Social structures and social identities
Sociology can be thought of as containing theories of the structure of society and theories of the social construction of individuals and individual identity.
Most major theories of sociology include both.
In these lectures I will be looking at how theorists imagine the structure of society and how they relate their big vision of the whole to their theories of the social interactions that create our personal identities as individuals.
The theorists I discuss include Karl Marx and Friederich Engels (who lived in the 19th century), Emile Durkheim (who died in 1917), Talcott Parsons, who was the major sociology theorist of the mid-twentieth century, and Pierre Bourdieu, who died in 2002,
Other theorists who enter the discussion are William Shakespeare, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, whose ideas partly reflect those of his partner, Harriet Taylor, Jean Piaget, Shulamith Firestone, James Fulcher and John Scott, some pre-historic picture theorists, and an anonymous working class folk song. I have also used the theories of Middlesex University students who have studied these subjects.
The three lectures are:
Lecture one: Socialisation - identity - and interaction
Lecture two: Sex - Gender - Sexuality
Lecture three: Inequality - Poverty - Wealth
We will begin each lecture by discussing the meaning and use of its main terms in relation to Britain today. We will do this by looking at a report published in 2010 called "How Fair is Britain?"
dictionary
Socialisation - identity - and interaction
|
How fair is
Britain?
The bulk of the 2010 "How Fair is Britain?" review is a collection of "data about the chances, choices and outcomes in life of different groups of people. It considers the experience of groups of people who share common characteristics in terms of:
All these characteristics relate to the identity of groups and individuals. The data in the Review relate to activities across different areas: All these areas can be related to aspects of the social structure of Britain. |
Structure one: Marx and
Engels
In simplified diagrammatic form, Marx and Engels argued that society can be
divided into a material base (foundations) and a structure built on top of
that (superstructure).
| SUPERSTRUCTURE |
| MATERIAL BASE = PRODUCTION AND REPRODUCTION |
The superstructure consists of everything else apart from production and reproduction: including law, the state and human consciousness.
Production means making things. Marx and Engels wrote about modes of production. These are different ways in which society can be structured to create what it needs to exist.
We may think of this as different ways of organising the economy. Theorists such as Marx and Engels and John Stuart Mill thought that economics is basic to understanding society. We call this approach to sociology political economy. Marx and Engels called their particular version historical materialism
In 1846, Marx and Engels wrote
" The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. "
" Men... begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence,.. "
" This mode of production must not be considered simply as being the production of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. "
In the 19th and century, and for much of the twentieth century, men in the
western world tended to find their identity in their role in production.
One of my grandfathers, for example, was a copper-smith in a factory that
made
railway engines. It was his position in life. He wore blue
overalls
that smelt of burnt copper, wore a cloth cap like all the other working
class men, read the Daily Herald newspaper and was an officer in his
Trade Union. When he went on holiday, it was to the local seaside that
everyone else went to, wearing a suit and bowler hat for the special
occasion.
The little boy on the donkey is me, Which brings us to the question of
Reproduction means making more people to take over production. Production means creating the means of existence (the economy) reproduction is used for re-creating the human beings who make the society. This re-creation is not simply biological, it includes the whole process of education (socialisation) through the family and the education system.
Engels, in 1884, wrote (my emphasis)
"According to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction of the immediate essentials of life. This, again, is of a twofold character. On the one side, the production of the means of existence, of articles of food and clothing, dwellings, and of the tools necessary for that production; on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The social organisation under which the people of a particular historical epoch and a particular country live is determined by both kinds of production: by the stage of development of labour on the one hand and of the family on the other.""
