The Forest and the Trees

by Allan Johnson

  9. Erving Goffman, “Embarrassment and Social Organization,” American Journal of Sociology 62 (1956–1957): 264–271.

  10. The study of methods people use to sustain the reality of a particular situation is known as ‘ethnomethodology’ (literally, ‘people’s methods’). It is most closely associated with the work of Harold Garfinkel. See his Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967). See also J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984); R. A. Hilbert, “Ethnomethodology and the Micro-Macro-Order,” American Sociological Review 55, no. 6 (1990): 794–808; and Eric Livingston, Making Sense of Ethnomethodology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987).

  11. See Goffman, Interaction Ritual.

  12. See, for example, the following works by Deborah Tannen: You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (New York: William Morrow, 1990) and Talking Nine to Five (New York: William Morrow, 1994).

  13. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1977).

  14. See Brian McNaught, Gay Issues in the Workplace (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993).

  15. For more on the concept of privilege, see Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies” (Wellesley, MA: Wellesley Centers for Research on Women, 1988).

  16. Such stories abound in the experiences of people of color in the United States. See, for example, Lois Benjamin, The Black Elite (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1991); Ellis Cose, The Rage of a Privileged Class (New York: HarperCollins, 1993); Joe R. Feagin, “The Continuing Significance of Race: Antiblack Discrimination in Public Places,” American Sociological Review 56, no. 1 (1991): 101–116; Joe R. Feagin, Hernán Vera, and Pinar Batur, White Racism: The Basics (New York: Routledge, 1995); Joe R. Feagin, Hernán Vera, and Nikitah Imani, The Agony of Education: Black Students at White Colleges and Universities (New York: Routledge, 1996); Joe R. Feagin and Melvin P. Sikes, Living with Racism: The Black Middle-Class Experience (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994); and David T. Wellman, Portraits of White Racism, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

  CHAPTER 6

  1. For the classic statement on the norm of reciprocity, see Alvin W. Gouldner, “A Norm of Reciprocity: A Preliminary Statement,” American Sociological Review 25 (1960): 161–178. See also Marcel Mauss, The Gift (1925; repr., New York: Free Press, 1954). For more on exchange theory, see Peter M. Blau, Exchange and Power in Social Life (New York: Wiley, 1986), and K. S. Cook, ed., Social Exchange Theory (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1987).

  2. Howard Steven Friedman. The Measure of a Nation: How to Regain America’s Competitive Edge and Boost Our Global Standing (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2012).

  3. Nate Silver, “Measuring the Effects of Voter Identification Laws,” New York Times, June 15, 2012.

  4. John Kenneth Galbraith, “Why the Welfare State Is Here to Stay,” interview by Nathan Gardells, National Times, June 1996, 30.

  5. Ibid.

  6. See Erik J. Engstrom, Partisan Gerrymandering and the Construction of American Democracy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013).

  7. For a classic statement of this principle, see Robert K. Merton, “The Sociology of Social Problems,” in Contemporary Social Problems, 4th ed., ed. Robert K. Merton and Robert Nisbet (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), 5–43.

  8. U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2012).

  9. See William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Knopf, 1996).

  10. Charles Murray, Losing Ground (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

  11. Ibid., 221.

  12. Ibid., 227–228.

  13. Ibid., 233.

  14. U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2012 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2012), table 694.

  15. Emmanuel Saez, “Striking It Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States,” Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality, Pathways Magazine (Winter 2008): 6–7.

  16. Lydia DePillis, “Congrats CEOs! You’re Making 273 Times the Pay of the Average Worker,” Washington Post, June 26, 2013, available at www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/26/congrats-ceos-youre-making-273-times-thepay-of-the-average-worker/.

  17. For international comparisons that illustrate alternatives to how things are done in the United States, see David Brady, Rich Democracies, Poor People: How Politics Explain Poverty (New York: Oxford, 2009).

  18. Associated Press, “U.S. Majority Have Prejudice against Blacks,” USA Today, October 27, 2012.

  19. See Jackson Katz, Leading Men: Presidential Campaigns and the Politics of Manhood (Northampton, MA: Interlink, 2012).

  20. Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000); Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998); Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: Myth of the American Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998).

  21. See Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (New York: Times Books, 2007).

  22. See Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation.

  23. See, for example, Karen DeYoung and Scott Clement, “Americans Say Afghan War Not Worth Fighting,” Washington Post, July 26, 2013, and Pew Research Center, “Veterans of Post-9/11 Wars Ambivalent about Whether Iraq Was Worth It,” March 19, 2013, available at www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/veterans-of-post-911-warsambivalent-about-whether-iraq-was-worth-it/.

