rate, which is the number of deaths in the first year of life for each 1,000 live births per year.

2. Health and Sickness in Wealthy Nations. There is a great variance in the health of wealthy versus poor nations.

B. Health and Sickness in the United States

Expectations vary from culture to culture and throughout time. The use of tobacco in the United States, for example, has gone through three main stages. Approximately 70% of Americans are overweight. Medical sociology is a sub area of sociology that links social structure and social life to health.

1. Epidemiology: The Social Dimensions of Health. Epidemiology relates health and illness to demographic variables like age and sex. It studies the distribution of health and disease and shows that health varies by the following variables.

-----a. Age. Life expectancy is the average number of years a person is expected to live.
-----b. Sex and Gender. Women’s illnesses are more likely to be linked to morbidity (chronic debilitation), while men’s diseases are linked to mortality (death).
-----c. Race and Ethnicity. Whites, on the average, can expect to live five years longer than non-whites. Native Americans suffer the poorest health in the USA.
-----d. Socioeconomic Status. Money explains much of the disparity in health of rich and poor. More than 44 million Americans have no medical or health insurance.

2. Social Attitudes Toward Health and illness.

-----a. Health and Fitness. While 70% of Americans are overweight, interest in diet, exercise and health are at an all-time high.
-----b. The Wellness Movement. The wellness movement emphasizes preventive health by combining knowledge about health and nutrition with sensible eating and exercise programs. -----3. Disease and Stigmas: AIDS. Victims of AIDS (acquired immunity deficiency syndrome, which is a spectrum of disorders that result from a progressive breakdown of the body’s immune defense system) have been stigmatized for their condition. Because of this, some people with AIDS practice passing and attempt to hide this stigmatized attribute. -----4. Health and Social Identity. Talcott Parsons conducted the first sociological analysis of the sick role, which included making an effort to get well, acknowledging one’s deviance, and exemption from social responsibility. Parsons contended health is important so people can fulfill their social obligations.

C. Medicine and Health Care: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Medicine and health care represent institutionalized efforts to combat disease and maintain a society’s health. They may vary cross culturally in philosophy, form and content.

1. Japan: Scientific Medicine and Kanpo. Universal health care is near the top in priorities in Japan and the quality is excellent. They have advanced scientific care and employ Kanpo, a traditional form of Japanese medicine introduced in the 6th century using meditation, herbs and acupuncture.

2. Sweden and Norway: Prenatal to Postmortem Health Care~ Both use socialized medicine, a system of state-operated health care that is available to all citizens.

-----a. Sweden. It uses about 9.2% of the GDP to pay for health care, but government pays 97% of the expenses.
-----b. Norway. Government not only pays for medical care, but also the salary of those who are ill. Norwegians can, with a doctor’s decision, get a change of climate trip to a spa in Turkey.

3. Great Britain: Socialized Medicine in a Capitalist Society. Great Britain spends approximately 5.8% of GDP on health care, but government pays 85% of Costs.

D. Medicine and Health Care in the United States

Medical care in America is shockingly expensive relative to nations like Japan, yet is unequally distributed. The U.S. is committed to scientific medicine, which is dominated by the AMA and characterized by specialization. The USA spends 14% of the GDP on health care and government only pays for about half of the costs.

1. The Development of Modern Medicine. America has moved away from general practitioners to that of specialization, or the focusing on one particular aspect of medicine.

2. The Age of Specialization. Specialization has led to an increased cost of medical care and greater prestige for doctors.

3. Media and the Medicalization of American Society. With the influence of medical groups and with media’s influence, there has been an increasing medicalization (viewing things from a medical perspective) of life activities not previously associated with medicine and health care.

-----a. Early Media Images of Medicine and Health Care: Creating a Positive Image. Early television images in such shows like Marcus Welby, MD and Ben Casey, tended to deify the role of the physician.
-----b. The Medicalization of Birth and Death. Childbirth was once not associated with doctors, but today 99% of births occur in hospitals.
-----c. The Medicalization of Deviance. Alcoholism and other problems are often treated as illnesses.
-----d. Elective Plastic Surgery. Once focused on defects and injuries, today it is associated with aesthetics
. -----e. Over-the-Counter Remedies. Americans have developed a “take a pill” mentality.
-----f. Contemporary Media Portrayals of Medicine and Health Care. Later shows like M*A*S*H, ER, and Northern Exposure portrayed doctors as often competent, likeable, but not beyond reproach.

4. The Health Care Crisis: A Functionalist Perspective. Our cost of health care is outrageously high and a very substantial proportion of Americans have, essentially, no access to adequate health care. Sociologists who analyze the health-care crisis from a functionalist perspective identify several factors at the heart of the problem: a lack of education, geographic distribution, bureaucratization and inefficiency, the high costs of health care, and inadequate resources for research and development.

5. The Health Care Crisis from the Conflict Perspective. American health care crisis is directly related to social inequality for conflict theorists. The most serious flaws in American health care can be attributed to unequal access, high costs and large profits, bureaucratization and alienation, and scientific medicine as ideology.

6. Is There a Health Care Crisis? An Interactionist Approach. Interactionists would not disagree that there is a health care crisis, but they select a frame of reference that helps us think about who constructs the perceptions of this crisis.

7. Integrative Medicine and Alternatives to Conventional Health Care. Recent studies have seen increased acceptance of some unorthodox approaches. Especially popular is the holistic approach, which focuses on treating patients as whole persons, the prevention of disease, and incorporating the patient fully into his or her own health care.

