The social world and humanity are ongoing achievements. We create the environments
in which we develop as persons, families, communities, societies, and as a species. This
course will assist you in your effort to better understand the historical currents and the
contemporary social structures and forms of thought that in a real sense guide your life--
especially when you are oblivious to them.

Required books include:

1. Colin Turnbull. The Mountain People.
2. Jaber Gubrium. Living and Dying at Murray Manor.
3. John Macionis and Nijole Benokraitis. Seeing Ourselves (3rd Ed).
4. Erving Goffman. Stigma.
5. Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonasson. The History and Sociology of Genocide.
6. Packets on Reserve.

COURSE GUIDELINES

I work hard preparing and delivering lectures and grading papers. In turn, several
kinds of performances are expected of students.

1. Attendance

Scott Surfsup had a "B-" average on papers and exams. Was he ever surprised to receive a
"C-" for the course! "How come?" he asked heatedly. "Because papers and exams reveal
only a small SAMPLE of what students are supposed to learn, Mr. Surfsup," I replied in a
soothing voice. Since you missed a lot of classes, I infer that there is a lot that you have not
learned."

2. Participation. If you have no questions to ask and nothing to add to lectures and
discussions, you might study harder. On the other hand, if you are afraid of appearing
stupid, now is a good time to overcome your fear--unless you want to go through life
thinking that everyone else is smarter than you are.

3. Hand in Work on Time. "On time" does NOT mean the day after work is due.
In fairness to those who hand in work on time, grades are reduced in proportion to the
lateness of work.

Students' creative excuses for late work are listed below, along with my sympathetic
responses.

Student: "My (dog, computer, roommate, bed, mother) ate my paper."
MK: "It is unfortunate that you did not make a copy."

Student: "I left my paper (with a friend, at Wrightsville Beach, on the bus)."
MK: "Oh."

Student: "I had two other papers to do."
MK: "Ah."

Student: "Wasn't it due next week?"
MK: "No."

Life is full of little "accidents." It is our job to anticipate and try to avoid or overcome
them.

4. Type Your Work if Possible. Use WIDE MARGINS so that there is space for
comments. If you hand write your papers, they should be easily readable. Otherwise,
I will not read them. Also, please write on only ONE side of a page.

5. Please Staple Pages Together. There is NO NEED to use folders.

6. Spelling. Spelling errors are easily seen as evidence of laziness and stupidity.
Do yourself a favor--use a dictionary.

Student: "But if I curect the speling and tern it back in, can you, yuh know, like,
uh, I mean, well, grayed it again?"

M.K.: (See reply to "Wasn't it due next week?" above.)

7. If during the last week of class a student asks for a "W" so as to avoid a "D" or an "F,"
that student will be politely informed that IT IS TOO LATE. ("Sorry. It's out of my hands.")
In other words, students who are not serious should Drop or Withdraw early.

8. Students whose final papers are late DO NOT receive an automatic "Incomplete" for
the course. By the time late work is handed in, I have already turned in grades and, in all
likelihood, given those students a "D." University policy is that "I" grades are granted only
though prior arrangement and by written contract.

9. Cheating. A small minority of students degrade the dedication, hard work, accomplishment,
and satisfaction that college is supposed to involve. For administration, faculty, and staff, this
place is a life's work. For you, it may be a last major opportunity to develop your mind and
character. Is there any good reason not to flunk those who cheat?

10. Please bring current readings to class. And if you can, xerox assigned readings
that are On Reserve.

GRADING

Grades are based on attendance, class participation, exams, perhaps additional written
assignments, and a journal. A journal consists of entries--some only a paragraph in length,
others perhaps longer--in which you reflect on readings, lectures, and class discussion. In
some entries, you might challenge what you have read. In others, you might give examples
from your own life to support a point made in lecture. Or you might apply what you are
learning to other issues. Possible entry topics are found at the end of each unit of the syllabus.
While I cannot say how large a journal should be, the more entries you make, the more your
journal will reflect how much you thinking and what you have learned.

The following is an outline of the course.

A. THE HUMAN CONDITION

"....I have thought some of nature's journeymen
had made men and not made them well,
they imitated humanity so abominably.
(Shakespeare. Hamlet. III:I)

"Alas, ye wretched, ye unblessed race of mortal beings,
of what strife and of what groans were ye born!"
(Empedocles)

"Genesis and decay, creation and destruction, birth and death,
joy and pain, all are interwoven with equal effect and weight;
thus even the most isolated event always presents itself
as an image and metaphor for the most universal."
(Goethe. Maxims and Reflections.)

This unit examines the following subjects.