In the 19th and century, and for much of the twentieth century, women in the western world tended to find their identity in their role in re- production.
|
Mary Jane Urmston was born in Lancashire in 1854. In 1874 (aged 19) she married John McKenzie (aged 21) who became a "boiler stoker" and "locomotive driver at the Pearson and Knowles Coal and Iron Co. Ltd". Mr McKenzie believed in his wife not knowing what he earned. They had 12 children, of whom 5 were buried before they were two years old. The youngest (my grandmother) was born in 1894. |
Consumption means eating things, using things, buying things. Commodities are things we buy or sell. Marx wrote that commodities are the distinguishing feature of capitalist societies. He argued that they blind us to the real nature of the social structures that make us what we are. This idea is developed by Zygmunt Bauman in many of his writings. He argues that, in the second half of the twentieth century, the western world became on in which people find their identity in commodities.
The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology says
"Socialisation may be divided into three stages: the primary stage involves the socialisation of the young child in the family; the secondary stage involves the school; and the third stage is adult socialisation, when actors enter roles for which primary and secondary socialisation may not have prepared them fully (for example, becoming an employee, a husband or wife, a parent)"
Emile Durkheim in Moral Education on the sociology of education.
This diagram of Durkheim's ideas, drawn by Dina Ibrahim, shows how, at one and the same time:
|
In the first stage of childhood, the child's mind is developed within the family until it has the intellectual foundations to go to school. The family develops the child's consciousness of self and self-confidence. In the second stage of childhood, the child goes to school. Here, he or she is not a "special" family member, but learns to be part of a group of equals and to play the game according to general rules. It is the foundation in morality that is necessary for wider society. Durkheim's ideas on family, school and society were developed further by Jean Piaget and Talcott Parsons. |
There are things that interaction in the family can do that school and wider society cannot do. There are things that interaction at school can do that the family and wider society cannot do. There are things that interaction in the wider can do that the family and school cannot do. Durkheim invites us to think about what these things are. |
Identity 1: Woman
|
"We thought the figure represented a woman of some kind a because of her voluptuous figure which was full and well rounded. Due to the shape and size of the figure, we identified it as being a fertility symbol and some of us felt that it could be a nursing mother that is also linked to fertility. She has no face." (Middlesex University students, February 2000) |
Identity 2: Scholar
|
"We thought this represented the face of a man. Was he a king or a scholar?
Our reason for thinking he might be one of these was that the shape of the
face was quite elongated with a high forehead that gave the impression of
some one quite learned. What was most interesting was that we all presumed
that the face was a man and not a woman." (Middlesex University students,
February 2000)
These images are pre-historic. They are before history and so before "western thought". Diana Coole argues that, in "western thought" "the female principle, and all it represents - nature, flesh, appetite - is to be subordinated to that of the male, signifying culture, spirit and reason." |
Interaction and social structure
If we model our ideas on those of
Jean Jacques Rousseau
we can divide human interaction into voluntary interaction and forced
interaction. Emile Durkheim, who in many ways followed Rousseau, makes a
similar division. He argues that there are
divisions of labour in society that are established by voluntary
interaction and forced divisions of labour.
Here is an example of forced interaction
|
A forced contract: "Be my slave or I will blow your brains out" |
|---|
Rousseau argued that real human society requires consent and has to be based on reason.
John Stuart Mill argues that
About Gender
the 2010 "How Fair is Britain?" review says that:
As
we have seen in discussin John Stuart
Mill, law used to
prevent women from being equal with men. It prevented women from having the
same rights in marriage, the same education and employment opportunities
and the same political rights as men. In the mid-19th century, being a
woman would mean you could not
go to
university, could not work as a doctor or lawyer, and
could not vote.
About
Sexual Orientation the 2010 "How Fair
is Britain?" review says that:
Theory - Gender and social structure
In these lectures on social structures and social identities, we are
looking
1) How theorists imagine the structure of society and
2) how they relate structure to the social
interactions that create our personal identities as individuals.
Two concepts that help us to relate identity to social structure are
role and
socialisation
We think of socialisation as having three stages:
Primary (first stage) socialisation:
Secondary (second stage) socialisation:
Tertiary (third stage) socialisation:
We can turn to
Talcott Parsons to see how these three stages relate to
gender. We will look at what he says about socialisation in
the family, in
school and at that crucial point when
society may direct the girl to be a housewife.
