SOCL 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Annette Lareau, Upper Middle Class, Antipositivism
6 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Variation within Sociology
● Positivism
○ How social order is generated and maintained
○ Assumes there is an objective reality
○ empirical/experimental tests
● Interpretivism
○ Working to understand meaning
Durkheim’s Suicide Study
● Positivist
Deductive and Inductive
● Deductive starts with theory
● Inductive starts with data
Examples of Each
● Redmond and Barrett → positivist, deductive, quantitative
● Lareau → interpretive, inductive, qualitative
Annette Lareau: Invisible Inequality
● Middle class parents reason with kids and draw out linguistic abilities
● Middle class schedule stuff for kids, child is a project
● Middle class has weak extended family ties, often in homogeneous age group
● As consequence middle class develops sense of entitlement, whereas poorer child has
sense of constraint (with authority figures)
● Could reinforce difference in class
Agents of Socialization: Primary and Secondary Schools
● Schooling in Capitalist America
○ Public schools limit cognitive horizons for poor and working class kids
○ Encourage students to
■ Obey
■ Extrinsic over intrinsic rewards
○ Found that kids who were creative were penalized
Primary and Secondary Education: Key Insights
● Educational institutions reflect the power and privilege of established groups
○ Standards of excellence privileged based on group characteristics
○ Those who lack access to these are defeated before game starts
○ Institution says it’s fault of individual
Agents of Socialization: Colleges and Universities
● sociologists moved into ‘party dorm’ at a flagship public university for a year
● Categorized women into three tracks
○ Party pathway
○ Mobility pathway
○ Professional pathway
● Serve interests of students and university
● Party
○ Upper middle class → have connections
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
