Sociology: Deviance, Stratification, Gender, Race, and Poverty

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering major sociological concepts from the lecture, including deviance and crime, social stratification, gender dynamics, race, ethnicity, and poverty.

Deviance

Behaviors or characteristics that deviate from a society's accepted norms and expectations; it is relative, culturally defined, and not inherently negative or criminal.

Behavioral Deviance

A form of deviance involving actions that break social norms, such as laughing at a funeral, refusing food, or committing murder.

Physical Deviance

A form of deviance based on physical appearance, unique dress, body modifications, or stigmatized bodily traits.

Social or Cultural Deviance

Deviance that involves departing from dominant lifestyle norms, such as practicing a minority religion or experiencing homelessness.

Crime

A formal subset of deviance that violates established legal statutes and is subject to official punishment by the state.

Social Control

The mechanisms, strategies, and practices through which a society regulates behavior to encourage conformity and discourage deviance.

Informal Social Control

Regulation of behavior carried out through unwritten rules, peer pressure, gossip, and community expectations enforced by family, friends, or religion.

Formal Social Control

Regulation of behavior enforced by official authorities through criminal laws, administrative statutes, and institutional rules.

Strain Theory

Robert Merton's theory positing that deviance occurs when an institutional gap exists between culturally approved goals and the legitimate means available to reach them.

Conformity (Strain Theory)

Merton's adaptation in which individuals accept both culturally valued success goals and the institutionalized, legitimate means to attain them.

Innovation (Strain Theory)

Merton's adaptation wherein individuals accept cultural goals but reject conventional means, resorting to alternative or illegitimate pathways.

Ritualism (Strain Theory)

Merton's adaptation where individuals abandon cultural goals of high success but rigidly continue adhering to conventional rules and means.

Retreatism (Strain Theory)

Merton's adaptation in which individuals reject both the cultural goals and the legitimate means of society, completely dropping out of the social system.

Rebellion (Strain Theory)

Merton's adaptation where individuals reject existing cultural goals and means, actively advocating to replace them with entirely new social systems and values.

Labeling Theory

A symbolic interactionist theory arguing that deviance is not inherent in an act, but emerges through social reactions, interpretations, and the application of labels by those in power.

Stigma

A profoundly negative social label that fundamentally alters a person's self-concept and social identity, often functioning as a master status.

Secondary Deviance

Deviant behavior that occurs as a consequence of adopting and internalizing a deviant label applied by society.

Broken Windows Theory

A criminological theory proposing that minor signs of visible disorder and neglect create a social signal that deviance and law-breaking are tolerated, leading to increased crime.

Conflict Theory of Deviance

A perspective asserting that definitions of deviance and crime are shaped by power struggles and unequal resources, serving the economic and social interests of elite groups.

Street Crime

Everyday, visible crimes carried out in public or private spaces, typically involving property loss, physical violence, or illicit substances.

White-Collar Crime

Nonviolent financial offenses committed by individuals in professional occupations, often producing far greater economic harm than street crime.

Recidivism

The repetition of criminal behavior resulting in rearrest, reconviction, or reincarceration after previous criminal justice punishment or release from prison.

Social Stratification

A society's hierarchical categorization of people into structured layers based on unequal access to wealth, power, prestige, and institutional privileges.

Estate System

A politically defined stratification system with legal rights and obligations tied to land ownership and social rank, offering minimal social mobility.

Caste System

A rigid, hereditary system of social stratification founded on notions of religious purity, where an individual's status is permanently fixed at birth.

Class System

An economically based stratification system characterized by looser boundaries, where status depends on financial attainment and mobility is achievable.

Status Hierarchy System

A stratification structure organized primarily around social prestige, honor, lifestyle, and consumption rather than economic capital alone.

Davis-Moore Thesis

A functionalist perspective arguing that social stratification is universal and necessary because unequal rewards motivate qualified individuals to undergo training for crucial positions.

Weber's Three Dimensions of Stratification

Max Weber's multidimensional model stating that social position is governed by three intersecting domains: Class (economic resources), Status (social prestige), and Party (political power).

Equality of Opportunity

The principle that everyone has an equal chance to pursue advancement under fair rules, meaning unequal outcomes are legitimate if determined by merit and effort.

Equality of Condition

The standard of equality asserting that all individuals should be provided with an equal starting point through corrective social measures like affirmative action.

