Introduction To Sociology Sp12 Monday/Wednesday/Friday

Hunter Brown
Sociology 12:20
Sigmund Freud


Sigmund Freud is considered the father of psychoanalysis. He lived from (1856-1939) and he revolutionized the study of dreams with his book The Interpretation of Dreams. He analyzed dreams to understand the aspects of people’s personalities; he believed that nothing one does occurs by chance, every action and thought is motivated by your unconscious at some level. Freud separated the mind in to three parts; the Id- which is centered on primal impulses, pleasure, desires, unchecked urges and wishful thinking, Ego- which concerns the conscious, the rational, the moral and self-aware aspect of the mind, and the Superego- which is the censor for the Id, which is also responsible for enforcing moral codes of the ego. When you are awake the impulses of the id are suppressed by the superego, but when you go to sleep you slip in to the unconscious part of your brain where the id controls your thoughts. The id when sleeping can put extremely strange and even mentally damaging images in to your dreams, so to keep you from waking with these horrible images the superego goes to work while dreaming as well, encrypting the messages and making it hard to remember your dreams. Freud says that the dreams always have a manifest and latent content. The manifest is what the dream is saying which is often strange and nonsensical. The latent content is what the dream is really trying to say in the underlying of the dreams. Freud classified these dreams in to five processes. The first is Displacement- Which occurs when the desire for one thing or person is symbolized by someone or something else. The second is projection- this happens when the dreamer propels their own desires and wants onto another person. The third is symbolization- this is when the dreamers repressed urges or desires are acted out metaphorically. The fourth is condensation- which is the process where the dreamer hides there feelings or urges by contracting it or underplaying it into a brief dream image or event. The fifth is rationalization- which is the final stage of dreamwork where the dream mind organizes an incoherent dream into one that is more comprehensible and logical; this is known as secondary revision. Freud is the father of psychoanalysis.


I Have A Dream
Jamie Adams


On April 4, 1968, our world would change forever and for the better. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took a historical step to let the people of America realize the severity of racial segregation, which lead to King’s death on the second- floor balcony of a hotel in Memphis. Forty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King concluded in his final speech, “I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.” According to Michael Eric Dyson, a Georgetown University sociology professor, he believes that black Americans are closer to the Promised Land but not all there yet. There is still a large amount of black Americans who still live in poverty every day. In Dyson’s opinion, he believed that King’s death changed America by giving us language to express our aspirations and alerted white America’s perception of life.

The death of King changed American society forever. Dr. King was a true hero that risked his life to stand up for what was right. Even since King’s death 44 years ago, his message still influences America today. It has even influenced the presidential election in a positive direction.

The differences between Barrack Obama and Martin Luther King Jr. are significant and yet both will have a lasting impact on the future progress of black Americans. The interviewee in the article correctly points out the fact that Obama gets an audience and media coverage being the first ever African American Presidential candidate while Martin Luther King Jr. started a movement and created significant lasting change as a citizen and pastor. Although the movement is still alive and the progress still recognizes most African Americans, there is still considerable progress that is needed.

There have been significant advances in the past four decades concerning equality; however, the only class that is reaping the benefits of the hard work put forth by our nations’ leaders is the middle class African Americans. There is still a significant amount of poor African Americans that as a whole seem to represent the African American race. You really only hear about the negative aspect of the African American race rather than the positive.

Some people believe that our society is right where it needs to be in terms of reconciliation and justice. Other parts of our society believe that we still have a long journey ahead of us to racial equality. In my opinion I feel we still have a long way to go concerning reconciliation and justice because of the way certain African Americans are discriminated against concerning jobs, salary, religion, athletics, and academics. Why can’t we all be looked at as the same regardless of the color of our skin? We are all “equal” by law but we still have many bridges to cross as a society.

Everything in our society today is a competition. Life is a battle and no matter what color your skin is or what sex you are you will always fight for justice. It will take years, if not decades, for racism and justice to be equal. Dr. King prospered in a way but it also failed 40 years ago and we are still struggling till this day, so we still have ways to go for racism and justice to be equal. No one in America should be proud of our society, as a whole, right now. Yet, everyone is proud to be an American?

My article was about the correlations between Martin Luther King Jr’s legendary “I have a dream” speech and the 2008 presidential election. People feel that Martin Luther King’s speech still has a presence in today’s society concerning ethics. Even after four decades since his speech, some feel like our society is right where it needs to be concerning reconciliation and justice, and others feel like we have a long way to go. I feel like we have a long way to go concerning reconciliation and justice because of the way certain African Americans are discriminated against concerning jobs, salary, religion, athletics, and academics. The road to racial equality is a long path, and the American society has only just begun. We are all “equal” by law but in the public eye there is still many bridges to be crossed.

