SOC 100: Exam #1 (Ch 1-5)

Ch 2 Reverse Causality

A situation in which the researcher believes that A results in a change in B, but B, in fact, is causing A. Reverse causality is just what it sounds like: You think A is causing B when, in fact, B is causing A. - The problem of reverse causality is what makes it so important to establish time order. - If a person's income drops only after getting sick sick, we can be surer that it was sickness that led to the decline in income. However, we should also note that time order is no guarantee by itself. People may alter their current behavior based on future expectations.

Ch 4 Ascribed Status

A status into which one is born; involuntary status. Sociologists often make a distinction between an ascribed status and an achieved status, which basically amounts to what you are born with versus what you become. - Another way to think about it is in terms of involuntary versus voluntary status. - Your age, race, and sex are all largely ascribed statuses, whereas your status as a juggler, drug dealer, peace activist, or reality television aficionado is an achieved status. - Sometimes, one status within our status set stands out or overwhelms all the others. - This is called a master status. A status we receive involuntarily - Example: place of birth, parents, race, ethnicity, sex, age

Ch 4 The Generalized Other

An internalized sense of the total expectations of others in a variety of settings—regardless of whether we've encountered those people or places before. According to Mead, however, that brings us only halfway to being socialized. - The final step is developing a concept of the generalized other, which represents an internalized sense of the total expectations of others in a variety of settings—regardless of whether we've encountered those people or places before. - In this way, we should be able to function with complete strangers in a wide range of social settings. We can, and do, continually update our internal sense of the generalized other as we gather new information about norms and expectations in different contexts. People may also intentionally violate established norms.

Ch 2 Spurious Relationship

Spurious correlation, or spuriousness, occurs when two factors appear casually related to one another but are not. The appearance of a causal relationship is often due to similar movement on a chart that turns out to be coincidental or caused by a third "confounding" factor.

Ch 3 Cultural Relativism

Taking into account the differences across cultures without passing judgment or assigning value. - Cultural relativism means taking into account the differences across cultures without passing judgment or assigning value. By employing the concept of cultural relativism, we can understand difference for the sake of increasing our knowledge about the world. - Cultural relativism is also important for businesses that operate on a global scale. There are, of course, limits to cultural relativism. In some countries, it is both legal and socially acceptable for a man to beat his wife. - Should we accept that wife beating is part of the local culture and therefore conclude that we are not in a position to judge those involved?

Ch 5 Organizational Culture

The shared beliefs and behaviors within a social group; often used interchangeably with corporate culture. The term organizational culture refers to the shared beliefs and behaviors within a social group and is often used interchangeably with corporate culture. - The organizational culture at a slaughterhouse—where pay is low, employees must wear protective gear, the environment is dangerous, and animals are continuously being killed—is probably very different from the organizational culture at a small, not-for-profit community law center. - The term organizational structure refers to how power and authority are distributed within an organization. - The slaughterhouse probably has a hierarchical structure, with a clear ranking of managers and supervisors who oversee the people working the lines.

Ch 1 C. Wright Mills

American sociologist who, with Hans H. Gerth, applied and popularized Max Weber's theories in the United States. He also applied Karl Mannheim's theories on the sociology of knowledge to the political thought and behaviour of intellectuals.

Ch 2 Population

An entire group of individual persons, objects, or items from which samples may be drawn. You are always studying a population.

Ch 3 Symbols

Anything that carries meaning to a specific group of people or culture. Subculture as a concept can be a moving target: It's hard to lock into one specific definition of the term. - Historically, subcultures have been defined as groups united by sets of concepts, values, symbols, and shared meaning specific to the members of that group. - Accordingly, they frequently are seen as vulgar or deviant and are often marginalized. Goths in Germany may look very different from those in the United Kingdom, and norms even differ among US cities, so each is a distinct branch of the subculture. - Yet as a whole, goths do have their own shared symbols, especially with regard to fashion, so they are visible as a subculture. Anything that means something else. - Ex: thumbs up, peace sign, UT logo, etc.

Ch 2 Research Methods

Approaches that social scientists use for investigating the answers to questions.

Ch 2 Dependent Variable vs. Independent

Dependent variable - The outcome the researcher is trying to explain. - Is the dependent variable depending on something? - Ex: test score Independent variable - A measured factor that the researcher believes has a causal impact on the dependent variable. - Change in your dependent variable depends on change in your independent variable. - Does this influence or have an impact on something else? - Ex: hours spent studying for a test.

Ch 4 Looking-Glass Self

Describes the process wherein individuals base their sense of self on how they believe others view them. Using social interaction as a type of "mirror," people use the judgments they receive from others to measure their own worth, values, and behavior. Perhaps the first full theory of the social self was developed by Charles Horton Cooley, who coined the term the looking-glass self.

Ch 1 Harriet Martineau

Essayist, novelist, journalist, and economic and historical writer who was prominent among English intellectuals of her time. Perhaps her most scholarly work is The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, Freely Translated and Condensed, 2 vol. (1853), her version of Comte's Cours de philosophie positive, 6 vol. (1830-42). Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), an English social theorist, was the first to translate Comte into English. - She addressed topics ranging from the way we educate children (which, she attests, affords parents too much control and doesn't ensure quality) to the relationship between the federal and state governments. - She was also the author of the first methods book in the area of sociology, How to Observe Morals and Manners (1838), in which she took on the institution of marriage, claiming that it was based on an assumption of the inferiority of women. - This critique, among other writings, suggests that Martineau should be considered one of the earliest feminist social scientists writing in the English language. The first person to translate Comte's work into English - Was an English scholar Wrote the first research methods book Studied a wide variety of subjects.

Ch 4 Agents of Socialization: Families

For most individuals, the family is the original source of significant others and the primary unit of socialization. - If you have siblings, you may develop the sense that older and younger children are treated differently. - The general impression is that the younger siblings get away with more. - Parents, having already gone through the experience of child rearing, may relax their attitudes and behaviors toward later children (even if unconsciously). Note, too, that socialization can be a two-way street. - Information doesn't always flow from the older to the younger family members. - So it's hard to say whether this is really socialization at work or merely a change in rational, selfish calculations. Meanwhile, sociologist Emily Rauscher found that for the average American, daughters made parents more politically conservative, specifically with respect to views about sexuality (Conley & Rauscher, 2013). - The socialization that occurs within the family can be affected by various demographics. - Parents of different social classes socialize their children differently. Indeed, sociologists have long recognized that parents' social class matters, but how exactly this privilege is transmitted to children (beyond strictly monetary benefits) has been less clear. - To better understand this process, ethnographer Annette Lareau spent time in both Black and White households with children approximately 10 years of age. - She found that middle-class parents, both Black and White, are more likely to engage in what she calls "concerted cultivation." - They structure their children's leisure time with formal activities (such as soccer leagues and piano lessons) and reason with them over decisions in an effort to foster their kids' talents. Working-class and poor parents, in contrast, focus on the "accomplishment of natural growth." - They give their children the room and resources to develop but leave it up to the kids to decide how they want to structure their free time. - A greater division between the social life of children and that of the adults exists in such households. Whereas middle-class parents send their kids off to soccer practice, music lessons, and myriad other after-school activities, kids in poor families spend a disproportionate amount of time "hanging out," as has been observed by Jason DeParle in American Dream (2004), his chronicle of three families on public assistance struggling through the era of welfare reform in Milwaukee. Likewise, a 2006 study by Annette Lareau, Eliot Weingarter, and this author shows the same statistical results: Outside of school, disadvantaged children spend 40 percent more time in unstructured activities than their middle-class counterparts. - Middle-class kids, on the other hand, spend their days learning how to interact with adult authority figures, how to talk to strangers, and how to follow rules and manage schedules. - From a very young age, they are taught to use logic and reason to support their choices by mirroring their parents' explanations of why they can or cannot get what they want. Low-income parents, Lareau found, were more likely to answer their children with "Because I said so," instilling respect for authority but missing an opportunity to help their children develop logical reasoning skills commonly used in adult interactions. - Middle-class kids discover the confidence that comes with achievements such as learning to play the piano or mastering a foreign language. - In fact, it should be no surprise that the rise of the "overscheduled" child comes during a period when, for the first time in history, higher-income Americans work more hours than lower-income Americans. - Professional parents familiarize their children with the kind of lives they expect them to lead as adults. - Later work found that perhaps intensive parenting did have a delinquency-protective effect, but only in adolescence (Milkie et al., 2015). - The problem with much of the work on parenting and how kids spend their time is that many parenting behaviors and decisions regarding the child's activities may be in response to how a child is faring. - We found that physical, outdoor activity had a positive influence on math test scores while indoor, sedentary behavior had the opposite effect. There may be something said, then, for the 1970s style of parenting of just sending your kids outside to play (without phones) all day as compared to having them sit inside on screens.

Ch 2 Operationalization

How a concept gets defined and measured in a given study. The process of assigning a precise definition for measuring a concept being examined in a particular study is called operationalization.

Ch 1 Macrosociology

A branch of sociology generally concerned with social dynamics at a higher level of analysis—that is, across the breadth of society. Macrosociology is generally concerned with social dynamics at a higher level of analysis—across the breadth of a society (or at least a swath of it). - A macrosociologist might investigate immigration policy or gender norms or how the educational system interacts with the labor market. - Statistical analysis is the most typical manifestation of this kind of research, but by no means the only one. Macrosociologists also use qualitative methods such as historical comparison and in-depth interviewing.

Ch 1 Microsociology

A branch of sociology that seeks to understand local interactional contexts; its methods of choice are ethnographic, generally including participant observation and in-depth interviews. Microsociology seeks to understand local interactional contexts—for example, why people stare at the numbers in an elevator and are reluctant to make eye contact in this setting. - Microsociologists focus on face-to-face encounters and the types of interactions between individuals. - They rely on data gathered through participant observations and other qualitative methodologies (for more on these methods, see Chapter 2)

Ch 2 Ethnography

A qualitative method of studying people or a social setting that uses observation, interaction, and sometimes formal interviewing to document behaviors, customs, experiences, social ties, and so on. Live with a group, does what they do. The researcher immerses themself into the society or group they are studying to get a better understanding and first hand account.

Ch 4 Limits of Socialization

Although socialization is necessary for people to function in society, individuals are not simply blank slates onto which society transcribes its norms and values. - In sociology, we tend to think less about right and wrong and more about which theories are more or less helpful in explaining and understanding our social world. The concept of socialization is useful for understanding how people become functioning members of society. For starters, human beings have agency. - This means that while we operate within limits that largely are not of our own making (e.g., we cannot choose our parents or siblings, and US law requires that all children receive schooling), we also make choices about how to interact with our environment.

Ch 1 W.E.B. Du Bois

American sociologist, historian, author, editor, and activist who was the most important Black protest leader in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. He shared in the creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 and edited The Crisis, its magazine, from 1910 to 1934. His collection of essays The Souls of Black Folk (1903) is a landmark of African American literature. He developed the concept of double consciousness, a process in which African Americans constantly maintain two behavioral scripts. - The first is the script that any American would have for moving through the world; the second is the script that takes the external opinions of an often racially prejudiced onlooker into consideration. The double consciousness is a "sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity". - Those operating with a double consciousness risk conforming so closely to others' perceptions that they are fully constrained to the behaviors predicted of them. Du Bois was also interested in criminology, using Durkheim's theory of anomie to explain crime rates among African Americans. - Specifically, Du Bois theorized that the breakdown of norms resulting from the former slaves' sudden and newfound freedom caused high crime rates among Blacks (at least in the South). He also analyzed the social stratification among Philadelphia's Black population and argued that such class inequality was necessary for progress in the Black community. First African American sociologist. Gets into both macro and micro situations within sociologists. Goes into double consciousness. - Dual sense of self: on one hand you are the individuals you grew up to be but then also being the person racist America made those people to be.

Ch 2 Reflexivity

Analyzing and critically considering our own role in, and effect on, our research. When we do qualitative fieldwork (interviews, ethnography, or participant observation), we talk about reflexivity, which means analyzing and critically considering the white coat effects you may be inspiring with your research process.

Ch 3 Culture Shock

Doubt, confusion, or anxiety arising from immersion in an unfamiliar culture. Moving from one culture to another can induce feelings of culture shock—that is, confusion and anxiety caused by not knowing what words, signs, and other symbols mean. - People who move fluidly from one cultural setting to another learn to code switch by swapping out one set of meanings, values, and/or languages on the fly. Confusion that results from being immersed in a community or culture that is unfamiliar. - Ex: someone from up North coming down to FL for Gasparilla - may question why a bunch of adults are dressing as pirates.

Ch 1 Feminist Theory

Focuses on analyzing the grounds of the limitations faced by women when they claim the right to equality with men. Inequality between the genders is a phenomenon that goes back at least 4,000 years. Feminist theorists emphasize equality between men and women and want to see women's lives and experiences represented in sociological studies. Early feminist theory focused on defining concepts such as sex and gender, and on challenging conventional wisdom by questioning the meanings usually assigned to these concepts. Feminist theorists have studied women's experiences at home and in the workplace. They have also researched gender inequality in social institutions such as schools, the family, and the government. In each case, feminist sociologists remain interested in how power relationships are defined, shaped, and reproduced on the basis of gender differences.

Ch 1 Max Weber

German sociologist and political economist best known for his thesis of the "Protestant ethic," relating Protestantism to capitalism, and for his ideas on bureaucracy Weber and others believed Marx went too far in seeing culture, ideas, religion, and the like as merely an effect and not a cause of how societies evolve. - Specifically, Weber criticized Marx for his exclusive focus on the economy and social class, advocating sociological analysis to accommodate the multiple influences of culture, economics, and politics. Weber is most famous for his two-volume work Economy and Society (published posthumously in 1922) as well as for a lengthy essay titled "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1904/2003). In the latter, he argued that the religious transformation that occurred during the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries laid the groundwork for modern capitalism by upending the medieval ethic of virtuous poverty and replacing it with an ideology that saw riches as a sign of divine providence. Economy and Society also provided the theories of authority, rationality, the state (i.e., government), and status, and a host of other concepts that sociologists still use today. One of Weber's most important contributions was the concept of Verstehen ("understanding" in German). - By emphasizing Verstehen, Weber was suggesting that sociologists approach social behavior from the perspective of those engaging in it. - In other words, to truly understand why people act the way they do, a sociologist must understand the meanings people attach to their actions. Weber's emphasis on subjectivity is the foundation of interpretive sociology, the study of social meaning. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: Study of the relationship between religious ideas and economic activity. Verstehen Interpretive Sociology

Ch 3 Norms

How values tell us to behave. If values are abstract cultural beliefs, norms are how values are put into play. We value hygiene in our society, so it is a norm that you wash your hands after going to the bathroom. - When you are little, your parents and teachers must remind you, because chances are you haven't yet fully internalized this norm. - Once you're an adult, however, you are in charge of your own actions, yet others may still remind you of this norm by giving you a dirty look if you walk from a stall straight past the sinks and out the door of a public restroom. When you arrive at college, you enter a new culture with different norms and values, and you must adjust to that new environment. Culture affects us. It's transmitted to us through different processes, with socialization—our internalization of society's values, beliefs, and norms—being the main one. - According to Marx's view of reflection theory, our norms, values, sanctions, ideologies, laws, and even language are outgrowths of the technology and economic means and modes of production. Social rules Ex: when entering a classroom, every walks in quietly, grabs their needed materials, preps for class, and becomes ready to learn.