E. Looking to the Future: Health and Medicine in the Twenty-First Century

With America’s health care system claiming one-fifth of everyone’s income, there could be a sort of “health care rebellion.” The high cost of American health care will probably drive more Americans to HMOs (health maintenance organizations) and PPOs (preferred provider organizations). Research and technology will play an even more important role in medicine and health care in the future. Sociologists whose teaching and studs’ center on medicine and health care are encouraged to rethink their approach and to emphasize the human dimension of medicine and health care.

This chapter introduces you to ways in which the sociological imagination is applied to the inevitable processes of social change: The chapter outlines social change theories, then turns to the nature of collective behavior and the characteristics of social movements. Some change is episodic and transient, and some occurs over long periods. Some change is subtle and other change may involve relatively abrupt system shifts with major results. The challenge for sociologists rests in trying to understand which kinds of change are actually system changes, and which are merely “random or transient fluctuations.”

A. What is Social Change?

Social change is a process through which patterns of social behavior, social relationships, social institutions, and systems of stratification are altered over time. The rate of social change differs from one society to another, depending on the complex interaction of various sources of change.

1. Macro Change. These are large scale changes, like modernization.

2. Micro Change. These are small, rapid social changes, such as small business decisions.

B. Sociological Approaches to Social Change

Cyclical Approaches.

-----a. Classical Cyclical Theories. Pitirim Sorokin proposed a cyclical theory of change that involved long-term oscillations of three mentalities: ideational, sensate and idealistic.
-----b. Contemporary Cyclical Approaches. Sees some of the same rises and falls of classical cyclical theories.

2. Functionalism and Evolutionary Perspectives. The dominant orientation in linear views of change is that of the (Western) view of gradual progress due to scientific and technological developments.

-----a. Classical Evolutionary Models. Many early sociologists, such as Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim, supported the unilineal evolution view of constant progress. Comte believed all societies go through theological stage, metaphysical stage and the last and highest stage, positivistic. Durkheim assumed that the breakdown of traditional, mechanical social bonds was leading to the more complex division of labor in organic solidarity.
-----b. Neoevolutionary Perspectives. These do not maintain the inevitable progress of societies.

3. The Conflict Perspective. Conflict theorists stress class, ethnic, gender, and natural struggles as important sources of change.

-----a. Class Warfare and Change. Marx thought that the most important processes of social change involved the conflict between social classes.
-----b. Revolutionary Change. Theda Skocpol believed that Marx over emphasized economic factors. She found revolutionary change occurred not only where there was serious economic crisis, but also when there was difficulty meeting challenges of transnational or international relations.

4. Contemporary Perspectives on Change. Contemporary sociologists tend to reject grand theories of social change. Some of the most important sources of change are the physical environment, technology, population, cultural innovation, and social conflict.

C. Collective Behavior

This consists of relatively spontaneous and non-institutionalized responses by a large number of people to uncertain and problematic situations.

1. interpreting Collective Behavior.

-----a. Contagion Theory. Gustav LeBon developed contagion theory of how members of a crowd pick up “contagious” emotions of the rest of the group.
-----b. Convergence Theory. This focuses on groups that share attitudes that predispose them to converge on
-----c. Emergent Norm Theory. States that group norms emerge” through group interactions.
-----d. Value-Added Theory. Neil Smelser developed value-added theory which focused on the factors of structural conducivenesss, structural strains, generalized beliefs, social control factors, and mobilization for action.

2. Crowds, Masses, and Collective Behavior. John Lofland presented two characteristics in classifying forms of collective behavior which included the level of volatility and type of collectivity.

-----a. Crowds and Collective Behavior. Crowds can influence people’s behavior in a variety of ways, depending on whether the crowd is a conventional crowd, expressive crowd, acting crowd, mob, riot, revolution, or panic.
-----b. Collective Behavior and Masses. Unlike crowds that are in the same vicinity, in mass behavior, people indirectly influence one another. Forms of mass behavior include fads, fashions, rumors, urban legends and mass hysteria.

D. Social Movements

Social movements involve large numbers of people who use well-organized but institutionalized means to promote or resist social change.

1. Perspectives on Social Movements. According to the relative deprivation theory, social movements appear when people feel deprived in relation to others. J. D. McCarthy and M.N. Zald developed resource mobilization theory, saying that social movements occur when people have the means to carry them out. David Snow and Robert Benford argued in theirframe alignment model that ideology was a key factor in social movements.

2. Social Movement Organizations. Social movements can be classified into reform movements, utopian movements, revolutionary movements, and resistance movements.

-----a. Grassroot and Professional SMOs. There are both volunteer and professional social movement organizations (SMOs), like the NAACP.

3. The Lifecourse of Social Movements. It is hard to get people to join because of the “catch-22” of convincing others that collective action is worthwhile. Secondly, there is thefree rider problem where many people who stand to benefit let others do the hard work while they sit on the sidelines.

4. Factors Related to Movement Success. William Gamson’s research showed that large, bureaucratically organized social movements are more effective than unorganized “grass roots” movements. Also, he pointed to effectiveness of using “strategic violence” and single-issue social movements. Robert Goldberg found other factors important to the success of social movements.

5. Social Movements and Change. Sherry Cable found that participation in grassroots movements may bring change and generate important personal changes such as a sense of empowerment.

E. Looking to the Future: The Media, Social Change, and Life in the Twenty-First Century

In contemporary society, the media plays a key role in defining and shaping public visions of the future. Theodore Caplow asserts that the future is not only determined by the past, but also due to free will and arising contingencies. In 1997, Money Magazine noted the three trends of “aging population, greater social diversity and widening gap between the rich and poor.” The sociological perspective can help prepare people for the future by helping them make informed choices.