DD122 Open University Course

An Introduction to Social Science Part Two

TMA03 – 10 MARCH 2009


“Our belief in 'experts' has gone. We no longer need them”. Discuss this view using one or more of the theories from chapter four with reference to one of the following:

  • Medical knowledge

  • Religious knowledge

  • Environmental knowledge


  • From block five.

    • Draws on book five, most important in chapter four, but it all counts

    • 1500 words

    • Main skill, synthesiszig material from all chapters


Learning Outcomes


  • Knowledge and understanding

    • The differences between social science knowledge and other forms of knowledge or understanding

  • Cognitive Skills

    • Evaluating arguments and theories in terms of their coherence, the soundness of their empirical base and their comprehensiveness

  • Key skills

    • Synthesizing material from different chapters


Student Notes


Have to choose one or more. Best to go for one, which read about in block five, knowledge society (sec one and two chapter four), consumer society (section three chapter four) or risk society (section four chapter four). focus on one, but others in evaluation if that's useful. Will not lose marks if you do rely on a single theory. You will also need to cite another chapter from the book as a source of examples. Medical, environmental or religious Refer to at least two chapters from book five, including chapter four. So, be selective, planning is very important. Each one has a different view off the importance of experts and the need to check you have a good understanding of the one you want to use.

Think:

  • Which theory shall I choose?

  • Which field of knowledge shall I use?

  • What has been the traditional role of experts in that field and who have they been?

  • What has happened to cast doubt on their role?

  • What are the contrasting arguments about whether we need them or not?

  • Where is the balance between these two arguments?

  • *Do check your understanding of the theory you choose.

    • Now choose examples from one of the other chapters in book four.


  • How convincing is the theory and its importance of experts, be critical and show limitations.

    • Does its explanation of change, or the lack of it, convince you?

    • How well does it fit the details of the example you have chosen?

      • Look at a different theory for comparison

        • Does it explain points your chosen theory does not?

          • Many points and details, so be selective.

            • Look back to the work in block four, on the strengths and weaknesses of the theories.

    • Make sure opening and end both refer directly to the question.

    • Remember that the question is mainly about theory, so go beyond the details of the examples you choose

    • Word count

    • References

    • Self evaluation


TMA04 – 14 APRIL 2009


Hard copy to:

Assignment Handling Office,

The Open University,

PO Box 722,

Milton Keynes,

MK7 6ZT


  • 32%

  • Look back over the course as a whole

  • At least two blocks

    • Course intro

    • four

    • five

    • six

  • References to DD121 can be used as additional but not instead of DD122 material.


General Notes


  • 1500 words

  • Either of two questions


  • Synthesize and integrate material from different parts of dd122 to evaluate theories and evidence

  • Audio 10A discusses in detail what is expected

  • In addition:

    • DD122 course introduction section two Looking Back and Moving On, Writing Essays and Evaluating Theories

  • Word Count

  • References


Learning Outcomes

  • Making comparisons between competing arguments

  • Evaluating arguments and theories in terms of their coherence the soundness of their empirical base the their comprehensiveness


Either:


1 - “People and groups are no more able to shape their own lives todays than they were in the 1950's”. Discuss.


  • Related to the course issue: social change, and can drawn on all course themes, eg. can be argued that increased knowledge gives scope for choices not available in past, or conversely have less opportunities because more fear from increased knowledge.

  • Structure and agency as choices still denied to many groups. Diversity and uncertainty because diversity gives new choices but uncertainty stops people taking advantage of them.

  • Use any of the themes if they are helpful in expressing or justifying points you wish to make.


When planning, think of:

  • Which areas of social life shall I focus on?

  • What is the evidence that people have more choices and opportunities?

  • what is the evidence to the contrary?

  • Are there particular groups who have new opportunities while others have less?

  • Where is the balance of evidence between the two.


  • Key is coherent integration from at, least two blocks. don't just recite a checklist from two blocks, but integrate and flag when using each block, eg. make a point and illustrate from places in the course

    • eg. New choices in:

      • Culture and cuisine (block four)

      • New patterns of consumption (block five)

    • Uncertainty

      • International effects on jobs (4)

      • Confusion about which experts to believe (5)

      • Fears of ethnic diversity (introductory)

    • many other examples, so be selective


  • Remember, it's a debate question which means you show you have understanding of competing possible answers – then reach a conclusion based on the strengths and weaknesses of those competing answers.


OR


Question Two


'Social divisions remain just as significant as they were in the 1950's'. Discuss this statement in relation to issues of either gender or class.


  • You must draw upon at least TWO blocks of dd122.

  • It's fundamentally about social change. From each having a fixed position in society, to one where divisions and expectations of behavior has broken down. No right answer, identifying competing views and offer own reasoned and evidenced conclusion, and balance between position


  • First establish what were the features in the fifties of the social division of your choice – then weigh up if they're the same or if real change has occurred. Use 'End of Course Review' to see themes and help with planning, draw on themes when they're genuinely useful i.e. themes are aids in organizing ideas, not things you are obligated to use. REMEMBER THAT YOU NEED TO ITE EXAMPLES FROM AT LEAST TWO BLOCKS OF THE COURSE (introductory and blocks four to six). Draw on dd121 but 122 must be the main sources of your answer.


When planning, think:

  • What was the pattern of division?

  • What's the pattern today?

  • What is the argument and evidence that the division remains very significant today?

    • And that it does not?

    • Where is the balance between the positions?


  • Again, use two blocks, but integrate, not comparing a checklist.

  • eg. New choice in gender roles; globalisation widens skills market (4) Technology reduces male strength need (5)

  • So, flag the reader to where in each block the example is coming from


  • Remember, it's a debate type question, show awareness of competing possible answers – hen reach a conclusion based on the strengths and weaknesses of those competing answers.




BLOCK FIVE – KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWING


  • How do we know anything?

  • How is that knowledge transmitted?

    • Always changing


Intro and 9A Notes

  • Knowledges are socially produced

  • eg. different types of snow

  • Key questions

    • What is knowledge?

      • Practices

      • Ideas etc.

    • How is knowledge socially produced?

      • Brought into current understanding

        • eg. the change in medical knowledge

      • Institutions give legitimacy

    • Has there been a decline in the trust of 'expert' knowledge?

      • Less manipulation

      • Or, just need new gurus

        • What about transformationalist position in globalisation?

      • Can knowledge produce social change?

        • Theories of social change


  • How do we know anything?

  • Theory of knowing and knowledge = epistemology

    • Proof

  • Knowledge product off society, so social scientists use circuit of knowledge.

    • Questions

      • Become

        • Claims

        • Hypothesis

        • Models

        • Theories

    • Evaluating evidence

    • Applying to theory

    • Evaluate


  • Key skills

    • Bringing together

      • Theories, concepts, evidence.

    • Combining/integrating them

      • Like making a cake with various ingredients.

    • Reflective learning

      • Course review.


  • Truths exist, or some knowledge, privileged by authority at a certain point in time.

  • Medical knowledge seated in social institutions, not natural world, and experts are rooted in an existing knowledge structure and so not really free

  • Key tasks:

    • Identify main argument and separate it from the illustrations

    • Understand knowledge production language and expert

    • Compare development of natural and social scientific methods

    • Relate all to course themes

      • Understanding/knowledge

        • Own evidence and interpretation

        • Many sources, own experience, friends comment etc.

        • Authority important in medical knowledge

          • But common sense has none

        • All knowledge needs expression but some expression has more status


Knowledge in Medicine and Science


  • Has a special authority, when did it attach?

  • Fifth century separated from religion and magic.