Brinkley, Douglas. "Guardian of The Dream." Time USA. N.p., 28 August. Web. 1 May 2012.,8599,478839,00.html
Malik, Simba. "Yes We Can." Black Past. N.p., 2008. Web. 1 May 2012.
Parker, Jennifer. "Barack Obama: 'I Accept Your Nomination for the Presidency of the United States'." ABC News. N.p., 24 Aug 2008. Web. 1 May 2012.

Barrington Moore
James West


Born May 12, 1913 died October 16,2005. Was an American political sociologist. He is famous for his Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (1966), a comparative study of modernization in Britain, France, the United States, China, Japan and India, and a philosophical history of totalitarianism. His many other works include Reflections on the Causes of Human Misery 1972 and an analysis of rebellion, Injustice: the Social Basis of Obedience and Revolt 1978.
Education and private life
He graduated from Williams College, Massachusetts, where he got a thorough education in Latin and Greek and in history. He also became interested in political science, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1941, Moore obtained his Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University. He worked as a policy analyst for the government, in the OSS and at the Department of Justice. He met Herbert Marcuse, a lifelong friend, and also his future wife, Elizabeth Ito, at the OSS. His wife died in 1992. They had no children. Academic career
His academic career began in 1945 at the University of Chicago, in 1948 he went to Harvard University, joining the Russian Research Center in 1951. He was emerited in 1979. Moore published his first book, Soviet Politics in 1950 and Terror and Progress, USSR in 1954. In 1958 his book of six essays on methodology and theory, Political Power and Social Theory, attacked the methodological outlook of 1950s social science. His students at Harvard included comparative social scientists Theda Skocpol, and Charles Tilly.
Social origins of dictatorship and democracy
Moore's groundbreaking work Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966), was the cornerstone to what is now called comparative historical analysis in the social sciences. In that work he studied the conditions for the sociogenesis of democratic, fascist and communist regimes, looking especially at the ways in which industrialization and the pre-existing agrarian regimes interacted to produce those different political outcomes. He drew particular attention to the violence which preceded the development of democratic institutions.
Moore lists five conditions for the development of Western-style democracy (through a "bourgeois revolution")
1. the "development of a balance to avoid too strong a crown or too independent a landed aristocracy"
2. a shift toward "an appropriate form of commercial agriculture"
3. a "weakening of the landed aristocracy"
4. the "prevention of an aristocratic-bourgeois coalition against the peasants and workers" [which would lead to fascism]
5. a "revolutionary break with the past".
Moore's concern was the transformation of pre-industrial agrarian social relations into "modern" ones. He highlighted what he called "three routes to the modern world" - the liberal democratic, the fascist, and the communist - each deriving from the timing of industrialization and the social structure at the time of transition.
In the simplest sense, Social Origins can be summarized with his famous statement "No bourgeoisie, no democracy" though taking that idea at face value undercuts and misinterprets the nuances of his argument.
In England, the effect of the "bourgeois impulse" was to change the attitudes of a portion of the landed elite towards commercial farming, leading to the destruction of the peasantry through the enclosure system and the English Civil War which led to an aristocratic, but moderate democracy.
In France, the French Revolution did directly include the bourgeoisie, but it was the overwhelming influence of the peasantry that determined "just how far the revolution could go." The peasantry remained thereafter a reservoir of reactionary attitudes.
In the United States, the industrial north's victory over the Southern planter elite in the Civil War cemented the U.S. path to modernity through liberal democracy, but only after southern planters "acquired a tincture" of urban business - essentially changing their attitudes towards capitalist accumulation. The result, however, was that once this transformation took place, the Northern capitalists ended Reconstruction and allowed the South to implement Jim Crow.
Moore also directly addressed the Japanese transition to modernity through fascism and the communist path in China, while implicitly remarking on Germany and Russia.
For Moore, the influence of the bourgeoisie in Japan was significantly more limited than in England, France, and the U.S. Instead of the capitalist accumulation through the "bourgeois impulse" as it did in those three cases, Japan's late transition to industrial modernity was induced through "labor repressive" agriculture - squeezing the peasantry to generate the necessary capital for modernization. This "revolution from above" served to cement a reactionary alliance of a weak bourgeoisie and powerful landowners that culminated in fascism.
In China, the overwhelming strength of the peasantry vis-a-vis the bourgeoisie and the landed elites resulted in the Chinese Revolution, but ironically they were its first victims. Here, the bourgeoisie allied with the peasants, and created a "revolution from below."
One can see Moore's theme of the bourgeoisie again here - in the states that became democratic, there was a strong bourgeoisie. In Japan and China, the bourgeoisie was weak, and allied with the elites or peasants to create fascism or communism, respectively.
On tolerance
In 1965, Moore, Herbert Marcuse, and Robert Paul Wolff each authored an essay on the concept of tolerance and the three essays were collected in the book A Critique of Pure Tolerance. The title was a play on the title of Immanuel Kant's book Critique of Pure Reason. In the book Moore argues that academic research and society in general should adopt a strictly scientific and secular outlook and approach theories and conjectures with empirical verification. The essay "Repressive Tolerance" is one part of this book.
Soviet Politics – The Dilemma of Power: The Role of Ideas in Social Change, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1950.
Terror and Progress, USSR: Some Sources of Change and Stability in the Soviet Dictatorship, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1954.
Political Power and Social Theory: Six Studies, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1958. Erweiterte Ausgabe: Political Power and Social Theory: Seven Studies, Harper & Row, New York, 1965.
Barrington Moore, Jr., Robert Paul Wolff, Herbert Marcuse: A Critique of Pure Tolerance, Beacon Press, Boston, 1965.
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World, Beacon Press, Boston, 1966.
Reflection of the Causes of Human Misery and on Certain Proposals to Eliminate Them, Beacon Press, Boston, 1972.
Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt, M.E. Sharpe, White Plains, NY, 1978.
Privacy: Studies in Social and Cultural History, M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY, 1983.
Authority and Inequality under Capitalism and Socialism (Tanner Lectures on Human Values), Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987.
Moral Aspects of Economic Growth, and Other Essays (The Wilder House Series in Politics, History, and Culture), Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1993.
Moral Purity and Persecution in History, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2000. References
2. ^ Moore, Barrington, Herbert Marcuse and Robert Paul Wolff, A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965)

