Social prisms [[electronic resource] ] : reflections on everyday myths and paradoxes / / Jodi O'Brien

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910480409903321
• Autore: O'Brien Jodi
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Thousand Oaks Calif. ; ; London, : Pine Forge, c1999
• ISBN: 1-4522-3404-3; 1-4522-6762-6
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (278 p.)
• Disciplina: 303.372; 306
• Soggetti: Social action; Social role; Social values; Electronic books.
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. 243-247) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Cover; Half title page; Title page; Copyright page; Dedication; Contents; Acknowledgments; Prologue; Chapter 1. The Paradox of Réduction: Some Observations on Sociology as Science; Knowledge Systems; Science as a Dominant System of Knowledge; Using Scientific Thinking for Social Questions; Science Discovers Nature: Something to Be Catalogued, Predicted and Controlled; Scientism: The Misapplication of Scientific Methods to Social Life; Empirical Observation Versus Interpretation in Social Research; Reduction and Reification; Conclusions; Chapter 2. The Case of the Designer Genes: Reconsidering the Nature/Nurture BinaryNature/Nurture: A Problematic Dichotomy; Biological Versus Social Patterns of Difference: An Example of Gender; Gender as a Social Institution; The Social Construction of Gender Classification; Social (Il)literacy; The Search for the Gay Gene and Other Misapplications of ""Bio Rhetoric""; ""There Are Three Kinds of People in the World""; Chapter 3. To Belong or Not to Belong? Paradoxes of Community; What Is Community?; Normative Routines Versus Habits of the Heart; Group Propositions and Paradoxes; The Paradox of Individual and Community: Who Would I Be Without This Group?Forging Self Through Choice; Two Paradoxes of Group Boundaries; Society as a Web of Group Interests; The Possibility of Pluralism? Intergroup Conflicts; Conclusions: Some Afterthoughts on Pluralism and Conflict; Chapter 4. Which Box Do I Check? Paradoxes of Social Difference; Making Distinctions; The Necessity of Difference; Marking Differences; Differences as Markers of Inequality; The Paradox of Social Differences; ""Getting It""; Chapter 5. How Do We Cut the American Pie? The Myth of Meritocracy; Is Equality the American Ideal?Structures of Scarcity; Education and Equal Opportunity; Strategies for Maintaining the Myth of Meritocracy; Suburban Life as an Illustration of the Illusion That Affluence = Social Character = Merit; Class Consciousness; Conclusions; Chapter 6. Family Equations: Whose Family? Whose Values?; The Rhetoric of ""Family Values""; Values of the Family: Definitional Equations; How Television Created the Ideal Family; Family Harmony and Family Appearances: Economic Factors; The Relationship Between Family and Community Networks; Is the Family in Crisis?; What Is a Family? Who Is It For?Conclusion; Chapter 7. The Paradox of Value in the Age of Certainty: Reflections on Max Weber and Georg Simmel; Modernity as the Age of Certainty; Standardization and Its Costs: The Erosion of Passion and Subjective Value; Certain Measures of Worth: Time and Money; Money as the Ultimate Form of Standardization; Standardized Measures as the Ultimate Authority of Worth; The Paradox of Transcendence; Epilogue: Paradoxes of Subjectivity; The Contemporary Problem of Subjectivity; The Will to Expression; Self-Multiplicity; Multivocality : Freedom of Expression and the Authority of Subjectivity
• Sommario/riassunto: Presenting basic sociological topics in terms of the paradoxes they contain, O'Brien situates the discipline and its subject matter in historical and intellectual context, while using examples that are contemporary, accessible, and of interest and relevance to students.