1. Be related to a concept or subject we have discussed in this course 2. Be something that you are interested in researching in an academic fashion 3. Ask a specific question that you’ll try to answe

• A series of “word matching” and/or short answer questions • One long form question requiring you to write a paragraph or two. This question will require you to synthesize lecture and textbook material, so expect to spend a bit of time on it. 3 Learning Outcomes 4 To gain an understanding of the basics of contemporary sociological theories To recognize the critiques of classical theories that led to the development of contemporary theories To begin to see how theoretical lenses serve as important tools in our sociological toolkits CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY New century, new problems 5 By the mid -twentieth century, many of the old sociological theories were being challenged 6 They tended to make sweeping generalizations about all of humanity, based on a rather small sample -size (North American or European men, for the most part) They tended to universalize and normalize European and North American histories Some – like early functionalism – had been built on shaky premises They tended to ignore the perspectives and contributions of marginalized groups FEMINIST THEORY From suffragettes to the third wave 7 Feminist theory has a long history in sociological research • Like other sociological theories, it is rooted in a philosophical outlook or concern • No matter the particulars of a given strand of feminist theory, they are all concerned with social inequality as it pertains to gender • When did the oppression of women and gender and sexual minorities begin • How did it emerge • Who maintains and perpetuates it • Why it persists • What mechanisms allow oppression to be reproduced from generation to generation 8 The “first wave” of feminist activism (late 19 th and early 20 th Centuries) • Early women’s rights/women’s liberation activists were primarily interested in securing political rights and social power for white, middle -class women • Early feminists were interested in specific goals – securing the right to vote, the right to attend schools, the right to earn a living • This historical phase of feminism is now sometimes called the ‘first wave’, and its zenith was in the 1910s and 1920s in the suffragette movement 9 The “second wave” • Began in the post -war boom of the 1950s, but really took off during the anti -Vietnam war and civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s. • Demanded that women be able to access top -tier universities, hold elected office, earn a living wage comparable to those of men • Also fought to allow women the ability to open a bank account without a man’s permission, obtain safe, legal abortions, demand divorces without requiring their husband’s permission • Encouraged women to get to know their own bodies, to de -stigmatize sexual and reproductive health 10 The “third wave”:

1980 - 2001( ish )?? • Emerged first as a critique of the largely white, middle -class concerns of earlier waves of activism • Driven by women of colour, lesbian, queer, and trans women • Introduced the concept of intersectionality to discussions of oppression and resistance • Like all other waves of activism, it pushes against the status quo, which it sees as unequal, and rooted in patriarchal institutions 11 The fourth wave • Has emerged in response to traditionalist resurgence across North America and Europe • Latest wave tends to be trans -inclusive, queer -inclusive, anti -racist • Concerned with defending hard -won rights from conservative efforts to roll them back in parts of the world (like America) • Deeply involved with online activism and uses social media to both communicate and organize offline activism 12 What does feminist theory and feminist research concern itself with? 13 Patriarchy & Patriarchal systems Economic Inequality Divisions of labour at home and work Emotional Labour Power & violence Crime and justice QUESTIONS? 14 POST - STRUCTURALISM Building on the legacy of symbolic interactionism 15 Post - Structuralist thought: A primer 16 Post structuralism builds on the ideas of symbolic interactionism There might be an ‘objective’ world out there, but we don’t really interact with it the way we think The world is socially constructed; knowledge isn’t imparted from knower to learner Knowledge is produced through social interaction; each space where people interact is a space where knowledge is produced This means that sites of knowledge production are sites where power relations exist Michel Foucault • 1926 -1984, French philosopher, social theorist, activist and all -round genius thinker • Outspoken early gay -rights activist; anti -war activist; student movement activist. • Throughout much of his career, he was a strong critic of Marx and Marxian ideas; he felt that Marx’s emphasis on class obfuscated less blatant forms of marginalization • Remains one of the most influential post - structuralist thinkers around 17 Power, Knowledge, and Discourse • Power : Power is relational and omnipresent; flows through every interaction • Knowledge : There is no such thing as ‘objective’ knowledge; relations of power are integral components of all knowledge • Discourse : A system of facts and power relations that form a particular worldview; they tell us what to think about a thing, and how we ought to feel about it 18 Discipline • It isn’t something done to us by society or outside forces, it’s what we do to ourselves in response to discourse • E.g. Society has an image of what a healthy (and therefore good) masculine body looks like • We all see it, acknowledge it, and affirm that we (masculine type folks) are judged by it • So men begin to shape themselves to match it • They perform masculinity by disciplining their bodies without anyone even telling them to.

