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Sociology Midterm
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| • Sociology: | systematic study of society and social systematic study of society and social interaction |
| • Society: | people in a defined area who interact and share a culture |
| • Culture: | a group's shared practices, values, and beliefs |
| C. Wright Mills | Credited with sociological imagination |
| • Sociological imagination | linking personal behavior and experience to the wider culture, history, and social structure |
| Micro vs Macro level | small groups and individual interactions vs. large-scale social structures and trends |
| Durkheim | structural functionalism, social facts, social solidarity - things that tie a group of people together, studied suicide rates, founded a university sociology department. society is a system of interdependent parts; focus on solidarity and social order |
| • Social facts | (Durkheim): laws, morals, customs, rituals, and other rules that govern social life |
| (Norbert Elias): | |
| • Figuration | analyzing individuals and the society that shapes them together, since the two cannot be separated |
| • Reification | wrongly treating an abstract idea (like culture) as if it were a real, living thing |
| • Positivism | studying society patterns with the methods of the natural sciences |
| • Auguste Comte | popularized the word sociology (1838), founded positivism |
| • Antipositivism | researchers should aim to understand meanings and subjective experience rather than predict behavior |
| • Max Weber | verstehen, Protestant ethic and capitalism, culture shapes behavior, researcher bias - religion center of change. |
| • Verstehen | understanding a social world deeply, from an insider's point of view |
| • Quantitative sociology | statistics and large surveys. |
| Qualitative sociology: | interviews, focus groups, content analysis |
| hypothesis | a testable proposition |
| • Social institutions | patterns of beliefs and behaviors that meet social needs (family, education, government, religion, economy, healthcare) |
| • Social solidarity: | the ties that bind a group together |
| • Functionalism: | society is a system of interrelated parts meeting needs |
| • Manifest function: | Intended, recognized consequence |
| Latent function: | unintended or unrecognized consequence. |
| Dysfunction | consequence that harms the system |
| • Dynamic equilibrium | stable state when the parts of society work together |
| • Conflict theory: | society is a competition for limited resources, producing inequality culture is unequal and reinforces divisions of class, race, gender, and age; dominant groups shape it |
| • Critical theory: | conflict-based theory aimed at explaining and changing structural inequality |
| • Symbolic interactionism: | society is built through everyday communication and shared symbols culture lives in everyday interactions and the meanings people give symbols |
| • Dramaturgical analysis (Goffman): | social life as theater, with roles and scripts |
| • Constructivism: | reality is what people collectively construct it to be |
| • Significant others vs. generalized others | Mead - specific people who matter to us vs. the organized attitudes of a group |
| • Looking-glass self | Cooley) - we see ourselves through others' reactions |
| • Harriet Martineau | First women to translate Comte from French to English , compared social institutions across countries, wrote on class and women's rights - First feminist, supporter of conflict perspective. |
| • Karl Marx: | Class struggle over the means of production; capitalism vs. communism - society is shaped by class struggle between owners and workers |
| • Herbert Spencer: | Structural functionalism, society as an organism; first book titled with sociology; linked to the phrase survival of the fittest |
| • W.E.B. Du Bois: | rigorous empirical research (Philadelphia study), challenged biological racism, helped found the NAACP. First PhD AA student at Harvard |
| • Jane Addams | Hull House, research that shaped child labor and immigration policy - conflict supporter |
| • Cooley | self develops through social interaction - symbolic interaction |
| George Mead: | s a founder of symbolic interactionism |
| • Robert Merton: | manifest and latent functions, structural functionalism |
| functionalism and conflict theory are | macro-level; |
| Symbolic interactionism is | micro-level. |
| What is the scientific theory? | Ask a question, do literature research, form a hypothesis, design and conduct study, form a conclusion, report results |
| Reliability: | Repeating the study gives consistent results. Validity: the study measures what it claims to measure |
| • Interpretive framework | eeks meaning and understanding rather than prediction, usually qualitative |
| • Material culture: | physical objects and artifacts. |
| Nonmaterial culture: | Ideas, values, beliefs, norms |
| • Cultural universals | government, religion, family, education, economy |
| • Ethnocentrism: | judging another culture by your own standards |
| • Xenocentrism: | believing another culture is superior to your own |
| • Cultural relativism | assessing a culture by its own standards |
| Xenocentrism | believing another culture is superior to your own |
| • Culture shock | disorientation when encountering an unfamiliar culture |
| • Values: | a culture's standards for what is good and just. Beliefs: convictions people hold to be true |
| • Norms: | rules for behavior. Formal norms (laws) are written; informal norms are unwritten |
| • Mores | norms with strong moral weight (violations are serious |
| Folkways: | everyday customs without moral weight |
| • Sanctions: | rewards and punishments that enforce norms |
| • Language and the Sapir-Whorf idea | Language shapes how people perceive the world • |
| • Ideal culture | (what people say they value) |
| real culture | (what they actually do) |
| • Subculture | smaller group within a larger culture, often built on shared identity or interest |
| • Counterculture: | group that rejects and opposes mainstream cultural patterns |
| nnovation: | discovery (finding what exists) |
| invention | (creating something new) |
| • Culture lag | gap between new technology (material culture) and society's cceptance and adjustment (nonmaterial culture) |
