Social Inequality & Change

1. Social Inequality & Change

2. Collective behavior • Definition: activity involving a large number of people; often spontaneous, sometimes controversial • Collectivity: lg. # of people whose activity occurs in the absence of well-defined & conventional norms (examples: crowds, riots, public opinion, rumors, fashion)—can be localized or dispersed

3. RIOT

4. CROWD

6. Localized collective behavior • Crowd: temporary gathering of people who share a common focus & influence each other • Mob: highly emotional crowd that pursues a violent or destructive goal • Riot: social eruption that’s highly emotional, violent & undirected • Flash mobs (result of modern technology)

7. MOB

8. FLASH MOB http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GBaHPND2QJg Sabadell http://www.cleanvideosearch.com/media/action/yt/watch?v=GbQRgsmStgI (closing time)

9. Dispersed collective behavior • Rumor: unsubstantiated information people spread informally, often by word of mouth • Gossip: rumor about people’s personal affairs • Public opinion: widespread attitudes about controversial issues • Propaganda: information presented with the intention of shaping public opinion

10. Panic: form of localized collective behavior by which people react to a threat or other stimulus with irrational, frantic & often self-destructive behavior • Mass hysteria (moral panic): form of dispersed collective behavior by which people react to a real or imagined event with irrational and even frantic fear • Fashion: social pattern favored by lg. # of ppl • Fad: unconventional social pattern people embrace briefly but enthusiastically

13. Social Movements & Change • Defined: transformation of culture & social institutions over time • Exist to encourage or resist change • Examples: civil rights movement, child labor laws, women’s rights, environmental laws, gay rights (same-sex marriage), marijuana legalization movement • Result of technology improvements: TV, cable, satellite, cell phones, social networks • Unites people like never before

14. Social Change • Causes: inventions/technology, discoveries, diffusion (spread of info/cultures); conflict, ideas (religion), demographics (women, child birth rates, migration) • Modernity: social patterns resulting from industrialization (less small communities, more personal choices, more diversity, oriented towards the future more than the past)

15. Modernity • Mass society: society in which prosperity & bureaucracy have eroded traditional social ties • Class society (Marx): capitalist society with pronounced social stratification • Postmodernity: social patterns characteristics of postindustrial societies

16. Race: category of people who share biologically transmitted traits that society considers important (black, white, Hispanic, Asian) • Ethnicity: shared cultural heritage (Christian Xmas) • Prejudice: rigid & unfair generalization about a category of people (all whites/blacks…) • Racism: the belief that one racial category is innately superior to another (Asians are smarter.) • Discrimination: treating various categories of people unequally (Preferring an Asian doctor because they’re “smarter.”) • Stereotype: an exaggerated description applied to every person in some category (black male=thug)