Sociological Theory and Analysis Flashcards

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering sociological concepts from C. Wright Mills, Émile Durkheim, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx based on lecture notes.

Sociological Imagination

An ability to link individual micro-social behaviors to structural forces, analyzing and reflecting on how personal lives and the broader world are structured.

Social Facts

Manners of acting, thinking, and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with coercive power that exercises control over them.

Egoistic Suicide

A type of suicide caused by excessive individualism and lower degrees of social integration, occurring when an individual recognizes no rules of conduct beyond private aspirations or interests.

Altruistic Suicide

A type of suicide occurring when the social group exerts excessive influence over the individual.

Anomic Suicide

A type of suicide resulting from a lack of social regulation during disturbances in the collective order, such as sudden economic crises or rapid increases in prosperity.

Fatalistic Suicide

A type of suicide brought on by excessive social regulation, such as that experienced in prison.

Anomie

Derived from the Greek term a-nomos, meaning without laws or lacking social regulations.

Division of Labor (Adam Smith)

The organization and coordination of human labor in society that increases productivity, skilled workmanship, and material wealth.

Mode of Production

The specific practices, rules, institutions, rights of ownership, and relationships that define how a society collectively satisfies its subsistence needs.

Forces of Production

The equipment, tools, technologies, and resources available and deployed to satisfy human subsistence needs.

Relations of Production

The rules, institutional frameworks, and social modes of cooperation through which people relate to each other during production.

Alienation (Estrangement)

The condition under capitalism where the product of labor appears outside the worker as an alien entity beyond their control, separating them from their activity, species-being, and fellow workers.

Mechanical Solidarity

Social cohesion arising from similarity of activities and sentiments among individuals, characterized by strong collective consciousness and punitive criminal law.

Organic Solidarity

Social cohesion based on mutual interdependence and the complementarity of specialized parts, predominantly regulated by civil and administrative law.

Collective Consciousness

The shared totality of beliefs, sentiments, and moral judgments common to average members of a society (la conscience collective).

Labor-Power

The worker's capacity to work, which is sold to capitalists as a commodity in exchange for wages.

Absolute Surplus-Value

Surplus value extracted by directly lengthening the workday beyond the time required for socially necessary labor.

Relative Surplus-Value

Surplus value extracted by increasing productivity through technology and division of labor, thereby shortening socially necessary labor-time and expanding surplus labor-time.

Marxian Exploitation Diagram

A visual framework showing the division of the workday into socially necessary labor-time ($A \dots B$) and surplus labor-time ($B \dots C$).

Capitalist Competition Diagram

A structural depiction illustrating competition between individual employers (employer1 vs. employer2) alongside competition among workers ($w1$, $w2$, $w3$) under capitalist relations.

Daily Subsistence Wage Calculation Formula

The mathematical equation representing the cost of maintaining and reproducing a worker's labor-power: $\frac{365A + 52B + 4C + D + \dots}{365}$.