SOC 507 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Social Evolution, Émile Durkheim, Robert K. Merton

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 507
• Professor: Alireza Asgharzadeh

Document Summary

Week 4: the rise of critical race theory. Classifying humans according to racial genetic characteristics. Social evolution: the belief that some races naturally less intelligent than others (this is false: eugenics/eugenicism: Largely disappeared today but still can see traces of it in the form of academic racism: sociobiology (edward wilson): Social factors (e. g. poverty, inequality, discrimination) are present in societies because of genetic or biological conditioning (this is false) Initially based on european immigration, but also applied to racial groups (ex. African canadians: assimilation of people of color and immigrants into the mainstream society (ex. Race-based theories: for much of 19th and 20th centuries race and racism were understood as: Used in trying to understand dynamics of stratification that led to disadvantaged position of people of colour, but did little to challenge it: today strong influence of critical theory, anti-racism theory, and crt , emphasizing structural inequalities.