Sociology Midterm Exam

nature-nurture debate

debate among scholars as to whether human development is influenced mainly by genes (nature) or environment (nurture)

False consciousness consequences of social class

denotes people's inability to recognize inequality, oppression, and exploitation in a capitalist society because of the prevalence within it of views that naturalize and legitimize the existence of social classes

social inequality

disparity in income, wealth, power, prestige, and other resources

Verstehen

empathetic understanding of human behavior; how social scientists should gather knowledge

differential association theory

individuals learn deviant behavior from those close to them who provide models of and opportunities for deviance

Iron Cage

modern social control through rules and rationalization

Taboos

norm engrained so deeply that even thinking about violating that for most people, it evokes strong feelings of disgust, horror, or revulsion

Mores

norm that carries moral significance, is closely related to the core values of a group, and often involves severe repercussions for violators

Anomie

normlessness, meaninglessness; a sense of disconnection derived from changing social conditions

Queer theory

-Proposes that categories of sexual identity are social constructs and that no sexual category is fundamentally either deviant or normal -Queer theory was inspired by gay and lesbian rights movements in the 1970s and '80s.

Weber's rationalization of society

-Rationalization (application of economic logic to all human activity), due to the rise of bureaucracies throughout society Rationalization not only transformed modern society, it played an important role in the development of capitalism. Though rationalization was first apparent in the creation of bureaucracies, it has spread to all aspects of society.

Social Group

-two or more people who share some attribute, identify with one another, and interact with each other -provide the values, norms, and rules that guide people's lives.

Structural functionalist theory

A theory of society in which individuals, groups, and social institutions are guided by an overarching social system. Sees a macro-level orientation

Opened and Closed Systems

An open system describes a society with mobility between different social classes. Individuals can move up or down in the social rankings; this is unlike closed systems, where individuals are set in one social position for life despite their achievements

Relativity of Deviance

Because different groups have different norms, what is deviant to some may not be deviant to others. Ex: Indian man showering naked at the neighborhood water pump= not deviant in India.

Proletariat and Bourgeoisie

Bourgeoisie (capitalists) - own means of production Proletariat (workers) - sell labor

Types of social stratification: class, caste, meritocracy

Class: social stratification based on both birth and individual achievement Caste: social stratification based on ascription or birth Meritocracy: based on personal merit

Conflict Theory

Conflict theory, first developed by Karl Marx, is a theory that society is in a state of perpetual conflict because of competition for limited resources

Emile Durkheim's research on suicide suggested that

Durkheim found that the more firmly connected people are to others, the less likely they are to commit suicide

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf's hypothesis that language creates ways of thinking and perceiving

McDonadlization

Efficiency, calculability, predictability, control the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of recent idea about the worldwide homogenization of cultures due to globalization

impression management

Individual's efforts to create specific impressions in the minds of others

"Unspoken: America's Native American Boarding Schools"

KUED takes a moving and insightful look into the history, operation, and legacy of the federal Indian Boarding School system, whose goal was total assimilation of Native Americans at the cost of stripping away Native culture, tradition, and language

Feminist theory

Looks at both gender inequalities in society and the way that gender structures the social world and considers remedies to these inequalities

Class consciousness

Marx's term for awareness of a common identity based on an awareness of one's social and/or economic class relative to others

organic and mechanical solidarity

Mechanical solidarity is the social integration of members of a society who have common values and beliefs (United by sameness). Organic solidarity is social integration that arises out of the need of individuals for one another's services (interdependent on eachother).

Milgram's research

Milgram began a famous and controversial series of experiments to test the boundaries of people's obedience to authority and determine how far normal people would go in inflicting pain on others just because they were told to. It showed the surprising degree to which people obey authority. Two out of three (65%) participants continued to administer shocks to an unresponsive learner.

catagory

People with only status in common

Stigma

Physical or social attribute that devalues a person or group's identity, and which may exclude those who are devalued from normal social interaction

Poverty line, relative & absolute poverty

Poverty Line- The poverty threshold in 2017 for a family of four was $24,600 Absolute Poverty - an objective measure of poverty that is defined by the inability to meet minimal standards for food, shelter, clothing, or health care Relative Poverty- is a relational measure of poverty based on the standards of living. - People are considered poor if their standard of living is less than that of other members of society.

Asch's experiment

Solomon Asch conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform. After combining the trials, the results indicated that participants conformed to the incorrect group answer approximately one-third of the time The experiment concluded that people conform for two main reasons: they want to fit in with the group (normative influence) and because they believe the group is more informed than they are (informational influence)

Culture

The entire way of life of a group of people. Acts as a lens through which one views the world.

"Body Ritual among the Nacirema"

The meaning of Miner's "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" is that if we distance ourselves and our point of view, a culture will always look peculiar to us. On the other hand, looked at from within, even the strangest customs and practices might seem completely reasonable and justifiable

Social Control

The regulation and enforcement of norms

relationship between sociology and other social sciences

The social sciences are subjects concerned with how humans interact with the world, and sociology is interested in the study of society.

social ties

The various types of connections individuals make with other people.

Dominant Culture

a culture that expresses the core values that are shared by a majority of the organization's members

Bureaucracy and its characteristics

a secondary group/organization of non-elected officials who implements the rules, laws, and functions of their institution and designed to perform tasks efficiently Characteristics: § Specialization § Hierarchy of offices § rules and regulations § technical competence § impersonality § formal, written communications

Status inconsistency

a situation where an individual's social positions have both positive and negative influences on his or her social status. For example, a teacher may have a positive societal image that increases their status but may earn little money, which simultaneously decreases their status

Diffusion

a social process through which elements of culture spread from one society or social group to another

symbolic interactionism

a theoretical perspective in which society is viewed as composed of symbols that people use to establish meaning, develop their views of the world, and communicate with one another

Social Control Theory

a theory of delinquency that links deviance with the absence of bonds to society's main institutions

achieved & ascribed statuses

achieved- •Status earned through individual effort ascribed- •Inborn status; difficult to change

Positivism

an approach to the study of society that relies specifically on empirical scientific evidence, such as controlled experiments and statistics. Positivism is a belief that we should not go beyond the boundaries of what can be observed

Symbols

anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share a culture

The new Jim Crow

argues that the U.S. criminal justice system is being used as a contemporary system of racial control even as it adheres to the principle of colorblindness.

traditional authority

based in custom, birthright, or divine right and is usually associated with monarchies and dynasties

legal-rational authority

based in laws, rules, and procedures

charismatic authority

based in the perception of remarkable personal qualities in a leader

Role

behavior expected of someone who holds a particular status

Deviance

behavior, trait, belief, or other characteristic that violates a norm

Subculture

o "Groups of people within society whose shared values, norms, beliefs, or use of material culture set them apart from other people in that society" (McIntyre, p. 110). o Examples: occupational, religious, ethnic, class-based, sexual, political, hobbies-based

Labeling theory

o Deviance is what we label as deviant o Deviants perform deviance b/c they are labeled deviant

Marxian theory of social stratification

o Economic system -- most important in dividing or connecting people -Means of production determines social hierarchies -Hunter gathering, agricultural, industrial

master status

one status within a set that stands out or overrides all others

Types of Stigma

physical (including physical or mental impairments), moral (signs of flawed character), or tribal (membership in a discredited or oppressed group).

Power and Authority

power: the ability to exercise one's will over others authority: the formal, socially approved use of powerw

Cultural relativity

practice of evaluating a culture by its own standards

"13th" Film

slavery and racism that still exists today in America; although not in a tangible form, mentally. 13th points out how much harm can be caused by slavery, even though the constitution negates such a possibility.

SES and Life Chances

socioeconomic status -Income, education, occupation -SES - one of the most powerful predictors of health, more powerful than genetics, exposure to carcinogens, and even smoking -The gap in mortality between high and low SES persons is larger than the gap between smokers and non-smokers. -Americans who have not graduated from high school have a death rate two to three times higher than those who have graduated from college. -Low SES adults have levels of illness in their 30s and 40s that are not seen in the highest SES group until after the ages of 65-75.

Cultural capital

the accumulation of knowledge, behaviors, and skills that a person can tap into to demonstrate one's cultural competence and social status

Culture shock

the disorientation that people experience when they come in contact with a fundamentally different culture and can no longer depend on their taken-for-granted assumptions about life

Values

the ideas, beliefs, and attitudes about what is important that help guide the way you live

Interaction

the interplay that occurs when the effect of one factor (such as environment) depends on another factor (such as heredity)

Socialization

the process by which individuals internalize the values, beliefs, and norms of a given society and learn to function as members of that society

Leveling

the process of cultures becoming more and more alike due to increases in things like communication, globalization, technology, immigration and travel.

Cooley's looking glass self

the self develops through our perception of others' evaluations and appraisals of us

relationship to the means of production

the sum total of social relationships that people must enter into in order to survive, to produce, and to reproduce their means of life.