Zygmunt Bauman
Owen Dineen


Zygmunt Bauman is a Polish sociologist. Born 19 November 1925, Zygmunt resided in Poland until 1971 when anti-Semitic groups forced him and others out of the country. He is best known for publishing Modernity and the Holocaust, 1989. This controversial writing outlined Zygmunt's belief that contrary to the popular idea of the Holocaust being a barbaric and evil event was in fact a “rationality of evil”.

Bauman’s ideals about Nazi actions seem to stem directly from the source. His family evacuated Poland in 1939 after the Nazi invasion. Bauman later enlisted and served in the Soviet controlled Polish First Army and participated in the battles of Kolberg and Berlin. In 1953 he was dishonorably discharged after his father considered emigrating to Israel and even spoke to the Israeli embassy in Warsaw. After discharge Zygmunt completed his M.A. degree and was hired on as a lecturer at the University of Warsaw in 1954. In 1968 after the anti-Semitic purges in Poland, Bauman traveled to Israel where for a short time he taught at Tel Aviv University but resigned after accepting a position in the Sociology Department at the University of Leeds.

Zygmunt Bauman’s most notable contribution to Sociology is his concept of modernity, which he defines as “the opposition of order and chaos” and he uses as the element to restrict social life’s unstated qualities. He uses this idea in Modernity and the Holocaust to describe the Holocaust as blending with modern principles and utilized many doctrines of modern rationalism. He made the argument that the Holocaust was made possible by both the Hobbesian view, stating that human kind is unethical by nature and ethical by society, and the bureaucratic division of moral obligation.

This logic is further reinforced by Bauman’s positions in his many other published titles. One idea that has opposed some of the best sociologists of their time is that the first form of human experience is social interdependence and by default the first human relationship is a moral relationship. He uses this idea to argue that the technological developments of our time cause technological abstraction in our lives even before our relationship with the global world can have as many negative effects as positive ones. Bauman shares this belief with sociologist Jean Baurdrillard but is subject to accusations of pessimism.

Another view that showed up in its infancy in Modernity and the Holocaust is the theory of the “stranger”. This figure is created by society, to an extent, as it attempts to cognitively order social and physical space which creates a form of human waste. Instead of being a friend or an enemy, the stranger fits neither of the categories and is instead undetectable. Because of this invisibility the stranger is constantly afraid of being excluded from the modern order of society as someone with a destined position or role in society.
Zygmunt Bauman at 87 is no spring chicken. However his ideas, though controversial, have helped shape the modern science of sociology. His ideas of modernity and “the stranger” are radical but they reflect the ideals of a man who has seen so much.