In 1959 Talcott
Parsons wrote
About one in a hundred babies have mixed features, but 99% of babies are
clearly a boy or a girl.
Every baby has a different
personality and some of these differences may
relate to his or her physical identity as a boy or a girl. However, on the
basis of this underlying physical difference, socialisation creates
sex roles
(gender roles).
The little girl and boy on the seaside ponies are
distinguished by their clothes and by their hairstyle, for example. She
wears a dress and has long hair tied by a ribbon, whilst he has short hair,
a shirt and short trousers.
Sex-roles decided in
primary socialisation in the
family
Parsons argues that human desires (motivations) are not simply
biological,
but are produced by the interaction of biology and social experience. That
is, our biological needs are given shape by
socialisation. All societies
need to
motivate people to perform their
roles. In the
social system as a
whole, this is done by the family and by socialisation.
The family establishes
"certain foundations" of what the child will want
out of life. But,
according to
Parsons, the only way in which children are
irretrievably made "different" in the family is in sex role. By the time
school starts, children have learnt to be boys and girls, and which they
are is
"stamped" on their personality.
School directs children to their future
As far as I know, Parsons doe not discuss girls in school. He did make
a
study of boys in school and, from this, he argued that the early
school
largely decides what the child's future status in life will be.
I am going to speculate that he would have argued that the school also
decided (at
that stage in American history) that the future of most little
girls would be as wives, housewives and mothers.
As a child develops, biological differences develop that differentiate
girls
and boys much more than when they were small children. (See
Shakespeare's
Seven ages of man Age three
the
lover)
Back in the
18th century
Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote a
guide to educating children that argued that boys and girls
should have the same education until their bodies began to alter at
adolescence. From then on, the boy should be educated as a citizen, and the
girl should be educated to be his wife.
Mary Wollstonecraft argued against Rousseau about this. She
argued (see
Vindications of the Rights of Woman) that it is not so much
biology that decides what a girl becomes, but her social experience.
Parsons argued that the
differentiation of men and women's personalities may be
due to
the
functional
needs
of society. Differentiation here means that the "maleness" of boys and the
"femaleness" of girls is developed by society, roughly parallel with their
body's development, so that they become different in a complementary way.
In terms of our
three stage socialisation model, this means that a child learns
his or her gender role in its family, then the school develops separate
career paths for the boys and girls in response to the needs that society
communicates to it.
By functional needs Parsons means something necessary to keep the social
system working. In other words, American society moulded men and women to
meet needs that all social systems have. The interplay of forces we need to
analyse is not just between biology and education, but between biology,
education and social needs.
Robert Freed Bales, a student of Parsons, pioneered the study of small
groups in an experimental setting. His observations of university
volunteers working on group tasks he set, were used to support a theory
that all groups have a need for
instrumental and affective leadership.
Affectivity is a state of feeling (pleasurable or painful). In our
relationships we have to choose how much feeling we allow ourselves.
Parsons argues that when we are seeking goals (instrumental roles), or
making moral decisions, we discipline or even renounce our feelings. In
"expressive" contexts, however, we indulge our emotions
However, Parsons and Bales argued, all group tasks require an element of
each. The group needs a leader who will focus it on how to achieve its task
(instrumental-orientation), but it also needs a leader who will focus it in
how to resolve the inter-personal problems that this creates (affective
orientation).
What applies to small groups also applies to societies. Societies need
groups where people resolve their emotional problems, as well as groups
where they get on with tasks. In mid twentieth century America the
emotional unit was, increasingly, the nuclear family, and the emotional
leader of the nuclear family was, increasingly, the mother.
In
1955 Parsons and Bales wrote
In the years that followed, a new feminist movement developed in America
that questioned these very issues. Why does the woman get landed with being
the mother, and why does she have to do it in families dominated by, and
provided for by, men?
Parsons was criticised by many faminists, but by prising sex-roles away
from biological determination and focusing on the interplay between
biology, socialisation and social pressures, he can be seen as preparing
the way for the theoretical work of the feminists.
