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Introduction To Sociology Block 2 (Week 10 How do people cooperate on the…
Introduction To Sociology Block 2
Week 9
How do people attune their efforts to one another?
De Swaan Chapter 7
How people attune their efforts to one another: competition and coordination
To survive in the natural world, you
need
cooperation
One's needs are fulfilled through cooperation with others -->
coordination
6 different ways of coordination: family ties, reciprocity, collective action, market formation, organisation, and state power
The natural world is marked by constant struggle for survival
But it is not simply a struggle in which everyday creatures fight against each other, cooperation is indispensable
Same
gene
(family) tend to help each other --> increasing the survival and reproduction chances --> improves the chances of its dissemination (spread)
Today family ties are stronger than ever --> cooperation stronger in families
Cycle of cooperation called
reciprocal obligation
Cooperation has to be reciprocal
But it also needs mutual trust --> if one doesn't trust the other, cooperation won't take place
Cooperation cycle widens over time
People associating with each other are more willing to participate + more trust
If they know they will see the other in the future they're like to make a friendly gesture to keep relations friendly (if needed in the future)
Cooperation cycle widens: family --> tribe --> state --> multi-state --> world
"You may help someone who has helped you, and you may not harm someone who has helped you."
Macionis Chapter 7.1
Social Groups
Social group
: two or more people who identify with and interact with one another
--> A group is made up of people with shared experiences, loyalties, and interests and think of themselves as a special "we"
--> Not every collection of individuals is a group
Category
: people with a common status
Crowd
: loosely formed collection of people in one place
Primary groups
(Charles Horton Cooley): a small social group whose members share personal and lasting relationships --> family is society's most important primary group
Primary relationships
: spending a lot of time with each other, do a lot of activities together, feel that they know each other pretty well
Think of the group as a goal and not a means to an end
Personal orientation
: define each other with
who
they are
Secondary groups
(Charles Horton Cooley): a large and impersonal social group whose members pursue a specific goal or activity
Secondary relationships
: weak emotional ties, little personal knowledge of each other
Goal orientation
: define each other with
what
they are --> a means to an end
These traits define the group in
ideal terms
--> most real groups contain elements of both
Two leadership roles:
Instrumental leadership
: focuses on the completion of tasks
Formal relationships with members + get more
respect
Expressive leadership
: focuses on the well-being of the group
More personal relationships with members + get more personal
affection
Three leadership types:
Authoritarian leadership
: focuses on instrumental concerns, takes personal charge of decision-making, demands group members to obey orders
Democratic leadership
: more expressive, includes everyone in decision-making process
Laissez-faire leadership
: group functions more or less on its own
Group conformity
: "fitting in" provides a secure feeling of belonging
Solomon Asch research: many of us are willing to compromise our own judgement to avoid the discomfort of being seen as different, even by strangers
Stanley Milgram's research: people are likely to follow the lead of legitimate figures + groups of individuals, when when it means harming another
Groupthink
(Irving L. Janis): the tendency of group members to conform, resulting in a narrow view of some issue
Reference group
: a social group that serves as a point of reference in making evaluations and decision
Our need to conform shows how others' attitudes affect us
Anticipatory socialisation
: conforming to another group that we do not belong to
Samuel Stouffer research: we form a subjective sense of our well-being by looking at ourselves relative to specific reference groups
In-group
: a social group toward which a member feels respect and loyalty
Exists in relation to out-group
Out-group
: a social group toward which a person feels a sense of competition or opposition based on the idea that "we" have traits that "they" lack
Dyad
(Georg Simmel): a social group with two members
Social interaction more intense in a dyad
Dyads are unstable --> both members have to work
Triad
(Georg Simmel): a social group with three members
More stable than dyad
Groups beyond three people become even more stable --> however reduces intense personal interaction --> larger groups more formal rules & regulations and less personal attachment
Race, ethnicity, gender each play a part in group dynamics
Peter Blau three ways in which social diversity influences intergroup contact:
Large groups turn inward = the larger a group the more likely members have relationships among themselves
Heterogeneous groups turn outwards = the more internally diverse a group the more likely its members are to interact with other people
Physical boundaries create social boundaries = physical segregated groups, its members are less likely to interact with other people
Network
