What Things Mean: Chapter Four: Sociological Analysis of Material Culture

Deals with attempts that sociologist and other scholars have made to understand how institutions...function society(63)
1. society: collective behavior (63)
2. Institutions: patterns that regulate the behavior of its inhabitants with each other that, at the same time, relate this behavior to much larger context of meaning
3. society is shaped by and shapes individuals
the study of human beings in groups and institutions (63)
Philosophers of Sociological Analysis
1. August Comte
  1. integrate theoretical and practical studies of humans (64)
  2. "to know in order to predict in order to control" (64)
    1. discern laws by which peple orgainze their lives so he and other sociologists could help create a more humane and rational social order (64)
2. Emile Durkheim
  1. founder of French sociology (64)
  2. the relationship that exists between individuals and society is very complicated
    1. human
      1. Social being
        Physical Being
        social beings, whose ideas and values are shaped to varying degrees by the social order (65)
      2. individual being
      3. duality of nature: irreduciblity of a moral ideal to a utilitarian motive (64)
        individual transcends himself, both when he things and when he acts (64)
      4. duality of thought: irreduciblity of reason to individual experience
3. Herbert J. Gans: Popular Culture and High Culture (68)
  1. taste cuture: entertain, inform, beautify (68)
    1. Values: taste cultures: music, art, design, lit, drama, comedy etc and their genres
      1. aesthetic values or functions (69)
      2. advertising: teaches us how to evaluate objects and read people in terms of the objects they wear and own.
    2. choices people make about the objects they purchase are connected to one another (69
      1. Five American Taste Cultures (70): socio-economic class, religion, age, eduation, ethnic and racial background + personality (70)
        High Culture: socioeconomic-cultural elites
        Upper Middle Class: professionals, managers, spouses
        Lowe Middle Class: older lower-middle class people
        quasi-Folk Low Culture: unskilled blue collar
4. Jean Baudrillards: System of Objects (77)
  1. private and public roles of objects (78)
  2. processes whereby people relate to them (78)
artifacts: they are in society and society is reflected in them (65)
1. reluctant witnesses to the past...valuable witness to the present (65)
Functionalism: Structural-functionalist
1. the institutions in society are part of an ongoing system of institutions, each of which is connected to all the others (65)
  1. Contribute to stability and maintenance of society: Functional (65)
  2. contribute to the destabilization and breakdown of a society: dysfunctional (65)
  3. no role: non-functional
  4. "conservative bias to structural-functionalism, since it posits the maintenance of society as the primary consideraton rather than focusing on change and the evolution of institution and societies (65)
  5. artifacts
    1. latent function: not intended and not aware (65)
    2. manifest functions: we are aware (65)
Uses and Gratifications: Artifacts
1. To have beautiful things: we have been successful (73)
2. Diversion and distraction: escape mundane lives, sense of power, escape anonymity
3. imitate models we respect: imitate their desires (73)
4. to affirm aesthetic values: our "taste" (73-4)
5. Race Ethnicity Gender
  1. race: genetic heritage (74)
  2. Ethnicity: share certain religious, racial, national and cultural traits and cuisines (74)
6. Status (75)
  1. position an individual has in some group (75)
    1. ascribed: born with traditional societies (75)
    2. achieved: merits, abilities, earned: Modern Societies (75)
  2. Role: behavior expected of people who have a particular status (76)
  3. Socialization: teaching people what roles to play in various situations (76)
What motivates people to purchase these objects. the functional perspective suggests that we cannot assume that we understand or recognize the roles that the artifacts we purchase play in our lives...quote often there are unrecognized functions played by artifacts and a multitude of different factors shaping our desire to choose and possess this or that artifact (79)

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What Things Mean: Chapter Four: Sociological Analysis of Material Culture

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