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Social Structure
Things that exist outside our control that exert a force on our lives
...Broken down into two components
...Social hierarchies (can be found in any society in which some groups or individuals are elevated above others).
...Institutional Environments (made up of laws, rules, organizations, and the government in which individuals navigate
The French & Industrial Revolutions
Sociology came about from these two revolutions
The Sociological Imagination
The capacity to think systematically about how many things we experience as personal problems are really social issues that are widely shared by others born in similar time and social location as us. (Interaction of history and biography)
Agency
Our actions and decisions in the world as individuals
Symbolic Violence
The tacit, almost unconscious modes of cultural/social domination occurring within the everyday social habits maintained over conscious subjects
Asch Elevator Experiment
Human nature to follow what others do
Rationalism
Thinking through it on your own
Theory
A statement of how and why specific facts are related. Testable ideas with beginning & end of process
Hypothesis
Prediction about what we are going to discover in our research.
Scientific Method
Theory, hypothesis, test, observation and then it repeats.
Quantitative Methods
Experiment with Surveys (Number Crunching)
Qualitative Methods
In-depth interviews / Ethnography
Experimental Research
A research method for investigating Cause & Effect under highly controlled conditions
Tests a specific hypothesis
Uses random assignment
Uses control groups
Random Assignment
A procedure used in experiments to equally distribute the personal traits of participants across each of the treatment groups.
Experimental Group
The portion of the sample that receives an experimental treatment
Control Group
The portion of the sample that does not receive an experimental treatment
Limitation of Experiments
Very controlled, sterile setting
Survey Method
Most common research method in which participants respond to a series of statements or questions on a questionnaire or in an interview
Good for patterns of behavior in large groups
Statistical Analysis
Demographics, opinions, daily life
In-depth Interview
A research method where researchers ask open-ended questions to participants
Ethnography
A research method in which investigators observe people while joining them in their routine activities.
Interaction
...Individuals & groups with society
...A way of looking at things
...We are only able to Interact with things of this world because of our senses...without them, we would be lost in this world.
Typification
A process of creating a standard social construction based on standard assumptions
Object
Something on which attention or action is focused
Social Construction of Reality
The interactive process by which knowledge is produced and codified, making it specific to a certain group or society
Social Construct
A social phenomenon (for example, a belief, discourse, or category) that was invented by individuals and is shaped by the social forces present in the time and place of its creation.
....Interact with the idea of the object, not the physical object itself ( We define what it is).
Presentation of Self
The process through which individuals try to shape how others perceive them - to shape the meanings and assumptions that others associate with them as object.
Impression Management
The manipulation of cues to control and organize the impression we give others
Front Stage
A region where one's performance (behavior) is open to judgement by those who observe it
Back Stage
A region where actors can discuss, polish, or refine their performance without revealing themselves to their audience
Significant Symbol
A gesture (usually a vocal gesture) that calls out in the individual making the gesture the same response that is called in on others whom the gesture is directed.
Definition of the Situation
The process of sense-making required to determine how one should act and to predict how others may not.
Symbolic Interactionism
The understanding that individuals (their personalities, their preferences, their ideas, etc.) are constructed and shaped by and through communication with other individuals, groups, and institutions.
Generalized Other
An organized and generalized attitude of a social group
Path Dependency
The set of decisions one faces for any given circumstance is limited by the decisions one has made in the past, even though past circumstances may no longer be relevant.
Institution
Enduring customs of social life, like religion or the "institution of marriage," as well as longstanding formal organizations, like government agencies or schools
Functionalism
A theoretical perspective which treats society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability
Structural Functionalism
Views society as stable and orderly. Interested in what makes it this way.
Culture
Systems of belief and knowledge shared by members of a group or society that shape individual and group behavior and attitudes.
Rational Choice Theory
A theory that sees human behavior as the outcome of cost benefit analysis on the part of the individual.
Cultural Toolkit
A set of symbolic skills, devices, or strategies that people learn throughout their lives, and can deploy strategically in different situations.
-Can also supply a set of ideas to justify a course of action retrospectively (Explanations for behavior / Explained before / after action)
Habitus
Lifestyles, values, dispositions and expectations acquired through the experiences of everyday life and shared by particular social groups.
Capital
Something that is not wanted for itself, but for its ability to help in producing or obtaining other goals.
Symbolic Capital
The resources available to an individual on the basis of honor, prestige, or recognition.
Social Capital
Opportunities or resources gained through the networks to which one belongs.
Cultural Capital
Signals, such as education, ways of speaking or taste in art, that offer a person access to status & power.
Embodied (Cultural Capital)
Consciously acquired and passively "inherited" properties of one's self.
Objectified (Cultural Capital)
Objects that are owned and can be transmitted directly (traditional definition) (Don't assume they are physical objects)
Panopticism
The systematic ordering and controlling of human populations through subtle and often unseen forces.
Power
The chance of a man/woman or a number of men/women to realize their own will in a communal action even against the resistance of others who are participating in the action
Three-Dimensions of Power
1.) The power of an individual or group to get another individual of group to do something it wants, which sometimes may involve force.
2.) The power to control the agenda of issues that are to be decided.
3.) The power to persuade others that their interests are the same as those of the power holder.
Marked Category
A category (usually of persons) that falls outside the default category. (Ex: "male nurse" "Black President"
Unmarked Category
A category (usually of persons) that carries a default connotation. (Ex: "President" instead of "White President"
Symbolic Boundaries
Conceptual distinctions made by the social actors that separate people into groups and generate feelings of similarity and group membership.
Boundary Work
Instances in which boundaries demarcations or other divisions between fields of knowledge are created, advocated, attached, or reinforced.
Omnivore
An individual who consumes BOTH high & low status forms of culture
Univore
A consumer who tends to be actively involved in just one, or at least just a few, alternative aesthetic traditions.
Aesthetic Disposition
A code necessary for interpreting and understanding dominant forms of culture. (Ex: For the elite, their's is FORM over FUNCTION)
Homology Argument of Taste
The idea that the cultural goods a person likes will correspond directly with their social background (Snobs v Slobs)
Power Elite
A small group of people, drawn from similar backgrounds and sharing broadly similar world views, that dominates the upper levels of U.S institutions and shapes the policies.
Sociology
Is the study of societies and the social worlds that individuals inhabit within them. (The Study of our lives).