Ch 2 Ethics of Research

Involves the application of fundamental ethical principles to research activities which include the design and implementation of research, respect towards society and others, the use of resources and research outputs, scientific misconduct and the regulation of research. A few golden rules exist in research. The first is "Do no harm." - This may seem obvious; you don't want to cause physical harm to your subjects. - Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment - Milgram experiment The initial charge not to do harm gets complicated quickly. - Often, we try to design research projects so that subjects will encounter no more risk than that associated with everyday life. The second rule is to get informed consent. - Subjects have a right to know they are part of a study, what they are expected to do, and how the results will be used. - If you're interviewing people or asking them to complete a survey, this makes sense. If researchers deceive subjects, the deception must be absolutely necessary to the study, and above all else, the subjects better be safe. The third rule is to ensure voluntary participation, which usually goes hand in hand with informed consent. - People have a right to decide if they want to participate in your study. - They are allowed to drop out at any point with no penalty. - Ethically, the researcher cannot badger respondents into participating in the study or completing it once they have started. - There are also certain protected populations—minors, prisoners and other institutionalized individuals, pregnant women and their unborn fetuses, people with disabilities—whom you need additional approval to study. Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) - Boards that are setup to evaluate experiments that were done did follow ethical rules. - Colleges have ranging ethical rules. - Being a part of a study should be "free." - Participants are allowed to leave the study whenever. - Example: Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Ch 2 Qualitative Methods

Methods that attempt to collect information about the social world that cannot be readily converted to numeric form. Qualitative methods, of which there are many, attempt to collect information about the social world that cannot be readily converted to numeric form. - The information gathered with this approach is often used to document the meanings that actions engender in social participants or to describe the mechanisms by which social processes occur. - Qualitative data are collected in a host of ways, from spending time with people and recording what they say and do (participant observation) to interviewing them in an open-ended manner to reviewing archives. More concerned with questions about individuals' felt experiences. - Participant observation

Ch 2 Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment

Mock prison experiment. People were assigned the role of a guard or prisoner. The experiment analyzed how people would adopt social roles that are given to us. - The guards became very verbally abusive, physical harmful, etc. The experiment had to be stopped as it went too far. - Broke rule #1: do no harm If we are studying people, we don't need to harm them. Deception can be used in experiments, it just can't be harmful.

Ch 4 I

One's subjective sense of having consciousness, agency, action, or power. Infants only know the I—that is, one's sense of agency, action, or power. Through social interaction, however, they learn the me—that is, the self as a distinct object to be perceived by others (and by the I). Although such a line of logic might work with your cousin's seven-year-old sister, it will not work with little Joey because he has yet to develop a sense of the other—that is, someone or something outside of oneself. - This is why we allow children a certain amount of leeway. Ourselves as the subject "I took a selfie"

Ch 3 Media History

Print Media (first type of media) - Printing technology began in the 8th century China - Printing Press: Gutenberg 1450 - Changed literacy - Oral traditions turned into books and readings - Primarily for spiritual writings (the bible) before becoming for all kinds of things. Invention of the telegraph and telephone in the 19th century allowed instantaneous communication over long distances - Instantaneous communicate over long distances. Milestones in Sound Recording and Film - 1877—Phonograph developed by Thomas Edison (first new 'mass media' since print) - Revolutionary over how we experience things - went from listening to music in only live contexts, people were now able to listen whenever they wanted. Sound and Film: - 1895: Cinematograph developed - 1927: First "talking picture" (sound is laid on top of the visual) - Social changes - going to the movies - Rise of mass entertainment culture. - When dating unchaperoned started rising (going to the movies) - Radio: first broadcast medium in the early 20 century. - 1948—LP record launched by Columbia Records - Became recording industry standard for 30+ years - Most songs are only 3 minutes because records could only hold 3 minutes of song. The Rise of Mass Media: Sound and Film, cont. - 1960s—Personal cassette tapes become popular - 1970s—VCRs become popular, allow movie purchase and rental and home recording - 1980s—CDs make music digital - 1990s—MP3, DVD, and other digital formats emerge - 1990s-present—Websites and streaming services emerge Television: - First television sets introduced in the 1940s; TVs in 65% of U.S. households by 1955 - 1998—Digital TV broadcast began... 'time shifted' media experience - Quickly adopted form of media - everyone added TVs to their life. The Internet: - New form of mass media - New form of medium - New form of community

Ch 1 Karl Marx

Revolutionary, sociologist, historian, and economist. He published (with Friedrich Engels) Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (1848), commonly known as The Communist Manifesto, the most celebrated pamphlet in the history of the socialist movement. He also was the author of the movement's most important book, Das Kapital. These writings and others by Marx and Engels form the basis of the body of thought and belief known as Marxism. Karl Marx (1818-1883) is probably the most famous of the three early sociologists; from his surname the term Marxism (an ideological alternative to capitalism) derives, and his writings provided the theoretical basis for Communism. - When Marx was a young man, he edited a newspaper that was suppressed by the Prussian government for its radicalism. Marx believed that it was primarily the conflicts between classes that drove social change throughout history. - Marx saw history as an account of man's struggle to gain control of and later dominate his natural environment. - In Marx's version of history, each economic system, whether small-scale farming or factory capitalism, had its own fault lines of conflict. - In the current epoch, that fault line divided society into a small number of capitalists and a large number of workers (the proletariat) whose interests were opposed. - The political struggle, along with escalating crises within the economic system itself, would produce social change through a Communist revolution. - In the ensuing Communist society, private property would be abolished and the resulting ideology governing the new economy would be "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." Was German. Argued that inequality based on social class was the organizing principle of society Famous works: Capital and The Communist Manifesto - Both works focus on social classes, inequality, and capitalism. The Bourgeoise and the Proletariat - Proletariat: social class that is people who are working for wages. - Working long hours, not paid well. - Bourgeoise: social class that is the people who own the factories, growing in wealth. Predicted that ultimately this class conflict would lead to revolution and that a new, classless society would emerge. However, Marx's economic theory of concentration of wealth and power holds true: - Gap between rich and poor in the U.S. is stark and at historic levels - Over the last 50 years, the richest 1% income share has doubled while poverty has held steady - Globally, the U.S. has the largest income gap of all high-income nations

Ch 1 Positivist Sociology

The approach to sociology that emphasizes the scientific method as an approach to studying the objectively observable behavior of individuals irrespective of the meanings of those actions for the subjects themselves. Durkheim is often considered the founding practitioner of positivist sociology, a strain within sociology that believes the social world can be described and predicted by certain observable relationships. A much more significant cleavage exists between interpretive and positivist sociology. - Positivist sociology is born from the mission of Comte—that mission being to reveal the "social facts" (to use the term Durkheim later coined) that affect, if not govern, social life.

Ch 1 Natural Experiment

Something that takes place in the world that affects people in a way that is unrelated to any other preexisting factors or their characteristics, thereby approximating random assignment to treatment or control groups.

Ch 3 Subculture

The distinct cultural values and behavioral patterns of a particular group in society; a group united by sets of concepts, values, symbols, and shared meaning specific to the members of that group and distinctive enough to distinguish it from others within the same culture or society. Subculture as a concept can be a moving target: It's hard to lock into one specific definition of the term. - Historically, subcultures have been defined as groups united by sets of concepts, values, symbols, and shared meaning specific to the members of that group. - Accordingly, they frequently are seen as vulgar or deviant and are often marginalized. Part of the original impetus behind subculture studies was to gain a deeper understanding of individuals and groups who traditionally have been dismissed as weirdos at best and deviants at worst. - For example, many music genres have affiliated subcultures: hip-hop, hardcore, punk, Christian rock. High-school cliques may verge on subcultures—the jocks, the band kids, the geeks—although these groups don't really go against the dominant society, because athleticism, musical ambition, and academic diligence are fairly conventional values. Goths in Germany (left) and Japan. What characteristics of goth culture make it a subculture? Goth culture has its roots in the United Kingdom of the 1980s, yet remains one of the most durable subcultures in a world where subcultures tend to come and go, according to Peter Hodkinson, author of Goth: Identity, Style and Subculture. - Goth originally emerged as an offshoot of post-punk music. Typified by a distinctive style of dress—namely, black clothing with a Victorian flair—and a general affinity for gothic and death rock, goth culture has evolved over the last three decades, with many internal subdivisions. - Some goths are more drawn to magical or religious aspects of the subculture, whereas others focus mainly on the music. Even the term goth has different meanings to people within the subculture: - Some see it as derogatory; some appropriate it for their own personal meaning. - An internal struggle has grown over who has the right to claim and define the label. What makes today's goths a subculture? - They are not just a random group of people dressed in black listening to music (for example, classical musicians usually wear black when they perform, but we don't consider them goth). - Certain words and phrases are unique to goth communities, such as baby bat (young goth poseur) and weekend goth (someone who dresses up and enters the subculture only on the weekends). - Goths in Germany may look very different from those in the United Kingdom, and norms even differ among US cities, so each is a distinct branch of the subculture. - Yet as a whole, goths do have their own shared symbols, especially with regard to fashion, so they are visible as a subculture. Not all subcultures, however, adopt characteristic dress or other easily identifiable features. Subculture examples: - Goth - Punk Rock - Hippies - LARP (Live Action Role Play) - Straightedge - The Amish

Ch 4 Self

The individual identity of a person as perceived by that same person. Individual self. - Sociologists would argue that it emerges through a social process. Perhaps the first full theory of the social self was developed by Charles Horton Cooley, who coined the term the looking-glass self. - According to Cooley in Human Nature and the Social Order (1922), the self emerges from our ability to assume the point of view of others and thereby imagine how they see us. We then test this "theory" of how we are perceived by gauging others' reactions and revise our theory by fine-tuning our "self concept." In the 1930s, George Herbert Mead further elaborated the process by which the social self develops (Figure 4.1). - Infants only know the I—that is, one's sense of agency, action, or power. Through social interaction, however, they learn the me—that is, the self as a distinct object to be perceived by others (and by the I). - Although such a line of logic might work with your cousin's seven-year-old sister, it will not work with little Joey because he has yet to develop a sense of the other—that is, someone or something outside of oneself. During play, children are able to make a distinction between the self and the other. Games involve a more complex understanding of multiple roles; indeed, you must be able to recognize and anticipate what many other players are going to do in a given situation. - We have learned to anticipate these behaviors from repeated experience in the context of a particular sort of constrained social interaction—namely, a soccer game. As our parents, siblings, friends, teachers, and soccer coaches socialize us, we learn to think beyond the self to the other. - The final childhood stage is, of course, adolescence (ages 13-19), during which the individual is finding their identity among their peers (and with respect to role models). - The fundamental question here is "Who am I?" - A well-adjusted adolescent emerges with a sense of "fidelity"—that is, a true inner self that serves as a lodestar to guide the person going forward into adulthood. Self-feeling; emergence of "self" Our "self" forms through social interactions and taking on the role of others

Ch 3 Racism in Media

The media continue to reflect and perpetuate racist ideologies, even if such examples are not usually as blatant as those in the 1941 article in Time. - Sometimes the racism is obvious, and these instances present us with the opportunity to discuss racism in the media Barry Glassner - Glassner asserts that, as a culture, we grossly exaggerate the frequency of rarely occurring events, often through amplification of a single instance through media repetition. We tend to divert or redirect our attention from political, economic, and cultural issues that are either taboo or simply too difficult to talk about, toward sensational, but rare, events like school shootings and terrorist attacks. - The media are the main vehicles through which this process occurs. In the case of Katrina, we blame the victims, the poorest of the poor, for not leaving the city, rather than ask how the government could leave its own citizens stranded like refugees without access to life's basic necessities.

Ch 2 Correlation

When two variables tend to track each other positively or negatively. We know that a correlation (or association) exists between income and health—that is, they tend to vary together. - But to say that two things are correlated is very different from stating that one causes the other. Using statistical analysis A causes B

Ch 4 Social Construction of Reality

- Refers to the theory that the way we present ourselves to other people is shaped partly by our interactions with others, as well as by our life experiences. How we were raised and what we were raised to believe affect how we present ourselves, how we perceive others, and how others perceive us. In short, our perceptions of reality are colored by our beliefs and backgrounds. So what does it mean to say that something is socially constructed? - This question is less a debate about what is real versus fake and more an explanation of how we give meanings to things or ideas through social interaction. Two good ways of understanding how we socially construct our reality are to compare one society over different time periods and to compare two contemporary societies. In US society we take for granted that childhood is a critical and unique stage of life. - It wasn't always considered so, however; this view came about through a series of cultural, political, and economic changes. - In preindustrial times children were expected to care for younger siblings and contribute to the household in other ways as soon as they were physically capable. *Toys specifically for children, one of the cultural markers of childhood, did not exist. - The early years of one's life were not regarded as a time for play and education. *They represented a time of work and responsibility, like most of life's course. - However, the development of the industrial factory led to the need for schools, a place where children might spend their days, because parents now left home to go to work. - This change in parents' lifestyles meant that a separate sphere had to be created for children. - People's lives became more segregated by age, and because of this separation, childhood began to be taken seriously and protected. - For example, child labor laws sprang up to protect children from hazardous working conditions. The notion that a distinct phase exists between childhood and adulthood is relatively new. - This important change evolved during the 1950s. After decades of financial hardship and war, America's booming economy led to a new freedom in the popular culture. Access to higher education broadened as well. For many Americans, this extension of educational opportunity delayed the onset of adult responsibilities—such as employment and raising families. - With the possibility of an extended adolescence, teenagers (biologically able to reproduce but delayed in their assumption of adult sexual roles) emerged as a discrete social category. Concurrently, cultural changes were marked by the advent of rock and roll, doo-wop, and other popular forms of music. With more access to radios and, to a lesser extent, televisions, and with more free hours after school, teens found the time and means to consume this emerging music culture. - Today we can see the life course becoming even further subdivided, with the advent of terms such as tween, which refers to the time between childhood and one's teenage years (roughly, ages 10 to 12) and emerging adulthood, which is between age 18 and the late 20s. As an example of cross-cultural differences in the social construction of reality, consider the following question: What constitutes food? - We tend to think of insects as interesting, necessary to the ecosystem, annoying, or maybe simply gross. - However, we generally do not regard them as food. - In other cultures, dishes such as fried grasshoppers and chocolate-covered ants are considered a delicacy. - Which perspective is "right"? - In fact, Americans may be an exception in not eating insects, which, I am told, are delicious. *Insects are nutritious (high in protein, low in fat and calories, and a good source of many vitamins and minerals) and economical, but they are inherently neither gross nor delicious. The point is that foods, which we take for granted as natural or self-evident, are assigned meanings and values in different cultural contexts. We might call the process by which things—ideas, concepts, values—are socially constructed symbolic interactionism (see Chapter 1), which suggests that we interact with others using words and behaviors that have symbolic meanings. This theory has three basic tenets: - Human beings act toward ideas, concepts, and values on the basis of the meaning that those things have for them. - These meanings are the products of social interaction in human society. - These meanings are modified and filtered through an interpretive process that each individual uses in dealing with outward signs. Symbolic interactionism can be very useful in understanding cultural differences in styles of social interaction. Comprehending the three basic tenets of symbolic interactionism listed earlier is key to seeing how the process of social construction is both ongoing and embedded in our everyday interactions. - Symbolic interactionism as a theory is a useful tool for understanding the meanings of symbols and signs and the way shared meanings—or a lack thereof—facilitate or impede routine interactions. Erving Goffman's dramaturgical theory of society, which laid the groundwork for symbolic interactionism by using the language of theater as a paradigm to formally describe the ways in which we interact to maintain social order.

