Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction To Sociology II
Introduction To Sociology II
Introduction To Sociology II
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY II
SOC 152
Kwame Nkrumah University of
Science & Technology, Kumasi, Ghana
UNIT FIVE
Culture
Several definitions have been given;
• The sum total of the systems of symbols among human population is what
sociologists generally call culture, (Turner, 2006).
• Tylor (1871) defines culture as “the complex whole which includes knowledge,
belief, art, morals, custom and other capabilities and habits acquired by man
as a member of society”.
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Cont’d
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Elements of Culture
• It is learned and not biologically transmitted.
• It is specific to societies and groups. Each society has its own culture. (cultural
diversity)
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Cont’d
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Key features of Culture
• Cultural Universal
• Cultural relativism
• Cultural diversity
• Ethnocentrism
• Subculture
• Counter culture
• Real culture
• Ideal culture
• Cultural conflict
• Acculturation (sociologist see it as the process of second-culture learning)
• Enculturation (is seen as the process of first-culture learning)
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Components of Culture
Norms
Values
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Cont’d
• The rules and behavior associated with some expectations are what is known as
norms.
• We are able to predict peoples’ behavior because of the norms in the society.
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Types of Norms
• Norms can be grouped into three main categories based on the severity of
our reaction to them.
Folkways
Mores
Laws
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Folkways
• Behavior patterns whose violations are not taken too seriously are known as
folkway.
• The common social control mechanisms are gossip, ridicule and isolation.
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Mores
• Behaviors whose violations are taken very seriously are termed as mores.
• Norms that are strictly enforced because they are thought essential to the core
values.
Examples include theft, rape, murder
• Therefore, laws are rules enforcing the mores by setting out punishment for
their infraction.
• All laws constitute mores but not all mores are laws
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Values
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Cont’d
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Significance of Culture
physical evolution.
conditions (if we wait for natural selection to enable us live, we will wait
forever).
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Dynamism of culture
The second, globalisation has ensured that the economies of the world are
interconnected.
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Process of change in culture
• Discovery
• Invention
• Diffusion
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Social Structure
• We observe different kinds of activities that may portray society as disorderly.
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Cont’d
• Hence, most of our interactions occur in a pattern.
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Cont’d
• Social structure can therefore be regarded as relationships that
have achieved relative permanence.
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Cont’d
• Social structures are constraining because they determine
appropriate behaviour in any given social situation.
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Cont’d
• They are enduring because these structures existed when we
were born, and they will most likely still exist and persist over
generations.
• They are largely invisible in the sense that they are not
incarnated in physical settings but disseminated in all levels of
society.
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Definition of social structure
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Cont’d
• It also shows how the institutions are arranged and how they
relate to one another in order to achieve the goal of society.
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Components of social structure
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Social institutions
Institutional Dimension – The Building Block
• Societies must meet certain social and human needs if it is to
exist.
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Social institutions
Societies must meet certain social and human needs if it is to exist.
Training new members, providing food and shelter, protection of members, etc.
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Cont’d
• The needs are both social and individual because they are
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Cont’d
• There are many social institutions but the most basic ones are;
family, political, economic, religious, health and educational
institutional.
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Cont’d
Family or kinship to procreate and care for children
Education to train children into the way of life of society
Economy to produce and distribute goods and services
Politics to provide for collective decision making and protection
(maintenance of law and order)
Religion to provide meaning and allay fears.
Health to ensure physical wellbeing.
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Cont’d
• The social institutions are interdependent.
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Components of Institutions
• In order to fulfil the social needs, institutions themselves
comprise smaller components parts:
• Status explain how people are to act and how to relate to others.
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Cont’d
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Cont’d
• Achieved statuses are on the other hand are those that one
attains by choice, effort, merit or activity.
• It is therefore voluntary.
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Roles
• A status comes with it, some culturally defined duties, rights,
responsibilities and obligation.
• Roles are then the set of social expectations attached to a given status.
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Cont’d
• The distinction between a status and a role is that, we occupy a
status and we play a role.
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Cont’d
• The multiplicity of roles attached to a status is known as role set.
• Role conflict occurs when we perform different roles that come into
conflict or are incompatible.
• When people receive help from others, role conflict or role strain may not
occur.
• They only occur if the person has no capacity to contain the contradictions,
incompatibilities and the demands of the status.
• Roles like status (achieved) are not permanent. They end after some time.
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Cont’d
• The process of quitting a status or role is known as role exit. Role
exit involves disengagement with one status and engagement with
another.
• This occurs through the following steps;
Doubt
Search for alternatives
Turning point
Creation of new identities
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The Relational Dimension - cement
• This dimension of the social structure focuses on what holds society together.
