30th of July SoE

( Handwritten notes by Roshan )



You gradually realize you find comfort in some areas.


Relationships

Just imagine the number of interactions you've gone through. If you want to study something you will have to understand the distinct phenomena.

Counting frogs
Weighing frogs

If we imagine that the relationships we build are random, then studying

If we need to study something it needs to have some stability

If everything is so random, there is no pattern, there is no stability, it doesn’t have distinct characteristic, how shall we study it?

What gives stability?

Routine: If you do same thing again and again.
A group routine.

There is a general routine that office timing is nine to five. Its true for Blore, Delhi, Lucknow and Pune.


( Element of Humour )

Understanding patterns.



Habits: Give stability to your interactions.
These habits could be individual.

Customs: Generations after generations. Various things we have been doing in similar ways. We start thinking in terms of religious terms.
Secular rituals and secular customs eg. Celebration of Independence Day.

Coffee Time: Sacred, Customs and rituals. The way ritual shapes society.

Roles: Role outlives the actor. The person may die/disappear but the role will be there.

Principalship is a role. Same school may have a situation when there is no Principal but the role will still be there.

Social Institutions:
Schools. Colleges, offices, marriage as a social institution.

Social Structure: Stratification, class structure during the feudal time

Social structure in modern European society is like a teardrop.

From pyramid to teardrop

If you want to study something you need something distinct to study.

What gives regularity to our actions?

What are the means provided by culture


Animals also repeat their actions.

Animals: Biologically wired to do such things.

Regularity is not unique in human beings. It exists in animals.

My cat comes to me at 2.30 am.
Animals do things repeatedly.

What's unique to humans is that we pass not just the genes but something more.
We don't just stay bound by biology.

Any kind of tool helps us to go beyond the biological limits.

Any physical tool extends your biology.

We also have culture tools and memory tools. They extend our cognitive capability.

What is genetically coded in case of other species….

Social institutions are like social genetics.

Genetic pull is something that’s biological.

Social institution are not natural, they are cultured.

Through memory tools


Symbolism:

Because of currency notes we can defy consumption and preserve it

Animals consume what's there in their immediate.

We consume things far away from us.

We have been able to control our consumption and production.

Particular act has been assigned particular symbolic meaning.


Empirical study: creating hypothesis. A might cause B. Testing of the hypothesis. You give a probabilistic statement.


Social facts are interpreted.

What we get through our senses, we interpret.


In the laboratory its possible to keep many factors constant, in social world its difficult. Because the factors are interlinkied.

ITR course: Control group and intervention group

Seeing the impact of an intervention.

In order to check ethical issues.

Medicine trial

6 weeks internship.

In science you are observing something that doesn't observe you.

Field view of society. They are not arm-chair people.

Impartial observation, you're observing  the interpretation.

As a  social reformer, your first job  is to understand the The maning

How are the sociologists interpreting.

There is certain advantage as well



Simple:

Mass education.

Durkeim has an approach: Functionalist approach.

What is functional approach in sociology?


Transition has been explained by different sociologists in different ways, through different approaches.

Max Weber was not happy with rationalisation. Iron cage of rationality.  Not a happy person, in someways.


Social construction of self:
Self fulfilling prophecy

Equality and inequality are loaded terms.
So sociologists use stratification.

Society is also stratified on the basis of status.

For eg. An honest judge might be earning the same as a shopkeeper but the judge will have a higher respect.
The society is stratified not just according to wealth but also status.

Dignity of labour.

Education has impact the social stratification.

There can be more than three themes of stratification.
Like ethnicity, rural/urban etc.


General, introductory of this field

Critical Pedagogy: Mk and Rish.

Harlombus