TABLE OF SOME IMPORTANT SEX-RELATED TERMS IN SOCIAL THEORY
The meanings of the terms we use differs from author to author. In the
following table I start with the definitions
James Fulcher and John Scott give in the textbook
Sociology and then draw on my own
Social Science Dictionary with a Durkheim bias (Words to
describe social reality)
one meaning in Fulcher and Scott - at least three meanings in common
culture
MAN AND WOMAN
Marx and
Engels
Marx and Engels on structure
We used this diagram to show how Marx and Engels argued that
society can be
divided into a material base (foundations) and a structure built on top of
that (superstructure).
Law, which we discussed at
the begining of the lecture, is part of the superstructure. So
is
culture.
According to this historical
materialist model, all the changes in law and social
attitudes to sexuality and gender, should be related to underlying changes
in economic and reproductive relations.
The original
(1848) and 1859) model had class struggle and economics as
the base. Engels produced
the complete model in
1884.
Shulamith Firestone's converted it into a chart in
1971
The evolution of gender structures
Development of
private property
in land, cattle &
slaves.
Engels defines it as:
1. Ancient mode of production based on slavery
2.
Feudal mode of production based on serfdom
3.
Capitalist
mode of production based on free labour
(Descent is traced by the male line)
takes over as male power is increased by the
development of property.
The family becomes a one-sided monogamy in that women cannot have sexual
relations with men other than their husbands whilst men are allowed sex
with other women, through prostitution, for example. Engels called this
hetaerism
developed with commerce, because it became necessary to
regulate everyone within a given territory, irrespective of family.
The slave state,
feudal
state and bourgeois (modern) state were different
forms.
SOCIALISM
Then to:
COMMUNISM
The People and ideas article on
Engels and
gender also discusses the responses of Simone de Beavoir and
Shulamith Firestone to Engels' theories.
The 2010 "How Fair is Britain?" review says that:
This relates life-span to Socio-economic group.
Socio-economic group's are our most used tool for describing the
stratification
of a nation's social structure
Socio-economic group classifies people according to their occupation
(socio) and income (economic). The United Kingdom system (as used in the
2001 census)
classifies people as
Our system of arranging groups like this is just over one hundred years old
-
See history
The United Kingdom system focuses on occupation. The reason for this is
related to activities like trying to relate health and life-span to social
class.
In
1928 the man who devised the system,
Thomas Stevenson gave a paper on 'The Vital
Statistics of Wealth and Poverty' in which he argued that
"culture" is more
important than material factors [See
Marx] in explaining the lower mortality of the
"wealthier classes".
Culture included knowledge of health and hygiene
issues. He argued that this was more easily equated to occupation than to
income and wealth.
1) How theorists imagine the structure of society and
2) how they relate structure to the social interactions that create our
personal identities as individuals
To do this with inequality, wealth and poverty, let us listen to an
anonymous song that British soldiers sang in the trenches in the
first world war about the seduction and
suicide of a woman who was poor, but honest. The chorus of this
is
Nothing, it may seem, can be more
personal and more
individual than
suicide. Nothing more
structural than the distribution of wealth and
poverty. The song describes the structure within which the
interactions
between the rich man and the poor woman takes place. In one verse we see
how wealth is related to
political
power
and how poverty might lead a woman
to prostitution:
It seems that structure has determined her
personality: she walks the
streets "in shame".
However, the song makes her an
active
agent in
social interaction, even
after her death.
rich and poor not the same the whole world over
The concept of inequality is most often associated with images of wealth
and poverty. Two distinct images spring easily to mind, the image of
wealthy people and poor people in the same society (See
Big Issue)
, and the starker image
of international inequality that comes to us with appeals for famine
relief (See
Oxfam).
Why are they different images? A careful reading of Fulcher and Scott
reveals that it is because our images of inequality are related to the
social reality of society. (See
Durkheim).
There are real societies that we
call nations
and real inter-relations between them that we call international relations.
