UCLA Sociology 101 Questions and Answers 100% Pass

UCLA Sociology 101 Questions and Answers 100% Pass The tools and raw material used to create a product that are existing at a given time period means of production the ways the society structures the relations between individuals relations of production The dominant class during the feudal stage of economic development. Aristocracy (aristocrat) The middle classes Bourgeoisie (bourgeois) Max Weber argued: it constitutes the most efficient and rational way in which one can organize the human activity and that systematic processes and organized hierarchies are necessary to maintain order, maximize efficiency, and eliminate favoritism. Bureaucracy (Weber) The abstraction of human labor into something that can be exchanged for money Labor-Power The tendency to attribute to commodities (including money) a power that really inheres only in the labor expended to create commodities. "There is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men's hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labor, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities." Commodity Fetishism Everything that goes into the production of the necessities of life, including the "productive forces" (labor, instruments, and raw material) and the "relations of production" (the social structures that regulate the relation between humans in the production of goods. Mode of Production The "lower" or "working" classes, the members of which must under capitalism sell their labor in order to earn a living Proletariat The surplus produced over and above what is required to survive, which is translated into profit in capitalism. Marx uses the concept of surplus labor to provide a scientific basis for the claim that capitalists exploit the working class. The capitalist pays his workers less than the value their labor has added to the goods, usually only enough to maintain the worker at a subsistence level. Of the total worth of the worker's labor, however, this compensation, in Marxian theory, accounts for only a mere portion, equivalent to the worker's means of subsistence. The remainder is "surplus labor," and the value it produces is "surplus value." To make a profit, Marx argued, the capitalist appropriates this surplus value, thereby exploiting the laborer. Surplus Value A primitive stage in the development of society during which there are no social classes. Tribal society is instead structured around kinship relations, with hunting Tribal Society Invisible hand "By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by ________________ to promote an end which was no part of his intention Ruling Class "What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ________________." Idea type "_________________ is formed by a one-sided accentuation of one of several perspectives, and through the synthesis of a variety of diffuse, discrete, individual phenomena, present sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes not at all; subsumed by such one-sided, emphatic viewpoints so that they form a uniform construction in thought. In this conceptual purity this construction can never be found in reality, it is a utopia. alienation "The _________________ of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently (...) and that it becomes a power of its own confronting him." Casing as hard as steel/iron cage "The Puritan wanted to be man with a calling; we are compelled to be. (...). In Baxter's view, concern for external goods should lie on the shoulders of the Saints only like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment. But fate has allowed that cloak to become ________________." Bureaucratic apparatus "The fully developed _________________ compares with other organizations exactly as does the machine with non-technical modes of production. Precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of the files, continuity, discretion, unity, strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material and personal costs - these are raised to the optimum point." machine "The work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of ________________, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily required knack, that is required of him." social action "'Sociology' is a word used in many different senses. In the sense adopted here, it means the science whose object is to interpret the meaning of _________________ and thereby give a causal explanation of the way in which the action proceeds and the effects which it produces." division of labor; communism "For as soon as _________________ comes into being, each man has a particular,exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape.He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; whilst in _________________, where nobody has an exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow." satanic mill "Undoubtedly, labor, and, and money markets are essential to a market economy. But no society could stand the effects of such a system of crude fictions even for the shortest stretch of time unless its human and natural substance as well as its business organization was protected against the ravages of this _________________." Fetishism "There is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. (...) This I call ________________ which attaches itself to the products of labor, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities." British Economics, German Idealism, French Socialism Three Main Influences of Marx/Engels thought "The main principle, however, which must guide us in the selection of a vocation is the welfare of humanity, our own perfection. One should not think that these two interests combat each other, that one must destroy the other. Rather, man's nature makes it possible for him to reach his fulfillment only by working for the perfection and welfare of his society" Marx on Choosing an Occupation "Christianity set itself the goal of fulfilling man's unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignored his attainable desires. By promising man eternal life, it deprived him of temporal life, by teaching him to trust in God's help it took away his trust in his own powers; by giving him faith in a better life in heaven, it destroyed his faith in a better life on earth and his striving to attain such a life. Christianity gave man what his imagination desires, but for that very reason failed to give him what he really and truly desires." Ludwig Feuerbach "The Alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power of its own confronting him; it means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien. (...) It is the same in religion. The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself." (Marx: Estranged Labor, 72) What is Alienation? The labor theory of value is an economic theory that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of labor required to produce it. According to the theory, labor is the only possible source of any economic value. At present this concept is usually associated with Marxian economics, although it is also used in the theories of earlier classical economists such as Adam Smith Labor Theory of Value 1. Alienation of the worker from the product of his labor 2. Alienation of the worker from the act of producing 3. Alienation of the worker from himself, from his species-being 4. Alienation of the worker from other workers Aspects of Alienation (4) Use value is the utility of consuming a good - it the ability of a good or service to satisfy a want. Use Value The quantified worth of one good or service expressed in terms of the worth of another. Exchange Value 1. Elias identifies royal and aristocratic courts as key social units which played a vital role in the emergence of bourgeois, capitalist society. 2. He analyses a 'courtly rationality' which both preceded instrumental rationality, i.e. bourgeois rationality, and continues as an undercurrent to it. 3. He identifies, in the dynamics of social relations in court society, a particular mechanism of power and social differentiation which continues to operate in contemporary social life. Key Aspects of "The Court Society" "As will emerge, the power of the individual ruler was by no means so unrestricted or absolute, even in the age of so-called 'absolutism', as this term suggests. Even Louis XIV, the Roi Soleil, who is often taken as the supreme example of the omnipotent absolute monarch, proves on closer scrutiny to be an individual who was enmeshed through his position as king in a specific network of interdependences. He could preserve his power only by a carefully calculated strategy which was governed by the peculiar structure of court society in the narrow sense, and more broadly by society at large." (Elias, 3) Royal Mechanism "As a central figuration of that stage of development, which after a long struggle gave way abruptly or gradually to a professional-bourgeois-urban-industrial stage, this aristocratic court society developed a civilizing and cultural physiognomy which was taken over by professional-bourgeois society partly as a heritage and partly as an antithesis and, preserved in this way, was further developed. By studying the structure of court society and seeking to understand one of the last great non-bourgeois figurations of the West, therefore, we indirectly gain increased understanding of our own professional-bourgeois, urban-industrial society." (Elias, 40) Court Rationality and Bourgeois Rationality In the 1950s and 1960s Weber's work on the Protestant work ethic and bureaucratic organizations was used in modernization theory to describe a contrast between ascription and achievement. Ascription refers to qualities of individuals, often inborn qualities such as gender, ethnicity, race, age, family status, or characteristics of the household of origin. According to the theory these govern an individual's life course or life chances in traditional societies. Achievement refers to performance of an individual and emphasizes what that individual achieves in life. While modern society does not always provide for opportunity to achieve or reward merit, the ideal goal is generally one that each individual should be provided an opportunity to achieve what they are capable of achieving Weber and Modernization Theory "Only in this one court society could its members preserve what gave them direction and purpose in their own eyes, their social existence as court people, their aloofness from all else, their prestige - the center of their self-image and of their personal identity. (...) Had they been concerned primarily with wealth, they could have reached their goal far better by pursuing a commercial or financial activity, but as they were concerned primarily with maintaining their elite character and their rank in court society, they could not escape going to court and forever depending directly on the king." (Elias, 99) Class vs. Status "At the present stage of social development the directors of the few large organizations that are actually controlled by a single person, for example, industrial concerns, have a wide range of impersonal methods of control at their disposal. (...) Despite their formal organizational framework based on written contracts and documents, which was developed only in rudimentary form in the state of Louis XIV, there are in many organizations of our time, even industrial and commercial ones, rivalries for status, fluctuations in the balance between groups, exploitation of rivalries by superiors, and other phenomena that have emerged in the study of court society. But as the main regulation of human relationships in large organizations is formalized in a highly impersonal manners, such phenomena usually have a more or less unofficial and informal character today. In court society we therefore find quite openly and on a large Bureaucratic Organizations commodity fetishism you think value is a relationship between objects when in fact it is a relationship between people. You don't think about the relationships or working conditions between people. Our belief is that the object holds this value when the value comes from the human labor put into it. Spirit of Capitalism (Weber) Benjamin Franklin Ex. working hard is good, pursuit of wealth is the ultimate goal to make wealth (historical evidence) Making money is not a means to an end, but a way to make more money; hard work is good Protestants spirit of capitalism: make as much money as you can calling: a specific task you are supposed to do lots of wealth is sign of God's love Adam Smith specialized division of labor Marx material conditions create ideas Social action of Weber (4 typologies) Ideal types 1. instrumental (rational)- Eng college degree; means to an end 2.Value Rational- behavior and decisions are based on morality/ethics 3. Traditional- the way it has always been done 4. Affect- based on emotions Domination ability to get someone to obey your commands, not based on wanting to but because they think you have a legitamite right to rule, they do make sense. All forms of domination strive for legitimacy 4 types of legitimate rule (domination) 1. legal- based on enactment 2. traditional- legitimacy based on because it has always been done. To tradition not the person is allegiance; broad power smatic- to a certain group of people these people can create miracles. NOT ABOUT IF THEY CAN BUT IF PEOPLE THINK THEY CAN Monasticism a religious way of life in which one renounces worldly pursuits to devote oneself fully to spiritual work. Inner-worldly asceticism combination of acquiring wealth without consuming i otherworldly asceticism withdraws from the world and does not aim at economic achievement or wealth value pluralism the idea that there are several values which may be equally correct and fundamental, and yet in conflict with each other Forces of Production The combination of the means of production (tools, machinery, land etc.) and human labor power (including skills, education, etc.). Relations of Production The sum total of social relationships that people must enter into in order to produce and reproduce their means of life. The relations of production are the relation between social classes. Modes of Production The combination of forces and relations of production form a unity, that is, the way people relate to the physical world and the way people relate to each other socially are necessarily bound up together in specific ways.