US Slavery vs. Historical Slavery

There has always been slavery throughout history, but the significant difference between slavery within the US historical context and the world historical context is this: The US based slavery system was based purely on skin color. Prior to importing slaves from Africa, the early settlers imported indentured servants from England who signed 7 year contracts and upon the completion of the contracts were promised some land that they can raise. The working conditions were not always favorable nor were the owners always the most benevolent nor were the contracts fulfilled at term. This lead a lot of the WHITE indentured servants to run away which presented a problem to the landlords, with the runaway servants being able to blend in with the crowd, the landlords sought a new solution. AFRICANS! The Africans were already in the slave trade for commercial purposes, and with the import of the Africans to work the land, even if they chose to run away, they were quickly recaptured due to their inability to mix in with the crowd unlike their predecessors (the indentured servants). The United States was also under Commonwealth Law (aka Common Law), due to the atrocities committed by the slave owners, Common Law no longer applied to slaves such as children of a citizen of the Commonwealth were not recognized. The Natives were viewed as occupiers of the land they wished to bum rush and even the Constitution stipulated "WHITE MEN" were allowed to be citizens...After the emancipation proclamation, the former slaves were considered 6/10 of a person and the Native Americans 1/8 of a person thus making any sort of census near impossible and by not being perceived as a whole person this allowed for the continued denigration and maltreatment of these victims and why to this day in the United States the residue of this perception that they are not considered as persons still resonate today.

In historical slavery, whether it was Greece, Africa, Asia or any other parts of the world, slaves were mostly a spoil that went to the victor, and if you were a slave then your children were slaves, in Africa some slaves were held in rather high regards. A great example of this was Joseph, who was sold off by his brothers as a slave to the Egyptians, who later became one of the king's most trusted adviser. Slavery, in this sense was never based exclusively on race, creed, religion, etc. but purely commercial and a spoils of war basis.

So until the recognition that the whites of the United States still acknowledge there is still some subconscious perception of non-whites as less than a full human being, race relations in the United States will stay at the standstill it is to this day. As my theory of "Racial Categoricalism" states, every ethnicity and race is categorized and are compartmentalized and if we don't fit the picture frame we are not accepted.

2 schools of Sociologists

Sociology, I have to say is my favorite subject, so much that maybe I should have just majored in it!!! Then again, I'll be one of those liberal arts losers I always talk crap about LOL...

Anyways, based on all the podcasts I heard (lectures, speakers, etc) I noticed there seems to be two schools of thought nowadays.

Categorization (see prior blog post) and the advocacy of what is outside the box...my question...why can't it be all of the above?

Everybody, from scientists down to the average layperson are looking for the ONE root cause for everything...

Let's look at homosexuality, they say a gay gene was discovered, because of this the "nature vs. nurture" argument has shifted to the nature side of the equation, Christians who seem to ignore all scientific evidence still say it's nurture. Hey guys how about "ALL OF THE ABOVE?" Having the so-called "GAY GENE" may give you a genetic predisposition towards those leanings and may make you a little effeminate (for men) and somewhat butchy (for women), I would say a lot of actors tend to be girly men, non-macho types (Sean Penn, Tom Cruise, the dude from the Transformers), yet they're not gay.

So the question become, how does one become gay? I believe genetic predisposition along with environmental contributions, such as early childhood molestation, automatically drawing to you the same type of persons as yourself and acceptance within the gay community where the person felt like an outcast, then due to the prevalence of metrosexuals (I believe society has, at least some parts, for girly men to be effeminate, LOL), as in mathematics you need more than one variable to find a solution, the human brain is so much more complicated than the most complicated of math formulas, you can't break it down to a handful of criterion but many scientists in their arrogance or perhaps ignorance or wanting to please research underwriters spew off a couple of contributing variables, and don't get me started on modern day research!!!

So that's the first of sociologists, the categorizers, then the second school of thought tries to advocate what's outside of the box of categorization and insist that's right...Me, I just say human beings are complex and dynamic and since we are adaptable, will get in where we fit in, nuff said...

My New Theory: Racial Categoricalism

First there was racism, then stereotyping, then what Oliver Stone coined as "Placism" (from the Movie, "Any Given Sunday" quoted by Jamie Foxx's character in the movie), where each race should know their place.