At the present stage of history, the
solidarity within nations is greater
than the solidarity across national boundaries.
Marx argues that economic inequality plays a key role
When we read about the rich man and the poor woman
We are reminded of Marx and Engels arguing in the
Communist Manifesto (1848) that
inequality, wealth and poverty are not just economic
The song also reminds us that inequality is not just economic.
Fulcher and Scott speak of
"various dimensions" of inequality which include:
amongst
others.
They relate these
structured inequalities to the different
"life chances" of
the different groups.
STRUCTURED INEQUALITY
Robert Merton, a student of
Talcott Parsons analysed society in terms of structure and
culture. He argued that there could be a strain between the two. The
culture could set out ideals that the structure made difficult to achieve.
A similar idea underlies what
Fulcher and Scott say
about structured
inequality.
culture
In England the Conservative Party usually sets out the benefits of the free
market and the Labour Party puts more emphasis on the power of the state
bureaucracy to achieve the welfare of the people. However, different views
structure
[MOBILITY -
Fulcher and Scott
2007" pages 741-744]
If the development of the market and the development of bureaucracy are
both seen (in our culture) as aiming at greater
equality of
opportunity, we might expect to see reduction of poverty and the
development of an increasingly open society in which people moved up (and
sometimes down) the social ladder.
Fulcher and Scott present evidence to show that in some respects, and from
some views, this is what happened in Europe and the United States. However
1) Studies of social mobility (movement between classes) in Britain showed
that "people were more likely to remain where they were born than they were
to rise or fall"
(Fulcher and Scott
2007 p.741)
2) In the United States "the effects of universalism... were partially
counteratcted by the persistence of racism and of disadvantages linked to
ethnicity".
(Fulcher and Scott
2007 p.744)
These conclusions (and others) suggested to the researchers that there are
structural features in the societies that are at odds with the cultural
ideals. What these structural features might be are matters of debate, but
we might suggest that the existing
hierarchies of inequality have ways of
resisting downward mobility of the people at the top, and upward mobility
of people at the bottom.
Parsons study of Boston schools showed that children from different classes
were assessed on what he considered universalistic criteria. They were not
rewarded because of who their parents were, but because of their
achievements.
As a result, many children from lower classes planned to go
on to college, and, Parsons says, going to college was the main thing that
decide who went into the higher classes.
Parsons looked at boys from different classes but of similar ability
measured by
IQ tests meant to tell what a child is capable of. He found
that amongst the pupils with the greatest ability
If almost a third of the brightest working class boys go to college and
change class that certainly suggests some mobility. But there a forces at
work in the opposite direct, for almost 90% of the upper class boys go on
to college.
What are the structural forces against mobility? Finance would appear to be
one force. Ambition might be another. Discrimination might be another.
These are matters for investigation.
As we have seen, boys from black families were much more unlikely to
advance than boys from white families. A reason for this could have been
that, on average, black pupils had less innate ability than white pupils.
IQ tests seemed to support this finding. In the 1960s, however, researchers
suggested that IQ tests did not measure an innate fixed ability, but only a
stage of development that a child had reached. It was argued that the
family life of many black children (with mainly manual class parents) did
not develop their abilities in the way that the life of many white (mainly
middle class) families did.
1963 to 1968 empirical research in French schools
1979 (in French) Distinction: A Social Critique of
the Judgment
of Taste
Argument: Power defines taste.
The children of different classes learn different habits of mind and
behaviour in the family.
As a result, children expect different things from life.
A working class child might not expect photography to be an art form, for
example. He or she might become a photographer who took straight pictures,
whilst a child from an "artistic" home might pursue photography a art
school.
In this way, stratification is perpetuated by the culture we learn at home.
TABLE OF SOME IMPORTANT INEQUALITY-RELATED TERMS IN SOCIAL THEORY
This table first inter-relates the definitions
James Fulcher and John Scott give in the textbook
Sociology. It also links this to material in my own
Social Science Dictionary with a Durkheim bias (Words to
describe social reality)
Three theoretical issues raised by the study of inequality are
Stratification, control, and
conflict
© Andrew Roberts
My referencing suggestion for this page is a bibliography
entry:
Roberts, Andrew 11.2011 - Social structures and social identities
Available at http://studymore.org.uk/structur.htm
and intext references to (Roberts, A. 11.2011).
