Semester I: Introduction to Sociology — Complete Notes

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering all core terms, concepts, and theoretical perspectives across Units I to IV of Semester I Introduction to Sociology.

Common Sense Knowledge

Everyday, taken-for-granted knowledge and assumptions about social life based on personal experience, tradition, and anecdote, which is often unsystematic, untested, and ethnocentric.

Sociology

The systematic, evidence-based, and critical study of society and social phenomena using objective methods of observation, classification, and generalization.

Thomas Theorem

The sociological principle stating that situations defined as real by people are real in their consequences.

Verstehen

Max Weber's concept denoting an interpretive understanding of the subjective meanings and motives people attach to their own actions.

Sociological Perspective

A distinctive way of seeing and interpreting human behaviour by understanding individual experience as shaped by larger social structures, described by Peter Berger as 'seeing the general in the particular' and 'seeing the strange in the familiar'.

Debunking

Peter Berger's term for the sociological practice of looking beneath officially stated purposes to discover the actual, often unstated, social functions of social arrangements.

Sociological Imagination

C. Wright Mills's concept describing the capacity to shift between private problems and structural issues by linking individual biography to wider history and social structure.

Personal Troubles

Problems located directly within the individual and their immediate range of interpersonal relationships, such as one individual losing their job.

Public Issues

Problems rooted in the broader institutional and structural organization of society, such as widespread unemployment caused by economic recession.

Humanistic Sociology

An orientation within sociology that focuses on human values, subjective meanings, lived experience, and ethics, often engaging directly with questions of social justice and human welfare.

Anthropology

The holistic study of humankind encompassing biological evolution and cultural life, which historically specialized in small-scale, pre-literate, non-industrial societies through long-term fieldwork.

Social Psychology

An overlapping sub-field between sociology and psychology that examines how individual psychology, attitudes, and behaviours are influenced by social and group contexts.

Economic Sociology

The branch of sociology that examines economic behaviour as embedded within social relationships, cultural norms, institutions, and networks of trust, rather than treating individuals purely as self-maximizing rational actors.

Political Sociology

The sub-discipline of sociology that examines power, authority, and legitimacy across all areas of social life—such as families, workplaces, and social movements—rather than solely within formal state institutions.

Idiographic Approach

An analytical approach characteristic of history that focuses on describing and explaining specific, unique events within their particular chronological context.

Nomothetic Approach

An analytical approach characteristic of sociology that seeks to formulate general laws, patterns, and recurring causal mechanisms applicable across multiple cases.

Historical Sociology

A field combining idiographic history and nomothetic sociology by utilizing comparative, historical case studies to develop and test general theories of social change and structure.

Society

A relatively large group of people who share a common territory, culture, and web of social relationships, interacting with one another over time within organized institutions.

Hunting and Gathering Society

The simplest and smallest type of society, surviving by gathering wild plants and hunting animals, characterized by a nomadic lifestyle and minimal division of labour beyond age and sex.

Pastoral Society

A society whose subsistence is based primarily on the domestication and herding of animals, producing a moderate surplus and greater social differentiation than hunter-gatherers.

Horticultural and Agrarian Society

Societies based on the cultivation of land using simple hand tools, and later the plough, resulting in permanent settlements, larger food surpluses, and clearer social stratification.

Industrial Society

A society driven by machine-driven factory production, marked by substantial urbanization, formal bureaucratic institutions, and a highly specialized division of labour.

Post-Industrial Society

A society whose economy is primarily based on information, knowledge, and the service sector rather than manufacturing, associated with Daniel Bell.

Social Group

A collection of two or more individuals who interact regularly, share a common sense of identity, and are guided by shared norms, values, and expectations.

Primary Group

Charles Horton Cooley's term for a small, intimate, face-to-face group involving personal, emotionally deep ties where relationships are valued as ends in themselves (e.g., family, close friends).

Secondary Group

Charles Horton Cooley's term for a larger, impersonal, goal-oriented group where relationships are structured formally and act primarily as a means to achieve a specific end (e.g., workplaces, professional organizations).

