Unit 1: Introducing Sociology

Week One: Introduction, Theory, and

Methodology (prof blog, student
discussion)
Welcome to the first Unit of SOCI 1000. This unit will provide a starting point for
understanding sociology, what it is, what it does, how it does it, and why it matters.
We will not only introduce the field, but also explore some of the central theoretical
frameworks of sociology, as well as some of the techniques used (methods) in
performing sociological research. This first unit is a touchstone for the course, one
to use in building your understanding of sociology and the many areas and topics it
includes. The blog for this unit is created by the instructor, and provides examples
of the kinds of things you can include when making your own blog posts.

Learning Objectives
By the end of this Unit, you should be able to:

provide a basic definition of sociology and what it does

understand how sociology differs from other academic fields

define and distinguish between central theoretical frameworks of

sociology

understand different forms of sociological research and how they are

used

know what is expected of you in creating your blog posts

Directions
1. Before you read anything in the textbook, write a sentence or two
describing what you think sociology is, and what you hope to learn from
this course. Include these thoughts on sociology in your introduction of
yourself to the class on the introductions forum in the blog tool. (See
Communications, Blogs, then Class Introductions topic.)
2. In the Class Introductions thread, introduce yourself to me and your
classmates (full instructions on that page).

3. Read the introduction to the text, as well as the material on Theory and
Methodology.
4. Read the Instructor Notes for this Unit:
a. Introduction
b. Four Sociological Approaches
c. Sociological Research
5. Read the blog. Make comments, engage with the material, answer
questions, and participate in discussion.
6. Submit two questions you have about the readings (these are the first
Questions for Clarification that you are required to submit in the Blog
section)
7. Read the Questions for Critical Thought at the end of the theory and
methodology chapter, and think them through to help you internalize
and apply the material you have read in the chapter. Decide if you
would like to answer one of the questions for part of your grade (see
Questions for Critical Thought in the assignment breakdown for the
course). If you choose to answer one of the questions for this unit, it is
due to the instructor on the last day of the unit.
8. Discussion Question:

What was most surprising, interesting, angering, or compelling

to you in this chapter, and why? After reading this chapter, do
you have a different understanding of what sociology is than
before you read it? Please elaborate.

Introduction
Just about anything can be studied sociologically, which is part of why it is
sometimes difficult to define what sociology is - what is it that we study in
sociology? Oh, things like: time, sexuality, work, race, gender, religion, media,
youth, the elderly, youth, food, families, disability, education, crime, the economy,
globalization, the environment, inequality, identity, health, emotions, prisons,
science, art, politics, death, birth, childhood, adolescence, knowledge creation...
There is research on the sociology of boredom, of bedwetting, of ignorance, of
happiness. You name it, sociologists study it, but we do so from a sociological
perspective, and it is that perspective which is central to sociology. Even though
studying society includes just about everything, not everything that can be studied
is always studied sociologically.

The central component to studying something sociologicallyand therefore the

central components of what makes sociology sociology, is the sociological
imagination
The Sociological Imagination (a term coined by C. Wright Mills) makes the
connection between private troubles and public issues. What this means, is that
when we face problems, sociology looks to the larger forces that exist in society to
explain those individual experiences and challenges. It is a sociological approach to
see how shared public issues are connected to problems or troubles that we
experience individually. Of course, the opposite is also true, sometimes things are
easy for us, or do not present challenges, and that too can be understood with a
sociological imagination. That is, what might seem like individual good luck can be
understood sociologically as part of the outcome of a larger social system that
creates privilege for some people over others. So while challenges and
opportunities are experienced individually, they often come from a more collective
source.
Macrosociology vs. Microsociology can be though of where you put your lens, how
close up or pulled back you are in doing your sociological researchthey are two
different approaches to doing sociological research, or levels of analysis. Are you
looking at how people are interacting at a science fiction conventions (micro level,
up close and personal analysis) or are you looking at rates of crime across major
Canadian city centres (macro level, big picture analysis) Macro looks at larger
social processes, institutions, or rates of occurrence, while micro looks at individual
interactions and small groups. Both can be used to look at the same topic, but will
result in different kinds of research. The example in the text uses the example of
homelessness. A macrosociology approach might examine rates of homelessness in
Canada, while a microsociological approach might explore how homeless people in
downtown Vancouver construct their identity. Both of these approaches would be
sociological, and employ the sociological imagination because they look at the
personal experience of being homeless and try to understand how it is connected to
larger social processes (provincially differing economic factors affecting availability
of affordable housing, perhaps, vs interpersonal processes of forming identity when
viewed as an outcast because of living on the street).
Sociological theories (some central ones are explained in the text) are the lens
that you use in understanding something sociologically. While micro vs. macro is
about where you put your lens (close up or pulled back), theory can be understood
as what lens you use. What lens you use allows you to see things in different ways.
Sometimes it is helpful to think of different theories as different coloured glasses. If
you look at something with blue glasses on, you will notice different things about it

than if you had yellow glasses on. Some things will be highlighted, some will be
downplayed.

Four Sociological Approaches

They are not right or wrong, they simply allow you to see different things, in
different ways. The thing that you are looking at doesnt changeonly the glasses
do.
There are roughly three classical sociological approaches traditionally seen as
central to social theory, and added to these, is the centrality of feminist approaches
to understanding the social.

Structural Functionalism

Views society as a system,

Assumes that each element contributes to the functioning of society and

has a role in sustaining equilibrium. Like the human body, everything
has a role in ensuring survival. There is a function for everything. (So,
society is a structure, and every piece of it has a function)

Durkheim is often associated with this theoretical perspective

Conflict Theory

Issues of power are used to explain society, rather than focusing on the
function of different elements and how they maintaining balance
(equilibrium)

Conflict theory sees society as a set of competing social groups, not a

system that creates equilibrium

Confrontation are understood to happen because of differences in power

Even if there is not overt conflict you can analyze issues or topics by
examining who has power over whom, and what the implications of that
are

Socitey is not about equilibrium, but about struggle and social change.

Marx is often associated with this theoretical perspective, as is Weber.

Symbolic Interactionism

Society is fluid and constantly built and rebuilt through individual actions

People behave according to the meanings things and situations have for
them

The meaning of things comes out of social interaction with others

We are born into ongoing interactions and existing meanings. We learn

them, but we also alter them in our performance of them and through
interpretation

We act as we do because of how we define the situation we are in

Weber is connected to this approach because of his focus on

interpretation and meaning making

Feminist Sociology

Gendered inequality shapes all components of social life

This is not only about inequality between men and women, but also
differences in how masculinity and feminity are valued

Feminist sociology challenges and works to rectify the ways gender has
been left out of understanding how society works

Emerges from Conflict Theory, and can also be incorporated into

Symbolic Interactionism, Marxism

Example
Lets go through an example: What do these perspectives have to say about the
issue of inequality?
Structural Functionalism:
inequality is present in all societies

societies require people in a variety of class positions in order to fulfill all

the needed functions

Inequality is therefore natural and inevitable

Conflict:
power and authority are unequally distributed, and those with more
access to power and resources, use them to create and maintain
structural inequality that helps them to maintain the power that they
have

those with less access to power and resources resist and challenge the
distribution of power

inequality is changeable, it is not natural, but created

Symbolic Interactionism:
inequality leads to different ways of understanding the world, to different
behaviours and expectations

each social class has its own symbols and world views that help sustain
differences within society

the key is that inequality produces different social worlds that must be
analyzed and understood

Feminist Sociology:
inequality can be understood in different ways using a gender analysis

men and women are in different social positions resulting in one form of
inequality

the unequal valuation of masculinity and femininity contributes to all

forms of inequality and power imbalance

Sociological Research
But when we are doing sociological research, what are we doing with these
theories? How does sociology do its work?
Another way to put this, is how do we put sociology to work, or how does sociology
operate? Answer: Operationalization.

Operationalization takes ideas about how the world works (theories, which usually
draw from one of more of the four above) and turns the abstract concepts in them
into measurable variables so that we can examine and test our ideas (or
hypotheses) about the social world.
A variable is something that varies (by degree, amount, type, etc.). So income
can be a variable. It is observable/measurable, and it varies. Age is another, so is
first language spoken at home, or favourite kind of icecream.
Most hypotheses (ways to test if a theory is supported by reality) have
both independent and dependent variables. The dependent variables are the
ones that change their value depending on other factors hence being called
dependent. And the other factors that they depend on are the independent
variables. The text gives an example regarding gender and income, where income
may vary depending on your gender, so gender is independent, and income is
dependent. That is, how much you make depends on your gender.
By translating our ideas about the world into observable phenomenon and testable
hypotheses about how things depend upon one another, we are able to do the work
of sociology.
There are many different methods to sociological research (surveys, interviews,
observation, document analysis, content analysis) and these can be understood as
either quantitative or qualitative.
Quantitative work collects numerical data (e.g. how many disabled people
employed in culture industry work? What factors effect the number of people with
disabilities employed in that sector?) Qualitative work collects non-numerical data
that can help to understand process through rich description (e.g. when people with
disabilities work in the culture industry what pathways and processes lead to
successful employment?) As you can see, this first question example could be
answered by using a survey, or even existing data sets, but the second question
would require the researcher to talk to people with disabilities who work in the
culture industry in more in-depth interviews, or to do focus groups, or even to
analyze recruitment documents for culture industry jobs and human resources
policies. What method to use, and how research is designed, depends upon the
question being asked.
By using different theoretical approaches in sociology, we can ask more specific
questions about our world and our connection to it and each other. With social
research methods, we can explore those questions rigorously instead of using only
our common sense to navigate things as we experience life. This allows us to unlock
our sociological imagination, to see how things are connected, to understand how

we create change (or not) even when it is unintentional. The sociological

imagination allows us to examine and understand the social mechanisms at play, to
see how our individual lives are connected to the larger social world, and therefore
to see that the world could be otherwise. That is, as C. Wright Mills wrote, both the
task and the promise of sociology.

Unit 2: Major Social Processes

Week Two: Culture and Socialization
(prof blog, student discussion)
Week Three: Social Organization
(student blog 1)
In this second unit, we start to get into some of the more substantive areas and
concerns of sociology. We will start by looking at the different ways that sociology
talks about and understands culture, explore socialization and how it works, and
then move on to social organization. Culture and socialization will be covered in
Week 2. These have been grouped together because culture is what we learn
through socialization. It is therefore best to have some idea of what culture means
before talking about the processes we learn it through. Week three explores how we
understand, define, and organize groups of people (Social Organization). The blog
for Week 2 will be created by the instructor as a second example before we have
our first student created blog in week 3.

Learning Objectives
By the end of this Unit, you should be able to:

define different meanings and dimensions of culture

understand what it means to say something is socially constructed and

why that matters

describe basic patterns of socialization

identify key concepts and theories of socialization

articulate how status, role, self, and identity are connected

engage in sociological debate on questions of nature/nurture

explain how groups and organizations are connected to culture

Directions
1. Before you read, jot down how you would define the terms culture
socialization and community.
2. At the beginning of week two, read the Chapters on Culture and Being
Social.
3. Read the instructor notes for Culture and Socialization.
4. Read the Culture and Socialization blog. Make comments, engage with
the material, answer questions, participate in discussion.
5. Submit one question you have that emerges from the culture and
socialization readings by Friday of Week Two (this is the third Question
for Clarification that you are required to submit).
6. At the beginning of week three, read the chapter on Social Organization.
7. Read the Instructor notes on Social Organization.
8. Submit one question you have that emerges from the social organization
reading by Friday of Week Three (this is the fourth Question for
Clarification that you are required to submit).
9. Read the Questions for Critical Thought at the end of all three assigned
chapters, and think them through to help you internalize and apply the
material you have read in the chapter. Decide if you would like to
answer one of the questions for part of your grade (see Questions for
Critical Thought in the assignment breakdown for the course). If you
choose to answer one of the questions for this unit, it is due to the
instructor on the last day of the unit.
10.Look back at the answers you jotted down defining culture, socialization
and community before doing these readings. Do you understand things
differently now?
11.Discussion Question:

Having read about culture, socialization, and social organization,

how do any of these concepts explain social change? From these

readings, what kinds of things do you think stand in the way of

change? What helps to make it possible?

