Soc 101 Chapter 5

Deference

The symbolic means by which subordinates give a required permissive response to those in power.

Typology

A classification scheme containing two or more mutually exclusive categories that are used to compare different kinds of behavior or types of societies.

Studied Nonobservance

A face saving technique in which one role-player ignores the flaws in another's performance to avoid embarrassment for everyone involved.

Role Expectation

A groups or societies definition of the way a specific role ought to be played.

Status Symbols

A material sign that informs others of a persons specific status. Ex. Wedding ring

Social Network

A series of social relationships that links an individual to others.

Role

A set of behavioral expectations associated with a given status

Social Institution

A set of organized beliefs and rules that establishes how a society will attempt to meet its basic social needs. Functional theorist emphasize that social institutions exist because they preform essential task. 1. Replacing members. 2. Teaching new members 3. Producing, distributing, and consuming goods and services. 4. Preserving order 5. Providing and maintaining a sense of purpose.

Role Conflict

A situation in which incompatible role demands are placed on a person by two or more statuses held at the same time.

Status

A socially defined position in a group or society characterized by certain expectations, rights, and duties.

Gemeinschaft

A term used by Ferdinand Tonnies to describe a traditional society in which social relationships are based on personal bonds of friendship and kinship and on intergenerational stability.

Gesellschaft

A term used by Ferdinand Tönnies to describe a large, urban society in which social bonds are based on impersonal and specialized relationships, with little long-term commitment to the group or consensus on values.

Edward Hall

Anthropologist. Analyzed the physical distance between people speaking to each other and found the amount of personal space that people prefer varies from one culture to another.

Stigma

Any physical or social attribute or sign that so devalues a persons social identity that is disqualifies that person from full social acceptance. Ex. Convicted criminal wearing a prison uniform.

Horticultural Societies

Based on technology that supports the cultivation of plants to provide food.

Pastoral Societies

Based on technology that supports the domestication of large animals to provide food.

Status Set

Compromises all the statuses that a person occupies at a given time. Ex. Maria is is a psychologist, professor, wife, mother.

Social Group

Consist of two or more people who interact frequently and share a common identity and feeling of interdependence.

Erving Goffman

Developed being a symbolic interactionist. Focused on the roles we play when we interact with others. He argues that we have a private inner self that stays off stage, and a social self that acts out the roles people expect of us.

Organic Solidarity

Emile Durkheim's term for the social cohesion found in industrial (and perhaps post industrial) society, in which people preform very specialized task and feel united by their mutual dependence.

Mechanical Solidarity

Emile Durkheim's term for the social cohesion of preindustrial societies, in which there is minimal division of labor and people feel united by shared values and common social bonds.

Impression Management

Erving Goffman's term for peoples efforts to present themselves to others in ways that are most favorable to their own interest or image.

Sociocultural Evolution

Gerhard and Jean Lenski's term for the changes that occur as a society gains new technology

Horticultural and Pastoral Societies

Gradual shift from collecting food to producing food. Change that has been attributed to three factors. 1. Depletion of the supply of large game animals as a source of food. 2. An increase in the size of the human population to feed. 3. Dramatic weather and environmental changes.

Breaching Experiments

Harold Garfinkle.Experiments that violate the established social order to assess how people construct social reality

Formal Organization

Highly structured group formed for the purpose of completing certain task or achieving specific goals.

Role Performance

How a person actually plays the role.

Secondary Group

Larger, more specialized group in which members engage in a more-impersonal, goal-oriented relationships for a limited period of time. Ex. Schools, churches, coorperations.

Role Strain

Occurs when incompatible demands are built into a single status that a person occupies.

Role Distancing

Occurs when people consciously foster the impression of a lack of commitment or attachment to a particular role and merely go through the motions of role performance.

Role Exit

Occurs when people disengage from social roles that have been central to their self identity.

Civil Inattention

Polite ignoring of others (after a brief sign of awareness) so as not to invade their privacy.

Social Solidarity

Refers to a groups ability to maintain itself in the face of obstacles. Exist when social bonds, attractions, or other forces hold members of a group in interaction for a period of time.

Primary Group

Small, less specialized group in which members engage in a face to face, emotion-based interactions over an extended period of time. Ex. Family, close friends , school/work related peer groups.

