lecture 4 notes ch 2 4

NOTES Chapters 2, 3, and 4

John Bradford, Ph.D.

I. STRUCTURAL VS INDIVIDUAL EXPLANATIONS…

Structural Explanations

• What causes….– Traffic jams?

– Unemployment?

Structural Explanations

• What causes….– Mass famine/

starvation?

Starvation in East Africa, 2011

Structural Explanations• A structural explanation focuses on the overall

social pattern or collective outcome: traffic jams, wars, poverty, etc.

• Often, these collective outcomes are not intentional outcomes: they are not planned or even desired.

Intended actions

Unintended Consequences

of Actions

Structural Explanations

• But this seems like a paradox: why do hunger, poverty, and war exist even when nobody wants hunger, poverty, and war?

Intended actions

Unintended Consequences

of Actions

CEO and Worker PayCEOs' pay as a multiple of the average worker's pay, 1960-2007

Source: Domhoff 2011

CEO and Worker Pay

• CEO’s (Chief Executive Officers) make over 500 times more than the average American worker.

• Ask yourself: 1. Are CEO’s 500 times smarter than

the average worker?2. Do they work 500 times more

than the average worker?

CEO and Worker Pay

3. In addition, why the sudden change? If they are 500 times smarter than the rest of us TODAY, then why was this not true 30 years ago?

4. Can we explain this by saying that the billionaires desired to become billionaires, or wanted it more than other people?

CEO and Worker Pay

We can draw two conclusions from this example:

1. Reward is *NOT* proportional to Effort!

2. We cannot explain these ‘social facts’ (patterns) solely by looking at people’s intentions or as a consequence of their attributes in isolation.

II. SOCIAL INFLUENCE AND INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY

Social Influence and Individual Responsibility

• In our culture we focus on what an individual does as opposed to what is done to an individual.

• We think individuals (at least adult humans) are self-determined. This is our common-sense notion of ‘personal responsibility.’ People are responsible for their own actions and decisions in life.

Influence and Responsibility• This point of view is not wrong, it is just limited

and one-sided. • Also, sociologists are not interested in morally

evaluating, punishing, or praising others- we are only interested in explaining and understanding.

• Our past decisions obviously have a huge impact on our present circumstances, but we cannot explain what happens to any given individual without also looking at his/her relations to other people- i.e. we have to also look at the larger social context.

Social Influence and Individual Responsibility

Consider two types of situations….1. Situations people do not control:

An individual can be influenced by circumstances over which s/he has little control or counter-influence;

• People’s available actions and decisions are always ‘constrained’ or limited by available resources;

• Examples: your native language, your religious and political beliefs, your parent’s income, etc. Starvation in East Africa, 2011

Social Influence and Individual Responsibility

2. Situations people do (or ‘can’) control: Other times, we can directly attribute a person’s circumstance to an attribute of that person or to some action that person has taken.

• Example: Smoking Crack

Social Influence and Individual Responsibility

Sociologists, however, will still examine:a) the social influences or circumstances that

made this behavior more or less likely.b) the social context in which some attributes

become significant or meaningful, and others not.

– “Sociologists think that much of people’s behavior is a result of what other people do.” (McIntyre, p. 1)

Social Influence and Individual Responsibility

2. Situations people do (or ‘can’) control:• Individuals’ ideas and preferences

determine their actions, but what in turn influences or determines their ideas and preferences?– We are socialized to pay attention to how

others respond to situations.– Emotional responses and attitudes are

often contagious!– We tend to become most like those we

spend the most time with and/or have an affinity for…. (‘We become like those we like!’)

Standing ovation

Social Influence and Individual Responsibility

2a. Social Circumstances• Most human behaviors are not ‘decisions’; rather

we have varying degrees of susceptibility to influence from others.

• Sociologists will examine those factors which influence (or ‘cause’) the behavior itself.

X(action)

Y(consequence)

X(action)

Y(consequence)

Z(circumstances)

Social Influence and Individual Responsibility

2b. The Social Context• Individuals do not determine the value of their assets, nor

do individuals determine how their behavior is interpreted by others.– some attributes are valued more highly in some contexts or

societies than in others. Individuals can adapt to these realities, but cannot control them.

• Example: standards of beauty.

Social Influence and Individual Responsibility

Conclusions• Sociology does not deny that individuals are

personally responsible for their actions, because we are not interested in explaining an individual’s behavior!

• Remember, sociologists are not concerned with the circumstances of any particular individual, but in how the circumstances of one individual relate to others, and in making generalizations about individuals.

• Remember: ‘Think Patterns, Not Individuals’ !

III. THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

The Sociological Imagination

• Sociology attempts to explain facts about groups of people, and then to relate these social facts to our individual lives.

• The study of how our lives are influenced by our larger historical and social circumstances is called the sociological imagination.

