Sociology Exam 2
How has union membership changed in recent years?
membership has steeply declined
Karl Marx believed that workers in a capitalist economy experience alienation because
they are paid for their labor but do not own the things they produce.
What is the goal of early college high schools, according to the textbook?
to make it easier for students from underserved backgrounds to enter college
Who led campaigns to end child labor and increase workplace safety?
unions
One of the primary principles of capitalism is
privatization of the means of production
Laura Scott describes U.S. society as __________, suggesting that U.S. cultural values support childbearing and child-rearing as the normative and preferred practice.
pronatalist
The increasing number of Americans who move out of state to attend college will decrease the importance of __________, assuming that students start new romantic relationships in school.
propinquity
A man is found guilty of rape, and despite the prosecutors asking for a sentence of six years in prison, the judge handed down a sentence of just six months in county jail. Many felt that, by handing down a light sentence for a serious crime, the judge was normalizing
rape culture.
The extent of a person's consistent and regular practice of their religious beliefs is known as
religiosity.
According to Randall Collins, our educational system is much like a "tribal initiation rite," a "secret society," or a "closed occupational caste." For Collins, it is not a rational system that produces more efficient production but a mechanism for
reproducing the existing class structure.
Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, and some political strategists argued it was partly due to Trump being a reality television celebrity. These political strategists likely feel that politics today
rewards style over substance.
Some are worried about the effect that the rise in one-child families is having on the foundation of Japanese society. On what sort of theoretical perspective on the family is this concern based?
structural functionalist
Every presidential candidate nominated by a major political party in the United States has been, at least publicly,
cisgender
What are unmarried adults who are romantically involved and live together under the same roof participating in?
cohabitation
According to the text, what is the most extreme form of socialism called?
communism
A math teacher writes problems featuring male characters who are always given an occupation, like Bob the janitor or James the lawyer, but the female characters are always given carework jobs, like nanny, or have no occupation. This is an example of the
way schools socialize children into gender roles.
Many people felt dissatisfied working on assembly lines because
workers never had the satisfaction of seeing the finished product.
Regarding gender, structural functionalists generally believe that
some social roles are better suited to one gender than the other.
What feature of modern politics closely resembles short, limited Twitter posts?
sound bites
In the mid-1990s, the children of divorced parents were about __________ times more likely to divorce than their peers from intact families.
1.5
The Industrial Revolution began in the
1700s
The former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor voted to allow a Christmas display on public property that included a nativity scene, but she voted to prohibit city governments from having displays that had only a nativity scene. This indicates that
America is both a secular and religious society at the same time.
How have Americans' attitudes changed, if they have at all, regarding interracial marriage?
Americans are much more accepting of interracial marriage than they were in the past.
To reform and improve the American educational system, what does the sociologist Randall Collins recommend?
The federal government should fund high schools so poor areas do not have poorly funded schools.
In the past, bank teller positions were almost all occupied by men. Today most bank tellers are women. 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 does a sociological perspective tell us about education in the United States?
Educational success often has as much to do with social stratification as it does with individual ability.
__________ is what sociologists call marriage to someone within one's social group.
Endogamy
__________ is what sociologists call marriage to someone from a different social group.
Exogamy
How are strictly controlled workers within bureaucracies different from robots?
Human workers can resist and undermine the bureaucratic restraints that limit their autonomy.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Alfred Kinsey surveyed Americans to find out about their sexual behavior. His findings were important because they
challenged the view that Americans were either exclusively heterosexual or homosexual.
The term "deadbeat dad" describes a man who isn't married to his children's mother and isn't helping to support his children financially. Why do we almost never talk about "deadbeat moms"?
Mothers usually remain the primary caregiver even when fathers don't take the instrumental role.
In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that Virginia's law banning marriage between persons of different races was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. What attitude led many to disagree with this decision?
People should partner up with similar people and respect endogamy.
Women are more likely to be arrested than men for
Prostitution
In the Sermon on the Mount of the Christian New Testament, believers are told, "Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them." Of which of the functions or dysfunctions of religion does this remind you?
Religion provides morals, values, rules, and norms for participants.
Barbara Ehrenreich explored some of the issues of power and service work in her book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001). As research for the book, Ehrenreich took minimum-wage service jobs as a waitress, a hotel maid, and a Walmart employee. What was her main finding?
She found that service workers in these types of jobs are likely to be exploited in several ways.
How do the incomes of single fathers compare with those of single mothers?
Single fathers make considerably more money than single mothers.
Men usually make more money than women because
Socially constructed categories of employment lead to larger numbers of men than women in many lucrative jobs.
Kim worked for a temporary staffing agency as a receptionist. She believed that it would give her a great chance to be offered permanent full-time work. Why might this be an incorrect assumption?
Temporary workers (aka contingent workers) tend to move in and out of jobs with little opportunity for full-time permanent work.
In 2009, South African track star Caster Semenya broke the world record in the 800-meter race. Subsequently, she was asked to prove to the world that she was a woman. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) subjected her to a complex series of tests that included physical and medical examinations. The controversy over Semenya's gender raises which of the following issues?
The IAAF's response assumes an essentialist idea of gender.
