SOCY200 Midterm - De Loatch

Enculturation

This process is the way in which we obtain and transmit culture. It describes how we come to terms with the already set ideals that their culture has

established, and how each person adapts to prohibited behaviors and beliefs, which are 'proscribed', versus encouraged behaviors and beliefs, which are 'prescribed'.

Natural Growth

A parenting style, often associated with working-class families, in which children's time is largely unstructured and self-directed, and clear social and hierarchical boundaries exist between parents and children.

Concerted Cultivation

A parenting style, common in middle-class families, where parents actively structure their children's time with organized activities (like sports, clubs, or lessons) to develop skills, talents, and confidence, and children are encouraged to communicate and interact comfortably with adults.

Gentle Parenting

A parenting approach focused on raising confident, independent, and emotionally healthy children through empathy, respect, understanding, and healthy boundaries, emphasizing age-appropriate development rather than traditional parenting styles of punishment and rewards.

Foraging Economy

A subsistence system based on hunting, fishing, and gathering; typically small and egalitarian. It is made up of the Economic principals of Collective Ownership of Property, the Original Affluent Society, and the Affluence Hypothesis Challenged

Mobility & Flexibility

Refer to the ability of hunter-gatherer groups to move frequently and adapt their activities, group size, and resource use depending on environmental conditions and food availability.

Kinship

Social relationships based on family ties, such as those formed through ancestry, marriage, or adoption, organize how people are related and how they interact in a society.

Marriage

A socially recognized relationship that may involve physical and emotional intimacy as well as legal rights to property and inheritance.

Gender Roles

Socially constructed expectations about how people should behave, act, and interact based on their gender. These roles are learned through social institutions such as family, religion, law, and the economy, and they vary across cultures and change over time.

Culture and Personality

The idea that the cultural environment people grow up in influences and shapes their individual personalities, behaviors, and ways of thinking.

Theory

A hypothesis that has been tested with a significant amount of data.

Reflexivity

The practice of critically examining how a researcher's own background, beliefs, and position in society may influence their observations, interpretations, and research findings.

Society

The largest-scale human group that shares a common temporal space, geographical territory, and common institutions

Sociological Imagination

A concept developed by C. Wright Mills that describes the ability to connect personal experiences ("troubles") with larger social forces and historical events ("issues"), helping individuals understand how their biography is shaped by society and history

Social Inequality

The unequal distribution of resources, opportunities, and privileges among people in a society. It varies in type and amount across societies and is based on factors such as social class, race, ethnicity, and gender. In the United States, class inequality has been increasing, while racial and ethnic inequality differs depending on the group. Some forms of inequality have declined over time, such as certain legal barriers, but income differences between genders still exist, with women generally earning less than men.

Social Institutions

Organized systems of norms, values, and rules that structure human interactions and guide behavior in society. Core institutions include the family, education, religion, economy, and government, which meet basic social needs. Other important institutions, such as mass media, medicine, science, and the military, also shape how society functions.

Social Change

The transformation of social institutions, norms, values, and patterns of behavior over time. An example is secularization, the process in which religion loses authority and becomes less central in society. Researchers study secularization to understand how, why, and when religion's influence changes. While religion is generally less integral to social life than in the past, levels of religiosity vary—declining in some parts of the United States while increasing in others. Religion still plays an important role by providing norms and structuring social interactions.

Social Facts

Studied by Emile Durkheim, they are the ways of acting, thinking, and feeling that are external to the individual, possess coercive power, and exist independently of individual will. Social facts influence personal decisions and can be observed in patterns such as suicide rates, which Durkheim argued could be explained by levels of social integration and regulation within society

Homophily

The tendency for individuals to form social ties with others who are similar to themselves in characteristics such as race, class, gender, age, education, beliefs, or interests. Create a lack fo tolerance towards different people and an echo chamber due to the limited amount of diversity.

Culture

Beliefs, customs, and traditions of a specific group of people.

Dominant Culture

Imposed on a society. Ex: English Language (U.S.)