Equality of Result

A standard of equality asserting that all members of society should receive identical or comparable material outcomes, irrespective of starting conditions or individual efforts.

Socioeconomic Status (SES)

A quantitative sociological index measuring an individual's or family's standing in society through a composite of income, educational attainment, and occupational prestige.

Social Mobility

The capacity of individuals, families, or groups to transition upward or downward between different positions within a social hierarchy.

Structural Mobility

Mobility driven by sweeping macroeconomic transformations or technological shifts that alter the distribution of available jobs rather than individual merit.

Status-Attainment Model

A model showing how generational advantage operates as family background influences educational attainment, which subsequently determines occupational prestige and adult socioeconomic standing.

Sex

The biological traits used to categorize individuals as male, female, or intersex, encompassing chromosomes, hormonal balances, and anatomical characteristics.

Gender

The socially constructed norms, roles, expectations, and behavioral scripts that a culture considers appropriate for men and women.

Biological Determinism

The belief that behavioral patterns, gender roles, and social inequalities between sexes are directly governed by fixed biological mechanisms and cannot be transformed.

Gender Socialization

The lifelong developmental process through which institutions teach individuals the cultural expectations and behavioral patterns associated with their assigned sex.

Sex Role Theory

Talcott Parsons' functionalist thesis stating that modern nuclear families operate efficiently when men fulfill instrumental roles and women fulfill expressive, nurturing roles.

Patriarchy

A social, economic, and political structure in which men monopolize primary power, leadership positions, and authority over women, children, and subordinate men.

Matrix of Domination

Patricia Hill Collins' Black feminist concept demonstrating how multiple categories of oppression—including race, class, gender, sexuality, and age—intersect simultaneously.

Doing Gender

A symbolic interactionist framework conceptualizing gender not as an innate property, but as an active, continuous performance enacted through daily social encounters.

Gender Pay Gap

The systematic difference in average earnings between employed women and men, shaped by occupational segregation, caregiving burdens, and labor market discrimination.

Glass Ceiling

An invisible institutional barrier preventing qualified women and minoritized workers from advancing to executive, high-ranking leadership positions.

Glass Escalator

The accelerated promotional pathway and structural advantages that men experience when entering female-dominated professions such as nursing or primary teaching.

Race

A socially constructed classification system that organizes human beings into categories based on physical phenotypes such as skin tone, facial features, and hair texture.

Social Darwinism

A pseudo-scientific ideology applying natural selection to human societies, falsely asserting that dominant racial groups are biologically superior and naturally fit to rule.

Eugenics

A movement advocating the selective breeding of human populations to cultivate desirable genetic traits and eliminate perceived inferior traits through coercive methods like sterilization.

Racialization

The sociological process by which ideological racial boundaries and identities are assigned to a formerly unclassified or ethnic group of people.

Ethnicity

A voluntary, culturally defined group identity grounded in shared heritage, ancestry, language, customs, religion, and collective historical memory.

White Privilege

Peggy McIntosh's concept of an invisible package of unearned assets, immunities, and advantages enjoyed by white individuals in a society structured by racial inequality.

Color-Blind Racism

An ideology that attributes ongoing racial inequality to individual choices and cultural deficits while refusing to acknowledge persistent structural racism.

Pluralism

A pattern of intergroup coexistence where diverse racial and ethnic communities maintain their distinctive cultural traditions without any single group holding total dominance.

Institutional Racism

Systemic patterns of bias, discrimination, and inequality entrenched within the foundational laws, operational policies, and organizational procedures of society's institutions.

Redlining

A discriminatory institutional policy in which banks and mortgage lenders systematically withheld credit and property investments from minority neighborhoods.

Culture of Poverty

A victim-blaming theory suggesting that individuals living in poverty develop generational psychological habits and survival values that impede their social mobility.

Underclass Thesis

A controversial view depicting the chronically impoverished as an isolated, deviant population whose welfare reliance and cultural detachment prevent economic self-sufficiency.

Perverse Incentive

An unintended policy outcome in which an institutional rule or welfare regulation paradoxically incentivizes behaviors that work against the program's primary objective.

Cycle of Poverty

A structural perspective demonstrating how deindustrialization, segregation, and economic forces generate concentrated disadvantage that traps families across generations.