Sociology exam 2

In the United States, the federal poverty line is calculated using food costs, based on the cheapest possible diet that can still provide basic nutrition. What sort of measure of poverty is this?

A measure of absolute deprivation.

What are the tastes, habits, and expectations called that children "inherit" (or learn) from their parents and that help to achieve material success in life?

Cultural capital

Which of the following describes how deviance can be explained from the functionalist perspective?

Deviance can help society clarify its moral boundaries: what is right and wrong. Promote social cohesion(functionalists value this): people can be brought together in the face of crime or other violations.

How do sociologists define ethnicity?

Ethnicity is a concept referring to a shared culture and way of life. This can be reflected in language, religion, material culture such as clothing and food, and cultural products such as music and art. Ethnicity is often a major source of social cohesion and social conflict.

All over Los Angeles, you can see cars sporting a bumper sticker that says, "My favorite teams are UCLA and whoever's playing USC." What is this an example of?

Hostility toward an out-group

Which of the following would sociologists consider the best definition of deviance?

Instances where a rule violation is, or seems to be, an admirable act, that should be supported.

What sort of jobs can support a middle-class lifestyle in America today?

Jobs in manufacturing skilled labor blue-collar work jobs associated with skilled trades like carpentry

Robert Merton developed structural strain theory to explain why deviance happens. To what sort of strain does the theory's name refer?

Modifying Durkheim's concept of anomie, Robert Merton developed the Strain theory people feel strain when they are exposed to cultural goals that they are unable to obtain because they do not have access to culturally approved means of achieving those goals.

When people attend high school class reunions, they often compare their own personal and professional successes and failures with those of their former classmates. This means that classmates are a(n):

Reference Group

Which of the following is a factor that can lead to increased group cohesion?

Relationship between cohesion and performance

How do sociologists define race?

Social significance. Race is defined as a category or group of people having hereditary traits that set them apart. While race revolves around the idea of biological traits, ethnicity is based on a shared cultural heritage.

Your professor was raised during a time when derogatory language and condescending thoughts were often written in public bathroom stalls. In contemporary society, people utilize social media as an enhanced form of condescending attacks known as:

Stratification is a characteristic of a society, rather than a reflection of individual differences

The "Jim Crow" laws in the American South, which mandated separate facilities for whites and blacks, were an example of:

The Jim Crow Laws were state and local laws enacted in the Southern and border state of the U.S. and enforced between 1876 and 1965. They mandated "separate but equal" status for African Americans accommodations that were almost always inferior to those provided to white Americans. Although it was required that the facilities provided were equal they were not. The Jim Crow period or the Jim Crow era refers to the time during which these laws occurred. The most important laws required that public schools, public places and public transportation, like trains and buses, have separate facilities for whites and blacks.

Which of the following is an example of a prejudice?

Vera believes that old people smell bad. When getting on the bus earlier this week, she therefore felt repulsed when she saw that the only available seat was next to an old person.

Although branding is no longer used as a form of punishment in the United States, some subcultures have adopted it as a form of body art. This demonstrates that:

What is considered deviant changes over time.

How is prejudice different from discrimination?

While prejudice involves holding biased opinions, discrimination involves acting upon those opinions by treating people unfairly.

The "ethnic miracle" is a term used to describe the process by which European immigrants and their descendants stopped being treated as members of minority groups and became assimilated into the dominant group. What kind of sociologist believes that this happened because it made society run much more efficiently?

a structural functionalist

Émile Durkheim worried that in an increasingly fragmented modern world, individuals would feel less and less connected to groups, which would lead to:

anomie, or normlessness.

When young people go away to college, it is often the first time they make friends with people of substantially different class statuses. Sometimes this leads to tension when the wealthier member of a friendship is oblivious to his or her friend's class status and suggests activities that are beyond the friend's means. This tension results from a lack of:

class consciousness

What kind of power is a football coach wielding when he threatens to kick a player off the team unless the player works harder?

coercive power

What kind of power is exhibited by a police officer who pulls over a suspect after a high-speed pursuit?

coercive power

Traditionally, most of the sociological literature on deviance focuses on:

crime, and how different cultures define very different behaviors as criminal or not and the vast differences seen in how crimes are punished.

An action or behavior that results in the unequal treatment of an individual because of his membership in a racial or ethnic group is called:

discrimination

Apartheid is a specific example of what system of social stratification?

feudal system a system of social stratification based on a hereditary nobility who were responsible for and served by a lower stratum of forced laborers called serfs

Which system of social stratification was in the final stages of breaking down when Karl Marx developed his ideas?

feudalism

What do sociologists call patterns of interaction between groups and individuals?

group dynamics

A society where social mobility is highly restricted by formal or informal rules, like those of a caste system, is called:

horizontal social mobility

What is the strongest type of conformity that can occur as a result of social influence or peer pressure?

internalization

What is the goal of affirmative action?

is to correct past injustices by implementing policies that favor those previously discriminated against.

Around the third week of a college class, a professor decides she's had enough, is tired of dealing with bureaucracies, and wants out. So one day, instead of coming to class, she flies to Tahiti and sells souvenirs on the beach. If this happened, the college would simply assign a substitute to finish the course. What does this tell you about the nature of the authority wielded by a professor?

it is a legal-rational authority it is ultimately backed by coercion it is rooted in tradition. it is primarily supported by persuasion. it is based on the personal qualities, or charisma, of the individual professor

Greg J. Duncan and a team of researchers analyzed the effect of parental income on the academic achievement of children. Given what you have read about socioeconomic status and life chances, what do you think Duncan found?

parental income is strongly correlated with academic achievement, especially in low-income families

What type of group provides most of our emotional satisfaction?

primary groups

Rather than seeing racism as a product of class differences, recent theorists like Tomás Almaguer argue that:

racist beliefs can become part of economic life

Members of which of the following think of themselves as belonging together while also interacting with each other?

social groups

What do sociologists call the webs of direct and indirect ties that connect individuals to others who may influence them?

social network

What school of social thought insists that all social structures, including systems of stratification, are built out of everyday interactions?

symbolic interactionism

Drew Westen, in "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation," argues that when advocates of health-care reform talk about universal health care as a way to help "the uninsured" or "the underinsured," they turn many people against universal health care because there is an underlying assumption that poor people are getting what they deserve. What do sociologists call this assumption?

the just-world hypothesis

Many people, especially young women, worry about maintaining a tan. Sometimes, if they do not have the time to tan naturally, they go to a tanning salon or use chemicals to simulate a tan. In some cultures, this might seem bizarre, which can help us realize that:

the line between beauty and deviance is fluid and changes across time and place.

if an upper-middle-class, white college student is sentenced to rehab for the same drug crime that a lower-class, black man is sentenced to jail for committing, what might a conflict theorist conclude about deviance?

the rules are applied unequally, and those with power or influence are punished much less harshly.

Why would sociologists who study social networks and employment pay attention to the frequency with which a person has been in contact with each member of his social network?

to see if a particular tie is strong or weak

Under what circumstances does a deviant label lead from primary to secondary deviance?

when the deviant label is accepted by the individual and seen as deviant