Sociologists in Action

Sociology, Social Change, and Social Justice

Kathleen Odell Korgen, Jonathan M. White, Michelle K. White

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781483321219
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The only text to provide real-life examples of how practicing sociologists use sociology to work toward social change and social justice!

Providing vivid examples of how sociologists are using sociological tools to make a positive impact on our society, this one-of-a-kind book helps students better understand how their study of sociology can be put to good use in today's world. Each of the 14 chapters, closely aligned with key topics in sociology courses, is filled with stories from practicing sociologists that help students better understand how their sociology studies can be applied and provides answers to the question, "…but what can I do with a sociology degree?" Discussion questions and suggested additional readings and resources at the end of each chapter give students the opportunity to delve further into the topics covered and carry out full and nuanced discussions, grounded in the "real world" work of public sociologists.

Chapter 1

The Sociological Perspective

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In this chapter, four very different Sociologists in Action pieces provide examples of how the sociological perspective can be used to understand society and make a positive impact upon it. Each of the four stories illustrates the two core commitments of sociology, using the sociological eye to notice social patterns and utilizing social activism to address social issues. The authors also describe how they used their sociological imaginations to relate their personal experiences to larger social issues and to their work as sociologists.

Starting off this chapter with “Sociology: Promise and Potential Through Praxis,” Cheryl Joseph vividly describes how her childhood experience of temporarily moving to Los Angeles and falling from a comfortable working class to a lower-class lifestyle “forced [her] to remove the blinders of familiarity and look past a way of life [she] had assumed was normal.” This new perspective allowed her to start developing a sociological eye and notice patterns in society of which she had been unaware. It also gave her the drive to use her sociological imagination to critically analyze the world around her and to find ways to “put sociology into action” and address inequities in society.

In the second piece in this chapter, “Human Rights and the Sociological Imagination: How Sociologists Can Help Make the World a Better Place,” Mayra Gomez’s work as a human rights advocate illustrates how the tools and perspective of sociology can both illuminate and help efforts to alleviate injustice. Gomez uses her sociological background, to great effect, in her work with the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and other human rights organizations. In doing so, she has helped create “concrete policy change” and a “more socially just world.”

“Stand Up and Speak Out,” Judith Wittner discusses how she enabled her students to “look beyond the information given out by news sources … to question the motives of people in positions of authority, to learn why society operates as it does, and to act on it.” In ceding the traditional power of the professor in the classroom, she revealed that the individual “classroom experience … [is] part of a politics of knowledge affecting subordinate groups more generally.” She argues that such awareness “is a critical first step toward building a citizenry liberated from mainstream media’s control of political ideas and actions.”

In the final piece of this first chapter, Georgette Bennett shows how she has used sociological tools “as a change agent and ‘action’ sociologist” during the course of her life. Throughout her many successful careers, Bennett has utilized her sociological background to make innumerable important, positive impacts on our society. Her body of impressive work includes: helping to create the first sex crime unit (now popularized on “Law and Order: SVU”) and changing the systematic unequal treatment of women in the NYPD; successful careers in broadcast journalism, public relations, and marketing; and founding the Tannenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding. In every venue, Bennett has used “the unique tools of our trade to make an impact on the world.”

SOCIOLOGY: PROMISE AND POTENTIAL THROUGH PRAXIS

Cheryl Joseph

Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont, California

Sociology professor Cheryl Joseph received her doctoral degree from Wayne State University in Detroit where she was born and raised. There, Dr. Joseph began her advocacy against racism, sexism, poverty, militarism, urban demise, and environmental degradation. Her 20-year position with a major airline taught her about corporate operations in the global economy, as well as different cultures throughout the world. A faculty member of Notre Dame de Namur University (NDNU) near San Francisco since 1988, her proudest contribution is the Animals in Human Society concentration that she created within the sociology major at NDNU. Dr. Joseph recently published Dealing With Difficult People: It’s a Zoo Out There (2010) and contributed a chapter to Teaching the Animal: Human–Animal Studies Across the Disciplines (2010), edited by Margaret DeMello.

Until the age of 13 (in 1961), I lived in a comfortable working-class neighborhood of Detroit, surrounded by factory-working fathers and stay-at-home mothers with their flocks of postwar babies. Included in this lifestyle was a stellar educational system and excellent health care benefits made possible by the struggles of the labor union to which my dad belonged. All this changed suddenly, however, during what Dr. Phil might call a “defining moment.” My father, deadened by the stultifying effects of assembly-line work and lured by his brother’s offer of a new start as a small businessman, unceremoniously quit his job and uprooted the family to begin a seemingly promising life in Los Angeles, California.