: a web of weak social ties, group containing people who come into occasional contact but who lack a sense of boundaries and belonging
Network ties may be weak but they can be a powerful resource:
who
you know is often more important as
what
you know --> social capital
Stanley Milgram experiment: everyone is connected by "six degrees of separation" --> later research concluded that rich people are far better connected across the country than ordinary people
Social media
: technology that links people in social activity
In recent decades networks have become far larger with the development of social media
Lecture + Seminar
Coordination:
De Swaan: biological
Macionis: social
Bredewold: also more social
De Swaan
Circle of cooperation
Widening circle
Macionis
It's okay if it's for the greater good
We obey and care
Circle of cooperation
Western world: shift from personal approach and duty to granting rights to everybody (collective arrangements) --> more responsibility on the individual
Hospital went bankrupt due to marketisation of healthcare + government regulations
Bredewold
Circle of cooperation
Criticism:
They can be more-dimensional
De Swaan: general overview, lacks empirical data
Macionis: universal rules, kind of a discussion
Bredewold: social boundaries, negative&positive of situational interactions
Bredewold
Urban Encounters Limited
Problem: people with intellectual disabilities/psychiatric disorders who live in ordinary neighbourhoods often have little contact with fellow residents without disabilities
Theory: reciprocity (a social norm of responding to a positive action with another positive action, rewarding kind actions), situational norms, convivality (encounters which provide people with an opportunity to step outside a fixed identity and explore more transient shared identifications with those they meet’)
Question: how contacts between people with and without disabilities occur and what role boundaries play in these encounters?
Methodology: 2 cities with mixed methods design (surveys + interviews & participant observation)
Findings: no contact + negative contacts, victims of bad intention, good intentions, some people with disabilities don't adhere to the situational norms
Conclusion: positive contacts between residents with and without disabilities are often characterised by built-in boundaries (easier to communicate when the boundaries are clear),
Week 10
How do people cooperate on the basis of rules and instructions? Organisation
De Swaan Chapter 10
How people cooperate on the basis of rules and instructions: organisation
Organisation is present in our everyday life that we expect everything to meet its conditions
Organisation
: lead by someone superior, kept and managed with division of tasks, it's a system of people and resources, geared towards performing a task
Countless organisation in society --> ever since 20th century a growth in number of organisations
Biggest and most important organisation = the state
State organisation is a collection of all sorts of administrative organisations (ministeries, agencies) led by the government
Very large, complex and highly regulated organisations are known as
bureaucracies
Manifest function
: primary and most visible task of an organisation
Latent functions
: hidden functions
Formal relations
: laid down in writing
Informal relations
: not laid down anywhere
'white collars': such as accountants and middle-management staff
'blue-collar': such as workers in assembly line
Third revolution --> computerisation (not the speed but the processing of information)
Macionis Chapter 7.2
Formal Organisations
Formal organisations
: large secondary groups organised to achieve their goals efficiently
Three types of formal organisations (Amitai Etzioni):
Utilitarian organisation
: pays people (income) for their effort --> individual choice to join but must join to survive
Normative organisation
: people join to pursue a goal they think is morally worthwhile --> voluntary associations
Coercive organisation
: involuntary membership --> as a form of punishment or treatment
Early organisations had two (2) limitations:
Lacked technology for further travels, quick communication and gather and store information
Preindustrial societies had traditional cultures
Tradition
(Max Weber): consists of behaviour, values, and beliefs passed from generation to generation --> limits a society's efficiency and ability to change as it makes it conservative
Rationality
: a way of thinking that emphasises deliberate, matter-of-fact calculation of the most efficient way to accomplish a certain task --> encourages productive efficiency because it is open to changes that can get the job done more quickly/better
Rationalisation of society
: historical change from tradition to rationality as the main human type of human thought
Bureaucracy
: an organisational model rationally designed to perform tasks efficiently
Our systems couldn't exist without bureaucracy keeping track of everything
Six (6) key elements of
ideal
bureaucratic organisation (Max Weber):
specialisation, 2. hierarchy of positions (vertical ranking), 3. rules and regulations, 4. technical competence, 5. impersonality, 6. formal, written communications: paperwork
Performance of any organisation depends on the
organisational environment
: factors outside an organisation that affect its operation:
Technology: employees access to more information + easier management by managers