How they act, walk, talk, dress, have sex, love, feel, eat, live 19 QUESTIONS? 20 QUEER THEORY Recognizing difference 21 What does queer theory argue?

• Queer theory centers ‘queerness’ – difference – in its analysis of social interaction • Rather than using similarity as a basis for demands for equal rights and access, queer theorists focus on difference • Being different isn’t ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’, and conformity shouldn’t be the basis for granting rights • Think about it: If rights flow from conformity, then anyone who is born different or who chooses to live a different life could be stripped of their rights 22 Desire, Language, Identity • Desire: Socially constructed and regimented into binaries. The only “good” desire is heterosexual; all other desires are “wrong”, “taboo”, or even “dangerous”. Queer theorists want to deconstruct the binary, to blow it wide open to explore all sorts of desires • Language: It’s not just utterances used to convey information; Language is value -laden. What we say and how we say it tell us how we ought to feel about the things we are describing.

• Normal/abnormal are normative: Normal = Good/Abnormal = bad; nobody wants to be abnormal • Identity: Who/what we are is fluid, contextual, and socially produced. I am a man only where the ways I behave are coded masculine. 23 POSTCOLONIAL THEORY A SILLY NAME THAT ASSUMES COLONIALISM IS OVER 24 The basics • Post -colonialism tries to understand how the forces of colonization shaped – and continue to shape – societies around the world • Contemporary theorists and activists often use the term “decolonization” rather than “post -colonialism”, as a recognition that the project of colonization (or “neocolonialism”) continues • Post -colonialism seeks to De -center imperial modes of thinking, in order to reveal the Indigenous ways of thinking and being that existed prior to Contact 25 ORIENTALISM 26 Orientalism • Academic: Material produced by intellectuals, experts and academia.

Not value neutral • Imaginative: creative works that reproduce a sense of Otherness between “orient” and “occident” • Institutional: Social structures created to reproduce power, used to control colonized spaces (education, the state, etc.) 27 QUESTIONS? 28 PART THE SECOND: RESEARCH METHODS IN SOCIOLOGY Qualitative Research, Quantitative Research, Research Ethics Learning Outcomes 30 To gain an understanding of the difference between Qualitative and Quantitative methods of conducting social research To learn to recognize the different strategies required by different research protocols To gain an understanding of how university Human Research Ethics Boards (HREBs) work with researchers to protect their work and their participants Key Terms • Research Instrument: The sorts of devices, data collection methods, and approaches used to conduct certain kinds of research. The type of research you want to do will often dictate the types of instruments you use • Inductive Reasoning: From specific to general ; attempts to use an accumulation of data to construct a more general theoretical model • E.g. Using the stories of 50 homeless folk to construct a theory about the causes of homelessness • Deductive Reasoning: From general to specific; uses an established theoretical model to make predictions about a specific social phenomena or event • E.g. Using a general theory about homelessness to attempt to predict the outcome of changing a specific policy about homelessness in a city 31 The research frame (or “research framework”) • Before any research can be conducted, researchers need to clearly outline:

• Who/what they are studying • Who is included • Who is excluded • Why they have chosen to include/exclude people • What specifically they’re looking at • Why they’re choosing to study it • How they are going to study it (both theoretically and methodologically) • What ethical challenges or concerns are there? Who might be harmed by the study? • When are they conducting their study (what’s their timeline?) • If researchers cannot answer these questions, they almost certainly will not be allowed to conduct field work. 32 EXAMPLE: “I WANT TO STUDY INSTAGRAM INFLUENCERS” 33 QUALITATIVE RESEARCH Obtaining data from richly detailed narratives 34 What does qualitative research look like?

• The researcher (and their interview script) are the instruments of research • Seeks to elicit richly detailed, personal accounts relating to a specific topic or experience • Often done on a small scale (between 5 -50 participants); the more participants, the more expensive the research • Generally not interested in formulating a generalized or universal theory 35 Participatory Action Research (PAR) • Driven by two key considerations: action research – research conducted with a specific goal of changing the situation for the research population, and participatory research – which actively involves members of the research population in the construction of knowledge throughout the project • PAR is often used, for example, with Indigenous groups, where members of a community (often Elders) are invited to consult with the researcher, and even collaborate on disseminating the results, with the goal of improving the condition of the people being studied. 36 Narrative Inquiry • Narrative Inquiry is the process of eliciting richly detailed information from a participant by asking them to construct a narrative (or story) of their experiences • Narrative Analysis: By breaking a participant’s narrative into its component elements, the researcher learns what the participant thinks is important about a given event 37 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) • A method of qualitative research that examines text to uncover patterns relating to cultural values or beliefs. It is an examination of the way that versions of the world are reproduced through text/discourse.

