Sociology Key Concepts: Culture, Society, and Stratification

Sociological imagination

an awareness of the relationship between a person's behavior and experience and the wider culture that shaped the person's choices and perceptions.

Herbert Spencer

he favored a form of government that allowed market forces to control.

W.E.B. DuBois

groundbreaking 1896-1897 study of the African American community conducted in order to document the familial and employment structures and assess the chief challenges of the community.

Conflict theory

a theory that looks at society as a competition for limited resources.

Social facts

the laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and all of the cultural rules that govern social life.

Social solidarity

the social ties that bind a group of people together such as kinship, shared location, and religion.

Cultural universals

patterns or traits that are globally common to all societies.

Ethnocentrism

believing your group is the correct measuring standard and if other cultures do not measure up to it, they are wrong.

Cultural relativism

the practice of assessing a culture by its own standards rather than viewing it through the lens of one's own culture.

Norms

formal and informal rules governing behavior; informal norms are casual behaviors that are generally and widely conformed to, while formal norms are established, written rules.

Sanctions

the means of enforcing rules.

Globalization

the promotion and increase of interactions between different regions and populations around the globe resulting in the integration of markets and interdependence of nations fostered through trade.

Diffusion

the process of the integration of cultures into the mainstream.

Innovations

An innovation refers to an object or concept's initial appearance in society—it is innovative because it is new.

Ideal culture

k.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

based on the idea that people experience their world through their language, and therefore understand their world through the cultural meanings embedded in their language.

Social control

encourages most people to conform regardless of whether authority figures.

This term refers to the idea that a society's economic character forms its base, upon which rests the culture and social institutions, the superstructure.

Base and superstructure

Alienation

individual is isolated and divorced from his or her society, work, or the sense of self.

Habitualization

society is created by humans and human interaction, 'any action that is repeated frequently becomes cast into a pattern, which can then be ... performed again in the future in the same manner and with the same economical effort.'

Role strain

Too much is required of a single role; individuals can experience role strain.

Hunter gatherer would travel to find food and pastoral societies remained nomadic because they were forced to follow their animals to fresh feeding grounds.

Migration in human societies

Anomie

A situation in which society no longer has the support of a firm collective consciousness.

Bourgeoisie

The rich factory owners.

Proletariat

The poor labor workers.

Looking-glass self

The idea that individuals compare themselves to others in order to check themselves against social standards and remain part of the group.

Thomas theorem

People's behavior can be determined by their subjective construction of reality rather than by objective reality.

Roles

Patterns of behavior that we recognize in each other that are representative of a person's social status.

Socialization

The process through which people are taught to be proficient members of a society.

Agents of socialization

Family, peer group, school, work, religion, government, and mass media.

Hidden curriculum

The informal teaching done in schools that socializes children to societal norms.

Princess culture

Has a negative effect due to girls refusing to do non-princessy things.

It describes the ways that people come to understand societal norms and expectations, to accept society’s beliefs, and to be aware of societal values. Socialization is not the same as socializing (interacting with others, like family and friends); to be precise, it is a sociological process that occurs through socializing.

Socialization and the life course

Self

A person's distinct sense of identity as developed through social interaction.

Generalized other

The common behavioral expectations of general society.

The ability to move within a social hierarchy.

Mobility

Intergenerational 

Intergenerational mobility refers to changes in social status between different generations

intragenerational mobility

Intragenerational mobility refers to changes within a single generation.

Structural mobility

Mobility that is caused by changes in the structure of society rather than individual actions.

Relative poverty

An economic condition in which a family or individual has 50% less income than the average median income.

An economic condition in which a family or individual cannot afford necessities, such as food and shelter, so that day-to-day survival is in jeopardy.

Absolute poverty

Global stratification

Compares the wealth, status, power, and economic stability of countries worldwide, highlighting worldwide patterns of social inequality.

Class vs. caste systems

A class system is based on both social factors and individual achievement, while caste systems are closed stratification systems where people can do little or nothing to change the social standing of their birth.

Wealth vs. income

Wealth is the value of money and assets a person has, while income is the money a person earns from work or investments.

Feminization of poverty

The increasing proportion of the poor who are women.