In-Group

William Graham Sumner's concept of a group with which an individual identifies and feels a sense of belonging and loyalty ('us').

Out-Group

William Graham Sumner's concept of a group toward which an individual feels a sense of separateness, indifference, rivalry, or hostility ('them').

Reference Group

A group whose norms, values, and standards an individual uses as a benchmark to evaluate their own status, conduct, and life situation, even without holding formal membership.

Community

A naturally occurring, spontaneous social grouping bound together by shared belonging, common life, territory, and diffuse 'we-feeling', rather than being created for a narrow objective.

Association

A group deliberately established to pursue one or a few specific, shared interests or goals, defined by formal rules, roles, and explicit membership criteria.

Gemeinschaft

Ferdinand Tönnies's term for community, characterized by close personal bonds, kinship, tradition, and collective unity typical of traditional or rural life.

Gesellschaft

Ferdinand Tönnies's term for association or modern society, characterized by impersonal ties, formal contracts, calculated self-interest, and instrumental roles.

Social Institution

An established, enduring system of social norms, roles, and structured practices designed to satisfy a fundamental, recurring social need.

Manifest Functions

Robert K. Merton's concept referring to the open, recognized, and intended consequences of a social pattern or institution.

Latent Functions

Robert K. Merton's concept referring to the unintended and often unrecognized consequences produced by an institution or social practice.

Family

A primary social institution based on ties of kinship (blood, marriage, or adoption) traditionally responsible for reproduction, primary socialization, economic cooperation, and emotional support.

Hidden Curriculum

Bowles and Gintis's concept for the unstated, informal rules, values, and behavioural norms (such as conformity, punctuality, and deference) taught in schools that help reproduce social inequality.

State

A political institution defined by Max Weber as a human community that successfully claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a bounded territory.

Traditional Authority

Max Weber's category of legitimate authority based on established custom, inherited status, and long-standing tradition, such as hereditary monarchies.

Charismatic Authority

Max Weber's category of legitimate authority founded upon extraordinary, exemplary, or magnetic personal qualities attributed to an individual leader.

Legal-Rational Authority

Max Weber's type of legitimate authority grounded in codified rules, formal office, and impersonal bureaucratic procedures, characteristic of modern states.

Religion

A social institution organized around shared beliefs, symbols, and practices regarding the sacred (as opposed to the profane) that addresses the ultimate meaning of human existence.

Culture

The total learned, shared, and transmitted way of life of a society, comprising both material objects and non-material beliefs, values, customs, language, and norms.

Civilization

A specialized, advanced stage of social and cultural development characterized by features such as urban centres, writing systems, formal administration, and an elaborate division of labour.

Material Culture

The tangible, physical objects, artifacts, tools, technology, and architecture created, adapted, and utilized by members of a society.

Non-Material Culture

The intangible, abstract creations of human society, including norms, values, beliefs, customs, symbols, and language.

Cultural Lag

William F. Ogburn's concept describing the period of maladjustment when non-material culture (customs, laws, ethics) adapts more slowly than rapid developments in material culture (technology).

Enculturation

The developmental process through which an individual learns and internalizes the culture of the society into which they are born.

Acculturation

The process of cultural exchange and structural change that results from sustained, direct contact between two or more distinct cultural groups.

Cultural Pluralism

A descriptive state wherein distinct ethnic, cultural, or religious groups coexist within a shared political framework while preserving their individual cultural identities (often compared to a 'salad bowl' or 'mosaic').

Multiculturalism

A normative policy and ideology that proactively recognizes, respects, and provides institutional support for the coexistence and equal worth of diverse cultures within a society.

Ethnocentrism

The tendency to judge and evaluate other cultures against the standards, customs, and practices of one's own culture, treating one's own group as the universal norm.

Cultural Relativism

The methodological and ethical principle pioneered by Franz Boas stating that an individual culture's practices and beliefs must be understood and evaluated on their own terms and within their own context.