Economic and political trends: periodic economic growth/recession + competition in foreign countries & changes in law
Population patterns: working force + market
Current events and other organisations
In the real world people try to cut corners + use their position for personal gain
Emails "flattened" organisations --> lower ranks can directly address the top
Bureaucracy (Max Weber): a model of productivity but has an ability to
dehumanise
and
manipulate
us
Can breed
alienation
through reducing humans to just a cog in the machine
Bureaucratic ritualism
: a focus on rules and regulations to the point of undermining an organisation's goals
Rules and regulations should be a means to an end
Bureaucratic inertia
: the tendency of bureaucratic organisations to perpetuate themselves
Oligarchy
: the rule of the many by the few
Robert Michels: oligarchy thrives in bureaucracy
Zygmunt Bauman
Sociology After the Holocaust
Main issue: the model of the Holocaust is an aberration (relapse to earlier development of human culture) being inadequate --> Holocaust was a logical outcome of modern civilisation and the bureaucratic, rational state
Main concepts: modern bureaucracy, rational spirit, principle of efficiency, scientific mentality, relegation of values to the realm of subjectivity, authorisation of violence, routinisation of actions, dehumanisation of victims, civilisation process
Methodology: examining compilation of studies that looked at holocaust from sociologists' point of view, discussion of Weber's work pony rationalisation --> pattern of rationalisation leading to events such as Holocaust
Findings:
Meaning of civilising process: the organisation of the killing, sequence of very small steps
Holocaust needed this level of bureaucratic organisation to accomplish the level of killing
Social production of moral difference: basic 'animal pity' that all humans have --> hard for us to hurt others and even kill others --> need for a mechanism which allows people to overcome this natural moral abhorrence of killing and violence
Under bureaucratic system, inner organisational rules provide moral context --> 'right' thing is following orders & good bureaucrats don't worry about substantive content of order --> their superiors do it
Three (3) conditions that erode moral inhibitions:
Authority (authorisation of violence)
Routinisation (make the work a routine)
Dehumanisation (make people seem less human
Social production of moral invisibility --> processes that make a person invisible morally
Three (3) processes:
Mediating the action of killing: each link in a long chain of events allows the person on one end distance themselves from the final outcome --> rationalised action: gives and receives order
Making the victims invisible - killing at greater and greater distances: physical process of making people hard to see as people
Making the humanity of the person disappear: deny the victim's humanity, referring to them with a non-human name (numbers, slurs)
Moral consequences of a civilisation process:
Commonly assumed elements of 'civilising process'
We do everything for a reason, supress the irrational
Decreasing amount of violence in everyday life, compartmentalisation of violence
Only one side of the coin
Conclusion: Holocaust is a significant and reliable test of the hidden possibilities of modern society
Powerful reminder of how ethically blind the bureaucratic pursuit of efficiency --> Final Solution was outcome of the bureaucratic culture
Macionis Chapter 7.3
The Evolution of Formal Organisations
Two (2) organisational traits cause the problems in bureaucracy:
Hierarchy and rigidity
Scientific management
: rules and regulations at the top and rule down (Max Weber)
Three steps leading to new model (
flexible organisation
): 1. identifying operations and time needed for them, 2. analyse data and try to improve, 3. provide guidance + incentive to workers
First challenge to conventional bureaucracy is to become more open and flexible in order to take advantage of the whole workforce → bottom line: greater profits
Japanese organisations reflect that nation’s strong collective spirit → they value cooperation --> their policy encourage more loyalty than in the US
Postindustrial economy created two very different types of work: high-skill creative work and low-skill service work
Our culture is becoming “McDonaldised” → we model many aspects of life on this restaurant chain
Today, organisational flexibility gives better-off workers more freedom but often means the threat of “downsizing” and job loss for many rank-and-file employees
Lecture + Seminar
Characteristics: goal oriented, efficient, rule bound, knowledge and task based, hierarchical, formal
Law of Michels --> oligarchy
Street-level bureaucracy --> Lipsky
Post-fordism/tailoristic --> we now sell product + feeling (emotion), a lifestyle
McDonaldisation (G. Ritzer): efficiency, predictability, uniformity + quality & animation (Broer)
Downside of modern organisation:
Industry --> ecological damage, hidden inefficiency
Liberal state --> totalitarianism, legitimacy
Week 11
How do people perform tasks together? Collective action
De Swaan Chapter 8
How people perform tasks together: collective action
Collective action
: when something is done/a task is done by a group
People cooperating to achieve something which they couldn't achieve on their own and that benefits the entire group
