Lecture notes on social stratification by religion and ethnicity

1) Is there social distance between ethno-religious groups in the Philippines?

2) Does this group identification (religious) explain social distance?

3) Which are the significant predictors of social distance

-  religious identification

-- ethnic identification

-- social inequality

-- out-group trust,

  while controlling for gender?

Theoretical notions

•Realistic conflict theory  (Coser, 1954) – intergroup competition over scarce resources and power (in-group favouritism and out-group hostility

•Social identity theory (Tajfel, 1971) - social categorization, identification and comparison processes underlying group formation and maintenance

•Trust theories – positive outcomes (and lack of trust and distrust associated with negative outcomes)

Social distance Mokken scale

To what extent would you accept or avoid having a Christian/Muslim as...?

Findings:

- There are significant differences in the social distance level between ethno-religious groups. Certain groups have greater tendency to avoid religious out-groups than other groups.

- There is a hierarchy and distinction between private (classmate, friend and bordmate) and public (civil servant, police and mayor) roles. Neighbor seems to mark the boundary between private and public.

- The avoided roles are those with power.

- Religious identification is positively related with social distance.

- Based on regression analyses, out-group trust is a strong predictor of social distance. It is able to explain the relation between religious identification and social distance.

Reference: (You can read the article here)

Abanes, M., Scheepers, P., & Sterkens, C. (2014). Ethno-religious groups, identification,  trust and social distance in the ethno-religiously stratified Philippines. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 37, Pp. 61-75. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2014.02.001.

Lecture Notes on social stratification and inequality

Social stratification - structuring and organizing principle characterized by hierarchical division, classification and categorization of groups differentiated by gender, social class, ethnicity and religion

Inequality arises from the development and perpetuation of division of labor, social conflict and private property (Charon, 2001)

Division of labor - people do different things on which society puts value. Some works are highly valued than others.

Social conflict - competition between/among groups over scarce resources (e.g. power, land)

Private property - ownership (and accumulation) of valued resources giving people privileges and a source and basis of power over those who do not have and need the resources

Class inequality influences life's chances

Inequality is often institutionalized and built-in structures in society

Manifestations of inequality are in three arenas: economic (unequal distribution of wealth), social (lack of access to housing, education, health care, employment), and political (power and exclusion)

Questions:

- Is there something in our culture, socialization and institutions that contribute to the emergence and persistence of inequality in our society?

- How can we help foster equality in our society?


Reference:

Charon, J. (2001). Ten questions: A sociological perspective. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

Lecture notes on surveys

• tool for measuring attitudes and orientations  in a large population

• best method available to collect original data for describing a population too large to observe directly

• Respondents – those who participate in surveys – they must be competent and willing to answer

2 types of sampling methods

Non-probability sampling – for obtaining information about specific groups

• > available subjects

• > purposive/judgemental sampling

• > snowball sampling

• > quota sampling – in cells

Probability sampling

• primary method of selecting large, representative samples

• Provide useful descriptions of the total population

• Sample of individuals from a population containing essentially the same variations that exist in the population

Terms to remember

Representativeness – if the aggregate characteristics of the sample closely approximate those same aggregate characteristics in the population

Population – aggregation of elements from which the sample is selected

Sample – selected element or respondent

Sampling bias – those selected are not typical or representative of the larger population they have been chosen from

Sampling designs

Simple random sampling – assigning a number to each element in the list

Systematic sampling – every kth element in the total list is systematically chosen

Stratified sampling – appropriate numbers of elements are drawn from homogenous subsets of the population

Cluster sampling – initial sampling of groups of elements (clusters), followed by the selection of elements within each of the selected clusters – can be multi-stage

Sampling error – the degree of error to be expected for a given sample design

Confidence level – accuracy of our sample statistics fall within specified interval from the parameter (e.g. 95%, 99%, 90%)

Questionnaire

• Instrument designed to elicit information useful for analysis

• Operationalization – measurement

•  > validity – what we intend to measure

•  > reliability – extent to which measures give consistent results

• Open-ended questions – respondents provide answers

• Close-ended questions – respondents elect an answer from the list of options

Tips

• Make items clear – “Do you agree with the peace agreement?”

