SOCI - 225 FINAL

Achievement gap:

a persistent and significant disparity in academic performance between different groups of students.

Tracking:

assigning students to specific educational programs and classes on the basis of test scores, previous grades, or perceived ability. 

Hidden Curriculum:

school practices that transmit nonacademic knowledge, values, attitudes, norms, and beliefs. 

Credentialism:

an emphasis on certificates or degrees to show that people have certain skills, educational, attainment levels, or job qualifications.

Religion (how do sociologists define and study it?):

a social institution that involves shared beliefs, values, and practices related to the supernatural.

Sacred:

anything that people see as awe-inspiring, supernatural, holy, and not part of the natural world.

Profane:

 the ordinary and everyday elements of life that aren’t related to religion

Beliefs:

the acceptance or conviction that certain statements or propositions are true or real. They often involve convictions about the nature of existence, the divine, morality, and the meaning of life. 

Rituals:

 formalized, symbolic actions or ceremonies that are often performed in a prescribed manner. They are repeated, patterned behaviors that hold cultural or religious significance. 

Church:

large established religious group that has strong ties to mainstream society.

Sect:

a religious group that has broken away from established religion. 

Protestant Ethic:

Weber argued that these values, when combined, created a mindset that was conducive to the development of capitalism. 

Power:

the ability of a person or group to influence others, even if they resist.

Force:

involves the use of physical strength or coercion to make someone comply with a particular action or command. 

Authority:

the legitimate use of power. 

Capitalism:

an economic system based on the private ownership of property and the means of production. 

Socialism:

an economic system based on the public ownership of the production of goods and services.

Communism:

a political and economic system in which property is communally owned and all people are considered equal. 

Mixed Economies:

economic system that incorporates elements of both market and planned or command economies. In this economy, the government and the private sector coexist and play roles in economic decision-making, resource allocation, and the production and distribution of goods and services.

Democracy:

a political system in which, ideally, citizens have control over the state and its actions.

Monarchy:

power is based on heredity and passes from generation to generation.

Oligarchy:

form of government or social structure in which power and influence are concentrated in the hands of a small, privileged, and often wealthy group of individuals or families. 

Totalitarianism:

the government controls almost every aspect of people’s lives.

Power Elite (C. Wright Mills):

a small group of influential people who make the nation’s major political decisions. 

Social epidemiology (including incidence and prevalence):

examines how societal factors affect the distribution of disease within a population. 

Sick role:

a social role that excuses people from normal obligations because of illness.

Medical-industrial complex:

a network of business enterprises that influences medicine and health care.

Medicalization:

a process that defines a nonmedical condition or behavior as an illness, disorder, or disease that requires medical treatment.

Stratification:

a society’s ranking of people based on their access to valued resources such as wealth, power, and prestige.

Social Class (including U.S. breakdown):

people who have a similar standing or rank in a society based on wealth, education, power, prestige, and other valued resources.

Social Mobility:

movement from one social class to another.

Intragenerational Mobility:

movement up or down a social class over one’s lifetime.

Intergenerational Mobility:

movement up or down a social class over 2 or more generations. 

Income:

the money a person receives, usually through wages or salaries, but can also include other earnings. 

Wealth:

economic assets that a person or family owns.

Working Poor:

people who work at least 27 weeks a year but whose wages fall below the official poverty level.

Event Poverty:

when a family falls below the poverty line because of the loss of a job, death, disability, pregnancy, or desertion of a spouse 

Socioeconomic Status (SES)?:

composite measure that reflects an individual's or a family's position within the social and economic structure. Includes: income, education, wealth, location, occupation. 

Davis-Moore thesis:

suggests that social stratification serves a beneficial function in society. According to this thesis, social inequality is not only inevitable but also necessary for the smooth functioning of society. 

Conflict perspective:

views social stratification as a result of inherent conflicts between different social classes.

Sex:

the biological characteristics with which we are born.

Gender:

learned attitudes and behaviors that characterize women and men.

Intersexual:

people whose sex at birth isn't clearly either male or female.

Sexual identity:

an awareness of ourselves as male or female and how we express our sexual values, attitudes, and feelings.

Sexual Orientation:

a preference for sexual partners of the same sex, opposite sex, of both sexes, or neither.

Gender Identity:

a perception of oneself as either masculine or feminine.

Gender policing:

enforcement or imposition of societal norms and expectations related to gender expression and behavior.

Sexual double standard:

code that permits greater sexual freedom for men than women.

“The Second Shift”:

domestic responsibilities and child-care after work

Hostile sexism:

involves overtly negative attitudes, beliefs, and stereotypes about women. 

Benevolent sexism:

attitudes and beliefs that may seem positive or protective toward women but, in reality, perpetuate gender stereotypes and contribute to the maintenance of traditional gender roles.

Gender pay/wage gap:

the difference between men’s and women’s earnings.

Glass Ceiling:

invisible or perceived barrier that prevents certain groups, particularly women and minorities, from reaching higher levels of leadership and advancement in their careers, despite their qualifications and achievements. 

Glass Escalator:

phenomenon where men in female-dominated professions, particularly those traditionally associated with women, tend to experience faster career advancement and promotions compared to their female counterparts. 

Race:

people who share visible physical characteristics that members of a society consider socially important. 

Ethnicity:

people who identify with a common national origin or cultural heritage.

Minority group:

people who may be treated differently and unequally because of their physical, cultural, or other characteristics.

Assimilation:

conforming to the dominant group’s culture, and intermarrying with that group.

Racism:

beliefs that one’s own racial group is inherently superior to other groups.

Prejudice:

an attitude that prejudges people, usually in a negative way

Discrimination:

behavior that treats people unequally because of some characteristics.

Institutional Discrimination:

unequal treatment because of a society’s everyday laws, policies, practices, and customs. 

De jure segregation / De facto segregation:

unequal access to high-quality schooling.

Racial steering:

a practice in which real estate brokers refuse to show houses outside a specific areas to minority buyers 

Contact hypothesis:

the more people get to know members of a minority group personally, the less likely they are to be prejudiced against that group.

Social control (informal and formal):

the techniques and strategies that regulate people’s behavior in society.

Informal Social Control:

we learn and internalize during childhood.

Formal Social Control:

regulates social behavior, exists outside of the individual.

Stigma (Goffman):

a negative label that devalues a person and changes her or his self-concept and social identity. 

Deviance:

a violation of social norms

Crime:

a violation of society’s formal laws.

 Differential Association Theory (Sutherland):

asserts that people learn deviance through interaction, especially with significant others.

Strain Theory (a.k.a. – Anomie; Merton’s Approach & Types):

people may engage in deviant behavior when they experience a conflict between goals and the means available to obtain the goals. 

Chambliss’ Saints and Roughnecks study:

labeling theory:posits that society’s reaction to behavior is a major factor in defining oneself or others as deviant.

Public-Order (a.k.a. Victimless) Crimes:

illegal acts that have no direct victim.

Recidivism:

the tendency of a person who has been involved in the criminal justice system to reoffend or engage in further criminal behavior after being released from imprisonment or completing a sentence.