SOC-210: Exam 3 Review
Why do sociologists see race and ethnicity as social constructions?
-Race isn't based on biology (for instance, we don't test DNA to determine race). -Racial categories change over time. -Racial categories never have firm boundaries.
What is a form of social stratification in which status is determined by one's family history and background and cannot be changed?
A caste system
How do sociologists define a minority group?
A group whose members are denied access to power and resources
What is racism?
A set of beliefs about the claimed superiority of one racial or ethnic group, used to justify inequality, and often rooted in the assumption that differences between groups are genetic.
What is prejudice?
A thought process - an idea about the characteristics of a group, applied to all members of that group, and unlikely to change regardless of the evidence against it.
What is an objective measure of poverty that is defined by the inability to meet minimal standards for food, shelter, clothing, or health care?
Absolute deprivation
What is discrimination?
An action - Unequal treatment of individuals because of their social group and is usually motivated by prejudice.
What is situational ethnicity?
An ethnic identity that can be either displayed or concealed, depending on its usefulness in a given situation.
What is symbolic ethnicity?
An ethnic identity that is only relevant on specific occasions and does not significantly impact everyday life.
What is color-blind racism?
An ideology that removes race as an explanation for any form of unequal treatment.
What is the term for the system of segregation of racial and ethnic groups that was legal in South Africa between 1948 and 1991?
Apartheid
Poverty can be defined in either relative or absolute terms. How is poverty defined according to relative deprivation?
By comparing the poor with more affluent members of society.
Who owned the means of production?
Capitalists - the Bourgeoisie
What is system of stratification based on status and family history that cannot be changed?
Caste
In the past, bank tellers were overwhelmingly male, but today they are mostly female. What could explain this shift?
Changes in technology made the work easier and less important, which drove down the wages and prestige accorded to the job.
What focuses on the struggle for power and control over scarce resources?
Conflict Theory
What do conflict theorists believe?
Conflict theorists believe men have historically had access to most of society's material resources and privileges. Therefore, it is in their interest to try to maintain their dominant position.
Which theoretical approach would explain race and ethnicity as social constructions that create conflict and inequality?
Conflict theory
What occurs when dominant group members adopt aspects of an oppressed group's culture without permission and for gain?
Culture appropriation
Who believes gender roles have a genetic origin and therefore cannot be changed?
Essentialists
How do essentials see gender?
Essentials see gender as biological or genetic and believe that gender is: a simple, two-category (binary) system, determined by your chromosomes, hormones, and genitalia, and is permanent and unchanging.
What is a socially defined category based on common language, religion, nationality, history, or another cultural factor?
Ethnicity
According to Talcott Parsons: Women are more suited for what type of role?
Expressive role - the person who provides the family's emotional support and nurturing.
T/F: From a sociological perspective, a minority status is determined by numbers.
False
T/F: General predictions can often be made about a person's life chances based on their socioeconomic status. In general, people of lower socioeconomic status are less likely to encounter the criminal justice system.
False
T/F: In America, all citizens have equal chances of obtaining significant wealth during their lifetime.
False
T/F: In America, everyone has equal access to education.
False
T/F: Rape culture, a set of beliefs, norms, and values that normalizes sexual violence against women, is unique to college campuses.
False
T/F: Sociologists apply the terms wealth and income interchangeably.
False
T/F: Sociologists believe that sex and gender are essentially the same thing.
False
Who are usually the primary source of socialization and greatly impact gender role socialization?
Families
Who apply assumptions about gender inequalities to social institutions to illuminate how gender inequality affects all areas of social life?
Feminist theories
What refers to the economic trend that women are more likely than men to live in poverty, due in part to the gendered gap in wages, the higher proportion of single mothers compared to single fathers, and the increasing cost of child care?
Feminization of poverty
Which theoretical approach would explain race and ethnicity as social constructions that help to maintain social order?
Functionalism
Which theoretical perspective generally believes that there are still social roles better suited to one gender than the other?
Functionalism
What do functionalists believe?
Functionalists believe that there are social roles better suited to one gender than the other, and that societies are more stable when certain tasks are done by the appropriate sex.
What refers to the physical, behavioral, and personality traits that a group considers normal for its male and female members?
Gender
What refers to an individual's behavioral manifestations of gender?
Gender expression
What refers to an individual's self-definition or sense of gender?
Gender identity
What is a fear of or discrimination toward homosexuals or toward individuals who display purportedly gender-inappropriate behavior?
Homophobia
A reporter who covers the police beat at a newspaper changes careers. She becomes an editor of nonfiction books and is paid the same salary as she was at the newspaper. What has she experienced?
Horizontal social mobility
What is discrimination carried out by one person against another?
Individual discrimination
What is systematic discrimination carried out by social institutions (political, economic, educational, and others) that affects all members of a group who come into contact with it?
