San Diego The Emergence of Sociological Theory Questions

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There is classmates example1.1-Seidman viewed the enlightenment’s scientific approach of thinking as debunking the previous Christian worldview of a created ordered universe. He contends that the enlightened thinkers asserted that the scientific method of study was based on facts and not on previous thought, which was based on prejudice and opinion. I believe his intended meaning of prejudice is ones own bias, beliefs or position within society. Yes, I do think it is a more methodical base of study. It limits preconceived biases and eliminates the spiritual or divine as reasons for human interactions. The Christian worldview looked to the whys in making sense of the world around them, while the scientific worldview championed by the enlightened thinkers, studied the whats of society. The enlighteners realized it was necessary to also include ‘the liberal humanistic worldview when studying society as it gave them a more complete understanding’ (science and philosophy) of human behavior than just using scientific study alone to promote freedom and progress (Seidman 2013).2-The kinds of anomalies that Martineau identified in 19th century America was its ‘practice of domination, i.e. slavery, the treatment of women, the reification of publication and the fetishizing of wealth’ (L&N 1998). The American society has changed for the better with the elimination of slavery and for granting women the right to vote. Both of these changes put society in better alignment with America’s ideals as described in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The other two, reification of publication and the fetishizing of wealth, are still anomalies we have to contend with today. The 1% still has the most power in forming government policy such as big oil or the banking industry. With regards to the reification of publication, Martineau spoke out against slavery in America at an Abolitionist meeting and ‘found her life threatened and plans for a return trip south cut off’ (L&N 1998). We still see that speaking out against injustices can get one ‘cancelled’ in today’s society. A good example from today would be when a public figure has spoken out against injustices that oppose the popular narrative have found themselves banned from social media platforms such as Twitter or YouTube.3-In todays society, the influence of the industrialist on scientific progress are many. The industrialists, such has pharmaceutical companies financially support scientific research and development on their behalf. Another science, computer science, has developed algarhythms, through the collection of data that help the industrialists with their capitalistic endeavors. By collecting data on what people view and ‘like’ on their computer feeds, they learn what to continue to put before the viewer with the purpose of using this information to generate sales. The scientific methods of collecting data, through means such as census and survey, are also used by many of today’s industrialists to promote their own agenda.References:Lengermann, P. and Niebrugge, G. (1998). The Women Founders, Sociology and Social Theory 1830-1930. Waveland Press, Long Grove, ILL.Seidman, S. (2013) Contested Knowledge: Social Theory Today. Wiley-Blackwell Publishing. Malden, MA.

There is from classmate example 2.(1)   Seidman argues that “the Enlighteners…saw in the scientific worldview a triumph of reason over prejudice.” What did he mean by “prejudice” in this case? Do you think it’s a valid argument that reason has triumphed over prejudice? Why? Why not? Give examples to support your view.After reading over this chapter, I feel that Seidman was referring “prejudice” as the preset values that someone may have on a certain topic or viewpoint on life which makes them see only in viewpoint and I feel that Seidman is discussing on how we only use those values to define our lives where we must look at also the reasoning behind it without the prejudice. I feel that reason have somewhat over taken prejudice because we were raised in society with the Christian values where they was only one viewpoint about the world around us while the Enlighteners helped to define reasoning without bringing in prejudice into their theories/ findings on an sociological standpoint. A prime example can include where we in our current society where we had slavery in the past, we can see slavery is seen as prejudice by the whites who saw black people as someone below them and not a person and we have the triumph reason where we social thinkers looking at the reasoning on how terrible and awful this system was and how it helped to dismantled the slavery system that we had in our American society.(2)   Martineau identified several “anomalies” between morals and manners in 19th century America. She argued that these kinds of anomalies would lead to social change over time? In what ways do you think American society has changed with respect to each of these anomalies? Do you see any and/or all of these anomalies still present today? What are any instances in which these anomalies seem to have produced social change? Give examples to support your argument. Martineau is a female sociologist who helps bring up a lot of anomalies in our society between the moral and manners in our daily lives that help to paint a bigger picture of the American culture. Martineau helps to showcase the anomalies, which are striking key features in American society that created their morals from the origin of the nation versus many other societies. A prime example of an anomaly that is very noticeable is the treatment of women and how it is have evolved throughout our society. In our Declaration of Independence, the founding fathers stated that “all men are created equal”; however this only stayed for the wealthy white men in our society and didn’t include a very large group which were women. In our US History, we have seen countless of times where many of women’s rights were denied excessively and they were seen as less versus a man in our society. In the past, we have only seen men in power positions such as lawmakers, congress members, presidents, CEOs and we see a gradual change in our present society, where we see more women as business owners, political figures such as Kamala Harris (our Vice President) and although this is a step, it is a small step. We still the countless of times even on the news how we fellow congress members attack on women who are in power such as comments regrading mood swings, etc. Even in our everyday lives, we still see the culture in current music where we see women being able to hit the billboards charts such as artists like Doja Cat, Cardi B in the hip-hop/rap community which is a very male dominated genre. Another anomaly we can look at is the electoral system where we can see some social change moving forward; however there are some issues with this system. In our government, the founding fathers implemented the idea that we elect our officials that help to represent us and be the voice of us. However, we see a lot of those elected officials being white males and although we are using the same system, a lot of POCs don’t have access t to voting due to a lot of restrictions like working countless hours, immigration status , or even past policies where in 50s, we had “tests” for people who want to vote, however it just targeted a lot of POCs due to this group not being able to attend school because of the segregation and the Jim Crow era. We have created a new social change where we dismantled these awful laws, but we still see the effects on them by very high level vocabulary on the ballots which can be very disproportionately catered to educated people, which includes a very high population of white upper class individuals.3) In what ways might Comte’s argument that societies dominated by positivist thought would be ruled by scientists and industrialists be true today? Give some present day examples to support your view.Comte argues that positivist thoughts in a society would come from the highest hierarchy of sociologist being the main positivist. To add on, in our society not everyone is a positivist thinker in many of our social issues. A prime example of this is the viewpoint of women in our society. Applying Comte’s logic to this argument, a positivist would see women as equal and treat them fairly, however not everyone in our society is like that and we some of that in our culture where the belittling of women is still here. We all in society should know that treating someone unfairly is morally wrong for that concept; however we still have people who don’t care or put an effort of treating women as equal such as equal pay, the objectification of women, etc.PermalinkReply?? Boken Shells of Sociological TheoryDicussion post 4 ???? Read Instructor’s Comments