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Social solidarity - Durkheim
• Durkheim believes that society is held together by division
of labour.
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Cont’d
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Types of Social Solidarity
• There are two types: simple and complex.
• It is simple when few people are engaged in many tasks. (mechanical solidarity)
• The family and kinship is dominant institution that fulfils most of the
social needs.
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Cont’d
• There is emphasis on community interest than individual interest.
• Deviations from the accepted norms and values are not tolerated
and are sanctioned informally.
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Organic solidarity
• It is called organic solidarity because it is like the human organism.
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Cont’d
• People occupy different statuses and play very different multiple roles.
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Social Cohesion-Tonnies
• He focused on the transformations induced by
industrialization.
• In such societies, the family and local community controls social life.
• Interactions are personal and face –to-face and everyone knows everybody.
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Cont’d
• Gesellschaft literally means association.
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Theoretical Perspectives on Social Structure
Structural functionalism
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Cont’d
• Talcott Parsons has argued that for a system to survive, it must fulfil four
needs or functional imperatives.
Adaptation: the system must adapt to its environment or adjust the environment
to its needs.
Goal attainment: there must be a general objectives for the system as a whole.
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Cont’d
Integration: the parts in the system must be interrelated and have to be able
to work in coordination.
Latency and pattern maintenance: latency refers to the rewards the system
gives to keep members motivated.
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Cont’d
• The values are transmitted through the family and school to children.
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Cont’d
Conflict perspective
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Sociological significance of social structure
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Society and Community
• Society can be referred to as voluntary organizations with specific aims
and objectives.
• Example, Ghana Society for the Blind, Society of Friends of Lepers, etc.
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Cont’d
• When sociologist say they study society, they actually mean a group
of people. For people to be considered as living in a society;
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Concept of Community
• It may refer to groups of individuals who may have little or nothing in common.
• It may also refer to people living in a fairly well bound geographical area and a
relatively important aspects of their lives as constituting a community.
• It can also refer to several nations or people working as a group like ECOWAS, EEU
(EU).
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Groups and Associations
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Cont’d
• Paulus (1989), defines group as “consisting of two or
more interacting persons who share common goals, have
stable relationship, and are somehow interdependent,
and perceive that they in fact part of a group”.
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Social Group
• It is a number of people who interact on a regular basis and in an orderly
manner on the basis of shared expectation.
• There are some behaviors expected from members but not expected from
non-members.
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Social Aggregate
• Social aggregate relates to a collection of people who are in the
same place at the same time but share no definite connections with
one another.
• Goffman calls aggregate “as a gathering of people with unfocused
interaction”.
• They have no manner of interaction.
• They may never have met before.
• Example, a crowd on the street.
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Social Category
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Cont’d
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Cont’d
• Secondary groups
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Primary Group
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Secondary Groups
• A secondary group refers to a group of people who meet regularly, but
whose relationships are mainly impersonal.
• They come together for specific purposes. Eg. A club, committee, etc.
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Informal groups
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Cont’d
Group cohesiveness
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Group Cohesion
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Group Dynamics
• This is the interpersonal processes, conscious or unconscious that
takes place in the course of interactions among a group.
• Communication structure
• Group roles
• Individual dominance
• Group think
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Causes of group think
• The group leader should not state his own position on belief until
late in the decision making process
SOCIALIZATION
UNIT SEVEN
SOCIALIZATION
• Human beings are born with limited instincts, but have a great capacity to
learn from experience.
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Cont’d
• The key word in the definitions of socialization is “process”.
• The term “process” means that socialization is continuous. It starts from birth to
death.
• It is in this sense that we say that socialization goes with biological maturation.
• Each stage in life has its own specialization that equips the individual to
perform the role associated with the new status.
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Types of socialization
Primary
Secondary
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Cont’d
It is here that children learn the basic attitudes and values of life.
Children acquire the basic attitudes, values and skills of life and
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Personality Development Theories
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Psychosexual stages of development
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Structure of Personality
id,
ego and
the superego.
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The id
principle.
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The Ego
• It is the part of the mind that is largely conscious and reality oriented.
• It develops when a child learns that their impulses cannot always be satisfied.
• The child learns to consider the demands of reality and therefore operates on the
reality principle.
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Cont’d
• Thus the ego is the reality oriented portion of personality that directs
behaviour.
• It determines the final decision and therefore considered the executive of the
personality.
• The ego is the internal representation of the values and morals of society and
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Cont’d
the ego ideal. It represents the image of what a person can ideally be,
and the conscience. It is the inner voice which says you did something right
or wrong.
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Cont’d
• The superego battles the id and the ego because behaviour often falls short of
the moral code it represents.
