From your readings to this point it should be clear that sociologists are interested in how the social categories of gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity are socially constructed and how these categories come to reflect and reinforce economic and other forms of inequality. To this end interpretive and interactionist approach have tended to focus on the former (social construction) and critical approaches, including feminist approaches have centred the latter (inequities and the maintenance of these). In the end, however, the study of gender, race and social inequality, perhaps more than any other, underscores how both micro and macro approaches are necessary.

Interpretive and Symbolic Interactionist theories of gender and sex

Symbolic interactionism aims to understand human behaviour by analyzing the central role of symbols in human interaction. Ideas about gender and race are continually recreated in everyday forms of interaction. Charles H. Cooley’s concept of the “looking-glass self” (1902) is relevant here (see Chapter 5. Socialization), as is the dramaturgical approach of Goffman. Cooley suggests that one’s determination of self is based mainly on the view of others in society that one interacts with (for instance, if other people perceive a man as masculine, then that man will perceive himself as masculine) and Goffman adds that interaction is something of a social dance where we play roles, improvise and react to the responses we get from our ‘audience’. Through such interaction we take on gender and racial identities and these come to feel ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ although the cross cultural research shows that they are specific to particular times and places.

Interpretive sociologists influenced by the study of semiotics — the science of signs — point to deep and often hidden or unconscious structures of language that take the form of binary oppositions to explain this. Binary oppositions are paired terms like male/female, rationality/emotion, mind/body, culture/nature, black/white, etc. that carry opposed or opposite meanings. Binary pairs, particularly binary opposites, form the elementary structure of meaning in all human signifying systems, yet there are no binary relations in nature, only in culture. It is a scheme imposed on nature. Observable differences between males and females are translated into conceptual opposites, not because of any inherent properties each might have, but only because they are conceptually opposed. Similarities are discarded.

An example of this is the phrase “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” used in pop psychology. Ideas of men and women being complete opposites invite simplistic comparisons that rely on stereotypes: men are practical, women are emotional; men are strong, women are weak; men lead, women support. Binary notions seem to be built into the language a society uses to communicate, but they mask complicated realities and variety in the realm of social identity. They also erase the existence of individuals, such as multiracial or mixed-race people and people with non-binary gender identities, who may identify with neither of the assumed categories or with multiple categories. This structuured binarism, embedded in language and culture, shapes our interaction with others. Those presenting as ambiguous in race or gender are consistently put in positions where others demand, sometimes with violence, that they conform to the expected binary.

This binarism also helps us understand how race and ethnicity are shaped by interaction and representation. Representation refers to the process by which meaning is produced and circulated in a society through the use of language, signs and images to stand in for, or re-present, things (Hall, 1997). In The Imaginary Indian (1992), Francis describes the representations of Indigenous people that emerged during the period of colonization and have continued to operate up until the present day. Through 19th century painting and photography, and later through travelling road shows and film, Indigenous people were alternately presented as a vanishing people — noble, romantic, ethnographic, exotic, but also childlike and gullible — and a lawless people — drunkards, brawlers, and sexually licentious.  Similar types of representation have been used to characterize other minority groups in Canada. The Chinese, for example, were represented as a “yellow peril” or menace to Western Civilization and unsuitable for Canadian citizenship. JH Preston’s (1881) characterization was typical:

“Their civilization, such as it has been, is effete and worn out, and their intellect is of a low order, being confined to cunning, which we are told is the wisdom of the weak. They have the talent of imitation, but do not possess the inventive faculty. They never add to the little they will consent to learn” (J. Preston (1881), cited in Wang, 2006).

Central here is the way that race and ethnicity are used not only as a source of meaning for oneself but also as a way of distinguishing ‘the other’. The “normal” Western self is often assumed to be a bounded, independent, rational decision-making, reflexive agent, able to autonomously pursue their own goals. The non-Western self then becomes the opposite of these traits: unbounded, dependent, irrational, non-reflexive, unable to separate unique individuality from social role, and unable to independently pursue individual goals. Two versions of this that have existed in both the sociological literature and popular culture as products of colonialism are orientalism and primitivism. Orientalism is the practice of projecting a series of exotic characteristics onto “Asia,” “the East” or “the Orient” that are said to be the opposite of Western characteristics. Oriental culture is therefore represented as passive, static, ahistorical, secretive and despotic, while the oriental self is sensual, emotional, lethargic, rigid, irrational, and mysterious (Said, 1978). Primitivism is the similar practice of projecting “savagery” or premodern characteristics onto Indigenous and racialized peoples around the globe. Primitive cultures are represented as simple, timeless, collective, pre-scientific, ritualistic, fetishistic, bound by tradition, and ‘pure’ whereas the primitive self is instinctual, irrational, unindividuated, submerged in nature, sometimes “noble” and sometimes “childlike” (Diamond, 1969).