Collective action does not always give something positive --> most of the time trust and
mutual expectation
is needed
If someone from the group is not sure they will help --> they will remain mistrustful and reluctant to commit --> a form of interdependence
Collective good
: everyone profits from it, none excluded, use does not diminish
The
dilemma of collective action
:
I join in + they join in = dike is built partly through my efforts
Second (2nd) best outcome even though I had to work for it
I don't join in + they join in = dike is built but I do nothing
Best outcome: I don't do anything but the work is done
I join in + they don't join in = I work for nothing
Worst outcome: my work is for nothing
I don't join in + they don't join in = no dike with no work
If other don't do anything then why bother --> nothing done
Solutions of dilemmas of collective action:
External force: taxation, minimum wage
Change expectations: dispel mutual distrust
Change emotions (Rutten)
Collective action can be engineered by
the manipulation of expectations
When there is collective action, there is also illusion and high expectations
Rosanne Rutten
Shame and workers activism
Problem: emotional barrier of shame prevents workers from confrontation with employers, face-to-face confrontations with authority figures may be thwarted by emotional and behavioural disposition of workers
Shame
: a feeling of social inadequacy in the presence of the privileged, and the (anticipation of) public humiliation
Theory: role of emotions is social movements --> the importance of emotions in personal, face-to-face confrontations with authorities
Stage fright: the fear of being judged (Goffman)
Deference (polite submission and respect) rituals: both parties play out their relation of dominance and subordination, following a mutually attuned script (Goffman)
Question: How the emotion of shame and the habitus of clientelism and deference may turn claim-making into a workers nightmare?
Methodology: qualitative research in Philippines --> based on personal experiences, daily lives +
Emotion work
(Hochschild): the act of trying to change (in degree or quality) an emotion/feeling
Findings: deference --> confrontation --> emotion work
Patronage system
: the complex ideology, behaviour and (expected) emotions that shape and legitimise relations of subordination and control
Conclusion
Shame (+ fear) may form a powerful barrier to claim-making in face-to-face encounters
Workers and their environment may create a habitus of clientelism and deference toward their patron
Overcoming shame in face-to-face encounters involves a change in habitus
Giddens&Sutton
936-949
Chapter 21: Politics, Government and Social Movements
Change is brought through revolutions or social movements
Revolutions are the most dramatic, far-reaching example of non-orthodox political action
Revolution
: an overthrow of an existing socio-political order by means of a mass movement, often involving violence
Most common type of non-orthodox political activity: social movement
Social movement
: a collective attempt to further common interests or secure common goals through action outside the sphere of established institutions
Example of modern society social movements: lesbian and gay rights, women's rights (economic and political equality)
Chicago School of Sociology --> first to systematically chart forms of collective behaviour
Social movements are agents of social change and not merely products of them
Blumer: theory of social unrest
Social movements can be seen as collective enterprises to establish a new order of life --> people derive their motive power from dissatisfaction and wishes and hopes for a new scheme of living
Active
: outwardly directed to transform society
Expressive
: inwardly directed to change the people who become involved
Eg: labour movement --> aiming to radically change capitalist societies, whilst encouraging people to transform their inner selves
Stages of social movements according to Blumer:
Social ferment
: when people are agitated but unfocused and disorganised
Popular excitement
: sources of dissatisfaction more clearly defined and understood
Creating formal organisations, higher level of coordination and effectiveness
Institutionalisation: accepted as part of the wider society and political life
--> interactionist approach because social processes come from human interaction + the individuals shape society and are shaped by society through meaning that arises in interactions
European research --> focus on why social movement emerge and when
American research --> how movements become organised
Resource Mobilisation Theory (RMT): movement participants behaved in rational ways and that movements were purposeful, not chaotic
What turns discontent into mobilisations and social movements is the availability of the necessary resources to mount effective campaigns
RMT helped fill the gap that was left by social unrest theories but little explanation for social movements that achieve success with very limited resources
NSM
: New Social Movements
New type of social movement --> trying to address the question of why it happened and when it did --> trying to complement RMT
New issues, new organisational forms, new action repertoires, new social constituencies
Smelser theory of
structural strain
:
Rejects notions of a single cause for social movements
What is necessary for a social movement to develop:
Structural conduciveness
Structural strain
Generalised beliefs
Precipitating factors
Mobilisation for action
Marx
The Communist Manifesto
Statement of purpose, publicise views, aims and tendencies of Communists --> intended for public
All of history until then were class struggles
History is shaped by economic relations alone
Proletariat will eventually destroy the bourgeoisie
Destroy the entire system as they have nothing to lose
Make proletariat ruling class
Lectures + Seminar
Private property = collective product
We just "own" that thing
Week 12
How do people produce for others and exchange goods? Division of labour, market formation and payment
De Swaan Chapter 9
How people produce for others and exchange goods: Division of labour, market formation and payment
Division of labour
is important for exchanges --> both parties can offer each other something
Exchange and division of labour related in two (2) ways:
Create product for rest of your life --> only works if the product can be sold forever
Exchanges only possible if other people are making and offering products
Each product/good embodies a network of exchange and relation --> division of knowledge goes with division of labour
Money
is a medium of exchange
A measurement of value but sometimes doesn't represent the article's value:
Utility of the good
Emotional value
Monetarisation
: the gradual elimination of barter trade and the introduction of a general medium of exchange and payment (money)
Money economy --> everything has a price
Market formation
is an example of a blind process --> unintentionally and without planning
Equilibrium
: when the supply of a product equals the demand of it
Monopoly
: in extreme cases when the supply or demand is dominated completely by a single party
Every exchange is also an agreement --> must be rules for deliveries and payment --> rules are enforced when necessary by the court
In a
free market
there is
perfect competition
Blanket discrimination
: the exclusion of a category of people from a particular social position on grounds that are irrelevant to the qualities needed to fill it
Protection racket
: pay for protection to the 'protectors'
Tonkens
Pretenders and Performers
Theme: the way in which
professionals
respond to the
commodification of healthcare
Main concepts: professionalism, commodification, health care
Methodology: five qualitative studies with in-depth interviews, semi-structured interviews and ethnographic research
Findings: market, bureaucracy and professionalism are combined into five new forms of professionalism, in response to the commodification of healthcare:
Entrepreneurialism: embracing commodification as integral part of professionalism --> making more money, focus on efficiency and 'client-friendliness', filling up beds, cheaper treatment
Activism: rallying against encroachment on the profession --> openly challenging the commodification, refusing to work with it
Bureaucratisation: seeking reassurance in procedures --> do everything by the book so you can justify everything (no suing)
Pretending: faking compliance to protect autonomy --> pretending to follow the rules to protect quality of your work, report other things, "opposing" commodification but do not do so
Performing: upholding the profession through conscious and skilful management of appearance in the eyes of patients and the public --> patients cant file complaints
These strategies tend to stimulate commodification rather than curtail it
Kuhlmann
Researching transformations
Major transformations in healthcare due to global economic crisis --> more cost-effective and sustainability focused
No one health-care system has developed convincing solutions for a good reformation
We need a better understanding of the transformations rather than simply searching for new design of healthcare & we need more context sensitive research
The risks of social inequality embedded in new health policies and the opportunities of mobilising new resources towards better healthcare for all citizens
Monograph --> bring together different research from different healthcare systems and geographical areas + different healthcare sectors
Highlight in-depth analysis and context-sensitivity that is needed in order to understand the effects of (in)equality in healthcare
USA: stronger state intervention --> greater public responsibility for healthcare and health insurance for all citizens
Didn't really work out because the public is highly suspicious of government involvement in healthcare
China: public responsibility for the provision of healthcare with inclusion of market elements & poorly connected governmental interventions
California + UK: competitive pay-for-performance systems and marketisation --> stratification of healthcare
Turkey: shift between public and private healthcare
Free choice of healthcare provider is expected to lead to greater efficiency
Mechanisms that can create an inequality gap in health systems:
Normative, legal and political goals of equality are not easily or adequately translated into health policy goals
The introduction of market mechanisms in all health systems may counteract the goals of equality and may shift the balance between different health policy goals
The presence of more complex and intersecting inequalities, as highlighted with regard to decentralisation in a country characterised by strong regional inequality
Lectures + Seminar