  CHAPTER 7

  1. See Theodore W. Allen, The Invention of the White Race, vols. 1–2, 2nd ed. (New York: Verso, 2012), and Audrey Smedley and Brian Smedley, Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview, 4th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2011).

  2. See Smedley, Race in North America. See also Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, 30th anniv. ed. (New York: Owl Books, 2001).

  3. For a history of this transition, see Basil Davidson, The African Slave Trade (Boston: Back Bay Books, 1988).

  4. For more on this history, see James R. Barrett and David R. Roediger, “How White People Became White,” in Critical White Studies, ed. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), 402–406, and David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, rev. ed. (New York: Verso, 2007).

  5. See George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics, rev. and enl. ed. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006).

  6. William H. Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina and the Black Struggle for Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).

  EPILOGUE

  1. On affirmative action, see Paul Kivel, Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: New Society, 2011), 172–179; Nicolaus Mills, ed., Debating Affirmative Action (New York: Dell, 1994); and David T. Wellman, Portraits of White Racism, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 226–236.

  2. See R. Roosevelt Thomas Jr., Beyond Race and Gender (New York: AMACOM, 1991).

  Glossary

  Words in italics refer to entries included elsewhere in the glossary.

  achieved status. Also known as an acquired status, a position in a social system that is occupied after birth, such as marital status, educational level, and occupation.

  acquired status. See achieved status.

  action. A behavior that takes into account a consideration of how other people will interpret and respond to it.

  agricultural society. A
society in which economic activity centers on the production of food through the cultivation of large fields, usually involving the use of a plow or its equivalent.

  attitude. A positive or negative evaluation of people, objects, or situations that predisposes those who hold it to feel and therefore behave in positive or negative ways.

  behavior. Anything a person does.

  belief. A statement about reality or about what is regarded as true or false.

  boundary. The rules and understandings that govern who may occupy a particular social status.

  bureaucracy. A complex social system consisting of formal relationships among status occupants who specialize in narrowly defined tasks governed by rigid rules and a clear hierarchy. Managers specialize in making sure that rules are followed and that decisions are based on rational consideration of the organization’s best interests rather than the personal feelings of individuals.

  capitalism. An economic system in which the means of production are privately owned by some (capitalists and investors) but used by others (workers) who sell their time in return for wages and produce goods and services.

  class. See social class.

  coalition. A subgroup in which members join forces to control what goes on in the group.

  colonialism. An international system of economic dominance through which more powerful nations exploit weaker ones.

  conflict perspective. A sociological perspective that focuses on how groups and individuals struggle with one another over resources and rewards, resulting in particular distributions of wealth, power, and prestige in societies and other social systems. These conflicts shape not only the patterns of everyday life but also larger patterns, such as racial, ethnic, gender, and social class inequality and relations among societies and regions of the world.

  contradiction. An instance in which two or more aspects of a social system are incompatible or in conflict with each other, often producing tension leading to change.

  cultural materialism. A sociological perspective that focuses on the ways in which material conditions in a social system, such as climate, shape cultural beliefs, values, attitudes, and norms.

  culture. The accumulated store of symbols, ideas, and material objects associated with a social system.

  deviance. Any instance in which a norm is violated.

  division of labor. A structural feature of social systems in which a process, such as producing goods or raising a family, is divided into various tasks that are assigned to the occupants of different social statuses.

  dramaturgical perspective. A sociological perspective that takes the point of view that social interaction is like a theatrical performance that can be understood in terms of scripts, players, roles, and audiences.

  ecology. The study of the relationship between social systems and physical environments.

  economic system. A set of institutional arrangements through which goods and services are produced and distributed in a society.

  ecosystem. A natural system in which forms of life live in relation to one another in a shared physical environment.

  ethnocentrism. The tendency to view the ideas and practices of other cultures as inferior or incorrect.

  ethnomethodology. The study of the unspoken rules and meanings that people use to interpret one another’s behavior and form expectations in social situations.

  functional perspective. A theoretical perspective in sociology that focuses on the ways in which cultural ideas and social structures contribute to or interfere with the maintenance or adaptation of a social system.

  gender. A collection of cultural ideas used to construct images and expectations associated with the biological categories of female and male (such as ‘women,’ ‘men,’ ‘manhood’).

  generalized other. The shared perception of the ideas and expectations that apply to people who occupy a particular social status in a social situation (e.g., customer in a store, passenger on a bus).