• Avoid double-barreled questions – “Do you think that K-12 will make our students globally competitive and our education standards globally at par?”

• Make relevant questions

• NO difficult words

• NO negative questions – “Do you NOT agree..”

•NO questions with possibly different standards – “Do you think that students today are liberal?”

•NO leading questions – “Due to changing times, do you agree that government policies must adapt to the changes?”

•NO assuming questions – “How often do you go out with your gf/bf?”

Exercises: Improve the response options

•Answers should match the questions and set of options – “Are you satisfied with Ateneo education?” “barely, sometimes, often, very”

•Answers should be mutually exclusive – “How often do you study?” “everyday, everynight, every weekend, once a week, more than once a week, monthly, never”

Designing a questionnaire

•Start with easy questions

•Place questions that are related in one block

•Design should be logical

•Introduce difficult and sensitive questions carefully

•Do not raise those in the beginning nor end

•Instructions must be clear and consistent

References:

Babbie, E. (2001). The practice of social research. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

Sterkens, C. (2010). Class handouts on quantitative methods. Radboud University Nijmegen

Lecture notes on human inquiry and research process

- Human inquiry is about knowing and learning things about the world around us; about predicting future circumstances conditioned by present ones

- Science has a special way/method of knowing and learning - conscious, deliberate, rigorous and systematic undertaking through research

- Sources of what we know: tradition, authority, and common sense can provide information and solve problems; the knowledge we get from these sources sometimes not true

- Idea refers to how and why something can plausibly work

- Model refers to a representation of how something works

- Approach/perspective refers to a point of view or way of looking at something

- Research is about "finding out" through observation and interpretation

- Three types of research: exploratory, descriptive (who, where, when and what), explanatory (how and why)

- Aims of research: understand the social patterns of behavior and probe deeply into the idiosyncrasies of a particular case

- Unit of analysis - object of observation
       - individuals
       - groups (families, gangs, ethnic, religious groups)
       - organizations (barangays, towns, cities, colleges, army)
       - social artifacts (product of people or their behavior) poems,                                          jokes, discourses, books

- Research process: interest, idea, theory (explanation), conceptualization, operationalization (measurement), choice of research method, population and sampling, observation, data-processing, analysis, and reporting

Inductive - the process from data to ideas
Deductive - from ideas to data

Modes of observation: experiments, survey, qualitative field research

Reference:
Babbie, E. (2001). The practice of social research. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

Alternative State of the Nation Address (SONA): A sociological perspective

(A talk delivered on the Alternative SONA: Boses kan Boss organized by the Department of Social Sciences, Ateneo de Naga University in Bicol, Philippines on 28 July 2014)

My role here is to present to you some of the things which may affect and shape you as a member of society. This task is commonly known in social science as sociological imagination, coined by Mills in 1956. Your problems are usually social issues too. For example, your problem of having no electricity is due to “Glenda” but more than a week after the typhoon, your problem might point to a public issue of inefficient delivery of public service; your problem of boring and uninspiring classes might point to a public issue of lack of priority for education, resulting to low wages for teachers and to outmoded and predictable teaching strategies and technologies; your fear of security might be a symptom of rising criminality and breakdown of social ties in communities; these are social issues. However, if you do not have a love life, it is a personal tragedy, not a social issue. Unless you are a Kris Aquino.

 If there is anything my 15-minute talk will accomplish, I want it to be that we all realize that our problems, hence public issues, are created by people. Thus, solutions can also be from people.

So what are some of the things that happened in the past year which will potentially affect and shape you as a member of society? Due to limitation of time, I will name two things. I will also show how they may affect and shape you.