Ch 4 Achieved Status

A a status into which one enters; voluntary status. Sociologists often make a distinction between an ascribed status and an achieved status, which basically amounts to what you are born with versus what you become. - Another way to think about it is in terms of involuntary versus voluntary status. - Your age, race, and sex are all largely ascribed statuses, whereas your status as a juggler, drug dealer, peace activist, or reality television aficionado is an achieved status. - Sometimes, one status within our status set stands out or overwhelms all the others. - This is called a master status.

Ch 1 Social Institution

A complex group of interdependent positions that, together, perform a social role and reproduce themselves over time; also defined in a narrow sense as any institution in a society that works to shape the behavior of the groups or people within it. A college is an institution that acts as a gatekeeper to what are considered legitimate forms of educational advantage by certifying what is legitimate knowledge. - It is an institution that segregates great swaths of the population by age. A social institution is a complex group of interdependent positions that, together, perform a social role and reproduce themselves over time. - Sometimes institutions even try to rupture their identity intentionally. - This grand narrative that constitutes social identity is nothing more than the sum of individual stories told between pairs of individuals. Trying to understand social institutions such as the legal system, the labor market, or language itself is at the heart of sociological inquiry. Social institutions are networks of structures in society that work to socialize the groups of people within them. Examples include: - The legal system - The labor market - The educational system: the military - The family ME: Social institutions achieve a certain goals that an individuals on their own wouldn't be able to do. They are enduring. - People are in these institutions but consistently move in and out of it. - Ex: College: students are frequently graduating and moving in. What Is a Social Institution? - Example: A college is a social institution that acts as gatekeeper to "legitimate" forms of education by deciding who can attend. - That segregates great swaths of the population by age. - That is a proprietary brand that is marketed on items like sweatshirts and mugs and through televised sporting events. - That has an informal set of stories told within a social network of students, faculty, administrators, alumni, and other relevant individuals.

Ch 1 Double Consciousness

A concept conceived by W. E. B. Du Bois to describe the behavioral scripts, one for moving through the world and the other incorporating the external opinions of prejudiced onlookers, which are constantly maintained by African Americans. The double consciousness is a "sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity". - Those operating with a double consciousness risk conforming so closely to others' perceptions that they are fully constrained to the behaviors predicted of them.

Ch 3 Hegemony

A condition by which a dominant group uses its power to elicit the voluntary "consent" of the masses. The media both reflect culture and work to produce the very culture they represent. Antonio Gramsci, an Italian political theorist and activist, came up with the concept of hegemony to describe just that. - Gramsci, a Marxist, was imprisoned by the Fascists in the 1920s and 1930s; while in jail, he attempted to explain why the working-class revolution Marx had predicted never came to pass. - He published his findings in his "prison notebooks" of 1929-35 (Gramsci, 1971). In this vein, then, hegemony "refers to a historical process in which a dominant group exercises 'moral and intellectual leadership' throughout society by winning the voluntary 'consent' of popular masses" (Kim, 2001). - This concept of hegemony stands in contrast to another of Gramsci's ideas, domination. If domination means getting people to do what you want through the use of force, hegemony means getting them to go along with the status quo because it seems like the best course or the natural order of things. - Although domination generally involves an action by the state (such as the Fascist leaders who imprisoned those who disagreed with them), "hegemony takes place in the realm of private institutions . . . such as families, churches, trade unions, and the media" (Kim, 2001). - Gramsci might argue that this is the way capitalist free-market ideology is instilled in the individual within the private realm of the family. The concept of hegemony is important for understanding the impact of the media. - It also raises questions about the tension between structure and agency. - Are people molded by the culture in which they live, or do they actively participate in shaping the world around them? Hegemony refers to the impact of media on culture and how people and societies shape, and are shaped by, the dominant culture. - Specific to media. The dominant ideology - how that plays a role in power in society. - What maintains control.

Ch 5 Isomorphism

A constraining process that forces one unit in a population to resemble other units that face the same set of environmental conditions. Networks can be very useful. They provide information, a sense of security and community, resources, and opportunities, as we saw illustrated by Granovetter's concept of weak ties. Networks can also be constraining, however. Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell (1983), focusing on businesses, coined the phrase institutional isomorphism to explain why so many businesses that evolve in very different ways still end up with such similar organizational structures. Isomorphism, then, is a "constraining process that forces one unit in a population to resemble other units that face the same set of environmental conditions" (Hawley, 1968). - In regard to organizations, this means that those facing the same conditions (say, in industry, the law, or politics) tend to end up like one another. Networks of connections among institutions are key to understanding how the institutions look and behave.

Ch 5 Small Group

A group characterized by face-to-face interaction, a unifocal perspective, lack of formal arrangements or roles, and a certain level of equality. Groups larger than a dyad or triad, according to Simmel, can be classified into one of three types: small groups, parties, and large groups. - A small group is characterized by four factors. - The first is face-to-face interaction; all the members of the group at any given time are present and interact with one another. - They are not spread out geographically. Within a small group, as in a dyad, there is a certain level of equality. - Only in a dyad can pure equality exist, because both members hold veto power over the group. - However, in a small group, even if the group will continue to exist beyond the membership of any particular member, no particular member has greater sway than the others. - No one member can dissolve the group. - Face to face - Unifocal - Lack of formal roles - Equality (equal status) - Ex: study group

Ch 5 Large Group

A group characterized by the presence of a formal structure that mediates interaction and, consequently, status differentiation. The last type of group to which Simmel makes reference is the large group. - The primary characteristic of a large group is the presence of a formal structure that mediates interaction and, consequently, status differentiation. - When you enter a classroom, it should be clear who the teacher is, and you comprehend that she has a higher status than you have in that specific social context. The professor is an employee of the university, knows more than you know about the subject being taught, and is responsible for assigning you a grade based on your performance in the course. You might be asked to complete a teacher evaluation form at the end of the semester, but it's not the same thing as grading a student. You and your professor aren't equals. The point is that the inherent characteristics of a group are determined not just by its size but also by other aspects of its form, including its formal, bureaucratic structures (if it has any). - Whether a group stays small, becomes a party, or evolves into a large group may depend on numbers, but it also may depend on the size and configuration of the physical space or technological platform that mediates interactions between and among group members, preexisting social relationships, expectations, and the larger social context in which the group is embedded. - Formal structure - Status differentiation - Ex: classroom

Ch 5 Triad

A group of three. 3 possible relations In a triad, the group itself holds a degree of collective power. - In other words, in a group of three or four, I can say, "I'm really unhappy, I hate this place, I hate you, and I'm leaving," but the group will go on. - The husband may walk out on his wife and children, but the family he's abandoning still exists. - He's ending his participation in the group, but the group will outlast his decision to leave it. Therefore, the group is not dependent on any one particular member. What's more, in a triad, secrets can exist. - Simmel refers to three basic forms of political relations that can evolve within a triad depending on what role the entering third party assumes. - The first role is that of mediator, the person who tries to resolve conflict between the other two and is sometimes brought in for that explicit purpose. - A good example would be a marriage counselor. - Rather than go to therapy, couples having marital problems often start a family because they believe a baby will bring them back together. - Unfortunately, as most couples come to realize sooner rather than later, a baby cannot play the role of a mediator.

Ch 5 Dyad

A group of two. Smallest group - Group of 2 people - Ex: married couple, 2 roommates, etc. - The most intimate: deeper connection - Simmel argues it is the most fragile because if one person leaves the group, the duo is broken - 1 relationship The dyad has several unique characteristics. - For starters, it is the most intimate form of social life, partly because the two members of the dyad are mutually dependent on each other. - That is, the continued existence of the group is entirely contingent on the willingness of both parties to participate in the group; if either person leaves, the dyad ceases to be. - This intimacy is enhanced by the fact that no third person exists to buffer the situation or mediate between the two. - Meanwhile, the two members of a dyad don't need to be concerned about how their relationship will be perceived by a third party within the group since there is no third party. You could withhold a secret from your dyadic partner, but in terms of the actions of the group itself, no mystery lingers about who performs which role or who did what. - Either you did it, or the other person did. In a dyad, symmetry must be maintained. - There might be unequal power relations within a group of two to a certain extent, but Simmel would argue that in a group of two an inherent symmetry exists because of the earlier stipulation of mutual dependence: The group survives only if both members remain. - Even in relationships where the power seems so clearly unequal—think of a master and a servant or a prisoner and his captor—Simmel argues that there's an inherent symmetry. - Of course, forcible relationships might develop in which one of two parties is forced to stay in the dyad, but to be considered a pure dyad, the relationship has to be voluntary. - Because a dyad could fall apart at any moment, the underlying social relation is heightened. - The dyad is also unique in other ways. Because the group exists only as long as the individuals choose to maintain it in a voluntary fashion, the group itself exerts no collective influence over the individuals involved. - The force of a group is much stronger when three or more individuals are part of the group. Let's take a real-life example of how the characteristics of a dyad play out and see why they matter. - Think about divorce. - One point in a marriage at which the divorce rate is especially high is when a first child is born (and not just because of the parental sleep deprivation that arrives with a newborn). - The nature of the relationship between the two adults changes. - They have gone from being a dyad to becoming a triad. Perhaps the parents feel a sudden lack of intimacy, even though the baby is not yet a fully developed social actor. - On the flip side, a husband or wife might begin to feel trapped in a marriage specifically because of a child. All of a sudden, group power exists—a couple has evolved into a family, and with that comes the power of numbers in a group.

Ch 5 Reference Groups

A group that helps us understand or make sense of our position in society relative to other groups. Reference groups help us understand or make sense of our position in society relative to other groups. - The neighboring town's high school or even another socioeconomic class can serve as a reference group. In the first instance, you might compare access to sporting facilities; in the second, you might compare voting patterns. Any group we use a point of reference Use to compare our own selves.

Ch 5 Party

A group that is similar to a small group but is multifocal. Simmel would say that a party, like a small group, is characterized by face-to-face interaction but differs in that it is multifocal. - Going back to the example of your sociology study group, if two people begin to talk about Margaret Mead's theory of the self while the rest of you discuss the differences between role conflict and role strain, then it is bifocal; if another subgroup splits off to deliberate on reference groups, then it has become multifocal. - According to Simmel, you've got yourself a party! - So when you're hosting your next party, you'll recognize when it has officially started. The point is that the inherent characteristics of a group are determined not just by its size but also by other aspects of its form, including its formal, bureaucratic structures (if it has any). - Whether a group stays small, becomes a party, or evolves into a large group may depend on numbers, but it also may depend on the size and configuration of the physical space or technological platform that mediates interactions between and among group members, preexisting social relationships, expectations, and the larger social context in which the group is embedded. Multifocal

Ch 2 Comparative Research

A methodology by which two or more entities (such as countries), which are similar in many dimensions but differ on the one in question, are compared to learn about the dimension that differs between them. Sometimes sociologists compare two or more historical societies; we call this "comparative historical" research. Comparative research is a methodology by which a researcher compares two or more entities with the intent of learning more about the factors that differ between them. The general approach to comparative research is to find cases that match on many potentially relevant dimensions but vary on just one, allowing researchers to observe the effect of that particular dimension. - Although all social science research makes inferences based on implicit or explicit comparison, comparative research usually refers to cross-national studies. Comparing different ideas, data, questions, and more.

Ch 1 Symbolic Interactionism

A micro-level theory in which shared meanings, orientations, and assumptions form the basic motivations behind people's actions. A strain of thought that developed in the 1960s was symbolic interactionism, which eschewed big theories of society (macrosociology) and instead focused on how face-to-face interactions create the social world (microsociology). - The idea that people act in response to the meaning that signs and social signals hold for them (e.g., a red light means stop). By acting on perceptions of the social world in this way and regarding these meanings as sui generis (i.e., appearing to be self-constituting rather than flimsily constructed by ourselves or others), we then collectively assign them meaning that defines their existence. The groundwork for symbolic interactionism was laid by Erving Goffman's dramaturgical theory of social interaction. - Goffman had used the language of theater to describe the social facade we create through devices such as tact, gestures, front-stage (versus backstage) behavior, props, and scripts. - For example, in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), Goffman explored how our everyday personal encounters shape and reinforce our notions about class and social status. According to Goffman, we make judgments about class and social status based on how people speak, what they wear, and the other tiny details of how they present themselves to others, and at the same time, they rely on the same information from our everyday interactions with them to classify us too. The primary micro-sociological theories. How do we assign meaning to things in society?

Ch 4 Symbolic Interactionism

A micro-level theory in which shared meanings, orientations, and assumptions form the basic motivations behind people's actions. We might call the process by which things—ideas, concepts, values—are socially constructed symbolic interactionism (see Chapter 1), which suggests that we interact with others using words and behaviors that have symbolic meanings. This theory has three basic tenets: - Human beings act toward ideas, concepts, and values on the basis of the meaning that those things have for them. - These meanings are the products of social interaction in human society. - These meanings are modified and filtered through an interpretive process that each individual uses in dealing with outward signs. Symbolic interactionism can be very useful in understanding cultural differences in styles of social interaction. Comprehending the three basic tenets of symbolic interactionism listed earlier is key to seeing how the process of social construction is both ongoing and embedded in our everyday interactions. - Symbolic interactionism as a theory is a useful tool for understanding the meanings of symbols and signs and the way shared meanings—or a lack thereof—facilitate or impede routine interactions. Erving Goffman's dramaturgical theory of society, which laid the groundwork for symbolic interactionism by using the language of theater as a paradigm to formally describe the ways in which we interact to maintain social order.

Ch 2 Scientific Method

A procedure involving the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses based on systematic observation, measurement, and/or experiments. As scientists, we follow the scientific method: That is, we observe the world, form a theory about an aspect of it, generate hypotheses (testable predictions based on that theory) about our subject matter, and set up an experiment or systematic observations to test those hypotheses. After conducting our analysis, we accept or reject our hypotheses and revise our theory, if necessary. Rinse and repeat. - This has been the approach of science since the Enlightenment in the seventeenth century, and it has worked remarkably well

Ch 2 Hypothesis

A proposed relationship between two variables, usually with a stated direction. The process of assigning a precise definition for measuring a concept being examined in a particular study is called operationalization. In the case of poverty, we might take a look at education, employment status, race, or gender. Establishing the groundwork for a reasonably "fair fight" between main and alternative hypotheses is important so we do not spend time discovering trivialities that are already well known (e.g., low-income individuals tend to be poor).

