Marxism - AQA SOCIOLOGY A LEVEL

?
View mindmap
  • MARXISM
    • Overview
      • structural conflict perspective
      • Biurgeoisie gain wealth through private ownership and expoliitation
      • Proletariat isn't aware of their expolitation
      • Class conflict rarely leads to a revolution because of institutions teaching people to passively accept capitalism
      • Institutions such as family and church convince the masses that the present system is inevitable and natural.
      • Marxists suggest family type emerged with capitalism (akin to FF theory - family adapts to society) and the needs of the capitalist system,
    • Althusser
      • ISA - The process by which the beliefs of the ruling class dominate society. Institutions perpetuate ideology by transmtting the values of the state.i
      • RSA - RSA perpetuate the capitalistic ideology via violence and coercion.
    • Zaretsky
      • Family acts as a safety valve for opressed workng class men, they take out their frustrations to feel like they're in control of their lives in the expolitotative system.
    • Engels
      • Monogamous family emerged because of capitalism
      • Pre capitalism societies lived in primite communism in which there was no private property
      • Property was collectively owned, no families as we know them, 'promiscuous hotde' present instead.
      • Capitalism is a system based on private ownership - the bourgeoisie use their personal wealth to invest for their own profit.
      • Bourgeoisie found a way to keep the wealth amongst your children (mainly sons because you know who your kids are) rather than share it amongst the masses. Monogamous family was the way.
      • This arrangement reproduces inequality - kids of the rich stay rich and poor stay poor. Nuclear family beenfits the elite.
      • - Gender inequality predates capitalism - women barred from owning property, no political power, reduced to housewives.
    • Family socialises people into believing that the capitalist system is fair and uncahngeable. One way it does it is by having  a hierarchy - that teaches children they will always be someone they have to obey.
    • Critcisms
      • - Ignores thriving families who aren't nuclear (family diversity) and that nuclear family is no longer the main type - Family breakdown might e more definicial as divorce is expensive and more money has to be spent to maintain it and later on forming new families.
      • - Too deterministic - assumes people passively accept socialisation, family life and their future is pre-determined. Plenty families reject consumerist lifestyle and bring up their children to be independent thinkers.
      • - Feminist argue that the focus on social class inequalities disregards and downplays the role of patriarchy which is the real source of female oppression - Feminists would point out that those sex inequalities exist within all families despite their social class background.
      • - Marxism ignores the benefits of nuclear family - Both parents supporting their children. The NR point out that the most functional family type to raise children in is the nuclear and since it's found in most societies it suggests its something people realise and actively choose.

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar Sociology resources:

See all Sociology resources »See all Families and households resources »