Through the racism and the stereotyping that ensued, everybody started becoming categorized, and because of those dumb ass psychiatrists and the pseudo doctor psychologists, the box that everybody is categorized into is getting smaller, and even sociologists are starting to become guilty of this micro categorization of societies, groups, religions, etc. Therefore categorism is not just limited to ethnicity/race. Just look at drug addicts, criminals, people from a disadvantaged socio-economic class, sure there are some patterns (correlations), but these idiots by saying correlation does not equal causation, by putting everything into a nice, neat category is in essence are contradicting themselves by saying correlation equals causation by their categorization.

Therefore, I now coin the term "Categorism", where everything is concerned, especially how race is placed in a box. For an example of what I mean, please click HERE I don't consider this racist, I consider it racial categoricalism where Chinese people are supposed to be this way...

Example, (from my observation of living in the US):

Asians (as far as they're concerned we're all either Chinese or Japanese), anyways, we're either model students, chaste, non-sexual beings (at least for the men), skinny, effeminate (men), kung fu fighters or weaklings, for the women, sex toys or chaste or kung fu fighters, submissive.

Black people: Criminals, rappers, athletes, can sing & dance well...

These are two examples I like to use, because I was talking to my white friend the other day and he admitted that if we (Asian & Black people) didn't fit in these categories, it would be hard for him to accept an Asian person or black person that doesn't not fit these neat categorical stereotypes...

Living in South Korea now, when you say caucasians, the first thought amongst the average Korean person (my own informal survey), the categories are for men:

1. All are handsome or good looking (I try to explain that models appear in magazines because they don't look like the ordinary person, yet they don't understand).

2. All caucasian men are tall (I'm 176 cm or 5' 9 1/2"), I'm not short OK!!!

3. They're all English teachers or US soldiers (20 years ago, just US soldiers).

4. They're all rich (think about it, if you're rich would you travel over 10,000 miles for a job? I try to explain that most English teachers are here because they can't find a job where they're from with their liberal arts, history, English Lit degrees and I always say, if you're living and eating well there's no reason to emigrate...

For the women:

1. They will all get fat or they are all fat!!! I'm confused with this one... (Then again, a hot chick in any country has no reason to emigrate, don't call me a chauvanist, guys know what I'm talking about).

Yet caucasians can be outside of these categories and be accepted, even as a Kyopo (a Korean person that lived overseas), I am categorized by Korean people.

The most common questions I heard:

1. Why did you want to come to Korea?
My reponse: Lower crime rate, a homogeneous society (over 20 years of living in a heterogeneous society you want a change!), quality of life, plus living in Asia is very addicting, don't know why?

2. When will you go back to America?
Been there, done that...I'm sick of 4 seasons, if I choose to emigrate again, why do I want to go back to where I grew up? I want to go to a warm weather country, wanna leave behind the cold!!!! This people definitely cannot understand, so my response is America is not the world, there's Europe (which I would rather live in, knowing what I know now), Africa, SE Asia, Central Asia, South America, etc etc etc why limit yourself?

The most common misconceptions of Kyopos (Koreans that lived or grew up overseas):

1. We're all super rich.
2. We all went to great colleges/universities.
3. We all study hard.
4. The world is our oyster.

So, being a Kyopo, if you're not rich and did not go to a great college, people disperse away from you like ( fill in analogy here)...

Just my new theory, perhaps one day it may be published, LOL upon further research.

Althusserian Claim

Louis Althusser:  This is a excerpt, more details HERE

And read more info at Wikipedia: Click HERE

Intellectual Revolutionary

Prior to and through World War II, 1939-1945, Althusser was involved in the Roman Catholic youth movement and advocated some of the church's more conservative teachings. During the Nazi occupation of France his thinking underwent a radical transformation, as he along with many others embraced Marxist ideologies. During this time he found himself involved with the French Resistance and attracted to one of its more prominent activists, Helene Legotier, eight years his senior and a member of the French Communist Party (PCF). In 1948 Althusser also joined the party. After the war Legotier continued her activism, while Althusser spent most of his time in academia. His lectures and writings became very influential and he was seen by many to be the party's most outstanding intellectual.