1. The existential facts of life: suffering, imperfection, mortality, and the responsibility for
creating meaning.

2. Common features of our species: gregariousness, pair-bonding, territoriality, symbolization
(the social construction of reality), self identity, dominance hierarchies, and efforts to
transcend the "here and now."

3. The social conditions in which humans experience happiness versus misery. Can we
distinguish between "necessary" suffering that is part of the bargain with life, and suffering
that is human-made? See, for instance, Arthur Schopenhauer (Studies in Pessimism or
TheWorld as Will and Idea); Freud (Civilization and Its Discontents); Victor Frankl
(various books); Sophocles (plays in the Oedipus cycle); Aeschylus (plays in the Oresteia
trilogy); the stoic philosophers Epictetus (The Manual) and Marcus Aurelius (Meditations); Shakespeare's MacBeth, Hamlet, King Lear; The Merchant of Venice, and Richard III;
basic works on Buddhism (especially those that discuss the four noble truths and the
eightfold path); and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Readings.

** C. Wright Mills. "The promise of sociology." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 1.

** Peter. L. Berger. "Invitation to sociology." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 6.

Suggestions for Journal

1. Can you think of additional features of human nature?

2. Select a few features of human nature and examine them as social accomplishments. How,
for instance, do you and your old friends create the idea of "our hometown" out of places,
objects, pathways, and activities? Or, think of the functions (effects) of a funeral for individual mourners, for the group at graveside, and for the culture. How does the social and physical organization of a funeral canalize (i.e., instigate, encourage, guide, and limit) feelings?
Finally, even if aggressiveness were a human trait, how is aggressiveness canalized (e.g.,
methods used, targets, rationalizations)?

3. How do individuals, families, organizations and societies make sense of "bad things"
that happen? Can you think of "wise sayings" and forms of social activity?

B. AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIETY AS AN OBJECTIVE AND
INTERSUBJECTIVE REALITY

"....every time we attentively open our eyes upon the world
we engage in theorizing." (Goethe. On Theory of Color.)

"....a confusing of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished."
(Goethe. Wisdom and Experience.)

Society is objectively real ("out there") in the sense that humans coordinate activities into
observable and durable PATTERNS called roles, personality types, divisions of labor,
groups, and social institutions (e.g., family, economy, political, religious). How is this
coordination possible? The answer, in part, is that humans develop shared WAYS of seeing,
hearing, and understanding; of CONSTRUCTING (and then living in) conceptions of time,
space, objects, activities, and people; and for MAKING SENSE of--that is, describing,
explaining, justifying, and legitimizing--what is going on. In other words, society is both
objectively real and INTERSUBJECTIVELY real.

Note that an observer's conception of what is going on may not be the same as members'
shared conceptions of what is going on.

This unit shows how "objective" and "intersubjective" aspects of social life (what people do
and how they make sense of what they do) work together. It also shows how different forms
of social life produce (and in turn are reproduced by) specific forms of personality.

Readings.

** Alfred Schutz. On Phenomenology and Social Relations. On Reserve.

** Jules Henry. "Time, space, motion, objects, and people." On Reserve.

** "Society as Objective Reality" and "Society as Inter-subjective Reality," In this packet, pp.
21-24.

** Leslie A. White. "The Symbol." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 37.

** Marvin Harris. "India's scared cow." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 53.

** Giri Raj Gupta. "Love...." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 306.

** Horace Minor. "Body ritual..." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 16

Suggestions for Journal

1. Discuss how members' shared understandings (symbols, typifications, values, moral
principles, rules or norms, and schemes of interpretation), as discussed by Jules Henry
and Alfred Schutz in the above-noted readings, help to account for the objective practices
described in the articles by Marvin Harris or Giri Gupta.

2. Describe the major projects at hand in your round of daily life. What are the relevancies, typifications, and background expectations (commonsense knowledge) involved in some
of those projects?

3. Observe a social setting such as a shopping mall, a major "square" or plaza (e.g., Copley,
Kenmore, Kendall, Porter, Harvard), a dorm, a dorm room, a library, or a neighborhood.
Collect information in the form of field notes, photos, found objects, and/or informal interviews.
Try to develop an understanding of how members experience time/temporal flow, spaces/places/territories, objects, activities, persons, social control, and power. What, for example, does an MBTA stop suggest about the culture's conception of time, and about "rules" for touching, looking, and proximity?

4. Compare and contrast provinces of meaning (e.g., the "paramount" reality of the world of
daily life versus the dream, being sick, grieving, or religious experience). What are the projects
at hand, relevances, typifications, significant symbols, and styles of experiencing?