Bourdieu's theory of social reproduction

the tendency for social-class status to be passed down from one generation to the next

Wealth gap

the unequal distribution of assets across a population

Gestures

the ways in which people use their bodies to communicate with one another

Technology

use of techniques, processes, and material objects to produce goods, provide services, and connect people

Social construction of beauty

what people take to be normal and fixed facts about the world are actually determined by social norms, culture and social interaction

Role strain

when roles associated with a single status clash

Role conflict

when the roles associated with one status clash with the roles associated with a different status

Functions of deviance

· deviance affirms cultural values and norms & responding to deviance clarifies moral boundaries o There can be no good w/o evil · responding to deviance brings people together · deviance encourages social change

status

•Position in a social hierarchy •Building block of social interaction

Crowds

temporary gathering of people in a public place

Thomas Theorem

"If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences" (Thomas and Thomas 1928).

Mills' sociological imagination

"The ability to look beyond personal troubles to see social issues" "The sociological perspective enables us to grasp the connection between history and biography." An awareness of the relationship between an individual and the wider society

Symbolic interactionist approach to social stratification/social class

- interactionists examine the way we use status differences to categorize ourselves and others. - As Erving Goffman pointed out, our clothing, speech, gestures, possessions, friends, and activities provide information about our socioeconomic status.

micro and macro sociological orientations

- micro-level orientation o close-up focus on social interaction in specific situations - macro-level orientation o concern w/ broad patterns that shape society as a whole

Structure

- relatively stable patterns of social behavior -e.g., family, workplace, classroom, etc.

Groupthink

- the tendency of group members to conform, resulting in a narrow view of some issue

"The Rich Get Rich & the Poor Get Prison: An Overview of the Book by Jeffrey Reiman"

-Examine the criminal justice system through the lens of the poor. -Understand that much of what goes on in the criminal justice system violates one's own sense of fairness. -Morally evaluate the criminal justice system's failures. -Identify the type of legislature that is biased against the poor

Karl Marx

-German philosopher and political activist; founder of Conflict Theory. - Critiqued industrial capitalism (economic system that is based on private for-profit operation of industry) believed that inequalities would become so extreme that workers would revolt. -theorized that capitalism created social inequality between the bourgeoisie, who owned the means of production (money, factories, natural resources, and land), and the proletariat, who were the workers. -Marx predicted that inequality leads to class conflict. -Bottom people want better wages to pay for their lives and top people want smaller wages so they can extract as much profit from the laborers

Total Institution (Goffman)

-Institution where individuals are isolated and controlled for the purpose of stripping away previous roles and identities in order to create a new one

Weber's theory of social class

-Multidimensional model -Social status depends on more than relationship to means of production: class, occupational prestige, power, income, wealth,

Resocialization

-Process of replacing previously learned norms and values with new ones as a part of a transition in life

Auguste Comte

-Reinvented the term, "sociology" 1838, coined in 1780 by French essayist Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès -Promoted positivism "scientific study of social patterns" sense perceptions are the only valid source of knowledge. -Anything you can't see, hear, touch, taste, or smell doesn't really exist -Applied scientific method (procedure for acquiring knowledge by collecting concrete data through observation and experiment) to study society -The industrial revolution

Reference groups

-Social groups that serve as a point of reference for people making evaluations or decisions -Provide a model of how to behave (or how not to behave). -Serve as a standard against which we evaluate ourselves and our actions.

Identification conformity

-conformity to establish or maintain a relationship with a person or group

Cultural imperialism

-deliberate imposition of one's own cultural values on another culture - imposition by one usually politically or economically dominant community of various aspects of its own culture onto another nondominant community

Compliance conformity

-mildest form of conformity; actions to gain reward or avoid punishment

Ethnocentrism

-practice of judging one culture by the standards of one's own culture "involves a belief or attitude that one's own culture is better than all others"

Mead's generalized other

-seeing self through the attitude of the community -We don't just learn social rules, values, norms; we incorporate them into ourselves

Primary Groups

-small social group whose members share personal and enduring relationships. -Among the first groups we experience in life.

Internalization Conformity

-strongest type of conformity; an individual adopts the beliefs or actions of a group and makes them his or her own

Cultural capital

-tastes, habits, expectations, skills, knowledge, and other cultural tendencies, socialized within each class -either helps or hinders us as we become adults. -Also referred to as "class traits"

Informal and formal norms

A formal norm is a law or something that is written down and could cause danger to people. An informal norm is a rule that is not written down and unspoken

Langauge

A system of communication through the use of speech, a collection of sounds understood by a group of people to have the same meaning.

Counterculture

Form of subculture that holds values, shares norms, or utilizes material culture in ways that set them apart and are perceived to threaten the larger culture

"McDonaldization of Society"

George Ritzer coined the term McDonaldization to describe the spread of bureaucratic rationalization and the resulting increase in both efficiency and dehumanization

Max Weber

German sociologist that regarded the development of rational social orders as humanity's greatest achievement. Saw bureaucratization (the process whereby labor is divided into an organized community and individuals acquire a sense of personal identity by finding roles for themselves in large systems) as the driving force in modern society.