Which economic system is based on collective ownership of the means of production and collective distribution of goods and services?
socialism
According to Max Weber, Protestant values contributed to the rise of
capitalism.
How have "right-to-work" laws benefited corporations?
The laws have prohibited workplaces from making union membership a requirement of employment.
What is the main reason abusive partners resort to intimate partner violence?
They desire power over their victims.
Demographers noticed __________ in the numbers of unwed individuals living with their romantic partners between 1960 and 2014.
a sharp increase
Which of the following changes was associated with the Industrial Revolution?
a significant population boom
What do all religions have in common?
a system of beliefs and rituals that establish a relationship between the sacred and the profane
Large social and economic changes followed from the domestication of plants and animals and the gradually increasing efficiency of food production. What do scholars call this type of revolution?
agricultural
An example of extrinsic religiosity would be
a person attending religious services.
Today, who do average Americans have in mind when they think of their families?
a brother or sister
Doctors and parents are quick to seek a surgical "fix" for babies who are born intersex because
an ambiguously sexed person seems threatening and disturbing in Western society.
Singer and celebrity Beyoncé endorsed Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election. Based on the extent that people pay attention to her and care about what she says, Beyoncé could be considered
an opinion leader.
What term applies to a child who leaves home at eighteen but later returns for at least a short period of time?
boomerang kid
Women are more likely than men to be diagnosed with which of the following illnesses?
depression
What is the belief that the lived experiences of women and men differ because of biological differences?
essentialism
Family friends who are referred to as "Aunt" or "Uncle" are examples of
fictive kin.
Which of the following terms is used to represent the most conservative group within any religion?
fundamentalist
The fact that almost all of the small electronics used in the United States are made in Asia is an illustration of
globalization.
An elementary school student notices that exhibiting good behavior and following the instructions of the teacher can go a long way to earning him decent grades in school. This example highlights what sociological term about the education system?
hidden curriculum
Patriarchy can be defined as a society
in which men dominate women
Socialist societies provide access to resources such as health care, food, housing, and other social services that meet their basic needs. This is possible because the system encourages a collective work ethic, which theoretically means
individuals are working for the good of all citizens.
A Black woman is followed around the store by a white sales associate while shopping for clothes. Frustrated, she leaves the store and goes home. As she enters her house, her husband asks, "What's for dinner?" What concept could we use to understand her experiences both in the store and at home?
intersectionality
Which term is used to describe a person whose chromosomes or sex characteristics are neither exclusively male nor exclusively female?
intersex
One's personal relationship to the divine, or inner religious life, is known as
intrinsic religiosity.
Someone who works primarily with information and develops or uses knowledge in the workplace is called a(n) ________ worker.
knowledge
A special interest group is a(n)
organization formed expressly to raise and spend money in order to influence elected officials and public opinion.
What sort of actions do abusive partners take to keep their partners in the relationship?
periodically enter a cycle of loving contrition
Laura is a married mother of three who works a full-time job. She is responsible for dropping off and picking up her kids at school each day. She and her husband get home from work around the same time. Laura's husband sits down and relaxes while Laura makes dinner and does housework. After dinner, she helps the children with their homework, reads to them, and puts them to bed. What sociological concept does Laura's situation exemplify?
second shift
The Information Revolution changed the nature of work and the economy because it has
shifted the economy toward the production of knowledge and services.
Talcott Parsons held the view that the family is responsible for the reproduction of society because it produces and socializes children who will in turn become future workers and produce and socialize more new members of society. What type of theoretical viewpoint is this?
structuralist/functionalist
A woman feels that she always needs to act cheerful and look her best when her husband gets home from work because he has a stressful job and he needs her help to unwind. We could say this woman is
taking on the expressive role.
In Schooling in Capitalist America, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis argued that schools train a labor force in the skills and attitudes necessary for the health of a modern economy. What are these skills and attitudes?
taking orders and performing repetitive tasks
The fact that school schedules are organized around Christmas is evidence
that the United States is not a totally secular society.
What changes in the economy would be associated with travel agents hiring inmates in minimum-security prisons to take calls and schedule vacations for customers?
the growth of information technology
Women are typically portrayed in a majority of commercials that advertise cleaning supplies. This illustrates that
the media portrays gender roles in highly stereotypical ways.
Robert Dahl developed __________ to argue that corporations, political parties, professional organizations, and ethnic and religious groups provide checks and balances for each other so that no one group has too much power.
the pluralist model
Which of the following seems to make people, in general, more likely to define a group as a family?
the presence of children
Beyond just money, the economy is about
the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services
Valentina calls her nineteen-year-old son every Sunday to make sure he's doing okay in college. She also sends him gas and grocery money every month. Valentina is also the primary caretaker for her elderly mother who lives with her. Which of these phrases best describes her situation?
the sandwich generation
Arlie Hochschild's study of two-income families found that women were much more likely than men to do the majority of the unpaid labor inside the home, even after a full day's work outside the home. What term do sociologists use to describe this extra labor?
the second shift
Remarriage rates are lower today than they were in the 1960s because
there has been an increase in cohabitation among unmarried couples.