Sociology
Positivism creator
Auguste Comte
Social imagination creator
C. Wright Mills
Social facts
Durkheim laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, rituals, and all cultural rules that govern social life.
Dramaturgical analysis
Erving Goffman Using theater as an analogy for social interaction and recognized that people's interactions showed patterns of cultural scripts
Function
Alfred Radcliff-Brown -part it played in social life as a while, and therefore the contribution it makes to social stability
Conflict Theory
Karl Marx looks at society as a competition for limited resources Macro-level
Symbolic interactionism
Mead micro-level theory that focuses on the relationship among individuals within a society
Figuration creator
Norbert Elias
Meta-analysis
Rotton-Kelly full moon's effect on behavior
Hypothesis
a testable proposition
Theory
a way to explain different aspects of social interactions
Social imagination
an awareness of the relationship between a person's behavior and experience and the wider culture that shaped the person's choices and perceptions.
Reification
an error of treating an abstract concept as though it has a real, material existence
Macro-level
analysis look at trends among and between large groups and society
Manifest functions
are the consequences of a social process that are sought or anticipated
Social Facts
are the laws, moral, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and all of the culture rules that govern social life, that may contribute to these changes in the family
Latent functions
are the unsought consequences of a social process
Grand theories
attempt to explain large-scale relationships and answer fundamental questions
Max Weber
believed it was difficult to use standard scientific methods to accurately predict the behavior of groups, but rather argued that influence of culture on human behavior had to be taken account.
Karl Marx
believed that societies grew and changed as a result of the struggles of different social classes over the means of production, believed capitalism would collapse and give rise to communism
Indepedent variable
cause of change
Survey
collect data from sujects who respond to a series of questions about behaviors and opinions
Operational definition
define the concept in terms of the physical or concrete steps it takes to objectively measure it
Capitalism
economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of good and the means to produce them
Communism
economic system under which there is no private or corporate ownership, everything is communally and distributed as needed
Emile Durkheim
established sociology as a formal academic discipline by establishing the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux. -people rise to their proper levels in society based on merit -Suicide
Random sample
every person in population has the same chance of being chosen for the study
Empirical evidence
evidence comes from direct experience, scientifically gathered data, or experimentation
Constructivism
extension of symbolic interaction theory which proposes that reality is what humans cognitively construct it to be
Auguste Comte
fathers of sociology, important role in developing sociology
George Herbert Mead
focused on the ways in which the mind and the self were developed as a result of social processes
Culture
group's shared practices, values, and beliefs
Reliability
how likely the results are to be replicated
validity
how well the study measures what it was designed to measure
Case Study
in depth analysis of a single event, situation, or individual
Society
is a group of people who live in a defined geographic area, who interact with one another, and who share a common culture
Sociology
is the study of groups and group interactions, societies and social interactions, from small and personal groups to very large groups
Sample
manageable number of subjects who represent a larger population
Ethnography
observation of the social perspective and cultural values of an entire social setting
Interview
one on one convo
Generalized others
organized and generalized attitude of a social group, coined by Mead
Hawthorne Effect
people change their behavior because they know they are being watched as part of a study
Population
people who are the focus of study
Transferable skills
people whose knowledge and education can be applied in a variety of settings and whose skills will contribute to various tasks
Paradigms
philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and the experiment
Figuration
process of simultaneously analyzing the behavior of individuals and the society that shapes that behavior
Herbert Spencer
published The Study of Sociology, favored a form of government that allowed market forces to control capitalism -Survival of the Fittest -Functionalism -Social Institutions
Participant observation
researchers join people and participate in the group's activities for the purpose of observing
Literature review
review of existing similar studies
Functionalism
sees society as a structure with interrelated parts designed to meet the biological and social needs of the individuals in the society
Dysfunctions
social process that have undesirable consequences for the operation of society
Social solidarity
social ties within a group
Significant others
specific individuals that impacted a person;s life coined by Mead
Dynamic equilibrium
state in which all parts work together to maintain stability
Micro-level
study of small groups and individual interactions
Positivism
study of social patterns via scientific methods
Harriet Martineau
the first woman sociologist, pointed out faults with free enterprise systems in which workers were exploited and impoverished while business owners became waelthy
Dependent variable
the thing that is changed
Anti-positivism
the view that social researchers should strive for subjectivity as they worked to represent social process, cultural norms, and societal values
Interpretive framework
to understand social worlds from the point of view of the participants
Georg Simmel
took an anti-positivism stance and addressed topics such as social conflict, the function of money, individual identity in city life, and fear of outsiders.
Qualitative sociology
understand human behavior through interviews, focus groups, analysis of sources
Verstehen
understand in a deep way, attempt to understand from insider's pov
Quantitative sociology
uses statistical methods ie. surverys
Mary Wollstonecraft
women's condition in society, first feminist thinker
Ibn Khaldun
world's first sociologist; wrote about foundation for both modern sociology and economics, theory of social conflict, comparison of nomadic and sedentary life, political economy, and tribe cohesion to capacity of power