• In other words a person with a weak superego has no moral standards for
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The Stages of Development
• He points out that every child derives pleasure from a particular part of the
body called the erogenous zone at every stage in life.
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Cont’d
• The attempt to derive the pleasure attracts parental attention.
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Cont’d
Oral stage
• The infant’s source of pleasure is derived from the stimulation of the mouth.
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Cont’d
• Oral receptive persons continue to seek pleasure through the mouth by:
overeating,
gum chewing,
alcoholism,
smoking,
kissing.
They are also gullible, that is they “swallow” things easily
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Cont’d
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Cont’d
• 2. Anal Stage: (1 -3yrs)
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Cont’d
• Harsh or indulgent toilet training may lock such response into personality.
stingy,
orderly and
clean.
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Cont’d
cruel,
messy,
disorderly and
destructive.
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Cont’d
• This causes the child to become physically attracted to the parent of the
opposite sex.
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Cont’d
Freud calls the attraction Oedipus complex for males and
Electra complex for females.
The child develops self–confidence and learns the social rules for
appropriate male and female behaviour.
• The stage begins at puberty through adolescence and ends with heterosexual love and
attainment of full adult sexuality.
• Masturbation is frequent.
• The focus is on moving toward sexual and emotional attainments outside the family.
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Cont’d
• According to Freud, the first three stages are more critical than
the last two fixations here are likely to have effects on the
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Erik Erikson
• His theory is called the psychosocial stages of development.
• The kind of response influences the trust necessary to go along with the
world, especially in relationships.
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Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt (before age two)
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Initiative vs. Guilt (age 3 through 5)
• The child’s motor and mental abilities are fully developed. (Child enters
school)
• If children are giving the freedom to run and ride, they develop a sense
of initiative.
• On the other hand, if they are denied the freedom, they receive
whatever the environment brings.
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Industry (Competence) vs. Inferiority (6 to puberty)
• The objective is to gain recognition and the pleasure derived from the
completion of a task.
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Cont’d
• Where attitudes are negative, they are likely to develop feelings of inadequacy
and inferiority with respect to their abilities and to themselves.
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Identity versus Role Confusion (adolescence; 13-17)
• This stage is crucial, for it is at this stage that one’s basic ego identity is
met.
• Erikson feels this is the most difficult stage for the individual.
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Cont’d
• There is an attempt to integrate a person’s ideas of what others think of him /her
• Those who emerge from this stage with a strong sense of identity are equipped to
face coming adulthood with an expanded sense of self – certainty and confidence.
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Cont’d
• Whatever identity the person picks depends on the social group the
individual identifies with.
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Jean Piaget
• Cognitive development explains how the process of gaining
knowledge changes across the life span.
• He believed that children are active and have the capacity to react to their
natural environment to enhance their cognitive development.
• It is for this reason that he believed that children have schemas (the organized
set of beliefs or general knowledge about the world).
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Cont’d
• Piaget’s cognitive development starts on the assumption that mental
functioning depends on two basic biological processes - organizing and
adaptation.
• With these children are able to organize their past experiences and adapt to
new observations and experiences.
• Children continually modify their schema about any object, event or person
through two complementary processes, assimilation and accommodation.
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Assimilation
• Assimilation refers to the process of taking in new information and
integrating them into the exiting schemas.
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Cont’d
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Stage One: Sensorimotor (0-24months)
• However, after about 8 months of life, there is an attempt to search for the
object, first at the place where it was found and later at different locations.
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Cont’d
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Stage 2: Preoperational (2-6/7years)
• The infant’s ability to use language and symbols to represent
other things is improved.
• They are able to play and imitate adult behaviour. They can
use one object to represent another.
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Stage 3:Concrete Operation (6/7-12years)
• A child’s reasoning abilities are much more developed.
• However, they are unable to make logical deductions, their reasoning is concrete.
• They can now understand the principle of conservation, serial ordering and
reversibility.
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Stage 4:Formal Operation (Early 11/12 adolescent
to adulthood)
• There is the ability to do abstract reasoning including
speculation.
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Cont’d
• Passage through the stages requires the right type of stimulation from the
environment to initiate the change.
• The absence of the right stimulation denies the child the opportunity to attain
their full potential.
• This means the content of their reasoning and the speed with which they pass
through the stages differ.
• The theory concludes that children progress from human beings who cannot
reason to persons fully capable of adult reasoning in 11 short years.
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Principles of Socialisation
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Importance of Socialisation
• We are also able to develop a social mirror or what C.H. Cooley calls
looking – glass self.
• Interpret the public’s reaction- imagine how all others perceive me.
• Developing the self-concept- integrate others judgement with our own and that of
significant others to develop a feeling about ourselves.
• If the image in the social mirror is favourable, our self concept is enhanced and our
behaviour is likely to be repeated.
