Download Social Inequalities - Introduction to Sociology - Lecture Notes and more Study notes Introduction to Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! Week 1 - Introductory Lecture 2 The course concerns social structures & institutions, power and resistance, and ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ (social inequalities). In this lecture we consider how to think sociologically about these themes in terms of considering the rise of modern Western societies and the historical processes that led to the sort of society sociologists refer to as “Modernity”. Modernity began to appear from about the 16th century onwards. It grew out of, and then replaced, medieval society. It first appeared in North-Western Europe, then spread to North America and then many parts of the rest of the world by the late twentieth century. Modernity was caused by a number of revolutionary changes that occurred from the 16th century onwards. The 5 revolutions we will examine are the 1) Political, 2) Economic, 3) Urban, 4) Cultural and 5) Social revolutions. The Political Revolution involved such things as the declining power of monarchy & aristocracy, the increasing political power of the middle classes and widespread ‘democratisation’. The Economic Revolution involved a shift from a medieval economy based around agriculture to a Modern Economy based around factories and machines (the so-called “Industrial Revolution”). This new economy involved not aristocracy and peasants, as had been the case, but two new classes - :the capitalist class (the ‘bourgeoisie’) on the one side and the working class (workers in factories - the ‘proletariat’) on the other. Sometimes modernity is defined as Capitalist Society”. This society has a complex and sophisticated “Division of Labour” (DOL), which is a situation where one person does just one specialised task, as opposed to one person doing lots of different jobs. The “capitalist division of labour” (CDOL), an idea formulated by Karl Marx & later Marxist sociologists, involves a situation where capitalists control and exploit the working class. The CDOL spread throughout all European and North American societies and in the 20th century spread to many other parts of the world too. For this reason, some analysts regard “Globalization” as involving the world-wide spread of capitalism. The Urban Revolution involved large numbers of people moving from the countryside to the cities, hugely increasing the populations of those cities and causing a large number of social problems, such as increasing divisions between rich and poor. Sociology developed as a way of studying these problems of urban living. The Cultural Revolution involved the development of new ways of thinking and feeling. Developments here included decline of religious belief (“secularisation”), increasing influence of natural sciences on thinking (“rationalisation”), the rise of mass media, and an emphasis on individualism. The Social Revolution involved moves both towards MORE individual freedom (e.g. women are allowed to have careers of their own) and LESS freedom at the same time. docsity.com
