SOCIOLOGY 201 - Quiz 1

Chapter 1 and 2

social location

personal aspects of someone’s life that affect your experiences, like race, gender, religion, hobbies, etc.

sociological imagination

term coined by C. Wright Mills, where society should be focused over the individual. and allows for the ability to shift between perspectives

sociology

involves looking at social patterns and variables

John Porter

examined the relationship between social class and ethnicity, and coined the term vertical mosaic to describe the hierarchical stratification of racial, ethnic, and religious groups due to systemic discrimination, specifically in Canada

Aileen Ross

first Canadian women to be hired as a sociologist. did major study on the Hindu family in and urban setting as well as homeless women in Montreal

social fact

social characteristics that cause you to act in sociologically predictable ways. it is separate from an individual and is a characteristic of a particular group that causes them to act in a certain way

symbolic interactionism

the meaning behind our daily social interaction

microsociology

focused on the plans, motivations, and actions of individuals and small groups

public sociology

the audience that is not part of the academic world

policy sociology

generating sociological data for governments and large corporations, ex. education, health, social welfare

critical sociology

“the conscience of professional sociology”, has similar audience but different purpose, to remind professionals of the goal for meaningful social change

professional sociology

audience is sociology departments, scholarly journals, professional associations, and conferences, and contains specific information

sociology by audience

the audience for whom the work is intended for and how critical the sociologist is (4 types)

postmodern theory

recognizing that there are many voices and should not be drowned out by the typically dominant voices

feminist theory

involves correcting centuries of discrimination and male-dominated conceptions of gender roles

latent dysfunctions

unintended, and sometimes unrecognized, and produce socially negative consequences

latent functions

unintended and unrecognized

manifest functions

intended and readily recognized

macrosociology

focused on the big picture of society and its institutions

conflict theory

based on the 4 c’s: conflict, class, contestation, and change

structural functionalism

focuses on how social systems operate and produce consequences and explaining social forms and their contributions to social cohesion

vertical mosaic

John Porter’s term for the hierarchical system in Canada, not a melting pot, but a specific order of what races or ethnicities were at the top compared to the bottom

sociology by approach

traditional way of representing different kinds of sociology

development of Canadian sociology

developed with a focus on the relationship between French and English, the development in the west, as well as connections between class and ethnicity

spread of sociology to North America

late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sociology spread, because of conditions similar to Europe, such as mass immigration and poor working conditions

Max Weber

German sociologist known for his identification of a set of values embodied in early Protestantism, called the Protestant work ethic, which he believed contributed to the development of capitalism

sociology’s origins

most notable was Ibn Khaldun who performed the first systematic study of sociological subjects, studying various societies histories, cultures, and economies

case study approach (qualitative)

research design that takes its subjects as a single case or a few selected examples of a social entity and employs a variety of methods to study them, which leads to the identification of best practices which achieve desired results

institutionalized ethnography

based on the theories of Dorothy Smith; any organization can be seen as having two sides: ruling interests and ruling relations

ethnography (qualitative)

seeks to uncover the symbols and categories members of a given culture use to interpret their world. it is a direct observation and extended field research to produce a natural description of people and their culture.

quantitative research

social elements that can be counted or measured and therefore used to generate statistics, objective research

qualitative research

permits subjectivity on the part of both the researcher and the research subject. examination of characteristics that cannot be counted or measured

Dorothy Smith

created and advocated for standpoint theory, which takes in the individuals that are effected and their perspective, and stressed its uniqueness over the objective outsider perspective

research

search for knowledge, based on scientific investigation, has patterns and methods to be followed to be considered acceptable

research methods

a subsection of research methodology that has various schemes, procedures, and algorithms

research methodology

the system of doing research, but there is no consensus on the best way to do about it (more encompassing)

evaluation research

evaluate aspects of policies and programs, to see how they solved a certain social issue

explanatory research

explain relationships and connections between social phenomena, and how they are related to each other

exploratory research

gain a in-depth understanding of a generally unknown/little-known topic

descriptive research

provides a precise description/estimate of a social phenomena

narratives

the purest form of the insider view, which was kept in a minor role because of positivism, and is used in qualitative research

positivism

the theory that rational/justifiable knowledge is true only from reason or logic, makes intuition or theism meaningless

content analysis

the observation of cultural artifacts that are not created to be studied but can be used to interpret the themes they reflect

discourse analysis

a conceptual framework with its own internal logic and underlying assumptions that are generally recognizable; 2 types: 1. analyzing discourse as the term is commonly understood 2. considers a broader definition of text, going beyond individual works and authors to include larger fields

genealogy (within discourse analysis)

a method of examining the history of text beyond individual works/authors to include large fields of presentation of information, trace the origins and history of modern discourses

operational definitions

try to take abstract/theoretical concepts and transform them into concrete, observable, measurable entities

correlation

two variables are associated more frequently than could be expected by chance

spurious reasoning

occurs when someone sees correlation and falsely assumes causation

ethics and research

subjects in a research study are giving informed consent, and are involved in beneficence and non-malfeasance