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Cont’d
• The development of the self does not depend on accurate evaluation.
• Those who also interpret every statement as positive are also “pronoids”
according to Fred Goldner (1985).
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George Hebert Mead and the “Self”
• To Mead, the vital outcomes of socialisation is the ability to anticipate what
others expect of us and to shape our own behaviour accordingly.
• Human beings are able to do this when we role-take (take the role of the
other).
• This starts first with taking the role of significant others (those who
influence our lives significantly).
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Cont’d
• As children grow, they are able to internalise the expectations,
attitudes and viewpoints of the generalised order and society as a
whole (the understanding of how “most” people think of us).
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Cont’d
• Play
• Games
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Imitation
• Children below age three lack a developed sense of self and so have
difficulty distinguishing their roles from those of others.
• They walk around in their parents’ shoes; and pretend they are adults.
• By pretending to take the roles of specific other people in this kind of play.
• Children are for the first time learning to see the world from a perspective
that is not their own.
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Games
• By the early school years, children are ready to take part in organized
games- preludes to the “game” of life.
• The individual learns to take multiple roles, that is, learn to take the
role of everyone in the team.
• Very young children cannot play organized games, for they do not
understand the rules , cannot take the role of other players and thus,
cannot anticipate how others would respond to their actions.
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“I” and “ME”
• The “I” in the self is the subject, the active, spontaneous and creative
part of the self.
• The “I” enables the individual to make sense of the attitude of others.
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Cont’d
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Re-socialisation
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Cont’d
• It may involve a modification of existing orientations to life or learning
a radically different perspective.
• In all cultures, the family is the main agent /agency for the socialization of
the child.
• The other agencies include peer relationships, schools, church, the mass
media, and the work place
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Effects of Social Isolation
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Anna
• She was born illegitimate and her grandfather hid her in an attic.
• Had little physical care and attention and no opportunities for social interaction.
• When she was discovered at age 6, she could not talk, walk, keep herself clean and feed
herself.
• Those who worked with her thought at first that she was deaf and possibly blind.
• Died 4 to 5yrs later but before then she was able to learn some words and phrases. She
could not speak sentences.
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Isabelle
• She was born illegitimate to a deaf and dumb mother.
• She and her mother were locked up in a dark room, by her grandfather.
• She had the advantage of social interaction but had no chance to develop
speech.
• She could not talk when she was discovered, could only use gestures.
• She was hostile to men. She found her speech after two years of intensive
training and rehabilitation.
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Cont’d
• The cases suggest that while human beings are resilient creatures,
extreme social isolation results in irreversible damage to emotional,
cognitive and behavioural domains of personality development.
• When a person passes a certain age, certain skills such as language will
be difficult to develop. Socialisation helps us to develop a sense of
self-identity and the capacity for independent thought and action.
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Nature v. Nurture
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Cont’d
• There are some theorists who believe that all important
developmental changes are controlled by biological factors (nature).
• They are called the nature theorists. For them heredity and
maturation produce developmental changes.
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Cont’d
• Arnold Gesell’s concept of maturation for example stresses that
nature is the sole determinant of motor skills.
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Cont’d
• The environmentalists (nurture theorists) believe that learning produces
changes and the acquisition of new behaviour.
• John Locke and John Watson for example saw the new born human being
as possessing a blank slate (tabular rasa) on which his/her story could be
written from scratch.
UNIT EIGHT
Introduction
• Why are some groups in society more wealthy or powerful than others?
• How much chance has someone from a lowly background of reaching the top of the
economic ladder.
• What are the opportunities available to people from different social backgrounds?
• These are some of the questions we will try to answer as we delve into the topic.
We shall begin by looking at social differentiation?
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Social Differentiation
• Individuals in society are different in several respects.
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Cont’d
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Cont’d
• The question that people often ask is what are the determinants of
inequality?
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Cont’d
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Inequality and stratification
If it is institutionalised.
If the reward is for membership of a given status rather than on personal
attributes-(emphasis shifts from the individual to the collective.
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Social Stratification: Definition
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Cont’d
• An individual’s position within a society is determined by his /her
position within the system of stratification.
• The position affects the life chances of the individual and limits
his/her actions in various ways.
• Hereditary Factors
• Marx
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Hereditary Factors
• These theorists suggest that individuals are born with differing
capacities or abilities.
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Structural functionalist theorists: Durkheim, Davis
and Moore
• They believe that people are stratified based on the various status-
roles they perform in society.
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Durkheim
• Durkheim sees stratification as something normal in societies.
• He observes that the complexities in organic societies require that there is division of
labour.
• This calls for specialization where individuals perform different roles which are
complementary.
• The division of labour is functional and it is this division of labour which is responsible for
the stratification.