Why do in-group/out-group boundaries, like we see in racial or ethnic group interaction, form? One explanation is that groups form boundaries when there is competition with other groups for scarce resources. Another is that they form to defend status, privileges and self-esteem of members by denigrating outsider groups. The Robber’s Cave Study in the 1950s provided interesting but ambiguous answers to this question (Sherif et al., 1961). In the formal published study, two groups of white, middle class, 11-year-old boys were sent to a summer camp, but kept separate for a week to bond. They named themselves the Eagles and the Rattlers, which they stenciled onto t-shirts and flags. Towards the end of the week they were able to catch glimpses of the other group but not directly interact. An antipathy began to develop in each group against the “outsiders” or “intruders.” The researchers, posing as camp counselors and staff, then introduced direct competition for scarce resources between the groups in the form of baseball games and other sports with a winner-takes-all prize of a trophy and pocket-knives. Conflict between the groups ensued with food fights, the Eagles burning the Rattlers’ flag, the Rattlers retaliating by ransacking the Eagles’ cabins, and a final fist fight, which the camp counselors intervened to prevent. In the third phase of the experiment, a common crisis was created in the form of a blocked water supply, which both groups were tasked with cooperating to resolve. The boys did manage to overcome their hostility to solve the problem but some enmity remained.

The outcome of the experiment seems to support both explanations. Competition over scarce resources created an incentive to harden group boundaries, until a common problem emerged that demanded cooperation. This is the basis of realistic conflict theory, which predicts that in group/out group antagonism will develop if there is a competition for a resource in which only one group can be the winner (i.e.,a zero-sum game) and will not diminish unless superordinate goals requiring cooperation can be established (Sherif, 1966).

A recent development in the formation of racial and ethnic difference and inequality has been the prominence of identity and identity politics as ways in which people understand themselves, as opposed to the universal properties of “humanity” that were the focus of earlier class struggles and civil or human rights movements. People increasingly define themselves less by what they do (for a living, etc.) and more by what they are,  or what they imagine themselves to be.  Manuel Castells (2010) defines identity as “the process by which a social actor recognizes itself and constructs meaning primarily on the basis of a given cultural Attribute or set of Attributes.” He contextualizes this historically in terms of the dramatic social transformations of globalization and technological advancement. As he puts it, “in such a world of uncontrolled, confusing change, people tend to regroup around  primary identities…. In a world of global flows of wealth, power, and images, the search for identity, collective or individual, ascribed or constructed, becomes the fundamental source of social meaning.” As discussed earlier, race or ethnicity are sources of these cultural attributes, sometimes imposed on groups and sometimes chosen or actively invented. Either way, Castells argues that identity is “becoming the main, and sometimes the only, source of meaning in an historical period characterized by widespread destructuring of organizations, delegitimation of institutions, fading away of major social movements, and ephemeral cultural expressions” (Castells, 2010). In such a world, far from being a remnant of the past, racial, gender and sexual identities come to more prominance and the inequities of these more pressing in our lives.

In the end, however, the strength of these approaches is in their ability to highlight the fluidity of social constructions and the need for these to be maintained through the sometimes unpredictable process of interaction and negotiation. What appears rather fixed at this moment is always subject to change. While our great-grandfathers fighting in WWI were very receptive to the drag performances that brought some humanity to a horrible situation, today drag performances have become political, and physical, conflicts.

Apparently then, while focusing on micro level interaction, sociologists working with this perspective acknowledge that the context of interaction is not devoid of power relations. In the process of creating and maintaining common definitions of the situation, some have more power than others and the situations we interact in priviledge some more than others. The study of such power relations and struggles is the focus of critical and feminist soliological approaches.

Critical Sociology

According to critical sociology, society is structured by relations of power and domination among social groups including genders that determine access to scarce resources. When sociologists examine gender from this perspective, they can view men as the dominant group and women as the subordinate group. According to critical sociology, social problems and contradictions are created when dominant groups exploit or oppress subordinate groups. Consider the women’s suffrage movement or the debate over women’s “right to choose” their reproductive futures. Even in societies with norms and laws supporting gender equality, it is difficult for women to rise to equality with men, as dominant group members create the rules for success and opportunity in society (Farrington and Chertok, 1993). The term ‘greedy work’ has been coined to explain how many well-paying male dominated jobs, from upper management positions to architecture, consultancy and finance are designed to expect long, irregular hours of work. While such schedules may be unhealthy for workers and lead to less productive workplaces, the workplace culture has been set by men, many having female partners doing the unpaid domestic labour that allows them to adapt to such demands.