Althusser attempted to reconcile the views of French structuralism with those of Marxism by denying the primary role of the individual subject in the face of historically unfolding social structures. His most important works are For Marx (1965), Lenin and Philosophy (1969), and his contributions to a book of essays called Reading Capital, all of which were popular with student revolutionaries during the decade of social upheaval in the 1960s.

While many Marxists were looking for a more "humane" alternative to the totalitarianism unfolding in the Soviet Union and a way to resolve the split caused by the Chinese revolution, Althusser, taking the opposite tack, proposed a purely scientific approach, one he ascribed to the maturing Marx himself in For Marx, (1970). In Reading Capital and in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1971) he aimed at an objective account of how the total society works from its technological top down, generating the classes that run and do the work of a society. In the latter collection he described how such a structure operates through the languages we speak in common. These, he said, tend to instill in people their sense of reality and of themselves and their social roles, all in the interest of perpetuating the order of the given society: this is the thought-controlling use of language called "ideology."

Structuralist Analysis

Althusser sketched the underlying fabric of a society with the help of French "structuralist" theory. This led to the development of a comprehensive and intricate Marxist model for society as a whole, although access to the model is made difficult by Althusser's style and terminology.

In the structuralist view society cannot be understood through the subjective experience of individuals seen as in some way differentiated from the unfolding processes in which they are enmeshed. A society functions as a single organism in a manner determined by its technology and its modes of production. Every individual action is solely determined by its role in relation to that technology. Althusser's critique was partly in reaction to prevailing individualistic philosophies, as well as the increasingly embarrassing historical degenerations of the Marxist system under Stalin. Critics of Altusser's thinking largely objected to the extreme austerity of a system which denies the primacy of the subjective experience, insisting that a system which so entirely subordinates the individual to the "total" structure can never hope to sustain itself in any realm other than the theoretical.

The Chinese experience reminded Marxists that "contradictions" were the essence of their world view; unity is achieved only through the play of opposites, and all "wholes" contain and even consist of the struggles internal to them. As an organism breaks down food to build up nourishment, the state takes life to protect itself. Later disciples of Althusser would point out that both language and personality reveal inherent tensions in the makeup of the self. These as oppositions can be counted on to result in change and progress as they are products of the internalization of "idealistic" structures in the society as a whole. Marxists who preferred to see change as brought on from "the bottom up" (the oppressed, the working class) criticized Althusser for this scheme of resistance from "the inside out" (the repressed inside any group, body, or system: in the economic system, workers). Others found this to be one of his most fruitful new turns of thought.

Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft are sociological categories introduced by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies for two normal types of human association. (A normal type as coined by Tönnies is a purely conceptual tool to be built up logically, whereas an ideal type, as coined by Max Weber, is a concept formed by accentuating main elements of a historic/social change.) Tönnies' concepts of both Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, strictly separated from each other conceptually, are fully discussed in his work “Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft” (1887), seven more German editions during his life time, last: Darmstadt 2005). The second edition of 1912 turned out to be an unexpected success, and the antagonism of these two terms belonged to the general stock of concepts German pre-1933 intellectuals were quite familiar with and quite often misunderstood.

Gemeinschaft

Gemeinschaft (often translated as community) is an association in which individuals are oriented to the large association as much if not more than to their own self interest. Furthermore, individuals in Gemeinschaft are regulated by common mores, or beliefs about the appropriate behavior and responsibility of members of the association, to each other and to the association at large; associations marked by "unity of will" (Tönnies, 22). Tönnies saw the family as the most perfect expression of Gemeinschaft; however, he expected that Gemeinschaft could be based on shared place and shared belief as well as kinship, and he included globally dispersed religious communities as possible examples of Gemeinschaft.

Gemeinschafts are broadly characterized by a moderate division of labour, strong personal relationships, strong families, and relatively simple social institutions. In such societies there is seldom a need to enforce social control externally, due to a collective sense of loyalty individuals feel for society.

Gesellschaft

In contrast, Gesellschaft (often translated as society or civil society or 'association') describes associations in which, for the individual, the larger association never takes on more importance than the individual's self interest, and lack the same level of shared mores. Gesellschaft is maintained through individuals acting in their own self interest. A modern business is a good example of Gesellschaft, the workers, managers, and owners may have very little in terms of shared orientations or beliefs, they may not care deeply for the product they are making, but it is in all their self interest to come to work to make money, and thus the business continues.