The Sociological Imagination

“Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.”

C. Wright Mills(1916-1962)

The Sociological Imagination

• To understand one side, you have to understand the other.

• The ability to understand history and its relation to biography is called the sociological imagination by C. Wright Mills.

Man/Woman Society

Biography History

Self World

Personal “Troubles of milieu”

Public “Issues of social structure”

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”

Karl Marx

(1818-1883)

IV. SELF-FULFILLING AND SELF-NEGATING PROPHECIES

What is Social REALITY?

• Thomas theorem: "If people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences“

• To understand human inter-actions and relations, sociologists have to understand both reality, and perceived reality.

W. I. Thomas1863 - 1947

• Social relations are often real because we act AS IF they are real. The social world concerns not only the material world, but the meanings we ascribe to the material objects, meanings which are themselves non-physical and non-material.

Examples:1. Nations2. Money

Self-fulfilling and Self-negating prophecies

• Robert K. Merton also coined the terms – ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ and – ‘role model’

• A self-fulfilling prophecy is something that becomes true because it is believed to be true. – Example: bank run, placebos, psychic predictions,

etc…• A self-negating prophecy is a belief that causes

its own falsehood. Explanation: it is something that, once believed to be true or expected to happen, cannot happen (or becomes less likely to happen).

Robert K. Merton(1910 – 2003)

The Power of Expectations

• Pygmalion Effect (aka Rosenthal effect): the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform.– According to legend, Pygmalion

was the king of Cyprus who fell in love with a beautiful woman (Galatea) he sculpted out of ivory.

The Power of Expectations• In the 1960s Robert Rosenthal and

Lenore Jacobson hypothesized that teacher expectations influenced children’s performance.

• Study: they randomly assigned 1 out of 5 children to the ‘spurter/bloomer’ group, but told teachers these students were selected to the group based on test performances that indicated future success.

• Findings: the kids who were expected to ‘spurt’ made larger improvements than nonspurters.

Self-negating Prophecies• In the case of financial markets, if one

person figured out how to predict market prices, then soon everyone else would adopt that strategy, making the strategy ineffective. This is an example of self-negating prophecy.

• Often observations do not influence actions which affect the aggregate outcomes. In this case, the observers are external or outside observers who observe but have little impact on what they observe. For example, academics who can observe persistent inequality but have no power to change it.

New Aggregate Patterns

Participant- ObserversObserving patterns

Actions that change

patterns

Aggregate Pattern

Remains

Outside- ObserversObserving patterns

Actions have no impact

V. EMERGENCE, CASCADES, AND TIPPING

Emergent Properties

• Methodological Individualism: the idea that society can be explained entirely by the individuals that make up society.

• Emergence: when the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Emergent properties are those new (and surprising) properties of the whole that are not possessed by the individuals.– Example: Water into Ice, Consciousness, etc.

Emergence and unintended consequences

• The Invisible Hand: a famous and early example of an unintended collective (macro) consequence of individual (micro) actions is Adam Smith’s idea of the ‘Invisible Hand’ of capitalism, where everyone’s selfish desire to make a profit ends up making everyone better off.

• The contrary is also often argued: competition may generate a ‘race to the bottom.’

Adam Smith

Emergence and unintended consequences

• Neighborhood Sorting: Thomas Schelling (2005 Nobel Prize winner) showed that macro-level segregation would arise from micro-level tolerance, so long as individuals prefer to live adjacent to some neighbors similar to them.

Thomas Schelling

Emergence and unintended consequences

• Imagine a city as a giant checkerboard, and suppose each piece wants 30% of its neighbors to be the same kind.

• A few, with more than 30% of its neighbors of a different kind, will move.• Two effects of initial relocations:1. other checkers of the same color from old neighborhood will also

want to move 2. other checkers of different color in new neighborhood will want to

move

Cascades and ‘Tipping’ points

• Diversity (differences between people) can lead to ‘Tipping’- the emergence of social cascades, aka chain reactions or domino effects.

• TIPPING = a small event or a few small actions can cause a cascade and large scale change

• Example: There are 100 people in the mall. How many of them have to be running out of the mall before you run out of the mall also? (Assume you have no understanding of why they running!)

Cascades and ‘Tipping’ points• Diversity and Connectedness lead to ‘Tipping’• Consider two scenarios.

– Scenario 1: Homogeneity. Everyone has the same threshold, or tipping point. Everyone will run out of the mall if they see 20 other people run out of the mall. What happens? NOTHING! No one will leave unless 20 other people leave!

– Scenario 2: Heterogeneity (Diversity). Everyone is numbered from 1 to 100; their number is also the number of people they need to see running before they also run: their threshold. What happens? First person leaves, then the second, then the third, etc. This generates a chain reaction, aka a CASCADE!

