What is a social movement and how does one develop?

What is a social movement? You know when you’re watching the news (or seeing breaking news on social media) and hear the reporters talking about a recent march that was protesting against injustice (ex. Women’s March)? Well, they were talking about a social movement.

A social movement is a demonstration by large groups of people to either create or resist social change, fight for social justice, and/or to provide a political voice for an oppressed group. But social movements are much more complex than what you see on TV or on your mobile device. There are stages to it and there are different types of movements.

What is a social construct?

Have you ever wondered why a post-secondary education is considered to be important? I mean, the material you learn isn’t as practical as actual work experience. Or have you ever wondered why each bill of money has a specific value? I mean, it is just a piece of colored paper. Well, these two things (and many others) have social value because of social construction.

Social constructionism is this sociological theory that believes all things that have social meaning are created by individuals and by societies. In other words, individuals construct meanings for things that would otherwise be meaningless. And as more people join the group (or society), the meanings of these things become reality because large amounts of people believe it. This is the basic process of a social construct.

What is a social problem and how do you define it?

You are walking down a street downtown one day and see an entire block, maybe longer, of homeless people asking for money. You wonder to yourself how something like this can even exist. Well, it’s a social problem (or social issue) that hasn’t been solved yet.

A social problem is a condition or societal behaviour that negatively affects people (i.e. poverty and homelessness) and that needs to be addressed and repaired. However, there are two requirements that need to be met before a condition is constituted as a social problem.

The first requirement, which is called the objective component, is that the condition must affect large amounts of people in a damaging way. The second requirement, which is called the subjective component, is that the condition needs to have a perception that it has to be addressed.

Book Review: Oxford Dictionary of Sociology

Buy the 'Oxford Dictionary of Sociology' from Amazon Here: https://amzn.to/2Ixl5z7

If you are a sociology major or just someone who wants to learn about society, this dictionary is a must-have!

(Just to be totally transparent with you, this review includes affiliate links. What this basically means is that if you decided to use the provided links to buy the product, I will get a small kickback from your purchase, at no extra cost to you.)

When I was in university, there were many times when I didn’t understand a concept that a professor taught or a sociological theory that I read in a text. So one day, I decided to ask one of my professors for extra help or for extra resources to help me understand the content I was learning better. He suggested that I get a sociological dictionary, especially if I wanted to continue my studies and get a post-graduate degree.

Sociology of Power: What is Power?

What is power?

Being at the heart of social stratification, many people view power as the ability to influence or control another person's behavior.

Economic Sociology: Emile Durkheim’s Division of Labor in Society

(Emile Durkheim)

In Emile Durkheim’s book, The Division of Labor in Society, he describes the differences between a society where people have similar tasks (mechanical solidarity) and a society where people have different, individual tasks (organic solidarity).

He says that in modern times, society is not gelled together by people’s similarities in tasks and beliefs. Rather, social solidarity is kept together by people’s individualism and specialties because it forces them to rely on one another, as citizens of modern society perform a narrow range of tasks.

Economic Sociology: Marx’s Materialist Conception of History

(Karl Marx)

Karl Marx, as you all should know, was a sociologist who often criticized capitalism for what it will do to society in the future. He was able to “foresee” this because he believed that history would follow a predictable course. This belief was based on his materialist conception of history, or historical materialism, a methodological approach that he used to study society, economy, and history.

Economic Sociology: Max Weber and ‘The Protestant Ethic and Capitalism’

(Max Weber)

Max Weber was raised by parents who held polar ideologies about life. His father, a bureaucrat, enjoyed the pleasures of life. His mother, on the other hand, was a devout Calvinist who lived an ascetic life and constantly pursued salvation. Because of the differences in his parent’s personality, Weber was able to experience the two sides of living, even though it affected him psychologically as the tension of having to choose a side played a great deal of stress on his mind.

In his early college career, he followed in his father’s footsteps by joining a fraternity, where he developed socially by going out and drinking large amounts of beer with his frat brothers. However, as he got older, he became more like his mother. In his late 20s, he developed a compulsion for work and lived ascetically.

It was these first-hand experiences (and extensive research in religious studies) that helped him write his most famous work, The Protestant Ethic and Capitalism (affiliate link) in 1904-1905.

What is Economic Sociology?

(Max Weber)

Economic sociology, which was coined by William Stanley Jevons in the late 1800s, is used by many sociologists to examine how the processes of the economy affect the organisms of society and vice versa.

This field of study is broken up into two periods, classical and contemporary.

Conflict Perspective of Crime and Deviance

(Karl Marx)

When it comes to crime, conflict theorists don't examine how and why crimes happen. Rather, they look at how society creates and defines deviants.

Karl Marx, the first conflict theorist, believed that capitalistic societies are split into two classes: the bourgeoisie (rich) and the proletariats (poor). The bourgeoisie are the ones who own the means of production, while the proletariat (the working class) are the ones who manufacture all of the goods. The rich extract capital from the goods that are built and then pay the workers a wage.

Sociology of Crime: What is crime and deviance?

What is a crime? To many, a crime is a behavior that violates the law. Laws are created to protect people from social harm, but how do we really know what constitutes a social harm?

Take for example same-sex marriage. It is unanimous among many scholars that homosexuality is natural (people are born LGBT). But yet it is considered to be an illegal "behavior" in many countries, and not too long ago it was illegal for same-sex couples to marry in all of North America because many people believed (and some still do) that homosexuality was a mental disorder.

Socialized Self: Erving Goffman's 'Dramaturgy'

(Erving Goffman)

Erving Goffman was a Canadian-born sociologist who discussed and contributed to symbolic interaction. He was considered to be the twentieth century's most influential American sociologist, and he gained this title with his research on social interaction and the social construction of self, among many others. His most well-known concept is Dramaturgy -- the illustration of human behavior through theatre.

Socialized Self: George Herbert Mead's Self, Mind and Society

(George Herbert Mead)

George Herbert Mead was a social philosopher who discussed the connection between the self, the mind, and society. He believed that society has an effect on the self and mind, and the self and the mind have an effect on society. Mead is considered to be the father of symbolic interaction.

5 Must Know Concepts of Race and Ethnicity

(W.E.B. Du Bois)

Last week I posted an article on the 6 sociological concepts that I thought everyone should know about. For this article, I decided to do the same -- except with concepts of race and ethnicity. So to keep the introduction short, here they are, the 5 must know concepts of race and ethnicity: