Sociology Week 5

In a series of __________, sociologist Harold Garfinkel assigned different activities to his students to see how breaking the unspoken rules of behavior created confusion.

breaching experiments

__________ emphasize that social institutions exist because they perform five essential tasks: replacing members; teaching new members; producing, distributing, and consuming goods and services; preserving order; and providing and maintaining a sense of purpose.

functionalists

In __________ societies, the basic social unit is the kinship group or family. People do not have private households or residences. Instead, they live in small groups of about 25 to 40 people.

hunting and gathering

_________ societies are mostly egalitarian. Because it is impossible to accumulate a surplus of food, there are few resources upon which individuals or groups can build a power base.

hunting and gathering

Social institutions are transformed in __________ societies. The family diminishes in significance as the economy, education, and political institutions grow in size and complexity.

industrial

__________ involves the application of scientific knowledge to the technology of production, thus making it possible for machines to do the work previously done by people or animals.

industrialism

In the context of sociologist Emile Durkheim's perspective on stability and change in societies, __________ refers to the social cohesion of preindustrial societies, in which there is minimal division of labor and people feel united by shared values and common social bonds.

mechanical solidarity

_________ societies are characterized by an information explosion and an economy in which large numbers of people either provide or apply information or are employed in service jobs.

postindustrial

According to the text, __________ occurs when the expectations associated with a role are unclear. For example, it is not always clear when the provider-dependent aspect of the parent-child relationship ends.

role ambiguity

__________ occurs when incompatible role demands are placed on a person by two or more statuses held at the same time.

role conflict

__________ occurs when incompatible demands are built into a single status that a person occupies.

role strain

A(n) __________ is a false belief or prediction that produces behavior that makes the originally false belief come true.

self-fulfilling prophecy

The family, religion, education, the economy, the government, mass media, sports, science and medicine, and the military are all examples of:

social institutions

__________, or cohesion, refers to a group's ability to maintain itself in the face of obstacles. It exists when social bonds, attractions, or other forces hold members of a group in interaction over a period of time.

social solidarity

According to social scientist Gerhard Lenski, societies change over time through the process of __________, the changes that occur as a society gains new technology.

sociocultural evolution

The process by which our perception of reality is shaped largely by the subjective meaning that we give to an experience is referred to as:

the social construction of reality

_________ statuses are thought to be gained as a result of personal ability or successful competition.

achieved

In __________ societies, social inequality is the highest of all preindustrial societies in terms of both class and gender. The two major classes are the landlords and the peasants. The landlords own the fields and the harvests produced by the peasants.

agrarian