Friedrich Engels (1884) studied family structure and gender roles in the 1880s in the historical context of the development of capitalism. Engels showed that the transition from the household, as the site of production under feudalism, to the capitalist workplace separate from the household lead to a double exploitation of women. The same exploitative owner-worker relationship seen in the labour force is seen in the household, with women assuming the role of the household proletariat. Women’s unpaid domestic labour supports not only the household itself (and the raising of new workers), but the ability of their male partners, (and increasingly their own), to provide labour to employers. Women are therefore doubly exploited in capitalist society: both when they work outside the home and when they work within the home. This is due to women’s dependence on men for the attainment of wages, which is even more constraining for women who are entirely dependent upon their spouses for economic support. Contemporary critical sociologists suggest that when women become wage earners, they can gain power in the family structure and create more democratic arrangements in the home, although they may still carry the majority of the domestic burden, as noted earlier (Risman and Johnson-Sumerford, 1998).

Feminist theory is a type of critical sociology that examines inequalities in gender-related issues. It also uses the critical approach to examine the maintenance of gender roles and inequalities. Radical feminism, in particular, considers the role of the family in perpetuating male dominance. In patriarchal societies, men’s contributions are seen as more valuable than those of women. Women are essentially the property of men. Through the feminist struggles for women’s emancipation in post-feudal modern society, the property relationship has been formally eliminated. Nevertheless, women still tend to be relegated to the private sphere, where domestic roles define their primary status identity. Men’s roles and primary status continues to be largely defined by their activities in the public or occupational sphere.

As a result, women often perceive a disconnect between their personal experiences and the way the world is represented by society as a whole. Dorothy Smith referred to this phenomenon as bifurcated consciousness (Smith, 1987). There is a division between the directly lived, bodily experience of women’s worlds (e.g., their responsibilities for looking after children, aging parents, and household tasks) and the dominant, abstract, institutional world to which they must adapt (the work and administrative world of bureaucratic rules, documents, and cold, calculative reasoning). Patriarchal perspectives and arrangements, widespread and taken for granted, are built into the relations of ruling. As a result, not only do women find it difficult to see their experiences acknowledged in the wider patriarchal culture, their viewpoints also tend to be silenced or marginalized to the point of being discredited or considered invalid.

For feminist scholars of the 1970s and 1980s, the point of identifying gender norms and social conventions was to undercut their cultural force—to free people from behavioral and social expectations that were based on their biological sex. For some gender nonconformists, traits traditionally identified as masculine or feminine are accepted as masculine or feminine, but nonconformists want the freedom to express their gender with whatever combination of traits they choose. For example, a person can present as a “femme” transgender woman and still consider themselves as nonbinary (Williams 2019). Moreover, any particular gender identity can be ephemeral—that is, transitory and temporary—as opposed to an enduring commitment. For some gender nonconformiststhe very idea of “gender” seems obsolete and society should embrace postgenderism. Shulamith Firestone advocated the spirit of postgenderism even before “gender” entered the vocabulary of feminist politics. She wrote in 1970 that, “[The] end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally” (Firestone, 1970).

Note: The last two paragraphs have been adapted from from Edward Schiappa, 2021, The Transgender Exigency: Defining Sex and Gender in the 21st Century, Routledge. Used under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/) license.

Critical sociological theories address racial and ethnic inequality in ways similar, though not identical to, the analysis of gender inequality. These approaches aim to explain the social context in which particular experiences and disadvantages based on race or ethnicity are embedded. How did racial and ethnic inequality form in the first place, how does it structure society today, and in which direction is it going in the future?

A critical sociology perspective of Canadian history would examine the numerous past and current struggles between the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) ruling class and racial and ethnic minorities (Porter, 1965), noting specific conflicts that have arisen when the dominant group perceived a threat from the minority group. Modern Canada itself can in fact be described as a product of internal colonialism. While Canada was originally a colony itself, the product of external colonialism, first by the French and then the English, it also adopted colonial techniques like the Indian Reservation system internally as it became an independent nation state. Internal colonialism refers to the process of uneven regional and social development by which a dominant group establishes its control over existing populations within a country. Typically it works by maintaining segregation among  colonized subjects, which enables different geographical distributions of people, different wage and educational levels, and different occupational concentrations to form based on race or ethnicity. Institutional racism, discussed earlier in this chapter, is one means by which this segregation and unequal treatment has been institutionally organized and perpetuated.