Instructor Notes on Culture

and Socialization
Culture
Culture infuses all aspects of what we do and how we understand the world around
us. It makes up the 'definition of the situation'the frameworks we use to make
things meaningful. As outlined in the glossary of the text, culture is the symbolic
and learned dimension of any and all societies. It therefore includes beliefs, ideas,
objects, artifacts, norms, values, worldviews, and meanings. Culture is central to
how we make meaning, whether in our day-to-day interactions, our institutions and
organizations, or in our conscious work of making cultural products (things like art
and the media, which are created with the purpose of conveying meaning through
symbols). Even our ideas of what nature is (which we often assume is separate from
culture), are infused with culturethat is, even though a tree is a tree is a tree,
what meaning we give to a tree is tied to culture, and that meaning will influence
how we interact with the tree, the importance we give it, the uses we have for it,
etc. Culture is everywhere, because as social beings, we make meaning out of all
we encounter, and those meaning infuse our social relations, and all aspects of
society. In short: culture is those elements of social life that have meanings that
social actors interpret and can also convey (Tepperman et al., 2014, 32).
The fact that culture is everywhere in these ways means that we can study it and
understand it under two broad umbrellas: Where does it come from? What do we do
with it?
In addition to culture, Structure is also central to societies, and can be
distinguished from culture. While culture includes the parts of social life that
embody or contain meanings, Structural aspects of society are the enduring
patterns of social relations and social institutions through which society is
organized (Tepperman et al., 2014, 33). The pattern of relationships that make up a
sports team, or our system of government are structures. Structure and culture
interact with one another, but analytically, they are distinct. When things
are analytically distinct, that means that we can distinguish between them when
we are unpacking what we observe, but that in experience they are intertwined. So
while we can identify the cultural components and the structural components of
something those components dont exist separately, but can
be discussed separately, in order to provide analytic clarity.

For example: the enduring pattern of relations that makes up the institution of the
university is the structure of the institutionevery program has a Coordinator or
Head, who oversees the work of professors. Professors sit on committees to do work
forming policies that staff help to put into place, the Dean oversees the research,
teaching and committee work of all faculty members through consultations with the
Heads and Coordinators. All these are parts of the structure of the university, (and
most Canadian universities have similar structures). The culture of different
universities will differ, however. What kinds of things can you identify as being part
of the culture of Memorial University? If youve attended another school, how did
the culture differ? In addition to their being different university cultures according to
location, there are also different cultural values and beliefs that help to explain why,
for example, there are more women than men enrolled in some areas of study.
While the first example of cultural difference is connected to physical/spatial
difference, the second (regarding gender) is connected to social positions or social
space. Finally, the beliefs and values that infuse universities now, are very different
than those that infused university 50 years ago.
While the structures may be similar in these examples about universities, shared
culture varies along these three dimensions:
1. physical space
2. social space
3. temporality
In other words culture is different in different places, it is different for people in
different social positions (e.g. men vs. women, upper class vs. working class) and in
different periods of time.
Because culture is the aspect of society that carries meanings, and because it is
contained in symbols, values, objects (etc.) that can be transmitted, that means
culture can travelit has fuzzy boundaries as the text says. This can lead to
cultures borrowing from one another, or exploiting one another. It is cultural
appropriation when a culture (usually with more power) takes or uses the
symbols, values, artifacts, or rituals of another culture without permission or
invitation and uses it for its own advantage, entertainment, or enrichment. We see
cultural appropriation often in Canada in connection with aboriginal cultures. Power
differences make cultural appropriation a serious problem and violation of culture,
since those who are part of the culture lose hold of what belongs to them as it is
taken and taken over by those with more power structurally.

Social Construction
Both culture and structure are socially constructed. But what does it mean to say
things are socially constructed? It means that they are created by us, that they are
not naturally occurring. Sometimes people make the assumption that if something

is socially constructed, that we can just change it, as if the fact that it is made by us
makes changing it easy. And sometimes people think that changing a social
construction is easier than changing nature. Neither of these things is necessarily
true. The fact that culture and structure are made by us does not mean that we can
remake or undo them at will. And the fact that nature is not made by us does not
mean we cannot change it. Indeed, we have changed nature with genetic
modifications (of tomatoes, or sheep, for example), or the extinction of various
species, but structural and cultural social constructions of racism, or unequal pay
between men and women, are still quite resistant to change, even as things shift in
our society. So while part of the promise of sociology is that things can be
otherwise, the fact that society is socially constructed does not mean that things
can be changed with ease, or by our intention alone.
This leads to the distinction between Structure and Agency. We have gone over
the discussion of structure above. Structures help to control or influence our actions
because they are enduring patterns that we expect and are expected to fulfill.
Agency, however, is our ability to make our own choices, to be agents in our own
lives, to have free will. Agency is our capacity to interpret, evaluate, choose, and
act accordingly (Tepperman et. al., 2014, 361). While this comes up more explicitly
in the reading on socialization, the different ways that culture is theorized and
understood tend to understand the influence of structure and agency differently.
When you read about the differences between Marxist and Neo-Marxist, Cultural
Functionalist and Symbolic Interactionist (or dramaturgical) approaches to culture
how can they be seen to understand the role of structure vs. agency in relation to
culture? Finally, each of these approaches tends to address what we do with culture,
or what the role of culture is in society (recall the two broad umbrellas mentioned at
the beginning of these notes). Make note of how these different theories differ in
how they view the role of culture. What do you find most compelling?
In contrast to asking what the role of culture is, the Production of
Culture perspective is one that also asks how cultural products (music, art, film,
etc.) are made. Rather than looking at only the uses of culture, this perspective is
one that examines the conditions of production for things that convey meaning, or
in other words, the production of material culture. This perspective complicates and
brings nuance to the viewpoint that cultural production is a manifestation,
reflection, or mirror of social needs or structures (as Structural Functionalist and
Marxist perspective on culture would view it to be).
Beyond understanding the how cultural products are created, how those cultural
products, like the media, art, music, literature are all used can also be further
examined sociologically. As the text outlines, cultural products (forms of art,
entertainment, and media) are connected to social hierarchies. This idea is central
to the work of Pierre Bourdieu, a contemporary theorist who said that our taste for
different kinds of cultural products (food, music, art, etc.) is connected to our social
position, or our class status. The basic idea is that what you like conveys meaning

about your social position to those around you. Not only do you communicate your
position through your tastes and preferences, but others see your preferences as an
indicator of your social position. So what we like, even though it feels individual, is
deeply social, and connected to social positions, not just individual desire and
preference.
When understanding art sociologically, we see that:
1. Art is a collective production (this come from Howard Beckers work on
Art Worlds that argues that networks of people are responsible for the
creation of art, not just individual artists)
2. Distinctions between popular culture (low culture) and high culture help
to create and recreate social stratification (inequality)
3. Our consumption of cultural products is connected to how we build our
identities and are seen by others.
Another contribution from Pierre Bourdieu is the concept of cultural capital. This is
one of the four kinds of capital Bourdieu proposed are at play in our social worlds.
1. Economic capital: Money, investments, etc.
2. Social capital: connection to other people, friendships, networks, who
you know and who you have access to
3. Symbolic capital: things that have status attached to them (e.g. titles
like Dr., while they indicate a profession, also have a level of social
status attached to them. Driving a Jaguar, has symbolic capital, and of
course, requires economic capital, but part of what you buy with all the
money that car costs is the status symbol of it)
4. Cultural capital: Educationboth formal education and degrees and
more informal learning that gives you the tools to understand cultural
frames of reference and navigate them smoothly. An example of formal
cultural capital: a Bachelor of Arts degree is a form of cultural capital
that increases your employability. Cultural capital is also what allows
people to understand operathey have learned how to enjoy it, either
through formal education, or informal socialization within a class position
that enjoys access to plentiful cultural capital.
These four forms of capital are transferable, that is money can buy status, friends
can teach you things or give you access to resources, status can get you access to
social networks, or give you better access to financial resources, etc.
Weve seen then, that culture is the aspect of society that carries and transmits
meaning, and that cultures are defined groups that share systems of meaning
(language, discourse, etc.). All of us are members of multiple culturesyouth

culture, indigenous culture, queer culture, Newfoundland culture, deaf culture,

gaming cultureall of these are examples of different cultures that people share.
And as we will see, the different cultures we are part of are connected to our
identities.

Socialization
All people, in all societies, experience socialization. The text defines socialization as
the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and motivation to participate in social life.
(Tepperman et al., 2014, 52). Even though socialization happens in all societies, that
socialization differs in different places, for people in different social positions, and
over time). Sound familiar? (Remember, the three dimensions of shared culture are
physical space, social space and temporality) This is because when people
experience processes of socialization (whether as children, or throughout the rest of
our lives) what we are learning, what we are incorporating into our selves are
components of culture.
Socialization is the process we go through to become functioning members of
society, and processes of socialization are key to the link between the individual and
societyand not just society in the largest sense, but in smaller social groupings as
well. We are socialized into organizations, into shared identities, into institutions,
into workplaces, into friendship circles. Socialization does not have an endpoint,
instead, we constantly learn and respond to new experiences and as the world
changes. Socialization is a lifelong process. As I once overheard a father say to his
young child: Thats the great thing about learning, you get to do it for your whole
life.
We are not blank slates, however. Even
though primary and secondary socialization works to build our values,
preferences, tendencies, attitudes, customs, etc. we do not passively receive these
guidelines and norms. Instead, we reflect upon and sometimes resist or even
challenge components of socialization. Here again, we see the distinction between
structure and agency: socialization is how we learn the norms, values, discourse,
and language that allow us to participate in (and maintain) society, and some of
those things are predetermined by what has come before us. We enter into existing
structures, and are shaped by them, but we also make choices, even though they
may be constrained. Think about your own life, and the ways that you have been
socialized and the cultural lessons you have learned in order to understand and
make your way through the world. In what ways have you resisted socialization?
What norms, values or beliefs have you rejected that were presented to you? What
values did you take on instead? Think about how this is connected to larger social
changes, shifts and processes.

Instructor Notes on Social

Organization
Socialization processes are how we learn to participate in social organization, but as
the chapter on Social Organization makes clear, understanding social organization
means understanding the connection between the individual and collective goals.
When we study social organization, we study the connections between how we build
our identities and how we build groups, organizations, and institutions that provide
us with roles that help us further develop our identities and shape social action,
social change, and social maintenance. Social organization is about how social
interaction is shaped and patterned into different forms. Georg Simmel (a founder of
sociological thought) broke this down to talking about:
1. Purposes and motives of interaction
2. Forms of interaction.
The material in the chapter on Social Organization can be grouped under these two
umbrellas.

Purposes and Motives of Interaction

To understand purposes and motives of interaction, we need to look at the
individual side of how we are connected to larger collective goals and understand
the concepts of Status, Role, and Identity. All three of these contribute to how we
interact with others, that is, to the purposes and motives of how we connect to
people, engage with people, build relationships and get things done.
In the chapter on socialization, we saw that socialization differs according to social
position, that is, who we are and what categories we belong to influence how we are
socialized (gender is a clear example of this that the text explores). While we learn
culture and structure through processes of socialization, the norms and
expectations we learn are connected to statuses and roles. That is, how you are
expected to behave differs according to who you think you are and according to
who the world thinks you are, and we know these expectations because of the
processes of socialization that have taught us these rules and positions of play.
Statuses are the social positions we hold, and roles are the expected actions,
rules, or scripts for behavior that are connected to statuses and which include both

rights and responsibilities. A status can be either ascribed or achieved. And all of
us occupy more than one status. Our gender is a status, as is our race or ethnicity,
our occupation, our dis/ability status, our family role, our religion, our sexuality, our
age group, our preferred pastimes and any other identifier around which we build
shared categorization with others.
An ascribed status is one we are born into or with, or that we have imposed on us
with ascribed status, we dont have much say in the matter. We are born into a
class status (that of our family), the bodies we have are ascribed races that we do
not control, we have our gender assigned at birth according to our genitalia
(although those of us who are trans know that the initial assignment may not be
correct, since gender is not only or decisively about genitalsmore on this in the
next unit!).
An achieved status, however, is one that we gain through our own efforts. Those of
us who are gamers, those of us who are vegetarian, those of us who are comedians,
those of us who are parentsall these statuses are achieved, they exist because of
what we do, because of what we have chosen to do and the meaning we have
assigned to that.
Take a minute to consider the ways that we think about achieved and ascribed
statuses. It is interesting the ways that different statuses are understood. Being an
artist or a musician, for instance, is clearly an achieved status. It requires hard work,
commitment, resources, practice. But even an achieved status can start to feel like
it has the inevitability of an ascribed status when it becomes a key component of
our identity.
Identity is how we see ourselves as a social object (Tepperman et al., 2014, 76),
that is, it is who we are in the world, or how we tell ourselves and the rest of the
world who we are. As mentioned above, this will include more than one status, since
all of us are more than one thing. What are all the things you are? What statuses do
you have? You are a student, but what else? All of the statuses that you hold are
your status set. Your status set shifts as you move through different statuses
(become a parent, age, change hobbies, learn new skills, change jobs, graduate,
change religions, become acclimatized to using a wheelchair after injury, etc.).
Different statuses in your status set will have different levels of importance for you,
and those which are most important are central to your identity. Identity is different
from master status because identity is about what we embrace about our statuses
and put forward to the world. In contrast, a master status overrides all other
statuses we have in terms of how other people see us. A strong example of this is
when, if we use a wheelchair, people see us as disabled over anything else, or how

