SOCI 250 Study Guide - Fall 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Canada, Quebec, Visible Minority
12 Oct 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
SOCI 250
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
SOCI250 – SOCIAL PROBLEMS
Lecture 1 (September 7th, 2017)
Introduction
What is sociology?
•!Sociology is the scientific study of social life, social change, and the social causes and
consequences of human behavior
o!Trying to generate a series of hypotheses based on theories
o!We take those theories and try to test them empirically: we look and observe the real
world data and we see whether or not the real world is what we expect it to be
o!Scientific: systematic knowledge gained through observation and experimentation
•!Journalists don’t operate off to actual evidence; sociologists use data representative of real
sample (more empirical)
•!Since nearly all human behavior is social, the subject matter of sociology has a vast range
o!Core issues that sociology deals with: change over decades, inequality in society
(primarily, how resources are allocated within a society in a non-equal way),
distribution of power in society, ethnicity, race, gender, and how life chances/power
are relevant considering those dimensions…
•!Few fields have such broad scope and relevance for research, theory, and application of
knowledge
•!Sociology and social problems: sociologists often explore why social problems fluctuate
across time and place
o!Why is this happening this way?
o!In most developed countries in the world, they are not a huge fan of immigrants.
•!Sociology is one of the principle disciples the idea of criminology – why do people commit
crimes?
o!Structural factures: environment, S.E.S., educational opportunities, family…
•!Psychology is more about what is going with “you”, while sociology looks at structure and
society
What is society?
•!A society is any group of people living together and constituting a single related,
interdependent community
•!Frequently taken to include entire national communities; we might, for instance, comment
upon some aspect of Canadian society
•!Society can also be used to refer to smaller groups of people, as when we refer to “rural
societies” or “academic society,” etc.
•!Society is probably the most generic term – you can place that on almost every group of
people
What is culture?
•!People learn culture
•!While many aspects of human life are genetic/biological (i.e. the desire for food, shelter)
most can’t be explained by characteristics of the human genetic code
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
•!Culture, as a body of learned behaviors common to a given human society, acts rather like a
template (i.e. it has predictable form and content), shaping behavior and consciousness
within a human society from generation to generation
•!Example: language, religion, marriage, how we dress, how we talk, what to eat, what is
beauty, what tastes good how we think, ideology, the way we see the world, the lens through
which we see the world… but we don’t know those things – they are not innate to us – we
learn it at a very young age
•!Everything is kind of cultural – we learn just about everything we do
Culture vs. society
•!Society is distinguished from culture in that society generally refers to the community of
people while culture generally refers to the systems of meaning
•!Because of the close conceptual relationship between the community and its culture, the
distinction between these words is often unclear in the common use of “society” or its
derivative words
•!Examples:
o!Elite society vs. elite culture.
!Is there an elite society? Scholars (and prof) think so – those who focus
particularly on politics say yes, there are elites – different kinds of elites and
these folks represent a society in a sense that they might not be connected as
neighbours in their interconnections but are connected interpedently such as
they come together in meetings for instance, and they come together at
different times and different events, they create a network, and begin to create
a society. The go-to/default: economic elite – the supper rich. The fact they
exist doesn’t make them a society – the question is: are they interdependent?
Are they even interconnected?
!Is there an elite culture? “There has been”. Scholars have shown that over
time, elite culture has diffused. If we go back 200 years (and even earlier), it
was much easier to see an elite culture, because they had a specific style of
dress that nobody else could approach – they lived in a way that nobody else
could approach. You knew they were elites; you didn’t even have to ask.
There were even laws saying “you cannot dress/live this way unless you have
the status making you as an elite”
o!Canadian society vs. Canadian culture
!Culture has to have a “reference point” in order to compare it to “others’”
o!McGill society vs. McGill culture
What is a social problem?
•!A social condition or behavior that people view as harmful and requires collective action to
remedy
•!The law is the boundary between what’s acceptable and what’s not
•!Examples (why are these social problems)
o!Poverty/unemployment
o!Crime
o!Inequality
o!Discrimination
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
The go-to/default: economic elite the supper rich. Scholars have shown that over time, elite culture has diffused. You knew they were elites; you didn"t even have to ask. There were even laws saying you cannot dress/live this way unless you have the status making you as an elite o canadian society vs. canadian culture. Culture has to have a reference point in order to compare it to others" o mcgill society vs. mcgill culture. Solutions to social problems: solutions often depend on ideology o poverty/unemployment o crime o inequality o environment o drugs/alcohol o the government decides on and implements solutions to social problems. Thus, we must understand what makes them act in certain ways. The government is the institution that can influence these policies. Differences that exist between countries, cities, provinces these 3 entities have different opinions on the matter each one of them has a particular way of seeing the problem and finding a solution and they disagree!
