1. Haddam-Killingworth High School Spring 2016
Ch. 4: Society
Haddam-Killingworth High School
Spring 2016

2. Goals Today: Marx- Manifesto, then other theorists.
Monday- wrap up all those theorists
Wed- The movie
TH- the movie, finish discussion questions
FR: Perfect Society activity

3. Initiation: Society
Before we actually read about and discuss the topic of society, please attempt to come up with a definition for it, in your own words. Why study society? How do you think the concept might be different from culture?
Do not attempt to the answer the remaining questions on the sheet – they correspond to an upcoming reading.

4. “Society” by Eddie Vedder
To further refine your introductory sense of society before we actually examine the concept, we are going to listen to and examine the song, “Society” by Eddie Vedder (featured in the film Into the Wild).
After listening to the song, please thoughtfully respond to the questions that follow.

5. The Amish: A Small Society
In your discussion groups: read, underline, and annotate John A. Hostetler’s “The Amish: A Small Society,” and respond to the remaining questions on the form titled “Society: An Introduction.”
Be prepared to share your findings with the class.

6. A Quick Lesson Regarding Hipsters
Hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter. Hipsters reject the culturally-ignorant attitudes of mainstream consumers, and are often seen wearing vintage and thrift store inspired fashions, tight-fitting jeans, old-school sneakers, and sometimes thick rimmed glasses.
“Evolution of the Hipster” Video?

8. Hipsters = a culture, but not a society
Reflection: How are culture and society different? Reflect in your notebooks. Be prepared to share.
Amish
Hipsters
Hipster-Free Zone
Hipsters
Hipsters = a culture, but not a society
Amish = a culture AND a society

9. Culture vs. Society Culture Society
The values, beliefs, behavior, and material objects that together form a people’s way of life. Includes what we think, how we act, and what we own.
Society
People who interact in a defined territory and share a culture.

10. Gerhard Lenski: “Sociocultural Evolution”
Changes that occur as a society gains new technology.
Name five (5) developments in technology that have changed American society in the past 200 years.

11. Lenski: Society-Types Activity
For the given society type, critically assess:
The strengths vs. weaknesses
The most important technology
What “social life” is like
Individually, please thoughtfully respond to the following question:
What are some of the positive and negative societal consequences of an ever more technological world?

12. Karl Marx (1818-1883) Social conflict Capitalists
The struggle between segments of society over valued resources
Capitalists
People who own and operate factories/businesses for profit.
Proletarians/Proletariat
People who sell their labor for wages.
In what ways are their interests directly opposed?
To Marx = economy is everything
Life dictated by materialism
False-consciousness
To keep profits high, capitalists keep wages low. Their interests were/are directly opposed.
False-consciousness:
Proletariat led to believe that THEY are the reason for their own poverty.
Explanations of social problems as the shortcomings of individuals rather than as the flaws of society. Not seeing the big picture.

13. Capitalism & Alienation
Alienation – the experience of isolation & misery resulting from powerlessness
In what ways have your jobs alienated you in your lives?
Capitalism alienates workers in four specific ways :
From the act of working
Workers have no say in production, work is tedious & repetitive
From the products of work
Workers have no ownership in the product that is merely sold for profit
From other workers
Work has become competitive rather than cooperative
From human potential
Workers deny, not fulfill themselves in their work

14. Foxconn: An Exclusive Look
Watch the video from ABC Nightline and reflect on the following question:
Describe the alienation that Karl Marx would see if he were alive to witness this video. Fill in the chart as examples become apparent.
After the video clip, please respond thoughtfully to the questions.

15. Revolution Can you think of any problems with these economic systems?
Marx believed that eventually the working majority would realize that they would have to remake society
Socialism is a system of production that could provide for the social needs of all
The change would generally require violence
Communism would be the final result
Can you think of any problems with these economic systems?