• Text : Any materials produced by people for the purposes of conveying meaning. • The process involves multiple phases of reading, coding, analysis, and interpretation 38 The Interview:

Teamwork makes the dream work • Introduce the topic of research • Establish rapport • First question: “Tell me how it is that you came to be here…” • Ask questions on the script, circling back to what you need clarified • Inform participant when you’re nearing the end • Ask them if they’d like to add anything that they feel might be important • End the interview/debrief 39 Qualitative Research is often deeply personal 40 To conduct almost any form of qualitative research requires researchers to build rapport with their participants, based on trust and empathy Researchers that cannot – or will not – take this first step often obtain poor results from their studies, as participants are less likely to be forthcoming Qualitative research reveals hidden motivations and nuanced reasons for why people do the things they do. It is not concerned with establishing large -scale social patterns (that comes through the analysis of large numbers of qualitative studies – sometimes called a “meta - interpretation”) QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH Statistics and large -scale social trends 41 What does quantitative research look like?

• Numbers driven; researchers less interested in why a person does something than with what they did • Interested in establishing large - scale social trends or historical patterns • Commonly used to establish trends ; popular with marketing & consumer research, demographics, government policy, etc. 42 The Likert Scale: a critical element of statistical research • The mainstay of survey -driven quantitative research • Allows respondent to rate the intensity of feeling about a subject • Useful for researchers to obtain a degree of nuance • Generally uses 5 categories, sometimes 7, rarely 9; the more categories, the less accurate it becomes 11 Correlation v. Causation • Correlation: A statistically significant relationship between two variables. Correlation tells you a relationship exists; it does not tell you anything about the directionality or causal relationship. • E.g. There is a correlation between ocean temperatures and the number of pirates in the world, but that doesn’t imply that one is the cause of the other • Causation: A statistically significant relationship between two variables such that changes in one variable can be shown to produce changes in another variable; this is a difficult thing to do with a simple test.

Determining causality is often more concretely done by designing a specific research question that explicitly looks for causation • E.g. There is a causal relationship between the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere and increases in global temperature 44 For example • Rotten food can cause serious illness if eaten, and it can cause bad smells if left out • But bad smells don’t cause serious illness, even though they are caused by the same thing (rotten food) • Bad smells and illness are correlated by virtue of both being caused by rotten food but there is no causal relationship 45 Rotten Food Bad Smells Correlation Serious Illness RESEARCH ETHICS Or: Why we don’t experiment on children 46 What is Research Ethics ? • The social sciences have a long, troubling history of conducting some fairly brutal experiments on human subjects – even subjects who had no idea they were being experimented on • Standford Prison Trials: What happens when we lock people into a closed space and tell half of them they are prisoners, and half of them they are guards? *** • Milgram Experiment: What happens when we order someone to kill someone else? • Modern research ethics boards at universities are now tasked with reviewing individual research designs, to ensure that participants are treated humanely, know what they’re getting into (unless deception is absolutely required), and will not be harmed in any material, emotional, or social fashion . *** Turns out this might have been something of a hoax. See: Replicability Crisis 47 Ongoing informed consent 48 We do not conduct research on human subjects without their prior, informed consent . We do not engage in research that will harm our participants.

We do not engage in research that exploits or degrades our participants.

Research that does this – directly or indirectly – is bad research. Human Research Ethics Board (HREB) • Research boards are also there to shield researchers from legal threat or challenge, as well as civil actions that result from any damages incurred over the course of a research program • They protect researchers’ academic freedom by protecting their right to confidentiality • In some cases, HREBs have abandoned these obligations, with troubling consequences for both the researcher and the institution 17 Research methods:

questions to reflect on… • How might research change if the influence of research ethics boards were decreased? • What research methods do you feel most drawn to? Why is that one more interesting than the others? • If you could study any social phenomenon, what would it be? How would you examine it? What risks would you need to consider? 50