After selling the family home and driving cross-country, we arrived in Los Angeles to begin our new lives. Regrettably, however, my uncle abruptly backed out of the deal immediately upon our arrival. This left my parents and me in an environment where we knew no one, had less than one year’s saving to live on, and had only my dad’s skill as a television repairman to depend on. Being more of a socialist than an entrepreneur, my father had no ability to run a business. As such, our lives quickly spiraled downward. We had moved from a spacious Cape Cod home with a sizeable yard to a cramped apartment, from a neighborhood where children played safely outside after dark to one where streets were lined with porno houses and derelicts.

After a summer spent exploring this new city by bus (rather than the bike I was accustomed to) with a cousin 2 years younger and 10 years more mature than I, junior high school beckoned. I found myself, sans cousin, in a friendless setting without my familiar clique. I resolved to take the initiative and make friends. I was more lucky than adroit in this venture as there were dozens of kids just like me—new to Los Angeles because their families sought a better life and desperate for friends. I recall one girl I met that first day before classes had even begun. In those first moments, “Pamela” told me she and her family, originally from rural Arkansas, were living in their car until she could “make it” in the movie industry. I saw Pamela only sporadically after that first day and after a few months, not at all. Each time, she looked dirtier, gloomier, and more stressed. As far as I know, she never did make it to the silver screen. We were joined that first day by “Kathleen,” who told us she was put on a bus in Idaho and sent to live with relatives in Los Angeles because her mother could no longer afford her. Later, I met “Sandy,” whose mother and siblings depended on the income she derived from prostituting herself after school. Occasionally, “Sandy” would show me the bruises she incurred from an abusive john.

On the other hand, the same school that served this underclass also attracted students from the wealthier side of the city. I became friends with “Rachel,” who would be delivered to school each day by the family’s driver. Rachel would invite me to her home in the sumptuous canyons where her family “dressed” for dinner, and I learned to enjoy foods I had never heard of before. I became accustomed to hearing my classmates discussing the movie stars who were living in their neighborhoods.

At the same time, the meager savings on which my own family depended were dwindling quickly. After two years, we returned to Detroit with $60, my dog, and whatever we could fit into the back of the station wagon. We ate at truck stops instead of the family-style restaurants where we had dined on the trip west. Instead of Holiday Inns with swimming pools, we slept in places that can only generously be described as “dives.”

Back in Detroit, we were forced to live with relatives in a very small house. With 10 of us and the family dog in tight confines, tensions were inevitable. My family soon separated until we could afford a place of our own. My dad stayed with his sister, my mom with a good friend, and I got farmed out to whoever would take a 15-year-old and her dog. I moved a lot that summer. I did not know at that time that my family was, by definition, homeless. Life improved, however, when my father was hired back at his previous job. With all the limitations of factory work, it nonetheless (thanks to a strong union) provided my family the benefits of home ownership and a college education for me.

I tell my story not because I enjoyed this trip down memory lane, but because all of these experiences laid the foundation for my life as a sociologist and for the kind of sociology I practice. These encounters forced me to remove the blinders of familiarity and look past a way of life I had assumed was normal. In order to understand the lives of my new-found friends, I had to critically examine their worlds and my own. I learned to appreciate and empathize rather than criticize. These life events helped me develop my sociological perspective. At the same time, I found the ability to connect personal troubles to public issues, what C. Wright Mills termed the “sociological imagination,” invaluable to understanding the connections between such social structures as the economy and the individual problems that my friends, family, and I incurred.

It was these lessons, in addition to the sociology-as-action approach, that I wanted to convey to my students when I began teaching sociology. Students in my Social Problems classes, for example, spent time in soup kitchens and homeless shelters engaged in participant observation. As part of a countywide census, one project took them to the streets of San Francisco after midnight to count those individuals sleeping in doorways and cars, and on park benches or pavement. In another class, students were required to simulate a day in the life of a mother on welfare. With only $5 and a doll that represented an infant-in-arms, they had to navigate the neighborhood using only public transportation. They were instructed to find the nearest welfare office, buy groceries for the day, and go to the elementary school where their oldest child purportedly had a discipline problem. One of my students summarized her experience thusly: “I’ve always believed there is no reason for child abuse. But I found myself slamming that damn doll on the ground when the bus driver would only accept exact change and I had to go from store to store to get it. What an eye-opener!” Another said, “I gave up from sheer exhaustion.”

