Aice Sociology Vocab #16

Personal communities

A network of close friends and kin (even pets) that a person might regard as closest to them.

Fictive Kin

Normally, close friends of the family, particularly parents, who have been given the honorary title of ‘uncle’ or ‘aunt.’

Voluntary Childlessness

Consciously and voluntarily choosing not to have children.

Bi-nuclear family

Children of divorced or separated couples often belong to two nuclear families because their natural parents have remarried or are cohabiting with a new partner.

Living Apart Together (LAT)

A modern household set-up in which a couple who are romantically involved make the decision to maintain separate households rather than move in together.

Failure to launch generation

Children who for a variety of reasons have not been able to leave home and therefore still live with their parents despite being adults.

Hetero-norm

The idea that relationships should be heterosexual.

Decentralization of conjugal relationships

A radical feminist idea that rejects the idea that the most important relationship a woman has is with a man.

Cult of the individual

An idea very similar to Beck’s concept of individualisation. It refers to the increasing trend to put ourselves before others and a desire not to live or mix with others, thus the trend towards living in single-person households.

Empirical

Based on experience or observation.

Epistemological

Relating to how knowledge of a given subject is obtained.

Egalitarian

The principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.

First Wave of Feminism

Ideas that appeared in the 18th and 19th century that challenged male domination of the family and eventually led to women being allowed to vote.

Second Wave of Feminism

Liberal, radical and Marxist feminist ideas that appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, often collectively known as the ‘women’s liberation movement.’

Liberal feminism

A collection of feminist sociologists who highlighted gender inequality in areas such as education and put pressure on governments to challenge it by introducing equal rights and opportunities legislation and social policies.

Radical Feminism

A group of feminists who attempted to explain gender inequality by constructing structural theories that saw patriarchy as a complex interdependent social system.

Socialists/marxist feminism

A type of feminism that argued that gender inequality was linked to class inequality.

Third Wave of feminism

Refers to two unrelated forms of feminism that appeared about the same time- intersectional feminism and post-feminism.

Intersectional feminism

A critique of liberal and radical feminism which implied that the experience of patriarchy was the same for all women.

Post-feminism

A 1990’s trend that suggested that females no longer had any need for second-wave feminism because they now had girl power.

Theoretical imperialism

The insistence that one particular type of experience should take precedence over all other experiences.

Ladettes

A term used by the media in the 1990s to describe young women who used their leisure time to act in the same way as men.

Fourth Wave of Feminism

Type of feminism, particularly the digital feminism practised by millenials.

Digital feminism

Feminists, who mainly belong to the millennials generation, who challenge sexism and misogyny using online digital sites such as Twitter and Facebook and by setting up internet websites such as Everydaysexism.com

Millennial feminists

Feminists who were born in the late 1980s and who in the early 21st century were in their 20s and early 30s. This generation, especially if it has experiences higher education, is thought to be politicised.