Kuhlmann is interactionist perspective
Week 13
How do people form states and states form people? State formation and state intervention
De Swaan Chapter 11
How people form states and states form people: state formation and state intervention
People evidently feel a strong connection with the country they live in, a feeling that comes out most clearly when there is some competition with another country
Only when you are 'outside' that you notice what you feel 'inside'
Whoever owns something has something to lose and something to defend
Protection and taxation go together
--> essence of the process of state formation
Internal defence --> police
External violence --> army
Legitimacy is needed if you want someone to accept the obligations (taxation)
Charisma, tradition, procedures (Weber)
State formation
: the establishment of an effective and legitimate monopoly on force and taxation within a certain territory
A state is formed in competition with other states
Formation of a nation is the consolidation of similarities among people within a territory and the accentuation of their differences with those outside --> become a guiding principle:
nationalism
Nation state
: state in which the inhabitants regard themselves as belonging to the same nation
Government
consists of parliament and cabinet
Democratic feedback
--> all citizens have the right to elect members of parliament
Parliamentary monarchies
: head of state is the monarch, but a cabinet of government ministers rules the country, and they need the support of majority in the elected lower house of parliament
Environmentalism
: care for the natural surroundings as opposed to a blanket preference for economic growth (
productivism
)
Constituency system
: a country is divided into a large number of electoral districts or constituencies
Proportional representation system
: candidates elected for the entire country instead of each representing one constituency
Unimodal distributions and crossing lines lead to compromise and stability
Bimodal distributions and coinciding lines promote conflict and tend to produce wide swings in election results
Giddens&Sutton
Chapter 21 907-936
Lukes three-dimensional view of power:
One dimensional: the ability to make things go your way
Two dimensional: how a group or individuals can exercise power by limiting alternatives for others
Three dimensional: 'manipulation of desires'
Tonkens
The Culturalisation of Citizenship
'Protecting our culture'
: recent code for denying citizenship to migrants
‘Full citizenship’
: enjoying the legal rights that come with citizenship but
also
being recognised symbolically and emotionally as co-citizens
Legal rights are nowadays only granted after lengthy procedures while symbolically still denied for generations
Protectionism of culture but this is a static view --> culture is ever evolving as immigrants changes their culture but also the receiving culture changes
‘Culturalization of citizenship’
: a process in which what it is to be a citizen is less defined in terms of civic, political or social rights, and more in terms of adherence to norms, values and cultural practices
Culturalization of citizenship has made that ‘belonging’ or ‘feeling at home’ is a requirement to be a citizen while in the past only possessing the nationality was enough
Migrants have to show a feeling of attachment, belonging, connectedness and loyalty to their country of residence
Citizenship defined by the majority
Harder to live a good life when you don't know society's expectations
Citizenship experienced locally rather than nationally --> arises through membership and social interaction
Natives experience it nationally
Understand citizenship as craftsmanship --> a skill developed through practice
Two ideal typical ways of
viewing culture
which bear on issues of citizenship:
Restorative
: the idea that culture is a given, that its content is fixed and mostly also known
Constructivist
: culture is seen as a process in the making → builds on traditions and changes produced by internal clashes and power struggles + confrontations with outsiders = cultural mixing
How culture is
mobilised
in the service of citizenship
Functional
view: speaking the country’s dominant language in public, gaining knowledge of its history and traditions as well as its conventions in politics, education and on the labour market
Affective
view: emotional meanings attached to culture, the ‘feeling rules’, how citizens are expected to feel
Functional restorative
: the idea that citizens must adapt to certain core values and preferably put them into practice
Affective restorative
: the need for feeling of loyalty to the nation-state and demands from citizens the proof of such feelings
Affective constructivist
: the experiences and feelings of citizens, to what extent these are shared and how far such shared feelings culminate in social participation
Functional constructivist
: culture as something that is made rather than found, by democratic processes as well as in everyday exchanges between citizens
Constructive notions help citizenship + functional facilitate citizenship easier to show an action rather than an emotion
Being liberal is the norm, if you are not then you are not Dutch --> oppresses the Islam
'Freedom' means submission to Dutch culture
The West is not that progressive, but keep criticising a culture so that it won't remain static
Week 14
Towards a world-wide society?
