Steven Weber

In the 1970s, Louis Althusser wrote Ideology and the State Apparatuses as a way to explain how social systems form people by using the idea of ideology. Althusser was a French Marxist who was interested in the idea of structuralism. Through this, Althusser attempts to answer his central thesis of how people are constructed by ideology by addressing two separate theses. The first is based on the idea that “the object… is represented in the imaginary form of ideology” while the second focuses on…

‘Modernity’, namely, the societal transformations brought by the industrial and political revolutions that started in the eighteenth century in Europe, has been theorised by a number of analytics as leading to the emergence of sociology. Following the social evolutions of the ‘Great Transformation’ that happened in Europe, as Gurminder K. Bhambra explains in the beginning of her article Sociology and Postcolonialism: Another ‘Missing Revolution’ (2007), the birth sociology was seen as an attempt…

Zimbardo decided to conduct the prison experiment because of his interest in social psychology. He was influenced by the milligram experiment that left a great impact on him as a person. According to Zimbardo, he said that he wanted to expand on the Milgram’s experiment and focus less on power authority and obedience. The prison experiment mainly focused on the human behaviors when asked to play a certain role in society. The experiment also resulted in the degeneration and breakdown of human…

In the novel, Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift expresses his ideas about politics, society, and the presumed self-righteousness of human society. The effects of social darwinism are profound and are evident within the characters in the story. Throughout the story, the desire to rise to a higher social standard is the driving motive behind the character’s actions. A main theme of the novel is how an individual can become distorted by their own thirst to climb up the social hierarchy. In her…

In Ancient Law, Sir Henry Maine explores the development of law and social structures while simultaneously examining historical findings and their implications. His famous claim, “the movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract” (Ancient Law, final sentence of Chapter 5), posits the stark contrast between law in the archaic world, which is based off “status” and law in modern world whose epicenter is “contract.” These differences aided in explaining…

Self Presentation The Sociologist and writer, Erving Goffman are widely known for his social theories presented in his book “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”. His work created a basis for sociology which is the study of a functioning human in society and for modern America. In this essay, his different theories will be discussed through a personal experience I had in my life while engaging in interpersonal communications. I will first start out with who I am and how I…

1. Distributive Justice is the question in social philosophy of how resources are to be distributed in society. A sub-portion of this question for example, is “should members of society be forced to contribute to the welfare of others?” 2. Strict Egalitarianism refers to a concept of radical equality of distribution. That all resources are to be evenly distributed amongst the populous; often on the grounds of individuals being morally equal and therefore, should be equal in access to…

Bourdieu’s work focuses a lot of overcoming social dichotomies. For example, Habitus and Field, Body and Mind and Macro and Macro. Habitus and Field are two co-terms which are used to explain the subjective and objective aspects of humanity, (Hardy, 2008, p. 214). We also examine Bourdieu’s three forms of capital. It is important to note that capital is not solely focused on economic capital. We focussed a lot of attention on cultural capital and the three typologies faced within cultural…

T.J. LeBlanc 325171965 IDC4U1-02 December 18, 2018 Sociological Understanding of Religion Religion is a prevalent topic in sociology, with Emile Durkheim and his functionalist theory, Karl Marx and his conflict theory, and Max Weber and his symbolic interactionist theory all having their own opinions and perspectives on the topic. While their views on religion do have quite a few differences when compared with each other, there are some similarities among their views and opinions that point…

Recently, we have seen a shift in literature from the socialization-approach to an institutional perspective when trying to explain the origins of social capital. There is an increasing recognition that the welfare state plays an important role in social capital creation. More precisely, it is argued that the capacity of citizens to establish social trust and their preparedness to engage in cooperative behavior is highly dependent on the efficiency and trustworthiness of bureaucratic…