First is the Reproductive Health (RH) law. I know you heard countless discussions on this topic. I think now is the best time to revisit the law after a decade of its intense and emotional process of passage. Much like a typhoon, the morning after brings clarity of what happened. This is also a goal of social science – to bring clarity and shed light on the things that affected us, are affecting us, and will affect us. As we know, the Supreme Court (SC) upheld the constitutionality of the law, while striking down several of its provisions. Much like the decision of the SC, I recognize the good and not-so-good aspects of the law. The first aspect that I will discuss is that the law to me is one of the most, if not the most, altruistic that was passed by Congress. No lawmakers claimed that the law is for them or will benefit them personally. They passed the law for specific segment of our population – the poor who have more children than the rest of the population. For the lawmakers, they had to arrest the growing population from the poor so that the country would benefit from its economic gains. Our contry has been consistently among those with highest growth rates in the world in the past years. These economic gains have been lost because of our relatively high population growth rate. Most RH advocates also echoed the same. Now finally, we have a law that is primarily for the “benefit” of the poor so that they will not have more children they can hardly take care and attend to their needs. Underlying this seemingly altruistic act towards the poor is a view that the poor is a dead weight towards development. As a development practitioner, I think that the law is an example of a solution which may not actually be a solution. Well yesterday according to reports, the 100^th  million Filipino was born. This is according to a commission that announced in 2010 that Filipinos had reached 96 million. When the official census came out, Filipinos in 2010 were only 92 million, a difference of 4 million. The flaw in the computation occurred in the use of the highest end in the range of the population growth rate. In the commission’s website (last visited in January 2014), it was using 1.9 population growth rate when World Bank, ADB, and UN are using 1.7 percent as the Philippine population growth rate.

The second aspect of the law that I’d like to discuss is its cultural implication. Ruth Benedict, a well-known anthropologist, describes culture as integrated whole in his classic book, Patterns of Culture. Without a doubt, the RH law will have tremendous implications and potentialities in the young Filipinos’ behavior and attitudes because it will introduce alterations in the patterns and configurations of young adults’ lives.

Imagine a road built in a remote barangay. Imagine the happiness of farmers and the changes in that barangay because of the road. Well, you don’t have to imagine too far because it might lead you somewhere. I will present to you two cases in my hometown, Milaor. A paved road was constructed in barangay Alimbuyog connecting it to poblacion and other barangays. After the construction, night clubs or “aling-alingan” in local language sprouted in the barangay making it a red light district. Another case is in “baliong salog” or the remote barangays across the river. Paved roads were constructed in barangay Dalipay, Mayaopayaowan, Cabugao, Maydaso until to some remote barangays of Minalabac. Farmers were so happy with the road, and so the robbers and thieves. The road provided the robbers and thieves an easy escape route just outside Naga City. These are examples of unintended consequences or in Merton’s words, latent functions, of the road.

Now, what is the latent function or unintended consequences of RH law, especially to the young adults. Well, let’s take an example close to us – Thailand. In a report by Thai Bureau of Public Health, Thailand has the highest teen pregnancy rate in Southeast Asia, beating Laos and the Philippines. Thailand has introduced, long time ago, sex education in schools and has made contraceptives readily available. Then why? Thai authorities conceded that their young people have lost  values associated with the sexual act.

May I cite another example! I lived for almost four years in the Netherlands. I heard stories of parents of teenage boys aged 13-15 years old casually handing out condoms to their boys if they are going to parties or sleep-overs. In my encounters with Filipina mothers in the Netherlands, many of them who are married to Dutch and have children face a dilemma of whether or not allowing their teenage daughters to go to parties and sleep-overs.

As far as I know, there is one institution which is strongly criticized and derided by non-members as well as some members, but still is consistently and constantly reminding people to do the act only after marriage. This restricts its practice with only one person.

Many international health workers are puzzled by the Philippine statistics on HIV-AIDS having very low recorded cases. Others are also baffled by the Philippine statistics as one of the countries with women who have late sexual contact. On average, Filipinas have their first sexual contact at 21 years old.

I, for one, am not puzzled and baffled by these statistics. There is a value at play here. And I am afraid that this may change the patterns of behavior because the integrated whole is being reshaped by a law and its unintended consequences.