Ch 2 Participant Observation

A qualitative research method that seeks to uncover the meanings people give their social actions by observing their behavior in practice. Sociologist Mary Pattillo (2007) studied the Chicago neighborhood of North Kenwood-Oakland, using the method called participant observation. - This approach aims to uncover the meanings people give to their own social actions (and those of others) by observing their behavior in practice, in contrast to just asking them about it after the fact. - This strategy is predicated on the notion that surveys, interviews, and other approaches are more easily "managed" by the respondents. - That is, studying racial attitudes by surveying respondents, for instance, may lead to subjects telling the researcher what they think is the "right" answer and what the researcher wants to hear. This type of sociology typically involves a significant time investment because the participant observer must gain access to a given community, learn its local norms and logic of behavior, and then watch social dynamics unfold. - Often it can take years to do an ethnographic study of this nature. Watching what people do, how they respond, how they feel, etc

Ch 4 Status

A recognizable social position that an individual occupies. Robert Merton's role theory provides just such a vocabulary. - The first key concept for an understanding of role theory is status, which refers to a recognizable social position that an individual occupies. - The person who runs your class and is responsible for grading each student has the status of professor. Roles, then, refer to the duties and behaviors associated with a particular status. - Roles are complicated, however, and relatively few of them materialize with handbooks and clear sets of expectations. Sometimes we experience role strain, the incompatibility among roles corresponding to a single status. - Whereas role strain refers to conflicting demands within the same status, role conflict describes the tension caused by competing demands between two or more roles within different statuses. - Each one of us, at any given time, enjoys numerous statuses. - These statuses (and their corresponding roles) can and do change over time and between places. - The term status set refers to all the statuses you have at any given time. Sociologists often make a distinction between an ascribed status and an achieved status, which basically amounts to what you are born with versus what you become. - Another way to think about it is in terms of involuntary versus voluntary status. - Your age, race, and sex are all largely ascribed statuses, whereas your status as a juggler, drug dealer, peace activist, or reality television aficionado is an achieved status. - Sometimes, one status within our status set stands out or overwhelms all the others. - This is called a master status. The key characteristic of a master status is that people tend to interact with you on the basis of that one status alone. A position one holds in a group or society that has a certain set of expectations - Teenager - Baptist - Lawyer - English major - Sorority/fraternity member - Tampa resident - Parent

Ch 2 Deductive Approach

A research approach that starts with a theory, forms a hypothesis, makes empirical observations, and then analyzes the data to confirm, reject, or modify the original theory. A deductive approach starts with a theory, forms a hypothesis, makes empirical observations, and then analyzes the data to confirm, reject, or modify the original theory. Top down approach Follows the scientific methods and its steps.

Ch 2 Inductive Approach

A research approach that starts with empirical observations and then works to form a theory. Conversely, an inductive approach starts with empirical observations and then works to form a theory. More bottom up - Hits all the steps - Grounded approach where the researcher focuses on the data first then asks questions, finds correlations, etc.

Ch 2 Interviews

A research method in which a researcher asks an individual questions and records the responses. Interviews are one common form of gathering qualitative data. Other researchers may rely on semistructured or structured interviews—that is, interviews in which the researchers have more than just a set of topics to cover in no preset order; rather, the researchers develop a specific set of questions to address with all respondents in a relatively fixed sequence. - If an interview becomes very structured, it falls into the next category: survey research. Group interviews.

Ch 1 Anomie

A sense of aimlessness or despair that arises when we can no longer reasonably expect life to be predictable; too little social regulation; normlessness. Durkheim argues that one of the main social forces leading to suicide is the sense of normlessness resulting from drastic changes in living conditions or arrangements, which he calls anomie. Du Bois was also interested in criminology, using Durkheim's theory of anomie to explain crime rates among African Americans. - Specifically, Du Bois theorized that the breakdown of norms resulting from the former slaves' sudden and newfound freedom caused high crime rates among Blacks (at least in the South).

Ch 5 Social Network

A set of relations—essentially, a set of dyads—held together by ties between individuals. Dyads, triads, and groups are the components of social networks. - A social network is a set of relations—a set of dyads, essentially—held together by ties between individuals. - A tie is the content of a particular relationship. If I ask you how you know a specific person, and you explain that she was your brother's girlfriend in the eighth grade, and the two of you remained close even after her relationship with your brother ended, that story is your tie to that person. - For every person in your life, you have a story. - To explain some ties, the story is very simple: "That's the guy I buy my coffee from each morning." - This is a uniplex tie. - Other ties have many layers. - They are multiplex: "She's my girlfriend. We have a romantic relationship. We also are tennis and bridge partners. And now that you mention it, we are classmates at school and also fiercely competitive opponents in Trivial Pursuit." A narrative is the sum of stories contained in a set of ties. - Your university or college is a narrative, for example. - Every person with whom you have a relationship at your university forms part of that network. - For all your college-based relationships—those shared with a professor, your teaching assistant, or classmates—your school is a large part of the story, of the tie. - Without the school, in fact, you probably wouldn't share a tie at all. When you add up the stories of all the actors involved in the social network of your school—between you and your classmates, between the professors and their colleagues, between the school and the vendors with whom it contracts—the result is a narrative of what your college is. - Of course, you may have other friends, from high school or elsewhere, who have no relationship to your school, so your college is a more minor aspect of those relationships. - If you try to make a change that involves a large network, the social structure becomes very powerful. Ironically, something abstract like a name can be more robust than most of the physical infrastructure around us.

Ch 2 Feminist Methodology

A set of systems or methods that treat women's experiences as legitimate empirical and theoretical resources, that promote social science for women (think public sociology, but for a specific half of the public), and that take into account the researcher as much as the overt subject matter.

Ch 3 Ideology

A system of concepts and relationships; an understanding of cause and effect. Nonmaterial culture, in its most abstract guise, takes the form of ideology. - Ideology is a system of concepts and relationships, an understanding of cause and effect. Even science and religion, which may seem like polar opposites, are both ideological frameworks. - People once believed that the sun circled around the earth, and then, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, along came Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, and this system of beliefs was turned inside out. - The earth no longer lay at the center of the universe but orbited the sun. - This understanding represented a major shift in ideology, and it was not an easy one to make. - People invest a lot in their belief systems, and those who go against the status quo and question the prevailing ideology may be severely punished, as was Galileo. On occasion ideologies do shatter. - The fall of the former Soviet Union, for example, marked not just a transition in government but the shattering of a particular brand of Communist ideology. Often, ideological change comes more slowly. - The fight for women's rights, including equal pay, is ongoing even today, but women won the right to vote way back in 1920. Not exclusive to media. How to be involved in a conversation - don't interrupt, say polite things, etc. - Knowing how to control and moderate facial expressions - smiling even when you're having a bad day.

Ch 2 Content Analysis

A systematic analysis of the content rather than the structure of a communication, such as a written work, speech, or film. One distinct subtype of historical methods research, content analysis, is a systematic analysis of the content in written or recorded material. - Manifest content refers to what we can observe. - Latent content refers to what is implied but not stated outright.

Ch 1 Interpretive Sociology

A type of scholarship in which researchers imagine themselves experiencing the life positions of the social actors they want to understand rather than treating those people as objects to be examined. Weber's emphasis on subjectivity is the foundation of interpretive sociology, the study of social meaning. An interpretive sociologist might object to the notion that we can make worthwhile predictions about human behavior—or more precisely, might question whether such an endeavor is worth the time and effort. - It is a sociology predicated on the idea that situation matters so much that the search for social facts that transcend time and place may be futile.

Ch 2 Case Study

An intensive investigation of one particular unit of analysis in order to describe it or uncover its mechanisms. Although the issues of generalizability are always at play, they become particularly acute when social scientists use case studies. A case study, often used in qualitative research, is an in-depth look at a specific phenomenon in a particular social setting. - This is perhaps the main drawback of the case study method. - The findings have very low generalizability. - One benefit, however, is that we typically obtain very detailed information. So there is often a trade-off between breadth (i.e., generalizability) and depth (i.e., amount of information and nuanced detail). - A case study can serve as a useful starting point for exploring new topics. Likewise, qualitative case studies are sometimes used to try to understand causal mechanisms that have been indicated in large-scale survey studies. Focuses on a single case.

Ch 3 Sexism in Media

American media in particular, and Western media more generally, are charged with glamorizing and perpetuating unrealistic ideals of feminine beauty. - Some argue that repetitive bombardment by these images decreases girls' self-esteem and contributes to eating disorders. Jean Kilbourne has become one of the most popular lecturers at college and university campuses across America. - In 1979 she released a film titled Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image of Women, in which she examines the ways in which women are maimed, sliced, raped, and otherwise deformed in advertising images. Advertising does not just reflect the underlying culture that produced it but also creates desires and narratives that enter women's (and men's) lives with causal force. - Ms. magazine was founded in 1971 during the feminist movement to give voice to women and explore women's issues. - Because such magazines don't accept advertising from huge makeup companies and designer fashion houses, however, they are often less economically viable than mainstream women's magazines, which carry ads on as many as 50 percent of their pages In 2005 Dove, a manufacturer of skin-care products, launched a new series of ads backed by a social awareness program called the Campaign for Real Beauty. - Instead of models, the ads featured "real" women complete with freckles, frizzy hair, wrinkles, and cellulite. - The images were intentionally meant to offer a contrast to the images we're accustomed to seeing

Ch 4 George Herbert Mead

American philosopher prominent in both social psychology and the development of Pragmatism. In the 1930s, George Herbert Mead further elaborated the process by which the social self develops (Figure 4.1). - Infants only know the I—that is, one's sense of agency, action, or power. Through social interaction, however, they learn the me—that is, the self as a distinct object to be perceived by others (and by the I). - Although such a line of logic might work with your cousin's seven-year-old sister, it will not work with little Joey because he has yet to develop a sense of the other—that is, someone or something outside of oneself. This is why we allow children a certain amount of leeway. To function as fully adult members of society, we need to be able to recognize that other people have wants, needs, and desires that are sometimes similar to and sometimes different from our own. - Thus, imitation, play, and games are important components of childhood development. When a child imitates, he or she is just starting to learn to recognize an other. - That's what peekaboo is all about. - Eventually, kids understand that you are still there when they cover their eyes. - They can then advance to play, according to Mead. During play, children are able to make a distinction between the self and the other. Games involve a more complex understanding of multiple roles; indeed, you must be able to recognize and anticipate what many other players are going to do in a given situation. - We have learned to anticipate these behaviors from repeated experience in the context of a particular sort of constrained social interaction—namely, a soccer game. As our parents, siblings, friends, teachers, and soccer coaches socialize us, we learn to think beyond the self to the other. According to Mead, however, that brings us only halfway to being socialized. - The final step is developing a concept of the generalized other, which represents an internalized sense of the total expectations of others in a variety of settings—regardless of whether we've encountered those people or places before. - In this way, we should be able to function with complete strangers in a wide range of social settings. We can, and do, continually update our internal sense of the generalized other as we gather new information about norms and expectations in different contexts. People may also intentionally violate established norms. Early Socialization: - Imitation *Early notions of mimicry *Doing what your parents are doing - Play *When kids are starting to play with other roles *Playing "house" *Playing "superhero and villians" - Games *Playing more formal games: board games, soccer, sports, etc. Generalized Other - When a kid picks their nose in public vs. Adults

Ch 1 Jane Addams

American social reformer and pacifist, cowinner (with Nicholas Murray Butler) of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1931. She is probably best known as a cofounder of Hull House in Chicago, one of the first social settlements in North America. Addams founded Hull House, the first American settlement house that attempted to link the ideas of the university to the poor through a full-service community center, staffed by students and professionals, which offered educational services and aid and promoted sports and the arts. - It was at Hull House that the ideas of the Chicago School were put into practice and tested. First applied sociologist. Establishing the Hull House in Chicago. - Helped addressed problems of poverty, homelessness, etc.

Ch 4 Charles Horton Cooley

American sociologist who employed a sociopsychological approach to the understanding of society. Perhaps the first full theory of the social self was developed by Charles Horton Cooley, who coined the term the looking-glass self. - According to Cooley in Human Nature and the Social Order (1922), the self emerges from our ability to assume the point of view of others and thereby imagine how they see us. We then test this "theory" of how we are perceived by gauging others' reactions and revise our theory by fine-tuning our "self concept." "Looking-Glass Self" - Famous theory that explains how our sense of self is derived through our experiences and social interactions One of the first to argue that identity is formed through social interactions We imagine how we appear to others We imagine the judgement of that appearance Self-feeling; emergence of "self" - Our "self" forms through social interactions and taking on the role of others "I" - Ourselves as the subject - I TOOK A SELFIE "Me" - Ourselves as objects - NOW I AM LOOKING AT MY SELFIE "Generalized Other" - I WOULD NOT POST THAT SELFIE ON A PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE

Ch 2 Theory

An abstracted, systematic model of how some aspect of the world works. In science, a theory is a systematic, generalized model of how some aspect of the world works. - It is more abstract and general than a specific hypothesis, and in fact, may generate multiple, testable hypotheses. A theory articulates a system of relationships between facts and suggests causes and effects emerging out of those relationships.

Ch 4 Total Institution

An institution in which one is totally immersed and that controls all the basics of day-to-day life; no barriers exist between the usual spheres of daily life, and all activity occurs in the same place and under the same single authority. The term total institution refers to an institution that controls all the basics of day-to-day life. - Members of the institution eat, sleep, study, play, and perhaps even bathe and pray together. - Boarding schools, colleges, monasteries, the army, and prisons are all total institutions to varying degrees—prisons being the most extreme. Marine boot camp strips down much of the prior socialization of recruits and resocializes them to become Marines. - New Marines—and recruits in all branches of the armed forces—also must be resocialized to accept the notion that it is okay, even necessary, to kill. It's about changing them so that they can perform tasks they wouldn't have dreamed of doing otherwise. - It works by applying enormous physical and mental pressure on men and women who have been isolated from their normal civilian environment and constantly placed in situations where the only right way to think and behave is that espoused by the Marine Corps. - For people to be effective soldiers, they must learn a new set of rules about when it is okay and/or necessary to kill.

