sociology test 3

Education

The process through which academic, social, and cultural skills are developed.

Human capital

The skills, knowledge, and experience possessed by a person or group that can yield economic benefits.

Hidden curriculum

The non-academic and less overt socialization functions of schooling.

Social capital

The information, knowledge of people, and connections that help individuals enter, gain power in, or otherwise leverage social networks.

How does class size affect educational achievement?

Positive educational outcomes that last.

Tracking

A way of dividing students into different classes by ability or future plans.

How does tracking reproduce inequality, especially for minority and lower economic groups?

It disproportionately awards advantages to those who are already privileged.

Which factor most clearly has a casual effect on later likelihood of criminal justice system involvement?

School discipline

Credentialism

An overemphasis on credentials for signaling social status or qualifications for a job.

Affirmative action

A set of policies granting preferential treatment to a number of particular subgroups within the population, typically woman and historically disadvantage racial minorities

Social class or socioeconomic statues (SES)

An Individual’s position in a stratified social order.

Cultural capital

The symbolic and interactional resources that people use to their advantage in various situations.

Stereotype threat

When members of a negatively stereotyped group are placed in a situation where they fear they may confirm those stereotypes.

Resource dilution model

Hypothesis stating that parental resources are finite and that each additional child gets a smaller amount of them.

Which statement about educational achievement gaps by minority status is accurate?

Both Hispanic and African-American students are the target of negative stereotypes that may depress achievement

What is the real issue behind the gender gap in educational achievement?

Girls have caught up to boys generally, but social class still asserts a disadvantage.

Capitalism

The economic system in which poverty and goods are primarily privately owned; private decisions determine investments.

Feudalism

A pre-capitalist economic system characterized by the presence of lords, vassals, serfs, and fiefs.

Agricultural revolution

The period around 1700 marked by the introduction of new farming technologies that increased food output in farm production.

Corporation

Illegal entity unto itself that has legal personhood distinct from that of its members-namely, its owners and shareholders.

Which historical factor involve the presence of lords, vassals, serfs, and fiefs, stratified groups that came before the class structures of capitalist systems?

Feudalism

Which historical factor emerged long after the development of capitalist systems?

The family wage.

Alienation

A condition in which people are dominated by forces of their own creation that then confront them as alien powers; according to Marx, the basic state of being in a capitalist society.

Socialism

An economic system in which most or all of the needs of the population are meant through non-market methods of distribution.

Communism

A political system in which the means of production are shared through state ownership and in which rewards are tied not to productivity but to need, supposedly leading to a classless society.

Which theorist posited that the human drive for exchange combines with an ever-increasing division of labor to produce greater wealth for all?

Adam Smith

Which theorist who reached researched capitalism worried that capitalism damaged the human soul by constraining it with rationality and bureaucracy?

Max Weber

Family wage

A wage paid to male workers sufficient to support a dependent wife and children.

Service sector

The section of the economy that involves providing intangible services.

Which feature of capitalist systems is distinctly true of the service sector?

It has many small businesses that pay lower wages.

Monopoly

The form of business that occurs when one seller of a good or service dominates the market to the exclusion of others, potentially leading to zero competition.

Oligopoly

The economic condition that exists when a handful of firms effectively control a particular market.

Productivity-enhancing

Economic activities that increase the total economic value available to society.

Rent-seeking

Economic activities that aim to move value from one person or company to another without increasing value.

Offshoring

A business decision to move all or part of a company’s operations abroad to minimize costs.

Union

An organization of workers designed to facilitate collective bargaining with an employer.

Unionbusting

A company assault on its workers union with the hope of dissolving it.

Politics

Power relations among people or other social actors.

Authority

The justifiable right to exercise power period

Charismatic authority

Authority that rests on the personal appeal of an individual leader.

Traditional authority

Authority that rests on or appeals to the past or traditions.

Legal-rational authority

Authority based on legal, impersonal rules; the rules rule.

Routinization

The clear, rule governed procedures used repeatedly for decision-making.

Rationalized

The never-ending process of ordering or organizing.

Bureaucracy

A legal-rational organization or mode of administration that governance with reference to formal rules and roles that emphasize merit based advancement.

Specialization

The process of breaking up work into specific, delimited tasks.