Unlike Gemeinschaften, Gesellschaften emphasize secondary relationships rather than familial or community ties, and there is generally less individual loyalty to society. Social cohesion in Gesellschafts typically derives from a more elaborate division of labor. Such societies are considered more susceptible to class conflict as well as racial and ethnic conflicts.

Since, for Tönnies, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft are normal types, he considered them a matter of Pure Sociology, whereas in Applied Sociology, on doing empirical research, he expected to find nothing else than a mix of them. Nevertheless, following Tönnies, without normal types one might not be able to analyze this mix

Source: click HERE

Time-space distanciation

Time-space distanciation is a phrase coined by Anthony Giddens. According to Giddens, social life consists of interactions that are face-to-face or remote. Time-space distanciation describes the process whereby remote interaction has become an increasingly significant feature of human life, and through which social systems that were previously distinctive have become connected and interdependent.

In contrast to pre-modern cultures, "modern time" separates from specific place and acquires a uniformity of measurements across regions through technologies like clocks and calendars. This "empty time" is a prior condition for the "emptying of space," or the separation of space from place. Place becomes increasingly "phantasmagoric," ( a constantly shifting complex succession of things seen or imagined)  influenced by distant or spatially absent social influences. This separation of time and space has brought about time-space distanciation.

Social activity becomes disconnected from the context of presence, and opened up to the possibilities of change by breaking free from the restraints of local habits and practices.

Reflexivity (social theory)

Source: Click HERE

In sociology, reflexivity is an act of self-reference where examination or action 'bends back on', refers to, and affects the entity instigating the action or examination. In brief, reflexivity refers to circular relationships between cause and effect. A reflexive relationship is bidirectional; with both the cause and the effect affecting one another in a situation that renders both functions causes and effects. Reflexivity is related to the concept of feedback and positive feedback in particular.

An example is the interaction between beliefs and observations in a marketplace: if traders believe that prices will fall, they will sell - thus driving down prices, whereas if they believe prices will rise, they will buy - thereby driving prices up.

The concept of reflexivity

In social theory, reflexivity may occur when theories in a discipline should apply equally forcefully to the discipline itself, for example in the case that the theories of knowledge construction in the field of Sociology of Scientific Knowledge should apply equally to knowledge construction by Sociology of Scientific Knowledge practitioners, or when the subject matter of a discipline should apply equally well to the individual practitioners of that discipline, for example when psychological theory should explain the psychological mental processes of psychologists. More broadly, reflexivity is considered to occur when the observations or actions of observers in the social system affect the very situations they are observing, or theory being formulated is disseminated to and affects the behaviour of the individuals or systems the theory is meant to be objectively modelling. Thus for example an anthropologist living in an isolated village may affect the village and the behaviour of its citizens that he or she is studying. The observations are not independent of the participation of the observer.

Reflexivity is, therefore, a methodological issue in the social sciences analogous to the observer principle. Within that part of recent sociology of science that has been called the strong programme, reflexivity is suggested as a methodological norm or principle, meaning that a full theoretical account of the social construction of, say, scientific, religious or ethical knowledge systems, should itself be explainable by the same principles and methods as used for accounting for these other knowledge systems. This points to a general feature of naturalised epistemologies, that such theories of knowledge allows for specific fields of research to elucidate other fields as part of an overall self-reflective process: Any particular field of research occupied with aspects of knowledge processes in general (e.g., history of science, cognitive science, sociology of science, psychology of perception, semiotics, logic, neuroscience) may reflexively study other such fields yielding to an overall improved reflection on the conditions for creating knowledge.

Reflexivity includes both a subjective process of self-consciousness inquiry and the study of social behavior with reference to theories about social relationships.

History

The principle of reflexivity was perhaps first enunciated by the sociologist William Thomas (1923, 1928) as the Thomas theorem: that 'the situations that men define as true, become true for them.'

Sociologist Robert K. Merton (1948, 1949) built on the Thomas principle to define the notion of a self-fulfilling prophecy: that once a prediction or prophecy is made, actors may accommodate their behaviours and actions so that a statement that would have been false becomes true or, conversely, a statement that would have been true becomes false - as a consequence of the prediction or prophecy being made. The prophecy has a constitutive impact on the outcome or result, changing the outcome from what would otherwise have happened.

