Sociology Chapters 1-10

How many babies out of every thousand are born intersex?

17

In her introduction to a paper about gender, the sociologist Rae Blumberg said that the central principle behind gender in our society is "remember the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules." What kind of theorist is Blumberg?

A conflict theorist

How do sociologists define the self?

The experience of an individual's personal identity, distinct from other people

A paradigm shift is a major break in the assumptions that are used to understand the world. For social scientists, what causes a paradigm shift?

new data forcing a new way of looking at the world

For many years, researchers struggled to find a biological explanation for sexual orientation. However, the vast majority of studies have focused on gay men and excluded lesbians, which might lead sociologists to question the ________ of such research.

objectivity

On any given day, within ten minutes of waking up, you probably depend on more than 100 strangers to provide electricity, water, natural gas, weather forecasts, and other services. According to Durkheim, this interdependence gives rise to:

organic solidarity.

According to Karl Marx, what social relations matter most in a capitalist system?

economic relations

A monetary fine, harsh words, and shaking one's fist are examples of:

negative sanctions

The belief that all Irish are drunks is an example of:

prejudice

If we are to have a truly egalitarian society, citizens must recognize the racist history of the United States and the social conditions that perpetuate contemporary inequalities. To do this, one must develop:

race consciousness.

What is the definition of "culture"?

Culture is the entire way of life of a group of people, and it acts as a lens through which we view the world.

How does colorblindness contribute to racial inequalities?

It perpetuates racial inequalities by making subtle forms of racism difficult to recognize and therefore difficult to address.

Symbolic interactionism argues that people act toward things on the basis of their meaning. According to this perspective, how does meaning arise?

Meaning is negotiated through interaction with others.

What did Max Weber mean when he said that modern people are trapped in an "iron cage"?

Most aspects of life are increasingly controlled by rigid rules and rationalization.

Which term describes a policy of honoring diverse racial, ethnic, religious, linguistic, and national backgrounds?

Multiculturalism

What explanation does functionalism have for prejudice and discrimination today?

Prejudice and discrimination help to increase group cohesion.

How is prejudice different from discrimination?

Prejudice is an attitude; discrimination is an action.

hat we need, and what we feel we need, is a ________________ that will help us use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and what may be happening within ____________.

Quality of Mind; Ourselves

In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Émile Durkheim argued that religion was a powerful source of social solidarity. Why?

Religion reinforced collective bonds and cultivated shared moral values.

Max Weber believed that as the Industrial Revolution progressed, society became increasingly rationalized. How did he define rationalization?

The application of economic logic to all aspects of social life

How is culture transmitted and internalized?

We learn values and beliefs slowly and incrementally.

Patriarchy can be defined as:

a society in which women are dominated by men

According to your textbook, what do all religions have in common?

a system of beliefs and rituals that establish a relationship between the sacred and the profane

Scientists who are searching for a "gay gene" have been criticized by sociologists for their narrow understanding of sexual orientation, which does not take into account the way biology and the social environment interact to produce sexual behaviors. Which of the following theorists makes this point?

a. Social historian Jeffrey Weeks, who points out that even though homosexual acts have been documented throughout history, homosexual identity as we know it today didn't exist before the twentieth century

Consider the major theoretical perspectives explored throughout the text. Which type of theorist might explore the idea that occupations traditionally held by men earn more money than those held by women, with the result being that men tend to be more financially successful and powerful?

a. conflict theorist

Dr. Lui plans to research the relationship between breast-feeding and preschool success. In this research, breast-feeding is the

independent variable.

The exploitation of a minority group within the dominant group's political borders is called:

internal colonialism.

What is the relationship between social class and race, ethnicity, gender, and age in the United States today?

intersectionality

What did Max Weber believe people would experience more of as the dehumanizing features of bureaucratic processes became increasingly prevalent in society?

disenchantment

When Charles and Kim visit Great Britain, Charles quickly decides to NOT drive the rental car because he perceives the drivers as strange and weird and he wants nothing to do with them. Kim, on the other hand, is excited about driving the car. She looks forward to learning how to do things differently than in the United States. In this example, Charles is experiencing _____ while Kim is experiencing _____.

ethnocentrism; cultural relativism

Which method of social research might involve shifting between participating in a social situation and being an observer?

ethnography

When individuals fail to see the ways they are oppressed by the social system in which they live, Karl Marx calls it:

false consciousness

Which sociological perspective explores how society is structured and maintains order?

functionalist

Religious groups that emphasize literal interpretation of sacred texts are called:

fundamentalist

A person's self-conception of being male or female based on his or her association with masculine or feminine gender roles can be defined as:

gender identity

What is the sociological term for signs people make with their bodies?

gestures

Auguste Comte is credited with coining the term "sociology," largely through the development of a theory of human thinking called positivism. What does positivism attempt to do?

identify laws that describe the behavior of a reality

Erving Goffman theorized social life as a kind of con game in which we work to control the impressions others have of us. What did Goffman call this process?

impression management

A simple random sample is defined as a sample:

in which every member of the population has a chance of being included.