Ch 2 Surveys

An ordered series of questions intended to elicit information from respondents. Surveys are an ordered series of questions intended to elicit information from respondents, and they can be powerful methods of data collection. Surveys may be done anonymously and distributed widely, so you can reach a much larger sample than if you relied solely on interviews. - At the same time, however, you have to pay attention to your response rate. But, as it turns out, who responds and who doesn't is not random. Surveys are generally converted into quantitative data for statistical analysis—everything from simple estimates (How many gay policemen are there in America?) to comparisons of averages across groups (What proportion of gay policemen support abortion rights, and what proportion of retired female plumbers do?) to complex techniques such as multiple regression, where one measured factor (such as education level) is held constant, or statistically removed from the picture, to pin down the effect of another factor (such as total family income) on, say, reported levels of happiness. Survey questions: - Wording - Exhaustive set of possible answers - Multiple choice format - Location

Ch 3 Media

Any formats, platforms, or vehicles that carry, present, or communicate information. We might define media as any formats or vehicles that carry, present, or communicate information. - This definition would, of course, include newspapers, periodicals, magazines, books, pamphlets, and posters. - But it would also include wax tablets, sky writing, web pages, and the children's game of telephone. The media both reflect culture and work to produce the very culture they represent. The concept of hegemony is important for understanding the impact of the media. We live in a media-saturated society, but one of the most exciting aspects of studying the media is that it allows us to explore the tensions and contradictions created when large social forces conflict with individual identity and free will. We see how people create media, how the media shape the culture in which people live, how the media reflect the culture in which they exist, and how individuals and groups use the media as their own means to shape, redefine, and change culture. We are not just passive receptors of media; as readers or viewers, we experience texts through the lens of our own critical, interpretive, and analytical processes. We can plot the media's effects in a two-dimensional diagram. - The vertical dimension indicates whether the effect is intended (i.e., deliberate) or unintended. - The horizontal axis depicts whether it is a short- or long-term effect. Represents media with short-term, unintended consequences. - An example might be when teenagers play violent video games and then go out and commit crimes almost identical to those portrayed in the game, or when a kid listens to heavy metal music with violent lyrics and then commits a school shooting. - Scientific research hasn't yet ruled definitively one way or the other on this controversial subject, but many believe that the media occasionally have short-term, unintended effects. Change in the media takes time; as society's ideologies about what constitutes good and bad love change, the media will reflect those changes by portraying more positive images of people loving whomever they choose. American media in particular, and Western media more generally, are charged with glamorizing and perpetuating unrealistic ideals of feminine beauty. - Some argue that repetitive bombardment by these images decreases girls' self-esteem and contributes to eating disorders. The media, and advertising in particular, play a large role in the creation and maintenance of consumerism. We rarely question the media's right to control what we see. Media have become a dominant social institution today - Media <--- ---> Culture - Television brought a visual context to households: during the civil rights movement, there was live footage of peaceful protesters being beaten by police. (also anti-war movements) Analyzing media: producers, texts, and users - For example, "Reading the Romance"

Ch 5 Organization

Any social network that is defined by a common purpose and has a boundary between its membership and the rest of the social world. Organization is an all-purpose term that can describe any social network—from a club to a Little League baseball team to a secret society to your local church to General Motors to the US government—that is defined by a common purpose and has a boundary between its membership and the rest of the social world. Formal organizations have a set of governing structures and rules for their internal arrangements (the US Army, with its ranks and rules), whereas informal organizations do not (the local Meetup.com group for ambidextrous tennis players [an actual group!]). - Of course, a continuum exists, because no organization has absolutely no rules, and no organization has a rule for absolutely everything. Therefore, the study of organizations focuses mainly on the social factors that affect organizational structure and the people in those organizations. Examples: - Corporations - Universities - Churches and religious organizations - Political parties - Club - Civic organizations

Ch 4 Frontstage

Behavior when they know that others are watching. Where the performance takes place and the performers and the audience are present. It is a part of the dramaturgical performance that is consistent and contains generalized ways to explain the situation or role the actor is playing to the audience that observes it. This is a fixed presentation. Goffman says that the front stage involves a differentiation between setting and personal front. Another important part of Goffman's theory is the distinction between front-stage and backstage arenas. - If you've ever participated in a school play or some other type of performance, you know all about front stage and backstage. - Here the meanings are quite literal—a curtain separates these areas, so the border between the front stage and the backstage is clearly delineated.

Ch 4 Impression Management

Behaviors intended to control how others perceive oneself, especially by guiding them to attribute desirable traits to oneself. We might say that the dramaturgical theory of society has its roots in William Shakespeare, but we generally credit Goffman with expounding this theory in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959). - He argued that life is essentially a play—a play with a moral, of sorts. - And this moral is what Goffman and social psychologists call "impression management." That is, all of us actors on the metaphorical social stage are struggling to make a good impression on our audience (who also happen to be actors). - This helps keep society and social relations rolling along smoothly (without the need for too many retakes). - Because we are all actors with roles, according to Goffman's dramaturgical theory, we also need scripts, costumes, and sets. Face, according to Goffman, is the esteem in which an individual is held by others. - We take this notion very seriously; hence the idea of saving face, which is essentially the most important goal of impression management.

Ch 5 Secondary Groups

Groups marked by impersonal, instrumental relationships (those existing as a means to an end). The characteristics of secondary groups, such as a labor union, stand in contrast to those of primary groups. - The group is impersonal; you may or may not know all of the members of your union. - It's also instrumental; the group exists as a means to an end, in this case for organizing workers and representing their interests. In a secondary group, affiliation is contingent. You are only a member of your union so long as you hold a certain job and pay your dues. - If you change jobs or join another union, your membership in that earlier group ends. Because the members of a secondary group change, the roles are more important than the individuals who fill them. - The shop steward, the person chosen to interact with the company's management, may be a different person every year, but that position carries the same responsibilities within the group regardless of who fills it. - A sports team is another example of a secondary group, although if you're also close friends with your teammates and socialize with them when you're not playing sports, the line between a primary and secondary group can become blurred. - Instrumental purpose - Coworkers at a job

Ch 4 Erving Goffman

Canadian-American sociologist noted for his studies of face-to-face communication and related rituals of social interaction. His The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) laid out the dramaturgical perspective he used in subsequent studies, such as Asylums (1961) and Stigma (1964). In Frame Analysis (1979) and Forms of Talk (1981), he focused on the ways people "frame" or define social reality in the communicative process. Erving Goffman's dramaturgical theory of society, which laid the groundwork for symbolic interactionism by using the language of theater as a paradigm to formally describe the ways in which we interact to maintain social order. We might say that the dramaturgical theory of society has its roots in William Shakespeare, but we generally credit Goffman with expounding this theory in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959). - He argued that life is essentially a play—a play with a moral, of sorts. - And this moral is what Goffman and social psychologists call "impression management." Because we are all actors with roles, according to Goffman's dramaturgical theory, we also need scripts, costumes, and sets. Another important part of Goffman's theory is the distinction between front-stage and backstage arenas. - If you've ever participated in a school play or some other type of performance, you know all about front stage and backstage. - Here the meanings are quite literal—a curtain separates these areas, so the border between the front stage and the backstage is clearly delineated. Face, according to Goffman, is the esteem in which an individual is held by others. - We take this notion very seriously; hence the idea of saving face, which is essentially the most important goal of impression management. Goffman uses the term opening to signal the start of an encounter—that is, the first bracket. - The closing bracket marks the end of an encounter.

Ch 3 Material Culture

Everything that is a part of our constructed, physical environment, including technology. Material culture, which is everything that is a part of our constructed, physical environment, including technology. - Well-known monuments, such as the Statue of Liberty or Mount Rushmore, are part of our culture, but so are modern furniture, books, movies, food, magazines, cars, and fashion. Of course, a relationship exists between nonmaterial culture and material culture, and that can take many forms. - When someone conjures up a concept like a portable computer, such an invention flows directly from an idea into a material good. - Other times, however, it is technology that generates ideas and concepts, values and beliefs. Material ex: food, clothing, technology, etc. (anything man made)

Ch 1 August Comte

French philosopher known as the founder of sociology and of positivism. Comte gave the science of sociology its name and established the new subject in a systematic fashion. According to Comte, positivism arose out of a need to make moral sense of the social order in a time of declining religious authority. - Comte claimed that a secular basis for morality did indeed exist—that is, we could determine right and wrong without reference to higher powers or other religious concepts. - And that was the job of the sociologist: to develop a secular morality. Comte further argued that human society had gone through three historical stages with respect to our understanding of morality. - In the first, which he referred to as the theological stage, society seemed to be the result of divine will. - During stage two, which Comte called the metaphysical stage, Enlightenment thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Hobbes saw humankind's behavior as governed by natural, biological instincts. - To understand the nature of society—why things were the way they were—we needed to strip away the layers of society to better comprehend how our basic drives and natural instincts governed and established the foundation for the surrounding world. - Comte called the third and final stage of historical development the scientific stage. - In this era, he claimed, we would develop a social physics of sorts in order to identify the scientific laws that govern human behavior. - The analogy here is not theology or biology but rather physics. Comte was convinced we could understand how social institutions worked (and didn't work), how we relate to one another (whether on an individual or group level), and the overall structure of societies if we merely ascertained their "equations" or underlying logic. Coined the term "sociology" - The first sociologists - was French. Positivist approach (social physics) - He borrowed techniques, terms, learnings from other pre-existing fields in order to crate sociology. - A science of the social world.

Ch 1 Emile Durkheim

French social scientist who developed a vigorous methodology combining empirical research with sociological theory. He is widely regarded as the founder of the French school of sociology. He wished to understand how society holds together and how modern capitalism and industrialization have transformed the ways people relate to one another. Durkheim's sociological writing began with The Division of Labor in Society (1893/1997). What made the substance of Durkheim's sociology of work, in addition to economics, was the fact that the division of labor didn't just affect work and productivity but had social and moral consequences as well. - Specifically, the division of labor in a given society helps determine its form of social solidarity—that is, the way social cohesion among individuals is maintained. - Durkheim argues that one of the main social forces leading to suicide is the sense of normlessness resulting from drastic changes in living conditions or arrangements, which he calls anomie. Durkheim is often considered the founding practitioner of positivist sociology, a strain within sociology that believes the social world can be described and predicted by certain observable relationships. French sociologist. - Drawing on Comte, Durkheim studied how aspects of social life shape individual action - Social Solidarity - What makes us feel connected to the community in which we are a part of? Division of Labor Suicide: Argues that suicide is a social phenomenon that can be attributed to a lack of social integration and regulation. - People felt less connected after the revolution, which prompted mental health issues. Religion, Age, Marital Status, Gender, Employment - Religion - Age: retirement - Marital: marriages fall apart - Gender: men have a higher suicide rate. - Employment: being laid off or unhappy with current career.

Ch 1 Verstehen

German for "understanding." The concept of Verstehen comes from Max Weber and is the basis of interpretive sociology. One of Weber's most important contributions was the concept of Verstehen ("understanding" in German). - By emphasizing Verstehen, Weber was suggesting that sociologists approach social behavior from the perspective of those engaging in it. - In other words, to truly understand why people act the way they do, a sociologist must understand the meanings people attach to their actions. - Weber's emphasis on subjectivity is the foundation of interpretive sociology, the study of social meaning.

Ch 5 Georg Simmel

German sociologist and Neo-Kantian philosopher whose fame rests chiefly on works concerning sociological methodology. He taught philosophy at the Universities of Berlin (1885-1914) and Strassburg (1914-18), and his insightful essays on personal and social interaction inspired the development of qualitative analysis in sociology. In his classic work "Quantitative Aspects of the Group," sociologist Georg Simmel (1950) argues that without knowing anything about the group members' individual psychology or the cultural or social context in which they are embedded, we can make predictions about the ways people behave based solely on the number of members, or "social actors," in that group. - This theory applies not just to groups of people but also to states, countries, firms, corporations, bureaucracies, and any number of other social forms. Focused on the importance of group size.

Ch 2 Laud Humphrey's "Tearoom Trade" (1970)

Humphrey was interested in sex activity in public rest stop areas. Humphrey would pose as the "guard" keeping watch. Humphrey is also collecting the liscense plates of the people entering the restrooms He then went to the mens' home: acting like he was providing a survey and recording their information. (marriage, life, hobbies, etc.) This study was unethical as the men didn't know they were in a study.

Ch 4 Agents of Socialization

Institutions that can impress social norms upon an individual, include the family, religion, peer groups, economic systems, legal systems, penal systems, language, and the media.

Ch 4 Ethnomethodology

Literally "the methods of the people"; this approach to studying human interaction focuses on the ways in which we make sense of our world, convey this understanding to others, and produce a shared social order. In the 1950s and 1960s Harold Garfinkel (1967) developed a method for studying social interactions, ethnomethodology, that involves acting critically about them. Ethnomethodology literally means "the methods of the people" (from ethnos, the Greek word for "people"). Garfinkel and his followers became famous for their "breaching experiments." - They would send their students into the social world to see what happened when they breached social norms. - In one example, Garfinkel sent his students home for the weekend and told them to behave as if their parents' home were a rooming house where they paid rent. - Imagine what would happen if you sat down at the kitchen table and demanded to know when dinner was typically served and what days of the week the bed linens were changed. - Similarly, a New York City professor instructed his students to ask people on the subway for their seats without offering any reason. - Some students simply could not take this action. - Others did it, but lied and said that they were not feeling well when they asked for the seat.

Ch 2 Experimental Methods

Methods that seek to alter the social landscape in a very specific way for a given sample of individuals and then track what results that change yields; they often involve comparisons to a control group that did not experience such an intervention.

Ch 2 Quantitative Methods

Methods that seek to obtain information about the social world that is already in or can be converted to numeric form. Quantitative methods seek to obtain information about the social world that is already in or can be converted to numeric form. - These methods then use statistical analysis to describe the social world that those data represent. - Such information is often acquired through surveys but may also include data collected by other means, ranging from sampling bank records to weighing people on a scale to hanging out with teens at the mall. Numerical; Use of surveys and statistical analysis. Quantitative = Quantity Ex: What is the average age of people in the US who get married?

Ch 2 Milgram Experiment

Milgram studied the Nazis and the social dynamic: how did the Nazi party get so many people to perform the atrocities. - Under what conditions would someone adopt the social role. Experiment consisted of a teacher and student; the teacher would ask the student a question and if they got the question wrong, the teacher would press a button to send an electrical zap to them. Found that majority of the teachers would go to the highest voltage if the lab coat experimenters said to do so. - People will do an awful lot when under high authority figure. 65% of the participants went to the "lethal" level. This experiment was unethical as it messes with the participants mental conscious/state. - It was psychologically harmful. - Broke rule #1: do no harm

Ch 3 Cultural Scripts

Modes of behavior and understanding that are not universal or natural. The validity of Mead's findings has been disputed, but her work continues to be a landmark of early anthropology for introducing the idea that cultural scripts, modes of behavior and understanding that are not universal or natural, shape our notions of gender. - This concept stands in opposition to the belief that such ideas derive from biological programming. How to be involved in a conversation - don't interrupt, say polite things, etc. Knowing how to control and moderate facial expressions - smiling even when you're having a bad day.