• Specialization is functional and exist to ensure that individuals are mutually dependent.
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Davis and Moore
• They believe that in every society some of the roles are functionally
more important than others.
• They argue that those who perform these roles must be greatly
rewarded to motivate others.
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Cont’d
The explanation is based on the following assumptions;
• Certain vital functions in society require scarce talent and or long
training
• Because the roles often involve stress and sacrifice, people must be
attracted with rewards such as wealth and power.
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Cont’d
Thus for them ones worth in society is judged by two overriding concerns;
• The differential scarcity of people with the talent or training needed for its
performance.
Based on these, Davis and Moore believe that inequality and stratification
are necessary for society’s existence.
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Marx
• He believed that the nature and determinants of social organisation rests on economic factors – production as a
process, which involves social relationships.
• He observed that a person’s relations to the means of production determine the person’s access to valued
resources.
• He explains inequality in terms of exploitation, the source of which is the desire to maximise profit.
• thus, the determinants of inequality are the ownership or non-ownership of productive property.
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Systems of Stratification
Four basic systems can be distinguished;
• Slavery
• Estates
• Caste
• Class
• Sociologist distinguish between them based on the degree of social mobility and
the opportunities for the individual inherent in the system.
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Caste System
• It is endogamous
• The risk of such pollution helps keep the strata physically as well as
socially separate.
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Class
• Classes are social entities. They are distinct social groups with
their own history and identifiable place in the organisation of
society;
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Cont’d
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Major classes found in contemporary societies;
• Upper class (the wealthy employers and industrialists, top executives),
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Theories of Class
• Marx and;
• Weber.
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Karl Marx:
• In the view of Marx, classes emerge where the relations of production
involve a differentiated division of labour.
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Cont’d
• A social class therefore is, any aggregate of persons who perform the
same function in the organization of production.
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Cont’d
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Cont’d
• These two groups have distinct and separate relations to the means of
production.
• The wealth of the dominant class’ comes from the extraction of the
‘surplus value’ of the labour of the ‘subordinate class’.
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Max Weber
• Like Marx, Weber saw class in economic terms.
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Cont’d
• Such resources include especially the skills and credentials that affect
the types of job people are able to obtain.
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Cont’d
• Weber identifies two other basic aspects of stratification.
• In other words he broke the concept of class into three distinct but related elements;
• class,
• status and
• party.
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Weber’s class dimension;
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Cont’d
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Cont’d
• Status refers to differences between social groups in the social honour and
prestige they are accorded by others.
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Cont’d
• The statuses identified are overlap. That is, though each can be
independent of the other, they are closely associated.
• One can be used to achieve the other. A person can also belong
to one or more of the statuses.
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Slavery
• Slavery is an extreme form of inequality in which some individuals are
literally owned by others as their property.
• In some societies they were denied all rights in law (Southern U.S)
while in others they were like servants.
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Cont’d
• Slavery, then, was a sign of defeat in battle, debt or of criminal act, and not
the sign of some supposedly inherently inferior status.
• There are different types of slavery. In some cases slavery was temporary.
• The children of some slaves in some places were automatically slaves, but
in some they were not.
• In some situations however, they could accumulate property and even rise
to high positions.
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Cont’d
• In the modern era there is a new form of slavery known as
indentured service.
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Estate
• It was part of European feudalism.
• The feudal estates consisted of strata with differing obligations and rights
towards each other.
• Some of the differences are established by law. The highest estate was
comprised of the aristocracy and gentry (people not of noble birth but are
entitled to have a coat of arms).
• The clergy formed the second and the third the commoners, free
peasants, serfs, merchandised artisans.
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Cont’d
• There is a certain degree of inter marriage and individual mobility was
allowed. E.g. A commoner might be knighted.
• Estates of old were organized on local basis but in China and Japan
they were national.
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GLOBAL STRATIFICATION
• People are stratified within a nation into groups based on their relative
power, prestige and property so are nations.
• The most common model divides nations into their groups according to
how they rank in terms of wealth and economic development.
• It constitutes about 25% of the earth’s surface and about 15% of its
people.
• The wealth is so enormous that even the poor in the state live better
than the average person in the third world
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The Second World
• Examples are the nations of the former Soviet Union and its former
satellites in eastern Europe- Poland, Romania, and Hungary etc.
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The Third World
• These are mostly found in Africa and Asia. They account for about 60% of
the earth’s land and 75% of its population.
• Countries here have less industrialized; most of the people are peasant
farmers with low standards of living.
• The per capital income is less than $1000 a year. Population grows faster in
these areas but mortality is down although still higher than in the first two.