C. SOCIALIZATION AND PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT: SELF AND SOCIAL SYSTEM

"There is a history in all men's lives;
Figuring the nature of times deceased;
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life, which in their seeds
And weak beginnings lie intreasured."
(Shakespeare. 2 Henry IV. III:II)

"Whatever aspect of our life we may choose to consider,
we find ourselves outwardly conditioned from the first breath to the last.
Despite this, however, we are in possession of the highest freedom--
that of developing our inward selves in such a way as to make our lives harmonize with the moral world order." (Goethe. Wisdom and Experience.)

"In vain we labor to depict the character of a man;
but give us a comprehensive report of his actions,
his deeds, and it will fuse into a picture of his character."
(Goethe. On the Theory of Color.)

Throughout a person's life, behavior is organized and reorganized. The organization at
any time is called the "behavioral repertoire" (or "personality"). The behavioral reportoire
can be seen as smaller units assembled into larger ones (e.g., movements arranged into actions;
actions combined to form tasks; tasks assembled into activities; activities organized as roles and
selves; and all of the foregoing constituting a stage of psychosocial development).

This unit has two objectives. First, it shows how each "level" of the behavioral repertoire
(e.g., actions, tasks, roles) develops as humans interact with corresponding levels of the physical
and social environment. For instance, social competencies develop in the context of interpersona exchanges. (See page 16 in this packet.) Second, this unit tries to capture both sides of the process
of psychosocial development--namely, an unfolding of our species' capabilities and our unique individual capabilities, and training for participation in the social world.

Important questions include the following. 1) Are the so-called "stages" of psychosocial
development universal (as though that is the way we naturally grow no matter where we live),
or can stages be seen as social products--the person being transformed by changes in
opportunities, expectations, rewards and punishments in his or her culture? 2) Is there a
fundamental conflict between individuals and social organization? If so, what might be the consequences? 3) How does the culture "get inside" the individual? 4) How can the individual
create or sustain some degree of independence from social influences?

This unit is divided into the following sections.

1. Respondent and Operant Learning

"Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own."
(Shakespeare. Hamlet. III:II)

Here we examine the development of elementary behavior (action and feeling). In particular,
we focus on: 1) how neutral events come to elicit pleasant and unpleasant feelings (respondent behaviors); 2) how actions and thoughts (operant or purposive behaviors) change as a function
of cues, prompts and consequences (contingencies of reinforcement); 3) how desirable as well as destructive behaviors develop in systematic ways and under the same conditions.

2. Social Exchanges and Social Competencies

Exchanges ("Help me, please.".... "Sure.".... "Thanks") are the building blocks of larger
forms of social organization, such as conversations, games, relationsips, families, and work p
laces. In this section we will focus on: 1) principles of interaction; 2) how interaction
(social exchange) is organized; 3) productive and counterproductive exchanges, and their
short- and long-term effects; and 4) durability, or why it is often so hard to make things better
and so easy to make things worse.

Readings.

** Martin Kozloff. "Structured exchanges: An Elementary form of social organization."
In this packet, pp. 31-59.

** Georg Simmel. "The dyad..." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 98.

3. How the Self Emerges and is Sustained Through Interaction

Is the self something that humans naturally get (in the same way that we come equipped
with a brain)? Or is the self a social and personal achievement? Moreover, must something
be done to sustain the self, or is it a case of once you've got it, you've always got it? How
does the self change? What would it take for a person to say, "I was not myself" or "I am now
a different person"?

Readings.

** "Socialization and Personality Development." In this packet, pp. 25-27.

** George Herbert Mead. "The self." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 75.

** Erving Goffman. "The presentation of self." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 100.

** Jules Henry. "Personality and ageing." On Reserve.

** Jules Henry. "Vulnerability." On Reserve.

** Jules Henry. "Sham." On Reserve.

** Charles Horton Cooley. "Primary groups." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 117.

** Mary Walsh. Cognitive development..." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 83.

** Naomi Wolf. "The beauty myth." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 215.

Suggestions for Journal

1. Give examples of respondent conditioning, generalization, habituation, extinction, and counter-conditioning in your life, in the media (e.g., advertising), in politics (e.g., a rally
or speech).

2. Give examples of operant conditioning (shaping, differential reinforcement, punishment)
in your childhood, in school, as parents and children intereact in stores.

3. Answer some of the questions in the reading on exchanges. 4. Observe and describe
exchanges. For instance, watch parents and children in the grocery store, or teachers and
students in an elementary school.