See ABC
Referencing for general advice.
Andrew Roberts likes to hear from users:
John Stuart Mill in
The Subjection of Women on the sociology of
education.
"
It arose simply from the fact that from the very earliest twilight of human
society, every woman (owing to the value attached to her by men, combined
with her inferiority in muscular strength) was found in a state of bondage
to some man.
"
"
We now live in a state in which the law of the strongest seems to be
entirely abandoned as the regulating principle of the world's affairs:
nobody professes it, and, as regards most of the relations between human
beings, nobody is permitted to practise it.
"
"
Nobody thinks it necessary to make a law that only a strong-armed man shall
be a blacksmith. Freedom and competition suffice to make blacksmiths
strong-armed men
"
"the true virtue of human beings is fitness
to live
together as
equals claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely
concede to everyone else..
To these virtues, nothing in life
as at
present constituted gives cultivation by exercise. The family
is a
school of despotism.."
"Citizenship, in free countries, is partly a school of society
in
equality;
but citizenship fills only a small place in modern
life,
and does not come near the daily habits or inmost sentiments.
The
family, justly constituted, would be the real school of the
virtues
of freedom."
(
Mill, J.S. 1869/Dent1985
p.260)
Sex -
Gender -
Sexuality
How fair is
Britain? (2010) surveys the "chances, choices and outcomes
in
life" of
people with different "characteristics"
(identities). Two of the identities it
talks about are
gender and
sexual orientation. It relates these to
the
social structure of English
law
We can use our
earlier diagram to think about how gender relates to social
structure. The family, school and society outside them are all
social structures, and parts of the whole society.
Family
School
Society
"the only characteristic fundamental to later roles which has
been clearly "determined" and psychologically stamped in by" [the time a
child goes to school] .. is sex role. The ... child enters the system of
formal education clearly categorised as boy or girl, but beyond that his
role is not yet differentiated..."
These "anatomically correct" dolls illustrate the main
physical identity
that parents look for in their new-born children. Is it a girl, like the
one on the left, or a boy, like the one on the right?
"
It is because the human personality is not "born" but must be "made"
through the socialisation process that in the first instance families are
necessary. They are factories which produce human
personalities."
"we argue that probably the importance of the family and its function for
society constitutes the primary set of reasons why there is a social as
distinguished from purely reproductive differentiation of sex
roles."
"The problem is not why [differentiation]
appears ... but why the man takes the more instrumental role, the woman the
more expressive, and why ... these roles take particular
forms."
19.2.1963 The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan published.
Read the
Wikipedia article.
click for dictionary
SEX
Fulcher and Scott use this word for "The physical and anatomical
differences that are held to distinguish men and women"
The
other main meaning is a short form for sexual intercourse. It is
also used for any kind of physical contact between individuals for pleasure
of the type that might lead to sexual intercourse. It can also refer to
thought and symbols about such things, Fulcher and Scott call these
activities
sexuality.
GENDER
Fulcher and Scott use this word for "Expectations of the way that men and
women are expected to feel, think and behave"
One's gender can just mean one's
sex in the sense of being either male or female. In its richer
sense, gender refers to all the characteristics that attach to being male
or female, including ones that are of cultural origin.
SEX ROLE
Fulcher and Scott say gender role is the "specification of the way
in which
men and women are expected to feel, think and behave". They say
sex-role
means the same, but "implies that the behaviour of men and women is shaped
by their
sex rather than by
gendered expectations"
SEXUALITY
Fulcher and Scott: The activity that people find physically arousing and
those aspects of identity, lifestyle, and community associated with this
activity.
Sexuality refers to sexual desires in general or to the way people
experience sexual feelings. Fulcher and Scott use it instead of
sex in order to distinguish "what sex are you?" from "do you
like sex?".
