Understanding Culture, Society, and Politics Flashcards

Vocabulary-style flashcards covering the fundamental concepts of society, structural elements like social status and groups, and the sociological imagination as presented in the lecture notes.

Society

A group of people with common territory, interaction, and culture as defined by Arcinas in $2016$.

Gregarious

A feeling or need for companionship that serves as one of the reasons people form societies according to Ariola ($2012$).

Specialization

A reason for forming societies centered on the learning of specific skills and knowledge.

Institution

Refers to the organized system of relationship including family, education, economy, government, and religion.

Family

Recognized as the basic unit of society within the structural element of institutions.

Social Group

Any collection of two or more individuals engaged in some form of personal or professional interaction.

Primary Group

A type of social group characterized by personal relationships, such as family and close friends.

Secondary Group

A type of social group characterized by professional relationships, such as teachers, classmates, and schoolmates.

Social Status

An individual's relative rank or position in a social hierarchy, defined by the amount of prestige, respect, and power they hold.

Ascribed Status

A status assigned at birth and involuntarily acquired, including race, age, biological sex, and royal lineage.

Achieved Status

A status earned or chosen based on merit, individual effort, and personal accomplishments, such as being a college graduate or a CEO.

Social Roles

The set of behaviors, rights, and obligations expected of a person who occupies a particular position or status.

Like mindedness

One of the five characteristics of society explaining why it cannot exist with just a single man.

Interdependence

A characteristic of society where individuals rely on each other within a pattern or system.

Sociological Imagination

A perspective coined by sociologist C. Wright Mills in $1959$ that allows one to see how personal life is shaped by larger forces of history and society.

C. Wright Mills

The sociologist who argued that an individual's life cannot be understood without understanding the time and place they live in.

Biography + History

The core formula of the Sociological Imagination, representing the intersection of an individual's life and the time/place they live in.