  • Hippocrates and others made classifications of symptoms

  • 1662, Charles II,

    • Royal Society

    • Nature

    • Philosophy

    • Medicine

    • Not:

      • Politics

      • Religion

    • Community

    • Objectivity

      • Better than subjective

      • Confirmed by community

        • Discussed

        • Published

  • But can choose what to study because of various subjective bias, i.e. studied marsh scientifically because of religious belief.

  • Common lay sense was still often influential

  • Core aspects of medical sense knowledge that developed

    • Particular areas of concern are investigated.

    • Particular methodologies

      • Eg. experimentation

      • Observation

    • Characterised by dichotomies/dualisms

      • eg. rational/emotional

        • Science is one side

          • eg. objective over subjective


Homeopathy, Proof and the Construction of Scientific Debate

  • Objectivity, experiments and logic can move beyond common sense

  • Homeopathy is controversial (Schiff 1995)

  • Laws = statement about the world which are true in all circumstances

  • Proof

  • Science

  • 1950's, double-blind studies

  • Publication bias, weak bias to report the positive i.e. evidence is distorted by the selection procedures


  • Science and social science: scientific ways of thinking

Enlightenment aka. the age of reason. 17&18 cen. Intellectual movement. People are essentially rational and good and knowledge should be accepted on that basis alone, not through tradition or religion.

  • Following enlightenment, science replaced religion as dominant knowledge (Hallad Gieben 1992)

  • Baconian method of induction: repeatable experiments lead to a conclusion

  • 1930, social philosopher Karl Popper challenged.

    • Can never be absolutely sure of the next result

      • Make an epistemological virtue of this

        • So, should create theories which can be disproved by evidence

          • Then the non-rejected should be accepted as closer to the truth

        • Verifying and falsifying

          • constant experiments hat would falsify hypothesis

          • Counterintuitive

            • Most experiments try and prove rather that disprove, with acceptance that there can never be absolute certainty (Rose,998, P47)

Paradigms = assumptions, laws and methods that set the standard for inquiry

  • Thomas Kuhn

    • The Structure of Scientific Revolution

      • Progress comes in fits and starts when sciences contradict each other and new paradigms are needed

      • Social constructionist approach to knowledge, truth not 'out there' for discovery but produced from relations with power. Not discovered but produced.


  • Bodies of knowledge, knowledge of bodies

    • Michel Foucault

      • Social constructionist

        • Knowledge

          • Not discovered

          • Produced through languages and practices that make it meaningful

          • Conditions and meanings are produced in discourses

Discourse, = set of ideas, statements or practices which provide a way of representing a particular kind of knowledge, makes it possible to say some things but also restricts what you can say.

  • classifications, of conditions, exist when put into the discourse

  • Modern

    • SIDS etc.

  • eg. description of egg and sperm in words of cultural meaning

  • We can access and transmit knowledge removed from language/discourse

  • Foucault stress on language has been very influential (Brieger 1993)

    • Can't discuss knowledge without considering the multiple points at which power is exercised in its production

    • Does this overemphasis social/cultural i.e. SIDS actually is the death of a human being.

      • it doesn't locate the source of power.

        • Knowledge itself produces power.

        • Eg Science is seen as objective and male and superior and so decides what will investigate and fin descriptions, what is evidence etc.


  • Women excluded from medicine as couldn't join unis and associations

    • Both suppression and opposition

      • Mary Seacote, 'Jamacan Doctress'

      • Elizabeth Garret and Sophia Jex-Blake


Add table on P36


Summery


  • Social constructions = no objective truth. Material limits social processes somewhat. Extreme forms underlay relationship between nature and culture

    • Points to links between politics, science and society

  • Feminists

    • Points to interconnections between power, value and medical claims.


Who Are The Experts?


  • Now, competition between knowledge is played out in the media


  • SIDS research

    • Women never harm their children coloured research, as did saying more than three deaths is murder.

    • Most people believe SIDS can't be inherited (Sweeny 2003)

    • SIDS category meant people could try and fit deaths into the category

    • Expert knowledge of higher status observed what was happening

    • Where did the idea to put infants on their back come from? Common sense.

    • Summery

      • A challenged theory may still be accepted

      • Authority can strengthen a theory and compensate for poor evidence

      • Cultural factors play important role about which theories are accepted

      • Common sense knowledge can be ignored until being recatagorized as having a scientific basis


Science and Society

Practice = professional activity, binds to set of expectation and rules

Tradition = Authority is antiquity and it completely accepted

  • Hippocratic oath

    • Code of practice

      • Master and Apprentice contract, it's limited to this and men (irkup and Smith Keller 1992 P. 17)

      • Not science as not based on observation and experiment

    • Now, science has tradition

      • Academic publishing system

        • Reinforces strong belief


Science, Politics and the Press

  • scientific evidence used to influence policies, back up/refute common sense views et.

    • Eg. temperature and stroke evidence

      • Docs. prescribe loft insulation

      • BMJ fight fuel inequality, as researchers discover its effects, so knowledge and politics are always linked

      • Communities of knowledge, like uni, actually structures that knowledge

Summery

  • Today, medical and science knowledge largely through the apprentice system

  • Restricting knowledge gives power to self-maintaining communities with authorities.


Conclusion


Knowledge

  • Different forms

  • Interrelated

  • Competing/complimentary

    • Authority is placed on it

  • Diversity in science is accepted


  • Structures

    • Transmit

    • Give authority

    • Constrain interpretation

    • Agency

      • Individual and collective

        • Change structures


Summery

  • Challenges to established knowledge creates uncertainty and diversity


Social Production of Knowledge

  • Identifying the argument

    • Not really about medicine, but need to look at the broad argument

      • Loot at contents/summery to see what it (or anything) was all about


  • Many types of knowledge

  • Historically specific

  • Specialised language

    • Structure

      • Included/excluded things

        • eg. SIDS

  • New ideas/discourses or responses to previous

  • Both competing and complimentary knowledge to explain monomania


Arguments and Examples

  • Can extract the argument from the examples by using a grid

    • One column argument examples, and the other = argument specifics

    • [included table]

    • DO FOR ALL CHAPTER/SECTORS

  • Science can be separate from nature, and objective too.

    • Institutionalisation over part of the objectivication of nature

    • But knowledge actually produced by these organisations.

    • Philosophy critique is that there's not a measurable, material world

    • Baconian method not objective


  • Circuit of knowledge has societal framework


  • Themes

    • Structure and agency of knowledge. Make table. Top, argument, examples, side, theme, theme, theme, theme



KNOWING AND BELIEVING – RELIGIOUS belief


  • Now focus on how find out and produce knowledge in social science

  • Key tasks;

    • Compare positivist and interpretative methods

    • distinguish substantive and functional definitions of religion

    • Evaluate theories put forward


INTRO


  • Here how what we know, but how do we know it?

    • Religion overtaken by science?

      • How do we know?

    • Newsweek, 'Is God Dead?' article

      • Evidence = religious observance figures

        • Variety of sources = dubious

          • Methods? Which questions asked?

        • But UK census 2001, 71.7% Christian,

          • But attendance 11%


SECULARIATION = Decline of religious belief and worship in modern society

SECULARIZATION THESIS = The debate in the social sciences as to whether it's happening at all

eg. Welfare and education now run by state

Less attendance, more leisure/other pursuits

Less authority as experts now scientists


The Status of Religious Knowledge


  • Based on revealed truths, not empiricism

  • Idea of competition between science and religion to explain phenomenon C19

    • Evolution

    • Compatible though?

    • Darwin believed in God as a non-Christian

  • C21, religion tries not to compete with science


  • The authority of science rests on (to some extent) what people think about it

    • Considerable diversity of scientific knowledge

      • Contested

        • eg. complimentary medicine

      • Can be seen as opposition (rel. and sci.)