Counterculture

Rejects elements of the dominant culture. Ex: Hippies

Subculture

Differ, but do not oppose. Ex: Goth/Punk

High Culture

The culture of a society's elites. Ex: Opera

Popular Culture

culture widely shared by the majority of society. Ex: Pop music(Taylor Swift) or sports games (Super Bowl)

Acculturation

The process of social, psychological, and cultural change that occurs when individuals or groups come into contact with a different culture, often adapting to elements of the dominant culture while balancing aspects of their original culture. Ex from Nisa: Kung adapting to

pressures from neighboring Bantu groups and government resettlement programs

Symbolic Interactionism

The broader theoretical approach that defines culture in terms of the rules and meaning underlying human behavior, rather than behavior itself. Human beings act toward things based on the meanings that things have for them. These meanings arise out of social interaction. Social action results from a fitting together of individual lines of action

Structural Functionalism

A theoretical perspective that holds that all societies reflect similar deep, underlying patterns of behavior that function to create patterns of social inequality.

Phenomenology

It is the philosophy of experience. How do we experience the world around us and conversely how do we shape the world? It is also the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view

Qualitative Research

A research method that focuses on understanding people's experiences, meanings, and social interactions through non-numerical data such as interviews and ethnography. It is used to gain deeper insight into how and why people behave in certain ways.

Interviews

A research method where sociologists ask individuals questions to understand their experiences, beliefs, and behaviors. They can be used to understand how and why people engage in criminal behavior by allowing researchers to hear participants' explanations and perspectives directly.

Ethnography

A research method in which sociologists observe and sometimes participate in the daily activities of a group to understand their behavior and social interactions. For example, a researcher might use participant observation to study how police enforce laws and interact with people suspected of committing crimes.

Characterize the family as a social group and a social institution

Family as a social group = a small group of people related by blood, marriage, or adoption that have regular interactions, emotional bonds, and shared responsibilities

Family as a social institution = a structured system that organizes reproduction, socialization of children, caregiving, and economic support in society.

How did settlements evolve?

They evolved from hunter-gatherers(small, mobile communities with no permanent settlement) --> horticulture villages (semi-permanent settlements for farming or animal herding) --> agarian towns (permanent settlements that allowed for market, trade, and government growth) --> industrial cities (large urban populations, specialized jobs & labor divisions, complex infrastructure)

What were the social origins of power, and how did power evolve?

Power is Who decides? Who benefits? Who is harmed? Power is made up of culture and social capital. The social origins of power comes from resources, leadership in warfare, religious authority, and economic wealth because they have control over resources, security, beliefs, or economic systems, allowing them to influence others and shape social organization. Hunter gathers had little centralized power --> horticulture chiefs and leaders had power --> agarian villages power were distrbuted amongst kings, nobility, and relgious elites --> industrial power is controlled by the government, large cooporations and industries also have power

Property- understand the importance of valuables/land in the conference of power, status, and respect.

Valuables showed you had prestige and a high standing status society. Property, especially in agarian societies, those who owned the land had power to control food production/sharing, tax or rent, command labor, and the use of natural resources on their land. Control of propety led to power, status, and respect

Stratification- what is it and how does it shape societies?

It is a system of inequality where individuals or groups have unequal access to wealth, power, and prestige. It affects society, creating social classes that can determine opportunities and success.

How did feudal states organize themselves?

Land-Based and Decrentralized Power

Typical feudal hierarchy:

1. King - owned/granted the land

2. Nobles / Lords - controlled the land

3. Knights

4. Peasants / Serfs - worked on the land

Marjorie Shostak

Nisa' interviewer

Nisa

The pseudonym Shostak gives to the !Kung woman whose interviews constitute the bulk of the book. She is 50 years old and a mber of the !Kung a group of bushmen who live in Botswana, Namibia, and Angola. Her stories accounts marriages, the deaths of all her children, and numerous other sad and happy memories most !Kung women experience

Bau

A !Kung woman interviewed prior to Nisa. She shares stories about childhood sex play, an extramarital affair, and domestic

Kxoma and Tuma

Two !Kung men who accompany Shostak and her husband to their campsite after their arrival in Africa.

Gau

Nisa's father is a medical healer and protective father, but has a bad temper as he threatens to hit Nisa or his wife Chuko.