SEXUAL ORIENTATION
Sexual orientation is not in Fulcher and Scott's glossary or index. In the
text they appear to use sexual identity as an alternative term. They
refer (critically) to the concept that people are "heterosexual,
homosexual, or possibly bisexual" (pages 165 to 168)
MAN
Man is not in Fulcher and Scott's glossary.
"Man" can mean human or male. In its
gender free sense, it can mean the human species or it can mean
a human individual. Or man can mean male, the counterpart to female
(woman). Over 2,000 years ago, Aristotle wrote "Out of these two
relationships between man and woman, master
and slave,
the
first thing to arise is the family..."
(Aristotle
1252b9)
FAMILY
Fulcher and Scott say this is "a much debated term" often defined as "a
social group based on marriage, biological descent, and adoption". They
offer as a "less exclusive" definition: "a small group of closely related
people who share a distinct sense of identity and a responsibility for each
other that outweighs commitments to others"
We tend to think of families as parents and children (See nuclear
family). Read
the dictionary article to see what a range of groups the word
has covered.
Talcott Parsons says that the family is an institution around
which the structures of
kinship, control of
sex relations and
socialisation tend to cluster.
MARRIAGE
Marriage is not in Fulcher and Scott's glossary.
Marriage is a religious or civil ceremony that joins a man and a woman in a
permanent (until broken) relationship which is usually completed
(consummated) by their sexual union.
Biology being biology, this usually creates children and makes a
nuclear family
KINSHIP
Fulcher and Scott: A network of relatives (kin) who are connected by common
descent or marriage
Kinship is a much wider network of relationships than what we call the
nuclear
family of parents and children. We might compare it to the idea
of an extended
family. Like
family, it is an important concept in linking
personality to
social structure
. See patriarchal families and
democratic or
companionship families
SUPERSTRUCTURE
MATERIAL BASE = PRODUCTION AND REPRODUCTION
Based on
Shulamith Firestone's chart
THE ECONOMY
REPRODUCTION
(Family)
and socilisation
GOVERNMENT
(Politics)
Early societies existed by gathering wild
plants and hunting animals. They were Nomads. About
10,000 years ago, some of these nomadic groups settled down and
developed
agriculture. They became
tillers of the soil.
Matriarchy (Mother-right) was a system where family lineage was
traced
through the mother. Following
Henry Morgan, Engels argues that such systems reflect an earlier
history of the family when women had more respect and honour
Gens is government based on family
connection instead
of territory. It suited a nomadic form of economy.
"the form of kinship organisation which prides
itself on its common descent...and is bound together by social and
religious institutions into a distinct community"
(Engels 1884 par. 3.2)
In Europe, Engels argues, such a family system em of government preceded
the establishment of the
Greek and Roman States. In Greece and Rome we step
directly from the Gens to Civilisation (p. 34) That is, we move from family
government to state government
(Less than 3,000 years ago)
Engels argued that the development of private property led to patriarchy:
Wealth accumulated outside the home - which was women's domain - and so
shifted the power base to men.
Men decided they wanted to ensure "their" wealth passed to "their"
children. Men, therefore, had to the sexual possession of the women.
"The overthrow of mother-right was the world historical defeat of the
female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded
and reduced to servitude, she became the slave of his lust and a mere
instrument for the production of children."
"With the patriarchal family, we enter the field of written
history"
CIVILISATION
as town & country
merchants develop.
PATRIARCHY
THE STATE:
Revolution leads first to:
The freedom of women becomes possible
Under Socialism the state will be used to suppress the old
classes. Under Communism the state will wither away.
How fair is
Britain?
Higher managerial and professional occupations
Lower managerial and professional occupations
Intermediate occupations (clerical, sales, service)
Small employers and own account workers
Lower supervisory and technical occupations
Semi-routine occupations
Routine occupations
Never worked and long-term unemployed
In these lectures on social structures and social identities, we are
looking at
"It's the same the whole world over,
Isn't it a blooming shame?
