Social Theory

Midterm Exam

Q1: My dorm roommate Angelica is a psychology major and she disagrees with my major on Sociology. Angelica insists that psychology is the real deal for studying people and that sociology is completely clueless subject. I disagree with her on that since I was looking into the different examples of sociology applied to human behavior. I looked into the class textbook, "Introducing Social Theory" in the first section was individualistic theory.

Individualism means an individual's personal attributes. I started seeing how sociology could describe people based on their personalities reflecting on their actions towards social interactions with others (Jones, Bradbury, and Le Boutillier, 1). I also showed Angelica an example on people having a controlling persona was an example of individualism based on individuals own ways of behavior. I told her, "Not everything is explained in psychology. Sociology gets more into a society realm perspective."

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Q3: Garfinkel was a colleague of Goffman. He was a believer of symbolic interactionism, and wanted to study close proximity behavior amongst people. He wanted to teach students how to use different tactics in order to learn more about the ordinary social atmosphere. In "Introducing Social Theory," Ethnomethodology was based on the methods people do based on getting a reaction and using that reaction to embark that the action from the person is a true fact. Garfinkel's breaching experiment brought into gender interaction based on conversations.

For instance, there is a radio station that picks on the second caller for a trivial questionnaire. The caller answers all of the questions correctly and gets a free trip to Disneyland for a weekend getaway; the caller is enthusiastic. The host asks the caller's name and the response is: Devon. The host gets an idea based on Devon's tone of voice and believes that Devon is a young woman since her tone of voice is medium pitched.

Ethnomethodology also goes for the experiment on race. For example, I remember watching a YouTube video on a teenage boy that was questioned constantly about what his racial identity was. He said that people cannot understand that he is mixed race. When it comes to ethnomethodology, the aspect of race is an idea that people are assumed the things associated with identity is the real traits of someone based on their culture.

Q5: W.E.B. Du Bois and C. Wright Mills are sociologists that bring in the study of people and the struggles that they face. Du Bois focuses his theory on ethnic struggles amongst African Americans and their impressions amongst living with Caucasians in "Spiritual Strivings". His main theory involves looking at the social spectrum of society in general and a realm of the treatment of African Americans (Du Bois, 2). C. Wright Mills' "The Sociological Imagination" goes into depth about people facing personal problems and feeling very down about being stuck in a difficult circumstance and feeling internal conflict (Mills, 3).

Goffman was a symbolic interactionist that believed in the fact that people would act in front of a stage and back stage in order to give off an impression from performing from a script. In his own book, "The Presentation of Self," Goffman goes into how an individual will go into feeling like making the first impression is difficult based on making a perfect impression once group interaction takes place (Goffman, 12). This also applies with going into social roles in order to understand what the interactions are and the types of conversation taking place.

Du Bois would analyze Goffman by underlining the fact that based on Caucasians are racist amongst African Americans simply for being different and the ideas of what race is that it is nothing but a mere idea of African Americans treated as outcasts. Goffman makes a point about the actor that can make up a believable statement to others while being on stage.

He says, "A cynical individual may delude his audience for what he considers to be their own good, or for the good of the community, etc." (Goffman, 18). Goffman makes the statement that an actor can cover up a default while performing in order to make a lasting impression. C. Wright Mills makes a demonstration at looking at the biography of an individual to analyze an inflicted social problem.

Q7: My social problem that I chose is the high cost of living in the Bay Area. For Weber, this problem is analyzed based on social class dividing people. In "Class, Status and Social Stratification," Weber's point of view on class has to deal with people in a group that share the same struggles and the same views of acquire basic necessities (Weber, 1).

Weber would approach this problem looking at which class could easily pay for the rental costs and analyze that only middle-income people would be moderately struggling while the upper class would have no trouble for paying rent. There would be another approach when it comes to earning money and the actions that people do in order to pay the rent on time. Another approach Weber would do is analyzing the high rental costs based on capitalism.

Since the rental costs are going up, people ask their bosses for a raise in order to keep their jobs without relocating or quit. Capitalism was once seen as a religious duty to preserve money and wealth was subject to be cautious. While wealth was taken seriously, living in poverty was not an excuse because of being a sign of struggle ("The Spirit of Capitalism and The Iron Cage", 4). Capitalism amongst the Bay Area is all about paying the rent on time and making everyone work overtime in order to stay in their residential area.

Durkheim would take on a different approach where he would make a positivism tactic. He would claim that the rental costs are not the problem, but it is the people that are able to survive without cracking under pressure. Durkheim goes into the fact that there are people that need strategic discipline in order to pay their rent, overlooking the high cost and more on the functions of people ("Suicide", 3). Durkheim would be mainly about social order and categorizing the statistics of financial restraint versus bankruptcy. These two different approaches contradict Weber and Durkheim on the social problem for high cost rent in the Bay Area.

References

1. Du Bois, W.E.B. 1903. Pp. 1-12 in The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago, Il: A.C. McClurg and Co.
   Durkheim, Emile. 1897. "Suicide." Excerpts from pp. 246, 247-249, 250-51, 252-254, 256, and 257-258 in Suicide: A Study in Sociology, edited by G. Simpson, translated by J.A. Spaulding and G. Simpson. New York: Free Press.
2. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City: New York. Double Day Action Books.
   Jones, Pip. Liz Bradbury, and Shaun Le Boutillier. 2011. Introducing Social Theory. Cambridge, U.K: Polity Press.
   Mills, Wright, C. 1959. Pp. 5-15 and 130 in The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.
3. Weber, Max. 1902 [1996]. Pp. 17-24, 166-174, and 180-183 in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury Publishing.
4. Weber, Max. 1909-1920. [1946]. "Class, Status, Party." Pp. 180-195 in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited and translated by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press.

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