Chuko

Nisa's mother, !Kung childre typicallt constant contact with their mothers in the early years and Nis reccounts her distresses from her mother trying to ween her(give up nursing in preparation for the birth of her next child)

Dau

Nisa's older brother, who protects her from their parents

Kumsa

Nis'a younger brother, whose birth she witnesses and steals milk from

Kxamshe

Nisa's sister who dies in childhood after a "trembling sickness."

Tikay

Nisa's young boyfriend with whom she begins to learn about sex, as all young !Kung children do.

Tuma

Nisa's cousin who wants to engage in sex play with her, though Nisa refuses.

Kantla

Nisa's first real love and one of the "important men" in her life. Kantla is married to a woman named Bey, and they both want Nisa to be a co-wife. They have a trial marriage, but it fails. Instead of marriage, he remains her lover during her life

Dem

Kantla's younger brother. Dem is Nisa's lover for a time, and he and Kantla get into a fight over her.

Bo (husband 1)

Nisa's first husband. He sleeps with Nukha while they are in the marriage hut. Nisa hears them and tells her parents, who scold Nukha sternly and dissolve the marriage.

Tsaa

Nisa's second husband, even though she likes him more she refuses to have sex with him as she is young. He refuses to give Nisa and her father meat, and Nisa's father sends him away.

Tashay

Nisa's third husband, and her first substantial marriage, he becomes the father of her children. He is jealous of Nisa's lovers(Kantla and Dem), and after his dies, his relatives say that the spirit of Nisa's lovers killed him

Saglai

Gau's co-wife, briefly, Because Chuko was not told about it so she gets into a rage and drives the co-wife out of the village.

Tiknay

Nisa's co-wife, briefly, during her marriage to Tashay.

Little Chuko

Nisa' first daughter, and conceivees the baby our of wedlock with her lover Twi. Dies in infancy, Nisa blames the fact that Chuko was her lover's child and not her husband's(!Kung believe in the power of spiritual forces to cause sickness and death).

Nai

Nisa's second daughter, who is the only to survive infancy and dies when she is sixteen or seventeen, by Shostak's estimate, after a physical brawl with her husband that results in a broken neck.

Bau

Nisa's fourth child, a daughter, who does not survive infancy.

Kxau

Nisa's son and last born. Kxau dies as a teenager from a disease that strikes him as a result of eating some honey from a hive that has been partially consumed by a honey badger

Besa

Nisa's fourth husband. He leaves Nisa while she is pregnant with their child, and the marriage eventually dissolves most likely due to his sexual demands and Nisa refers to him as "very bad"

Kashe

One of Nisa's lovers. Besa chases him with a knife, and eventually Nisa's father drives Kashe away.

Debe

Another of Nisa's lovers. When Bo finds out that Nisa and Debe have stolen away into the bush for a tryst, he kicks Nisa in the chest, almost killing her.

Bo (husband 5)

Nisa's fifth husband. Nisa is married to Bo during the initial fifteen interviews, and she is still married to him four years later, when Shostak returns to Africa. Nisa admits that they have big fights and small fights but says that they love each other.

Identify the three major themes that emerge from Nisa's biography, and the importance of reoccurring symbols.

The Three Major Themes: The Intrusion of the Modern World, The Universality of Women’s Experience, & The Importance of Sexuality

The Intrusion of the Modern World = Nisa’s life reflects the growing influence of outside societies on the traditional !Kung hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The cattle-herding Tswana and Herero peoples intrude on the !Kung way of life when they establish settlements in the once-isolated Dobe region. The Western anthropologists themselves also introduce modern ideas into !Kung society, the influence of the modern world can be seen as Shostak pays their subjects in tobacco or other goods, use tape recorders, cameras, and other gadgets, and drive their trucks near the villages.

The University of Women's Experience = How !Kung women experience menstruation, sexuality, pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause, and she observes their stoic approach to pain associated with women’s conditions. The work done by !Kung women, who gather the bulk of a village’s food supply, puts them in a position of power and strength, and, as a result, a high degree of sexual equality exists. The power of sisterhood. suggest that Nisa and Shostak can connect across culture boundaries.