Ch 3 Values

Moral beliefs. Our understanding of the world is based on the various ideologies we embrace, and ideologies tend to be culturally specific. - Culture also affects us by shaping our values, our moral beliefs. If values are abstract cultural beliefs, norms are how values are put into play. - We value hygiene in our society, so it is a norm that you wash your hands after going to the bathroom. - When you are little, your parents and teachers must remind you, because chances are you haven't yet fully internalized this norm. - Once you're an adult, however, you are in charge of your own actions, yet others may still remind you of this norm by giving you a dirty look if you walk from a stall straight past the sinks and out the door of a public restroom. Culture affects us. It's transmitted to us through different processes, with socialization—our internalization of society's values, beliefs, and norms—being the main one. Let's start with reflection theory, which states that culture is a projection of social structures and relationships into the public sphere, a screen onto which the film of the underlying reality or social structures of our society is shown. - A different version of reflection theory derives from the Marxist tradition (see Chapter 1), which says that cultural objects reflect the material labor and relationships of production that went into them. - Karl Marx asserted that it is a one-way street—from technology and the means of production to belief systems and ideologies. - According to Marx's view of reflection theory, our norms, values, sanctions, ideologies, laws, and even language are outgrowths of the technology and economic means and modes of production. What a society thinks of itself. What do we "approve" of? Are not static: some cultures will change their values.

Ch 4 Master Status

One status within a set that stands out or overrides all others. Sociologists often make a distinction between an ascribed status and an achieved status, which basically amounts to what you are born with versus what you become. Another way to think about it is in terms of involuntary versus voluntary status. - Your age, race, and sex are all largely ascribed statuses, whereas your status as a juggler, drug dealer, peace activist, or reality television aficionado is an achieved status. - Sometimes, one status within our status set stands out or overwhelms all the others. - This is called a master status.

Ch 2 Historical Methods

Research that collects data written from reports, newspaper articles, journals, transcripts, television programs, diaries, artwork, and other artifacts that date back to the period under study. What researchers employing historical methods do is collect data from written reports, newspaper articles, journals, transcripts, television programs, diaries, artwork, and other artifacts that date back to the period they want to study. - Researchers often study social movements using historical methods, because the full import of the movement may not be apparent until after it has ended. Archival research

Ch 4 Gender Roles

Sets of behavioral norms assumed to accompany one's status as masculine, feminine, or other. One of the most popular lines of thought to evolve from role theory has been the concept of gender roles, sets of behavioral norms assumed to accompany one's identity as masculine, feminine, or other. In their critiques of role theory, gender theorists such as Candace West and Don Zimmerman (1987) have argued that the statuses of male/female have distinct power and significance that role theory doesn't adequately capture. We can see how gender fits into larger theories of socialization. - Sometimes the gendering starts before birth: One recent tradition is the gender reveal party, where a baker is given the results of a sonogram or other test that reveals the biological sex of the fetus and then bakes a cake or cupcakes with either pink or blue filling. - The family gathers around to celebrate the revealed sex by eating the sweet. Knowing the sex of a baby may influence how parents talk to it—i.e., the tone of voice and what they say—even before it leaves the womb. Not just family members but people in the larger social world interact with boys and girls very differently and, consequently, socialize them into different roles and into the schema of a gender binary itself. Sociologist C. J. Pascoe spent a year in a working-class high school in California finding out just how teens enforce gender norms on one another. She discovered what she calls "fag discourse," a term that describes the near-continuous use of the term fag or ****** as an insult teenage boys use against one another to curtail improper behavior. - She explained in a recent interview how it worked. - Someone could get called a fag if, as she said, "you danced, if you cared about your clothing, if you were too emotional, or if you were incompetent." What's more, actually being gay turned out to be beside the point. - As Pascoe explained: "What I came to realize was that they used fag as an insult to police the boundaries of masculinity. It wasn't about same-sex desire. In fact, when I asked them about same-sex desire, one boy said, 'Well being gay is just a lifestyle; you can still throw a football around and be gay.' " - This "masculinity policing" is no joking matter. - A boy she called Ricky was "targeted so relentlessly that he dropped out of school" (Conley, 2009c). At the school in Pascoe's study, girls did not insult each other. - Instead they had to put up with constant sexual harassment from the boys. - As the boys looked for behaviors that would prove they were not fags, they used girls as unwitting resources with which to perform aggressive sexuality by describing to one another either how they could "get" girls or the outlandish and often violent sexual escapades that would then follow. - Further, they engaged in rituals of forceful touching, often physically constraining girls' movements. - Pascoe describes one hallway scene in which she "watched one boy walk down the hallway jabbing a girl in the crotch with his drumstick yelling, 'Get raped, get raped' " (Conley, 2009c). In this case, gender socialization looks a lot like gender-based bullying. For some, constant gender-boundary policing has catastrophic effects. Pascoe points out that 90 percent of school shooters who go on rampage school shootings have been subject to homophobic harassment and teasing (Conley, 2009c). - Even when it does not end so tragically, such gender socialization during childhood may form the roots of adult gender performances—ranging from the fact that men are more likely to sexually harass women in the workplace than the reverse, to the simple fact that men are 33 percent more likely to talk over or interrupt a woman than they are a man (Shore, 2017). Ninety-two percent of respondents to a recent poll of 10-to-18-year-olds believed in gender equality as a principle, and a majority agreed that sexism still persists and equality has yet to be achieved. - Life goals were the same, overall, by gender, and girls were as represented as boys in school leadership positions and were as likely to aspire to leadership positions in life as well as to value a career. Moreover, the survey found that it is now more acceptable for girls to violate traditional gender norms by adopting "male" interests, styles, and manners. - That said, boys still felt very constrained by expectations for them to be stoic, strong, and athletic. Girls, by contrast, were discomforted by how much emphasis was placed on their looks (a finding that is echoed by adult women) by society and how sexualized they were by the boys. - Finally, 3 percent of respondents identified as transgender, illustrating the breaking down of the entire gender-binary system to a certain extent We should keep in mind that these overall numbers obscure significant variation by race, class, and region.

Ch 5 Elastic Ties

Social connections that display the repeated interactions characteristic of strong ties while maintaining a degree of protective social distance (i.e., not knowing more than a first name, if that). Sociologist Stacy Torres noticed a third kind of tie in her ethnography of a New York City elderly population that was "aging in place" (that is, growing old where they had lived for most of their adult lives rather than moving to a retirement destination or some form of supportive housing). - These ties that her subjects cultivated were not quite strong, but nor were they weak, exactly. She called them "elastic ties."

Ch 5 Primary Group

Social groups, such as family or friends, composed of enduring, intimate face-to-face relationships that strongly influence the attitudes and ideals of those involved. Primary groups are limited in the number of members, allowing for face-to-face interaction. - The group is an end unto itself, rather than a means to an end. - This is what makes your family different from a sports team or small business: Sure, you want the family to function well, but you're not trying to compete with other families or manufacture a product. Meanwhile, primary groups are key agents of socialization. - Most people's first social group is their family, which is a primary group. Your immediate family (parents and siblings) is probably small enough to sit down at the same dinner table or at least gather in the same room at the same time. - Loyalty is the primary ethic here. - Members of a primary group are noninterchangeable—you can't replace your mother or father. - And while you have strong allegiances to your friends, your primary loyalty is likely to be to your family. Finally, the relationships within a primary group are enduring. - Your sister will always be your sister. - Another example of a primary group might be the group of your closest friends, especially if you've known each other since your sandbox years. - Most intimate - Family or core group of friends.

Ch 5 Solomon Asch

Solomon Asch was a pioneering social psychologist who is perhaps best remembered for his research on the psychology of conformity. Asch took a Gestalt approach to the study of social behavior, suggesting that social acts needed to be viewed in terms of their setting. His famous conformity experiment demonstrated that people would change their response due to social pressure in order to conform to the rest of the group. In the late 1940s the social psychologist Solomon Asch carried out a now-famous series of experiments to demonstrate the power of norms of group conformity. - He gathered subjects in a room under the pretense that they were participating in a vision test, showed them two images of lines, and asked which ones were longer than the others and which were the same length. - The trick was that only one person in each room was really a research subject; the rest of the people had been told ahead of time to give the same wrong answer. - While a majority of subjects answered correctly even after they listened to others give the wrong answer, about one-third expressed serious discomfort—they clearly struggled with what they thought was right in light of what everyone else was saying. Subjects were the most confused when the entire group offered an incorrect answer. - When the group members gave a range of responses, the research subjects had no trouble answering correctly. - This experiment demonstrates the power of conformity within a group. More troubling instances of group conformity may be seen in cases of collective violence such as gang rape, which tends to occur among tightly knit groups like sports teams or fraternities. Found People would sit as a group as a table and were asked to identify which line is the same as the reference - Found that people will conform.

Ch 4 Other

Someone or something outside of oneself. Infants only know the I—that is, one's sense of agency, action, or power. Through social interaction, however, they learn the me—that is, the self as a distinct object to be perceived by others (and by the I). Although such a line of logic might work with your cousin's seven-year-old sister, it will not work with little Joey because he has yet to develop a sense of the other—that is, someone or something outside of oneself. - This is why we allow children a certain amount of leeway. To function as fully adult members of society, we need to be able to recognize that other people have wants, needs, and desires that are sometimes similar to and sometimes different from our own. - Thus, imitation, play, and games are important components of childhood development. When a child imitates, he or she is just starting to learn to recognize an other. - That's what peekaboo is all about. - Eventually, kids understand that you are still there when they cover their eyes. - They can then advance to play, according to Mead. During play, children are able to make a distinction between the self and the other. Games involve a more complex understanding of multiple roles; indeed, you must be able to recognize and anticipate what many other players are going to do in a given situation. - We have learned to anticipate these behaviors from repeated experience in the context of a particular sort of constrained social interaction—namely, a soccer game. As our parents, siblings, friends, teachers, and soccer coaches socialize us, we learn to think beyond the self to the other. According to Mead, however, that brings us only halfway to being socialized. - The final step is developing a concept of the generalized other, which represents an internalized sense of the total expectations of others in a variety of settings—regardless of whether we've encountered those people or places before. - In this way, we should be able to function with complete strangers in a wide range of social settings. We can, and do, continually update our internal sense of the generalized other as we gather new information about norms and expectations in different contexts. People may also intentionally violate established norms. I WOULD NOT POST A SELF ON A PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE

Ch 1 The Chicago School

The Chicago school is best known for its urban sociology and for the development of the symbolic interactionist approach, notably through the work of Herbert Blumer. It has focused on human behavior as shaped by social structures and physical environmental factors, rather than genetic and personal characteristics. The emergence of American sociology was characterized by the latter, an applied perspective best embodied by what came to be referred to as the Chicago School, named for many of its proponents' affiliation with the University of Chicago. - If the Chicago School had a basic premise, it was that humans' behaviors and personalities are shaped by their social and physical environments, a concept known as social ecology. Chicago, which had grown from a midsize city of 109,260 in 1860 to a major metropolis by the beginning of the twentieth century, when these scholars were writing, served as the main laboratory for the Chicago School's studies. - Chicago proved to be fertile ground for studying urbanism and its many discontents. - Immigration, race and ethnicity, politics, and family life all became topics of study, primarily through a community-based approach (i.e., interviewing people and spending time with them).

Ch 1 Sociological Imagination

The ability to connect the most basic, intimate aspects of an individual's life to seemingly impersonal and remote historical forces. Sociological imagination, the ability to see the connections between our personal experience and the larger forces of history. - This is just what we are doing when we question this textbook, this course, and college in general. To see our intensely personal, private experience of life as typical of the period and place in which we live. This can also serve as a source of comfort, however, helping us realize we are not alone in our experiences, whether they involve our alienation from the increasingly dog-eat-dog capitalism of modern America, the peculiar combination of intimacy and dissociation that we may experience on the internet, or the ways that nationality or geography affect our life choices. - The sociological imagination thus allows us to see the veneer of social life for what it is and to step outside the "trap" of rapid historical change in order to comprehend what is occurring in our world and the social foundations that may be shifting right under our feet. Both a set of skills and a way of seeing. Connects our personal experiences to society at large and greater historical forces. Making the familiar strange - Allows us to "make the familiar strange," or question habits or customs that seem "natural" to us. It questions the customs, traditions, habits, norms, and things that feel natural to humans. Our norms are not static or permanent. It is a "tool kit" that helps us understand the social world. It is also a "lens" that is put on that can be hard to take off. - It shows connections between humans and actions. - Seeing interconnections between individuals and the society they live in and create. Looking at the connections between individuals and society "makes the familiar strange" helps dive into the "common sense." What makes those things common sense? Why are they part of common sense? How and why are they familiar?

Ch 3 Culture Jamming

The act of turning media against themselves. People can take back the media or use the media for their own ends. Culture jamming (a term that evolved from radio jamming, another form of guerrilla cultural resistance that involves seizing control of the frequency of a radio station) is the act of co-opting media in spite of themselves. - Part of a larger movement against consumer culture and consumerism, it's based on the notion that advertisements are basically propaganda. Culture jamming differs from appropriating advertisements for the sake of art and sheer vandalism (where the sole goal is the destruction of property), although advertisers probably don't care too much about this latter distinction. Numerous anticonsumerist activist groups have sprung up, such as Adbusters, a Canadian magazine that specializes in spoofs of popular advertising campaigns. - Adbusters also sponsors an annual Buy Nothing Day (held, with great irony, on the day after Thanksgiving, known in retail as "Black Friday," the busiest shopping day of the year), which encourages people to do just that—buy nothing on this specific day of the year—so that they can reclaim their buying power and focus on the noncommercial aspects of the holiday, such as spending time with family and friends.

Ch 1 Positivism

The approach to sociology that emphasizes the scientific method as an approach to studying the objectively observable behavior of individuals irrespective of the meanings those actions have for the subjects themselves. Positivism arose out of a need to make moral sense of the social order in a time of declining religious authority. - Comte claimed that a secular basis for morality did indeed exist—that is, we could determine right and wrong without reference to higher powers or other religious concepts. - And that was the job of the sociologist: to develop a secular morality

Ch 3 Mass Media

The means of communication that reach large numbers of people in a short time, such as television, newspapers, magazines, and radio. When we talk about the media, we're generally talking about the mass media. - The first form of mass media was the book. - Before the invention of the printing press, the media did exist—the town crier brought news, and royal messengers traveled by horseback, every now and then hopping off to read a scroll—but they did not exactly reach the masses. Since that time the terms media and mass media have become virtually synonymous. Ex. Books, newspapers, magazines, movies, CDs, TV shows, radio, digital and social media. - Examples of Non-Mass Media: phone call, texting, etc. (one to one moments of communication) Mass Media Use Today: - Pervasiveness of Media in Contemporary Society - Radios in 99% and TVs in 96% of U.S. homes - Adults spend an average of 5 hours a day watching TV... or 76 days per year (!) Mass Media Use in 2019: - Cell phone ownership: 96% - Smartphone: 81% - Desktop or laptop computer: ¾ U.S. adults - 1 in 5 Americans are "smartphone only" internet users.