gender and race are a master status (people see these things about us firstor
think that they do, or try to).
Identities can be seen in two ways: personal identity is who we see ourselves to be,
and social identity is the roles we play. Sometimes these two things line up, but not
always. We may have the social identity of being a server in a restaurant, but not
have it be part of how we see ourselves to be in the world. After all, sometimes a
job is just your job, not central to your understanding of yourself.
While a status is a social position, roles are the rights and responsibilities, or
expected behaviours, associates with any particular status (is vs. does; be vs. do).
In your status as a student in this course, for example, there are certain things
expected of you, your roles to fulfill. You have responsibilities you are expected to
meet, and you also have the right to certain things: you have the right to receive
feedback on your work, for example, or to be graded fairly amongst your
peers. Role conflict is what happens when the expectations attached to one status
make it difficult to fulfill the role (expectations) attached to another status. For
example, perhaps you could not do the reading for one of your courses by the
expected time (role of student) because you were tending to a sick child (role of
parent or guardian). Role strain is different. With role strain it isnt conflicting
roles, but multiple demands within one role that cause stress. Professors, for
example, must juggle the demands of teaching and mentoring students adequately
while also doing research, writing, publishing, and also performing administrative
duties. It is an example of role strain when you feel like you are too busy working
to do your job.
Given the connections between status and identity, it makes sense that since
statuses can change (and therefore also our roles) so can identity. All of us
experience identity change at some point in our lives (I would suspect). We may
decide to join the priesthood, or we may decide to leave it. We may come out as
queer or trans, we may decide to enter or leave a marriage, or we may change our
religion. We may decide to become parents. We may change our citizenship. All of
these can be examples where identity change comes into play. One of the central
differences between status changes and identity changes is that identity change
involves our personal identity shifting in ways where we may need to account for
who we used to be in relation to who we are now.
In thinking about any possible identity changes you have experienced, do you think
the four stages outlined in the text reflect your experience? Why might it matter
more if you are an ex-nun than an ex-waitress? How might that connect to the
differences between personal and social identity, role, status, and master status?

Forms of Interaction
While status, role, and identity are on the individual side of understanding social
organization, since they help explain the purposes and motives of interaction on
that individual level, we also need to understand the different forms that interaction
takes once we take up the roles associated with our various statuses and identities.
The text identifies five different types of social organization, or different kinds of
groupings of people:

1. Categories
Categories are made up of people who are not connected with one another
personally, but have a commonality that connects them as a type which is
socially significant. Examples include: teenagers, redheads, male people,
etc. Categories are only important or interesting sociologically if they are
representative of meaningful boundaries (you see? Culture rears its head
again). So, people whose second toe is longer than their big toe are not
a meaningful category of people sociologically, since we dont assign
importance or social/cultural significance to the length of the second toe.

2. Networks
Social networks, however are groups of people who are either directly or
indirectly connected. While different forms of capital can flow through
either direct or indirect social networks, there is no sense of collective of
shared identity necessarily attached to the network, there is not a
collective or shared goal, and the people in the network dont know who
all the members are, or their characteristics.

3. Communities
Unlike networks, when a group of people share an identity they are often
referred to as a community. That shared identity may come from any
aspect of their status set. It could be that they live in the same
neighbourhood, or that they are all poets, or all identify as LGBTQ, or
share religious values, or similar interests. The sci-fi community, for
example.

4. Groups
In groups, unlike communities, networks, or categories, members as all
connected with one another and are aware of one another. Within this

form of interaction, there are primary groups where people interact

regularly, and secondary groups, which are larger and may not have as
regular contact. Groups are based on face-to-face interaction, and often
inspire loyalty.

5. Organizations
Organizations include a shared or collective goal or purpose and can
be informal or formal. The text refers to informal organizations
as spontaneous. When an organization is spontaneous, it is because a
group of people come together to accomplish a particular goal, which,
upon completion, disbands the group. A study group for a final exam, is
one possible example. Ive seen people pull their cars over to jump out
and work together to get a lost dog out of traffic and to safetyclearly an
informal and spontaneous organization, but like all organizations, forms of
communication and leadership fall into place as people work to solve the
problem or meet the shared goal.
Another subset of informal organizations are cliques. Cliques are informal
organizations with unstated goals: to draw a line between insiders and
outsiders where insiders are deemed to be of higher
status. Formal organizations, however, are planned and coordinated
groupings of people whose roles are defined in order to streamline the
meeting of a shared goal or goals. Indeed, it is the roles and statuses of
members that are the framework, and often the actual people who fill
those rolls are irrelevant. This is particularly true of bureaucracies. Both
bureaucracies and total institutions are examples of formal organizations,
and both work to rationalize the possibilities that we see in the function
and uses of roles and statuses, in order to streamline meeting particular
goals. In total institutions, the goal is to control people, to manage their
identity, to completely resocialize people. We see examples of total
institutions in Canadas residential schools, used to perpetuate cultural
genocide (and genocide itself) against aboriginal peoples. Prisons too, are
often total institutions, as are convents, or training institutes for soldiers.
In reviewing the characteristics of bureaucracy in the text, what do you see as the
drawbacks and benefits? How might this relate to questions of structure and
agency? Where might culture fit in?

Unit 3: Social inequality

 Week Four: Class and Status (student

blog 2)
Week Five: Gender and Sexuality
(student blog 3)
Week Six: Race and Ethnicity
(student blog 4)

Introduction
In Unit Three, we are exploring social inequality. This is sometimes referred to as
social stratification since categories or types of people occupy different strata or
levels in society, depending on their access to different forms of capital (remember
it is not just about money, or financial capital, but also about symbolic, cultural, and
social capital and how these forms of capital interact). This unit has three weeks of
study, but each of these weeks can be (and often is) the base for entire courses and
subfields within the discipline. We will begin with looking at class and status, then
move on to explore gender and sexuality, then race and ethnicity. While these three
vectors of inequality (class, gender and race) are central categories in sociology for
understanding social inequality, they are not the only bases upon which inequality is
built or maintained. Indeed, disability is also central to how we organize our social
world, as is age, or citizenship status. While these are touched on in the text, it is
worth thinking about what is left out in the course materials, and to consider how
the silences about some forms or aspects of inequality in our formal learning help to
maintain structures and systems that perpetuate inequality. After all, the 2012
Canadian Survey on Disability conducted by Statistics Canada found that almost
14% of the adult population in Canada are limited in their daily activities because of
disability, and yet, our textbook index has only one reference for disability, and that
is to a 2 paragraph section (only 1/2 a page) focusing on disability in a book about
social structures, institutions, and realities that is 360 pages long.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this Unit, you should be able to:

provide sociological definitions for race, class, gender, and disability

understand the concept of intersectionality and be able to apply it in

analyzing the world around you

articulate how social inequalities connect to individual lives and

circumstances (use your sociological imaginations!)

explain how socialization processes connect to structural inequality

engage in discussion of how categories presumed to be natural are

socially constructed and maintained

Directions
Before you read anything, jot down how you would define the terms equality,
inequality, class, gender, sexuality and race.

Week Four Instructions

1. At the beginning of week four, read the Chapter on Class, Status, and
Social Inequality.
2. Read the Instructor notes for Class, Status, and Social Inequality.
3. Read the Class, Status, and Social Inequality blog. Make comments,
engage with the material, answer questions, participate in discussion.
4. If you have a question about the material in this chapter, submit one
question that emerges from the readings by Friday of Week Four (this will
be the fifth Question for Clarification that you are required to submit if
you choose to submit it. You will have to do two for this unit, and may
choose which material you submit your question on).

Week Five Instructions

1. At the beginning of Week Five, read the chapter on Gender and Sexuality.
2. Read the Instructor notes on Gender and Sexuality.
3. If you have a question about the material in this chapter, submit one
question that emerges from the readings by Friday of Week Five (this will

be either your fifth or sixth Question for Clarification that you are
required to submit if you choose to submit it. You will have to do two for
this unit, and may choose which material you submit your question on) .

Week Six Instructions

1. At the beginning of Week Six, read the chapter on Race and Ethnicity.
2. Read the Instructor notes on Race and Ethnicity.
3. Watch the documentary Journey to Justice.
4. Read the Race and Ethnicity blog. Make comments, engage with the
material, answer questions, participate in discussion.
5. If you have a question about the material in this chapter, submit one
question that emerges from the readings by Friday of Week Six (this will
be the sixth Question for Clarification that you are required to submit if
you choose to submit it. You will have to do two for this unit, and may
choose which material you submit your question on)
6. Read the Questions for Critical Thought at the end of all three assigned
chapters, and think them through to help you internalize and apply the
material you have read in the chapter. Decide if you would like to
answer one of the questions for part of your grade (see Questions for
Critical Thought in the assignment breakdown for the course). If you
choose to answer one of the questions for this unit, it is due to the
instructor on the last day of the unit.
Remember: your graded questions for critical though must NOT be on
topics you are blogging for.
7. Look back at the answers you jotted down defining equality,
inequality, class, gender, sexuality, and race before doing these
readings. Do you understand things differently now? In what ways?

Instructor Notes on Class,

Status, and Social Inequality
Culture
In the last unit, you were introduced to the idea that much of our lives are socially
constructed (both structure and culture), so that even while we live in the natural

world, what we make of it (how we understand it, the truths we build about it) are
things we create through different social processes. Remember, just because
something is socially constructed doesnt mean that it is less real than other
aspects of the world we live in.
In this unit, you will be introduced to some central concepts and categories of social
inequality. At its core, social inequality is connected to social constructions - over
time and through our ongoing interactions and institutions, we build the systems
that make some kinds or types of people have privileges and opportunities that are
not granted to all kinds or types of people. Different kinds of people do not have
innately different values or worth. One of the things we do, however, is socially
construct categories to sort people into, and we often infuse those categories with
worth or with stigma. That is what it means to say that inequality is socially
constructed. Inequality is something created in and by our societies, and as such, it
is something that we can work to change. That change can be difficult to make, but
it is possible. Understanding how social inequality works, the mechanisms that build
and maintain it, can be important first steps to working for change. It can also help
us to build policies that do what we intend, rather than have unintended
consequences - it can help us to make our world more consciously.
It is important to understand that inequality is structural, and is not only the result
of discriminatory attitudes or actions of individuals. Instead, individually
discriminatory attitudes or actions emerge from cultures and structures that allow
for and/or encourage inequitable beliefs. What does it mean to say that inequality is
structural? There are benefits for some, and barriers for others built into the
different structures, institutions, and cultural values that pervade our daily lives.
This means that despite our individual best intentions, if we dont attend to
structural inequality, inequities will persist. Indeed, racism, homophobia, ableism,
sexism, classism, etc. are written into many of our institutions in ways that
perpetuate these dynamics of inequality despite our good intentions if we dont
work to dismantle how they are embodied in our social structures and cultures. As
the text notes: class divisions are sustained not only by various institutions,
ranging from elite private schools to political parties, but also by popular ideologies
that legitimize and perpetuate specific social and class arrangements (Tepperman
et al., 2014, 115).
Different categories that are used to build structural inequality are sometimes
called vectors of oppression. What this means, is that people are afforded privilege
and opportunities, or discriminated against based on their relationship to that
category. Another way to think of it is that these are different bases of inequality.
There is inequality based on class, on race, on gender, on sexuality, on disability, on
age, on religions, on citizenship, etc. Many of these are ascribed statuses (see notes
from last unit).

Class
Class is the first basis of inequality we are examining. Class inequality means that
there is inequality based on ones access to material and economic resources.
Having access to money (and other forms of financial capital) is often connected to
having access to social capital and to power. Put very simply, the people who
control assets and resources have the most power, and therefore the most privilege
and opportunity. Your class, as in individual attribute, is your social position in
societys economic hierarchy, and typically people talk about upper class, middle
class, and lower class. While these are categorizations connected to how much
money one has (either personal income or family income), status is a related term
that refers to your social position according to your symbolic capital, or the esteem
with which you are regarded. Of course, this is often connected to wealth, but the
connection is not always direct. There are jobs, for example, where one can make a
great deal of money, but they may not have the social status that is often
connected to higher income.
While class and status are usually viewed as achieved, (our text views it this way) it
is also true that we all come from families whose class and status determine ours,
at least at the outset, so that our class and status are never an individual
achievement but are instead connected to the positions we were born into. As our
dominant North American narrative of rags to riches stories attests, peoples class
position can change over the course of their lives. So while the class position we are
born into shapes our life history, it is not an unchangeable category. However,
contrary to the dream of meritocracy (where hard work is always rewarded)
changes in class are often also connected to larger historical shifts in economic
opportunity, and to how those shifting opportunities provide different possibilities
for people to reach for and achieve. This does not mean that those who have been
awarded do not work hard - of course, many do. What it means is that there are also
people working just as hard or harder, who do not receive those same rewards,
often because of intersections of different statuses that people hold, and which
place them in different structural positions, with different access to opportunities
and resources. While a meritocracy is an ideal in a society that values individualism,
as the text makes clear (p. 115), if that were the reality of how our society works,
there would be much more social mobility. Instead, most people remain in the class
they were born into.
Our text looks at how four different sociological approaches take up the idea of
social stratification.

