Sociological Theories and Modernity Practice Flashcards

A comprehensive set of vocabulary flashcards covering major sociological theorists and concepts from the transcript, including modernity, structure and agency, and social systems.

Multiple Modernities

A concept by Eisenstadt suggesting that different societies can be modern in various ways rather than following a single path.

Struggle for Recognition

The main social conflict according to Honneth, characterized as the fight for acknowledgement.

End of History

Fukuyama's claim that the fall of communism marked the end of history, though contested because conflicts did not cease.

Late Modernity

Giddens' term for the current era, characterized by detraditionalization and dependence on spatially and temporally distant systems.

Disembedding Mechanisms

Mechanisms that lift social relations from local contexts and connect them to abstract systems, such as money acting as a symbolic sign.

Reflexive Modernity

According to Beck, a stage where modernity begins to modernize itself through internal processes.

Risk Society

A society focused on the production of socially manufactured, invisible, abstract, and global risks.

Autopoiesis

Luhmann's concept that systems self-create and reproduce without being governed by a center like the state or nation.

Second-order Observation

The act of observing how someone else observes, acknowledging that every system views the world from its own perspective.

Historicity

Touraine's term for a society's ability to act upon itself and transform itself, primarily through social movements.

Communicative Action

Habermas' concept of social interaction aimed at mutual understanding and consensus, counterposed to instrumental rationality.

Colonization of the Life-world

The encroachment of systemic logic (power and money) into the natural spheres of solidarity and communication.

Everyday Life (Agnes Heller)

The space where society's ability to change itself is born; a fragmented world of open but not infinite possibilities.

Radical Imagination

Castoriadis' idea that society is not fixed and people can create new forms of politics, culture, and identity.

Liquid Modernity

Bauman's term for a state of constant flux, uncertainty, and flexibility where consumer aesthetics replace the work ethic.

Simulacrum

Jameson's and Baudrillard's concept of a mediated simulation of reality that lacks a deeper meaning or vaild original.

Hyperreality

Baudrillard's term for a state where the distinction between reality and its media simulation no longer exists.

Metanarratives

The 'grand stories' or 'big narratives' of modernity which Lyotard claims have lost their credibility in the postmodern era.

Cyborg Manifesto

Donna Haraway's critique of binary oppositions, arguing that identities are hybrid, technologically mediated, and 'impure'.

Theory of Structuration

Giddens' attempt to bridge the gap between individual free will and social pressure, viewing structure as both the medium and result of action.

Habitus

Bourdieu's term for internalised dispositions and tastes that arise from one's social position and guide how a person reacts and behaves.

Cultural Capital

Bourdieu's concept referring to education, taste, and knowledge that can advantage individuals within social fields like the education system.

Morphogenesis

Archer's concept of the process in which new social forms are created through repeated action, emphasizing the separation of structure and agent.

Episteme

Foucault's term for the invisible structure of thought that defines the limits and conditions of knowledge in a specific era.

Biopower

Foucault's concept of power that manages populations through the discipline of the body and the regulation of biological processes like birth and death.

Deconstruction

Derrida's method of reading that exposes the internal contradictions within a text.

Différance

Derrida's concept indicating that meaning is generated through differences between signs and is constantly deferred.

Binary Oppositions

Lévi-Strauss's theory that the human mind organizes reality into opposing pairs like culture/nature or man/woman.

Death of the Author

Barthes' idea that the meaning of a text is determined by the reader rather than the author's intent.

Signifier and Signified

The two parts of a sign in Saussure's linguistics: the sound or image (signifier) and the concept or idea (signified).

Typifications

Mental categories and templates used in everyday life to orient ourselves, according to Alfred Schutz.

Symbolic Interactionism

A perspective, formalized by Blumer, stating that social relations are built on interpretations and symbols shared during interaction.

Total Institutions

Prospaces like asylums or prisons where people live similar lives cut off from wider society, as described by Goffman.

Ethnomethodology

Garfinkel's study of the reasoning processes people use to maintain social order and make sense of their daily interactions.

Indexicality

The idea that words and sentences only make sense within a specific shared context or implicit background information.

Ideology vs. Utopia

Mannheim's distinction: ideology serves ruling interests by ignoring contradictions, while utopia represents the desire of the oppressed to destroy the current order.

Actor-Network Theory (ANT)

Latour's theory that scientific knowledge is constructed by a network of both human actors and non-human objects.

Structural Differentiation

Smelser's concept describing the growing number of subsystems and complexity within a society during social change.

Creative Destruction

Schumpeter's term for the process within capitalism where innovation constantly replaces old structures with new ones.

Civilizing Process

Elias's long-term historical process of increasing self-control and the pacification of society through mutual dependencies.

World-systems Theory

Wallerstein's global economic model divided into the core (rich states), periphery (exploited areas), and semi-periphery.

Hegemony

Gramsci's concept of dominance maintained not just by force, but through the consent of the ruled who accept the ruling class's values as 'common sense'.

Aura

Benjamin's term for the unique, one-of-a-kind quality of an original work of art, which is destroyed by modern technical reproduction.

Culture Industry

A term by Adorno and Horkheimer describing how media and entertainment create passive consumers to serve capitalist interests.

One-dimensional Man

Marcuse's description of individuals in a society where critical thinking has vanished because the system effectively fulfills false needs.

Mirror Stage

Lacan's concept of the moment a child recognizes their reflection, creating an illusory sense of a unified ego.

Interpellation

Althusser's process by which ideology 'addresses' the individual and transforms them into a social subject.

Thanatos

Freud's term for the death drive, representing an innate tendency toward self-destruction and aggression.