Sociology Key Terms Chapt. 6-8, 14, 10, 11, 17

Just listing them in the order they were on Canvas

Social Group

A collection of people who regularly interact with one another on the basis of shared expectations concerning behavior and who share a sense of common identity.

Social Aggregate

A simple collection of people who happen to be together in a particular place but do not significantly interact or identify with one another.

Social Category

People who share a common characteristic (such as gender or occupation) but do not necessarily interact or identify with one another.

Primary Groups

Groups that are characterized by intense emotional ties, face-to-face interaction, intimacy, and a strong, enduring sense of commitment.

Secondary Groups

Groups characterized by large size and by impersonal, fleeting relationships.

Organization

A large group of individuals with a definite set of authority relations.

Formal Organization

A group that is rationally designed to achieve its objectives, often by means of explicit rules, regulations, and procedures.

Networks

Sets of informal and formal social ties that link people to each other.

In-groups

Groups toward which one feels particular loyalty and respect-the groups to which "we" belong.

Out-groups

Groups toward which one feels antagonism and contempt-"those people."

Reference Group

A group that provides a standard for judging one's attitudes or behaviors.

Dyad

A group consisting of two persons.

Triad

A group consisting of three persons.

Bureaucracy

A type of organization marked by a clear hierarchy of authority and the existence of written rules of procedure and staffed by full-time, salaried officials.

Ideal Type

A "pure type," constructed by emphasizing certain traits of a social item that do not necessarily exist in reality.

Formal Relations

Relations that exist in groups and organizations, as laid down by the norms, or rules, of the official system of authority.

Informal Relations

Relations that exist in groups and organizations developed on the basis of personal connections; ways of doing things that depart from formally recognized modes of procedure.

Surveillance

The supervising of the activities of some individuals or groups by others in order to ensure compliant behavior.

Timetables

The means by which organizations regularize activities across time and space.

Iron Law of Oligarchy

A term coined by Weber's student Robert Michels meaning that large organizations tend toward centralization of power, making democracy difficult.

Oligarchy

Rule by a small minority within an organization or society.

Information and Communication Technology

Forms of technology based on information processing and requiring microelectronic circuitry.

Norms

Rules of conduct that specify appropriate behavior in a given range of social situations

Deviance

Modes of action that do not conform to the norms or values held by most members of a group or societyDEvia

Deviant Subculture

A subculture whose members hold values that differ substantially from those of the majority.

Sanction

A mode of reward or punishment that reinforces socially expected forms of behavior.

Laws

Rules of behavior established by a political authority and backed by state power.

Crime

The result of any action that contravenes the laws established by a political authority.

Anomie

A concept first brought into wide usage in sociology by Durkheim to refer to a situation in which social norms lose their hold over individual behavior.

Relative Deprivation

Deprivation a person feels by comparing himself with a group.

Differential Association

An interpretation of the development of criminal behavior proposed by Edwin H. Sutherland, according to whom criminal behavior is learned through association with others who regularly engage in crime.

Labeling Theory

An approach to the study of deviance that suggests that people become "deviant" because certain labels are attached to their behavior by political authorities and others.

Primary Deviation

According to Edwin Lemert, the actions that cause others to label a person as a deviant.

Secondary Deviation

According to Edwin Lemert, this is the action that occurs when an individual accepts the label of deviant and acts accordingly.

Conflict Theory

A sociological perspective that emphasizes the role of political and economic power and oppression as contributing to the existing social order.

Control Theory

A theory that views crime as the outcome of an imbalance between impulses toward criminal activity and controls that deter it. Adherents of this theory believe criminals are rational beings who will act to maximize their own reward unless they are rendered unable to do so through either social or physical controls.

White-Collar Crime

Criminal activities carried out by those in white-collar, or professional, jobs.

Corporate Crime

Offenses committed by large corporations in society. Examples include pollution, false advertising, and violations of health and safety regulations.

Cybercrime

Criminal activities by means of electronic networks or involving the use of new information technologies. Examples include electronic money laundering, personal identity theft, electronic vandalism, and monitoring electronic correspondence.

Community Policing

A renewed emphasis on crime prevention rather than law enforcement to reintegrate policing within the community.

Shaming

A way of punishing criminal and deviant behavior based on rituals of public disapproval rather than incarceration. One goal of this punishment is to maintain ties between the offender and the community.

Social Stratification

The existence of structured inequalities between groups in society in terms of their access to material or symbolic rewards. The most distinctive form of this in modern societies is class divisions.

Intersectionality

A sociological perspective that holds that our multiple group memberships affect our lives in ways that are distinct from single group memberships. For example, the experience of a Black woman may be distinct from that of a White woman or a Black man.

Structured Inequality

Social inequalities that result from patterns in the social structure.

Slavery

A form of social stratification in which some people are owned by others as their property.

Caste

A social system in which one's social status is held for life.

Class Systems

A system of social hierarchy that allows individuals to move among classes. The four chief bases of this system are ownership of wealth, occupation, income, and education.

Class

Although this is one of the most frequently used concepts in sociology, there is no clear consensus on how it should be defined. Most sociologists use the term to refer to socioeconomic variations between groups of individuals that create variations in their material prosperity and power.