| • Globalization | growing worldwide movement and exchange of goods, ideas, and culture |
| • Functionalism: | culture reflects shared values and holds society together by meeting needs |
| • Types of societies | hunter-gatherer, pastoral, horticultural, agricultural, industrial, post-industrial. Each step generally brings more surplus, specialization, and inequality |
| Gesellschaft: | Larger society built on impersonal, formal ties |
| • Gemeinschaft (Tonnies) | : close community built on personal ties. |
| • Mechanical solidarity | (Durkheim): unity from similarity and shared beliefs in small, traditional societies. |
| Organic solidarity: | unity from interdependence and division of labor in complex societies |
| • Social structure: | the patterned relationships and institutions that organize society |
| Ascribed status | assigned at birth - a position in society |
| Achieved status: | earned or chosen. |
| Master status | he status that dominates how others see you |
| • Role: | xpected behavior for a status. |
| Role conflict | demands of two roles clash |
| Role strain: | demands within one role clash |
| • Social construction of reality | what we treat as real is created and maintained through shared interaction |
| • Dramaturgy (Goffman): | front stage (performing for an audience) vs. back stage (relaxing); impression management |
| • Rationalization | (Weber): shift toward efficiency, calculation, and rules |
| Role conflict vs role strain | . Role conflict is between roles; role strain is within one role. |
| • Socialization: | learning societal norms and expectations, accepting society's beliefs, and becoming aware of societal values |
| • Self: | a person's distinct sense of identity, developed through social interaction |
| Nature vs nurture | • Nature: genetic influence on self-development. Nurture: the social environment's role |
| • Moral development: | how people learn what is good and bad in society |
| • Peer group: | people similar in age and social status who share interests |
| • Anticipatory socialization: | preparing for future life roles |
| • Resocialization: | emoving old behaviors and learning new ones in their place |
| • Degradation ceremony: | new members of a total institution lose parts of their old identity and are given new ones |
| Durkheim's suicide researc | e first to make this distinction between psychology and sociology |
| • Harry Harlow | isolated rhesus monkeys showed disturbed behavior; given wire and cloth surrogate mothers, they attached to the cloth mother, so comfort and contact mattered |
| self is built by taking the view of others, in four steps: | preparatory stage (imitation only), play stage (taking one person's role), game stage (juggling several roles at once), and the generalized other |
| • Kohlberg's moral development: | preconventional (judging by direct consequences), conventional (considering others' feelings and what society calls right), postconventional (abstract principles; law and morality can differ) |
| • Society survives by teaching its culture to new members, and individuals need it to | develop a self, language, and cultural skills. Without socialization we literally have no self |
| • Functionalists on society | socialization trains members and perpetuates culture |
| Conflict theorists on society | it reproduces inequality across generations. I |
| Interactionists: | face-to-face exchanges and symbols, such as pink and blue baby clothes |
| Agents of socialization | Family, peer groups, school, workplace, religion, government, mass media |
| Poor families stress what during socialization while wealthy families .... | stress obedience and conformity. tend to stress judgment and creativity (Melvin Kohn), which reproduces class. |
| • Resocialization: | strongest in a total institution (prison, military boot camp, convent, ship at sea), often through a degradation ceremony followed by building a new identity (for example, basic training) |
| • Group: | at least two people who interact with some frequency and share an aligned identity. |
| Aggregate: | people in the same place at the same time with no interaction or shared identity (a line at a coffee shop). |
| Category | people who share traits but are not connected (Millennials) |
| • Primary group | Cooley): small, informal, closest to us, serving expressive. (emotional) functions; the family is the best example. |
| Secondary group of socialization | larger, impersonal, task-focused, and time-limited, serving instrumental functions; groups can shift from secondary to primary over time (even online) |
| • In-group | the group you belong to and see as part of your identity. Out-group: a group you do not belong to and may compete with (William Sumner). In-groups can fuel ethnocentrism, racism, and similar bias |
| • Reference group: | a group you compare yourself to; people usually have several, and they can send competing messages. focus on emotional wellbeing (a counselor or religious leader). People often prefer a mix of both |
| : instrumental leaders are and expressive leaders | goal- and task-oriented (a CEO or general); |
| • Leadership styles | Democratic (builds consensus; can be slow), laissez-faire (hands-off; works with motivated groups, risks drift), authoritarian (issues orders with little feedback; useful for quick or expert decisions, risks alienating members) |
| • Conformity | how much an individual complies with group norms. |
| • Formal organization: | arge, impersonal organizations - Normative or voluntary 0 shared interest Coercive - not voluntary - prison or mental hospital Utilitarian - Joined for material rewards - job/school |
| Total institution | Goffman - members live a controlled life and undergo total resocialization |
| • McDonaldization | he fast-food model spreading to other institutions through efficiency, predictability, calculability, and control. Upside: more goods available worldwide; downside: less variety, and more uniform, generic products. |
| • Iron Rule of Oligarchy | Large organizations end up ruled by a few elites |
| • Bureaucracy | (Weber's ideal type, which means typical, not best). (Weber's ideal type, which means typical, not best): hierarchy of authority, clear division of labor, explicit rules, and impersonality |
| Meritocracy: | membership and promotion based on proven, documented skills |
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