Dear Readers,
Today I treat you with some of my work from the past, today you will explore some group work that I participated in that involved offering up a question and proposing how given sociological theories would have tried to answer the question. Some of it might be confusing for the unitiated, but this is our summary of the whole 5 part process.
There are references at the end for those who would like to further enlighten themselves.
Enjoy;
Group D Theory summary
Rational Choice Theory Question: If Blau and Homans headed a new “Stop Teenage Binge Drinking” Campaign, what strategies do you think they would use?
The rational choice perspective essentially assumes that people are rational and base their behaviour on what they perceive to be the best course of action in order to get what they want (Wallace & Wolf, 2006, p. 303).
This approach is closely related to economics, with rational choice theorists adopting some basic propositions of economics:
"1. Individuals are rational profit maximizers ....
2. The more of something an individual has, the less interested he or she will be in yet more of it.
3. The prices at which goods and services will be sold in a free market are determined directly by the tastes of prospective buyers and sellers. ...
4. Goods will generally be more expensive if they are supplied by a monopolist ..." (Wallace and Wolf, 2006, p. 308).
* George Homans: A behaviourist
Homans states in the Rationality Proposition that when individuals are “choosing between alternative actions a person will choose the one for which, as perceived by him at the time, the value, (V), of the result, multiplied by the probability, (p), of getting the result, is the greater” (p. 316). Hence, teenagers view the social approval (result) as having a large value and high probability of positive effects. Homans believes ‘that people value (social) approval’, and this is a key factor in explaining ‘how conformity is created and maintained in informal groups’ (p. 315). Hence teenagers feel the need to conform to the wishes of the group to drink in excess, so that they can continue to access ‘approval and esteem’ (p. 315).
An anti-drinking campaign led by Homans would focus on trying to change the ‘social approval’ given by these groups. Homans would use a ‘shame’ approach, that would make the teenagers aware of the negative aspects of binge drinking, so that they would come to the ‘self gain’ concept at the centre of Rational Choice theory, similar to the ad for speeding, ‘No one thinks big of you’. A campaign of this kind would aim to help teenagers rethink the value/risk equation in order to decide if binge drinking truly delivers what they want.
* Peter Blau: A collectivist
Blau suggests that the two general functions of social exchange are: 1) for creating friendship bonds between people; and 2) the establishment of domination or subordination (p. 329). He emphasizes the importance of "impression management", i.e. "how people present themselves to others", stating that people wish to be seen as companions whose presence is both extrinsically and intrinsically rewarding (Wallace & Wolf, 2006, p. 340). Therefore, an approach based on social approval would be one aspect of Blau’s anti-drinking campaign.
An anti-drinking campaign led by Blau may also focus on trying to stop binge drinking through the implementation of rules and laws, e.g. no more drinks after 2pm, no drinking on the main street of towns, more security. The teenagers would then be guided by these laws and rules to correct their behaviour, and thus cease binge drinking.
Hence, Homans would attack the problem by getting the teenagers to change their perception of the situation and thus change their behaviour, because it was no longer an effective means to their goals, hence from the small groups to society. Blau on the other hand would attack the problem at an institutional level and implement laws that would influence people to change their behaviour.
Postmodernism Discussion Question: How would postmodern theorists view and deconstruct the various online social networking sites?
* Michel Foucault
Foucault believed that power essentially penetrates society through discourse, which is often sustained by institutions as a means of control (Macionis & Plummer, 2005). He also noted that the specific way in which the world is understood by society is through texts (Wallace & Wolf, 2006) and now with the social networking sites, everybody is a creator of text.
Social networking sites are similar to Foucault’s concept of panopticon- ‘in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualised and constantly visible’ (1977, p. 200). This panopticon played an integral role in defining power relations, maintaining order and subsequent discipline. Power relations on the networking sites can be seen by viewing who has befriended who, just as well as who has excluded who; with the added complexity of each actor having the ability to play the dual roles of prisoner within a group membership; and guard of their own profile or web space. This duality creates a false sense of reality, for an individual who guards their profile space may entrust that they have the power to protect while viewing those of others. Foucault (1977) may indeed have argued that this false sense of reality may provide an ideal environment to enforce discipline and punishment upon society.
* Jacques Derrida
A key concept for Derrida and postmodernism is Discourse; a way to emphasise the meaning and concepts words embody, while also exploring the rules that develop within a group (society) on ‘appropriate ways of talking about things’ (Wallace, & Wolf, 2006, p. 422). To understand this we need to understand that words and their meanings are socially produced, (e.g. slang, and the concept of the sign, signifier and signified).
On networking sites people represent themselves mostly through language (especially on Twitter's post based model), hence their identities are constructed for the world through language. Derrida wrote that identity is nothing more than the various cultural texts an individual is given (and therefore people are no more real than the texts they create). Hence, people are constructed through their use of language, and since language has no ‘centre’ (Bass, A, 1966), then a person can have no centre, thus the dynamic nature of humans and of their profiles. We are constructed by language and our construction is altered by language.
* Jean Francois Lyotard
Lyotard believed that social life is organised around 'language games'. Such games are made up of 'moves' or statements which, are the means by which participants try to influence others to accept their version of what is true or 'win the game' (Van Krieken et. al., 2000).
According to Lyotard, the postmodern era is characterised by the following:
1) People seem to have abandoned the search for truth; people have lost faith in science as providing truth.
2) Technical language games have replaced denotative language games; research is aimed at producing knowledge where there is a market for it. (Van Krieken et. al., 2000).
Postmodern society is no longer interested in theories of truth or justice and instead is based on the exchange of knowledge and the production of knowledge (Van Krieken et. al., 2000). The proliferation of information on the Internet and on networking sites supports the idea that we are living in a postmodern society. In the postmodern era anyone can be published, thus lending credence to Lyotard's views that the people in the post modern era are less interested in one great truth and more inclined to explore a multitude of truths.
References
Bass, A, 1966, ‘Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign and Play in the
Discourse of the Human Sciences”, Writing and Difference, pp.
278-95, On Literary Theory Dance Party, viewed 24 August,
2009, obtained through Google,
http://literarytheory.wordpress.com/2007/04/04/jacques- derridastructure-sign-and-play-in-the-discourse-of-the-human-sciences/
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison.
London: Penguin.
Macionis, J. J., & Plummer, K. (2005). Sociology a global introduction.
Essex:Pearson Prentice Hall.
Van Krieken, R., Smith, P., Habibis, D., McDonald, K., Haralambos, M.,
& Holborn, M. (2000). Sociology Themes and Perspectives,
Frenchs Forest: Pearson Education Australia.
Wallace, R.A, & Wolf, A, 2006, Contemporary Sociological Theory:
Expanding the Classical Tradition, 6th ed., Pearson Education,
Prentice Hall, New Jersey, USA.
Authors
Dale Stam, Sophia Grant, Josephine Gravina, Deanne Wright
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