The second thing that may affect you is the peace agreement between the government and MILF. This agreement will bring significant changes in intergroup relations between Christians and Muslims. Social science recognizes that there are various points of view, and that these points of view come from groups and their relative position in society. Have you ever tried looking at and experiencing Philippine society as a Moro? You may experience the anti-Muslim bias in workplaces, in schools, in communities, in politics, and in society in general.

Tomorrow we will celebrate Eid’l Fitr, one of the most important days for Muslims. Do you know that the Philippines declared this as holiday only in 2002? That means prior to 2002, Muslims worked during Eid’l Fitr! Imagine yourself as a Christian working during Good Friday or Christmas!

Certain groups are discriminated by the structures of dominance. Edwin Ardener labels them as muted groups. He argues that their mutedness is not only in public discourse, but their mutedness remain because their aspirations cannot be expressed or realized using the modes of expression and models by the dominant group. Last Independence Day, this mutedness was challenged by our student. However, such articulation and breaking from mutedness gained minimal public support, unfortunately. To my mind, the desired impact is not met because of the use of the dominant mode of expression (i.e. Tagalog) and content (national issue). Had that student shouted in Bikol and the content was a valid grievance of Bicolanos (e.g. Ano an naginibohan mo para sa Bikol? Haen an major na projecto mo digdi? Mayaman an Bikol, tano ta tios kami? Itao an poder sa local, federalismo ngonian na!), public support might have been gained.

(Kindly watch out if PNoy has major projects in Bicol. This apparent neglect of the government has been the primary reason why Bicol tends to vote for opposition. In some parts of Bicol, there are even two governments.)

In my PhD, I studied different categorical groups. I investigated peoples’ willingness to allow social distance towards religious out-groups in the Philippines. I found out that people are willingto minimize social distance in private domains (e.g. friends, classmates and neighbors), but not in public domains (e.g. mayor, police and civil servant).It is because of power. People exclude religious out-groups in matters that involve power. In an article that got published in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility Journal, I tested factors that could impact on this social distance between Christians and Muslims in the Philippines. I found out that out-group trust is a strong predictor of social distance. That means out-group trust is likely to reduce social distance between categorical groups. The recent peace agreement is a clear manifestation of out-group trust. Another example is the choice of Muslim woman as a news anchor in a national TV in 2012. It was a historic first for Muslims.

Now do you want to reduce social distance between Christians and Muslims? Show some trust. Will you vote for a Muslim running for senator? Since 1995, our Philippine Senate has never had a Muslim member.

Sociological imagination invites us to grasp the intersections between our role in society and conversely, the role of society in our lives. The task at hand is to locate the state of the nation in this imagination. Thank you! Dios mabalos po!

Lecture Notes on Culture: Why we do what we do

• Anthropology – study of culture

• How and why cultures differ and are similar

• Theoretical orientation – attitude about how cultural phenomenon is to be explained.

Early evolutionism(Tylor and Morgan)

   - culture evolved from simple to complex- 3 stages of development  savagery, barbarism, civilization

    - to account for variations – societies in different stages of evolution

Historical Particularism – (Boas) disagreed with evolutionists that cultures are governed by universal laws
-   cultural trait has to be studied in the context of the society in which it appeared

    - only after body of the data was gathered could theories be proposed and interpretation made.

Diffusionism - British school – most aspects of civilization were developed in Egypt and diffused to other parts

 - German-Austrian school- from different cultural complex

 - American school- features of culture area to a geographical culture center

                Question: how a culture accepts and rejects? 

Functionalism (Malinowski)

- Cultural traits serve the needs of individuals in a society
- function of cultural traits is its ability to satisfy same basic needs or derived needs of the members of the group

       - needs include nutrition, reproduction, bodily comfort, safety, relaxation, movement, growth

       Question: Needs are universal, then why ways of satisfying them vary from one culture to another?

Structural functionalism (Radcliffe-Brown) - aspects of social behavior maintain society's social structure rather than satisfying individual needs

         Question: How to determine whether a cultural trait is contributing to the maintenance of society or not?