Conflict
Marx is the central example of a conflict approach (which sees society as a set of
competing social groups), sees society as divided into classes according to their

relationship to the means of production. This relationship is what determines class.

The means of production are the resources (land, machinery, workers, factories,
money) that allow for the production of wealth. Those that own or control the means
of production are the bourgeoisie, and they are the ruling class, since they have
control over the resources that create profit. The proletariat are the workers
(working class), who must sell their labour power to the bourgeoisie because they
do not own or control sufficient property and resources. Because the bourgeoisie is
the class who benefits from the creation of profit (those who control the workers
benefit more than those who do the work themselves) Marx saw class conflict as
inevitable, since he believed the proletariat would develop class consciousness, that
is a recognition that workers share a similar position, and can band together to work
for a more equitable distribution of profits and a different arrangement for
production. Do you think there is a class consciousnessamong those who work for
others in Canadian society? What evidence do you see? What are the effects (either
or where you see it, or where you dont)?

Structural Functionalist
To exemplify a structural functionalist approach to social stratification, the text
explains Durkheims notion of two types of solidarity. The first is mechanical
solidarity, which exists when there is little division of labour (that is, everyone does
similar work for their own subsistence and wellbeing). With mechanical solidarity,
people are presumed to have common beliefs, experiences and values, and it is the
fact that they have these things in common that creates their solidarity with one
another. The second type of solidarity isorganic solidarity. With this social form,
solidarity is created by the interdependence people have when everyone has
different roles. That is, with the division of labour (some people do this work, other
people do that work) people become increasingly reliant on one another to do their
part. Organic solidarity exists because of the necessity of collaboration and
cooperation. In this view, social stratification is about each part of society
contributing to the equilibrium of the whole. However, as the text notes (p. 117) if
the division of labour is forced so that people do not feel a moral obligation to one
another, class polarization can occur and threaten equilibrium.

Symbolic Interactionist
With symbolic interactionist perspectives on social stratification, the focus is more
on the cultural components of stratification. In other words, this approach tends to
focus on how class divisions are represented symbolically, and made meaningful in
the ongoing reproduction of class inequality. Here the text cites the work of
Thorstein Veblen (The Theory of the Leisure Class). Veblen talks about the leisure
class (in contrast to the working class) who display their wealth symbolically

through what they purchase and enjoy. The leisure class performs their class
position to display status symbolsthe symbolic embodiment of social inequality
(Tepperman et al., 2014, 117) and that symbolic display of status symbols works to
maintain class division and create divisions as categories of worth instead of
categories of who has access to what resources. Because wealth is translated into
these symbols of personal worth, people often try to avoid the stigma of not being
wealthy, by engaging in conspicuous consumption beyond that they can afford. In
doing so, people can go into massive debt, therefore ensuring their class position
will not change, even if they drive a car that is a status symbol.

Feminist
As is often the case, a feminist approach to social stratification is one that includes
women and womens experiences as part of the analysis, rather than theorizing
from masculine experiences alone, which has often been the case in classical
approaches to stratification. In terms of how this relates to class, feminist scholars
show how class and gender intersect in important ways because of the ways that
labour forces are feminized and masculinized. The feminization of poverty is an
insight that women, throughout their lives, are more likely to be poor because of the
gendered structure of labour markets and the gendered division of labour.
This last approach leads into the idea of intersectionality, where different attributes
come together in very specific ways in peoples lives, experiences and structural
positions.

Intersectionality
Intersectionality, is the word used to hold the very simple idea that none of us is
only one thing. While its a simple idea, it can be complex in how it plays out. What
are all of your statuses and categories? Are you a disabled, heterosexual, upper
class white man? What does that mean about your structural position? How does
the fact of your disability interact with the privilege you may be afforded because of
your gender or your race? Social inequalities are not isolated categories. No one is
just female, or just gay, or just rich, or just Muslim, or just an immigrant. No one is
only their gender, or only their race, or only their class, or only their sexuality. The
different statuses we are ascribed or achieve are interwoven and interconnected,
making structural positions and structural inequality quite complex. How you
experience gender depends upon how you experience race and class. What it
means to be a woman or a man depends on the cultural expectations of your class
position. Similarly, what class privilege you have is influenced by your race.
One of the tricky things about understanding class as a basis for inequality is that it
often intersects with other bases of inequality. Women, for example, with equivalent
education and qualifications, systematically get paid less than men for the work
they perform. This means that part of the inequity of female status can be

understood economically. This is true for many different statuses that are bases for
inequality - those who are marginalized also often have less money (this is another
example of the connection between social power and economic resources). The text
notes and explores how women (especially single mothers), single people,
Aboriginal people, people with disabilities visible minorities, recent immigrants, and
the working poor are particularly susceptible to economic marginalization.
However, poverty is not the only expression of inequality for those of us
marginalized for our sexuality or our race or our disability, and poverty is also a
separate base for marginalization. That is, being poor can be stigmatizing all on its
ownand its not just about having less money. Think about all the different
stereotypes you know about poor people. If your family does not have a lot of
money, have you encountered stereotypes or assumptions about what that means
about you, your character, your values, or your capabilities? If you have not faced
these assumptions yourself, think about examples you can find in popular media.
How are those of us who are poor represented? What might the implications of that
be?
Now, if we are going to talk about poverty, we need to define it. But that is, of
course, not as easy as it sounds. There are countless things that can result in
individual poverty, and very few of us if anyare immune. Indeed, most people are
one crisis away from poverty, one car accident, one lost job, one fire, one bad
illness. While these things affect us personally and on an individual level, the
sociological imagination allows us to see how these personal troubles are connected
to private issues. As the text says: There are many structural variable that
influence poverty levels, such as deindustrialization (the replacement of well-paid
manufacturing jobs with lower-paid service-based jobs), rising costs of living,
barriers to opportunities (such as increased tuitions for education and training
programs), limited access to affordable housing, inability to obtain credit, and so on
(Tepperman et al., 2014, 127).

Poverty
But how do we define what it means to be poor? What is poverty? How do you
recognize it? There is absolute poverty, and there isrelative poverty.
Absolute poverty is the inability to meet basic needs of food, shelter, and
clothing. It is when you are unable to provide for your own subsistence needs. In
contrast, relative poverty is poverty defined by community standards. So if it is
usual (if it is the standard of living) to own a car, a cellphone, and to have internet
access at home and there is no way you can afford a car, a cellphone, and internet
access at home, that is an example of relative poverty, even though you may be
able to feed, clothe and shelter yourself.

Different definitions of poverty will have different effects on what kinds of policies
are put into place. Think about the differences between workfare and a Guaranteed
Annual Income for everyone. One assumes laziness on the part of the poor, the
other assumes a right to a certain level of security.
It is not only different definitions of poverty that have effects on what kinds of
policies are put in place. There are different ways of understanding equality that
affect how we approach inequality (and this applies to social inequality of all kinds).
When you look at efforts to create equality, you can see that some efforts
see equality as uniformity, while others see equality as equity.
Equality as uniformity
Works from the premise that we are all the same and presumes a level
playing field

Demands that all are treated in the same way, with no variance in
treatment for anyone

Equality as equity
Works to promote equality of outcomes and points to structural privilege
and marginalization

Demands treatment that addresses inequality and seeks to level the

field.

When you see different examples of people or institutions working for equality, think
about what definition they are using. What would change if they changed their
definition to acknowledge structural inequality?

Instructor Notes on Gender

and Sexuality
Terms
1. Cisgender
Cisgender (or cis for short) is the term for those of us who are the gender
we were assigned at birth. You are cisgender if the doctor or midwife said

Its a boy, or Its a girl, and you have never disagreed with that
assessment.

2. Transgender
Transgender (or trans for short) is the term for those of us whose gender
is not the one we were assigned at birth. Those of us who are trans may
be men or women but have been assigned a different gender at birth, or
we may not be a binary gender (we could be both, or neither, and
therefore be gender-fluid, bigender, agender, or genderqueer, for
example).

3. Hegemonic Masculinity
Hegemonic masculinity includes dominant, traditionally masculine traits.
While these might be different at different times, or in different
cultures,hegemonic masculinity as the text notes is distinguished from
other expressions of masculinity that are subordinated and/or
marginalized, and it is especially distinguishied from femininity
(Tepperman et al., 2014, 145). Interestingly, part of hegemonic
masculinity is the presumption of heterosexuality as being central to how
masculinity is expressed.

4. Emphasized Femininity
Emphasized femininity is the feminine counterpart to hegemonic
masculinity. It is also sometimes called hyperfemininity and includes
traditionally feminine and/or highly sexualized traits (again, these are
variable across time and cultures). Like hegemonic
masculinity, emphasized femininity is presumed to be heterosexual. We
see this when people are surprised by the existence of feminine lesbians,
or the ways that lesbians who have feminine expressions of gender are
often presumed to be straight. This is because traditional and dominant
expressions of masculinity and femininity areheteronormative (see the
next definition).

5. Heteronormativity
It is heternormative thinking to assume that heterosexuality is the
universal norm. In other words, with heteronormativity, heterosexuality is
treated as if it were a neutral category against which all other forms and
expressions of sexuality are measured or compared. Things that

are heteronormative are also sometimes called heterocentric (meaning it

puts heterosexuality in thecentre of all understandings of sexuality and of
how the world works).

6. Cisnormativity
Like heteronormativity, cisnormativity is an assumption about a universal
norm. Cisnormativity is the assumption that being cisgender is a universal
norm. With cisnormativity, being cisgender is treated as if it were the
neutral category of gender (or only category of gender) against which all
other forms and expressions of gender are measured or compared. Things
that arecisnormative are also sometimes called ciscentric (meaning it puts
beingcisgender in the centre of all understandings of gender and how the
world works). For example, it can be cisnormative to assume there are
only two genders, since that is what is true among those who are
cisgender.

Instuctor's Notes
We have already started to cover some ideas about gender in the previous chapter,
when talking about the feminization of poverty, and the gendered division of labour.
Now, we will talk more about gender, and also about sexuality, and in doing so we
will unpack and analyze how these categories are socially constructed, and the
ways they are connected to structural inequality.
The text outlines how gender and sexuality are critical vantage points, and social
constructions which involve relations of power and inequality. These notes outline
what it means to say gender and sexuality are critical vantage points and social
constructions. Through the explanations provided, it will be made clear how
relations of power and inequality are part of the ways these categories are used as
vantage points and connect to inequality.

Gender and Sexuality as Critical Vantage Points

To say that gender and sexuality are critical vantage points means that by taking
gender and sexuality seriously, and by including views from the structural positions
held by women, trans folk, and those who arent heterosexual, we are better able to
see how our social structure, culture, institutions, and organizations are built. Have
you ever heard the saying that the only thing a fish is unaware of is water? The
same can be true when we think about how power works in relation to different
social categories. As the text discusses, much of our authorized knowledge in North

America (that is, the things we learn about in high schools and university) has
historically been produced using mostly heterosexual male perspectives as if they
were neutral, when of course, they are notthey are perspectives made possible by
a certain structural position. By assuming these positions are objective or neutral
we imbue them with the power to define the situation, but also, we lose out on
insights that other structural positions can provide. This is what the text means
when it says that gender and sexuality are vantage points. A vantage point, says
the text, enables us to see ourselves, the social institutions around us, and our
social worlds in ways that include more experiences and provides an angle to
critique the status quo (Tepperman et al., 2014, 134). In other words, opening
ourselves to different vantage points lets us see the water or the things that we
often take for granted as how things are.
Another way to think of how gender and sexuality work as vantage points, in fact
how any category that is a basis for how structural inequality works as a vantage
point, is through the concept of marked and unmarked categories. Again, this is true
not only for gender and sexuality, but also for disability status, race, etc.
Unmarked categories refers to categories which are not remarked upon,
categories that are assumed to be the norm in one way or another, or which are
taken as neutral. It is important to note, however, that these categories are NOT
normal or neutral. In fact, having the value of being neutral or normal
assigned to you is one of the privileges of being a member of that category. Being
the norm is a position of power. That is why there is a slogan in LGBTQ politics:
heterosexuality is not normal, it is just common. This slogan questions the power
dynamic wherein being anything other than heterosexual is seen as not normal or
requiring explanation of some sort. The same is true with gender, and can be seen
in male-centred (androcentric) assumptions that, for example, presume male
experiences in the workforce are the universal norm for all experiences in the work
force (as we saw earlier in the text, pp. 117-118).
To provide example of this, consider the following riddle:

A father and son are in a car accident and the father is killed
instantly. The son is rushed to the hospital. When he arrives to
emergency, the doctor exclaims: "I can't operate on this boy." "Why
not?" the nurse asks. "Because he's my son," the doctor responds.
How is this possible?