Ch 3 Ethnocentrism

The belief that one's own culture or group is superior to others and the tendency to view all other cultures from the perspective of one's own. Ethnocentrism is a term that encapsulates the sense of taken-for-granted superiority in the context of cultural practices and attitudes. - It is both the belief that one's own culture or group is superior to others and the tendency to view all other cultures from the perspective of one's own. Some even believed that non-Westerners did not have souls and weren't human, and this notion was used to justify slavery, violence, and oppression. - Such claims obviously weren't true (and we owe a lot to anthropologists for disproving them), but the long history of racism with which we still struggle does have some of its roots in these ideas. Studying culture but using your familiar culture as a reference point.

Ch 5 Tie

The connection between two people in a relationship that varies in strength from one relationship to the next; a story that explains our relationship with another member of our network. Dyads, triads, and groups are the components of social networks. - A social network is a set of relations—a set of dyads, essentially—held together by ties between individuals. - A tie is the content of a particular relationship. If I ask you how you know a specific person, and you explain that she was your brother's girlfriend in the eighth grade, and the two of you remained close even after her relationship with your brother ended, that story is your tie to that person. - For every person in your life, you have a story. - To explain some ties, the story is very simple: "That's the guy I buy my coffee from each morning." - This is a uniplex tie. - Other ties have many layers. - They are multiplex: "She's my girlfriend. We have a romantic relationship. We also are tennis and bridge partners. And now that you mention it, we are classmates at school and also fiercely competitive opponents in Trivial Pursuit." A narrative is the sum of stories contained in a set of ties. - Your university or college is a narrative, for example. - Every person with whom you have a relationship at your university forms part of that network. - For all your college-based relationships—those shared with a professor, your teaching assistant, or classmates—your school is a large part of the story, of the tie. - Without the school, in fact, you probably wouldn't share a tie at all. When you add up the stories of all the actors involved in the social network of your school—between you and your classmates, between the professors and their colleagues, between the school and the vendors with whom it contracts—the result is a narrative of what your college is. - Of course, you may have other friends, from high school or elsewhere, who have no relationship to your school, so your college is a more minor aspect of those relationships. - If you try to make a change that involves a large network, the social structure becomes very powerful. Ironically, something abstract like a name can be more robust than most of the physical infrastructure around us.

Ch 5 Embeddedness

The degree to which social relationships are reinforced through indirect ties (i.e., friends of friends). One important dimension of social networks is the extent to which they are embedded. - Embeddedness refers to the degree to which a social relationship is reinforced through indirect paths (i.e., friends of friends) within a network. - The more embedded a tie is, the stronger it is. That is, compared to a relationship with someone whom only you yourself know, a tie to someone who also knows your mother, your best friend, and your teacher's daughter is more likely to last. - It may feel less dramatic and intimate, but it's robust and more likely to endure simply by virtue of the fact that it's difficult to escape. You will always be connected to that person—if not directly, then through your "mutual" friends. - However, the counterpoint to this dynamic lies in what sociologist Mark Granovetter (1973) calls the strength of weak ties, referring to the fact that relatively weak ties—those not reinforced through indirect paths—often turn out to be quite valuable because they bring novel information. The strength of weak ties—as compared to strong, multi-reinforced ties—has been found especially useful in job searches (Granovetter, 1974). - In a highly embedded network of strong ties, all the individuals probably know the same people, hear of the same job openings, maintain the same contacts, and so on. - However, your grandparents' neighbor, whom you see every so often, probably has a completely different set of connections. - The paradox is that this weak tie provides the most opportunities.

Ch 4 Roles

The duties and behaviors expected of someone who holds a particular status. One of the most popular lines of thought to evolve from role theory has been the concept of gender roles, sets of behavioral norms assumed to accompany one's identity as masculine, feminine, or other. Not just family members but people in the larger social world interact with boys and girls very differently and, consequently, socialize them into different roles and into the schema of a gender binary itself.

Ch 4 Face

The esteem in which an individual is held by others. Face, according to Goffman, is the esteem in which an individual is held by others. - We take this notion very seriously; hence the idea of saving face, which is essentially the most important goal of impression management. There are many subtleties to learn in life, and nobody explicitly teaches us all of these things. - Indeed, mistakes, called breaches, are themselves an important part of the game. When there's a breach in an established script, we work hard to repair it and move forward. - Humor is a useful tool in getting the script back in place. Sometimes, the stakes are so high or the situation is so new that we seek explicit guidance. - People can and do make careers out of negotiating social scripts and methods for saving face. - The truth is, however, that human social interaction is too complex for a single script to work universally.

Ch 2 Validity

The extent to which an instrument measures what it is intended to measure. To say a measure has validity means that it measures what you intend it to. Accuracy Making sure the data is true. Are we accurately measuring what we intend to measure?

Ch 2 Generalizability

The extent to which we can claim our findings inform us about a group larger than the one we studied. Generalizability is the extent to which we can claim that our findings inform us about a group larger than the one we studied. Sample size Obtaining a representative sample. We can generalize our data to the general population.

Ch 3 Political Economy of Media

The freedom to say whatever you want is often upheld as one of the great markers of the "land of the free." - The press, however, is hardly free. Most broadcasting companies are privately owned in the United States, are supported financially by advertising, and are therefore likely to reflect the biases of their owners and backers. - Ownership alone does not equal censorship, but when the majority of the media lie in the hands of a few players, it is easier to ignore or purposely suppress messages that the owners of the media don't agree with or support. - The internet, to some extent, has balanced out communications monopolies. It's much easier to put up a website expressing alternative views than it is to broadcast a television or radio program suggesting the same. - Yelp.com, for example, reports that updates to Google's search algorithm place Google+ reviews higher in Google's search results than reviews for the same venues on other sites, shifting web traffic to Google+ at the expense of competing review sites like Yelp and Thrillist (Leswing, 2015). Moreover, the internet often acts as a force for reinforcing our prejudices—including extremist views—by creating a "filter bubble" in the words of Eli Pariser, author of a book by that title. That is, the major corporations that own the backbones of how we interact with the internet, such as Alphabet, Facebook, and so on, have a profit incentive to feed us news, posts, and so on that confirm our preexisting desires, beliefs, and viewpoints since we are more likely to click on such links. Media ownership in the United States is in the hands of six companies. Media Conglomerates: Google, Facebook, Amazon - Do you think that the internet has (somewhat) balanced out media monopoly power?

Ch 2 Representative Sample

The idea that a particular slice of social observation—a sample of survey respondents, an ethnographic research site such as an organization, or a batch of social media posts—captures in an accurate way the larger set (or universe) of those phenomena that it is meant to stand in for. Conducted every other year, the GSS includes some new questions, but many are the same from one survey to the next. - This consistency has allowed researchers to track American attitudes about a range of important issues, from race relations to abortion politics to beliefs about sexual orientation, and to see how the beliefs of different demographic subgroups have converged or diverged over four decades.

Ch 1 Conflict Theory

The idea that conflict between competing interests is the basic, animating force of social change and society in general. Sociologists such as C. Wright Mills, writing from 1948 through 1962, criticized Parsons and functionalist theory for reinforcing the status quo and the dominant economic system with its class structures and inequalities instead of challenging how such systems evolved and offering alternatives. - Functionalism also took a beating in the turbulent 1960s, when its place was usurped by a number of theories frequently subsumed under the label Marxist theory or conflict theory. - Whereas functionalists painted a picture of social harmony as the well-oiled parts of a societal machine working together (with some friction and the occasional breakdown), conflict theorists viewed society from exactly the opposite perspective. The theory—as expressed by Ralf Dahrendorf, Lewis Coser, and others—stated that conflict among competing interests is the basic, animating force of any society. - Competition, not consensus, is the essential nature, and this conflict at all levels of analysis (from the individual to the family to the tribe to the nation-state), in turn, drives social change. - And such social change occurs only through revolution and war, not evolution or baby steps. According to conflict theorists, inequality exists as a result of political struggles among different groups (classes) in a particular society. - Although functionalists theorize that inequality is a necessary and beneficial aspect of society, conflict theorists argue that it is unfair and exists at the expense of less powerful groups. Today most sociologists see societies as demonstrating characteristics of both consensus and conflict and believe that social change does result from both revolution and evolution.

Ch 5 Mediator

The member of a triad who attempts to resolve conflict between the two other actors in the group. The first role is that of mediator, the person who tries to resolve conflict between the other two and is sometimes brought in for that explicit purpose. - A good example would be a marriage counselor. - Rather than go to therapy, couples having marital problems often start a family because they believe a baby will bring them back together. - Unfortunately, as most couples come to realize sooner rather than later, a baby cannot play the role of a mediator.

Ch 5 Tertius Gaudens

The member of a triad who benefits from conflict between the other two members of the group. A second possible role for the incoming third member of a triad is that of tertius gaudens (Latin for "the third that rejoices"). - This individual profits from the disagreement of the other two, essentially playing a role opposite from the mediator's. Someone in this position might have multiple roles. - In the previous example, the marriage counselor plays the part of the mediator, but she is also earning her wages from the conflict between the couple. - Maybe she encourages continued therapy even after the couple appear to have resolved all their issues, or perhaps she promotes their staying together even though they've already decided to get a divorce.

Ch 3 Reflection Theory

The idea that culture is a projection of social structures and relationships into the public sphere, a screen onto which the film of the underlying reality of social structures of a society is projected. Culture affects us. It's transmitted to us through different processes, with socialization—our internalization of society's values, beliefs, and norms—being the main one. Let's start with reflection theory, which states that culture is a projection of social structures and relationships into the public sphere, a screen onto which the film of the underlying reality or social structures of our society is shown. - A different version of reflection theory derives from the Marxist tradition (see Chapter 1), which says that cultural objects reflect the material labor and relationships of production that went into them. - Karl Marx asserted that it is a one-way street—from technology and the means of production to belief systems and ideologies. - According to Marx's view of reflection theory, our norms, values, sanctions, ideologies, laws, and even language are outgrowths of the technology and economic means and modes of production. Likewise, for Marx, ideology has a very specific definition: culture that justifies given relations in production. - Marx would argue that the combination of factory labor and global trade relations between England and its colonies necessitated and inevitably led to these kinds of legal structures. Reflection theory has its limitations. - It does not explain why some cultural products have staying power, whereas others fall by the wayside. If reflection theory is true, why do some products change their meaning over time? Most people now understand that an interactive process exists between culture and social structure. - Most would agree that culture has an impact on society and it is not just a unidirectional phenomenon.

Ch 2 Casual Relationship

The idea that one factor influences another through a chain of events; such a dynamic is different from two factors being merely associated or correlated, in which case they may appear to vary together but that could be due to chance or a third factor causing both.

Ch 4 Role Strain

The incompatibility among roles corresponding to a single status. Sometimes we experience role strain, the incompatibility among roles corresponding to a single status. - Whereas role strain refers to conflicting demands within the same status, role conflict describes the tension caused by competing demands between two or more roles within different statuses. - Each one of us, at any given time, enjoys numerous statuses. - These statuses (and their corresponding roles) can and do change over time and between places. - The term status set refers to all the statuses you have at any given time. When the same role has demands and expectations that contradict each other

Ch 5 Social Capital

The information, knowledge of people, and connections that help individuals enter, gain power in, or otherwise leverage social networks. Having many weak ties is one form of what sociologists call social capital. - Like human capital, the training and skills that make individuals more productive and valuable to employers, social capital is the information, knowledge of people or things, and connections that help individuals enter preexisting networks or gain power in them. Consider the importance of networking in endeavors such as preventing neighborhood crime or obtaining a good job. - As it turns out, the cliché holds a lot of truth: It's not just what you know but whom you know. - Weak ties may be the most advantageous for an individual; however, for a community, many dense, embedded ties are generally a sign of high levels of social capital. This concept makes sense when you think about it. - Dense social capital means that people are linked to one another through a thick web of connections. - As a result of these connections, they will feel inclined—perhaps even impelled—to help each other, to return favors, to keep an eye on one another's property. - The more connections there are, the more norms of reciprocity, values, and trust are shared. - After all, there is no such thing as total anonymity: Even if you don't know someone directly, chances are that you are only one or two degrees removed from him or her.

Ch 2 Reliability

The likelihood of obtaining consistent results using the same measure. Reliability refers to how likely you are to obtain the same result using the same measure the next time. Consistency If we were to replicate our study, will our results repeat and remain accurate?

Ch 2 Causality

The notion that a change in one factor results in a corresponding change in another. Often, when we establish correlation but can't do the same for causality, it's because we don't know which variable is causing change in the other—we can't establish time order, for example, so we don't know which variable is the independent and which is the dependent.

Ch 5 Strength of Weak Ties

The notion that relatively weak ties often turn out to be quite valuable because they yield new information. One important dimension of social networks is the extent to which they are embedded. - Embeddedness refers to the degree to which a social relationship is reinforced through indirect paths (i.e., friends of friends) within a network. - The more embedded a tie is, the stronger it is. That is, compared to a relationship with someone whom only you yourself know, a tie to someone who also knows your mother, your best friend, and your teacher's daughter is more likely to last. - It may feel less dramatic and intimate, but it's robust and more likely to endure simply by virtue of the fact that it's difficult to escape. You will always be connected to that person—if not directly, then through your "mutual" friends. - However, the counterpoint to this dynamic lies in what sociologist Mark Granovetter (1973) calls the strength of weak ties, referring to the fact that relatively weak ties—those not reinforced through indirect paths—often turn out to be quite valuable because they bring novel information. The strength of weak ties—as compared to strong, multi-reinforced ties—has been found especially useful in job searches (Granovetter, 1974). - In a highly embedded network of strong ties, all the individuals probably know the same people, hear of the same job openings, maintain the same contacts, and so on. - However, your grandparents' neighbor, whom you see every so often, probably has a completely different set of connections. - The paradox is that this weak tie provides the most opportunities. Additional research finds that weak ties offer the greatest benefits to job seekers who already have high-status jobs, suggesting that social networks combine with credentials to sort job applicants, and that strong ties may be more useful in low-status, low-credential job markets (Wegener, 1991). - Their tie bridges what we call a structural hole between the two cliques, a gap between network clusters, where a possible tie could become an actual tie or where an intermediary could control the communication between the two groups on either side of the hole. When sociologist Ronald Burt (1992) studied managers in a large corporation, he found that those with the most structural holes in their social networks were the ones who rose through the company ranks the fastest and farthest. - This notion can be expanded to explain how a great deal of profit making occurs in today's economy. - At one extreme is the totally free market, in which there are no structural holes; no restriction on information exists, and all buyers and sellers can reach one another—think eBay. - At the other extreme is the monopoly, in which one firm provides necessary information or resources to a multitude of people (i.e., maintains and profits from a gaping structural hole). - And then there is everything in between these extremes: everyone from shipping magnates to spice traders to mortgage brokers to multilevel marketers. Sociologist Stacy Torres noticed a third kind of tie in her ethnography of a New York City elderly population that was "aging in place" (that is, growing old where they had lived for most of their adult lives rather than moving to a retirement destination or some form of supportive housing). - These ties that her subjects cultivated were not quite strong, but nor were they weak, exactly. She called them "elastic ties."