        • Or independent

          • Science = how

          • Religion = why

      • Can overlap

        • The nature of self

      • Sometimes integration attempts

        • Cosmogenisis

      • Decline is more to do with how science succeeds or fails in answering certain needs.

      • Early social scientists saw role as to be critical

        • 'The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of people is required for their real happiness' (Marx 1844/undated, P42)

        • Auguste Comte, human thought passes three stages: theological, metaphysical and then scientific (positive?), which supposedly correspond to individuals intellectual development, from childhood, adolescence and then adulthood (comte, 1852-53; Thompson, 1976)

          • Most social scientists more neutral

            • What social functions it serve?

              • For which groups?

            • Separate from truth or falsity (or beliefs)

              • Only see how it works, is produces and its impact


  • Moral prescriptions

  • Emotional support

    • Combined with:

      • Ethnicity

      • Nationalism

    • Moral causes

      • Ecology

      • New age

      • Occult

    • religion Politics, religion and science, new groups cross boundaries of science


  • Identity

  • Relation to past

  • Ideas of future

    • Reliance of non-scientific thinking

      • What does knowledge do?

        • Continuity

        • Order

        • Comfort

How can social science investigate religious knowledge and it's relevance?


    • What is it?

    • How do we know about it?

    • What is its status?

    • More or less recent uncertainty?

      • Make more diverse opportunities for religious expression?


What is Religious Knowledge?


SACRED = Set apart and separate from everyday

PROFANE = Routine and ordinary practices of every day human life.

  • Can be daily life practice but always appeals to dimension beyond the routine

  • Yes, faith and belief

  • No empiricism and testing

  • Yes, tradition confers authority


  • Emile Durkheim said distinction between the sacred and the profane

    • Science knowledge

      • Rational

      • Testable

    • Religious knowledge

      • Immeasurable

      • ineffable

      • Divine


SUBSTANTIVE DEFINITION = concerns content

FUNCTIONAL DEFINITION = concerns societal purpose


  • Definition

    • Substantive (or exclusive)

      • What it is, rituals, beliefs, etc.

        • Excludes anything that doesn't have reference

    • Functional

      • What it does

        • Eg. answers the unanswerable

          • community

            • Includes anything that serves a function

  • Max Weber adopted substantive definition, esp ethical content, i.e. The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber, 1904/1930), covers ethical beliefs and the effect on economic behaviors in the development of C17 capitalism.

  • Emile Durkheim in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life adopted functional definition with a substantive element i.e. community aspect binding people together around a common symbol (which could be anything)

    • Rituals

    • Queen as head of Church of England forges link between religious and political


Two Different Approaches


  • Which you adopt effects view/interpretation of what is happening in modern society

  • Substantive adopters see religions in decline as society becomes 'demystified'. This is Weber's view, i.e. a rationalization process of modernization, rationalization pushed out traditional thought based on spiritual values/sanctified custom – but Durkheim said religion had essential functions that would continue even if symbols decline or change

  • Functional adoptees tend to focus on the changing forms of belief systems that serve the same social functions as religion eg. nationalism based around a common sacred. Durkheim pointed out, French Revolution of 1789 overthrow religion goal, but then had sacred symbols and moral obligations

  • (Bellah, 1970), US 'civil religion', oath at flag, thanksgiving etc.

    • UK equivalent: royals, jubilee etc, hurt by divorce but helped by 'saint' Diana


  • Functionalists say always societal as well as individual function, essentially integrative


  • Grace Davis – substantive people say fading as in all ways that can be measured it is, but functional say no/less so as they include phenomenon under Durkheim definition of 'sacred'


Recent Developments


PHENOMENOLOGY – Sociology of a philosophical approach which focuses on people's consciousness of their experience, and they they interpret the world; the meaning it has for them.

  • Functionalism stresses societies needs

    • Phenomenology things of an individual's needs to have answers, some of which can only be religious.

      • Assumption: people need to see the world s meaningful and coherent

      • Life gives situations, like suffering, that only religion can answer otherwise senseless - and gives a way to express desire for world to be a certain way eg. ritual, with symbols and so the social scientist interprets the symbol system and the way it works for the individual

      • The approach strong in sevventies9

      • Peter Berger, The societal Reality of Religion = religion is a sacred canopy against meaninglessness.

        • Science does the same but religion covers totality and tells us how to behave towards phenomena

          • Moral guidelines

        • Sheltering aspect

          • Important in marginal situations eg. identity called into question

          • Such situations show precariousness of meaning order (nomos) and threaten with meaninglessness (anomie), but religion buttresses nomos into a sacred cosmos

          • 'Religion is the audacious attempt to conceive of the entire universe as being humanly significant (Berger, 1967, P.28)

  • Summery

    • Religion gap of sacred and profane

    • Substantive approaches content and stresses decline

    • Functionalist emphasizes purpose

    • Phenomenologyical focuses on individual meanings


Methods: Finding Out


  • Hard to study as it's about subjective belief

    • Questionnaires

    • Observe behaviour

POSITIVIST – Observational approach which claims it excludes subjective understandings we can only understand the world by observing what people do -so in line with natural science and appears to devalue religious beliefs. It observes and draws structural conclusions. Stresses quantifiable rather than meanings, intentions of motives – criticized because doesn't take intentionality into count – which can' be measured. This view isn't held by many social scientists now, but quantifiable data is important.

INTERPRETATIVE – Understanding of meanings which people give to their actions

  • Shift from observation to understanding

  • More agency, as not impose categories from outside

  • Reject positivist claim that physical science should be the model for all sciences

  • People give meaning to their action, but research might still privilege their own interpretation

  • Acknowledges intentionality of both observer and observed

  • More likely to tolerate a multiplicity of meanings – rasher than try and establish one right answer.


Summery


  • Positivist methodologies = observation and quantitative methods

  • Interpretative = Agency and understanding of subjects, allowing numerous perspectives and meanings.


Secularization – Is Religion on the Decline


  • Stats of attendance easy to interpret

  • Stats of belief hard to interpret i.e. personal god, life force etc and the change over the years in these bus-beliefs hasnt' moved in a clear way

  • (Mass Observation 1948) Found widespread belief in God, but not along Orthodox lines.

  • More Irish believe as part of identity and they face 'enemy' with opposing belief

  • USA 88% believe diving 3% attend services weekly (NORC, 1999) but immigrants came and religion helped define them.

  • This all depends on substantive definition of religion – but belief an extend o outside of formal religion. Going to church doesn't necessarily indicate belief.

  • Apart from USA, there has been secularization because of modernization – according to substantive research.

  • But can have a more inclusive definition of religion belief systems which have some characteristics of religion but offer meaning and identify for certain groups


Summery


  • some evidence UK is secularized

    • Depends on substantive definition

    • Not clear cut

      • Differences among groups

    • Need different evidence

      • Qualitative

      • Interpretative

      • Quantitative


Gender And Religion


  • Bureaucratic structures of most UK churches dominated by med (Knott, 1994)

  • Statistically, women go to church more

    • Is that true for all religions?

      • Hard, as in Islam eg. women worship at home

    • Arrival of women from S. Asia in 60's shaped Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism, shaping domestic activities and encouraging worships places (Knott, 1944)

      • I.e. women needed to retain religious identities

    • Women influence Anglican

      • Inclusive language

      • Women priests

      • CofE admit in 1992

      • Baptists in 1922

    • Much female involvement is outside places of worship

      • How measure?

      • Can ask?

