Foundations

Imagination, Construction, & Intersectionality

Throughout the semester, I will emphasize the structural aspects of social problems and highlight the ways in which they are constructed so that you can imagine a different kind of construction…a different kind of society…and develop the skills necessary to critically examine the social world. This material serves as the foundation of our analyses.

Material Covered

• READ: “The Promise”; “Constructing Differences”; “The Combahee River Collective Statement”; “Five Faces of Oppression”; “The Uses of Anger”

Listen Up

What is a social problem?

What is a social problem?

The Sociological Imagination

• We have troubles (private/personal) and issues (public)
• Most people are unaware of the interplay of “individuals and society, of biography and history, of self and world”
• We don’t tend to recognize the way things are connected or how we got here
• Particularly in US culture (and even more specifically in white US culture) we see problems as individualized — as disconnected from the bigger picture
• The sociological imagination allows people to understand larger contexts and how those shape the individual
• Individuals both shape and are shaped by society

Social Construction of Reality

“What is ‘real’? How do you define ‘real’? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, taste and see then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” — Morpheus, ‘The Matrix’ (1999)

• People are problems? OR People have problems?
• Social construction of reality means that reality is not something that is fixed or “naturally occurring” but something that grows out of the shared process of defining and redefining issues
• Our Goal: Become a “stranger” in a familiar world

Constructing Differences

• Differences are not the causes of inequality it is the meanings and values we assign to those differences
• What we see as real is the result of interaction
• Thinking critically:
• identify and challenge assumptions
• awareness of our place and time in culture or standpoint
• search for alternative ways of thinking
• develop reflective analysis
• Become active participants in our knowledge production (remember from the quote I shared about education: we claim our knowledge)
• Theorists Berger & Luckmann describe the social construction of reality as happening in 3 stages (though these stages don’t necessarily happen as a clear and distinct process):
• Externalization: create cultural products through interaction and then they become external to us (e.g. gender performance)
• Taught to act differently so we do act differently and then we are seen as being different
• Objectivation: when products created in the first phase appear to take on a reality of their own
• We become unaware of the fact that we shape our environments and interpret our own realities
• Things take on objective realities
• Internalization: we learn supposedly “objective facts” about the cultural products that have been created
• Socialization process
• Mass media has a huge influence on this process
• Categories of difference are being constructed and transformed into systems of inequality which are then maintained through various structures
• We sometimes see this as “just the way things are” or “human nature”
• Which categories become and are maintained as “unmarked” or the default?:
• In the US, categories such as “male” or “straight” or “white” Become the categories against which all other categories are measured typically via a binary
• The things that the author describes can help us understand ourselves:
• When we consider alternative experiences and perspectives
• Call to practice empathy — the ability to identify with the thoughts and experiences of another, even though you have not shared them
• How do we resist making our individual experiences the “universal”?

Five Faces of Oppression

• Oppression reduces the potential for other people to be fully human
• The language of oppression allows us to make sense of our social experiences
• In using oppression instead of discrimination, we can, again, work towards de-individualizing a problem and looking structurally at societal issues
• Exploitation: using people’s labor to produce profit while not compensating them fairly
• Results in lack of control & lack of self-respect
• Tied to “low-skill” labor that is racialized and gendered
• Marginalization: process of exclusion or “disappearing people” (i.e. Angela Davis)
• Marginalization is closely linked to the idea of whiteness
• Forced deprivation & dependency
• Powerlessness: “…people who have little or no work autonomy, exercise little creativity or judgment in their work, have no technical expertise or authority, express themselves awkwardly, especially in public or bureaucratic settings, and do not command respect.
• Most people actually have little power
• Powerless people must prove their respectability
• First three refer to the structural and institutional relations that delimit people’s material lives; a matter of concrete power in relation to others, who benefits from whom, and who is dispensable
• Cultural imperialism: imposes ruling class culture as the norm
• This works to universalize the individual experience.
• Again: In the US context, this means that a particular form of white, straight, male, Christian norms are the “norm”
• It flattens the human experience into a very limited way of being and interacting with the world
• This often plays out in producing stereotypes of the “Other” group & viewing any differences from the ruling class norm as deviant
• Du Bois: double consciousness — viewing themselves through the eyes of the other; experience themselves as both invisible and marked out and made to be “different”
• These groups are constructed to be different & are often socially segregated and occupy specific positions in the social division of labor — causing these groups to often experience the first three forms of oppression
• Violence: systematic and legitimate
• Systematic because it is carried out on a particular group simply because of their place in that group
• Legitimate because most people regard violence as unsurprising and usually goes unpunished
• Includes the fear of violence
• Example: How many people socialized as women have taken steps to “protect” themselves when walking alone? Like holding your key between your fingers in a parking garage? Avoiding running alone at night?

Angela Davis On Violence and Revolution

Think: What is violence? What counts? Who decides? How do we redefine it?

The Uses of Anger

Audre Lorde

“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even if her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained. Nor is anyone of you.”

• Change is not just breathing room or being able to feel good under systems of oppression: change is the “…basic and radical alteration in those assumptions underlining our lives”
• Anger is productive!
• Racism & sexism are props of profit
• How do we harness our (collective) anger?

The Matrix of Domination & Intersectionality

• Patricia Hill Collins is a sociologist and critical theorist and Kimberlé Crenshaw is a legal scholar and Black feminist theorist.
• In their works, they coined the “matrix of domination” and “intersectionality” as ways of analyzing experiences unique to Black women.
• Are Black women oppressed because of their gender (sexism)? Their race (racism)?
• However, they both argue that this does not create an additive effect. These various identities interact or interlock with one another to create a distinct positionality and experience
• This is not about “who is more oppressed” or as some call the “oppression Olympics”

• “Power as both a force that some groups use to oppress others and an intangible entity that operates throughout a society and is organized in particular domains”
• Systems of oppression are organized and maintained through 4 interrelated domains:
• Structural: institutional structures including government, legal system, housing patterns, economic traditions, and educational structure
• Disciplinary: ideas and practices that characterize and sustain bureaucratic hierarchies
• Interpersonal: patterns of interaction between individuals and groups
• Hegemonic: images, symbols, ideas, and ideologies that shape social consciousness