Chapter 01 Quiz [The Sociological Perspective]
Which of the following statements best illustrates the career advantage a person gains by studying sociology?
A police officer understands which categories of people are at high risk of becoming victims of crime.
W. E. B. Du Bois described African Americans as having a "double consciousness" because ________
African Americans are American citizens who have a second identity based on skin color.
The term "sociology" was coined in 1838 by ________
Auguste Comte.
The pioneering sociologist who studied patterns of suicide in Europe was ________
Emile Durkheim.
__________, one of the founding sociologists, urged sociologists to understand a social setting from the point of view of the people in it.
Max Weber
According to Auguste Comte, people begin to try to understand how social life operates as their society enters which stage of development?
Metaphysical stage
________ is a way of understanding the world based on science.
Positivism
Who was the U.S. sociologist who distinguished between the manifest functions and the latent functions of social patterns?
Robert K. Merton
Auguste Comte described the earliest human societies as being at which stage of historical development?
Scientific stage
Social structures sometimes have negative consequences for the operation of society as a whole. Which of the following concepts refers to these negative consequences?
Social dysfunctions
Which of the following concepts is used to describe relatively stable patterns of social behavior?
Social structure
Which theoretical approach claims that it is not so much what people do that matters as much as what meaning they attach to their behavior?
Symbolic-interaction approach
Which theoretical approach would highlight the fact that, on average, African American families have less income than white families?
The race-conflict approach
What might a sociologist say about people's selection of marriage partners?
Typically, a person marries someone of similar social position.
Which early U.S. sociologist studied the African American community and served as a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)?
W. E. B. Du Bois
In the United States today, the suicide rate is highest for which of the following categories of people?
White males
According to Auguste Comte, people living in Europe during the Middle Ages thought of society as ________
an expression of God's will.
Learning more sociology can help you ________
assess the opportunities and constraints in our lives.
Making use of the sociological perspective encourages ________
challenging many commonly-held beliefs.
Following the thinking of C. Wright Mills, we would expect the sociological imagination to be more widespread in a population ________
during times of social crisis.
Sarah is spending a summer living in another country where people have a way of life that differs from her own. A sociologist might expect that this experience would lead her to ________
end up with a greater understanding of both a new way of life and her own way of life.
An accurate criticism of the structural-functional approach is that it ________
focuses too much on power divisions in society.
To evaluate a theory using evidence, sociologists ________
gather data or facts.
Because there is more social isolation in rural areas of the United States than in urban areas, we would expect suicide rates to be ________
higher in rural areas.
Sociologists cannot identify "laws of society" that allow us to precisely predict the behavior of an individual because ________
human behavior may be patterned, but it is also spontaneous.
Gaining a global understanding is ________
important for college students because most new U.S. jobs involve international trade.
A sociologist using the gender-conflict approach might state that ________
in many ways, men are in positions of power over women.
Sociology provides an advantage to students preparing for later careers by preparing them for work ________
in teaching, criminal justice, business, and many other careers.
Using the social-conflict approach, a sociologist might highlight ________
income differences among young people in high school.
An example of a latent function of college is ________
keeping young people out of a tight labor force, which may not have jobs for them.
Unrecognized and unintended consequences of a social pattern are called ________
latent functions.
According to Emile Durkheim, categories of people with a higher suicide rate typically have ________
lower levels of social integration.
The recognized and intended consequences of a social pattern are referred to as ________
manifest functions.
The social-conflict approach draws attention to ________
patterns of social inequality.
The symbolic-interaction approach focuses on how ________
people experience society.
C. Wright Mills claimed that the "sociological imagination" transformed ________personal problems into public issues.
personal problems into public issues.
W. E. B. Du Bois claimed that ________ was the major problem facing the United States during the twentieth century.
race
By stating that the sociological perspective shows us "the strange in the familiar," the text argues that sociologists ________
reject the familiar idea that people simply decide how to act in favor of the initially strange idea that society shapes our lives.
Peter Berger describes using the sociological perspective as:
seeing the general in the particular
The "framework for building theory that sees society as an arena of inequality that generates conflict and change" is the ________
social-conflict approach.
The main characteristic of the _____ approach is its view of society as being orderly and stable.
structural-functional
The theoretical approach in sociology that assumes society is a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability is the ________
structural-functional approach.
The basic idea of the symbolic-interaction approach is that society is ________
the product of people interacting in countless everyday situations.
Among the historical changes that stimulated the development of sociology as a discipline was ________
the rise of the industrial economy and growth of cities.
About 1.25million immigrants enter the United States each year and many (including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gloria Estefan) have become well known. These facts support the conclusion that ________
the world's nations are increasingly interconnected.
A statement that explains how and why specific facts are related is called a(n) ________
theory.
Sociology differs from the older discipline of philosophy by focusing on ________
what the ideal society should be.
In the feature about Barbara Ehrenreich working at low-wage jobs (see Thinking about Diversity), we learned that she ________
worked very hard, but never made enough money to pay for her basic needs.