Psychological approaches (Benedict and Mead) - cultures could be characterized in terms of different personality types

     - Culture and personality types are linked

     - Culture is responsible for personality differences between sexes

Structuralism (Levi-Strauss) - culture as a surface representation of the underlying structure of the human mind which is predisposed to think and behave in terms of binary opposition

          - Like grammar in language, there are rules of thoughts that underlie culture

Ethnoscience - attempts to derive these rules from logical analysis as free as possible from contamination of biases

     - if we can know the rules of behavior , then we can explain much of what people do and why they do it

Cultural ecology (Steward) - explanation for some aspects of cultural variation could be found in the adaptation of societies to their environment

    - cultural traits can be adaptive or maladaptive

Political economy - assumes external forces (e.g. politics, economy, world history) explain the way a society changes and adapts

---------------

Ethnography - a (thick) description and analysis of a single society

Participant observation (fieldwork) - systematic observation and data collection

Reference:
Ember, C., & Ember, M. (1990). Cultural Anthropology. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc.

Bicol Protest during the Philippine Independence Day: Continuing revolution from national to local

The day was supposed to be a celebration of something local in the national revolution. Unfortunately, as in any mainstream history, the national took up and consumed any local incidences.

On the 116^th year of the Philippine independence, President Aquino came to Naga City in Bicol to recognize and highlight the role of Bicol in the 1898 Philippine revolution by remembering the martyrdom of 15 Bicolanos. Finally, a national event becoming a local one, I thought.

While he was at it, one student-activist interrupted and heckled him in Tagalog language. “Alis pork barrel king. Walang pagbabago sa bansa!” (Out pork barrel king! No change in the country.) Some meters away and out of sight from the president, hundreds of other activists were echoing the same sentiments.

Meanwhile, thousands of those who came to celebrate the day in Plaza Quince Martires, including me, were stunned by such boldness of one activist. I heard comments, “Ano na ‘yan pasale, dae man lang pigrespeto si ocassion asin bisita” (What kind of trick, it never considers respecting the occasion and guest). Many said in jest, “Dae man lang nagsabi, inibanan co cuta.” (He did not tell, I could have joined).

In Bikol culture, a guest is accorded habitually with over-welcoming and warm gestures. Thus disrupting an event with guests in attendance is not consistent with what is expected of Bikolano hosts.

However, the activist evidently did not act like a Bikolano host. Or probably he did not want to welcome certain guests and be a host to this event. Certainly for the police who apprehended him at that time, he was certainly not a Bicolano because he shouted in Tagalog language. It was not only the language that could be of interest to point out here. The message or content of the protest could also be examined. Essentially, the message was of national issue seeking national attention.

Had the language and message been of local, many Bicolanos and Bicolanas could have been sympathetic and supportive of the activist. Had he cried for autonomy for example, like others who said he could have joined him, I would have joined as well.

When the activist was dragged past near my location, he was still shouting, “walang pagbabago…”(no change), and obviously resisting several police officers who were dragging him away from Plaza Quince Martires heading to a another plaza called Plaza Quezon where I last saw a group of police surrounding him.

From a plaza named after local heroes to a plaza named after a national hero, it was like a local concern being brought to national attention which often suppressed any local origins. The revolution in 1898 will always be viewed as national, as if regional efforts reflected the national project. After 116 years, that project needs to be localized to embody regional aspiration for liberation. The revolution must be continued to finally free us from the hands of the guests in our homeland.

Course Outline for S/Y 2014-2015

Department of Social Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences

Ateneo de Naga University

Naga City, The Philippines

SOC 001: Society and culture with family planning         

First semester, SY 2014-2015                          Menandro S. Abanes <mensab2004@yahoo.com>

 Consultation hours: MW (2:30-4:30) Social Sciences Department

Course description and outline

How do we see the world? How do we make sense of it? This course will introduce two disciplines, sociology and anthropology, which will help us in trying to understand humans who inhabit this world and their societies that structure it. We will learn sociological and anthropological perspectives which will locate our experiences of this world within the larger scale of society characterized by social structure and system. Through this course, we will be able to view familiar things in a new light, find new meanings in the old and new ways of doing things, and gain understanding and insight of the rapidly globalizing and changing world.