Achieved Status

Social position a person assumes voluntarily as a result of personal choice, merit, or direct effort. Ex. Maria voluntarily assumed the status as psychologist, mother, wife.

Ascribed Status

Social position conferred at birth or recieved involuntarily later in life, based on attributes over which the individual has little or no control, such as race/ethnicity, age, and gender. Ex. Maria is a female born to Mexican American parents.

Industrial Societies

Societies based on technology that mechanizes production.

Postindustrial Society

Societies in which technology supports a service and information based economy.

Hunting and Gathering Societies

Societies that use simple technology for hunting animals and gathering vegetation.

Agrarian Societies

Societies that use the technology of large-scale farming, including animal-drawn or energy-powered plows and equipment, to produce their food supply.

Definition of the Situation

Sociologist describe this process meaning that we analyze a social context in which we find ourselves, determine what is in our best interest, and adjust our attitudes and actions accordingly.

Robert Park

Sociologist. Coined the term "Social Marginality" to refer to persons (such as immigrants) who simultaniously share the life and traditions of two distinct groups.

Emile Durkheim and Ferdinand Tonnies

Sociologist. Developed typologies to explain the processes of stability and change in the social structure of societies.

Carol Brooks Gardner

Sociologist. Found that women frequently do not perceive street encounters to be routine rituals. They fear for their personal safety and try to avoid comments and propositions that are sexual in nature.

Harold Garfinkle

Sociologist. Initiated the ethnomethodology approach. Coined the term "ethno" for people and "methodology" for a system of methods. Critical of mainstream sociology.

Tracy Watson

Sociologist. Role conflict can sometimes be attributed not to the roles themselves but to the pressures that people feel when they do not fit into culturally prescribed roles. Studied woman athletes, found role conflict in being an athlete woman.

Everett Hughes

Sociologist. Stated that societies resolve the ambiguity of determining which status is most important by determining master statuses.

Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh

Studied the process of role exit by interviewing ex-convicts, ex-nuns, retirees, divorced men and women, and others who had exited voluntarily from significant social roles; she believed that role exit occurs in four stages 1. Doubt 2. Search for alternatives 3. Turning point, action, realization 4. Creation of new identity

C. Wright Mills

Suggested that when we "sell our personality" in the course of selling goods or services, we engage in a seriously self-alienating process. In other words the "commercialization" of our feelings may dehumanize our work role performance.

Social Structure

The complex framework of societal institutions( such as the economy, politics, and religion) and the social practices (such as rules and social roles) that make up a society and that organize and establish limits on peoples behavior.

Interaction Order

The fact that people engage in civil inattention demonstrates that interaction does have a pattern which regulates the form and processes of social interaction.

Master Status

The most important status a person occupies.

Social Construction of Reality

The process by which our perception of reality is largely shaped by the subjective meaning that we give to an experience.

Social Interation

The process by which people act toward or respond to other people.

Self-fulfilling Prophecy

The situation in which a false belief or prediction produces behavior that makes the originally false belief come true.

Social Marginality

The state of being part insider and part outsider in the social structure. Social Marginality results in stigmatization.

Dramaturgical Analysis

The study of social interaction that compares everyday life to a theatrical presentation.

Ethnomethodology

The study of the common sense knowledge that people use to understand the situations in which they find themselves.

Ferdinand Tonnies

Used the terms gemeinschaft and gesellschaft to characterize the degree of social solidarity and social control found in societies.

Arlie Hochschild

Who coined feeling rules that shapes the appropriate emotions for a given role or specific situation. These rules include how, when, where, and with whom an emotion should be expressed.

Information Explosion

an economy in which large numbers of people either provide or apply information.

Nancy Henley

attributed the pattern of touching others from childhood to adulthood to power differentials between men and women and to the nature of women's roles as mothers, nurses, teachers, and secretaries.

Jacqueline Wiseman

in her study of "Pacific City's" skid row, she wanted to know how people who live or work on skid row (a run-down area found in all cities) felt about it; found that homeless persons living on skid row evaluated it very differently from the social workers who dealt with them there; showed that we define situations form our own frame of reference, based on the statuses that we occupy and the roles that we play.

Face Saving Behavior

techniques used to salvage a performance that is going sour

Subsistence Technology

the methods and tools that are available for acquiring the basic needs of daily life