Sociology Midterm 1
What are the dominant values of our culture?
Dominant values in American culture include beauty, independence, fairness, material success, individuality, youth, competition, equality, and hard work.
What are the 3 stages in the social construction of reality?
Externalization: The ongoing outpouring of human being into the world, both in the physical and the mental activity of people. Objectivation: Attainment by the products of this activity (again both physical and mental) of a reality that confronts its original producers as an external to and other than themselves. Internalization: The re-appropriation of humans of this same reality, transforming it once again from structures of the objective world into structures of the subjective consciousness.
What are the 4 main sociological perspectives?
Functionalism: A paradigm based on the assumption that society is a unified whole that functions because of the contributions of its separate structures. Conflict and Power: A paradigm that sees social conflict as the basis of society and social change, and emphasizes a materialist view of society, a critical view of the status quo, and a dynamic model of historical chance. Symbolic Interactionism: A paradigm that sees interaction and meaning as central to society and assumes that meanings are not inherent but are created through interaction. Feminist Perspective: Feminists argued that women and their activities, because they took place in the private realm of the home, were ignored by social scientists.
What are the characteristics of hunter-gatherer, horticultural, agrarian, and industrial societies?
Hunter-Gather: Moving from place to place hunting and gathering berries, men killed animals, women collected berries. They never had surplus, only what they needed. Horticultural: The first societies to start settling down. They began to farm on a small scale, which is what women did. The men dealt with livestock. Never produced surplus. Lasted for about 2000 years. No social class or any form of government. Agrarian: Started from the invention of the plow. They began creating a surplus of food. Social classes began to spring up, specialization, where small groups of people started to not have to do anything. The surplus food that was created was then kept by the king, or leader. Tremendous inequalities, with the lower class living worse than ever. The first time where armies were starting to be created. Societies began to take one another over. Industrial: The economy shifted from food, to various other things with livestock also becoming industrial. Medical advances, increase in lifespan and population. Governments representing society properly. The process of information becomes the majority of the work.
What is meant when sociologists say that reality is socially constructed?
Interactionists see humans as active, creative participants who construct their social world, not as passive, conforming objects of socialization.
How does the sociological perspective differ from other perspectives?
It looks outside of individual personalities to help understand what shapes us.
What is meant by "macro" and "micro" levels of social interaction?
Micro: Face-to-face and small group interactions Macro: Large scale social structures
What are norms, folkways, mores?
Norms: A rule of guideline regarding what kinds of behavior are acceptable and appropriate within a culture. Folkways: A loosely enforced norm involving common customs, practices, or procedures that ensure smooth social interaction and acceptance. Mores: A norm that carries great moral significance, is closely related to the core values or a culture group, and often involve severe repercussions for violators.
What are participant observation, field/natural experiments, content analysis, historical/documentary research? What is secondary analysis?
Participant Observation: A methodology associated with ethnography whereby the researcher both observes and becomes a member in a social setting. Field/Natural: A research method in which the scientific method is used to examine a piece of the real world. Content analysis: A research method used to analyze social life through the interpretation of various pieces such as documents, film, art, music, etc. Historical/Documentary research: The use of various outside sources as source material for what you are researching. Secondary analysis: Analyzing old data in pursuit of an original work.
What is resocialization? What are total institutions?
Resocialization: The process of replacing previously learned norms and values with new ones as a part of a transition in life. Total institution: An institution in which individuals are cut off from the rest of society so that their lives can be controlled and regulated for the purpose of systematically stripping away previous roles and identities in order to create new ones.
What is a role? What is role conflict?
Role: The set of behaviors expected of someone because of his or her social status. Role conflict: Experienced when we occupy two or more roles with contradictory expectations.
What is the difference between signs and symbols?
Signs have fixed meanings, while symbols are arbitrary and created by humans.
What are some of the main aspects of non-material (symbolic) culture?
Signs, gestures, language, values, norms, and folkways.
What is socialization? What are the main agents of socialization?
Socialization is the process by which we absorb the contents of our culture. Family: The most important agent because we learn the do's and don't's along with basic values. School: We learn what society considers to be true and good. We also learn behaviors that will be rewarded in the job market. Peers: We learn what is cool and what isn't. They are an important yardstick against which we measure ourselves. Media: It sets are standards for beauty, what kind of car we should drive, home we should live in, person we should marry, important issues and how we should think about them, and what we "need" to buy.
What are subcultures and counter-cultures?
Subcultures: A group within society that is differentiated by its distinctive values, norms, and lifestyle. Counter-cultures: A group within society that openly rejects and/or actively opposes society's values and norms.
What is the "nature vs. nurture" debate?
The discussion of the respective roles of genetics and socialization in determining individual behaviors and traits.
What did Emile Durkheim's study of suicide demonstrate?
The more disconnected someone is from the social pillars of life including family, religion, and the workplace, committed suicide more often than those who were connected.
What is ethnocentrism?
The principle of using one's own culture as a means or standard by which to evaluate another group or individual, leading to the view that cultures other than one's own are abnormal or inferior.
What are the components of culture?
The two major components of culture are material culture (any physical object to which we give social meaning), and symbolic culture (beliefs, values, assumptions, norms, interactions, and communication).
What are the fundamental things to pay attention to when coming up with survey questions?
The wording of each question, close-ended questions, open-ended questions, leading questions, and double-barreled questions.
What are some of the ethical standards which must be met when doing social science research?
They must acquire the consent of the subjects, and conduct the experiment in a way that protects the subject from harm. Must have confidentiality and anonymity. Also subjects have to participate voluntarily. and no other agendas should exist.
What is the "hidden curriculum"?
Values or behaviors that students learn indirectly over the course of their schooling because of the structure of the educational system and the teaching methods used.
What is the Hawthorne effect?
A specific example of reactivity (the tendency of people and events to react to the process of being studied), in which the desired effect is the result not of the independent variable but of the research itself. The name comes from studies done on productivity at the Western Electric's Hawthorne Works.