This is a fairly well known riddle, and if you know it, the answer is.the doctor is his
mother. If we are puzzled by the riddle, it is because we have assumed the doctor to
be male, a presumption that we have because culturally produced sexism makes
doctor a category that means male unless it is marked otherwise. In this case,
the status doctor holds within it the unmarked category of male, since the status
of medical authority is often presumed to be masculine.
Now thinkthere are other answers we could give for this riddle that also show us
how marked and unmarked categories can lead us to make assumptions which limit
our views of what is possible, some of which are: 1) The boy is the son of two gay
men, one of whom is the doctor. 2) The doctor is a trans man who had a child. 3)
The father who was killed was a trans man. 4) The doctor is the stepfather of the
child.
Marked categories refers to categories that are contrasted with or measured
against the unmarked categories that are assumed to be the norm. The doctor in
the traditional answer to the riddle above is in the marked category of being female,
and it is because she is marked as differing from the presumed norm of masculinity
in practicing medicine that the riddle can exist at all. In the alternate answers
provided, it is trans identity, or gay identity or being from a blended family, that
would be the marked categories that, when not noted in the description of the
doctor, make the riddle puzzling.
Recall from the instructor notes and text material on identity (Unit Two), that
identity is about what we embrace about our statuses and put forward to the world.
In contrast, a master status overrides all other statuses we have in terms of
how other people see us.Marked categories of gender, sexuality, or other categories
connected to structural inequality often become master statuses. So that if you
have a friend you connect with because you both like the same music, you live in
the same neighbourhood, whose sense of humour you enjoy, and with whom you
have established a strong rapport and sense of mutual trust, and if that friend uses
a wheelchair, and you do not, they may be seen by others as your disabled friend
instead of your best friend. Or if they are not white, and you are, they may be seen
as your Asian friend, instead of your best friend. Or if they are not cisgender and
you are, they may be seen as your trans friend----you get the picture. The marked
category, in these examples, has become the master status of how people identify
your best friend.

Gender and Sexuality as Social Constructions

It may sound counterintuitive to think of gender or sexuality as socially constructed,
when we often feel them as such central and essential parts of our selves and

identities. Gender, in particular, because of the ways it is misunderstood to be

about chromosomes and genitalia is a category we often make the mistake of
thinking is a biological fact. While of course, penises and clitorises exist as biological
facts, and chromosomes are biologically existent, connecting penises with
masculinity or clitorises with femininity is a social and cultural construct. Biology is
not what decides what it means to be masculine or feminine. Even deciding to sort
gender into only two categories (man and woman) is a social and cultural
construction that not only cultural and historical variations prove false, but which
the realities of biology often complicate.
But the fact remains, that we use biological markers (the presence of testicles or
labia, XX or XY chromosomes etc.) to sort people into categories of male and female
and assign a sex at birth. To say that gender is socially constructed does not deny
the existence of biologybut highlights that the categories we sort people into do
not exist biologically. The categories are constructs we have created. While people
sometimes distinguish between sex and gender, with sex being connected to
biologically based markers and gender being connected to social and cultural
markers, it is important to note that even the categories of sex, are socially
constructed.

Instructor Notes on Race and

Ethnicity
Race as a Social Construction
Like gender and sexuality, people often think of race as a biological characteristic.
Although it is associated with biological, physical and other characteristics,
categories of race are socially constructed. The concept of race, and its various
groupings/categories is historically specific and socially contingent. Biologically,
race doesnt existthere are more differences among groups than there are
between groups (so white people are more different from each other than they are
different from other racialized groups). Using arbitrary similarities to create a
category, even if some of those similarities are biological, does not mean the
category is a biological reality. We create race, and the fact that our categories of
race shift according to historical and social context is evidence of that fact. Skin
tone is one marker of race, as are different patterns of speech (the first is biological,
the second is not). And there are people who are now considered white, who have
not been seen as white in the past, though their skins remain the same. Again, like
with gender, the attributes we use as markers are sometimes biologically based

(skin colour and eye colour are created by different levels of melanin), and
sometimes behavioural (speech patterns and styles, as mentioned above) but the
meanings we attach to those markers is socially constructed. Race is about how we
understand the worldit is a social and cultural construction.

Racialization
The social creation of race is called racialization. The social process
of racialization is when arbitrary characteristics are imbued with extended
meanings that structure social relations to the advantage of one group over others.
Sometimes people talk about the visible majority as those who are given structural
advantage by the process of racialization, while those who are not afforded
advantage are called visible minority. The problem with these two terms is that it
can make it sound like it is about the number of people in different categories of
race, and that is not what the term indicates, since those with racial privilege (white
people) do not outnumber visible minorities.
It comes back to the idea of marked and unmarked categories. Those who are white
are not usually seen as having a race or an ethnicity in dominant North American
contexts, because in terms of race, white is an unmarked category. Those of us
who arent white are marked by race. Food that is commonly eaten by people who
are white is not called ethnic food even though it is connected to shared cultural
characteristics and food practices. When we say something is ethnic in
Newfoundland, what do we mean? We mean it isnt white, as if whiteness does not
have ethnicity.
It is also important to note that race and ethnicity can be distinguished from each
other. While race is about arbitrary characteristics being used to build social
categories of structural inequality, ethnicity is about shared cultural characteristics
and practices, and shared identity and a felt sense of commonality. While the two
terms are related, they are not the same thing.
The process of racialization is clearly central to racism. But how can we define
racism?
Racism is:

A set of collective beliefs about the supposed inferiority of a group

defined as a race

Practices and structures that systematically disadvantage or

discriminate against members of a group defined as a race

An ideology that rationalizes, legitimizes, and sustains patterns of

inequality along the dividing lines of racial groupings.

Connected to the maintenance of inequality of an entire group of people

defined as a race (even though often experienced individually)

Systemic Racism or Institutional Racism is when a group of people who are

defined as a race is systematically disadvantaged through a system or institution,
regardless of the intent or beliefs of the people involved in that system or
institution. It is important to remember this component of racism, and to avoid
seeing racism as an individual characteristic or individually held belief. While it does
occur at the individual level, the issue is far more pervasive, and infuses many of
our ways of understanding and organizing the social. What examples of systemic
racism come to mind as you watch the film Journey to Justice?
In terms of how we understand race, ethnicity, and racism in Canada, the text
explores Canadian immigration policies, and the concept of multiculturalism.

Aspects of Multiculturalism
1. It is descriptive, or as the text says it is a demographic reality
(Tepperman et al., 2014, 158). What this means, is that the Canadian
population is made up of people from many different cultures.
2. It is also prescriptivemeaning that it provides an ideal that Canada is
supposed to work toward, a pluralist ideal that embraces the notion that
different groups can coexist together in a larger unity.
Because it is prescriptive, it ends up being deeply connected to different
government policies, practices, and programsand it also means that there can be
struggle over political resources among minority groups.
One issue the text points out, is that policies of multiculturalism can help to hide the
realities of racism and colonialism in Canadian culture and institutions, by shifting
the focus onto cultures. In other words, multiculturalism can be seen as addressing
ethnicity, but ignoring race, and structural inequality connected to race.
Additionally, in relation to Canadian Aboriginal peoples, multiculturalism, as a
prescriptive ideology informing government programs and struggle over resources
is part of continued colonialism and erasure of Aboriginal rights to self-governance.
This is because multiculturalism can reduce Aboriginal peoples to being seen as just
another minority group in a plural nation, rather than acknowledging their status as
the first occupants of this land.

As was outlined in the notes on class, economic marginalization is often one of the
markers for structural inequality on the basis of race. In other words, being
discriminated against in the labour market is one the things that happens because
of systemic and cultural racism, with the end effect being that people who arent
white have less access to economic resources than people who are white.
The realities of intersectionality, however (remember, none of us are only one thing)
mean that there is variation and stratification of earnings within racialized groups as
well. The text notes, for example, that women make less than men in all ethnic
groups and social classes, and also, the more people within an ethnic group who are
recent immigrants, the more likely it is for that ethnic group to have lower earnings
(Tepperman et al., 2014, 166). As the text elaborates upon, immigration status is a
particularly powerful basis upon which economic marginalization occurs, with
members of the same race or ethnic group who are Canadian-born bearing less of
the burden of economic marginalization. And the amount of money that recent
immigrants to Canada earn has been steadily decreasinga disturbing trend of
structural inequality for new Canadians. The only category of racialized people who
do not see an increase in their earnings for being born here are those of us who are
Aboriginal in Canada, who, as we saw in our earlier readings on poverty, are at
much greater risk of impoverishment, due at least in part to deeply ingrained
institutional and structural racism and colonialism that has actively worked to
obliterate Aboriginal peoples and cultures through government policies, residential
schools, foster care, adoption, violence, assimilation, cultural appropriation, etc.

Blog
Reading through the materials for this first week, I found myself thinking about the core of what it means to do sociology,
regardless of the topic that is being studied. In this video Dalton Conley talks about how sociology makes the familiar
strange and gives another way of talking about some of the ways we can understand the use and purposes of sociological
thought.http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2012/12/everyday-sociology-talk-making-the-familiar-strange.html
He talks about how sociology can show how things may seem naturalbut they arent, which reminds me of a teacher I
had in undergrad who said in lecture that in sociology, you learn that everything could be otherwise. And this is the
promise of sociology that it can help us to see how we as individuals are connected to the larger social world, and if we
can understand the dynamics of that connection? Well, then we can do a lot. After all, if things are socially constructed,
why not work to build them more consciously, or with an eye for what the unintended consequences might be?
For examples of what it could mean to do sociology beyond just explaining what the sociological imagination is, this list of
sociological New Years Resolutions is kind of fun:
http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2012/01/sociological-new-years-resolutions.html
You can see here the ways that sociological thought could be put into practice on a more personal level. Do any of these
resolutions surprise you? Which ones do you find most compelling, and why? What do you think of the idea of making a
sociological resolution? While the resolutions are interesting ways of thinking about doing sociology on our own, as far as
the work force goes, the ability to understand the connections between the personal and the public is a skill that feeds into

many professions, as this list from University of Toronto shows: https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/careers/careers-by-majorsociology

How do you see exploring the sociological imagination possibly contributing to your future or current working life? For
another point of discussion (in addition to comment or responses to things above), have a look at the introductions people
wrote to the class (where you were to say what you think sociology is, your favourite colour, etc). What are the most
common definitions of how people in this class think about sociology now, before taking this course? Why do you think that
might be the case? (Hint: what Im asking you to do is identify a social trend and talk about what larger social issues or
forces might result in our class tendencies of how we individually define sociology.) And I leave you with this, which I think
is funnyIts C. Wright Mills, by the way:

This is the second blog post that Im providing as example of the kinds of things you can do in your own blog posts. No one
blog post will cover all the material, but with the collection of everyone in the groups posting, we should be able to cover
more ground. So, if there were others contributing on this topic (instead of it being just me on my lonesome) they might
have chosen to select materials that highlight the production of culture and art worlds, or to explore the three different
bases of shared culture, or to examine the classes opinions on structure vs. agency in determining action. For this weeks
discussion, I encourage you to comment both based on my blog links and questions below, but also to try your hand at
finding links that you think might help address material on culture and socialization (a practice run that happens in
discussion here). Have a go! The difference between your blog posts and mine, is that I encourage you to provide more of
your own thought and reflections (I have focused on questions, since I dont want to just lecture at you in blog form, but
encourage you to engage in discussion. Your posts are also your soapboxes (so long as you are sociological), as well as
your way of leading class discussion.
As for my own contributions, Im focusing on cultural capital and the creation of meanings and how they connect to
structure and inequality. To start, not only did a couple of the people in class reference the CBC video on why dont skeets
know they are skeets in discussion for our last unit, I also had a former student post it on my facebook wall, with the
comment memories of soc class, flooding through my mind. And its truethe video below can be analyzed using many
different sociological concepts.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/why-dont-skeets-know-theyre-skeets-1.3758774 What do you
think is happening sociologically here? Why does this video stand out to my former student, and what concepts from our
work on culture and socialization can we use to contribute to understanding the question posed by the video? What
connections between structural inequality and culture can we use to better understand the video and the phenomenon of
the video? What I mean by the latter question, is that Im curious what you might have to say about the people they chose
to interview, and why. The video itself is, after all, a form of cultural productionwhat has been produced? What does this
do? What meanings (culture) are being made? Why might that matter?
One of the things that I find most interesting about the different forms of capital, is that they are
transformable/transferable from one to another. It is our own version of spinning straw into goldand personally, I like
how the mutability of capital gives a way to understand how we can express our agency within structural restrictions.
Reading about this man and how he has worked to raise money for diabetes provides some real-life
example:http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/guy-poole-liz-walk-diabetes-fundraising-newfoundlandlabrador-1.3758905 In this news piece, how do you see different forms of capital acting? How could you use this story to
explain some of the concepts from our readings on culture? This story stood out to me as one that highlights how capital is
used, how it can be transformed, and how it relates to structural position.

