Stratification

If you've ever taken a geology course, you may have heard the term stratification...if you see a rock with different layers and colors, you are observing stratification. We can also observe stratification in our own society if we look close enough. First, there are separations that happen according to the social groups we are a part of, called segregation. Then, there are the layers of statuses in society, which open or close doors for us depending on where our social location is.

The stratification of society is a common sociological topic. Sociologists use the three social theoretical perspectives to generate ideas on why things are the way they are in society. Stratification by social class or socioeconomic status occurs in many arenas, including the workplace, neighborhoods, educational systems, and recreational activities. Socioeconomic status is a sociological term that means collectively your income, education level, and occupation. Different income levels enable acquiring more resources, including education, and your occupation gives you a certain level of prestige. In our country, school teachers have low prestige, but in Japan, they have high prestige. Context matters!

So what do the there sociological theories tell us about the societal factors in having a class system of social stratification? Symbolic interactionism is a framework that considers our perceptions and the meanings behind our behavior. A theorist from this camp might suggest that we do not associate with others outside of our social class because of our perception of what this means. We have labels that are associated with social class, that further show our perceptions and stereotypes. Phrases like "white trash" or "capitalist pig" convey opinions about different groups. This may help explain why we keep to our socioeconomic status in large part. Functionalism looks at other social institutions such as the economy, education, the family, region, etc. A functionalist would explain stratification by saying that from the get go, our schools separate us, and then further separate us into different jobs, then different neighborhoods, etc. A functionalist would say that we need a class system in order to fill all of the jobs we need done. Finally, conflict theory suggests that those with social power affect the social systems so that the powerful keep their resources. Essentially the rich benefit from keeping some people poor, in part by exclusion both socially and economically.

What social class do you resonate with? Why don't people tend to associate with or marry outside their social class (on average?) Do we have a "class system" in America?

How does economic inequality and stratification harm a society?

Culture: Values, Norms, Sanctions and More

I am a medical sociologist, but unlike most medical sociologists that pursue academic research most of the time, I spend time working with students and groups in my local community, applying the "sociological imagination" to local issues. I work with people from different "sectors"- business, healthcare, social services, education, and government. I help brainstorm as a member of various "coalitions" or groups of people who are dedicated to a common cause, such as improving graduation rates (Klamath Promise), ending child hunger (Child Hunger Coalition), and building a healthier community (Healthy Klamath). I also work directly for organizations such as the Food Bank, doing research by way of gathering local data that can be used to support the missions of organizations working on food issues in the county.

Just last month, Klamath County received some pretty amazing news...after a long application process led by our friends at Klamath County Public Health, Sky Lakes Medical Center, and others, we got word that Klamath is a 2018 WINNER of the Robert Wood Johnson (most famous philanthropic organization for health, based in Princeton) CULTURE OF HEALTH PRIZE. This prize is awarded to communities that are "building a culture of health"- in other words, actively and constructively working to improve the health of a community. What a great time to be a Population Health major at Oregon Tech! Students have participated in all of the initiatives highlighted for the prize as part of their externships!!

This has got me thinking about this week's concepts: culture, norms, values, beliefs, sanctions, and deviance to name a few. Remember to read about these in your textbook, and this post can supplement the reading and hopefully give you a new angle to see these concepts at play in the real world.

For medical sociology students, in addition to reviewing the above concepts, we will review the terms social determinants of heath and structural determinants.

What is culture? Culture is a way of life for a given group of people. Culture includes the things we say, eat, do, and how we perceive the world. Klamath has an agriculture culture, also a ranching culture, along with an emphasis in some areas on religion, with many churches around, and it's part of the culture here to value both self sufficiency and a sense of community. Every culture has certain norms that are specific to its people, and these norms can vary based on the location. Norms are the expected ways of acting in certain situations. There may be different norms for you at work, home, and school. You may even have a partner or spouse whose family has different norms than yours. If you break norms, you will receive negative sanction, and will be considered deviant. Deviance does not mean being a criminal or delinquent or bad! It just means you are going against the grain. If the norm is cigarette smoking for your peers, and you quit, you are deviating from the norm! You may even receive negative sanctions (people giving you a hard time) if you deviate from your family by going vegan (not eating animal products)!  Here in Klamath, policies to make it harder for young kids to smoke cigarettes are changing the norm (where it's easier for teens to buy cigs); and programs like Produce Connection which gives away free fruits and veggies are changing the norm, and the stereotype that economically struggling people eat unhealthy convenience foods.

Values and beliefs are part of culture too. Values are things that people think are good. You may value family, doing well in school, religion, and your health. Klamath has shown that we value education and investing in recreation. Beliefs are things people think are true. If you have the belief that  you can do anything you set your mind too, or that you can change your lifestyle, you will be more likely to start and sustain making those healthy changes. Here at the Sky Lakes Live Young Wellness Center, people who go through the doors are not treated with conventional treatments only- they also participate in classes designed to reduce stress, teaching healthy cooking and shopping, and increase physical activity. People are assessed about their beliefs and willingness to change before they even start their program! Beliefs are powerful!

