For this family exercise, I want each of the families to discuss how any THREE of those ten propositions about society I handed out a couple weeks ago relate -- either positively or negatively -- to the authors' analysis of the ideas of Spencer and Sumner in Chapter 3.
Also, I want each family to identify what you believe is the most relevant and least relevant aspect of Spencer and Sumner for understanding modern society.
Each family will prepare a brief one to two-page summary of your findings, which a designated spokesperson will present to the class next week THURSDAY, 3/5.
This exercise is worth 6 points. You must participate to earn the points. I will also award 3 bonus points to the family which does the best job in my estimation. I will post that family's summary on the blog along with some of my own comments, which will be the basis for whatever questions I may ask on the midterm about Chapter 3.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
First Essay Assignment
SOCIOLOGY 340
ESSAY I
2/19/09
A. I want each of you to discuss the meaning of the passage quoted below from a study of American society entitled, "Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life," and how it relates to class lectures and text readings (Chaps. 1 & 2) on the origin of modern sociology. There are different ways to do this and several relevant points that could be brought out, so do NOT worry that you did not do it the "right" way or that you may have missed some points. As long as you have some confidence that you interpreted the passage appropriately and made some good connections to class material, you should do fine. And remember that class material would also include comments I posted on the blog about our "missing the forest for the trees" exercise.
"We believe that much of the thinking about the self of educated Americans, thinking that has become almost hegemonic in our universities and much of the middle class, is based on inadequate social science, impoverished philosophy, and vacuous theology. There are truths we do not see when we adopt the language of radical individualism. We find ourselves not independently of other people and institutions but through them. We never get to the bottom of our selves on our own. We discover who we are face to face and side by side with others in work, love, and learning. All of our activity goes on in relationships, groups, associations, and communities ordered by institutional structures and interpreted by cultural patterns of meanings. And the positive side of our individualism, our sense of the dignity, worth, and moral autonomy of the individual, is dependent in a thousand ways on a social, cultural, and institutional context that keeps us afloat even when we cannot very well describe it. There is much in our life that we do not control, that we are not even "responsible" for, that we receive as grace or face as tragedy, things Americans habitually prefer not to think about. Finally, we are not simply ends in ourselves, either as individuals or as a society. We are parts of a larger whole that we can neither forget nor imagine in our own image without paying a high price. If we are not to have a self that hangs in the void, slowly twisting in the wind, these are issues we cannot ignore." (p. 84, Habits of the Heart)
hegemonic - ruling or predominant
vacuous - empty, vacant; having or showing a lack of intelligence
B. Your essay should be roughly 3 pages (single-spaced handwritten or double-spaced typewritten). DO NOT POST IT AS A COMMENT ON THE BLOG (although you may post questions about the assignment which I'll try to respond to). If you quote anything from the text in your paper, please indicate the page # in parentheses.
C. This essay is due THURSDAY, FEB. 26TH.
ESSAY I
2/19/09
A. I want each of you to discuss the meaning of the passage quoted below from a study of American society entitled, "Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life," and how it relates to class lectures and text readings (Chaps. 1 & 2) on the origin of modern sociology. There are different ways to do this and several relevant points that could be brought out, so do NOT worry that you did not do it the "right" way or that you may have missed some points. As long as you have some confidence that you interpreted the passage appropriately and made some good connections to class material, you should do fine. And remember that class material would also include comments I posted on the blog about our "missing the forest for the trees" exercise.
"We believe that much of the thinking about the self of educated Americans, thinking that has become almost hegemonic in our universities and much of the middle class, is based on inadequate social science, impoverished philosophy, and vacuous theology. There are truths we do not see when we adopt the language of radical individualism. We find ourselves not independently of other people and institutions but through them. We never get to the bottom of our selves on our own. We discover who we are face to face and side by side with others in work, love, and learning. All of our activity goes on in relationships, groups, associations, and communities ordered by institutional structures and interpreted by cultural patterns of meanings. And the positive side of our individualism, our sense of the dignity, worth, and moral autonomy of the individual, is dependent in a thousand ways on a social, cultural, and institutional context that keeps us afloat even when we cannot very well describe it. There is much in our life that we do not control, that we are not even "responsible" for, that we receive as grace or face as tragedy, things Americans habitually prefer not to think about. Finally, we are not simply ends in ourselves, either as individuals or as a society. We are parts of a larger whole that we can neither forget nor imagine in our own image without paying a high price. If we are not to have a self that hangs in the void, slowly twisting in the wind, these are issues we cannot ignore." (p. 84, Habits of the Heart)
hegemonic - ruling or predominant
vacuous - empty, vacant; having or showing a lack of intelligence
B. Your essay should be roughly 3 pages (single-spaced handwritten or double-spaced typewritten). DO NOT POST IT AS A COMMENT ON THE BLOG (although you may post questions about the assignment which I'll try to respond to). If you quote anything from the text in your paper, please indicate the page # in parentheses.
C. This essay is due THURSDAY, FEB. 26TH.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
"Missing the Forest for the Trees"
The winners of the "missing the forest for the trees" contest are as follows:
Most creative: (tie) "Wedding Business" (Claire B.)& "Washing Dishes" (Matt E.)
Most sociological: (tie) "Judging a Person" (Lewis B.) & "Racism" (Jessica H.)
Each of the above-mentioned individuals will earn 2 bonus points for this exercise. I respect the decision of the class, although I have to say that "washing dishes" really misses the point.