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Imperfections in the Model
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How the World’s Nations Become Stratified
There are four theories that attempt an explanation;
• Culture of Poverty
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Imperialism and Colonialism
• Imperialism refers to the pursuit of unlimited geographical expansion.
• There was scramble for Africa and other weaker nations (talk about
consequences).
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The Dependency Theory
(Gunder Frank)
• The development of the third world was effected by the process of
colonialism and imperialism.
• The third world was not undeveloped but rather under developed.
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Cont’d
• They were turned into plantations and mines, planting and extracting
whatever they needed to meet their growing appetite for
commodities.
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The World System’s Theory (Immanuel Wallerstein)
• He was influenced by the dependency theory and indeed uses some of
its core concepts such as core, periphery and unequal trade.
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For this theory, there are four groups of
interconnected nations;
• The core includes; Western Europe, the US and the industrialized nations.
They are powerful because of their wealth.
• The explanation is that there is no room for risk taking, people stick to the
tried and tested ways of doing things.
• The more they fail to take risks the more they fail.
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Maintaining Global Stratification
sell weapons and manufactured goods at higher cost- they are always in debt
Because of the debt, developed countries are able to control them and
dictate their trading relationships.
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Cont’d
• Multinational Corporations
Work with urban power elite to deprive development in rural areas. Build
plush offices in capital cities.
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Social Mobility
• Sociologists are interested in social stratification, they are also
interested in the opportunities available to the people in the system of
stratification.
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Types of Social Mobility
• Vertical Mobility
• Horizontal Mobility
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Horizontal Mobility
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Vertical Mobility
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Sociologists study social mobility in two main ways;
how far has the individual moved up or down the social scale in the
course of his/her working life.
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Cont’d
That is, how far children enter the same occupation as their parents
or grandparents.
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Cont’d
• Sociologists are interested in vertical intergenerational mobility
because it tells the extent to which inequalities are built into the
society.
SOCIAL CHANGE
UNIT NINE
Introduction
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The central questions about change that sociologist
asks are;
• What are the causes of social change?
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Definitions
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Cont’d
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Characteristics of Social Change
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Cont’d
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Influences on Social Change
The main influences on social change can be summarised under;
Cultural,
Environmental,
Conflict
Technological factors
Need for adaptation
Idealistic factors
Social movement.
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Cont’d
• These processes are influenced by religion, styles of thought,
consciousness, and leadership.
Religion
• Religious beliefs and practices can act as barriers to change while others
facilitate change.
How?
A leader capable of pursing dynamic policies.
Those able to generate a mass following.
Those capable of altering existing modes of thought.
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Direction( Positive and Negative)
Positive
• Social change has led to industrialization, urbanization and
modernization.
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Cont’d
Negative
• It has adverse effects on traditional social values (traditional values
and controls are weakened).
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Cont’d
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Cont’d
• People accept scientific explanations for many of life’s events and consequences.
• People see their lives as a series of options; a process Peter Berger calls
individualization.
• The extended family which used to provide social support for members is
weakened.
• The tendency now is toward the nuclear family which is basically self-centred.
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Cont’d
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Theories of Social Change
• Social theorists have proposed various explanations to why societies
change.
Karl Marx,
David McClelland.
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Karl Marx’s theory of social change
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Cont’d
• This weakness leads to the eventual collapse of that stage and usher
a new one.
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Cont’d
Those who own the means of production (in agricultural, societies, land;
industrial societies, factories and machines)
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Cont’d
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Cont’d
• Thus in any society where private property was the source of material
production, there existed a basis for class conflict.
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Cont’d
• To him it is the particular attitude of man that produces change.
• The individual in his view is the prime mover of change and not
society.
• Weber argues that the institution in the modern world which best
exemplifies this aspect of social change is bureaucracy.
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Cont’d
• He saw religion as the motivation for modern capitalism.
• He wondered;
Why people constantly seek more wealth, great profits, even when they
apparently do not always enjoy them?
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Cont’d
• He identified a relationship between the ideas of the protestant sects, especially
‘Calvinism’ and the Sprit of Capitalism.
• Thus although wealth accumulation is the symbol of virtuous and efficient hard
work.
• The consumption of fruits of labour is denied the believer because of the need to
live an ascetic life.
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Cont’d
• There was the need to accumulate money for re-investment and
become upwardly mobile.
• The assumption is that certain factors when present lead to change but
when absent lead to stagnation.
• Among the factors singled out are the values and attitudes of individuals
and their willingness to see education as a means of promoting
meritocratic and individual’s character in society (the mere existence of
structure do not bring about change).
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Cont’d
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Cont’d
• There are two factors that according to McClelland are change agents
– need for achievement and entrepreneurship.
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Cont’d
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Cont’d
• People who have high “n’ach’t” usually are the most successful
entrepreneurs.
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Kwame Nkrumah University of
Science & Technology, Kumasi, Ghana
SOCIAL INTERACTION
UNIT TEN
Introduction
• Some of our actions have implication for us, but most of them involve
some relationships with other people and thus constitute interaction.
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Definitions
• Social interaction is the process by which people act toward or
respond to other people whether face to face or indirectly.
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Cont’d
According to G.H. Mead, interaction occurs when;
another organism sees the signs and alters its course of action in response to
them, thereby emitting signs of its own
• These meanings in most cases reflect the cultural norms and values
that we `acquire from our family and society (they are cultural).
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Types of Interaction
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Verbal and Non-verbal Interaction
• Verbal interaction involves the use of language whereas non-verbal
involves the use of gestures and signs.
• The space you provide for a person determines the type of interaction
you are ready to engage in.
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Hall (1959) identified four main zones;
• Intimacy zone
– It is reserved for people in close relationships. It extends up to 18 inches.
• Personal distance
– It is reserved for friends and acquaintances and ordinary conservations. It
extends from 18inches to 4feet.
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Cont’d
• Social distance
– The zone extends from 4 feet to 12 feet, marks formal or impersonal
relationships. We reserve this space for job interviews and strangers.
• Public distance
– It extends beyond 12 feet. It is used to separate dignitaries and public
speakers from the general public.
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Cont’d
• One important thing that needs to be emphasised is that the ability to
read symbolic gestures allows humans to role-take or take the role of
others.
• The gestures that others emit therefore become what C. H Cooley called
looking glass or mirror.
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The Social Construction of Reality.
• People interpret reality in different ways.
• Goffman thinks that the human beings are skilful at the presentation
of the self, adjusting the image of themselves.
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Cont’d
• He used the theatre to distinguished between the front stage and the
backstage regions in interaction.
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Cont’d
• In the backstage people relax and lower their respective fronts.
• A lot of our interaction involves moving back and forth between front
stage and backstage areas.
• Without backstage life will be stressful and without front stage social
life will be problematic.
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Impression management
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Cont’d
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Kwame Nkrumah University of
Science & Technology, Kumasi, Ghana
UNIT ELEVEN
Introduction
• The two are usually discussed together basically because the family
has its origin in marriage.
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THE FAMILY
• Its importance lies in the fact that, it is the basic unit of society.
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Cont’d
Parson, (1959) for instance argues that in modern societies there are
only two basic and irreducible functions:
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Cont’d
• The conflict views the family as the principal institution in which the
dominance of men over women has been expressed.
• Husbands have several rights over women. Typical examples are right
of genetricem and rights in uxorem.
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Transformations in family patterns
• Fletcher (1962); and Goode (1969) have noted that industrialization has led
a move from the extended to nuclear families.
• Goode, believed that there is a ‘functional fit’ between the family and
industrialization.
• Therefore as society industrialized, the family would change ‘to fit’ the new
arrangements.
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Cont’d
Specific factors influencing the shift from extended to nuclear families include;
• Geographical mobility
• Social mobility
• Permissiveness
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Cont’d
The following points summarize the most important changes occurring worldwide:
• The rights of women and children are becoming more strongly recognized within
the family.
• A union between a man and a woman such that children born to the woman are
considered legitimate offspring of both parents (Notes and Querries, 1951).
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Cont’d
• The definitions show that for marriage between people to be
recognized, it must be socially approved.
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Rules of Marriage
• Traditional laws and beliefs require that certain categories of people cannot
marry each other because their relationship is considered too close.
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Forms of Marriage
• Some of the commonly known forms of marriage all over the world
are monogamy and polygamy.
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Cont’d
• Polyandry is the sub-form in which a woman has multiple husbands at any given time.
fraternal
adelphic,
non-fraternal
non-adelphic and
familial polyandry.
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Cont’d
• Fraternal/adelphic is a variety in which the multiple husbands are
brothers.
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Residence Patterns
• Where couples live after marriage is also culturally determined.
• Basically, there are four main types: matrilocal, patrilocal, neolocal and duolocal.
• Matrilocality is a residential pattern in which a married couple lives with or near the
wife’s family.
• Neolocality is a residential pattern in which couples live apart from the parents of
both spouses.
RELIGION
UNIT SIX
Introduction
• Early Sociologist developed interest in religion because it underpinned
social order.
• Ritual acts may include praying, chanting, singing, eating certain kinds of
food or refraining from doing so- fasting or feasting on certain days.
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Cont’d
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Theories of Religion
• None of the three was religious and all thought that the significance of
religion would decrease in modern societies. (secularization)
• The ideologies use false pictures of the world to distract people from a
true perception of their environment.
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Cont’d
• In other words, religion releases people from the miseries of life and
find in it a consolation which enables them to tolerate their situation.
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Max Weber
• His main interest specifically, was how religious beliefs provided some
form of motivation for certain kinds of economic activity.
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Two questions were significant;
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Cont’d
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Ideology of Calvinism
• God put man in the world for his own glory and that it was man’s duty
to work in an everyday occupation.
• God had predestined some for salvation and some for damnation and
that nothing a man did in his lifetime could alter his fate.
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The teaching had two effects;
• The feeling of loneliness- because only God knew who was saved.
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Attempts to help people overcome the anxieties;
• Assume you are saved- rejected because people wanted a firm answer
to the question, ‘am I one of the saved?
• Work hard in a worldly occupation and take your minds off the urgent
question of ultimate destination.
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Cont’d
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Cont’d
• These teachings encouraged Calvinists to concentrate on worldly
work as the most virtuous activity and at the same time advised to be
ascetic- frugal, thrifty and austere- lives.
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Cont’d
• For them, profligate, ostentatious or self-indulgent fashion
contradicts the Calvinists virtue of asceticism.
• Religion was the mechanism which makes it possible for all aspects of
social life to proceed in relative harmony.
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Cont’d
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Cont’d
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Types of churches
• Ecclesia
• Denominations
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Ecclesia
• An ecclesia is a church that claims membership of everyone in society or
even several societies.
• Membership is compulsory.
• In the Islamic world Islam is the official religion of Malaysia and Indonesia.
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Denomination
• A denomination on other hand is one of many religious organizations
in society.
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Sect
• Sects are smaller, more radical protest movements, set up in
opposition to a dominant mainstream church.
• They mostly aim at discovering and following the ‘true way’ and tend
to withdraw from the surrounding society into community of their
own.
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Cont’d
• Sects believe that their interpretation of scripture is the literal and the
route to salvation.
• Sects appeal to very specific types of people, the marginal lower class who
may be opposed to the state.
• Sects tend to express the needs and predicaments of people who are
undergoing rapid social, economic and cultural transformation.
• They provide a cultic discipline that churches are unable to do. Taboos are
clearly spelt out and strictly enforced.
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Types of Sect
Sects can be classified into two main groups;
• Millennial
• Thaumaturgical
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Millennial
• The millennial religion, stress the imminence of the second coming of
the Lord.
• The eventual radical changes in the fortunes of different social and
economic groups.
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Cont’d
• Thaumaturgical movements put considerable emphasis on wonder
working with stress on neo-magical manifestations such as divine
healing, interpretation of dreams and the assurance of success in a
wide variety of mundane enterprises.
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Cont’d
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Cults
• Cults are generally small loosely organized groups, usually founded by
a charismatic leader who attracts people by virtue of his personal
qualities.
UNIT THIRTEEN
Introduction
• The political institution is responsible for the maintenance of law and order
and the assignment of power.
• This means that it is through the political institution that some people
acquire power and exercise it over others.
• The basic question that sociologist ask is what is power, who holds it, how
is it acquired, why is it applied and for what purpose.
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What is power?
• Power is the ability to direct others even against their wishes.
• Coercion
• Authority
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Cont’d
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Cont’d
• The consensus notion of power assumes that there is no finite
amount of power in the society.
• His view is ‘zero or constant sum’: some people have power at the
expense of others (refer his definition of power).
– Traditional
– Legal- rational
– Charismatic
• That means that rules are perceived to be legitimate and could continue
to rule so long as they do not change the existing arrangements.
• They are able to change existing rules because of the special powers or
special gifts them posses. They are thus a threat to public order.
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Cont’d
• The legitimacy of the leaders is based on the charisma. People obey
charismatic leaders because of the promises they make or because they
want to believe them
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Legal-Rational
• Authority is legitimized by explicit rules and procedures that define the
rights and obligations of the rulers.
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Marxist view
• The starting point for the study of power according to the Marxists is the
study of class relationships and especially economic power.
• Those who own the means of production have the power over others.
UNIT FOURTEEN
Education
• Societal survival depends in a large part on the socialization of new
members into the ways of society.
• Society therefore ensures that its members acquire the knowledge, skills,
behavior patterns and values necessary to become functional in society.
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What is education?
• (Note: much education takes place through the media and at work.)
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Conflict account of Education
• Bowles and Gintis argue that schooling operates within the ‘long
shadow of work.’
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Cont’d
• They argue that there is a fragmentation of the work processes which
mirrors in the break – up of curriculum into packages of knowledge,
each subject divorced from all others.
• Pupils have no control over what they learn and this is reflected in the
lack of control over work.
• They also argue that education creates the conditions for the
reproduction of inequality.
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