SOC101Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Dogma, Nomothetic
Rejects universalism and essentialism by challenging the idea of fixed
structures and meanings
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Doing one study does not prove that everything is true
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Fundamental tools that we use to understand the social world are not fixed,
don't have a fixed essence that remains the same through time
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Word society, freedom, gender, class, mean something drastically different
than they did a long time ago, rich history to understanding of these terms
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What is the history of the medical establishment, criminal justice system,
meaning of crime, meaning of femininity
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Instead of using tools / concepts
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Rejects the notion that ideas, individuals, groups, institutions, and practices
have a core, stable, true essence that defines them for all time and all places
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Asks about history of tools --> where did they come from, what is their history
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No metaphysical: don't ask 'what is a tool,' simply use it.
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It's worthwhile to ask these questions
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Moving away from seeking universal social laws, focus instead on how
categories come into being and come to be seen the way they are
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What we can and cannot answer with the tools we have
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Key figures: Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu
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Post-structuralism v. grand narratives
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A way to organize and make sense of what we've observed / measured
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How to look at parts of the world
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A set of questions that you have a set of answers you are seeking
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Different sets of tools. Is a hammer better than saw? Depends what you are
trying to do.
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Each are models, offer you a set of lenses to notice something you may not
have noticed before
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One cannot necessarily be better than the other
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are clusters of different cases that allow us to distinguish two things
from each other
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Hybrid between word and meaning
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Colour: blue red, reason for word is to distinguish differences. Putting
shades of blue and calling blue
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Concepts
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Theory is not enough, still need to gather data, find answers, talk
to people
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Affinity
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One theory: feel like that theory is all you need, has all the answers
that are required
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Covers everything for all time
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Dogmatism
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Affinity v. Dogmatism
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Don't be dismissive of theories, explanations, sets of observations that don't
fit pre-existing understanding of world
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Ask questions about how to make sense of fact that what you know / believe
is at odds with a new piece of information. Need to find out where it came
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Approaching theory: sociology of knowledge
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Lecture 1.3: Research Methods
September 28, 2016
12:13 PM
LECTURE Page 6