        • eg. Jewish women describe importance of family and of tradition in the woman's role of introducing religion to the family (Jewish Women in London Group, 1989)

        • Much interview material was about children and Kim Knot says it might be better to talk spirituality rather than religion

        • Some women say childbirth is a spiritual experience

        • Being involved in creating life is associated with conservation of the natural world (Kroll, 1987), so perhaps it's constraining to classify the experiences as religious

      • Eco-feminism bridges the gap between politics and religion

        • New term for ancient wisdom

          • Interconnection

            • and this interconnection called spirituality

              • Capitalism and Marxism saw happiness about goods material and denied this interconnection

      • 'Spirituality' means different things to different people

      • women attend more but what does it mean to them? Interpretative approaches let them explain it beyond observable behavior



Summery


  • Empirically women involved more than men in some religions

    • But doesn't explain how they perceive their involvement

      • Need more interpretative approach

        • Females can understanding o spiritual experience challenges orthodox, patriarchal religion.


ETHNICITY AND RELIGION


  • Are intermeshed

  • Ethnicity = have, or seem to have, common culture, original practice (Yinger, 1976 P.200)

    • Fluid, white, Asian, Christian, different things, depends on situation.

    • Now religion is on the census

    • Political

    • Muslims upset only illegal to discriminate in N. Ireeland (Modood, Weerbner, 1977 P8).

    • Many take label as solidarity, eg. hated Muslims (Keddie, 1999) (so positive)

    • In surveys, some Muslims put faith as identity before country (Modood et. la 1994 P57), so its less to do with a sense of being 'other' (or more?)

    • Caribbeans stressed therapeutic and celebratory nature, so individualistic


  • Identity can give meaning to marginalization

    • or resist globalisation

  • Diaspora has to negotiate meanings with same religion people from different countries.

    • Media often focuses on non-typical, fundamentalist aspects


  • Second generation are less religious, but may give more importance to religious identity

    • So it's still a function of religion.


  • On the whole, religion is an individual choice/cultural resource


Summery


  • Religious identity may override other identities, eg. Islam from different countries

  • Religion can be involved in racialisation and ethnicisation



New Age Beliefs


  • Often private practice so hard to quantify

  • New age/occult titles grew 150% between 1970 and 980 (Bruce, 1995, P.105)

  • No strict definition of New Age

  • Basic assumptions (Jeremy Tarher):

  1. The world is an expression of a higher power

  2. Each person has divine self which is a manifestation of divine nature

  3. Higher nature can be awakened and be a part of daily life

  4. The awakening is the point of human life


  • Differing opinions of new age among sociologists

  • One, evidence the sacred does not disappear from society but takes new forms, and weakness of organized religion means easier to be plundered by secular an put to new uses (Davies, 1994 P.41) eg. Human potential about spiritual training and used them for management training (Heelas, 1996)

    • More examples of religion into secular

      • Ecological movement

      • Complimentary medicine

        • whole person

        • Holism

          • Set apart once more integrated into human being, no fragmentation of mind, body etc.

      • Davis's view is that holistic approaches incorporated spirituality rather than try to draw distinctions between religious, scientific and moral knowledge.

      • Ecology

        • Need to balance parts

          • Wholism

        • Deep ecologists

          • Ecological egalitarianism

        • Abuse

          • Prejudice against nature

        • Ecotheologians

          • Morality

            • Spiritual democracy of god's creation

              • Particals to nebulae

            • Rights to animals and plants

              • Not limited liberalism for human freedom (Nash 1989 P6)


  • Some see new age as pseudo-science

    • Will one day be validated

    • Not now because or bigotry/narrow-mindedness


  • Science gives no moral meanings about people get interpret eerts as such eg. will always be gap between science and moral meaning and you would expect gap to diminish as science progresses but it never does as it can never give moral meanings


  • Perhaps new age a reaction to modernization, secularization and globallisation because emphasis on individual self – spiritual progress etc.

  • some scientists attracted by holistic aspects


Summery


  • End of C20 increase in New Age beliefs

  • Challenges secularization if considered a religion

  • But it can seek to become new science rather than new religion – when this is what it challenges

  • New Age beliefs illustrate interconnections between different sets of knowledge


Science and the Extrasensory


  • Some say people still believe without belonging

  • Or science and materialsm mean that people don't attach religious meanings to the extraordinary

  • Zoologist Alister Hardy 1969

    • Questionnaire

      • 3000 had religious experience

      • Triggers:

        • Beauty

        • worship

        • Prayer

        • Music

        • Dreams

        • Depression

        • Despair

          • Effects

            • Security

            • Protection

            • Peace

            • Joy

            • Guidance

            • Vocation

            • Certainty

            • Integration

            • (Hay 1990 P. 41)

    • David Hay 1976

      • One third had experiences

      • four to three femaie

      • More education, more likely

      • Higher class, more likely

      • Gallup 1986

        • Half had

        • Premonition, two thirds

        • Long interviews meant more positives


  • Hay said people embarrassed to admit, as crude C19 positivist science means only empirical acts count

  • Back up:

    • Stanly Melgram 1963

      • Electric shock obedience

        • WHITE COAT

    • Refusing to accept dominant scientfic values requires either remarkable self-confidence or the presence of the protetive ghetto??? (Hay 1990 P.60)

  • But this means all knowledge is equal and so social science studying religion can't advance knowledge

  • Or could make us less inclined to overlook experiences which do not fit conventional assumptions.

  • As people become more educated generally, they become more aware of the limitations of science


Summery


  • Studies show large number have experiences

  • In depth interviews reveal more

  • May not like admitting in a society where scientific realism is dominant

  • Such evidence may challenge the secularization thesis


Conclusion


  • About methods

    • Challenging as science and religion obtain knowledge from elsewhere

    • Secularization thesis = decline of religion in the light of science

      • but religious knowledge in many different sites, experiences and understandings

    • Spirituality

      • Rel. and soc. combined

    • Interpretative approach sees as more complex picture than simple decline

      • New opportunities for

        • Women

        • New age

      • Resistance of religious restraints

    • Some evidence does not support the secularization theory

      • Spirituality

        • Interrelation of knowledge


The Status of Religious Knowledge


  • Identify the argument

    • See summaries

    • First question: status of religious knowledge and how it differs from natural scientific knowledge


  • What are the differences between religion and science

    • Creationism

      • Evidence

        • Validating theories and hypothesis

  • Sci. and rel. same in that:

    • Legitimized by authority

    • Provided through particular language

    • Symbols, rituals in science

      • Social aspects of knowledge

        • Socially created


  • Weber, function on and effect on economy

  • Durkheim, sacred and profound

    • So, anything, can be a religion

      • Football

        • Sacredness

        • Ritual

        • Community


Definition counts

  • Will influence secularization conclusions

    • Substantive – content – decline

    • Functional – social institution – different forms


Using Course Themes


Belief, Uncertainty and Diversity


  • In the past, religion gave all answers and still not in opposition in some places

  • In the west, has failure so science driven people to spirituality, uncertainty Principe?


  • Church attacked

    • Feminists

    • Other cultures

  • But religious knowledge has different meanings to fit different groups and needs


Structure and Agency


  • Substantive emphasizes hierarchy and institutions as structure

  • Functional = nationalism and green movement are also religion


  • berger gave individual agency as religion has role of making sense of both death and life and so not structure (other than life and death itself) and identity

  • Some aspect in quakers and new age or any movement that does away with hierarchy and emphasizes inner-life of individual.


  • What evidence given?

    • Gender role influence

    • Ethnic diversity influence

    • New age increase

  • Bear in mind, definition of religion


  • Why ethnicity and new age not studied? No linked... or assumption?