Institutional discrimination
According to Talcott Parsons: Men are more suited for what type of role?
Instrumental role - the person who provides the family's material support and is often an authority figure.
What do interactionists emphasize?
Interactionists emphasize how the concept of gender is socially constructed, maintained, and reproduced in our everyday lives.
Social mobility is the movement of an individual within a social class system. What are the different types of mobility that can exist in a society at any given time?
Intergenerational, intragenerational, horizontal, and vertical
What is the economic and political domination and subjugation of the minority group by the controlling group within a nation?
Internal colonialism
A black woman is followed around the store by a white sales associate while shopping for clothes. Frustrated, she leaves the store and decides to go home. Her husband, on seeing her enter the house, asks, "What's for dinner?" What concept could we as sociologists use to understand her experiences, both in the store and at home?
Intersectionality
What is a concept that identifies how different categories of inequality (e.g., class, race, and gender) intersect?
Intersectionality
How does color blindness contribute to racial inequalities?
It perpetuates racial inequalities by making subtle forms of racism difficult to recognize and therefore difficult to address.
One cost-of-living indicator shows that a salary of $40,000 in Santa Barbara, California, is equivalent to $14,000 in Wichita, Kansas. This is primarily because of the cost of housing, which is much less expensive in Wichita. What does this difference say about how the federal government calculates poverty?
It points to a flaw in the way the government calculates the poverty line as the standard is uniformly applied without regard to regional differences.
What did Karl Marx believe?
Karl Marx believed that there were two main social classes named the Capitalists and the Workers. He also believed that the classes would remain divided and social inequality would grow.
What originated in the 1970s to discuss the challenges of masculinity?
Male liberationism
What does Michelle Alexander argue?
Michelle Alexander argues that there is what is similar to a caste system in the criminal justice system of the United States.
What consists of everyday verbal and nonverbal communications that are denigrating or dismissive?
Microaggressions
What is a social group that is systematically denied access to power and resources available to the dominant groups of a society?
Minority group
What is an ingrained prejudice against women; dislike, contempt, or hatred of women?
Misogyny
What do most sociologists use?
Most sociologists use a constructionist approach and see sex, gender, and sexuality as social constructs.
In 2006, New York City announced that it was moving forward with a plan to allow transgender residents to change the sex listed on their birth certificates. This would be permitted if they had lived in their adopted gender for at least two years, but no physiological change or medical authorization would be required. How is New York City defining gender?
New York is separating gender from sex.
What is a closed system?
One in which there is very little opportunity to move from one class to another
What is an open system?
One with ample opportunity to move from one class to another.
What did Erving Goffman point out?
Our clothing, speech, gestures, possessions, friends, and activities provide information about our socioeconomic status.
Societies that encourage racial and ethnic diversity have embraced the value of what?
Pluralism
The pattern of intergroup relations that encourages racial and ethnic variation within a society is referred to as what?
Pluralism
What is a pattern of intergroup relations that encourage racial and ethnic variation within a society?
Pluralism (multiculturalism)
What is the forcible removal of a group of people from the territory they have occupied?
Population transfer
What is an idea about the characteristics of a group?
Prejudice
What do queer theorists emphasize?
Queer theorists emphasize the importance of difference and rejects ideas of innate identities or restrictive categories of gender and sexual identity.
What is a socially defined category, based on real or perceived biological differences between groups of people?
Race
African American and Hispanic communities are much more likely to be located near toxic waste dumps than white communities. What does this tell you about race in America?
Race can have an effect on health.
What is racial assimilation?
Racial minority groups are absorbed into the dominant group through intermarriage.
What is cultural assimilation?
Racial or ethnic groups are absorbed into the dominant group by adopting the dominant group's culture.
What is living as if one is a member of a different racial category, has a long history in the United States?
Racial passing
Critical race theory explores the relationship among race and what two other concepts?
Racism and power
What is a relational measure of poverty based on the standards of living?
Relative deprivation
What is invisibility of poverty?
Residential segregation, political disenfranchisement, and the use of law enforcement to control the homeless can make poverty invisible to many Americans.
What is the claim by whites that they are discriminated against due to their race?
Reverse racism
What refers to an individual's membership in one of two biologically distinct categories—male or female?
Sex
How do most sociologists differentiate between sex and gender?
Sex is biological; gender is social.
What are all bases of hierarchies of inequality in our society?
Sex, gender, and sexuality
What is the inclination to be heterosexual (attracted to the opposite sex), homosexual (attracted to the same sex), or bisexual (attracted to either sex)?
Sexual orientation
A young person from Southern California has four German grandparents. She lived in Los Angeles all her life before accepting a job in Milwaukee. She has never really thought about her German heritage. In Milwaukee, she discovers many other people with similar ancestries and begins using her ethnicity as a way to develop social and professional relationships. Of what is this an example?
Situational ethnicity
What is system of stratification based on the legal ownership of people?
Slavery
What is the most extreme form of social stratification and is based on the legal ownership of people?
Slavery
What is a system of stratification based on access to key resources (e.g., wealth, power, property)?
Social Class
What is a system of stratification based on access to resources such as wealth, property, power, and prestige?
Social class
What refers to a system of stratification based on access to resources such as wealth, property, power, and prestige?
Social class
Sociologists see race and ethnicity as what?
Social constructions
What is the unequal distribution of wealth, power, or prestige among members of a society?
Social inequality
What suggests that babies and children learn behaviors and meanings through social interaction and internalize the expectations of those around them?
Social learning theory
What is the movement of individuals or groups within the hierarchical system of social classes?
Social mobility
What is the tendency for social-class status to be passed down from one generation to the next?
Social reproduction
What is the division of society into groups arranged in a social hierarchy?
Social stratification
Sociologists often refer to social class as what?
Socioeconomic status
Consider the three major theoretical perspectives routinely explored throughout the text. Which theorist explores the ways in which poverty serves a purpose in our society by providing jobs to many people in the social service sector?
Structural Functionalist
Consider the three major theoretical perspectives routinely explored throughout the text. Which theorist might explore the ways in which instrumental and expressive roles are fulfilled in relationships, thereby ensuring cohesion within those relationships?
Structural Functionalist
What focuses on the ways that race creates social ties and strengthens group bonds and acknowledges that such ties can lead to violence and social conflict between groups?
Structural functionalism
Consider the three major theoretical perspectives routinely explored throughout the text. Which theorist might explore racial inequality in terms of the creation of social cohesion within different social groups?
Structural functionalist
What refers to changes in the social status of large numbers of people due to structural changes in society?
Structural mobility
Plantation owners in America often argued that enslaved Africans were better off because they did not have the mental capacity to run their own lives. Today, this seems both racist and idiotic. How could such racist beliefs flourish?
Such beliefs justify social arrangements between dominant and minority groups that benefit those who accept them.
What focuses on the ways that race, class, and gender intersect to produce an individual's identity and sees race as an aspect of identity established through interaction?
Symbolic Interactionalism
Which theoretical approach would explain race and ethnicity as a part of our identity displayed through our presentation of self?
Symbolic Interactionalism
What examines the way we use status differences to categorize ourselves and others?
Symbolic interactionists
What is the ideology that anyone can achieve material success if he or she works hard enough, explains and justifies economic inequality in our social system, and has been criticized for legitimizing stratification by implying that everyone has the same opportunity to get ahead?
The American Dream
What is feminism?
The belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes and the social movements organized around that belief.
Apartheid is best described as which of the following types of social systems?
The caste system
What refers to learned attitudes that can develop among poor communities and lead the poor to accept their fate rather than attempt to improve their situation?
The culture of poverty
What is genocide?
The deliberate and systematic extermination of a racial, ethnic, national, or cultural group.
What is segregation?
The formal and legal separation of groups by race or ethnicity.
What is gender role socialization?
The lifelong process of learning to be masculine or feminine, primarily through four main agents of socialization: families, schools, peers, and the media.
Subsequently, the male liberationism movement has split into what?
The men's rights movement and the pro-feminist men's movement
What includes "white-collar" workers, has a broad range of incomes, and makes up about 30% of the U.S. population?
The middle class
What is vertical social mobility?
The movement between social classes and, depending on the direction, is often called either upward mobility or downward mobility.
What is intergenerational mobility?
The movement between social classes that occurs from one generation to the next.
What is intragenerational mobility?
The movement between social classes that occurs over the course of an individual's lifetime.
What is horizontal social mobility?
The occupational movement of individuals or groups within a social class.
What includes the members likely employed part-time or unemployed and makes up about 12% of the U.S. population?
The underclass
What consists of the wealthiest people in a class system, possesses most of the wealth of the country , and makes up 1% of the U.S. population?
The upper class
What includes professionals and managers and makes up about 14% of the U.S. population?
The upper-middle class
What includes "blue-collar" or service industry workers, members less likely to have college degrees , and makes up about 30% of the U.S. population?
The working (lower-middle) class
What includes the members likely work manual and service jobs and seasonal employment, and makes up about 13% of the U.S. population?
The working poor
How does social class relate to race, ethnicity, gender, and age in the United States today?
These multiple dimensions of status and inequality intersect to shape who we are and how we live.
T/F: Every society has some form of stratification.
True
T/F: Gender tends to shape our experiences in the workplace but has little impact on our experiences with health.
True
T/F: Male domination, or patriarchy, can be traced back to biological differences (particularly differences in physical strength) between men and women.
True
T/F: Society currently recognizes several sexual identities or orientations. These identities are based on a two-category gender system.
True
What is double-consciousness?