Taylorism

The methods of labor management, Introduced by Frederick Winslow Taylor to streamline the processes of mass production, in which each worker repeatedly performs one specific task.

Meritocracy

A society where status and mobility are based on one individual attributes, ability, and achievement.

Milgram experiment

An experiment devised in 1961 by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, to see how far ordinary people would go to obey and Authority figure.

Power

The ability to carry out one’s own will despite resistance.

Domination

The probability that a command with specific content will be obeyed by a given group of people.

State

As defined by Max Weber, “A human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.”

Coercion

The use of force to get others to do what you want.

Paradox of Authority

Although the states authority derived from the implicit threat of physical force, resorting to physical coercion strips the state of all legitimate authority.

International state system

A system in which each state is recognized as territorially sovereign by fellow states.

Welfare State

A system in which the state is responsible for the well-being of its citizens.

Citizenship rights

The rights guaranteed to each law-abiding citizen in a nation state.

Civil rights

The right guaranteeing a citizen’s personal freedom from state interference, including freedom of speech and the right to travel freely.

Political rights

The rights guaranteeing a citizens ability to participate in politics, including the right to vote in the right to hold an elected office.

Social rights

The rights guaranteeing a citizens protection by the state.

What special power does a state claim?

To use physical coercion without consequence.

Soft power

Power attained through the use of cultural attractiveness rather than the threat of coercive action (hard power).

Democracy

A system of government where power theoretically lies with the people.

Dictatorship

A form of government that restricts the right to political participation to a small group or even to a single individual.

Game theory

The study of strategic decisions made under conditions of uncertainty and independence.

Political party

An organization that seeks to gain power in a government, generally by backing candidates for office who subscribe to the organizations political ideals.

Interest group

An organization that seeks to gain power in government and influence without campaigning for direct election or appointment to office.

Political participation

An activity that has the intent or effect of influencing government action.

Which structural feature of our democratic process distorts the idea of the one person, one vote principal?

Convicted felons cannot vote even after they are released from Prison.

Which initiative advances the one person, one vote principle?

Same-day voter registration.

Collective action

Action that takes place in groups and divergence from the social norms of the situation.

Convergent theory

Theory of collective action stating that collective action happens when people with similar ideas and tendencies gather in the same place.

Contagion theory

An experiment devised in 1961 by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, to see how far ordinary people would go to obey and Authority figure.

Emergent norm theory

Theory of collective action emphasizing the influence of keynotes and promoting new behavioral norms.

Social movement

Collective behavior that is purposeful and organized and that seeks to challenge or change one or more aspects of society through institutional and extra institutional means.

Alternative social movements

Social movements that seek the most limited society change and often target a narrow group of people.

Redemptive social movements

Social movements that target specific groups but advocate for more radical change in behavior.

Reformative social movements

Social movements that advocate for limited social change across an entire society.

Revolutionary social movements

Social movements that advocate the radical re-organization of society.

Value-added theory

Theory, claiming that certain conditions are required for a social movement to coalesce and achieve a successful outcome.

Classical model

Model of social movements based on a concept of structural weaknesses in a society that results in psychological disruption of individuals.

Resource mobilization theory

Model of social movements that emphasizes political context and goals but also states that social movements are unlikely to emerge without the necessary resources.

Political process model

Model of social movements that focuses on the structure of political opportunities.

Emergence

The first state of a social movement, occurring when the social problem being addressed is first identified.

Coalescence

The second stage of a social movement, in which resources are mobilized around the problems outlined in the first stage.

Grassroots organization

A type of social movement organization that relies on high levels of community based membership participation to promote social change.

Premodernity

Social relations characterized by concentric circles of social affiliation, a low degree of division of labor, relatively undeveloped technology, and traditional social norms.

Modernity

Social relations, characterized by rationality, bureaucratization, and objectivity as well as individually created by non-concentric, but overlapping, group affiliations.

Postmodernity

Social relations, characterized by a questioning of the notion of progress and history, the replacement of narrative with pastiche, and multiple, perhaps even conflicting, identities, resulting from disjointed affiliations.

In which type of society would people be most likely to live lives very similar to those previous generations?

Premodern

Social changes prompted by World War II represent an example of which primary motivator for significant change in society?

Conflict between social actors.