  • Gender

    • Women entered church

      • And started movements beyond it

        • Eco feminism


All of this is the evidence presented


  • Ethnicity

    • Religion may give identity or solidarity


  • New age beliefs

    • Evidence hard as definition wide

      • Crossover

        • Ecology

        • New age as science


  • Evidence

    • Books bought

    • Surveys of extrasensory experiences


Investigating Religion

  • Secularization because of science... or just new forms of religion?


INSERT TABLE HERE, POSITIVIST AND INTERPRETAVE METHODS


  • Method chosen depends on definition of religion

    • If believe form will observe form

    • If believe function, will observe qualitatively

      • Thinking and feelings


  • Positivism, strength: hard data

  • Weakness: disregards personal meanings/intentions, and also has the possibility of bias during interpretation


  • Interpretative strength = includes meanings from subjects, and

    • fiction

    • art

    • music

    • PO

    • Weakness: because based on feeling, hard to verify. Might say no, or lie, or not even really know your motivations.


  • Evidence doesn't speak for itself, both qualitative and quantitative, because of higher status of silence, statistics believed more, so interpretative studies are often presented this way.


  • Sometimes, methods are combined but there's always more than one way to look at the evidence, so often multiple approaches are used to generate more questions.


POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES AND THE ENVIRONMENT


  • Ideologies also tested through the circuit of knowledge

    • Plus chosen if they are congruent with the kind of society one wantss to see.

    • Now examine this with ecology, rose when technology failed to deal with problems


Key Tasks:

  • Explore knowledge and political action relationship

  • Clarify environmental ideologies

  • Employ course themes to the ideologies

  • Use circuit of knowledge on ideologies.


Political Ideologies and the Environment


  • Does double crisis:

    • Practical problems of degredation

    • New 'green thinking'

  • ... constitute crisis for modern political ideologies?

  • Ideologies

    • Are a map

      • How things are; descriptive

      • How things could be; prescriptive

        • History

        • Reflective

      • 'enable us to choose what we want to become' (Freedem??, 1996, P553)

    • Not propaganda as generate testable hypotheses

    • Important:

      • Explain world and how to change it

        • Ideologies compete with each other

        • So have to choose

          • Societal consequences

        • Appeal deeply and draw out commitment

          • World war

          • Gulf war

      • Many ideologies need to be redrawn because of the environment


  • Modern ideologies based on science and technology to produce economic growth

    • Questioned

      • ?Progress in uncertain circumstances

      • Limits to growth, more problems than solution in controlling nature = precautionary principle

    • Gap between global nature of environmental problems and nation state political decision making

    • Need wider notion of self-interest

      • Natural limits to social and political agency, and attempts to control nature through social action my make nature react at us in unforeseen ways.


  • Gap, global env. prob and pol. nation states (Cochrane and Pain, 2004; McGrew 2004)


  • Growth, technology

    • Liberals, mixes of markets

    • Marxists, planning

  • Affluence means can pay for non-material eg. clean environment

    • Problems caused by science

    • Poss. science only one way to explain world and wil never completely understand the natural world

      • Weather and climate change – don't know

      • Threshold effect

        • Non-linear

        • Turning point, OK before but can't go back from it

Precautionary Principle – change burden of proof; don't effect change because not have neg. consequences – have to show not have hem.

  • Caused by uncertainty, even if science well understood, we don't know what will happen

  • Problem, how to render economic growth environmentally benign (Himmelweit and Simoetti, 2004)

  • Can't measure consequences

  • How value environmental aspects?

  • Future generations not involved


Global Commons – resources not controlled by a nationstate but available to all – should rainforests be available to all?

Environmental globalisation – if nationstate undermined to protect environment?


  • World valued in relation to human concerns

  • Humans not considered part of the environment

  • Many risks taken locally with global consequences

    • DNA

    • Genetics etc


Responding to Environmental Problems


  • Gap between global env. probs. and nationstarte decision making

    • international cooperation

      • Enlightened self-interest

    • Global decisions via UN


  • Liberalism, business as usual but incorporate environmentalism

    • Market answers

    • Market solutions

    • Efficiency

    • Social costs included

  • Social democracy

    • How can you value the social costs

    • How can they be owned

    • Have a proper debate and proper decision making involving all

  • Feminism

    • Redical alternative


  • Green thinking since industrialisation, but now centrestage


  • Conservatism = 'the politics of imperfection' (Quinton, 1978)


  • Answers need a nationstate to implement them – and can't coordinate resourses overall

    • Bargain in self-interest

    • ?freeriding of states of another

    • No enforcement

      • Carrot not stick?

        • Pay not to pollute?


  • Enlightened self-interest

    • Natural limits

      • Non-human has inherent value

      • Reject all anthropocentric view of the world


The Challenge of Green Thinking


  • A radical environmental idea is that we can operate on a different moral and cultural basis other than self-interest and instrumental reason


  • Ecology – science

  • Ecologism – political ideology

    • The place of humans in the world

    • Ultimate limits of energy and time on economic activities

    • Efficiency and progress called into questioning (which modern ideologies rely upon)

  • Meaning of nature has changed over time and place, now contested again within and beyond green thinking

  • Ecofeminism is revaluing of nature critical of androcentric nature of science. Compatibility of scientific understandings of nature with understandings of those of other traditions of thought including spirituality, is hotly debated.


  • Green politics

    • Reverence for each

    • Social justice

    • Rejection of materialsim

    • Personal/spiritual growth

    • Decentralised communities


  • Founder

    • All are the same atoms

    • Man, animans, same moral and natural status

    • Nature = source of truth and guidence


  • Closed system of spaceship earth


  • Efficiency makes economics a science?

    • Car

      • Tickets

      • Insurance

      • Tolls

    • But energy efficiency is different


  • Value of non-human is paternal unless remove self-interest

  • Intrinsic value is the antidote to anthropocentrism

  • Crude oil? Not inherent worth

    • So, instrumental value

Instrumental V. intrinsic value

Instrumental = concepts and theories usefulness, not measured by if they are true, false or correctly depict reality, but how effective they are in explaining and depicting reality.


Political Ideologies and the Environment


Knowledge, Ideology and the Environment


Identifying the Argument

  • It's not about the environment

  • It's about how a new situation caused political ideologies to change

    • Can see how knowledge evolves

    • can see how knowledge and ideology work to make a practical difference

  • Four questions provided the framework for the chapter

    • What is political ideology?

      • Why is it important?

    • What challenge to political ideologies does environmental damage pose?

    • How have ideologies responded?

    • what is green thinking and how does it differ from other ideologies?


  • Broad tendency of ideologies that are a problem environmentally

    • Notion of progress based on economic growth

    • National politics

    • Human as the centre of the universe


  • Env. problems are multi-factorial, not one sci. solution


Insert table of P43


Instrumentality, to greens, is using nature to human ends

  • Not because it won't work but because it's ethically wrong


  • Ecologism – science

    • Greek moral philosophy

    • Study of human and animal behaviour

    • Second law of thermal dynamics

      • = into ideology of how things could be


Using Course Themes


The limiting problems of ideologies can be thought of as course themes


  • Bound to nationstate and traditional power structure

  • Depend upon scientific certainty

  • Treat nature and society as separate


Structure and Agency


Nationstate as structure


Knowledge and Knowing


  • Male, scientific way of knowing things

  • Though some green thinking can incorporate science


Uncertainty and Diversity


  • Can't fully understand nature so we don't fully know what the results of our interventions will be


  • Ideologies on the circuit of knowledge keep ballooning off to become new questions/circuits of knowledge


CHANGING TIMES – CHANGING KNOWLEDGE


  • About knowledge influencing social change


Key Tasks:

  • review key questions

  • Consider approaches to knowledge revolution

  • Consider dis/advantage of knowledge revolution


Knowing the Social Sciences


Knowledge Society = a society where knowledge is the motor for social, economic, cultural and political change

  • How do we know when change is taking place and knowledge is causing it?