Unit 4: Social Institutions

 Week Seven: Families (student

blog 5)
Week Eight: Education (student
blog 6)
Week Nine: Work (student blog 7)
Week Ten: Healthcare (student
blog 8)
Introduction
In Unit Four, we will explore some central social institutions. Our work will focus on
families, education, work, and healthcare, though of course there are many other
institutions as well. In each of these chapters, the authors show how different
sociological approaches contribute to our understanding of these institutions in
particular. As with earlier in the text, they write about conflict approaches, structural
functionalist approaches, symbolic interactionist approaches, and feminist
approaches. While these are used as lenses to understand different aspects of social
institutions, rarely is only one lens used. As the text outlines, people often combine
lenses or approaches in their sociological analysis.
In talking about institutions we do not leave behind discussions of inequality,
socialization, social organization, or culture. Indeed, in exploring these four
institutions we will see how they are connected to material we have already
covered. Family and education (and work too, to some degree) are central
institutions for socialization and for the creation and maintenance of cultureand
often of inequality. Healthcare is also connected to cultural understandings of
wellbeing, and is centrally connected to inequality, with those who are in positions
of social disadvantage often having poorer health outcomes or access to healthcare
than those who are structurally privileged. Once again, the topics in each week are
bases for entire subfields in sociology, and this unit serves to introduce you to some
of their central concepts, and the ways that they connect both with each other, and
with other central concepts of sociology that we have examined thus far. You are

encouraged to think critically about the material in the textbookare there ways
the material is presented that you think are better or worse? How so, and for what
reasons?

Learning Objectives
By the end of this Unit, you should be able to:

identify and define central concepts relating to sociology of families,

education, healthcare, and work

apply concepts from previous units to material covered in these four

chapters

engage in sociological discussion of issues and debates connected to

these four institutions

explain how these institutions contribute to social change and/or social

reproduction

Directions

Before you read anything, jot down what you think makes a family a
family, your thoughts on the role of education, your definition of health,
and the purpose of work.

Week Seven Instructions

1. At the beginning of week seven, read the Chapter on Families
2. Read the Instructor notes on Families
3. Read the Families blog. Make comments, engage with the material,
answer questions, participate in discussion.
4. If you have a question about the material in this chapter, submit one
question that emerges from the readings by Friday of Week Seven (this
will be the 7th Question for Clarification that you are required to submit
if you choose to submit it. You will have to do two for this unit, and may
choose which material you submit your questions on)

Week Eight Instructions

1. At the beginning of Week Eight, read the chapter on Education

2. Read the Instructor notes on Education

3. Read the Education blog. Make comments, engage with the material,
answer questions, participate in discussion
4. If you have a question about the material in this chapter, submit one
question that emerges from the readings by Friday of Week Eight (this
will be either your 7th or 8th Question for Clarification that you are
required to submit if you choose to submit it. You will have to do two for
this unit, and may choose which material you submit your questions on)

Week Nine Instructions

1. At the beginning of Week Nine, read the chapter on Work
2. Read the Instructor notes on Work
3. Read the Work blog. Make comments, engage with the material, answer
questions, participate in discussion
4. If you have a question about the material in this chapter, submit one
question that emerges from the readings by Friday of Week Nine (this
will be either your 7th or 8th Question for Clarification that you are
required to submit if you choose to submit it. You will have to do two for
this unit, and may choose which material you submit your question on)

Week Ten Instructions

1. At the beginning of Week Ten, read the chapter on Healthcare
2. Read the Instructor notes on Healthcare
3. Read the Healthcare blog. Make comments, engage with the material,
answer questions, participate in the discussion
4. If you have a question about the material in this chapter, submit one
question that emerges from the readings by Friday of Week Ten (this will
be your 8th Question for Clarification that you are required to submit if
you choose to submit it. You will have to do two for this unit, and may
choose which material you submit your question on)
5. Read the Questions for Critical Thought at the end of all four assigned
chapters, and think them through to help you internalize and apply the
material you have read in the chapter. Decide if you would like to
answer one of the questions for part of your grade (see Questions for

Critical Thought in the assignment breakdown for the course). If you

choose to answer one of the questions for this unit, it is due to the
instructor on the last day of the unit. Remember: your graded questions
for clarification mustNOT be on topics you are blogging for.
6. Look back at the answers you jotted down about what you think makes a
family a family, your thoughts on the role of education, your definition of
health, and the purpose of work. Do you understand things differently
now? In what ways?

Instructor Notes on Families

Families, like many other social institutions, vary across time, and in different
culturesand those different cultures are not always cultures of ethnicity (though
that may sometimes be the case). LGBTQ populations, for example, often talk of
chosen families of people who are not related by blood, but who fulfill many of the
same social roles and functions as families in heterosexual cultures. This happens
for a number of reasons, one being the fact that sometimes families of origin reject
family members who are not heterosexual or cisgender, another being that
socialization into the norms and expectations of LGBTQ culture cannot be performed
as easily in families of origin, since the majority of us have heterosexual parents.
Street kids too, often build family-type units to rely upon in the subculture of youth
who are street involved, and these family-type units share resources, and help with
socialization into street norms and survival strategies.
But what is it that we mean when we say someone is family to us? While biological
elements can be part of it, there need not be direct biological connection for us to
feel that we are in a family relationship. We see this in many casesthe one we
most often point to is when people have children through adoption. But this is only
one of the many different ways that people may be members of the same family but
not have biological connection. After all, the people we are married to are people we
consider to be family, but usually we do not have direct biological connection to
them. Step-parents and step-siblings, too, or the people to whom our other family
members are marriedall of these may be members of our families. Patricia Hill
Collins talks about the importance of othermothers to understanding families.
Othermothers are women who take on mothering work towards children they arent
biologically related to, and who help hold communities together through the caring
work they perform (Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Women and Motherhood. Black
Feminist Thought. New York: Routledge, 2000.)

While families have often been understood to be groups of people united by kinship
(biology), legality (weddings, adoptions), and who live in the same dwelling, the
variety of forms families take cannot be encapsulated by these possible aspects of
families, and families come in a wide variety of forms and arrangements. Rather
than identifying families as always being one particular thing (or including particular
people), it can be useful to look at patterns of caring and sharing (Tepperman et
al., 2014, 175) that unite groups of people in order to define families when we see
them rather than defining them in advance. Doing so means that we avoid the
mistake of deciding what a family is, and then telling people if the central intimate
social unit of their lives qualifies or notinstead, we look to different time periods,
places, and cultures and explore how this primary social unit is organized. Because
at the end of the day, that is what families are: primary social institutions.
As the first social institution that we encounter in our lives, families play a major
role in socialization, and sometimes that is how they are definedas units of
socialization. But there are many other things that families can do as one of the
building blocks of communities, society, and culture. Families serve us as
individuals, through the sharing of resources and supports, and when we are
fortunate, they are places of support and caring, and can provide love, positive
reinforcement, a place for non-stigmatized sexual expression and a sense of
belonging. Sadly, they are also often places of trauma, abuse and
neglect. Families are socially recognized groups that often have emotional
connection to one another, and which serve as economic units, and units of
socialization.
As societal building blocks, families extend beyond the individual level and are key
to the building of communities, and of society writ large. Governments rely on
families to fulfill a number of different roles for society.
Families are often economically united, with household incomes and household
productivity being key to the institution, the ways it is created, and how it is
maintained or shifts. Think about the ways that work is connected to families in this
regard. How does the labour performed in and through families feed into the world
of professional work? In what ways do families make work possible?
While all of us in North America will have seen, and likely absorbed (at least in part)
social messages about how love makes a family, and while love may be central to
families some of the time, marriages and family connections are also often made for
reasons other than love (even if love is hoped for, or welcomed, it need not be the
central motivational force). Indeed, it can be argued that the focus on love in some
understandings of what motivates marriage (as one possible base of family) is
connected to mainstream white North American values of individualism that prefer

to see decisions as based only in personal preference, even when societal forces
outside of individually felt emotions are clearly at play. And, if you want to mess
with it even more, you can explore the idea of how emotions are socially
constructed, and not something that is entirely individualin fact the sociology of
emotions is a thriving subfield of sociology (unfortunately, it is not something weve
time to cover in this course). Who we fall in love with, and if we marry for love the
marriage choices we makethese are patterned in ways that make clear that our
experiences of love have far more to do with socioeconomic, cultural and other
factors than our usual romantic ideals allow.

Three Approaches to the Sociology of

Families
The text looks at three different frameworks used in studying families sociologically
(as weve seen in earlier chapters). When the text refers to the political economy
approach, this can be understood to map onto what weve previously called the
conflict approach.
Because the conflict approach is concerned with economic material realities (who
owns the means of production), using this framework to understand families looks
at how families are connected to shifts in political economy. The text notes that
with historical changes in production, the family has shifted from being a unit of
production, to a unit of consumption. Both are economic units, of course, and both
involve families engaging in the work of socialization to ensure that family members
are contributing to the existing structures of political economy. The question posed
to you above (how does the labour performed in and through families affect work) is
informed by a conflict or political economy perspective that, as the text notes, sees
the division between public and private to be misleading (Tepperman et al., 2014,
178). In short, when sociologists (and others) use this framework to understand and
talk about families, the focus is on how economic structures of production and work
affect the creation and maintenance and roles of families. Different forms of political
economy allow for and require, different family forms. Can you think of ways that
your own family is formed and shaped by the economic realities of the context that
surrounds you?
A structural functionalist framework, when applied to families, focuses primarily
on how families are units of socialization, since socialization is one of the ways that
structural functionalists understand social order to be maintained. Remember,
structural functionalist approaches see the different parts of society all working
together to fulfill the end goal of equilibrium and social order. This means that a
structural functionalist will explore how families are structured according to what

functions different roles can fulfill, rather than explaining differences in roles using
other forms of explanation (culture, gendered inequity, political economy, etc.).
In contrast, a symbolic interactionist approach (here, the text calls it a social
constructionist approach) focuses on how families are socially constructed by our
ongoing social interactions and expectations. Here, the text claims that individual
agency and choice is seen as explaining more of how families are formed and
maintained than in the previous two approaches, which are more structural.
However, even though individual agency is given more space in this framework, a
symbolic interactionist approach understands that the definition of the situation or
the meanings that are created from or imbued in families are not solely individual
choices. Indeed, a symbolic interactionist approach is one that shows us that we see
ourselves as members of our families, and we choose our behavior based on the
expectations that we understand to be part of our family positions. We know what a
mother is supposed to act like, or an older brother, or an uncle, or a cousin, and we
behave according to those expectations and project those expectations onto others.
Lastly, the text talks about feminist and post-structural approaches, with
feminist approaches looking to better understand how gender informs the ways
families are built and maintained, as well as how families affect the construction
and maintenance of gender. Because the unpaid labour performed in families is
disproportionately performed by women (as weve seen in other parts of the text
previously and as is discussed further in this chapter) many sociologists using a
feminist framework explore the nature of gendered work in the family as well, and
the ways that women are pushed and pulled by obligations both within and outside
the home. With post-structural approaches, which weve not yet seen in the text,
the central point is that grand narratives about the nature of the family cannot be
fully trusted, since families are and have always been highly variable. We must
therefore unpack and analyze where our understandings come from, and which
viewpoints they privilege in order to understand what they can create and maintain.

Recent Issues in Canadian Families

How can you understand the various issues brought up in the remainder of the text
using these different frameworks? While the text highlights inequity in the division
of household labour, medically assisted conception, affordable childcare, divorce
and remarriage, and wife abuse as recent issues in Canadian families, do you think
that these are the most central issues families face?

What other issues can you think of that Canadian families face that sociology could
help provide an understanding of? Why might they have been left out? What is
placed in the foreground by the choices the author has made in the text?

Instructor Notes on Education

Education can be either informal or formal. Both forms of education are part of
socialization processes, and both forms of education are also connected to
structural inequality and of course, to the worlds of work. But education is not only
about learning skills to gain employment, even if that is how we often view it, and
even though it is central in that pursuit. Like the family, education is a social
institution that is a building block for our communities, society, and cultures. It is
also an institution that is connected to inequality both through its ability to make
changes to address injustice, and its ability to commit injustice.
Informal education includes the learning we do in our everyday lives, through
interaction with others. We learn by watching others, we learn by trying things that
are new. We learn by googling it (but be careful about your sources!). We learn
through experience. Informal education does not result in being awarded
certificates, diplomas, degrees or other forms of accreditation, yet it is still crucial
for us to be able to move through the world. Remember our earlier discussion about
forms of capital (economic, social, cultural and symbolic). Informal education can
result in cultural capitalit provides us with knowledge about the world that we can
use as a resource. However it does not always hold the same prestige (symbolic
capital) as formal education.
Formal education is the education we think of as schooling. Formal
education happens in institutions of learning and often results in accreditation,
certification, diplomas, or degrees. Another way to think of it is that you can list
your formal education on your resume, but if you want employers to understand
how your informal education prepares you for a position, you would need to explain
and elaborate upon that in your covering letter as part of your relevant
experience. Formal education is cultural capital, and depending on the kind of
accreditation it provides, it has different levels of symbolic capital (prestige)
associated with it. A university degree, for example, is usually afforded a higher
degree of symbolic capital than a college diploma.

