Cambridge International AS and A Level Sociology Chapter 1

Value consensus

agreement about the things a society and by extension individuals within that society thinks are important.

Organic solidarity

type of social solidarity characteristic of industrial societies, in which people are bound together by what they do.

Mechanical solidarity

type of social solidarity characteristic of pre-industrial/ tribal societies, in which people are bound together by who they are rather than what they do.

Modern industrial society

type of society characterized by particular forms of political, economic (mass production, manufacturing) and cultural (science, reason) belief and practices.

Traditional society

type of society in which behavior is characterized by and based on long-standing customs, habits, and traditions.

Beliefs

Ideas that are accepted as true, wither or not they are supported by evidence.

Feminism

a bread range of approaches dealing with male-female relationship from the perspective of the latter.

Researcher bias

a condition in which the presence or behavior of the researcher introduces uncontrolled variables into the research, making it unreliable or invalid.

Radical feminism

a form of feminism that sees females oppression in terms of patriarchal relationships.

Macro-sociology

a large scale sociological approach where the focus is on social structure and institutions.

Positivism

a methodology based on the principle that it is possible and desirable to study the social world in broadly the same way that natural scientists study the natural world.

Interpretivism

a methodology based on the principle that social behavior can only be understood subjectively, by understanding how people interpret situations and, by so doing, give them meaning.

Respondent

a person who is the subject of a research process or who responds to the research.

Social policy

a set of ideas and actions pursued by governments to meet a particular social objective.

Weberian theory

a sociological perspective, driving from the work of Max Weber, focused on understanding and explaining social action.

Ideology

a system of related beliefs.

Scientific method

a way of generating knowledge about the world through an objective, systematic and controlled research.

Capitalism

an economic system based on the pursuit of private profit.

Latent functions

are hidden or sometimes unintended consequences of that same action.

Manifest functions

are intended consequences of an action.

Objectivity

freedom from personal or institutional bias.

Relations of production

in Marxist theory, the social relationship into which people must enter in order to survive, to produce and reproduce their means of life.

Forces of production

in Marxist theory, this refers to how everything- from raw material through labor power to machinery- is organized in the productive process.

Structuralist theory

it focuses on analyzing society in terms of its institutional relationship and their effects on individual beliefs and behaviors.

Social change

on macro level, it involves a major shift in the political, economic or cultural order (such as the change from feudalism to capitalism or pre-modern to modern society).

Marxist theory

philosophy based on the ideas of Karl Marx.

Hypothetico-deductuve method

positivist research design based on the development and systematic testing of hypotheses.

Hypothesis

statement or question that can be systematically tested.

Hypothesis:

statement or question that can be systematically tested.

Social problem

the behavior is seen to cause public friction and/or private misery, usually involving some form of public outcry or call for action.

Social order

the behavior patterns and regularities established by societies that make social action possible.

Determinism

the claim that human behavior is shaped by forces beyond the immediate control of individuals such as social structure or "society".

Value-freedom

the general principle that the conduct and findings of the research process should not be influenced by the values of the researcher.

Economic determinism

the idea that the form taken by economic relationships (such as master and serf in feudal society or employer and an employee is capitalist society) is the most significant relationship in any society.

Non-material culture

the ideas and beliefs they create in related to their culture.

Functionalist theory

the major theory that argues that consensus is the overriding principle on which societies are based. It focuses on the institutional relationships and the functions they perform for the individual and society.

Postmodernism

the microsociological perspective that rejects the modernist claim that the social world can be understood rationally and empirically.

Material culture

the objects people produce related to their culture.

Falsification:

the principle that scientific theories should be framed in such a way that they can be disproved (falsified).

Gender

the social characteristics different societies assign to individuals based on an understanding of their biological or social differences. Where biological sex refers to ideas like male and female, gender refers to ideas about masculinity and femininity.

Social control

the various mechanisms, such as rewards and punishments, that individuals and societies use to maintain order.

Culture

the way of life of a particular group of people.

Globalization

various processes- economic, political and cultural- that occur on a worldwide basis.