  • Knowledge always important, but now emphasis on new knowledge

  • And knowledge produced and disseminated more quickly

  • New knowledge

    • Who accessed?

    • Specialised?

    • Power relations

    • Social structures

    • Outcomes

    • Plurality

      • Certainty?


Knowledge and the Social Sciences

  • Study change, but also cause it

    • What do we do with social science knowledge?


What is knowledge?

  • Academic

  • Common sense

    • Socially constructed

      • The context of its production

Social Construction = eg. language, social, political, legal = the ways knowledge is constructed, eg study something because need legal definition, so looking for something in the first place

Social Constructionism = theoretical approach, prioritises social processes ok knowledge production, truth or false depends on context of how procuded = there's no truth 'out there', it' s procuded, not discovered.

  • producers and source of knowledge

    • Relationship

produced or false depends on context of how truth knowledge production, of

New technologies

  • change

    • distribution

    • What actually counts as knowledge

    • More sources

    • New orthodoxies

      • Spirituality

      • Comp. medicine

    • Barriers between high and low knowledge broken down (Hall, 1997)

    • Who expert

      • Fame in one thing crosses over into the unrelated

    • Orthodoxy breakdown

      • Good and bad

    • Some knowledge carries more weight/status

      • Power


  • Methods

    • Positivist

    • Interpretative

      • Qualitative

      • Quantitative


So, knowledge is patriarchy and it's effects led to social change or using knowledge as the basis to start social change


Questions now:

  • How is knowledge related to change?

  • What is knowledges' impact?

  • Knowledge society, more equality or only anxiety?


Social change


  • In jobs need more information than traditionally

    • More knowledge in everything you do

      • Relationships

      • Childcare

      • Shopping etc.

        • 90% of US workforce produces consumer goods and services (Rosenblatt??, 1999)

        • It's not about what something does but what it means

        • Everyone is considered a consumer, by govs, docs etc.


Post Industrial Society

  • The coming of Post Industrial Society Bell 1975??

    • Employment from agriculture to service sector

    • Before, was as Marx described, few capital owners with confrontational proletariat, i.e. manufacturing

    • So went from agricultural to manufacturing, but the technology and investment created new needs and went to service, surplus labour keeps moving to where there are jobs i.e.... dunno

      • So, things like robotics created wealth by efficiency and the newly wealthy people wanted higher education, tourism etc.

      • Services often can't be automated, so jobs are safe

      • 'Professionals' with specialist knowledge will become the most important class and manual workers will be replaced by white collar workers

        • Separated not by class but culture, divided by access to theoretical knowledge


The Knowledge Economy

  • Bell wrong

    • Info revolution was within manufacturing

      • Biotechnology etc.

    • IT technologies in themselves important, not just technologies

    • Modern materials replaced by knowledging, i.e. use less more efficiently

    • Modern companies succeed on knowledge eg. marketing


  • Communication

    • Satellite

    • Optic future???

      • Key to globalisation of finance (Cairncross, 1997)

        • Access to finance and material electronically

        • Consumption rather than production emphasised


Summery

  • Many C20 changes in production are producing and disseminating info (adverts etc.)

  • Production changes in material production gives priority to knowledge in the process eg. what to make


From Production to Consumption


Summery


  • Economic changes transformed production through fordism and post-fordism

    • Knowledge revolution contributed

  • Production to consumption shift explains social relations

  • Post modernism showed centrality of culture of production and production of culture consumption, not production state = away from Marxism

  • Post ford is flexible specialisations, products more specialised and individualised shorter runs

    • Outsourced aspects

    • Variety

Cultural Turn = soc. sci. moved to study production and consumption of cultural goods and the centrality of culture in mediating social relations. Cultural turn in economics studies increased production of cultural goods (MacKay, 2004) and centrality of culture production precess i.e. production of goods that are aspirational lifestyles (DuGay,, 1997)


Advertising guided the transition from Fordism to post ford era (Lashard ???? 1994)

  • so freed from need and just focus on pleasure


Post Modernism


  • Developed out of past – fordism

  • About meanings attached to consumption rather than utility

  • About desire and wish fulfillment (Baudsillard??? 1988) = identity fragmented and concerned with fantasy and desire *****

  • Baudillard

    • Needs are produced by the system of production i.e. we need what can be produced

    • We need material goods for difference and meaning

    • Importance of symbolic systems and signs = meanings associated with purchases i.e. you're buying into its image and status


We're All Experts Now?


  • i.e. can completely judge a purchase with information you can get for yourself

  • Customer sovereignty, purchase what they want, linked to liberalism, focus on process of consumption,, including the creation of desire

  • could be that consumers seek their own interest because of a distrust of experts?


Knowledge of resistance


  • More knowledge of products could mean we purchase ore, rather than make more choices


  • Anti-capitalism

    • Situationist

    • Surrealist

    • Anarchist

      • Inequalities of wealth

      • conspicuous spending

      • Externalities

      • Unintended consequences of free market

        • (Himmelweit and Simonetti, 2004)


since 1950, consumed more than all history (Taylor and Tifford, 2000, P463)


Too Much Knowledge, The Risk Society


Summery

  • Recent significant change = scale of environmental threats

  • Risk society because of our knowledge of these threats (Ulricch Beck)

  • Politics transformed by risk society

  • All modern key societal shirts from economics

    • Known risks rather than natural

      • Bio

      • Nuclear

      • Pollution etc.

        • Non-spatial

        • Some not perceivable

    • i.e. people have knowledge of risk and require coping, so now politics based on expert knowledge and risk management

    • but it's not a stable society, full of conflict inequality and disagreement


Weighing Up the Argument


Less Manufacturing labour

  • more goods

    • Status goods

      • consumption, not class defines

    • Technical skills required

    • More knowledge

      • Power?

      • Anxiety?

    • Change in knowledge systems and society are inextricably linked


Afterward

  • What is knowledge?

    • Organised information and understanding, practices

      • Common sense

      • Held in im/material form

    • social construction

      • Language

      • Institutions etc.


The Fate of Expert and Knowledge Elites

  • Diversity

    • Religion

      • Multiculturalism

      • New age

    • Medicine

      • Complimentary

        • Destabalising/liberalising

      • Internal dialogs

      • Not closed knowledge clubs

        • Uncertainty widened/revealed (though always there)

        • Less diversity as experts don't have one voice?

  • Media disseminates

  • People are more educated now

  • Public comprehend expert failings

    • Questioned

      • Latrogenic diseases

      • Over-prescription

    • Religion

      • Family ethics

    • State

      • Security and prosperity


Knowledge and Social Change


Post fordists and post modernists would say its still within a capitalist system as need cash to distribute information


Social change and the Social Sciences

  • Provided explanatory frameworks

  • Diversity

    • Methodology

  • Study itself causes change

    • Though can't be neutral and conscious

    • No grand theory

    • No neutrality

      • But give all the tools to explore


Key Tasks:

  • Review questions posed

  • Understand background of knowledge revolution

  • Consider different approaches to KR

    • Dis/advantage


What is knowledge

  • Practices, ideas, visual representations

  • Specialist and various subjects

  • Categories

    • Expert

    • Institutional


  • Power

    • Status

  • Expert knowledge can be challenged


How do we know what we know?

