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Week Two Lecture Soc 201
I’m going to begin by addressing two things. First: you are encountering
a different way of teaching and learning in this class than you usually
see. What might have worked for you in the past is not going to work for
you here. This is because my goal differs from many of your other
teachers.
I have extensive advice for you about this in your syllabus, so please
read the entire syllabus carefully. You will in addition to that advice,
want to pay attention to both what I say in lecture, readings, and so on,
but also how it is said. I am training you in not just new terms and ways
of looking at the world, but how one goes about this process.
The underlying rationale for that is that in your life, especially as an
adult, most of what you encounter there is no script and answer key for
unless you simply obey what those superior to you want. If you prize
your autonomy, you have to make decisions based on incomplete
information and where the right decision is not known ahead of time
much of the time. Thus, the method one uses to arrive at decisions is
very important. Making good decisions is the best one can hope for in
life because that is under our personal control.
Society’s leaders at this time tell you that the script is pretty simple:
work hard and you will be rewarded. This is what the American Dream
promises. How hard one works, however, and what one achieves in
terms of material and non-material prosperity, are not strongly
associated, especially now. (Material things include money and goods;
nonmaterial things include ideas.)
In fact, one can argue that the opposite is generally true: the very
hardest working people tend not to be the most materially rewarded.
Even working smarter or being smarter or being inventive frequently
does not reward people with the American Dream. The very smartest
and most inventive people tend to care little about material incentives.
What makes someone that others look up to and greatly respect isn’t the
qualities that most authorities promote but are outside the dominant
system of incentives. See this video to demonstrate this. Watch this
short video before you continue.
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In order to develop the tools one needs to be able to make good
decisions you need to get to the final stage of Bloom’s Taxonomy,
Evaluation. See the last page of your syllabus. In this stage you are able
to identify the premise upon which the two major value stances are
based – aka the consensus and the conflict paradigms – and evaluate the
contours of the argument being made based upon each value stance.
The following are the two different value stances. In the Consensus
Perspective, one need only focus on what one is personally doing within
the larger Division of Labor. As Durkheim puts it: “[The division of
labor] requires us only to be charitable and just towards our fellow-
men, to fulfill our task well, to work towards a state where everyone is
called to fulfill the function he performs best and will receive a just
reward for his efforts.” (p. 204, Ian McIntosh, Classical Social Theory)
In other words, according to functionalism, you deserve what you get
and everyone is doing more or less what they are most suited for;
income inequality is useful and necessary no matter how large the gap;
you should not concern yourself with the generalized other except to be
literally charitable (e.g., give to charities) and fair in your dealings with
others around you (e.g., be nice to homeless people). Material incentives
are what motivate people.
Contrast this value position with the Conflict Perspective: social
inequality that determines people’s life chances based to a large extent
on one’s class, gender, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation and
nationality, are unfair and dysfunctional. What is fair and just should be
equally applicable to all, those far and near to us, and there should not
be different rules for different people. Racism, sexism, homophobia and
Ethnocentrism need to be combatted. Non-American lives are just as
precious as American lives. Individuality should be honored and
respected but individualism as an ideology is harmful. Exploitation of
others and treating the Earth non-sustainably need to end. Non-material
and material incentives both need to be taken into account but non-
material incentives should increasingly assume a larger and larger role
in society.
For a deeper discussion of these two paradigms, see this article.
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There is a reason why nearly all rich people adopt a functionalist or
consensus perspective and why authorities consider the conflict
perspective outside the pale. If you’re rich, you want to believe that you
deserve that privileged status and that those who are not rich also merit
where they are. In other words, you accept social inequality because you
think you are somehow “better” than others.
The premise upon which an argument is made about politics or
economics is either the functionalist view or the conflict view. This is
true whether someone making the argument is familiar with these
terms or not. That is why this point has universal applicability outside of
sociology. While it is true that facts are facts and the truth is the truth,
how much importance one attaches to particular facts is decided by
one’s value stance ultimately and therefore what is true may or may not
be acknowledged by someone if their value stance privileges inequality.
To put this another way: what is true may not be convenient to
recognize by someone in particular and if they think their own personal
interests are the most important thing, than their conclusion about
some matter will be guided by personal interest to a large degree.
To give you two concrete examples – if you compare minorities to white
people, both taken as a whole, who is more likely to be concerned about
racism? If you compare females to males, who is more likely to be
concerned about rape? Now you know I am sure that there are lots of
exceptions to this pattern in that some white people are even more
concerned about racism towards minorities than some minorities are,
but as a rule, minorities are more likely to be concerned than whites.
The same pattern is evident in comparing females and males. If a
consensus person and a conflict person are having a discussion, they are
going to find it difficult to come to a mutual understanding on certain
topics because they see the world quite differently. The former person
values private interests over the public interest more and is not going to
insist as passionately that laws apply equally to everyone no matter
what. A person can potentially switch sides and some do going either
way, but usually they remain one or the other type their whole life.
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If someone renders an opinion about politics or economics but you
don’t know, and don’t know how to figure out, which paradigm they are
basing their argument on, then you will be forced to choose your “own”
opinion based on other people’s values because you won’t have made a
conscious choice yourself. You can only borrow other people’s values
and opinions as your own.
The key to evaluating an argument is what premise (which paradigm)
they are basing the argument on because that is the foundation or
keystone upon which everything else rests. That is why I said last week
that Vulcans could not really exist as a society.
One more point about how I teach before going on:
If it is true that life is not simple but complex, and
if it is true that many things in life do not come with an answer key,
unless you just copy what you see others doing,
then learning how to reach a conclusion conscious of how you are doing
it and what values you are basing that conclusion on means that you
have to learn how to evaluate a wide array of arguments and learn how
to see past the surface appearances of things (because things can be
dressed up nicely to trick you).
To be able to do that involves two primary skill sets.
First, you need to be literate in the sense of being able to read the
surface and the deeper meanings of a message (an essay, a TV
broadcast, a news article, an editorial, a speech, etc.).
Second, you need to be able to reach conclusions based upon direct
and/or indirect information. Another way of saying this is that you need
to be able to deduce and infer conclusions. A deduction is a conclusion
reached by direct evidence and an inferred conclusion is based upon
indirect evidence.
I have noticed in the last several years of teaching, that there are more
students now who do not trust their own reading of directions and want
reassurance that what they see stated is actually correct. For example, I
have had students ask me if such and such a date that I have put down
in the syllabus is actually the date that test is happening. Or I have had
people recount in an email to me the answer that they are seeking from
me but they don’t recognize or don’t trust that their own recounted
version of the situation is correct. In other words, they have already
answered the question themselves but are asking me to restate what I
stated before, to give them the answer that they have already figured
out themselves!
Please have more confidence in yourselves! Especially this is so if I have
said in direct messages something like the date of an exam or that I do
not give extra credit or that memorizing things will not help you do well
on my tests. If I have said to you that you need to get to a place where
you can draw and must draw inferential conclusions to many of life’s
questions, including in this class’ tests, then this also applies to both
direct and indirect materials that are in my courses.
What do I mean by indirect materials? There are always different levels