Ch 2 White Coat Effects

The phenomenon wherein a researcher's presence affects her subjects' behavior or response, thereby disrupting the study. "White coat" effects—that is, the effects that researchers have on the very processes and relationships they are studying by virtue of being there. - Often, subjects change their behavior, consciously or not, just because they are part of a study. When we do qualitative fieldwork (interviews, ethnography, or participant observation), we talk about reflexivity, which means analyzing and critically considering the white coat effects you may be inspiring with your research process.

Ch 4 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. Socialization is "the process through which individuals internalize the values, beliefs, and norms of a society and learn to function as its members." Starting from when you were born, the interactions between you and the rest of the world have shaped who you are. - We learn how to interact on myriad levels in an endless number of situations. You recognize the limits of your socialization when you find yourself in a new situation and aren't quite sure how to behave. Where people acquire: 1) personality and identity 2) the way of life of their society Socialization: what makes human beings human Biology is our blueprint Lack of socialization has serious consequences

Ch 3 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. Through social dynamics that's how we internalize red and green.

Ch 4 Resocialization

The process by which one's sense of social values, beliefs, and norms are reengineered, often deliberately, through an intense social process. Adult socialization simply refers to the ways in which you are socialized as an adult. - Resocialization is a more drastic form of adult socialization. - When you change your environment, you may need some resocialization. The most drastic case of resocialization would be necessary if you had suffered a terrible accident and lost all of your memory. - You would need to relearn everything—how to hold a fork and knife, how to tie your shoes, how to engage in conversation. - You would be completely childlike once again—and any inappropriate nose picking would be forgiven.

Ch 5 Divide et Impera

The role of a member of a triad who intentionally drives a wedge between the other two actors in the group. The third possible role that Simmel identifies for a third party is divide et impera (Latin for "divide and conquer"). - This person intentionally drives a wedge between the other two parties. - This third role is similar to tertius gaudens, the difference between the two being a question of intent and whether the rift preexisted. When contemplating how these theoretical concepts work within actual social interaction, keep in mind that these groups—dyads and triads—don't exist in a vacuum in real life. - Most social groups are very complex, and we need to take that into consideration when we attempt to determine how they operate. - This is why we start with Simmel's purest forms. - The interactions that take place in groups of two and three become the building blocks for those in much larger groups.

Ch 4 Me

The self perceived as an object by the "I"; the self as one imagines others perceive one. Infants only know the I—that is, one's sense of agency, action, or power. Through social interaction, however, they learn the me—that is, the self as a distinct object to be perceived by others (and by the I). Ourselves as the subject "I took a selfie"

Ch 3 Consumerism

The steady acquisition of material possessions, often with the belief that happiness and fulfillment can thus be achieved. America is often described as a consumer culture, and rightly so. In an interview with sociologist Allison Pugh, she pointed out that "corporate marketing to children is a 22 billion dollar industry." - She then added, "Children 8 to 11 ask for between two and four toys [for Christmas], and they receive eleven on average!" The term consumerism, however, refers to more than just buying merchandise; it refers to the belief that happiness and fulfillment can be achieved through the acquisition of material possessions. The media, and advertising in particular, play a large role in the creation and maintenance of consumerism. Consumerism: the steady acquisition of material possessions, often with the belief that happiness and fulfillment can thus be achieved. American is often described as a consumer culture. - This is reflected in sales that thrive on major holidays. - Through the vending brands, goods, and possessions, we are being sold a self-image, a lifestyle, and a sense of belonging.

Ch 1 Sociology

The study of human society. Sociology is the study of human society, and there is the sociology of sports, of religion, of music, of medicine, even a sociology of sociologists.

Ch 2 Sample

The subset of the population from which you are actually collecting data. Most of the time it's too time-consuming and expensive to collect information about the entire population you want to study, so instead you focus on a sample. - Your sample, then, is the subset of the population from which you are actually collecting data.

Ch 5 Narrative

The sum of stories contained in a set of ties. A narrative is the sum of stories contained in a set of ties. - Your university or college is a narrative, for example. - Every person with whom you have a relationship at your university forms part of that network. - For all your college-based relationships—those shared with a professor, your teaching assistant, or classmates—your school is a large part of the story, of the tie. - Without the school, in fact, you probably wouldn't share a tie at all. When you add up the stories of all the actors involved in the social network of your school—between you and your classmates, between the professors and their colleagues, between the school and the vendors with whom it contracts—the result is a narrative of what your college is. - Of course, you may have other friends, from high school or elsewhere, who have no relationship to your school, so your college is a more minor aspect of those relationships. - If you try to make a change that involves a large network, the social structure becomes very powerful. Ironically, something abstract like a name can be more robust than most of the physical infrastructure around us.

Ch 3 Culture

The sum of the social categories and concepts we embrace in addition to beliefs, behaviors (except institutional ones), and practices; everything but the natural environment around us. Culture is a vague term we use to rationalize many behaviors and describe all sorts of peoples and patterns. - Culture is casually used as shorthand for many things, ranging in meaning from innate biological tendencies to social institutions, and everything in between. The set of values, beliefs, traditions, and norms for a society - "way of life" - The combination of beliefs, values, norms, etc. - Material and nonmaterial - Material ex: food, clothing, technology, etc. (anything man made) - Nonmaterial ex: norms, belief systems, ideology, etc. (things that aren't tangible) The meanings attributed to culture are never simply given but are the product of human invention, socially constructed and agreed upon among a demonstrably large number of society's members. - Collectively in agreement as a society. - What does a red light mean in culture? - Traffic = stop - Red light district - Red light on siren = police/emergency

Ch 4 Role Conflict

The tension caused by competing demands between two or more roles pertaining to different statuses. Occurs when we play different roles that have contradictory rules at the same time

Ch 1 Functionalism

The theory that various social institutions and processes in society exist to serve some important (or necessary) function to keep society running. Although American sociology was born in a tradition of community studies that avoided grand theory and drew its insights from the careful observation of people in their environments, it was largely characterized by the concept of functionalism for much of the twentieth century. - Functionalism derived its name from the notion that the best way to analyze society was to identify the roles that different aspects or phenomena play. - These functions may be manifest (explicit) or latent (hidden). - This lens is really just an extension of a nineteenth-century theory called organicism, the notion that society is like a living organism, each part of which serves an important role in keeping society together. - The state or government was seen to be the brain, industry was the muscular system, media and mass communications were the nervous system, and so on. The functionalist impulse originated in the 19th century, most notably in the work of Durkheim. Durkheim's work What is the function of x in society? System of interrelated parts that work together to make a functioning society. - Ex: what is the function of religion in society?

Ch 3 Cultural Lag

The time gap between the appearance of a new technology and the words and practices that give it meaning. Before phones with cameras and apps such as Instagram, the word selfie did not exist, and before selfies there were no selfie sticks. - When it takes time for culture to catch up with technological innovations, there is a cultural lag.

Ch 4 Dramaturgical Theory

The view (advanced by Erving Goffman) of social life as essentially a theatrical performance, in which we are all actors on metaphorical stages, with roles, scripts, costumes, and sets. We might say that the dramaturgical theory of society has its roots in William Shakespeare, but we generally credit Goffman with expounding this theory in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959). - He argued that life is essentially a play—a play with a moral, of sorts. - And this moral is what Goffman and social psychologists call "impression management." That is, all of us actors on the metaphorical social stage are struggling to make a good impression on our audience (who also happen to be actors). - This helps keep society and social relations rolling along smoothly (without the need for too many retakes). - Because we are all actors with roles, according to Goffman's dramaturgical theory, we also need scripts, costumes, and sets. We act out some of our roles much more intentionally than others. - Often, we play several roles simultaneously, and if we have been properly socialized and don't suffer from too much role conflict, we can transition in and out of roles with a certain amount of ease. - In dramaturgical theory, the translation would be "This is the wrong stage. Find the right one." Another important part of Goffman's theory is the distinction between front-stage and backstage arenas. - If you've ever participated in a school play or some other type of performance, you know all about front stage and backstage. - Here the meanings are quite literal—a curtain separates these areas, so the border between the front stage and the backstage is clearly delineated. Face, according to Goffman, is the esteem in which an individual is held by others. - We take this notion very seriously; hence the idea of saving face, which is essentially the most important goal of impression management. There are many subtleties to learn in life, and nobody explicitly teaches us all of these things. - Indeed, mistakes, called breaches, are themselves an important part of the game. When there's a breach in an established script, we work hard to repair it and move forward. - Humor is a useful tool in getting the script back in place. Sometimes, the stakes are so high or the situation is so new that we seek explicit guidance. - People can and do make careers out of negotiating social scripts and methods for saving face. - The truth is, however, that human social interaction is too complex for a single script to work universally. The art of tact even involves, on occasion, breaking the rules to make others feel comfortable. There are some ways to generalize, however. Goffman uses the term opening to signal the start of an encounter—that is, the first bracket. - The closing bracket marks the end of an encounter. Sometimes, we need a nonverbal bracket to commence an encounter, a signal to cease our civil inattention. - Civil inattention means refraining from directly interacting with someone, even someone you know, until an opening bracket has been issued. We have to signal to people; we have to warn them that we are going to break civil inattention and initiate an encounter. Under less extreme circumstances, you may be phrasing your desire to end the conversation as a kind gesture to your interlocutor. Sometimes, we resort to formal closings. However, given-off gestures also exist, unconscious signals of our true feelings. Many of our gestures and brackets are nonverbal. - This is why it is often more difficult to end a conversation on the phone than in person: Much of our toolbox is not available to us.

Ch 5 Cultural Structure

The ways in which power and authority are distributed within an organization. The term organizational structure refers to how power and authority are distributed within an organization. - The slaughterhouse probably has a hierarchical structure, with a clear ranking of managers and supervisors who oversee the people working the lines. The problem, critics argue, is that we then allow a select group of people—predominantly rich, White men—to control the decisions made in thousands of companies. - Such people also have ties to research institutions and elected officials that may compromise their objectivity and create conflicts of interest. - Capitalism, after all, is based on competition, but if board members on interlocking directorates favor the other companies to which they are connected, suppliers may not be competing on a level playing field when bidding for contracts. - Or worse, take the situation that might develop when a board member of a drug maker asks his friend and fellow board member at a health insurance company to give preferential coverage to his company's drugs over a competitor's drugs. This can lead to higher prices for consumers who need to purchase the competitor's drugs. - This type of situation can lead to what sociologist C. Wright Mills called a "power elite" or aristocracy.

Ch 5 6 Degrees of Separation

Theory that any person on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. The evidence supporting the six degree theory came out of research undertaken in the 1960s by Stanley - Milgram, whose colleagues were pestering him about why it always seemed like the strangers they met at cocktail parties turned out to be friends of a friend. Milgram decided to test the reach of social networks by asking a stockbroker in Boston to receive chain letters from a bunch of folks living in Lincoln, Nebraska. - The Lincolnites could send letters only to friends or relatives whom they believed would be likely to know someone who might know someone who might know the guy in Boston. - About 20 percent of the letters eventually made it to Boston, and the average trip length was just over five people, hence the idea that in the United States there are no more than five people between any set of strangers, or six degrees of separation. Duncan Watts (2003) noticed that Milgram's findings applied only to the letters that made it to their final destination. - Watts set up a similar—this time worldwide—experiment using e-mail and statistical models to estimate global connectedness and found that Milgram was not quite right. - Furthermore, Watts was able to test the commonsense notion that there are some people out there who just seem to know everyone and that it must be through these superconnected people that the rest of us are able to say we're only six degrees from Kevin Bacon (or whomever). - But instead he found that when it comes to whom we know, "the world's remarkably egalitarian," and that superconnectors played almost no role in getting the e-mail forwarded all the way to its destination.

Ch 3 Code Switch

To flip fluidly between two or more languages and sets of cultural norms to fit different cultural contexts. Moving from one culture to another can induce feelings of culture shock—that is, confusion and anxiety caused by not knowing what words, signs, and other symbols mean. - People who move fluidly from one cultural setting to another learn to code switch by swapping out one set of meanings, values, and/or languages on the fly. Elijah Anderson (1999) and others have pointed out how many minority groups, such as African Americans, learn to code switch in their daily lives by going back and forth between standard English and African American English as they move between predominantly White social contexts (perhaps their workplace) to environments in which they form the majority (such as at home or in church).

Ch 3 Nonmaterial Culture

Values, beliefs, behaviors, and social norms. We can divide culture into nonmaterial culture, which includes values, beliefs, behaviors, and social norms, and material culture, which is everything that is a part of our constructed, physical environment, including technology. - Well-known monuments, such as the Statue of Liberty or Mount Rushmore, are part of our culture, but so are modern furniture, books, movies, food, magazines, cars, and fashion. Of course, a relationship exists between nonmaterial culture and material culture, and that can take many forms. - When someone conjures up a concept like a portable computer, such an invention flows directly from an idea into a material good. - Other times, however, it is technology that generates ideas and concepts, values and beliefs. Nonmaterial ex: norms, belief systems, ideology, etc. (things that aren't tangible)

Ch 4 Agents of Socialization: School

When children enter school, the primary locus of socialization shifts to include reference groups such as peers and teachers. - In addition to helping you learn the three Rs, one of the teacher's main goals is to properly socialize you—teaching you to share, take turns, resolve conflict with words, be quiet when necessary, and speak when appropriate. When students resist classroom behavior norms, many parents and teachers turn to medication. Psychiatrist Fadi Haddad, whom we heard from in the chapter opener, treats kids who have been referred to him because their parents or teachers think they have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). - He has identified four factors leading to the uptick in ADHD cases in the United States. - Only one of them is the mental health of the kid; the rest are rooted in the broader social context. - He sees that "the demands of the schools are built on certain curricul[a]" that are "not very flexible . . . they want the kid to behave in a certain way." - If a kid does not behave, "it's easy to say this kid has ADHD and that's why he is not successful in school rather than, oh, well, maybe this kid, his brain is functioning a little bit different, and if we change the curriculum, he will be a brilliant kid and he will succeed." A compounding parallel issue is that American culture is "work, work, work, work. - If the kid is not able because of many different reasons. . . . This kid might have symptoms of depression, and that's why he's not able to concentrate on his work. - It's much easier for the parents to say, 'Well, my son has ADHD and he needs medication' rather than dealing with other issues that [are] affecting them." The school structure and the long work hours parents face run into a third concern. - Haddad is a psychiatrist specializing in children's mental health, but, as he says: - Ultimately, Haddad says, it is easier to medicate the children to fit with the socialization norms than to change society. Socialization may not come easily for anyone, but it is especially difficult for those who find conformity a challenge. - Schools, however, teach us more than how to show up prepared for class, and all schools are not created equal.

Ch 4 Backstage

Where performers are present but audience is not, and the performers can step out of character without fear of disrupting the performance. It is where facts suppressed in the front stage or various kinds of informal actions may appear. Another important part of Goffman's theory is the distinction between front-stage and backstage arenas. - If you've ever participated in a school play or some other type of performance, you know all about front stage and backstage. - Here the meanings are quite literal—a curtain separates these areas, so the border between the front stage and the backstage is clearly delineated.