16. Karl Marx (1818-1883) & Conflict Theory
Read Marx and Engels’s Manifesto of the Communist Party, in groups. Be sure to decipher difficult passages together by doing the following:
Read carefully by stopping at reasonable waypoints to discuss/understand elements of the work.
Underline/annotate interesting passages. Make this reading your own.
Highlight any passages that do not make sense, even after discussing them with your group members.
Flag me to your group to help with difficult passages.
Be prepared to respond to questions following this exercise.
What are the distinguishing factors of “class conflict”? How does this differ from other kinds of conflict, as between individuals or nations? How do they define the “Bourgeoisie” and the “Proletariat”?
Why do Marx and Engels argue that understanding society in the present requires investigating the society of the past?
On what grounds did Marx and Engels praise industrial capitalism? On what grounds did they condemn the system?

17. Max Weber ( )
Weber did not accept materialism; instead adopted idealism
How do you think they are different?
Tradition vs. Rationality
Tradition = the old way
Rationality = the best way (modern societies)
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Materialism (our stuff) vs. idealism (our ideas)
Identified ideal types = or examples of something in pure form
Tradition = right & wrong passed down; blind acceptance
Rationality = modern societies, where the best way to do something is valued more than the old way
Rationalism, Calvinism, and industrial capitalism
Predestination and God’s favor
religious ethic transformed to work ethic

18. Weber’s Rational Social Organization
Weber: Rationality is the basis of modern society
Seven characteristics of rational social organization:
Distinctive social institutions
Large-scale organization
Specialized tasks
Personal discipline
Awareness of time
Technical competence
Impersonality
Expressed in bureaucracy and capitalism
Name/describe two (2) institutions that embody these characteristics.

19. Bureaucracy & Capitalism = Alienation
“Today, it is primarily the capitalist market economy which demands that the official business of public administration be discharged precisely, unambiguously, continuously, and with as much speed as possible. Normally, the very large capitalist enterprises are themselves unequaled models of strict bureaucratic organization.”
~Max Weber (1921)
What’s his gripe with society?

20. Landscape with Figures (1963) by George Tooker
How would Max Weber have looked at this painting if he had been alive to see it?

21. Stranger than Fiction
How would Max Weber react to the opening scene (4:30) from Stranger than Fiction?

22. Bureaucracy: Solution Makers
Design a society that takes into account the problems that Marx and Weber discuss with their writings. Try to come up with something that both of them would be happy with. Explain the following items with complete sentences and important details.
Who will lead the society? What will the government look like?
Who will complete the labor? How will things get done?
What kinds of civil rights will people have?
What will people do in their free time / for entertainment?

23. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) Society is more than the sum of individuals
Society has a life of its own—beyond our personal experiences (before birth / after death)
Social Facts help society to function as a whole
Society has an “objective reality” beyond our own subjective perceptions of the world
Examples: Norms, values, religious beliefs, and rituals
Why might social facts be valuable?
Social facts give us the power to guide our thoughts and actions

24. Durkheim (Continued) Modern society = anomie
A condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals
From Mechanical Solidarity to Organic Solidarity:
Mechanical Solidarity – social bonds based on “likeness” or common values; people automatically feel a sense of belonging (preindustrial society)
Organic Solidarity – social bonds based on “differences” or specialization & interdependence; people with different skills who must rely upon each other (industrial society)
What might Durkheim’s dilemma be, here? What are the pros and cons of modern society, then?
There are advantages to the freedom of modern-day society, but with anomie, societies provide little moral guidance to individuals.
The dilemma: The technological power and greater personal freedom of modern society come at the cost of declining morality and the rising risk of anomie.
He calls it mechanical solidarity because in preindustrial society, people who are like each other are kind of “stuck” with each other; they automatically feel a sense of belonging. In organic solidarity, people with all kinds of different skills (teachers, administrators, coaches, custodians, bus drivers) must rely upon each other for a modern society to function. Unfortunately, this can be alienating because people relying on each other don’t often
Anomie (/ˈænəˌmi/) is a "condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals".[1] It is the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community, e.g., under unruly scenarios resulting in fragmentation of social identity and rejection of self-regulatory values.[2] It was popularized by French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his influential book Suicide (1897). Durkheim never uses the term "normlessness"; rather, he describes anomie as "derangement", and "an insatiable will".[3]
For Durkheim, anomie arises more generally from a mismatch between personal or group standards and wider social standards, or from the lack of a social ethic, which produces moral deregulation and an absence of legitimate aspirations. This is a nurtured condition:
Most sociologists associate the term with Durkheim, who used the concept to speak of the ways in which an individual's actions are matched, or integrated, with a system of social norms and practices… anomie is a mismatch, not simply the absence of norms. Thus, a society with too much rigidity and little individual discretion could also produce a kind of anomie... Thus, fatalistic suicide arises when a person is too rule-governed...
In 1893, Durkheim introduced the concept of anomie to describe the mismatch of collective guild labour to evolving societal needs when the guild was homogeneous in its constituency. He equated homogeneous (redundant) skills to mechanical solidarity whose inertia retarded adaptation. He contrasted this with the self-regulating behaviour of a division of labour based on differences in constituency, equated to organic solidarity, whose lack of inertia made it sensitive to need changes.