W.E.B. DuBois's term for the divided identity experienced by blacks in the United States.
What three components did Max Weber argue class status was made up of?
Wealth (or privilege), Power, and Prestige
What is the belief that the nation should reflect a white identity?
White nationalism
What involves unearned advantage for dominant group members and Color-blind racism is an ideology that disqualifies race and an explanatory factor for inequality?
White privilege
Who sold their labor for wages?
Workers - the Proletariat
Which person is likely to have the greatest status in the United States?
a white male
When the minority group is absorbed into the mainstream or dominant group, making society more homogeneous this is known as ...
assimilation
What do sociologists call awareness of our own and others' class statuses?
class consciousness
The unequal treatment of individuals because of their social group is called ...
discrimination
According to William Julius Wilson, racism has created a black underclass, but this underclass is perpetuated by
economic factors
A socially defined category based on common language, religion, nationality, history, or another cultural factor is called ...
ethnicity
Being born into a lower social class means that an individual will be more likely to ...
feel at risk of being harassed by law enforcement.
The physical, behavioral, and personality traits that a group consider normal for its male and female members refer to
gender
A person's self-conception of being male or female based on his or her association with masculine or feminine gender roles can be defined as
gender identity
For many years, Saturday Night Live ran a series of skits about a character named Pat. The premise of each skit was that no one could tell if Pat was male or female and the other characters would devise ingenious plots to determine Pat's gender; all attempts failed. The humor in these skits is based on the fact that ..
gender identity is so important to our social selves that we can barely interact with anyone without first determining that person's gender.
A trans woman, a person who does not identify as male or female, and a man who sometimes identifies as female are all ...
gender nonconforming.
Sheila watches her mother wash the dishes every night. In this way, she learns that washing dishes is a task done by women. This exemplifies
gender role specialization
The systematic of a group is called:
genocide
The belief that heterosexuality is and should be the norm is called
heteronormativity.
Some immigrants have a hard time assimilating to a new culture. If their children assimilate and have a higher standard of living than their parents, the children are experiencing ________ mobility.
intergenerational
It is often said that you can always tell a millionaire by her shoes. She may dress like a slob in every other respect, but someone from the upper class is bound to have expensive, custom-made footwear. Whether this is true or not, it helps demonstrate the way we ...
make split-second judgments about who people are and what social statuses they occupy based on their appearances.
In the workplace, aggressive men are often described as "go-getters," but aggressive women are often described as "bitches." This is an example of ...
microaggression
A young girl from a poor family is sent to live with wealthy distant relations. Her relations expect her to take care of the household cooking and cleaning instead of going to school. They do not pay her and threaten her when she attempts to return home. Her situation is an example of ...
modern slavery
Max Weber argued that there were several important components of social class. What is NOT one of the components?
morals
Presenting yourself as a member of a different racial or ethnic group than the one you were born into is known as
passing
In Western societies, ____________________ are an important agent of socialization.
peer groups
The relationships between different racial and ethnic groups have varied throughout history. Some groups interact in more cooperative and tolerant ways while others are violent and hostile. List the patterns of intergroup relationships from the most hostile to the most tolerant:
population transfer, assimilation, pluralism
Sociologists define _____ as a socially defined category based on real or perceived biological differences between groups of people whereas _____ is a socially defined category based on common language, religion, nationality, history, or another cultural factor.
race; ethnicity
Light-skinned African Americans who attempt to live as white in order to avoid the consequences of being black in a racist society are practicing ...
racial passing
A young man is told by his friends that in bars he should drink beer while buying women shots in the hopes of getting the women very drunk and increasing his chance of having sex with them. He tells his friends that they are encouraging ...
rape culture
Sociologists consider _____ to be biological whereas _____ to be cultural and social.
sex; gender
Those who are asexual may ...
simply reject any sexual identity at all.
The tendency of social classes to remain relatively stable as social class status is passed down from one generation to the next is called ...
social reproduction
Many people became instant millionaires during the so-called dot-com boom of the late 1990s, though we usually think of social mobility as a result of individual effort. This is an example of ...
structural mobility
Displays of ethnic identity that only occur on special occasions are called ..
symbolic ethnicity
According to a study, black defendants on trial for murder in Pennsylvania were 40 percent more likely to receive the death penalty than whites convicted of similar crimes. This indicates that
the criminal justice system has a racial bias.
We call entrenched attitudes that can develop among poor communities and lead the poor to accept their fate ...
the culture of poverty
The economic trend showing that women are more likely than men to live in poverty is called ...
the feminization of poverty
Disenfranchisement refers to
the removal of rights of citizenship
What was the cause most identified with the first wave of the women's movement?
the right to vote for women
A math teacher writes story problems that have male characters that are always given an occupation like Bob the janitor or James the lawyer, but the female characters have no occupation. This is an example of the
way schools socialize children into gender roles.