Introduction to Sociology: Ch.1
Verstehen
A German word that means to understand in a deep way.
Society
A group of people who live in a defined geographical area who interact with one another and who share a common culture.
Culture
A group's shared practices, values, and beliefs.
Theory
A proposed explanation about social interactions or society.
Dynamic Equilibrium
A stable state in which all parts of a healthy society work together properly
Dramaturgical Analysis
A technique sociologists use in which they view society through the metaphor of theatrical performance
Hypothesis
A testable proposition.
Functionalism
A theoretical approach that sees society as a structure with interrelated parts designed to meet the biological and social needs of individuals that make up that society.
Symbolic Interactionism
A theoretical perspective through which scholars examine the relationship of individuals within their society by studying their communication (language and symbols)
Conflict Theory
A theory that looks at society as a competition for limited resources.
Macro-level
A wide-scale view of the role of social structures within a society.
Grand Theories
An attempt to explain large-scale relationships and answer fundamental questions such as why societies form and why they change.
Reification
An error of treating an abstract concept as though it has a real, material existence.
Constructivism
An extension of symbolic interaction theory which proposes that reality is what humans cognitively construct it to be.
Harriet Martineau
First woman sociologist. Translates compte's writing from French to English. Inequality and Social Justice.
Karl Marx
German philosopher and economist. Created conflict theory.
Qualitative Sociology
In depth interviews, focus groups, and/or analysis of content sources as the source of its data.
Social Institutions
Patterns of beliefs and behaviors focused on meeting social needs.
Paradigms
Philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and the experiments performed in support of them.
Max Weber
Proposed Antipositivism. Symbolic Interactionism. Iron cage
Herbert Spencer
Published "The Study of Sociology". The first book with the term sociology. Social Darwinism.
Dysfunctions
Social patterns that have undesirable consequences for the operation of society.
Manifest Function
Sought consequences of a social process.
Significant Others
Specific individuals that impact a persons life.
Quantitative Sociology
Statistical methods such as surveys with large numbers of participants.
Emile Durkheim
Studied Social norms between individuals and society. Functionalism. Wrote "Suicide"
Sociological Imagination
The ability to understand how your own past relates to that of other people, as well as to history in general and societal structures in particular.
Auguste Compte
The father of sociology. He reinvented the term sociology and named the scientific study of social patterns positivism.
Social Facts
The laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and all the cultural roles that govern social life.
Generalized others
The organized and generalized attitude of a social group.
Function
The part a recurrent activity plays in the social life as a whole and the contribution it makes to structural continuity.
Figuration
The process of simultaneously analyzing the behavior of an individual and the society that shapes that behavior.
Positivism
The scientific study of social patterns.
Social Solidarity
The social ties that bind a group of people together such as kinship, shared location, and religion.
Micro-level Theories
The study of specific relationships between individuals or small groups.
Sociology
The systematic study of society and social interaction.
Latent Functions
The unrecognized or unintended consequences of a social process.
Antipositivism
The view that social researchers should strive for subjectivity as they worked to represent social processes, cultural norms, and societal values.