It's the rich what gets the pleasure,
It's the poor what gets the blame."
"See him in the House of Commons,
Passing laws to combat crime,
While the victim of his evil,
Walks the streets at night in shame."
"When they dragged her from the river,
Water from her clothes they wrung,
And they thought that she had drownded,
Till her corpse got up and sung....."
"It's the same the whole world over,
Isn't it a blooming shame?
It's the rich what gets the pleasure,
It's the poor what gets the blame."
"See him in the House of Commons,
Passing laws to combat crime,
While the victim of his evil,
Walks the streets at night in shame."
"The bourgeoisie has at
last, since the establishment of modern industry and of the world market,
conquered for itself, in the modern representative state, exclusive
political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for
managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."
The song is
about the relations between a rich man and a poor woman and
Marx and Engels (in particular) pointed to the double standards in sexual
morality that helped to secure male domination of women.
(See hetaerism above)
MARKET
AND
STATE
"
Universalism involves treating all people in the same way... In
a universalistic system , all are free to achieve social goals through
their own individual efforts" (Fulcher and Scott 2007") p.724)
"Universalism has generally been seen as operating most
effectively through either a market mechanism or a bureaucratic mechanism"
(p.724)
"agree in ... involving universalitic standards..."
(Fulcher and Scott
2007 p.724)
We can use our
earlier diagram to think about how inequality
relates to the social structures of the family, school and society outside
them.
"the working-class 'aesthetic' is a dominated 'aesthetic' which
is constantly obliged to define itself in terms of the dominant aesthetics"
click for dictionary
EQUALITY
Fulcher and Scott: A condition in which all members of a society are equal
to one another in one or more measuarable respects. Includes
"equality of
opportunity",
"equality of outset" and
"equality of outcome"
INEQUALITY
Fulcher and Scott do not include in their glossary, but say (under
"A structure of inequality and
domination",
p.12) that "some groups benefit
more" from societies activities (see
life-chances). They say the "various dimensions" of inequality
include:
class,
ethnic,
gender,
religious and nationality inequalities
within
nations and international inequalities between nations.
POVERTY
Fulcher and Scott (page 728) say that poverty and
wealth are best defined
in relation to one another. Relative to what is
"normal for citizens in a
particular society", the poor are those who are deprived of, or even
exluded
from full public life. In a "theory box" they distinguish this concept of
relative
poverty from the concept of absolute poverty
ABSOLUTE POVERTY
Fulcher and Scott (page 728) say that an absolute view of poverty tries to
measure it in terms of a fixed and unchanging baseline. Poverty is seen as
defined as physiological subsistence or fixed human needs.
RELATIVE POVERTY
Fulcher and Scott: A condition where people follow a way of life that is
deprived relative to the standard of living that is customary or accepted
as
normal in their society. They are unable to fulfil the rights of
citizenship to the full.
WEALTH
Fulcher and Scott: The opposite of poverty
(relative poverty). because of their income and asset, the
wealthy are able
to enjoy life chances and lifestyles that are superior to those that are
recognised as normal for citizens in their society. Wealth is the basis of
privilege.
LIFE CHANCES
Fulcher and Scott: The
opportunities that a person has to acquire income, education,
housing, health, and other valued resources. They are the basis of
inequalities.
OPPORTUNITY
Fulcher and Scott define
equality of opportunity as a condition in
which entry to all social positions is governed by criteria of
universalism: they are open to all on the basis of merit, rather
than being limited by birth or social background
OUTCOME
Fulcher and Scott define
equality of outcome as a condition in
which all members of a society enjoy the same standard of living and
Life-chances
OUTSET
Fulcher and Scott define
equality of outset as a condition in
which all start out from similar positions in the competition for
advantages, as in a competitive race.
STRATIFICATION
Fulcher and Scott:
See
stratification and hierarchy and
class
CONTROL
Fulcher and Scott:
CONFLICT
Fulcher and Scott:
Study
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