All of these changes at the local level are examples of structural or social factors in health. Social factors are things such as your location, education level, and economic standing that could impact your heath. Structural things are parts of the community such as availability of recreation, healthy food, and organized community groups that can also impact community health.

What an interesting time to study sociology and population health in rural Oregon! If your appetite for this kind of thing is wetted, find out more about the PHM program and how you can get involved in the community :).

Personal Troubles vs Public Issues

Our first unit of this introduction to sociology course included a review of the sociological perspective, and a reading that- although dated- still remains quintessential in explaining this perspective.  In C. Wright Mill’s chapter, The Promise (of sociology), he outlines a world where people are only somewhat aware of the broader social forces that are impacting their lives. And, in some cases, there is a feeling of being “trapped”, or constricted, by these forces. What are these forces? Social forces are those aspects of society that influence the people in that society, such as social institutions and major events. 

Let’s review social institutions, our social location, and the promise of sociology. 

Social institutions are those building blocks of society- they include all of the systems. Education, economic base, mass media, churches, community organizations, healthcare, criminal justice, laws and policies, technology, and military are all social institutions.  Social institutions means they are systems that provide various functions to society. 

If you’ve heard the phrase “systems-level thinking”, that refers to the skill of acquiring knowledge in multiple systems, organizations, or populations, to inform a given goal.  For example, if you are starting a business in a new city, it would be helpful to be a systems thinker, because you can consider the town’s demographics, educational opportunities, competing industries, the local culture, the political powers that be and the subsequent policies, and the building of the hierarchy in your own company.  If you had just considered your business plan without these broader characteristics, you might have missed something vital to avoid or capitalize on. 

In your introductory post, you included a brief summary of your social location. Your social location is essentially where you are “located” in the geography, hierarchy, and characteristics of your community. These include the social factors in your life- your age, race, gender, religion, educational attainment, social background, occupation of your parents, and other aspects of your life that could categorize you with other people. Now, no one likes to be put in a box- this does not mean that you are totally similar to others in your categories.  The point of looking at an individual’s social location, and comparing people by social factors, is to understand more about that society. For example, what aspects could lead to a strikingly low rate of alcohol consumption on a college campus? What about a huge difference in education in men vs women in a certain city? What about a lower than average state unemployment rate? This is the study of sociology. It is the researching of social factors, and characteristics of a community, that also drive our behavior. 

The questions just posed help exemplify public issues. What makes something a public issue vs a personal trouble?  For starters, if you are adversely impacted by a public issue, it is a personal trouble. Secondly, just because something is a public issue and it’s your personal trouble, does not mean “blaming society” and ignoring individual factors contributing to that situation. This is a really important distinction. Sociologists do study society- but not to explain everything, just to highlight the social factors that many of us are exposed to, regardless of our personal opinions. 

You all gave varied, descriptive explanations of what you think makes something a public issue.  Many of you said that it is a phenomena that impacts everyone, or a large portion, of a society.  Things like racism, mass violence, and college debt are societal phenomena present in our society; we are all affected in our own ways. 

Public issues have social contributing factors. Regardless of how many people are affected, or how significant or serious the impact is, public issues signify that there are societal level influences. What are those aspects of a society- a city, neighborhood, state, country, college campus- that influence public issues. And remember- public issues and social problems are not always problems to everyone- let’s just say they are trends in society. 

Social theory is a tool that can be learned in a term, that can be applied to any social trend in order to brainstorm factors that can be researched sociologically.  It is particularly helpful to expand our perspective, so we don’t get stuck in a rut with our initial idea of why things are the way they are.  That is not to say common sense can’t be a starting place for sociological research- but as James Henslin writes in your textbook- research has shown that some common sense assumptions can be quite misleading! 

To introduce the three main angles from which to view social trends, I’ll again reference the article by C. Wright Mills. The questions he poses with respect to public issues are kind of like foreshadowing social theory….

The questions are:

What is the structure of the society as a whole? 

What are its essential components? 

These questions relate to functionalism. 

Where is this society in history? How is it changing? What is it’s meaning for the development of humanity as a whole? 

These questions relate to symbolic interactionism.

What kinds of men and women prevail in this society? 

Liberated and oppressed? 

These questions relate to conflict theory.

FUNCTIONALISM is the angle that looks at social institutions, and how those institutions affect each other and fulfill functions in society. If you were to research unemployment, you might consider how the education system or the local industries influence this issue. Also, what social function does unemployment serve? 

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM is the angle that considers the deeper meaning behind social behaviors, or our perception of the issue.  In this way, symbolic interactionism also relates to things like mass media, which you could say might be influencing our perceptions (especially at a young age). In researching unemployment, this perspective might consider what people think about being unemployed- is it accepted? Are people more willing to be unemployed than to take a job they perceive as “below them”? What do people think it means to be on welfare? 

CONFLICT THEORY is the angle that sort of asks the question, who or what is benefiting from this trend? It assumes there are people that succeed or fail in society, but also that there are certain groups with more power than others that can influence society.  What local policies relate to unemployment- are the politicians backing a certain industry that outsources labor? Is there less of a market for goods in a community so headquarters are moved? Are those in power inflicting policies that cause industries to fail? 