The point of this exercise was to make you consider how the whole is more than the mere sum of its parts, which is premised on the interrelated nature of reality, especially social reality. In this regard, I would say that missing the big picture (the forest) by focusing on details (trees) -- that is, looking at facts as separate and distinct -- is tantamount to misunderstanding. This point is driven home in a book I used this past Interim, "In Defense of Food," by Michael Pollan. He is critical of what he calls "nutritionism," which is based on a reductionist science approach that focuses on nutrients in isolation from the foods which contain them. He makes a plea for us to focus more on whole foods and the context in which these whole foods are grown and marketed. Pollan comments:
"'The problem with nutrient-by-nutrient nutrition science,' points out Marion Nestle, a New York University nutritionist, 'is that it takes the nutrient out of the context of the food, the food out of the context of the diet, and the diet out of context of the lifestyle.'" then, a bit later --
"...if you're a nutrition scientist you do the only thing you can do given the tools at your disposal: Break the thing down into its component parts and study those one by one, even if that means ignoring the subtle interactions and contexts and the fact that the whole may well be more than, or maybe different from, the sum of its parts. This is what we mean by reductionist science." (p. 62)
Finally, the fact is: "...people don't eat nutrients; they eat foods, and foods can behave very differently from the nutrients they contain." (p. 63)
This general point about focusing on the whole and the system of relations that constitute the whole also underlies a point Prof. E. Ahrens (who we will be reading later on) stresses about the nature of explanation in the following commment:
"The essence of explanation is to say what things are and to define them in and through their relations to other phenomena or forms of phenomena."
So, in the final analysis, I would contend that any social theory which misses or ignores the forest for the trees is ultimately inadequate.
PLEASE COPY OR PRINT OUT THE ABOVE OBSERVATIONS AND INSERT IT IN YOUR NOTES WHERE I FIRST ADDRESSED THI ISSUE IN THE TEXT.
Most creative: (tie) "Wedding Business" (Claire B.)& "Washing Dishes" (Matt E.)
Most sociological: (tie) "Judging a Person" (Lewis B.) & "Racism" (Jessica H.)
Each of the above-mentioned individuals will earn 2 bonus points for this exercise. I respect the decision of the class, although I have to say that "washing dishes" really misses the point.
The point of this exercise was to make you consider how the whole is more than the mere sum of its parts, which is premised on the interrelated nature of reality, especially social reality. In this regard, I would say that missing the big picture (the forest) by focusing on details (trees) -- that is, looking at facts as separate and distinct -- is tantamount to misunderstanding. This point is driven home in a book I used this past Interim, "In Defense of Food," by Michael Pollan. He is critical of what he calls "nutritionism," which is based on a reductionist science approach that focuses on nutrients in isolation from the foods which contain them. He makes a plea for us to focus more on whole foods and the context in which these whole foods are grown and marketed. Pollan comments:
"'The problem with nutrient-by-nutrient nutrition science,' points out Marion Nestle, a New York University nutritionist, 'is that it takes the nutrient out of the context of the food, the food out of the context of the diet, and the diet out of context of the lifestyle.'" then, a bit later --
"...if you're a nutrition scientist you do the only thing you can do given the tools at your disposal: Break the thing down into its component parts and study those one by one, even if that means ignoring the subtle interactions and contexts and the fact that the whole may well be more than, or maybe different from, the sum of its parts. This is what we mean by reductionist science." (p. 62)
Finally, the fact is: "...people don't eat nutrients; they eat foods, and foods can behave very differently from the nutrients they contain." (p. 63)
This general point about focusing on the whole and the system of relations that constitute the whole also underlies a point Prof. E. Ahrens (who we will be reading later on) stresses about the nature of explanation in the following commment:
"The essence of explanation is to say what things are and to define them in and through their relations to other phenomena or forms of phenomena."
So, in the final analysis, I would contend that any social theory which misses or ignores the forest for the trees is ultimately inadequate.
PLEASE COPY OR PRINT OUT THE ABOVE OBSERVATIONS AND INSERT IT IN YOUR NOTES WHERE I FIRST ADDRESSED THI ISSUE IN THE TEXT.
Friday, February 13, 2009
DEADLINE on First Exercise
It is FRIDAY, the 13TH, 10AM and I just checked the blog and noted that several people still have not posted their comments on the first exercise. I am setting an ABSOLUTE DEADLINE of MONDAY, 2/16 by NOON, after which you will not earn the points for this exercise.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
"Get Your Feet Wet" Exercise
Welcome to the Soc. 340 course blog for this semester (Spring '09). Below is a description of what I call a "get your feet wet" exercise to get your minds thinking theoretically and get you used to commenting on this blog, which you will be asked to do throughout this semester.
"Get Your Feet Wet" Exercise: In the Preface of our text, the authors refer to what they call the "forest and trees" problem (p. xxiv), which I believe should really be worded: "missing the forest for the trees." For this exercise I want each of you to post an example of this problem (which can be invented if you can't think of one you may have run across in another course or other reading or even real life) OTHER THAN one discussed by the authors in the Preface. I also want you to address the question of why this is a "problem." I am only looking for one or two paragraphs (NO dissertations). Please post your comments by next THURSDAY, FEB. 12th. This exercise is worth 4 points.
"Get Your Feet Wet" Exercise: In the Preface of our text, the authors refer to what they call the "forest and trees" problem (p. xxiv), which I believe should really be worded: "missing the forest for the trees." For this exercise I want each of you to post an example of this problem (which can be invented if you can't think of one you may have run across in another course or other reading or even real life) OTHER THAN one discussed by the authors in the Preface. I also want you to address the question of why this is a "problem." I am only looking for one or two paragraphs (NO dissertations). Please post your comments by next THURSDAY, FEB. 12th. This exercise is worth 4 points.
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