The Importance of Sexuality = Sexual relationships, desire, jealousy, and extramarital affairs play a major role in !Kung social life. Many of the liberated ideas the !Kung have about female sexuality, such as the belief that a woman who is having intercourse must finish her work (a euphemism for having an orgasm) or else risk falling ill. The !Kung also believe that a woman who does not satisfy her sexual desires will die.

Distinguish an ethnography from other forms of qualitative research.

Qualitative Research is an umbrella term for studying human experience, behavior, and social context through interpretation.

Ethnography is a research method in which sociologists observe and sometimes participate in the daily activities of a group to understand their behavior and social interactions for an extended period of time.

Ethnography differs as it made up long-term immersion in a culture, participant observation, and detailed descriptions of everyday life and social meaning - while other forms of qualitative research conduct interviews or sueveys to identify certain themes, topcis, & questions this is conducted over a short period of time or just done by looking at past documentation, and not done first hand.

Know when Shostak conducted this ethnographic research? Where did Nisa live-what place was Shostak referencing in her ethnography?

Shostak conducted her enthographic research from 1969 to 1971. The research took place in Dobe region of Africa, in northwest Botswana and at the edge of the Kalahari Desert, which is where Nisa lived in a small !Kung village.

Distinguish between Nisa's personal problems and larger social problems that impacted the !Kung.

Conflict and dissatisfaction in marriage(personal) → Arranged marriage system and limited partner choice(larger social) Nisa often entered marriages arranged at a young age. This reflects a broader !Kung social structure where marriage decisions were influenced by family and kinship expectations rather than individual preference.

Jealousy, extramarital relationships, and marital tension(personal) → Social norms around sexuality and flexible relationships(larger social) Affairs and shifting relationships were relatively common in !Kung society, which sometimes created jealousy and conflict within marriages.

Violence and emotional strain in relationships(personal) → Gender expectations and power dynamics in marriage(larger social)Although !Kung women had relatively high status, men still held certain authority in relationships, which could lead to conflict or violence.

Childbirth difficulties and loss of children(personal) → Harsh environmental conditions and limited medical resources(larger social) High infant mortality and difficult births were common challenges in hunter-gatherer societies like the !Kung due to limited healthcare and demanding living conditions.

Emotional struggles with aging, family changes, and relationships(personal) → Cultural and social change affecting !Kung society(larger social) Increasing contact with outsiders and shifts away from traditional hunter-gatherer life created uncertainty about roles, relationships, and the future.

In the Sacred Rac, what is the importance of the cow and the rac?

The cow in India is seen and protected as a sacred animal. The rac, an animal much like a bull in size, strength and temperament, for the Asu people it is sacred animal and a social obligation to own at least one rac. Owning a rac shows your wealth and prestige in the tribe, if you do not own one at all you are seen as poor.

In the Sacred Rac, in what ways were the cow and rac similar and how are they different?

Similarities = treated as sacred animals showing strong cultural and symbolic importance in society and traditions

Differences = Cow's excrement, milk, it is valuable for fertilizer and fuel. While Rac's excrement cannot be used, and Racs in general have high cost of its upkeep, the damage it does to the land, and its habit of destructive rampages

In the Body Ritual of the Nacirema, what is the importance of the body ritual?

The body ritual is important because it reinforces cultural beliefs about the body, cleanliness, health, and social expectations, helping maintain shared values and social order in Nacirema society.

In the Body Ritual of the Nacirema, where is the body ritual performed?

The ritual is preformed at a household shrine, with the more powerful individuals in the society have several shrines in their houses.

In the Body Ritual of the Nacirema, why is the body ritual performed?

The Nacirema see the body as ugly and says it has a natural tendency to debility and disease. These rituals are important to be preformed because it is man's only hope is to avert these characteristics - maintain health, improve appearance, and prevent disease.

In the Body Ritual of the Nacirema, who performs the body ritual and when?

It is prerformed daily body ritual by everyone includes a mouth-rite. Holy-mouth men perform the ritual, preform the ritual twice a year for households. Then from time to time the medicine men come to their clients and jab magically treated needles into their flesh, but this can actually kill people, rather than cure them which is the point of the body ritutal to promote health and prevent disease.