Students in my Urban Sociology classes acquaint themselves with different social classes, cultures, histories, and such social concerns as crime and affordable housing, through interactions with the people who live in San Francisco. For nearly 20 years, my students have hosted a picnic in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on Thanksgiving Day where they share the lunch they prepared with the 350+ homeless people who live there.

In addition, I teach a two-semester internship class in which students assist such populations as jail inmates and their families, domestic abuse victims, people living with HIV/AIDS, at-risk youth, and homeless families. One student reported, “This internship lets me see the world outside of the classroom. All the theories and concepts we learn in class come alive.”

By 2000, I began to recognize the close bond many people share with their companion animals and to notice similarities in how animals and oppressed human populations like people of color, women, and the poor are treated. As a result, I created a sociology major with a concentration in animal–human studies. This Sociology: Animals in Human Society major—the only one in the world to date—includes six classes taught from the perspective of engagement and action-oriented sociology. The Animal–Human Bond course, for example, requires students to conduct research by interviewing groups with different viewpoints on an animal-related issue like breed-specific bans. They then devise a means to reach a target audience. Finally, the general community is invited to an evening where students pre sent their messages. In the past, the presentation of these messages has ranged from developing brochures that encourage owners to neuter and spay their pets to a script for a television infomercial depicting the link between animal abuse and violence against people. This strategy helps students see the role of social awareness in social change. Students also obtain “hands-on” experience at humane societies, rescues and sanctuaries, facilities that utilize therapy animals, and organizations that advocate for animal rights.

In the fall of 2009, I undertook the codirectorship of our Dorothy Stang Center at my university. I feel honored to be part of an effort that carries forth our namesake’s quest for social justice, community engagement, and environmental sustainability. For over 20 years, Sister Dorothy Stang worked with peasant farmers of the Brazilian rainforest, defending their land rights against the rapacity of cattle barons and the logging industry. Just as she began to make progress against that country’s power elite, she was viciously murdered by a hired assassin. In her memory, the Dorothy Stang Center embarks on projects that create social awareness and social change both locally and globally. On the local level, we have initiated a community garden on campus and we give the produce to a nearby homeless shelter. On a larger scale, a group of us attended a vigil/protest to advocate the closure of the School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (SOA/WHINSEC), which trains the militaries of dictators in Central and South America who then massacre their own citizens.¹ In 2010, we spent Spring Break in an impoverished region of Jamaica. There, we engaged with Jamaicans to create empowerment groups that will eventually produce collectives for artists, micro-financing opportunities, and chances to build healthy communities.

My early experiences and the context that sociology provided for understanding them allowed action-oriented sociology to evolve readily for me. Marx’s theories of class consciousness and social conflict resonated with me as I thought of the experiences of my friends and family. Through learning how to use my sociological imagination, I recognized the pervasive influence of social institutions on individual lives. The feminist approach of Jane Addams awoke me to the strength of women in community. The connections she created between the Chicago School of Sociology and Hull House (the settlement house in Chicago she cofounded) inspire me to combine practice with theory. Putting sociology into action fuels my passion. It is this passion that I try to convey to my students.

HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION: HOW SOCIOLOGISTS CAN HELP MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE

Mayra Gómez

Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

Mayra Gómez is Co-Executive Director of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. She received her PhD in sociology from the University of Minnesota, where her work was supported by a grant from the MacArthur Interdisciplinary Program on Global Change, Sustainability and Justice. She has worked with leading international human rights organizations and UN human rights bodies, particularly in the area of women’s human rights, and travels widely to all regions of the world. She has authored over thirty human rights articles, books and reports, and is a regular contributor to the Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights. Mayra has also served on the Amnesty International USA Board of Directors.

My love of sociology and of the social sciences came early to me as a stu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Sociological Perspective
• Chapter 2 Theory
• Chapter 3 Research Methods
• Chapter 4 Culture
• Chapter 5 Socialization
• Chapter 6 Deviant Behavior
• Chapter 7 Social Movements
• Chapter 8 Stratification and Social Class
• Chapter 9 Race and Ethnic Relations
• Chapter 10 Sex, Gender, and Sexuality
• Chapter 11 Globalization and Immigration
• Chapter 12 Environmental Justice
• Chapter 13 Social Institutions (Family, Economy)
• Chapter 14 Social Institutions, Continued (Education, Government, Religion)
• Index
• About the Editors