Reflexivity was taken up as an issue in science in general by Popper (1957), who called it the 'Oedipal effect', and more comprehensively by Nagel (1961). Reflexivity presents a problem for science because if a prediction can lead to changes in the system that the prediction is made in relation to, it becomes difficult to assess scientific hypotheses by comparing the predictions they entail with the events that actually occur. The problem is even more difficult in the social sciences.

Reflexivity has been taken up as the issue of "reflexive prediction" in economic science by Grunberg and Modigliani (1954) and Herbert Simon (1954), has been debated as a major issue in relation to the Lucas Critique, and has been raised as a methodological issue in economic science arising from the issue of reflexivity in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) literature.

Reflexivity has emerged as both an issue and a solution in modern approaches to the problem of structure and agency, for example in the work of Anthony Giddens in his structuration theory and Pierre Bourdieu in his genetic structuralism.

Giddens, for example, noted that constitutive reflexivity is possible in any social system, and that this presents a distinct methodological problem for the social sciences. Giddens accentuated this theme with his notion of "reflexive modernity" - the argument that, over time, society is becoming increasingly more self-aware, reflective, and hence reflexive.

Bourdieu argued that the social scientist is inherently laden with biases, and only by becoming reflexively aware of those biases can the social scientists free themselves from them and aspire to the practice of an objective science. For Bourdieu, therefore, reflexivity is part of the solution, not the problem.

Michel Foucault's The Order of Things can be said to touch on the issue of Reflexivity. Foucault examines the history of western thought since the Renaissance and argues that each historical epoch (he identifies 3, while proposing a 4th) has an episteme, or "a historical a priori", that structures and organizes knowledge. Foucault argues that the concept of man emerged in the early 19th century, what he calls the "Age of Man", with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. He finishes the book by posing the problem of the age of man and our pursuit of knowledge- where "man is both knowing subject and the object of his own study"; thus, Foucault argues that the social sciences, far from being objective, produce truth in their own mutually exclusive discourses.

Reflexivity in Economics

Billionaire investor George Soros has been an active promoter of the relevance of reflexivity to economics first propounding it publicly in his 1987 book. ^[2]

Reflexivity is discordant with equilibrium theory, which stipulates that markets move towards equilibrium and that non-equilibrium fluctuations are merely random noise that will soon be corrected. In equilibrium theory, prices in the long run at equilibrium reflect the underlying fundamentals, which are unaffected by prices. Reflexivity asserts that prices do in fact influence the fundamentals and that these newly-influenced set of fundamentals then proceed to change expectations, thus influencing prices; the process continues in a self-reinforcing pattern. Because the pattern is self-reinforcing, markets tend towards disequilibrium. Sooner or later they reach a point where the sentiment is reversed and negative expectations become self-reinforcing in the downward direction, thereby explaining the familiar pattern of boom and bust cycles

Reflexivity and the status of the "Social Sciences"

Flanagan (1981) and others have argued that reflexivity complicates all three of the traditional roles that are typically played by a classical science: explanation, prediction and control.

The fact that individuals and social collectivities are capable of self-inquiry and adaptation is a key characteristic of real-world social systems, differentiating the social sciences from the physical sciences.

Reflexivity, therefore, raises real issues regarding the extent to which the social sciences may ever be 'hard' sciences analogous to classical physics, and raises questions about the nature of the social sciences. 