This approach can be used to explain how existing inequalities of race and ethnicity, and the continuance of these, can be explained as a viscious cycle. Prejudices and negative stereotypes lead to differential and unequal treatment of a racialized group which in turn leads to a groups social and economic disadvantages. The dominant group then takes these disadvantages as confirmation of their prejudices — and the cycle continues.

Bringing it all together: Intersectional theory

For critical sociology, addressing the issues that arise when race and ethnicity become the basis of social inequality is a central focus of any emancipatory project. They are often complex problems, however. Feminist sociologist Patricia Hill Collins (b. 1948) developed intersection theory to analyze the combined effects of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, disability and other attributes on inequality. Intersection theory proposes that these sources of inequality cannot be examined independently because they compound their effects (1990). When race is examined sociologically, it can be shown to provide advantages and disadvantages, but it is important to acknowledge the way racial inequality is influenced, for example, by gender, class or disability. Multiple layers of disadvantage intersect to create the way race is experienced.

For example, if sociologists want to understand the effects of discrimination, they must understand that the discrimination that affects a White woman because of her gender is very different from the layered discrimination that affects a poor Asian, Indigenous or Black woman, who is affected by stereotypes related to being poor, being a woman, and being part of a visible minority. In fact labour market discrimination is both gendered and racialized. Block, Galabuzi, and Tranjan (2019) show that in 2016, “Racialized women earned 59 cents for every dollar that non-racialized men earned, while non-racialized women earned 67 cents for every dollar that non-racialized men earned. Little progress was made in reducing this gap over the 10-year period [between 2006 and 2016].” The central message here is not that one source of (dis)advantage is more important than another but rather that the pattern of inequality can only be understood by looking at multiple factors at once. This helps us to understand our own social positions but also informs policy decisions. For example if we know that Queer youth are more likely to find themselves homeless, and to face violence on the street and in shelters, we are awakened to the fact that housing solutions might need to be tailored to this group.

Media Attributions

• Figure 11.12File:Blumenbach’s five races.JPG by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, In the 1795 Treatise on “De generis humani varietate nativa” (Tab II), via Wikimedia Commons, is in the public domain.
• Figure 11.13 David Laird explaining Treaty 8 Fort Vermilion 1899 – NA-949-34 from the Glenbow Museum, via Wikimedia Commons, is in the public domain.
• Figure 11.14 The Heathen Chinee in British Columbia by Canadian Illustrated News, (1879), via the Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia Library (CC-GR-00009). Used with permission.
• Figure 11.15 Auschwitz survivor Sam Rosenzweig displays his identification tattoo by Rudy Purificato, via Wikimedia Commons, is in the public domain.
• Figure 11.16 Herbert Blumer from the American Sociological Association. Used with permission.

IMedia Attributions

• Figure 12.13 Helping families build a future free from poverty by Find Your Feet, via Flickr, is used under a CC BY 2.0 licence.
• Figure 12.14 Pink Helmet on Pink and Black Motorcycle by Anastasia Shuraeva  is used under the Pexels license. 
• Figure 12.15 Female character flowchart by S. Mlawski and Hann Commander, on Overthinking It is used under a CC BY-NC licence.
• Figure 12.16 Emily Murphy, by unknown author at the Provincial Archives of Alberta, via Wikimedia Commons, is in the public domain.
• Figure 12.17 Woman’s work is never done by Evil Erin, via Flickr, is used under a CC BY 2.0 licence.
• Figure 12.18 [No title. Photo suspected to be from 1960 Better Homes and Gardens, 1960 “Decorating Ideas” issue], uploaded by Ethan, via Flickr, is used under a CC BY 2.0 licence.
• Figure 12.19 Portrait of Friedrich Engels, by photographer William Hall (1826–ca. 1898), via Wikimedia Commons, is in the public domain.
• Figure 12.20 A trans-masculine gender non-conforming person and transfeminine nonbinary person drinking coffee in bed, by Zackary Drucker, via the The Gender Spectrum Collection. is used under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence .
• Figure 12.21 Female patient with sleep hysteria from Nouvelle iconographie de la Salpêtriêre/Société de neurologie de Paris, 1906-18 in the Wellcome Collection, via Wikimedia Commons, is used under a CC BY 4.0 licence.