Chapter 1 Sociology

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.

Unlike simple stereotypes, sociological generalizations _______.

Are based in all available facts.

The term "sociology" was coined in 1838 by ________.

Auguste Comte

The pioneering sociologist who studied patterns of suicide in Europe was _________.

Emile Durkheim

An accurate criticism of the structural-functional approach is that it ________

Focuses too much on power divisions in society

Who helped launch the discipline of sociology by studying the evils of slavery and also by translating the writings of Auguste Comte?

Harriet Martineau

Sociology differs from the older discipline of philosophy by focusing on __________.

How society actually operates.

Understanding the differences between countries encourages _______.

Increasing our understanding of both of our own lives and the lives of others.

_______ had an important influence on the development of the social-conflict approach.

Karl Marx

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.

The recognized and intended consequences of a social pattern are referred to as _______.

Manifest functions.

__________, one of the founding sociologists, urged sociologists to understand a social setting from the point of view of the people in it.

Max Weber

Social problems in the United States, such as poverty and gender inequality, are ________.

More serious in poorer countries.

Looking at the operation of U.S. schools, the social-conflict approach might lead a sociologist to conclude that:

Our society provides some students with far better schooling than others.

________ is a way of understanding the world based on science.

Positivism

A manifest function of sports is ________.

Providing recreation and physical conditioning.

The "framework for building theory that sees society as an arena of inequality that generates conflict and change" is the _________

Social-conflict approach

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.

Herbert Spencer described human society as a complex system having much in common with _______.

The human body

Racial discrimination in professional sports is evident today in _________.

The positions typically played by white and black players.

The basic idea of the symbolic-interaction approach is that society is _________.

The product of people interacting in countless everyday situations.

The major goal of sociology's pioneers, including Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim, was __________.

To discover how society actually operates.

Which early sociologist received the first doctorate ever awarded by Harvard University to a person of color?

W. E. B. Du Bois

A simplified description unfairly applied to every person in the same category is called ________

a stereotype

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.

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.

Building social relationships and creating tens of thousands of jobs are two of the _________ of sports.

latent functions

Unrecognized and unintended consequences of a social pattern are called ________

latent functions

Using the symbolic-interaction approach, sports becomes ________

less a system than an ongoing process of interaction.

Robert Merton explained that what is functional for people in one category of a society's population ________

may not be functional for people in another category.

In deciding what kinds of questions to ask in their research, sociologists are guided by ________

one or more theoretical approaches

A social-exchange analysis states that ________.

people typically seek mates who offer as much as they do.

C. Wright Mills claimed that the "sociological imagination" transformed _________.

personal problems into public issues.

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.

A criticism of the symbolic-interaction approach is that it ________.

says little about the influence of structural factors such as culture, class, gender, and race.

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 concept is used to describe relatively stable patterns of social behavior?

social structure

Which discipline defines itself as "the systematic study of human society"?

sociology

The ______ approaches are macro-level, describing societies in broad, structural terms.

structural-functional and social-conflict

Among the historical changes that stimulated the development of sociology as a discipline was ________

the rise of the industrial economy and growth of cities.

The ancient Romans saw the stars as being gods. Auguste Comte would classify Roman society as being in which of the following stages of history?

theological stage

A statement that explains how and why specific facts are related is called a(n) ________.

theory.