25. People are Strange (1967) by The Doors
People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down
When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
No one remembers your name
When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
No one remembers your name
How do Jim Morrison’s lyrics reflect a growing sense of anomie?

26. Gerhard Lenski Karl Marx Max Weber Emile Durkheim
What Holds Societies Together?
How’ve Societies Changed?
Are Societies Improving?
Gerhard Lenski
 A shared culture
 Changing technology
Yes/No
Modern technology offers expanded human choice, but leaves us with new sets of dangers
Karl Marx
Elites force an ‘uneasy peace’
Social conflict
Someday
Social conflict will only end once production of goods and services are taken out of the hands of the capitalists and placed into the hands of all people
Max Weber
 Rational thought, large-scale organizations
 From traditional to rational thought
I guess…
Saw socialism as a greater evil than capitalism, as large, alienating bureaucracies would gain even more control over people
Emile Durkheim
Specialized division of labor
From mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity
Sure, but stick together, guys!
Optimistic about modernity and the possibility of more freedom for individuals, but concerned about the dangers of anomic feelings

27. Into the Wild: Film Analysis
As you watch the film, take notes that address any sociological issues that we’ve covered this semester. Be sure to comment on ANYTHING that is relevant to the concepts of culture and society.
Possible topics include: subcultures, multiculturalism, structural-functional theory, social-conflict theory, symbolic interaction theory, norms, culture shock, symbols, globalization, etc.
After you watch the film, you’ll thoughtfully respond to reflection questions.

28. Me, Me, Me Generation
Carefully read/highlight/annotate the recent Time article that has been written about YOU!
Be prepared to thoroughly answer the questions that follow.

29. Closure: “Imagine”
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace
You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man Imagine all the people sharing all the world You, you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one I hope some day you'll join us And the world will live as one
Analyze the John Lennon song, “Imagine,” and explain how each of the following theorists (Marx, Weber, & Durkheim) would feel about the message from the song.

30. Society: Mock-Quiz Creation
Review all of your materials for the Society Quiz (Chapter 4) and create a challenging “mock quiz.”
You will only need one per group, but everyone must contribute.
Create an answer key for the questions (on a separate piece of paper) so that another group can (eventually) examine and take your quiz.

31. Review Activity: groups of 3
One person will be the listener each round.
Pair discussion: Partners will hold a short discussion. You will speak/discuss, debate for 1 minute on the topic. The listener will decide who had the most information or the best points made.
keep track of points
Switch listeners for each question.

32. Question 1
HOW would Marx view McCandless’
“adventure”?
One minute… go

33. Question 2
How would MC Candless’ view Durkheim’s theories/ views on society if he studied him? (Which I am sure he did)

34. Question 3
Marx versus Weber.. Go..

35. Question 4
How would Weber’s views of society influence Mc Candless’ goals to leave on his adventure?

36. Question 5
Is it possible to completely leave society? What would that entail? In your discussion, bring in at least 1 idea from what you read or studied in class.

37. Question 6
Culture and society are the same concept. Discuss.

38. Question 7
Lenski historically traced major societies from hunters and gatherers to the modern era. What has the greatest power to shape or change each society?

39. Choose 1 term to discuss, applicably to something we studied in society chapter.
Rationality
Social inequality

40. Debate/ discuss
Capitalism versus Communism

41. Theorist that held the most “optimistic” or positive view of society
Marx
Weber
Dukheim
None

42. How would One of the following describe “Melennials”?