Summary of the sheets and all the articles used in the course: The Social Structure of Western Societies, during the master Sociology at the Tilburg University. I passed this course with a 8.8 with these summaries.
Summary
The Social Structure of Western Societies
Social structure = A patterned social relationship between individuals
Examples: Social class, Family and Ethnicity
Features of a social structure:
- Socially embodied (actions and beliefs of individuals)
- Coercive (normative system) (dwang/geen keus/geen invloed vanaf geboorte)
- Assignment of statuses and roles (position system)
- Distributive consequences (social outcomes)
- Leads both to stability and change
Social institutions = Organization of patterned social relationships.
Examples:
- Economic: to produce and distribute goods (markets)
- Legal: to enforce norms (law)
- Political: for collective decision making and protection (democracy)
- Educational: to train children into the way of life of society (schools)
- Religious: to provide meaning (church)
Trend 1
Modernization = Transformation process from traditional (agrarian) to modern (industrial) or
post-modern (service) society
- Technological changes: production process
- Economic changes: more wealth
- Political changes: democracy
- Spatial (social) changes: urbanization
- Cultural changes: modern values
Trend 2
Globalization = A set of processes of social change, among which deterritorialization
Human activities and relationships
- Extension across the world
- Intensification
- Increasing velocity/speed
- Interconnectedness
- Reflexivity
,Sociological imagination (Mills, 1959) = Importance of seeing the connections between
social structure and individual experience and agency.
Micro-macro perspective (Coleman, 2002) = To determine macro outcomes we need to
look at the effect of macro effects on micro effects and how these determine macro outcomes.
Social institutions = Social institutions affect both our individual behavior and our individual
position in a social structure (which in turn affects individual behavior). Social institutions
also mediate the effect that individual’s position in social structure has on individual’s
behavior.
, Stratification and Social Class
Social inequality is a fundamental feature of society, individuals are different.
Social stratification = composition of population in ‘layers’ or strata.
- Stand = status, honor, lifestyle
- Class = means of production, economic criterion, class consciousness and class
struggle
Social mobility = moving upward or downward the so-called social ladder.
Two main objectives of social historical research:
- Reconstructing the social stratification of past societies.
(Adel,soldaten/craftsman,boeren)
- Measuring social mobility in the past: the extent to which people climb or descend on
the social ladder.
Social stratification
- In the Middle ages and early modern period
Fixed and closed system of standen (estates, orders, castes).
- During the industrialization and (post-)French Revolution
A more modern and dynamic class system (Economic growth, increasing
technological knowledge and division of work: new social groups)
Two main indicators:
- Occupational titles
e.g. Vital Registration System = ‘Burgerlijke Stand’
- Tax data
e.g. Taxation on income and property
Problems using historical data
- Limited availability and quality (Before 1811; many destroyed)
- Sources not constructed to answer contemporary questions
- Data is incomplete and difficult to interpret
- Stratification is not clear (What is high, what is low…? Who’s in, who’s out?)
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