02 Jul one page homework for UST 200 ” Intro of Urban Studies”
The City Confronts Social Issues
Defining Sociology
Sociology is the scientific study of society. It is a social science involving the study of the social lives of people, groups, and societies.
Aspects of sociological study are:
Our behavior as social beings, at many geographic scales.
Our social aggregations, the entities through which humans move throughout their lives
Overarching unification of all studies of humankind, including history, psychology, and economics.
Urban Sociology
Urban sociology is the sociological study of life and human interaction in metropolitan areas.
It seeks to study the structures, processes, changes and problems of an urban area and by doing so provide inputs for planning and policy making.
Sociological concern with urbanization began with rapidly growing 19th-century industrial cities that first supported those social relationships and structures.
Now that cities house the majority of people, we need to continue to learn how the city functions using a social lens.
Urban Ecology
Urban Ecology is the study of ecosystems that include humans living in cities and urbanizing landscapes.
The urban environment refers to environments with high-density structures, paved surfaces, and other urban factors that are different from previously studied environments in the field of ecology.
It is an emerging, interdisciplinary field that aims to understand how human and ecological processes can coexist in human-dominated systems and help societies with their efforts to become more sustainable.
Social Ecology
Social ecology posits that nearly all of the world’s ecological problems stem from social problems, arising from structures and relationships of dominating hierarchy.
Social ecologists argue the most serious ecological dislocations of the 20th and 21st centuries have as their cause economic, ethnic, cultural, and gender conflicts, among many others.
Today’s ecological problems cannot be clearly understood, much less resolved, without dealing with problems within society.
Sociological Approaches
Because of the complexity of influences, there are a variety of approaches to the study of society.
Primary approaches (perspectives):
Cultural
Culturalists deal with people’s experiences in cities – how urban life feels and how people react to the urban environment.
Structural
Structuralists are concerned with the distribution of wealth and power – the relationship between political and economic forces and changing spatial organizations.
Primary Sociological Perspectives
Functionalists (Spencer, Durkheim, Parsons, Merton) believe society is a system of interconnected parts that work together in harmony to maintain a state of balance and social equilibrium for the whole (families).
Conflictivists (Karl Marx) view society as composed of different groups and interests competing for power and resources. The conflict perspective explains various aspects of our social world by looking at which groups have power and benefit from a particular social arrangement (feminism).
Symbolic Interactionists (Simmel, Cooley, George Herbert Mead, Goffman) are concerned with the socio-psychological dynamics of individuals interacting in small groups. It emphasizes that human behavior is influenced by definitions and meanings that are created and maintained through symbolic interaction with others (self-identity).
Influential Sociological Theorists
Tönnies (1887) described two ideal types of social organizations:
Gemeinschaft (community) is a primary group in which individuals take into account the needs and interests of the group as much as, if not more than, their own self interest. Gemeinschaften are regulated by common mores, or beliefs, about the appropriate behavior and responsibilities of members with respect to each other and to the group at large. Associated with rural life.
Gesellschaft (society) describes associations in which the larger association never takes precedence over the individual’s self interest. Gesellschaft society posits that people reach their status through their education and work. Gesellschaften emphasize secondary relationships rather than familial or community ties. Associated with urban life.
Influential Sociological Theorists
Urbanism As a Way of Life (Wirth, 1938) argued for urbanism as the prevailing way of life in modern society. Wirth argued that the very size and density of modern cities had changed modern people and their relationships.
Due to city size people cannot possibly know all other urbanites.
The urbanite does not develop deep personal connections with these people but only interacts with them in terms of their roles.
The density of living and heterogeneity of urban residents leads people to live in homogenous groups resulting in a ‘mosaic of social worlds’ in a city.
Social Network Analysis
Social network analysis [SNA] is the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers, URLs, and other connected information/knowledge entities.
The nodes in the network are the people and groups while the links show relationships or flows between the nodes.
SNA provides both a visual and a mathematical analysis of human relationships.
Gephi is an open-source software for visualizing and analyzing large networks graphs.
Class Structure
Class is a relative social rank in terms of income, wealth, education, status/position, and/or power.
A class consists of a large group of people who share a similar economic and/or social position in society based on their income, wealth, property ownership, job status, education, skills, or power in the economic and political sphere.
Class is determined not just by “economic capital” (what you earn or own) but also by “social capital” (who you know) and “cultural capital” (what you know).
Our class identity affects us on a personal and emotional level, not just in economic terms, since it influences how we feel about ourselves and others.
Social Inequality
There are two main ways to measure social inequality:
Inequality of opportunities refers to the unequal distribution of life chances across individuals. This is reflected in measures such as level of education, health status, and treatment by the criminal justice system. White privilege.
Inequality of conditions refers to the unequal distribution of income, wealth, and material goods. Housing, for example, is an inequality of conditions with the homeless and those living in housing projects sitting at the bottom of the hierarchy while those living in multi-million dollar mansions sit at the top. Wealth privilege.
Dimensions of Social Inequality
Inequality is a social problem that encompasses three dimensions:
Structural conditions include things that can be objectively measured and that contribute to social inequality. Sociologists study how things like educational attainment, wealth, poverty, occupations, and power lead to the social inequality between individuals and groups of people.
Ideological supports include ideas and assumptions that support the social inequality present in a society. Sociologists examine how things such as formals laws, public policies, and dominant values both lead to social inequality, and help sustain it.
Social reforms are things such as organized resistance, protest groups, and social movements. Sociologists study how these social reforms help shape or change social inequality that exists in a society, as well as their origins, impact, and long-term affects.
Governmental Programs and Mediating Structures
Governmental programs are funded policies to improve the success of individuals by providing formal access to services.
Mediating structures are the nongovernmental community support systems that help individuals and families cope with and counteract adverse social forces.
Formal organizations: churches, private schools, voluntary associations.
Informal subsystems: social clubs, neighborhood groups, peers, friends, and extended family networks.
Assignment for Friday, February 17
Identify and describe five mediating structures in the community.
In your submission, include:
Name of the organization or association (link if available)
Is it a formal organization or informal subsystem,
A brief description (2-3 sentences) of its mission/purpose, and
the types of support it offers.
Submit your research to the Blackboard assignment link.
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