Work and Education

The connection between work and education can seem fairly straight forwardand
it is often talked of and treated that way. We go to school in order to get a good job.
Education is how we acquire skills and knowledge that employers want their
employees to have. Another way to put this is that we must have cultural capital to
gain some forms of employment. While this is sometimes connected to needing
directly applicable occupation or task-based skills (how to fix an engine, how to
balance accounts, how to perform brain surgery), education does not only include
providing students with skills and knowledge specific to particular occupations or
careers. Education also provides a breadth of knowledge, from which to draw, and a
variety of skills that can be applied creatively to a wide range of careers and
situations. As the text notes: what counts is not so much the knowledge that we
acquire as our capacities to learn, innovate, and apply knowledge to emergent
situations (Tepperman et al., 2014, 194).
This difference between learning specialized skills or knowledge connected to a
particular profession and other forms of formal education is particularly important
for understanding the role of university degrees in the Humanities and Social
Sciences in the contemporary job market. In looking at employment opportunities,
one will not see listings for Sociologist, Medievalist, or Historian, for example
(unless you are looking at the job market for those with PhDs). Instead,
undergraduate degrees in these areas provide students with opportunity to hone
transferable skills that can be applied in a multitude of situations, and to many
different careers and fields. There are, of course, some jobs that require specific
training. To be a medical doctor you must go to medical school, to be a lawyer you
must go to law school, etc. However, outside of those occupations that require
specific credentials, what employers in ourknowledge-based economy need are
people with the skills honed in educational experiences like BA programmes across
the disciplines.
A knowledge-based economy, or the new economy is how we refer to the shift
away from industrial production as the centre of economic activity and the major
source of employment. With a knowledge-based economy, the shift is toward the
bulk of economic activity and related jobs being found in fields where information,
global competition, high-level technologies and knowledge-based advancement are
the central driving forces. Here, ability to learn quickly as fields advance or in
response to global competition and other contemporary challenges, as well as the
ability to apply skills across a variety of contexts are the skills in high demand.
Arguments like this one are based in the ideas central to human capital
theory. Human capital theory sees education as a way to advance productivity and
development, by investing in people as our central resource.

It is also important to note that in relation to work, education provides not only
cultural capital, but social capital as well. The ties that people create during their
years of schooling are often strong ties that can be mobilized for gaining
employment. We are all familiar with the idea that who you know can help get a
foot in the door for employment opportunities. Participating in formal education
provides increased opportunities to expand the pool of people you come into
contact with, and can provide the opportunity to socialize outside of your regular
circle, thereby expanding the reach of your social network. In addition to providing
the opportunity to meet and work with new people to form new individual ties,
schools often work to build a sense of shared identity in their student body by
working to build school spirit. Building school spirit is a way to create a sense of
shared affiliation and loyalty that can also be part of the social and symbolic capital
drawn upon in the job market. Can you think of times when your have seen shared
affiliation with a particular school used to motivate people or mobilize resources?

Inequality and Education: Access,

Outcomes, Curriculum, and Change
Central to understanding education from a sociological perspective is also seeing
the different ways that education and inequality are connected to one another. The
ways that inequality and education are connected can be seen in four central ways.
First, there is often unequal access to education. Second, there are often
unequal outcomes from education, and third, educational curriculum itself can
contribute to inequality through skewed representations, bias, or omission. Also
important, is that even though education can (and often does) contribute to or
reflect inequality, it can also be used for change, to address inequality.

Access
As we have seen, education is often connected to increased opportunities, but
getting access to education is not universal, or equitable. The most obvious
examples of education being inaccessible to some is seen in discussions of college
and university education, since these forms of education require the payment of
tuition fees which not all people are able to afford. As the text notes, social class
has a strong impact on post secondary attendance (Tepperman et al., 2014, 207).
But it is not only lack of economic resources that can keep people from the
opportunities of schooling. What kinds of things can you think of that can prevent
people from having access to education? A quick brainstormed list of reasons could
include the following:

Schools being physically inaccessible, either because they are too far
away, or because they are not built to be accessible to those of us with
disabilities.

Insufficient childcare supports available for students with children.

Social norms and expectations about what fields of study are appropriate
for different categories of people leading tostreaming of students into
different educational paths at an early age. This is often related to
statuses like gender, race, and class.
Curriculum designed in ways that are more accessible/achievable to
some students than to others, based on structural position and status.

Discriminatory treatment at earlier levels of education that frustrates

accomplishment and works against student ability to meet admission
requirements.

Schools being socially and physically unsafe environments for some

students (LGBTQ students, racialized students, etc.) because of
homophobia, racism, etc.

Unequal funding of schools in different areas that serve different

populations (e.g. see the photo on page 208 of the text that notes how
First Nations schools receive $2000 less funding per student than
provincial schools) resulting in negative effects on basic learning
conditions.

Outcomes
Many of the items on this list of reasons for lack of access to education can also
help explain why there is inequality in outcomes of education as well. That is, even
if some of the above factors do not always prevent people from attending school,
they can be factors feeding into why some people dont gain the same benefits from
schooling as others. Women, for example, as weve seen previously, do not earn the
same amount of money as their male counterparts even when they have the same
educational credentials. Those of us who are immigrants to Canada often dont have
equal recognition of our educational credentials, and racism continues to affect
hiring practices. As the text notes, even though the education system in Canada has
expanded in ways that have benefited Canadians in all categories, outcomes for
specific groups, including Aboriginal people, some immigrant and visible-minority
populations, those from working-class backgrounds, and many persons with

disabilities continue to be less favourable relative to other groups (Tepperman et

al., 2014, 207).

Curriculum
The connection to inequality does not stop with the ways people are able to
participate or benefit from education as a way of accumulating cultural, social, and
symbolic capital. Curriculum too, that is, what is actually taught to people in
schools, can reflect and reinforce biases that contribute to ongoing structural
inequality.
The most violent and direct example of curriculum contributing to inequality is that
of Canadas Residential schools, institutions which aboriginal students were forced
to attend, having been forcibly removed from their homes and communities.
Students in residential schools were physically and sexually abused as a matter of
course, punished for speaking their own languages or observing their own cultural
traditions, fed insufficiently, and many died, were sterilized, or experimented upon.
While these schools started in the 1840s, the last one closed in 1996. The mandate
of these institutions was to assimilate aboriginal children, to kill the Indian in the
child, and the effect of these schools and what they did to aboriginal children and
their families, still reverberates through aboriginal communities. Residential schools
are an example of total institutions ,which as the text notes in an earlier chapter,
Through the extreme and expert control of human inmatesare able to bring
about identity change through degradation (Tepperman et al., 2014, 89). While this
is a clear example of violent curriculum, as we see below, there need not be a total
institution in order for curriculum to feed and maintain structural inequality.
For example, before watching Journey to Justice for this class, did you know any of
the history of race and racism in Canada covered in that film? Even if you did
consider the reality that it is new information to many people. What does it say
about our high school curriculum that these parts of our history are often excluded?
What is the unspoken lesson we give to students when we leave these things out?
Can you think of other things that were omitted in your education thus far? What do
those omissions do? What do you wish you had been taught?
Further examples of curriculum contributing to ongoing structural inequality can be
seen in our own text. On page 47, for example, the text says: The Aboriginal
cultures of First Nations and Inuit peoples were, of course, present before the idea of
a Canadian society or culture was ever proposed. Realistically, the colonization of
indigenous lands was never a proposal, it was not proposed and considered by all
parties, but imposed by colonial settlers, often violently. Other examples from our
text include the relative lack of material on people with disabilities (as was noted
previously), an omission that helps to reinforce stereotypes about those of us with

disabilities not being centrally connected with and involved in social institutions,
communities, etc., but somehow living outside societysomething that is clearly
not the case. Finally, return to the material in the text on families and examine what
assumptions it makes, or can lead people toward. For example, when the text talks
about infertility (p. 182), what assumptions does it make, or conclusions does it lead
people toward? What does that say about the assumed roles of femininity and
masculinity? What other examples can you think of in our text that may lead to
reinforcing assumptions and stereotypes that contribute to inequality?

Change
Because education is part of socialization as well as being a source of information,
knowledge, and skills for the workforce, it can also be a central force in working to
address inequality. Education can work for change both through raising awareness
(changing curriculum and providing information to help work against stigma or
bias), and through making active changes to educational structures that have been
working to privilege some over others (as was talked about above in discussion of
access and outcomes). What kinds of examples can you think of where education is
connected to working for change in connection to inequality?
Additionally, and often on a more individual level, education is one of the social
institutions where capital can be transformed, from one form to another. Recall from
earlier notes that social, cultural, economic, and symbolic capital can be
transformed from one to another in different circumstances or contexts. For
example, social capital (your connections to other people) can lead to an increase in
your economic capital: knowing people can lead to increased work opportunities, or
access to the resources of others. It can lead to cultural capital: increasing your
social capital can expose you to new information and expand your informal learning.
It can lead to symbolic capital: think of the phenomenon of namedropping where
people let you know they are connected with someone of note, and can sometimes
gain prestige (symbolic capital) from the association (social capital). The same is
true in other directions, economic capital can give you access to cultural capital,
symbolic capital can give you access to social capital, etc.
Education is one of the social institutions within which we often see the
transformation of capital. That is, through the process of education, it can be
possible to transform your access to different forms of capital and resources in ways
that can change your personal social position. This is something that we know, even
if you havent thought about it in the language of different forms of capital and their
transformation. Memorial University, for example has a high percentage of students
who are the first in their families to receive university education. Perhaps this is true
for you. And if it is true for you, or for friends that you know here, think about how

the hopes attached to that education play out in families. People with less access to
economic resources scrimp and save to pay their childrens tuition, to give them a
better chance. The money of the tuition itself is not sufficient on its own to help
their children directly with any lasting effect. But using that same amount of money
(economic capital) to pay tuition transforms it into the cultural, social, and symbolic
capital of a university degree that will not run out, and cannot be spent. While
economic capital is often seen as the bottom line, (and is often a motivating force)
its important to realize that the other three forms of capital can be more resilient,
since they are less prone to being used up or depleted.

Instructor Notes on Work

Work is how we spend most of our adult lives. Both paid work, and unpaid work take
up our time, our energy, and if we are lucky, work provides us with things that we
need: money, a sense of wellbeing, a base for identity, a sense of personal
satisfaction, community. The text articulates this in three main points:
1. Work is central to our existence
2. Work is a social product
3. People seek meaning in their work
The first and third points are self explanatory, but what does it mean to say
that work is a social product? We all have to engage in some form of labour in
order to survive (see self explanatory point #1). Even if you are living off the grid,
and committed to building, growing, raising, or making all that you need, that still
requires you to work. And that work of self-sufficient subsistence living will be of a
very different nature from your work if you are selling your skills to a company who
pays you an hourly wage, and differ again if you are in a unionized position with
salary and full benefits. All of these are examples of work, but what the work is, how
it is organized and structured and the rewards connected with it are all social
products. While this may seem obvious, it is an important thing to keep in mind in
analyzing work, so that we do not forget that any current organization of work is not
inevitable or the only option for how labour is structured. Interestingly, it is because
work is so central to our lives that we can run the risk of not seeing how it is a social
productwe are unaware of it, as the saying goes, the way a fish is unaware of
water.

Capitalism

We therefore must look at the economic system we are in if we want to understand

how work is structured and constructed, and the effects of it being organized in the
ways that it is. The text defines the economy as a social institution in which people
carry out the production, distributions, and consumption of goods and services
(Tepperman et al., 2014, 214).
As we will talk about more in Unit Five, we live in a world of global capitalism. We
had some brief discussion of capitalism in Unit Three in the notes on the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat. In a capitalist system, those who own the means of production
are the ruling class, and they are engaged in an unequal relationship of exchange
with workers, who must sell their labour for a wage. Those who own the means of
production (bourgeouisie, or the capitalist class) are driven to make a profit, and
therefore structure work to be efficient, and to pay the lowest possible wages in
order to increase profit. The text is particularly succinct in its description:
capitalism is based on private ownership of the means of production, an exchange
relationship between owners and workers, an economy driven by the pursuit of
profit, and competitive market relations (Tepperman et al., 2014, 215).
Early capitalism had individuals or families as the capitalist class (family capitalism)
and in this arrangement, wealth accrued through capitalist activities was handed
down through family lines, and this is still sometimes the case, as we have seen in
Unit Threes readings that talked about the Canadian elite (p. 119). There is a move
away from this form of private ownership, however, toward corporate capitalism. In
corporate capitalism it is not individuals or families who are the direct owners, but
corporations that the super elite are connected to as shareholders. Corporations are
a legal entity that is separate from the people who own the corporation, providing
protection to owners and CEOs from personal liability and from taking on any of the
businesses debts personally. While each of these forms of capitalism has shared
central traits, the differences do still have effect on the structure of work within
them.