"America the Beautiful: The Obsession with Physical Beauty and Its Cost"

In America the Beautiful we see how increasingly unattainable images contribute to the rise in low self-esteem, body dismorphia, and eating disorders for young women and girls who also happen to be the beauty industry's largest consumers.. In almost 40,000 media messages a year, youthful Americans are being told that, unless you look like supermodels and rock stars, you're not good enough for anyone to love. In 2004 alone, Americans spent 12.4 billion on cosmetic surgery. America the Beautiful explores why Americans are spending so much money to cover up their discontent

Self-fulfilling prophecy

In a self-fulfilling prophecy an individual's expectations about another person or entity eventually result in the other person or entity acting in ways that confirm the expectations.

Tertiary Deviance

Redefining the stigma associated with a deviant label as positive

"On Being Sane in Insane Places"

Rosenhan discovered doctors tend to over-diagnose in order to be on the safe side and not miss a sick person. But this tendency can cause damage when adopted by psychiatrists due to the social and legal repercussions of a mental condition

Social Networks

Social network analysis is a way of conceptualizing, describing, and modeling society as sets of people or groups linked to one another by specific relationships

Coercive Power

an ability that allows an authority figure to influence another individual to deliver a result by using fear and threats as incentive

Dramaturgy

an approach pioneered by Erving Goffman in which social life is analyzed in terms of its similarities to theatrical performance. A method of analyzing social interaction as if the participants were performing on a stage

Aggregates

collections of people who share a physical location but do not have lasting social relations

Merton's typology of deviance

conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, rebellion

Latent Function

consequences that are largely unintended and unrecognized

Emile Durkheim

considered the father of sociology and a major proponent of functionalism, Emile Durkheim was the pioneer of modern social research and established the field of sociology as separate and distinct from psychology and political philosophy

Out-group

group that a person feels opposition, rivalry, or hostility toward

In-group

group that a person identifies with and feels loyalty toward

Folkway

loosely enforced norm that involves common customs, practices, or procedures that ensure smooth social interaction and acceptance

material vs nonmaterial/symbolic

material- tangible things created by members of society. A society's artifacts reflect underlying culture nonmaterial- ideas created by members of a society

American Dream, as ideology

o Ideology that anyone can achieve material success if he or she works hard enough -explains and justifies economic inequality in our social system -has been criticized for legitimizing stratification by implying that everyone has the same opportunity to get ahead

Leadership styles

o Instrumental leadership -task- or goal-oriented. -less concerned with people's feelings than with getting the job done. o Expressive leadership -concerned with maintaining emotional and relational harmony within the group because this will lead to a positive work environment and improved productivity.

intra/intergenerational social mobility

o Intragenerational social mobility -change in social position during a person's lifetime. o Intergenerational social mobility -social mobility of children in relation to their parents.

principles of stratification

o Stratification is a trait of society. o It persists over generations. o It is universal, but variable. o It involves not just inequality, but beliefs

Crime

o Violation of a norm that has been codified into law. o Types: § Violent § Nonviolent § Street § Corporate § Victimless § Hate

Merton's Strain Theory

o anomie is built into the structure of society o Occurs when the norms of society don't match the social structure o extent and kind of deviance depends on whether society provides the means to achieve cultural goals

Secondary Groups

o large, impersonal social group whose members pursue a specific goal or activity. o Involve weak emotional ties.

Social Conflict Theory of Deviance

o links deviance to social inequality o who or what is labeled deviant depends on which categories of people hold power § Those labeled deviant often share the trait of powerlessness § Social norms & laws reflect interests of the rich and powerful § Powerful people have resources to resist deviant labels

Social Mobility

o vertical = movement up or down o horizontal = sideways movement o structural = shift in social position of large numbers of people due to changes in society

primary devience

occurs at the moment an activity is labeled as deviant by others

Secondary Deviance

occurs when a person labeled deviant accepts the label as part of his or her identity and begins to act in conformity with the label

ideal and real culture

real- the way society actually is ideal- standards society would like to embrace and live up to

Manifest function

recognized and intended consequences of any social pattern

Culture of poverty

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

Social sanctions

rewards or punishments that encourage conformity to social norms (can positive or negative, formal or informal)

Norms

rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its members

Beliefs

specific ideas that people hold to be true

Culture war

struggle between two sets of conflicting cultural values

Sociology

study of social life, social change, and the social causes and consequences of human behavior

Critical race theory

study of the relationship among race, racism, and power

Social Stratification

system by which a society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy