Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Chapter 4: Sociological Analysis
of Material Culture
- Sociology
- The study of human beings in
groups and institutions. Focus is
on the way society functions and
other aspects of collective
behavior.
- Artifacts
- They are in society and society
is reflected on them, witnesses
to the present
- Suggest our wealth and socioeconomic class
- Advertising
- Teaches how to be
"discriminating" consumers and
to recognize what brands go
with what kind of people.
- August Comte
- Goal was to: "know in order to
predict in order to control." Help
create a more humane and rational
social order
- Emile Durkheim
- Relationship that exists between
individuals and society is very
complicated.
- Individual Being
- Has its foundation in the organism and
the circle of whose activities, strictly
limited
- Social Being
- Represents the highest reality in the
intellectual and moral order, by
observation.
- Individuality, we are an
"organism," social beings, whose
ideas and values are shaped by
social order.
- Structural-functionalists
- Institutions in society are
part of an ongoing system
of institutions, connected
to all others.
- Focus on whether an
institution helps contribute to
the stability and maintenance
of society, "functional"
- Functional Alternative:
Substitutes for original
function
- Manifest Function: stated
reason for using
something
- Latent Function: Unconscious
factors involved in using
something
- Helps contribute to the destabilization
and breakdown of society,
"dysfunctional."
- If an institution plays no
role, "non-functional."
- Typologies
- Classification schemes,
help us better understand
the way societies,
institutions, phenomena
function.
- Taste Cultures: entertain
us, inform us, and
beautify our lives.
- Herbert J. Gans
- Choices people make
about the objects they
purchase are connected to
one another.
- High Culture
- Upper Middle Culture
- Lower Middle Culture
- Quasi-Folk Low Culture
- Youth, Black, and Ethnic Cultures
- "beautiful" or desired objects enhances a
feeling of wellbeing/succesful
- Purchasing objects, enable us to escape,
enhance the quality of our lives, short time
a sense of power
- We imitate desires reflected by
advertisements and commercials
- The choice of our possessions reflects
"taste," or aesthetic values
- Race: categorizing people by their genetic heritage.
- Negroid
- Mongoloid
- Caucasian
- Dominant motivators
behind the purchase, she
objects are gender specific.
- Ethnicity: refers to
groups that share
certain religious, racial,
national, and cultural
traits and cuisine.
- Race: position an
individual has in
some group
- Ascribed Status: factors
based on gender, age,
family status
- Achieved status: based on merits,
abilities, success in various endeavors
- Role: behavior expected of people who have a
particular status, unconscious.