5. Examine the vulnerability system in a culture with which you are familiar. What are
the manifest and latent vulnerabilitiesd? How are vulnerabilities transmitted from one
generation to another or through society? How do people (individually, as families,
organizations, and societies) defend against vulnerabilities. Is a vulnerability system
developing regarding aids?

6. Describe the sham system in a family, in school, in current relationships? Can you think
of examples of sham at the macroscopic level?

7. Describe the personalization process in your family or culture. What are the socially
significant symbols? What are the typical ways that "full" members assess children and
others, and communicate their assessments? What are the stages of psychosocial development?
(Are they defined by competence, rites of passage, possessions, privileges,....?

8. Who are the main "voices" whom you have internalized? Can you identify different sorts of messages and their effects?

9. Describe your selves. Is there a public and private self? A self for Mom, a self for Dad,
and a self for friends? Does one self seem to be the "real" you? How do people (e.g., you)
manage the separation of selves? (different clothing, tones of voice, activity)?

10. Give examples of impression management. Compare and contrast selves presented and
methods used by men/women, older/younger, and other sorts of persons.

11. How do the elements of the "cultural configuration" (Jules Henry's term) or society as
an intersubjective reality (time, space, motion, objects, persons) organize your daily life
and your perceptions and feelings?

D. USING OUR UNDERSTANDING OF OBJECTIVE AND INTERSUBJECTIVE REALITY TO ANALYZE A SMALL SOCIETY

"A little more than kin, and less than kind."
(Shakespeare. Hamlet. I:II)

Here, we will use ideas in Unit B. to examine a whole society--in this case a former hunting
and gathering society. We will be especially interested in: 1) how the aggregate of members'
choices "adds up" to a larger whole (the social order); 2) how individuals, groups, and society
adapt to their environments; 3) how people create society and then, reciprocally, are shaped by it;
4) what happens when a society can no longer make a living the old way; and 5) whether what
many consider essential features of humanness (e.g., gregariousness, love, nurturance of children, respect for elders) appear and are sustained only under certain conditions.

Readings.

** Read about hunting and gathering societies in "Main Features of Different Types of Society,"
in this packet, pp. 17-20.

** Colin Turnbull. The Mountain People.

Suggestions for Journal

1. Compare and contrast the Ik as hunter-gatherers and as they were when Turnbull described
them. (Use "Society as Objective Reality" and "Society as Intersubjective Reality" on pp. 21-24
in this packet.)

2. Why did ego-centric, present-oriented behavior persist even after the rains came?

3. Describe the child Adupa as a failure of socialization.

4. Describe the process of socialization and personality development among the Ik.

5. Analyze Icien humor (types, social functions).

6. Can you see analogies between Icien society and some features of modern society? Can you
describe the "Ik-ification" of some social system with which you are familiar? (See Simmel's
piece "The metropolis and mental life" in Seeing Ourselves, p. 374.)

7. What lessons do you draw from the IK about the nature of human nature and about the
relationship between personality and society?

E. DEVIANCE, SOCIAL CONTROL AND/OR VICTIMIZATION

"Will ye not cease from evil slaughter?
See ye not that ye are devouring each other in
heedlessness of mind? (Empedocles)

"....and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape"
(Shakespeare. Hamlet. III:I)

"But 'tis strange:
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
In deepest consequence."
(Shakespeare. Macbeth. I:IV.)

"By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes."
(Shakespeare. Macbeth. IV:I)

"....The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity....
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
(W. B. Yeats. "The Second Coming")

"We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
Alas! Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry gutter....
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
(T. S. Eliot. "The Hollow Men")

Our species may be the most aggressive on earth. Not only do we prey on other species,
but many among us prey on other humans--robbery, rape, battery, murder, slavery,
everyday manipulation and exploitation. How do we account for such behavior?

a. Human nature? Psychoanalysts might say that our nasty side--Thanatos--the death instinct--
has not been properly defended against or has "broken through" cultural and personal defense mechanisms.

b. Personality type? Do only psychopathic or sociopathic personalities engage in such behavior?

c. Special circumstances? Under the right conditions, will almost anyone--the Ik being a case
in point-- engage in such behavior?

Even if we could develop a reasonable explanation at the individual (microscopic) level,
would that explanation hold up at middle-range and macroscopic levels? For example, does
it make sense to see genocide as an aggregate (rather than a group) of people engaging in
aggressive behavior towards others? No, it does not make sense.

The position that we will explore is that human inhumanity to other humans can be seen as a
social accomplishment, whether it is at the microscopic level (e.g., one victim and one victimizer),
the middle-range level (e.g., elderly persons in certain nursing homes), or at the macroscopic
level (e.g., mass genocidal movements.)