The three branches of government established in the early years of the United States are the executive, legislative, and judicial. More recently however, there is a growing belief that we have established a fourth branch of government. What does this refer to?

media

What are religions called that worship one divine figure?

monotheistic

The ideal of objectivity means that a researcher:

must try to adopt a stance of personal neutrality toward the outcome of the research

How does a person come to possess an achieved status?

An achieved status is earned.

In Émile Durkheim's study Suicide, he reported that suicide rates went up when the economy slumped but they also increased when the economy boomed. Which of Durkheim's concepts explains why both positive and negative economic conditions could increase suicide rates?

Anomie

Which film in my master's thesis featured integrated products like, Toyota, Pepsi-Free, and Calvin Klein underwear?

Back to the Future

No social study that does not come back to the problems of ________, of __________, and of their intersection within society has completed its intellectual journey

Biography; History

How is a subculture different from a counterculture?

Both are distinct from mainstream culture, but a counterculture actively opposes important aspects of the mainstream.

What did Karl Marx think the lower classes needed to develop in order to end their oppression?

Class consciousness

A famous monologue from Shakespeare's As You Like It begins:All the world's a stage,And all the men and women merely players;They have their exits and their entrances,And one man in his time plays many partsWhich theory of social life could be seen as taking its inspiration from these lines?

Dramaturgy

informal norms are unspoken and implicit

How are informal norms different from formal norms?

In this Age of Fact, _________ often dominates our attention and overwhelms our capacity to assimilate it.

Information

How is institutional discrimination different from individual discrimination?

Institutional discrimination is more systematic and widespread.

When Laud Humphreys was a sociology graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis, he wrote his dissertation on the "tearoom trade," anonymous homosexual encounters in the men's rooms of public parks. To gather data, he acted as a lookout for his subjects, but he also surreptitiously noted license-plate numbers as the men left, so he could get their names and addresses. The next year, he picked about fifty men from the "tearooms" and interviewed them in their homes, claiming to be performing a health survey. His descriptions of the interviews made it possible for many of the men (and their families) to recognize themselves when the dissertation was published. Why do many sociologists consider this research method to be unethical?

It failed to protect the biographical anonymity of his subjects.

Which of the following statements best characterizes microsociology?

It is an approach that examines interactions between individuals and the ways those interactions reflect larger patterns within a society.

How has the Kinsey Scale of Sexuality helped us to better understand sexual orientation?

It supports the idea that human sexuality exists as a highly diverse continuum over the lifetime of any individual.

By the fact of _________ we contribute, however minutely, to the shaping of this society and to the course of History.

Living

Which of the following statements best describes the approach taken by macrosociologists?

Macrosociology examines large-scale social structure to see how it affects individual lives.

It is this Quality of Mind that Mills refers to as the _____________________.

Sociological Imagination

How is the study of culture different for sociologists than for anthropologists?

Sociologists usually study a culture to which they belong.

Conflict theorists believe that arguments over values and beliefs have their roots in:

Struggles over scarce resources and power.

Which social theory focuses on micro-level interactions?

Symbolic interactionism

What is the sociological imagination?

The ability to understand the connections between biography and history, or the interplay of the self and the world

Which of the following statements about the process of socialization is true?

The process is reciprocal: society shapes the individual and the individual shapes society.

How are the terms "gender" and "sex" different?

The term sex refers to the biological differences between males and females, whereas the term gender refers to the socially constructed behavior of men and women.

According to Karl Marx, how is class consciousness, or revolutionary consciousness, developed?

When the lower classes come to recognize how society works and challenge those in power

In the opening pages of The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan wrote about a problem that "lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women." What was this problem?

Women experienced dissatisfaction with traditional gender roles.