  • sociological methods

    • Evidence to support theories

      • Knowledge production linked to theories and values

  • Ideologies

    • Explanations

      • (and prescriptions)

    • Identifies problems

    • Some can be found inadequate to explain certain things


  • Social and economic change studied separately


  • Fordism

    • Mass production and job demarcation over many sectors

  • Post fordism

    • Flexible production, new technologies result in new forms of social organisation

  • Post modernism

    • Move away from all-embracing theories

    • Stress on symbolic systems of representations and culture


Three approaches to growth of production and distribution of knowledge

  • Society

    • Knowledge

    • Consumer

    • Risk

      • Each is a different focus

      • Also, theoretical differences


Knowledge society


  • More important than manufactured things, esp. IT knowledge


Consumer Society


  • Shift in focus from production to consumption to understnad change and societal relations


Risk Society


  • Rev. related to class, now all have risk. No trust in experts. No social security


Focus

  • Knowledge – knowledge systems

  • Consumer – consumption

  • Risk – environment


How do social sciences study and contribute to shift from production to consumption

  • Bell's theory of professionals

  • Speed of communication

  • Fordism – post fordism

  • Marxism to post fordism

    • i.e. looking at theories



Weighing up the arguments


Three soc. types and nec. conflicting

Features

Strengths

Weaknesses

Knowledge societies

Knowledge key economic asset, so transform economic structures. Groups with knowledge are more powerful.

Logical. Supported by obs.

Overplays IT.

downplays economic power

Consumer society

Consumption not ownership and production determine social relations., Symbolic system contribute to understanding

eg. primacy of advertising. Widespread knowledge about products. some evidence of resistance

Underplays ownership and natural power so not comprehensive

Risk Society

Knowledge of risk drives political agenda and undermines experts

coherent claims and evidence of risk

environmental focus overstates negative




This 'balance sheet' for evaluation includes the three tests of evaluation introduced earlier


Reflection and Consolidation


Audio 9b


  • Expert knowledge

    • Officially sanctioned

    • Status

    • Power

  • Soc. Sci also knowledge

    • Attempts to mimic nat. sci. showed the way that knowledge is socially produced


Key Points:

  • Knowledge exploded

  • Transmission exploded

    • Tradition challenged

    • Uncertainty and diversity

  • Power

    • How represented

    • social sciences are constructed and have impact

    • There's a suggestion that sociology has ideological consensus but this is hotly contested


TV06 Mother Knows Best


  • Looks at knowledge with respect to childrearing

    • Whether to have vaccine

    • How to deal with a sleepless child

      • Lots of info

      • Uncertainty

      • Seek/produce knowledge

    • Is it top down power?


Questions

  • Who are the contemporary experts?

  • What is the relationship between diff. kinds of knowledge eg. prof and common?

  • common sense challenged or legitimized

  • Choice of experts or constrained by structures


Key points

  • Many sources

  • Decline in traditional and gov.

  • Uncertainty and diversity

  • Can mean longing for mythical certainty

  • different types of knowledge can feed into each other eg. medial knowledge can be common sense

  • Knowledge produced through means and confers more status to some

  • All can be involved in knowledge production now eg. parents etc


  • table of knowledge and knowing appears here


Practice TMA


'Examine the way in which knowledge can be said to be socially produced and how this is related to social change. Illustrate your answer the arguments and evidence from two or more chapters'


  • word

    • Relate

      • Most points

        • Theme: uncertainty and diversity

        • First, examine evidence

        • Second, relate to social change

          • Look and pull out knowledge and knowing from book


Generic questions before the essay

  • What type of question?

  • Specific requirements?

  • What is the central subject matter?

  • Key arguments

    • Conflicting theories

  • Where main evidence?

  • What basic conclusion?

  • How will structure answer?

Examine

  • Look at aspects and weigh up

Illustrate

  • concrete examples from text as evidence

    • Relate to question

      • = synthesis

        • Integrate

          • conclusion


specific requirements

  • One or more chapters

  • DON'T FORGET TO INCLUDE PAGE REFERENCES FROM COURSE BOOK


Central subject matter

  • Relationship between production of knowledge and social change

Structure

  • Say what will do

  • Do it

  • Say what you did

    • Identify

      • How knowledge produced and change

    • Consider

      • Different arguments

        • Examples


** most of the things you need will be in the section summaries

  • Key concepts

  • Key sources

    • There are laid out for the tutor, so you will need to use them.

    • Also laid out for tutor in supplementary material




Assignments Booklet


1500 words – either question

  • At least two blocks

    • Intro

    • 4

    • 5

    • 6 (blocks)


  • Audio 10A explains requirement:

    • Introduce

    • Define key terms

    • Develop argument

    • Cite evidence

    • Conclude

      • WC

      • Ref

  • To: Assignment Handling Office

  • Outcomes:

    • Making comparisons between competing arguments

    • Evaluating them by the X3 evaluation criteria


EITHER:


'People and groups are no more able to shape their own lives today than they were in the 1950's' Discuss.


  • Two blocks


  • Related to social change

  • Draw on course themes when you can

  • Eg.

    • Knowledge

      • More choices from knowledge

      • Less choice as more fear from knowledge

    • Structure and agency

      • Choices are still denied to some groups

    • Uncertainty...

      • ... stops people taking them

  • Use themes if they are helpful in expressing or justifying your points


  • Think about these questions:

    • What evidence suggests more choice?

    • What evidence suggests the contrary

    • Are there groups that have more opportunities and groups who have less of them?

    • Where is the balance between the evidence?


  • Two blocks successfully integrated

  • NO, examples from two blocks and flag

  • YES, make general points and then illustrate them from two blocks

  • Consider all the examples and choose, be careful of choice and specific


  • It's a debate question which means you must show awareness of possible competing arguments – then to conclusion based on strengths and weaknesses of those competing arguments


OR


'Social divisions remain just as significant as they were in the 1950's' Discuss this statement in relation to issues of either gender or class.


I's about social change

  • One view, society gone from fixed and predicatlbe to ridig divisons and expectations of begaviour have broken down.

  • There's no right or wrong answer.

    • Identify competing views

    • Offer own reasoned and evidenced conclusion to where the balance lies


  • Establish what the features of social division concerning your choice were in the 1950's

    • Weigh up how much chge or sameOne view, society gone from fixed and predicable to rigid ddivisions and expectations of behavior have broken down.

    • See end of course review

      • Use course themes if relevant and help in making or clarifying points, organise ideas – but now requirement

    • Think about these questions:

      • What was the pattern of division (of your choice) in the 1950's?

      • What is the position today?

      • What is the argument and evidence that the divisions are still relevant?

      • What is the contrary argument and evidence?

      • What is the balance between the two?

      • Some advice don't just pull examples from blocks and flag reader to where it came from, make general points and then illustrate from blocks – i.e. division because of COURSE THEME HERE, then examples from two blocks or eg. more choice in gender roles, evidence, globalisation widens skills market (block four) and less need for ale strength (block five)


Again, it's a debate question, so you need to show awareness of competing possible answers then reach conclusion based on strength and weaknesses of those arguments


##


END OF COURSE REVIEW


  • It's about synthesis and integration

  • Will use post-was city as an example

    • Reading skills also

    • TMA 1500 word

    • ??? course theme


City Themes: Thinking Back

Key Tasks:

  • Introduce key city issues

  • Consolidate and reflect skills

  • Synthesize and integrate practice


Summery: The City and Identity

  • Cities are a source of individual and collective identity

  • Cities characterized by:

    • Uniformity and diversity

    • Proximity and distance

    • Intimacy and alienation

    • Uncertainty and uncertain identities

    • Complex structures

      • Hard/soft

      • Material/immaterial

      • Economic

      • Cultural etc.

