Sociology Midterm

Sociology

the scientific and systematic study of groups and group interactions, societies and social interactions, from small and personal groups to very large groups.

Society

a group of people who live in a defined geographic area, who interact with one another, and who share a common culture.

Micro-Level

sociologists working from the micro-level study small groups and individual interactions.,

Macro-level

they look at trends among and between large groups and societies.

Culture

refers to the group’s shared practices, values, and beliefs

C. Wright Mills

sociological imagination

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.

Cultural Patterns

social forces and influences put pressure on people to select one choice over another.

Social Facts

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

Norbert Ellas

figuration

Figuration

called the process of simultaneously analyzing the behavior of individuals and the soccer that shapes that behavior,

Ma Tuan Lin

the first to. record the social dynamics underlying and generating historical development

Ibn Khaldun

proposed a theory of social conflict and provided a comparison of nomadic

Mary Wollstonecraft

wrote about women’s conditions in society

Auguste Comte

reintroduced the term sociology

Positivism

what Comte called the scientific study of social patterns

Harriet Martineau

introduced sociology to English speaking scholars through her translation of Comte’s writing from French to English.

Karl Marx

Marx rejected Comte’s positivism

Herbert Spencer

favored a form of government that allowed market forces to control capitalism

George Simmel

a German art critic who wrote widely on social and political issues as well (anti-positivist)

Emile Durkheim

helped establish sociology as a formal academic discipline by establishing the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux

Max Weber

wrote on many topics related to sociology including political change in Russia.

Quantitative Sociology

uses statistical methods such as surveys with large numbers of participants

Qualitative Sociology

seeks to understand human behavior by learning about it through in-depth interviews, focus groups, and analysis of content sources.

Public Sociology

a branch of sociology that strives to bring sociological dialogue to public forums.

William Sumner

held the first professorship in sociology

Albion Small

wrote the first professorship in sociology

Lester Ward

developed social research methods and argued for the use of the scientific method and quantitative data to show effectiveness of policies

W.E.B Du Bois

pioneered the use of scientific method in sociology

Thorstein Veblen

began to study the economy through a social lens, writing about the leisure class, the business class, and other areas that touched on the idea of “working” itself.

Jane Addams

founded “Hull House”, a center that served needy immigrants through social and educational programs while providing extensive opportunities for sociological research.

Charles Herbert Cooley

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

George Herbert Mead

whose work focused on the ways in which the mind and the self were developed as a result of social processes.

Robert E. Park

social ecology

Hypothesis

a theory to explain different aspects of social interactions and to create a testable proposition about society.

Social Solidarity

Emile Durkheim studies social ties within a group

Grand Theories

attempt to explain large-scale relationships and answer fundamental questions such as why societies form and why they change

Paradigms

in sociology, a few theories provide broad perspectives that help explain many different aspects of social life.

3 Paradigms

structural functionalism,. conflict theory, symbolic interactionism

Structural Functionalism

the way each part of soccer functions together to contribute to the functioning of the whole

Conflict Theory

the way inequities and inequalities contribute to social, political, and power differences and how they perpetuate power

Symbolic Interactionism

the way one-to-one interaction and communications behave

Dynamic Equilibrium

Alfred Radcliffe-Brown said in a healthy society, all parts work together to maintain stability

Manifest Functions

the consequences of social processes that are sought or anticipated

Latent Functions

the unsought consequences of social processes

Dysfunctions

social processes that have undesirable consequences for the operation of society

Critical Theory

must explain what’s wrong in current social reality, identify the people who can make the changes, and provide practical goals for social transformation.

Janet Saltzman Chalets

presented a model of feminist theory of how a system of institutionalized power structures that help to maintain inequality between groups can be changed.

Dramaturgical Analysis

using theater as an analogy for social interaction and recognized that people’s interactions showed patterns of cultural “scripts”

Constructivism

an extension of symbolic interaction theory which proposes that reality is what humans cognitively construct it to be

Culture

comprised of shared values and beliefs

Nonmaterial Culture

consists of the ideas, attitudes, and beliefs of a society

Material Culture

items you can touch

Cultural Universals

patterns or traits that are globally common to all societies

George Murdock

found that cultural universals often revolve around basic human survival

Ethnocentrism

to evaluate and judge another culture based on one’s own cultural norms

Cultural Imperialism

the deliberate imposition of one’s own cultural values on another culture

Culture Shock

when people find themselves in a new culture, they may experience disorientation and frustration

Cultural Relativism

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

Xenocentricism

refers to the beliefs that another culture is superior to one’s own

Kalervo Oberg

credited with first coining the term “culture shock”

Values

ideals, or principles and standards members of a culture hold in high regard

Beliefs

the convictions that people hold to be true

Ideal Culture

the standards society would like to embrace and live up to

Norms

behaviors that reflect compliance with what cultures and societies have defined as good, right, and important

Mores

norms that embody the moral views and principles of a group

Folkways

norms without any moral underpinning

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

it is 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

Pierre Bourdieu

grouped cultural capital into 3 categories: 1.Embodied 2.Objectified 3. Institutionalized

High Culture

term used to describe the pattern of cultural experiences and attitudes that exist in the highest class segments of society

Low Culture

associated with the pattern of cultural experiences and attitudes that exist in the lowest segments of a society

Popular Culture

refers to the pattern of cultural experiences and attitudes that exist in mainstream society

Subculture

part of the larger culture but also share a specific identity within a smaller group

Counterculture

reject some of the larger culture’s norms and values

Innovation

refers to an object or concept’s initial appearance in society

Culture Lag

coined by William F. Ogburn and refers to the time that passes between the introduction of a new item of material culture and its social acceptance

Diffusion

the process of the integration of cultures into the mainstream

Globalization

refers to 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

Scientific Method

an interpretive framework to increase understanding of societies and social interactions

Empirical Evidence

our observations about social situations often incorporate biases based on our own views and limited data

Literature Review

a review of any existing similar or related studies

Hypothesis

an explanation or a phenomenon based on aa conjecture abut the relationship between the phenomenon and one or more casual factors

Independent Variable

the cause of the change

Dependent Variable

the effect

Reliability

refers to how likely research results are to be replicated of the study is reproduced

Validity

refers to how well the study measures what it was designed to measure

Operational Definition

defining each concept in terms of physical or concrete steps it takes to objectively measure it

Interpretive Framework

understand social worlds from the point of view of participants

Frankfort School

social science is embedded is embedded in the system of power constituted by the set of class, caste, race, gender, and other relationships that exist in society

Primary Source Data Collection

survey, participant observation, ethnography, unobtrusive observations, experiment

Secondary Data Analysis

use of existing sources

Survey

collects data from subjects who respond to a series of questions about behaviors and opinions, often in the form of na questionnaire or an interview.

Population

people who are the focus of a study

Sample

a manageable number of subjects who represent a larger population

Random Sample

every person in a population has the same chance of being chosen for the study

Quantitative Data

data in any numerical form that can be counted and statistically analyzed

Qualitative Data

conveyed through words

Interview

a one-on-one conversation between the researcher and the subject

Field Research

gathering primary data from a natural environment

Participant Observation

in which researchers join people and participate in a group’s routine activities for the purpose of observation