These theoretical perspectives- angles from which to examine society- are ways to conceptualize social factors.  They are not opinions or political orientations- and they are always used to then test theories and research factors. 

That sums up a review of social institutions, your social location, and public issues- with an introduction to social theory. 

Intro to Sociology

The Sociological Perspective

Sociology is a social science.  The sociological perspective is one that transcends individual or group perspectives, becasue the purpose of applying the sociological perspective is to observe and measure social trends, and explore the social structure or foundation that underlies them.

A science uses the scientific method, which you likely have learned in other courses.  You typically have a theory-driven hypothesis, collect and analyze data, and then test again, sharing the results with others. Social sciences have to do with understanding people and places. Social scientists study economics, politics, environments, trends, demographics, and other human behaviors.

The sociological perspective can be a tool that can help you cultivate a big picture mentality. Just like some little kids like to take things apart and put things back together again, and may grow up to be engineers, some folks just naturally have a big picture perspective. Many if not all employers now are asking for big picture or systems-level thinkers.  This is because big picture people do not as easily get caught up in their “own little world” - they can get a grasp of how an institution works, how policies impact practices, how workplace hierarchies, relationships, and politics play out, and are sensitive to the fact that things get perceived differently by different people.

The sociological perspective is a scientific approach to understanding a society- a society might be a college campus, a neighborhood, a hospital, a community, a county, a state, or a country- basically any population. 

Psychologists may analyze individual people, finding out what makes them tick. Economists may analyze financial trends, political scientists may analyze political factions and how the state operates, and anthropologists might analyze a cultural group by living among them and observing behavior. 

Sociologists analyze communities- whether large or small- so what does that entail? 

What might you analyze in a community? What are the building blocks of a society? To answer this question, I imagined what it would be like to start a business.  What would I want to know if I were going to move to a new community, before I posted up shop? 

Here’s the list that my in-class intro to sociology class came up with: 

• other industries and businesses 
• employment rates
• natural resources and climate 
• demographics- what’s the average age, gender mix, race/ethnic background, income levels

Then I wondered what people in general moving to a new community want to know. I asked my class what they would research if they were moving to a new place and had kids and aging parents. Here’s what they said: 

• schools/educational opportunities
• jobs
• community engagement
• crime rates/criminal justice system
• health care and services
• recreation and entertainment
• politics
• neighborhoods
• what the people are “like” (culture)

There’s one thing no one mentioned:

• laws
• policies

Together, all of those factors are sociological factors. Sociologists study how those factors relate to human behaviors- trends in things like:

• crime
• employment
• marriage and divorce
• socializing and dating
• economic, environmental, and social policy
• educational attainment
• political orientation
• lifestyle
• health behaviors
• chronic and acute illness
• diet
• drug use
• mental health

The lists go on…but this gives you a sense of what sociologists study, and what the sociological perspective is. 

Do  sociological analysis of where you live. 

How do those factors impact you? 

Introduction

Hello Class! 

Nice to meet you all. I am Sophie Nathenson, your online instructor and the Director of the Population Health Management Program at Oregon Tech- Klamath Falls. 

I was raised in the midwest, mostly Nebraska. I studied psychology and Spanish at the University of Tulsa, and studied abroad in Madrid, Spain and Prague, Czech Republic. After college I moved to the Czech Republic, taught preschool, started a business, and then relocated to Salt Lake City, Utah.  In Utah I continued my education in sociology and taught at the University of Utah and Westminster College. I have worked in Klamath Falls as a medical sociologist for five years. In that time I have worked with many organizations in healthcare, government, and the non-profit sector within Oregon, and I have continued to study abroad, most recently in Denmark and Iceland. 

I love Oregon Tech for many reasons, but mostly the hands on, real world approach in which education evolves along with industry and society.  I had the opportunity to start an applied medical sociology program,  Population Health Management (PHM), and with the help of the first cohort of PHM students, started the Population Health Management Research Center (PHMRC). At the PHMRC, student researchers-in-training conduct research and make recommendations to organizations on issues related to the health of communities. 

To sociologists, community health issues are viewed in a broader scope, in which education, industries, and the physical infrastructure of cities play a part. In this course we will learn about health using a sociological perspective. We will look at trends in health by different groups compared to each other, and examine how the aspects of our communities shape our health.

I will be providing many research studies from a variety of disciplines to share with you different aspects of society as related to health. I will also use real world examples of applying this research to improve community health—mostly these will include projects that PHM majors are working on in Oregon.

In this course we will learn and apply the “sociological imagination”- as you’ll find in reading the article “The Promise” by C. W. Mills, this point of view is a “big picture” mentality.  Using the sociological imagination means envisioning humans not just as individual actors, but as a whole, examining patterns and trends in behavior.  It’s as if you start to see the “structure” of society- the way it all works together. And, if you have the opportunity to travel or learn about other cultures, you start to realize how different these structures can be. 

The next blog introduces the field of sociology, and lists the social institutions that form the organization of our societies.