We expect to find that even in situations of great cruelty: 1) persons are learning and
performing roles/selves (e.g., the role of the abused spouse); 2) there is complementarity
between role/self performances of different actors (e.g., how victim and victimizer understand
each other's part); 3) there is a division of labor (e.g., those who identify "deviant" persons,
those who pass laws making the victimization process legal, those who run the trains, those who operate the camps, prisons, and special hospitals); 4) there are hierarchies of power, authority,
prestige and privilege (e.g., elites, officials, dirty workers, victims); 5) there are reward and punishment contingencies (e.g., for being a "good" victim or victimizer); 6) there are norms and
rules (e.g., about how "far" one can go); 7) there are methods by which actors make sense of
what they are doing or about what is happening to them (e.g., victimizers seeing victims as
deserving of what they are getting; philosophies about the good of the State or the People).

In this unit, we will examine human inhumanity to other humans at the microscopic, middle
range, and macroscopic levels.

1. The Micro-production of Deviance

How do people "with" some kind of deviant or disvalued "condition" attempt to "pass" as
normal, as regular members, as persons not to be rejected, ejected, ignored, or victimized?
What are the reactions of the audience? When does interaction become "centripetal" (bringing together) versus "centrifugal" (pushing apart), and with what effects? How do people become victimizers?

Readings.

** Erving Goffman. Stigma.

2. At the Middle-range Level

"For all things come from earth, and all things end by becoming earth." (Xenophanes, born 565 B.C.)

"Now you depart in innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of evil;
a victim not of the laws, but of men..." (Plato, Crito.)

Here we examine the organization of social, personal and biological death. The nursing home
is seen as being at the nexus of a number of trends in large industrial societies (e.g., nuclear
family structure, geographic mobility, smaller size of dwellings, medical prolonging of life).
We will see how in certain nursing homes inmates and staff are involved in the depersonalization
of the one and the alienated labor of the other.

Readings.

** "The apparatus of social control and the deviant career." In this packet, pp. 28-29.

** "Main Features of Different Types of Society." Read about village gardening, horticultural, feudal/agrarian and industrial societies in this packet, pp. 17-20.

** Emile Durkheim. "The functions of crime." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 144.

** Robert Merton. "Manifest and latent functions. In Seeing Ourselves, p. 42.

** Ferdinand Toennies. "Gemeinschaft..." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 65.

** Karl Marx. "Alienated labor." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 260.

** Max Weber. "The characteristics of bureaucracy." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 121.

** Max Weber. "The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 315.

** Robert N. Butler. "The tragedy of old age in America." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 241.

** Donald O. Cowgill. "The aged as teachers." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 254.

** "Factors that Describe the Context and Inner Workings of Some Total Institutions,"
in this packet, p. 30.

** David L. Rosenhan. "On being sane in insane place." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 147.

** Jules Henry. Review "On personality and ageing." On Reserve.

** Gaber Gubrium. Living and Dying at Murray Manor.

Suggestions for Journal

1. Describe Murrray Manor as a social system, noting both its objective and intersubjective
features.

2. Describe how the depersonalization process works in Murray Manor.

3. How would you redesign Murray Manor?

4. What social policies and alternative social arrangements would you promote for improving the situation of the elderly?

3. At the Macroscopic Level.

Concentration camps, slave-labor camps, and prison camps (usually occurring in totalitarian
societies) may be the ultimate in human predation and aggression. Are totalitarian societies and
their camps what we have come to after hundreds of centuries of socio-cultural-personality
evolution?

Readings.

** Max Weber. "The disenchantment..." In Seeing ourselves, p. 455.

** Georg Simmel. "The metropolis and mental life. In Seeing Ourselves, p. 374.

** Jo Freeman. "On the origin of social movements." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 425.
(Can you generalize any propositions in her theory to genocidal movements?)

** Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "Manifesto..." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 57.

** Emile Durkheim. "Anomy..." In Seeing Ourselves, p. 450.

** Terrence Des Pres. The Survivor. On Reserve.

** Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn. The History and Sociology of Genocide. Read Part I.
(all) and Part II. (chapters of your choosing).

** Alexis De Tocqueville. "What sort of despotism democratic nations have to fear." On Reserve.

** Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. "Our muzzled freedom." On Reserve.

Suggestions for Journal

1. What are your reactions to Des Pres' The Survivor?

2. Describe differences in adaptations of the Ik and camp survivors. How might you account
for the differences? (Survival of the social group as a planned social project?)

3. Can you develop a theory of genocide that includes macro, middle range, and micro factors
and processes?

"Our revels now are ended.
These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
(Shakespeare, The Tempest. IV:I)