Person 0Begins to run

Person 1 runs only if 1 other person runs

Person 2 runs only if 2 other people run

3 4 5 6

Cascades and ‘Tipping’ points• Mark Granovetter devised this threshold

model initially to describe riots: – one person will definitely riot; another will riot

only if one other person riots; a third will riot only if two others riot; etc….

– We are much more likely to riot ourselves if we see others rioting.

• His model explains:1. Why social changes can be abrupt,

discontinuous, and sudden.2. Why they are so unpredictable. One person

in a chain can either cause or prevent a collective chain reaction, or social cascade.

• Other examples: clapping, birth rates, dancing at parties, rates of crime, etc.

VI. PARADIGMS AND ETHNOCENTRISM

Functionalist Paradigm

1. Consensus about values and norms makes society possible

2. Society is a whole made of integrated parts that work (i.e. function) together. – A change to one part of society will affect

all others.– All parts are interdependent.– Society is ‘more than the sum of its parts.’

3. Society seeks stability and tends to avoid conflict

Conflict Paradigm

1. In every society, there are disagreements and differences (i.e. lack of consensus) about values and norms

2. Society is made up of subgroups (aka ‘classes’) that are in ruthless competition for scarce resources

3. Society is not harmonious: conflict is normal in a society.– The conflict can be latent (i.e. conflict of interests) or manifest

(i.e. real conflict such as violence).

Symbolic Interactionist Paradigm

• Also known as social constructionists1. How people act depends on how they

see and evaluate reality2. People learn from others how to see

and evaluate reality3. People constantly interpret the

meaning of their own behavior and the behavior of others

4. Misunderstanding and conflict comes from people not perceiving reality in the same way

Which paradigm is correct?

• Society is like this cube: we can see it from multiple perspectives!

• The paradigms are just lenses through which we view society.

Ethnocentrism and RelativismEthnocentrism: the ‘process of judging other peoples and their customs and norms as inferior to one’s own people, customs, and norms” (pg. 52). Ethnocentrism is normal! Most societies exhibit some amount of ethnocentrism.

Toward Own Group Toward Outsiders

See members as superior See outsiders as inferior

See own values as universal and true

See outsiders’ values as false

See own customs as original, reflecting ‘true’ human nature

See outsiders’ customs as ignorant, lacking in humanity

Cultural Relativism: ‘the belief that other people and their ways of doing things can be understood only in terms of the context of these people’ (pg. 56). McIntyre argues that although ethnocentrism is common, it can get in the way of understanding. To understand others, you have to see things from their point of view.

VII. MANIFEST AND LATENT FUNCTIONS

Functions and Dysfunctions

• “Function” simply means a purpose, intention; what something is used for.– Prefixes: ‘Dys’ vs ‘Dis’

• Dys- Greek prefix meaning ‘defective’, ‘difficult’, or ‘painful.’

• Dis- Latin prefix meaning ‘apart’, ‘asunder’, or ‘deprived of.’

• Functional = positive; something works• Dysfunctional = negative consequences;

something that doesn’t work.

Latent and Manifest Functions

• “Manifest” = obvious, evident, apparent.• “Latent” = not manifest; hidden; concealed.

– Like a latent disease; the hidden content of a dream, etc.

• Manifest function = intended or conscious purpose (or consequences) of some action.– The reasons people give for why they do things.

• Latent function = unintended, unconscious, or hidden purposes (consequences) of actions.– The ‘real reasons’ or purposes that people’s actions

may have, as seen by outside observers (sociologists)

Robert K. Merton(1910 – 2003)

Latent and Manifest Functions

1. Rain Dance Ceremony– Manifest function: • ‘We dance to bring rain’

– Latent function:• The ceremony is ‘really’ a way of

building social solidarity through ritual participation

Rain Dance

Latent and Manifest Functions

2. University Education– Manifest function: • Higher Learning, Education

– Latent function:• Keep young adults out of the job

market• Conduct research that supports

the ‘Military-Industrial-Complex’ (Eisenhower)

• …?

University

VII. CHAOS AND THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT…

Fundamental Indeterminacy• Chaotic systems are extremely sensitive to initial conditions, so

that tiny differences in the initial conditions of otherwise identical systems will generate huge differences between them.

A butterfly creates massive tornados or hurricanes in another hemisphere. The idea is that small and simple causes can generate complicated, non-proportional (i.e. ‘non-linear’) effects. Brain teaser: could a butterfly also cause disproportionate phenomena of a different kind, such as political revolutions or economic or legal upheavals?

Fundamental Indeterminacy• Note: chaos theory as described in the book actually describes

phenomena that are, in principle at least, determinate. Chaos, however, does make predicting events difficult in the real world, simply because we can’t know all of the interacting causes and initial conditions! Chaos theory is determinate.

• In contrast, Complexity theory describes systems that are self-organizing (aka emergent) and therefore in principle indeterminate.