Reflexivity - Reflexivity In Sociology

Reflexivity - Reflexivity In Sociology

The term's history in the social sciences has been somewhat more complex, as it has been used by different theorists to refer to different phenomena according to what both the object and subject of reflection is understood to be. The concept of reflexivity has a longer history in sociology than in anthropology. As a sociological term, it first appears in the work of Talcott Parsons where it refers to the capacity of social actors in modern societies to be conscious and able to give accounts of their actions. This usage was further developed by Anthony Giddens, who argues that one of the main characteristics of late modernity is a heightened importance of reflexivity in this sense, both at the individual and the societal level. In late modernity, he argues, most aspects of social activity are subject to constant revision in the light of new information or knowledge (sociology itself is a major source of such reflexivity at the level of the society). Individual social actors likewise must constantly revise their identities in light of the changing social categories at hand. A second meaning of the term in sociology is traceable to the work of Harold Garfinkel who used the term to mean the process by which social order is created through ad hoc instances of conversational practice. A third sense of the term is in the context of "reflexive sociology." The term was coined by Parsons's student Alvin Gouldner, who called for a sociological examination of the discipline itself as part of a liberatory "radical sociology." The theorist most closely associated with reflexive sociology in this sense is Pierre Bourdieu. In his work, reflexivity is understood as a strategic agenda, that of utilizing the tools of the discipline in order to demystify sociology as a power saturated social practice.

Modernization Theory

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Modernization Theory

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Modernization Theory - Presentation Transcript

1. Modernization Theory Dr. Christopher S. Rice
2. Rise of the United States as a Superpower
3. Spread of a (perceived) united world Communist movement
4. Disintegration of the European colonial empires
5. Evolutionary Theory
6. Features of Classic Evolutionary Theory • Assumed social change is unidirectional • Imposed a value judgment on the evolutionary process • Assumed that the rate of social change is slow, gradual & piecemeal (evolutionary NOT revolutionary)
7. Functionalist Theory
8. The Functional Imperatives (AGIL) • Adaptation • Goal attainment • Integration • Latency
9. Homeostatic Equilibrium
10. Criticism of Parsons
11. Parson’s “Pattern Variables” • Affective vs. affective-neutral relationship • Particularistic vs. Universal relationship • Collective orientation vs. self- orientation • Ascription vs. Achievement • Functionally diffused vs. functionally specific relationships
12. Marion Levy Relatively Modernized Societies
13. How is Modernization defined?
14. Why does Modernization occur?
15. Relatively non-modern societies are characterized by: • Low degree of specialization • High level of self-sufficiency • Cultural norms of tradition, particularism, & functional diffuseness • Relatively little emphasis on money circulation & market • Family norms such as nepotism • One-way flow of goods and services from rural to urban areas
16. Relatively modern societies are characterized by: • High degree of specialization & interdependency of organizations • Cultural norms of rationality, universalism, & functional specificity • High degree of centralization • Relatively great emphasis on money circulation & market • The need to insulate bureaucracy from other contexts • Two-way flow of goods & services between towns and villages
17. What if you come late to the party?
18. Advantages Disadvantages • Knowing where they are • Problems of scale. going • Problems of conversion of • Ability to borrow initial resources, materials, skills, expertise in planning, etc. from one use to capital accumulation, another. skills, & patterns of • Problems of organization without the costs of invention. disappointment. • Able to skip some of the • Many people get hurt in a non-essential stages society’s movement associated with the toward relatively process. modernized patterns.
19. Rostow’s Stages of Economic Growth • “Traditional Society” • Precondition for takeoff growth • Takeoff • Drive to Maturity • High mass-consumption society
20. PI from banks, capital confiscatory and markets, government bonds, taxation devices & the stock market How do you get the necessary capital for “Takeoff”? PI through direct foreign PI through capital investment foreign trade
21. Theoretical Assumptions of Modernization Theory
22. From Functionalist Theory • Modernization is a systematic process • Modernization is a transformative process • Modernization is an immanent process
23. From Evolutionary Theory • Modernization is a phased process • Modernization is a homogenizing process • Modernization is an Americanization (or Europeanization) process • Modernization is an irreversible process • Modernization is a progressive process • Modernization is a lengthy process
24. Policy Implications
25. 4 Criticisms of Modernization Theory
26. Unidirectional Development
27. Need to Eliminate Traditional Values
28. Ideological Critique
29. “These epistemological sins led to the theoretical errors of belief in incremental and continuous development, the possibility of orderly and stable change, the diffusion of development from the West to the Third World, and the decline of revolutionary ideology and the spread of pragmatic and scientific thinking.” Sydney Almond
30. 4 Epistemological Sins of MT • Belief in the possibility of an objective social science free of ideology. • Belief in the cumulative quality of knowledge. • Belief in universal laws of social science. • Export of these beliefs to the Third World countries.
31. Neglect of the Issue of Foreign Domination

The Incompatibility of Science and Religion