I.                    The discipline of sociology

A.      Introduction

Ø  Key concepts: sociological imagination, history and biography

Ø  Readings: The promise of sociology by C. Wright Mills (pp. 19-26) and Invitation to sociology by Peter Berger (pp. 3-7) in Down to earth sociology (9^th Ed.) by James Henslin

B.      Theoretical perspectives in sociology

Ø  Key concepts: functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interactionism

Ø  Readings: Doing sociological research (pp. 27-30); The presentation of self by Erving Goffman (pp. 106-115) and The uses of poverty: The poor pay all by Herbert Gans (pp. 314-320) in Down to earth sociology (9^th Ed.) by James Henslin

Ø  Requirement: Newspaper clipping that shows any of the perspectives

II.                  The discipline of anthropology

A.      Culture: Why we do what we do

Ø  Key concepts: culture as learned and shared, material and non-material culture, components of culture (gestures, languages, values, etc.)

Ø  Reading: The cultural context of social life (pp. 69-71) and Body ritual among the Nacirema by Horace Miner (pp. 73-77) in Down to earth sociology (9^th Ed.) by James Henslin

B.      How culture is studied: Participant observation

Ø  Key concepts: fieldwork, ethnocentrism, cultural relativism

Ø  Reading: Street corner society by William Foote Whyte (pp. 59-67) in in Down to earth sociology (9^th Ed.) by James Henslin

III.                Research process and methods

A.      Human inquiry and research model

Ø  Key concepts: research model, surveys, experiments, data-gathering

Ø  Reading: How sociologists do research by James Henslin (pp. 31-42) in Down to earth sociology (9^th Ed.) by James Henslin

B.      Practice of research

Ø  Key concepts: theory, inductive, deductive, quantitative, qualitative

Ø  Reading: The role of theory in sociology by Janet Saltzman Chafetz (pp. 15-20) in Readings for introducing sociology (Ed.) Richard Larson and Ronald Knapp

Ø  Requirement: Participant observation on your own social group/neighborhood

IV.                Enculturation/socialization

A.      Social interaction and structure

Ø  Key concepts: agents of socialization, institutions, self-emergence

Ø  Reading: Town fiesta: An anthropologist’s view by Frank Lynch (pp. 219-236) in Philippine society and the individual

Ø  Requirement: A sociological paper written in one’s native language

B.      Family and kinship

Ø  Key concepts: family planning, marriage, kinship

Ø  Reading: The elemental Filipino family by Yen Makabenta http://www.livinginthephilippines.com/philippine_articles/elemental_family.html

C.      Deviance and control

Ø  Key concepts: breaching, norms, rules, labeling, anomie

Ø  Reading: Suicide by Emile Durkheim (pp. 125-131) in Readings for introducing sociology (Ed.) Richard Larson and Ronald Knapp

V.                  Stratification

A.      Sex and gender

Ø  Key concepts: identity, roles, social construction of gender

Ø  Reading: Fraternities and rape on campus by Patricia Martin and Robert Hummer (pp. 353-362)

B.      Class and inequality

Ø  Key concepts: status, power, social mobility, prestige, patron-client relations

Ø  Reading: Big and little people: Social class in the rural Philippines by Frank Lynch (pp. 104-111) in Philippine society and the individual

C.      Categorical differences (ethnicity and religion)

Ø  Key concepts: ethnicity, religion, social distance, trust, identification

Ø  Reading: Ethno-religious groups, identification, trust and social distance in the ethno-religiously stratified Philippines by Menandro Abanes et al. in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 

      http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0276562414000079

VI.                Social change

Ø  Key concepts: modernization, globalization, trends

Ø  Readings: The Mcdonaldization of society by George Ritzer (pp. 494-504) in Down to earth sociology (9^th Ed.) by James Henslin

Ø  Requirement: A research paper due on the final examination date