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Sociology
Chapter 1 Vocabulary
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| understanding human behavior by placing it within its broader social context | sociological perspective |
| people who share a culture and a territory | society |
| the group memberships that people have because of their location in history and society | social location |
| the application of systematic methods to obtain knowledge and the knowledge obtained by those methods | science |
| the intellectual and academic disciplines designed to explain and predict events in our natural environments | natural sciences |
| the intellectual and academic disciplines designed to understand the social world objectively by means of controlled and repeated observations | social sciences |
| a statement that goes beyond the individual case and is applied to a broader group or situation | generalization |
| recurring characteristics or events | patterns |
| those things that "everyone knows" are true | common sense |
| using objective, systematic observations to test theories | the scientific method |
| the application of the scientific approach to the social world | positivism |
| the scientific study of society and human behavior | sociology |
| Marx's term for the struggle between capitalists and workers | class conflict |
| Marx's term for capitalists, those who own the means of production | bourgeoisie |
| Marx's term for the exploited class, the mass of workers who do not own the means of production | proletariat |
| the degree to which members of a group or society feel united by shared values and other social bonds; also known as social cohesion | social integration |
| the view that a sociologist's personal values or biases should not influence social research | value free |
| the standards by which people define what is desirable or undesirable, good or bad, beautiful or ugly | values |
| total neutrality | objectivity |
| repeating a study in order to test its findings | replication |
| a German word used by Weber that is perhaps best understood as "to have insight into someone's situation" | Verstehen |
| the meanings that people give their own behavior | subjective meanings |
| Durkheim's term for a group's patterns of behavior | social facts |
| sociological research whose purpose is to make discoveries about life in human groups, not to make changes in those groups | basic or pure sociology |
| the use of sociology to solve problems- from the micro level of family relationships to the macro level of crime and pollution | applied sociology |
| a general statement about how some parts of the world fit together and how they work; an explanation of how two or more facts are related to one another | theory |
| a theoretical perspective in which society is viewed as composed of symbols the people use to establish meaning, develop their views of the world, and communicate with one another | symbolic interactionism |
| a theoretical framework in which society is viewed as composed of various parts, each with a function that, when fulfilled, contribute to society's equilibrium; also known as functionalism and structural functionalism | functional analysis |
| a theoretical framework in which society is viewed as composed of groups that are competing for scarce resources | conflict theory |
| a examination of large-scale patterns of society | macro-level analysis |
| an examination of small-scale patterns of society | micro-level analysis |
| what people do when they are in one another's presence | social interaction |
| communication without words through gestures, use of space, silence, and so on | nonverbal interaction |
| the growing interconnections among nations due to the expansion of capitalism | globalization |
| capitalism (investing to make profits within a rational system) becoming the globes dominant economic system | globalization of capitalism |
| Phase I | 1900-1920 focus: research to improve society (collected data) |
| Phase II | 1920-1941 focus: gathering research and not so much for reform sake |
| Phase III | 1945- present focus: apply research they've gained to affect change |
| discuss the different views of sociology | Analytical standpoint is preferred because it doesn't change society. Social reform fixes problems, however, they could make a situation worse |
| father of sociology | Auguste Comte |
| Herbert Spencer | applied "Social Darwinism" to the study of society bringing survival of the fittest to the society |
| Karl Marx | proposed an idea of class conflict; talked about capitalists being the upper class called the working class called the bourgeoisie; the lower class and they could never move up called the proletariat |
| W.E.B DuBois | one of the first black sociologists; began as just collecting data but after years of frustration because he didn't see any progress he became a social reformer. became the founder of the NAACP |