Life Chances

A term introduced by Max Weber to signify a person's opportunities for achieving economic prosperity.

Income

Money received from paid wages and salaries or earned from investment.

Wealth

Money and material possessions held by an individual or group.

Means of Productions

The means whereby the production of material goods is carried on in a society, including not just technology but also the social relations between producers.

Bourgeoisie

People who own companies, land, or stocks (shares) and use these to generate economic returns.

Proletariat

People who sell their labor for wages, according to Marx.

Surplus Value

In Marxist theory, the value of a worker's labor power left over when an employer has repaid the cost of hiring the worker.

Communism

A social system based on everyone owning the means of production and sharing in the wealth it produces.

Status

The social honor or prestige that a particular group is accorded by other members of a society.

Pariah Groups

Groups who suffer from negative status discrimination-they are looked down on by most other members of society.

Contradictory Class Locations

Positions in the class structure, particularly routine white-collar and lower managerial jobs, that share characteristics of the class positions both above and below them.

Upper Class

A social class broadly composed of the more affluent members of society, especially those who have inherited wealth, own businesses, or hold large numbers of stocks (shares).

Middle Class

A social class composed broadly of those working in white-collar and lower managerial occupations.

Working Class

A social class broadly composed of people working in blue-collar, or manual, occupations.

Lower Class

A social class comprised of those who work part time or not at all and whose household income is typically lower than $31,000 a year.

Social Mobility

Movement of individuals or groups between different social positions.

Intergenerational

Movement up or down a social stratification hierarchy from one generation to another.

Intragenerational

Movement up or down a social stratification hierarchy within the course of a personal career.

Structural Mobility

Mobility resulting from changes in the number and kinds of jobs available in a society.

Exchange Mobility

The exchange of positions on the socioeconomic scale such that talented people move up the economic hierarchy while the less talented move down.

Cultural Capital

The accumulated cultural knowledge within a society that confers power and status.

Absolute Poverty

Not meeting the minimal requirements necessary to sustain a healthy existence.

Relative Poverty

Poverty defined according to the living standards of the majority in any given society.

Poverty Line

An official government measure to define those living in poverty in the United States.

Working Poor

People who work but whose earnings are not enough to lift them above the poverty line.

Feminization of Poverty

An increase in the proportion of the poor who are female.

Homeless

People who have no place to sleep and either stay in free shelters or sleep in public places not meant for habitation.

Kuznets Curve

A formula showing that inequality increases during the early stages of capitalist development, then declines, and eventually stabilizes at a relatively low level; advanced by the economist Simon Kuznets.

Culture of Poverty

The thesis, popularized by Oscar Lewis, that poverty is not a result of individual inadequacies but is instead the outcome of a larger social and cultural atmosphere into which successive generations of children are socialized.

Dependency Culture

A term popularized by Charles Murray to describe individuals who rely on state welfare provision rather than entering the labor market. It is seen as the outcome of the "paternalistic" welfare state that undermines individual ambition and people's capacity for self-help.

Social Capital

The relational networks that provide a person with tangible resources (such as wealth) and intangible ones (such as personal connections).

Work

The activity by which people produce from the natural world and so ensure their survival.

Occupation

Any form of paid employment in which an individual regularly works.

Economy

The system of production and exchange that provides for the material needs of individuals living in a given society.

Capitalism

An economic system based on the private ownership of wealth, which is invested and reinvested in order to produce profit.

Technology

The application of knowledge of the material world to production; the creation of material instruments (such as machines) used in human interaction with nature.

Housework

Unpaid work carried out in the home, usually by women; domestic chores such as cooking, cleaning, and shopping. Also called domestic labor.

Division of Labor

The specialization of work tasks by means of which different occupations are combined within a production system.

Economic Interdependence

The fact that in the division of labor, individuals depend on others to produce many or most of the goods they need to sustain their lives.

Corporations

Business firms or companies.

Family Capitalism

Capitalistic enterprise owned and administered by entrepreneurial families.

Entrepenur

The owner/founder of a business firm.

Managerial Capitalism

Capitalistic enterprise administered by managerial executives rather than by owners.

Welfare Capitalism

The practice by which large corporations protect their employees from the vicissitudes of the market.

Institutional Capitalism

Capitalistic enterprise organized on the basis of institutional shareholding.

Global Capitalism

The current transnational phase of capitalism, characterized by global markets, production, finances; a transnational capitalist class whose business concerns are global rather than national; and transnational systems of governance (such as the World Trade Organization) that promote global business interests.

Fordism

The system of production pioneered by Henry Ford, in which the assembly line was introduced.

Taylorism

A set of ideas, also referred to as "scientific management, " developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor, involving simple, coordinated operations in industry.

Low-Trust Systems

Organizational or work settings in which people are allowed little responsibility for, or control over, the work task.

High-Trust System

Organizations or work settings in which individuals are permitted a great deal of autonomy and control over the work task.

Alienation

The sense that our own abilities as human beings are taken over by other entities. The term was originally used by Marx to refer to the projection of human powers onto gods. Subsequently, he used the term to refer to the loss of workers' control over the nature and products of their labor.

Post-Fordism

The period characterized by the transition from mass industrial production, using Fordist methods, to more flexible forms of production favoring innovation and aimed at meeting market demands for customized products.