Most sociologists argue that gender is a social construction, and they acknowledge the possibility that binary male-female categories are not the only way of classifying individuals. This perspective is called:

a constructionist perspective

Mowgli, the character from Disney's The Jungle Book who is raised by animals, is a Hollywood representation of

a feral child

Researchers should try to avoid double-barreled questions, or questions that:

ask about multiple issues.

Sociologists observe society:

by studying the various parts of a society, and the ways they interact and influence each other.

What do sociologists call awareness of our own and others' class statuses?

class consciousness

A questionnaire with a set of predetermined responses is

closed-ended.

Consider the different theoretical perspectives explored throughout the text. Which theoretical perspective might be used to explore the social patterns perpetuating overrepresentation of African American and Hispanic males in prisons?

conflict theory

Monique believes that religious practices such as prohibiting women from becoming priests promote inequality. Monique understands religion through which sociological lens?

conflict theory

What do sociologists call it when cultures that were once distinct become increasingly similar?

cultural leveling

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that:

language can structure our perception of reality.

In the early nineteenth century, Native Americans, who had survived clashes with the U.S. Army, were forcibly removed to reservations. This is an example of:

population transfer.

According to Karl Marx, the most important factor in social life is a person's:

relationship to the means of production.

A female police officer who struggles with commanding respect from male colleagues while also presenting herself in traditionally feminine ways may be experiencing:

role conflict

A high school football coach is worried about how he should handle his roster. On the one hand, it's his job to try to win as many games as possible, which means playing the best players; on the other hand, his contract also requires him to try to allow every member of the team to meaningfully participate. The tension he feels is the result of:

role strain

What did sociologist Charles Cooley argue was taking place in people's minds when he developed the concept of the looking-glass self?

seeing ourselves reflected back from others

What does Jean Baudrillard call an image in the media that people can no longer distinguish from the reality that it is supposed to represent?

simulacrum

Émile Durkheim suggested that mechanical solidarity created the

social bonds that held agrarian societies together.

What system of stratification is commonly used in capitalist societies?

social class

Systems and structures that persist over time and help organize group life are called:

social institutions.

What does Pierre Bourdieu call the tendency of social class to be passed down from one generation to the next and consequently remain relatively stable over time?

social reproduction

The division of society into groups arranged in a social hierarchy is called

social stratification.

Short sentences or phrases on a political subject, designed to be catchy and memorable but not necessarily to convey much information, are called:

soundbites.

A woman has her Ph.D. in child development, yet she continues to work as a low-paid preschool aide. This is an example of

status inconsistency

Consider the major theoretical perspectives we've routinely explored throughout our text. Which perspective is likely to explore the ways in which poverty serves a purpose in society by ensuring that even the "ugly" jobs get done?

structural functionalism

Manny believes that religion gives meaning to his life. He believes that religion helps him understand the most fundamental questions about life and existence. Manny understands religion through which sociological lens?

structural functionalism

"Gender is socially constructed and maintained in our everyday lives. Gender is something we 'do' on a daily basis." This statement most likely comes from which perspective?

symbolic interactionism

What school of social thought insists that all social structures, including systems of stratification, are built out of everyday interactions?

symbolic interactionism

Many people choose to buy an expensive car though they cannot easily afford the monthly payment. Driving the car becomes an important part of "performing" their social class. Choose the perspective and concept with which this statement most closely aligns.

symbolic interactionism and class consciousness

What type of theorist is most likely to explore the ways in which people "do" ethnicity on a daily basis?

symbolic interactionist

In Schooling in Capitalist America, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis argued that schools train a labor force in the skills and attitudes necessary for the health of a modern economy. What are these skills and attitudes?

taking orders and performing repetitive tasks

The nature vs. nurture debate helps us understand:

the complex interaction between hereditary traits and social learning.

The term " socialization" refers to:

the lifelong process by which people learn the norms, values, and beliefs of their culture.

C. Wright Mills identifies the small and unified group of people who occupy the highest positions of the major economic, political, and military institutions and exercise tremendous influence in American social life as:

the power elite

According to conflict theory, what is the real source of racism?

the struggle groups have for power and control

What is reactivity?

the tendency of research subjects to change their behavior in response to being studied

What is the most extreme form of authoritarianism called?

totalitarianism

Which theorist argued that if people define a situation as real, it is real in its consequences?

w.i thomas

Max Weber helped lay the groundwork for sociologists who would develop symbolic interactionism as a theory, because he believed that a social scientist should approach the study of human action:

with verstehen (understanding), which emphasizes the need for empathy with individuals' experiences.