De Swaan Chapter 12
Globalisation: Towards a Worldwide society
With the industrial revolution, the demand for imports from distant parts rapidly increased
Monoculture
: growing a single crop
Asymmetrical dependence
: mutual dependence not amounting to economic equality
Global political system intimately entwined with global economy
Through colonialism colonised peoples were incorporated into the global economy and the world political system
Protectionism
: banning imports so that consumers buy products manufactures internally
Monopolist competition
: fighting for the support of a big state
Democratic states have seldom fought one another --> quicker to assist each other
Not yet a united sense of solidarity --> no single community
More connected nowadays (requirement for greater solidarity) --> mass culture
Global culture is in the making + patterns of consumption
Globally looking after environment
Travelling has become easier
Nowadays better off people more aware of the misery in the world
de Wilde
Designing Trust
Theme/issue: resolving the challenge of
connecting home-owners to the supply side actors of low-carbon retrofitting
(satisfactory to the home-owners) --> trust essential --> would be helpful in
advancing the (policy relating to the) transition towards sustainable housing
Theory/main concepts: low-carbon retrofitting, transition towards sustainable housing, home-owners vs. market, intermediaries, customer-journey designs, trust
Research question: how do strategic intermediaries choreograph low-carbon retrofit experiences of homeowners through the design of a 'customer journey'?
Methodology: three already existing designs as 'maximum variation cases'
In-depth sessions with the service representatives who designed them
Document study
13 in-depth interviews
ethnographic fieldwork: 43 observations made at the touchpoints --> qualitative research
Findings/conclusion: three (3) customer-journey designs --> built on different views of role/attitude of the customer
Private design
--> passive: trusts expertise of intermediary
Civic design
--> active but dependent on help: engaged consumer-citizen, trust in neighbours
Public design
: active: critical customers, trust in products
Six (6) touchpoints: distinguishable moments of contact in the process that are part of all designs
Sensitise: collaboration with local actors
Advice: type of expertise
Tender: degree of transparency
Install: degree of involvement
Evaluate: object of evaluation
Inspire: communication channels
Trust
is crucial in uncertain settings such as low-carbon retrofit market --> trust is needed in supply-side actors and their procedures and products
Private design
Passive customer doesn't want to be bombarded with information --> focus on convenience
Preselection is made which may leave out the best option for the house
Civic design
Community participation --> large-scale transition
Still need extended support --> collective learning
Public design
The customers initiative to sort out the whole process
Provide website with the required knowledge
Intermediaries and their designs are key actors in making the transition happen
Policy making:
Make sure there is a design available for everyone and not only the most efficient and cost-effective one --> has to fits the customers attitude and role they want to play in the process
Giddens&Sutton
Chapter 5 155-196
Nature
: one of the most complex and difficult words in the English language --> dominant meaning has changed over time
Social constructionism
: an approach to studying social problems (including environmental issues) --> depends on how the problem is framed by people demanding a policy response from the government --> kinda people socially 'construct' the problem
Critical realism
: approaches environmental issues in a scientific way --> take into account the objective reality of natural objects and environments
--> Constructionism leads to sociology of environment, using conventional principles
--> Realism leads to environmental sociology, revising existing principles
Environmental issues: both social relationships and interactions and non-human, natural phenomena
Air pollution, water pollution, solid waste, resource depletion, food shortages and GM crops, global warming
Environmental issues also involves natural scientific research and evidence
Consumerism --> negative (mass consumption damages environment), positive (economic development)
'Treadmill of production'
: leads to environmental damage, using up resources
Consumerism is a way of thinking, a mentality or even an ideology --> social status
Sustainability
: ensuring that human activity does not compromise the ecology of planet earth
Sustainable development
: development which meets the needs of the present generation, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs
Economic growth is often put #1
External risk such as earthquake --> adding onto this genetically modified foods and global warming, we add to these external risks
Ecological modernisation
: usual business is not possible anymore but deindustrialisation is not wanted with radical environmentalist solutions --> transforming production methods to reduce pollution
Civil citizenship
: mutual obligation on people to respect each other's rights to property
Political citizenship
: expansion of voting rights, free speech etc.
Social citizenship
: rights to welfare and responsibilities for collective provision of social benefits
Ecological citizenship
: obligation to non-human animals, to future generations and to maintain the integrity of the natural environment
Nowadays see the dark side of the indsutry
Developed world is wealthier than ever before but we have hella ecological problems and inequalities
Lectures + Seminar
Giddens paradox: problems that aren't tangible, immediate or visible in the course of day-to-day life and we'll do nothing against it until they become visible and acute until we do something, which is when it's too late