        • Shape identities

        • Context for:

          • Choice

          • Agency


City hard and soft inside and outside, individual and collective identity


The City, and the Natural and the Social

Summery:

  • city is a complex interaction of natural and social, not wholly opposite to countryside

  • City has ecological footprint

  • Environmental and social problems are closely intertwined


  • Many zoned found in US and now developing countries

    • one-function specific buildings and more travel

    • Car made worker and urban sprawl Opp polycentric/compact city


The City, Order and Power

Summery

Cities' = order and disorder, shaping families and work etc.

Cities' diversity tend towards messinesss and social disorder

  • Urban planning and governance is the response eg. rethinking families or regulating labour markets

  • Grand designs are top down

    • They try to eradicate or contain infrastructural/social ??? by, but they founder on the intractable diversity and intractability of cities

    • alternative governance, see power produced and used by multiple agents competing in markets and collaborating in networks and negotiations

      • But rarely take into account enormous difference in power of different actors, groups etc.


Ebenezer Howard

  • Liberal Social reformer

  • Garden city movement

    • Self—sustaining planned cities in rural areas, models for UK post war towns

Le corbusier

  • Functional rationalism

    • Sculptural qualities of rough-cast concrete


  • Gardens segregated

    • Less protected, so caused more fear, then though should have produced less


  • Le Corbusier, no defensible space i.e. a community responsible for a demarked place

  • Houston

    • Was other than planning

  • Governance over government

  • Associative Democracy – Hirst

  • Jacobs bottom up, small scale, mu.timulti

Howard

LeCorbusier

Low density

High

Periphery

Centrist

Bypass intensity

Intensity good

Crit = cosiness

Crit = authoritarian centrist


It's grand place V alt. models

Gov B. Market decisions


DD122 and Course Themes


It's abut taking notes from more than one chapter and extracting themes for TMA04


  • Make condensed notes from your own notes

    • Extract main points

      • Make topic summery sheet

        • Headings

        • Key points

        • Names etc

          • for that topic

        • Take main topic headings and make master summery sheet

        • Main subject matter for that whole section of the course

    • BOIL DOWN

      • Concentrated essence

      • Broad themes

      • Better for answering

    • So choose answer from master sheet, which came down to be condensed, and work your way back up.

    • Condensed, pulled together notes brings focus and interest


The City and Course Themes: Culture and Diversity


Course intro

  • What were key questions?

  • How course themes used?

  • How diff. parts of block address these issues?

  • what types of evidence/examples?

Uncert. and Diversity

  • Multi ethnic

  • Uncertain identities

  • New Britishness

Structure and Agency

  • Social, economic and cultural

Knowledge and knowing

  • Mass culture causes new identity

  • Evidence used by social sciences

  • issues and debates

    • Nature of social change

  • Use of evidence

    • Evaluating theories

  • Evidence and examples

    • Stats

    • Dual


The City and Globalistation

  • Impact of globalisation on cities

    • Diverse

      • Economic

      • Political

      • Collateral

      • Migratory

        • Winners

        • Losers

  • Global cities prosper

    • Expense of social polarization and disorder

  • Some cities, esp. old manufacturing cities, neg. effect. esp. disconnection from global finance ad service networks

  • Cities, as containers and agents of local structure, have responded inn different, localized ways.

  • So, look at relevant extract

    • Themes

    • Questions

    • Evidence and examples


Connecting Themes Over Chapters

  • i.e. take globalisation

    • Link to

      • Cities

i.e. take theme and ;pull out from all chapters – THIS IS HOW YOU LINK THEM


The City and Knowledge

Summery

  • Cities – transformed

    • IT

    • New knowledge

    • Globalisation

    • De industrialization

    • Social polarization

  • Cities shaped by different ways of knowing and imagining cities

  • Expert planning lost authority and political power, though always was constrained

  • Contemporary diversity of actors and models of governance have yet to produce consensus of how to regulate inequalities of power

  • Cities produce a lot of knowledge eg. Uni


Uncertainty and Diversity in the Post-war UK City


  • Was there a 'golden age'?

    • Evidence?

  • only social diversity bought change – or other factors?

  • Diversity can liberate. Are we now more insecure or do we just feel that way?

  • How does it depend on who you ask?

  • a table going through all the course material can pick out each uncertainty and the diverse opportunity that came from that – so they're linked YOU HAVE TO HAvE UNCERTAINTY FOR NEW OPPORTUNITY/AGENCY AGENCY AD DIVERSITY certainty and structure. Knowledge is understanding them.


  • UK not rural, and was the first not to be

    • Counter-urbanization, people returning


  • When was the golden age of cities?

  • How many people leaving?

    • Only rich?


  • Golden age often anti-urban


  • So tie all. Eg:

    • Cities bad

    • fordism was alienating


An Era of Certainty? Urban Redevelopment After the Second World War

  • Cities were bad in the fifties

    • Greenbelts

    • Satellite town

      • New town

      • white

      • Periphery hi-rise estate

        • Black


A Loss of Community? The Fragmentation of Urban Social Life


  • Community studies

    • Little shops close, close contact

      • Community

    • Centrist, no have

  • So new estates had no community and didn't develop them


Uncertainty and Diversity? Urban Change in the Eighties and Nineties


  • History of cities, policies and their effects appear here as a flowchart.


Cars, shops and Space


  • Mos effects on urban life over the past two decades

    • Car

    • Retail revolution

    • Privation of leisure

      • Xlibrary


Structure and Agency and Urban Change

Revisiting Structure and Agency


See structure and agency flowchart


Social stratification is spatially organized

  • eg. poverty

    • locally

    • globally


  • Not clear

    • eg. Nation state is also a global agent


Quangos = Quasi-autonomous NGOs


Wales

  • structure

    • Global economy

    • EU legislation

  • Two flowcharts of welsh redevelopment

    • What actually happened

    • The structures involved

    • Racist developing committee met by agency of ethic used to dealing with racism


Structures

  • Biological

    • environment

    • Body

  • Cultural

    • Language

    • Discourses

    • Stereotypes

  • Economic

  • Political

    • NGO

    • Gov

  • Material

    • Telecommunication infrastructure


Different forms

  • Formal, informal – RELIGION QUESTION

  • class

  • gender

  • institutions etc


Spatial

  • Global

  • Regional etc


Institutions

  • structure and agency depending on view


Structures shape agency

  • Un/consciously

  • Stereotypes

  • coercion

    Provide recourses

  • Create opportunists


Agency

  • Individual and collective

  • Agents interact

    • Combative

    • Cooperation

  • Agents unconsciously replicate structures

    • eg. PC speech


Knowledge, Knowing and the City

The Argument, Cities, Knowledge and Communication


Symbolic Analysts = people who's income derives from the creation and manipulation of data symbols, architects, computer programmers, media workers etc.

In-person servers = occupations requiring the physical presence of the worker, cleaning, nursing etc.


Extracting and Evaluation Epistemological basis of social science arguments


  • What question

  • What claims

    • descriptive

    • Explanatory

    • Normative

  • Concepts used

    • Arranged in theoretical framework?

  • Context

    • From where claims sprung

      • Any values?

        • Ideologies?

        • Institutional origins

        • Overriding method?

          • Positivist

          • Interpretative

        • Method?

          • Subject

      • How presented

        • Organised

        • Interpreted

          • Evidence

            • Selected

            • Shaped

      • Tests

        • Coherence

        • Empirical adequacy

        • Comprehensiveness

    • New questions?


SO THIS IS ABOUT READING SOCIAL SCIENCE TEXTS


EXTRACT:

  • Key Questions

  • Claims

  • Concepts/key theories

  • Contexts/values/ideologies

  • Evidence/methods/problems

  • Evaluation X3 criteria

  • New questions