Four economic sectors of work (or is that Five?...)

While all of us work within industrialized global capitalism, our relationship to work
can also change according to the economic sector we find employment in. At
different times, and in different contexts, job opportunities shift from one sector to
another. The sectors of work can expand or contract depending on multiple factors,
some local, and some more directly connected to global flows.
There are four formal sectors within which we find employment, and how our work is
structured, depends on the sector we work within.

1. Primary resource industries

Much of Newfoundland and Labrador is still deeply connected to primary
resource industries: the fishery, oil, and mineral extraction. Primary
sector work extracts resources from the environment and therefore
includes forestry, hunting, fishing, raising animals, farming, mining, etc.
2. Manufacturing
This sector is also called the secondary sector. While the primary sector
extracts raw materials, the secondary sector processes those raw
materials and manufactures goods with them.
3. The Service Sector
Following the pattern, this sector is also called the tertiary sector (tertiary
meaning third, in order or in levelhere is it level). The service sector is
a huge employer, but the jobs are neither as secure or as well
compensated as positions in manufacturing, which are more often
unionized. Service sector workers dont make anything, at least not in the
way that manufacturing does, instead, they provide services. While we
often think of service industry jobs as always being lower paid positions
like those who work in coffee shops, drive taxis, or work in retail sales,
this sector includes a much wider range of jobs. While retail and food
services are at the lower end, people working in administration, business,
healthcare, and education are also in the service industry.
3. Social Reproduction
The labour of social reproduction is not part of the formal sphere of
production as the first three sectors are. Social reproduction is the unpaid
work that people do every day to keep families and households running
and supporting those who much enter the sphere of production for paid
work. Social reproduction work is more often performed by women, and
even when performed by men, when those men are in heterosexual
relationships, the work is usually managed by women, even though some
tasks are delegated to men. The fact that the work of cleaning, cooking,
caregiving, shopping, etc. is not paid or part of the sphere of production
does not mean that it is outside of economicsin fact, the capitalist
economy relies on the free labour of social reproduction to create, raise,
and maintain an available work force and consumer base. If people (and
remember, it is predominantly women) did not do this free labour, it
would take $197 billion to have that necessary work performed as paid
employment (Tepperman et al., 2014, 219).

4. Shhhh.. the informal economy

Lastly, we turn to the informal economy, which, like social
reproduction work is not officially visible as economic activity. With
the informal economy, it is not that work is unpaid, but that work is not
formally organized, and the economic activity it creates is not reported to
the government. Most of us have done work in the informal economy at
some point. Babysitting, holding bake sales, sex trade work, busking,
shovelling peoples walks, collecting recyclingall of these are work that
happens in the informal (or underground) economy.
Pay close attention to the texts discussion of how inequality and work are
connected. When you look at these five sectors of work above, what connections do
you see to inequality based on gender, race, youth, ability, sexuality, or class? The
connections move in several directionspart of the reality of structural inequality is
that we can measure it according to peoples income, those with less are often in a
position of structural disadvantage. But are people in poorly paid jobs because of
structural inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, and ableism? Yes, that is
often the case. But also, being in poorly paid jobs contributes to inequality. With
gender, for example, only some of the gendered wage gap can be explained by the
sectors within which women work or the levels of education women attain. Once
those factors are controlled for, women are still systematically paid less than men,
even when in similar positions, and with similar qualifications. This has lead to ad
campaigns like one created by the Equal Opportunity Commission in the United
Kingdom that features two children, a boy and a girl, looking to the camera with the
text: Prepare your daughter for working life. Give her less pocket money than your
son.
In connection with the five sectors above, also consider which ones are most likely
to have unions. The text talks about the union advantage, and this term refers to
the considerable benefits and protections available to workers who are members of
unions (collectives of workers that negotiate terms with employers). While we have
seen that the capitalist class is the ruling class, by joining together as a collective
into unions, workers gain the power to negotiate and can ameliorate some of the
exploitative relationships that capitalism creates. If a worker is only an individual,
they can be easily replaced, and have very little bargaining power in relation to
large companies that employ them. But if workers advocate and negotiate for better
conditions as a group, and can withhold ALL of their labour (through strike), the fact
that capitalism is reliant on workers comes to the foreground, and workers have
some teeth in negotiating with powerful employers. This can lead not only to better
wages, job security, and equalization of wages, but also to safer working conditions,
and greater ability for workers to collectively control the conditions of their work in
ways that help support the ability of the working class to find work meaningful. In

the context of global capitalism, as we will see in Unit Five, many corporations
respond to this by outsourcing those jobs more likely to be unionized to areas of the
globe where cheaper labour is more readily available.

Instructor Notes on Healthcare

Understanding health is not only about understanding biology, chemistry, or
anatomy. Health too, like other institutions and concepts we have talked about, is
woven into our social world and is a thriving area of research within the discipline
of sociology. We can understand how health is social in three ways:
1. Health is socially determined
2. Definitions of health and illness are socially constructed
3. Health is not just an individual issue, but a social concern

Health is Socially Determined

It is easy to find yourself thinking that your health is just about your bodybut the
reality is that social factors are largely responsible for our health and wellness.
Social determinants of health include not only risky social behaviours (drinking,
smoking, drunk driving, etc.) but socioeconomic status, gender, race, sexuality,
access to information and education, strong social networks, resilient community,
etc. Have you ever experienced any health issues that you can connect to social
determinants? No doubt you can think of several instances either for yourself or
people that you know. Possible examples include: the stress of single-parenting
leading to health issues, not having access to extended health benefits that cover
physiotherapy preventing full or efficient recovery from injury; needing to work full
time while in school causing exhaustion and weakening your immune system,
stigma against women asking men to use condoms can contributing to the spread
of STDs. Even so, when we talk about health being socially determined, it is not on
the individual level alone. Social determinants can affect people as individuals but it
is also social determinants on a larger scale that account for differing rates of health
and morbidity within and between countries. That is, inequities in health are
connected to social inequities at both the micro and macro level.

Definitions of Health and Illness are

Socially Constructed
Health and illness are not absolute categorieswhat is understood to be healthy
varies over time, and illnesses too, are socially constructed. The boundary between
illness and health is a shifting one, according to culture, structural position, time
period, and social context. The text talks about the sick role as one example where
we can see the social construction of illness in terms of the role that one is expected
to play when feeling ill so as not to disrupt social equilibrium (clearly a structural
functionalist perspective). The text notes that when a stigma is attached to an
experience of ill healthand here the stigma is usually that you have brought it on
yourself somehow, the ways that the social world responds to your illness can vary.
This is because being an innocent victim of poor health is central to our social
constructions of valid illness. This shows one of the ways that moralism is woven
into our definitions of health and illness. After all the very same physical symptoms
will be treated very differently if one does not meet the criteria of innocent
victimhood. This construction of health and illness is connected to what cultural
theorist Mary Douglas wrote of in her seminal 1966 book, Purity and Danger. In this
work, she examines how cultures draw boundaries between what is clean and
unclean, sacred and profane. What examples can you think of where an illness is
filtered through this kind of stigma where the individual is blamed for their
condition? How are those sicknesses socially defined and responded to? What large
social forces or cultural conceptions are connected to the construction of the
stigmatized illness? Interestingly one way that stigmatized experiences of ill health
can be cleansed (at least in part) of their stigma, is if discussion and understanding
of those experiences is pushed towards further medicalization.
Medicalization, the process of more parts of life increasingly being seen as
relevant to the field of medicine (or medicine being seen as a solution or
appropriate intervention in more areas of life) is another example of how definitions
of health and illness are socially constructed. Can you think of examples of things
that are medicalized that need not be? One example is childbirth. While childbirth is
a natural process, uncomplicated natural births are medicalized in our standard
North American practice. While medical interventions are life-saving in births with
complications, the medicalization of uncomplicated birth is a social process that
many contest as unnecessaryand healthwise, that is true. But if you think of how
Christianity sometimes attaches moralism to the pain of childbirth (Genesis 3:16),
where it is said to be a punishment from God for Eves sin, you could argue that
medicalization of childbirth has worked to help cleanse women of the stigma
associated with the pain of childbirth. The response to pain is moral and cultural, as
are many of our constructions of health and illnessbut medicalization, because it
is supposed to be objective, helps to take moralism out of the picture. Or at least, it

does when it doesthere are also examples where moralism is rife in the medical
system. Have you ever had your doctor talk to you in a way that made you feel
shame for the symptoms you went to see them about? Even the tactics dentists use
to encourage flossing (which yes, you should do!) often employ judgment tactics
more connected to moralism than medicine.
When capitalism enters into the area of medicine, medicalization takes a different
turn. Since capitalism is oriented toward profit, pharmaceutical corporations
sometimes engage in what the text calls disease-mongering, meaning that they
are dealing in or selling disease in order to make a profit. As the text notes in
explanation: the pharmaceutical industry plays a significant part in creating
diseases out of conditions for which they have developed an effective drug
(Tepperman et al., 2014, 247). Things that people experience that have been
previously understood to be different possible parts of life (hair loss, pimples,
cellulite, etc.) are reframed and marketed as conditions in order to create a market
for medicalized interventions.
The social construction of definitions of health and illness are not always so directly
visible as the examples of medicalization ordisease-mongering. There are cultural
differences in what is considered to be healthy and unhealthy, and how we
understand sickness and death is also culturally variable. Socioeconomic class can
have effects on what is considered healthysomeone living in poverty may take as
a given certain bodily experiences that they have and not consider them outside of
the definition of healthy. If a rich person experienced that same bodily condition,
they might very well rush to the doctor. This is only one example is of how people in
different structural positions can have different definitions of health and illness.
Similarly, as the text points out on page 236, while some people think of Aspergers
as a disorder, many people with Aspergers do not identify as having a disorder, but
point to societal barriers ableism and stigma as the source of their troublesnot the
Aspergers.

Health is not Just an Individual Issue, but

a Social Concern
Illness takes a social and economic toll, making health a social concern, and a
concern of the state. After all, even though you may experience sickness personally,
your illness takes you away from how you can normally interact with others, and
your ability to work.
There are two different conceptions of dealing with health and illness that affect the
kinds of policies put in place to address related issues:

1. Medical Care: With medical care, focus is on providing medical

services, diagnostic services and treatments. Medical care is what is
provided within a framework of allopathic medicine.
2. Health Care: In contrast with medical care, health care includes
preventative measures. Promoting health is, after all, a very different
thing from treating illness. The sense of coherence that the text talks
about can be seen as connected to sociological understandings of health
care in contrast with allopathic medicine. Other things that can be
included in healthcare are: access to clean water; safe roads; clean air;
strong communities; poverty reduction; access to healthy foods;
opportunities for exercise and leisure, safety awareness campaigns, etc.
In Canada, our medical care system is one of the things we think of as
distinguishing us from the United States, which does not have universal healthcare.
While doctors are paid by the government, they are not government employees.
Instead, Canadian doctors bill the state for the services they provide. This is called a
private practice/public payment model.
There are five basic principles that Canadian healthcare is premised upon:
1. Healthcare should be universal: Everyone should be able to access
healthcare
2. Healthcare should be portable: People should be able access
healthcare no matter where they are in Canada
3. Healthcare should be comprehensive: All medically necessary
procedures should be covered.
4. Healthcare should be publicly administered: Healthcare should not
be a for-profit enterprise
5. Healthcare should be accessible: Everyone should have access to
healthcare facilities and all physicians and hospitals should be given fair
compensation
While much of these principles are focused on models of allopathic medicine, lately,
we have seen a shift, as Canada has moved away from focusing only on medical
services, and is now looking at social determinants of health as part of the problem
and solution in health as a social issue. Part of the reason for this shift is that our
ability to address the illnesses that are most problematic is no longer a matter of
treating infectious disease. Infectious diseases like tuberculosis, strep throat, or the
flu do not present the same level of risk for us as they have in the past.
Instead, it is now chronic diseases that are the leading causes of death. Heart
disease, cancer, diabetes, and depression. Addressing these chronic illnesses
requires a different model, a model based on healthcare as well as medical care.
This shift can also be seen not just as a shift in how we conceive our healthcare

models, but as a response to fiscal crisis, where the work of prevention is less costly
than the work of medical intervention after the factand many of the costs of
prevention are shouldered by the individual, rather than the medical system. We
see then, that even using a healthcare model instead of a medical model can be
connected to social stratification. Clearly, health and illness are deeply social issues,
from the level of our cultural conceptions, to how we respond to and manage
healthcare issues, to morbidity rates and rates of illness at a global level.