  gerrymandering. A legislative process through which electoral districts are redrawn so as to advantage the political party in power by increasing the number of districts where they hold a majority.

  gesture. A physical movement (such as waving your hand) that in a particular culture has meaning.

  group. A social system involving two or more people who interact with one another in regular and patterned ways and identify one another as members (e.g., a family or basketball team).

  horticultural society. A society that organizes the economic system primarily around the cultivation of small gardens using digging sticks and hoes.

  hunter-gatherer society. A society that organizes the economic system around hunting for game and gathering vegetable foodstuffs.

  ideology. A set of cultural ideas used to explain and justify the status quo or movements for social change.

  individualism. A way of thinking based on the idea that everything that happens in social life results solely from the thoughts and feelings of individuals without reference to their participation in social systems.

  industrial society. A society that organizes the economic system around the centralized production of goods using machinery and nonanimal sources of power.

  interaction ritual. Rituals performed as part of social interaction to sustain the shared reality of a particular social situation or relationship (such as greeting people you meet on the street and asking how they are).

  LGBT. An acronym standing for ‘lesbian,’ ‘gay,’ ‘bisexual,’ and ‘transgender.’ Some activists add the letter ‘Q’ for ‘queer,’ as in ‘LGBTQ.’

  looking-glass self. Our perception of ourselves based on how we think other people perceive and evaluate us.

  luxury of obliviousness. An aspect of systems of privilege by which members of dominant groups have the option of choosing whether to be aware of the true extent, causes, and consequences of privilege and oppression.

  male centeredness. An organizing principle of patriarchy by which the path of least resistance is always to place males and what they do at the center of attention.

  male dominance. An organizing principle of patriarchy by which the default condition is for men to hold positions of power.

  male identification. An organizing principle of patriarchy by which males are taken to be the standard for human beings and are thereby regarded as superior to females.

  Manifest Destiny. Originating in the nineteenth century, Manifest Destiny was an ideology by which the United States was chosen by God to expand across the continent and spread its influence and culture to ‘uncivilized’ peoples in other parts of the world.

  material culture. Objects made by people as they participate in social systems and interact with one another and the physical environment.

  means of production. Tools, machines, resources, and technology used in an economic system to produce goods and services.

  migration. The movement of people from one place to another.

  mode of production. The way in which a society organizes the production of goods and services (e.g., agricultural, industrial).

  norm. A social rule of appearance or behavior that links beliefs and values to rewards and/or punishments.

  oppression. In a social system, the subordination, exploitation, and mistreatment of one social category by another as an assertion of privilege.

  overpopulation. A condition in which population size outstrips available resources, within a social system, regionally, or globally.

  path of least resistance. In a social system, the path of least resistance in a particular situation consists of whatever behavior or appearance is expected of participants depending on their position in that system.

  patriarchy. A social system organized around the principles of male dominance, male centeredness, male identification, and an obsession with control that is gendered as masculine.

  performative language. An act of speech that alters the terms of a social relationship (as in saying, “I promise”).

  popula
tion. A collection of people who share a geographic territory or participate in a social system.

  post-industrial society. A society whose economic system is organized more around the providing of services than the production of goods.

  power. The ability to have an effect, including the assertion of control and dominance, in spite of opposition.

  power structure. The distribution of power in a social system.

  prejudice. A positive or negative attitude directed at people simply because they occupy a particular social status.

  privilege. An advantage that is unearned, exclusive to a particular social category, and socially conferred by others.

  queer. A general term used by some LGBT activists for those who, in various ways, reject, test, or otherwise transgress the boundaries of what is culturally regarded as normal in relation to gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation and expression.

  race. A set of cultural categories based on the scientifically groundless assumption that different kinds of human beings exist, as indicated by such physical characteristics as skin color, hair texture, and facial features.

  racism. A broad category that includes anything having the effect of enacting, enforcing, or perpetuating a system of privilege based on race.

  reality. See social construction of reality.

  reciprocity, norm of. A social expectation that an action will be responded to in a mutual and appropriate way that sustains a relationship (such as responding to what someone says in a conversation or returning a favor).

  role. A set of beliefs, values, norms, and attitudes associated with a social status in a social system that shapes how people participate in and experience social life in relation to the occupants of other statuses (as in the role of ‘wife’ in relation to ‘husband’).

  role conflict. An instance in which the expectations or ideas attached to one role conflict with those attached to another.

  role structure. The arrangement of social statuses in a system and their corresponding roles.