Sociological Concepts, Health Disparities, and Systemic Inequality

Flashcards covering core sociological concepts, institutional inequality, race, health models, and assigned readings.

Institutional Inequality (The Valley of the Nine Families)

The reproduction of inequality over generations as dominant groups establish system rules that normalize their unfair advantage and make exploitation appear natural.

Rules of the Game (Schwalbe)

Laws, land ownership systems, and trade terms established by those in power to protect their advantage and maintain status without needing constant physical force.

Legitimization and Socialization (The Valley of the Nine Families)

The process through which disenfranchised groups come to accept an unequal system as 'just the way things are,' obscuring the structural roots of their poverty.

Social Autopsy (Klinenberg)

A sociological examination of natural disasters revealing how urban degradation, fear, institutional isolation, and neighborhood neglect combine to create fatal outcomes for vulnerable populations.

1995 Chicago Heat Wave (Klinenberg)

An extreme weather event resulting in over 700 deaths that were concentrated among elderly, poor, and Black residents due to structural isolation and neighborhood decay.

Statistics as Social Constructs (Best)

The concept that numerical data and statistics are not neutral facts, but social products reflecting the specific goals, methods, and biases of the people who construct them.

Hookup Culture (Wade)

An institutionalized college social script prioritizing casual stoicism, alcohol-driven encounters, and strict emotional detachment, which often causes harm and reproduces inequality.

Strategically Ambiguous Language (Wade)

Vague phrasing (such as saying 'we hooked up') used by students to describe sexual experiences to prevent emotional vulnerability and avoid breaking the casual norms of hookup culture.

Misrecognition (Rios)

The process in which authority figures (such as police, teachers, and store clerks) interpret marginalized youth's protective mannerisms, cultural expressions, or attempts to demand respect as deviant or criminal.

Resistance Identities (Rios)

Identities formed in response to pervasive stigma and institutional oppression, where individuals intentionally embrace and display behaviors labeled as deviant to assert dignity and self-preservation.

The Bag of Chips Theft (Rios)

An act by Mike who stole chips after feeling humiliated and treated like a criminal by a store owner despite trying to act respectfully, serving as an assertion of dignity against misrecognition.

Human Enhancement Technologies (Fahmy)

Emerging scientific developments (such as gene editing and brain implants) that highly religious individuals frequently view with skepticism or caution as meddling with divine creation.

Religious Fasting Practices (Fahmy)

Ritual practices that are not universal to all religions and that vary significantly based on age, health status, geographic location, and devotion even within observing faiths (such as Islam, Catholicism, and Judaism).

Queer Recruitment Panics (Brown-Saracino and Compton)

Periodic moral panics asserting that rising LGBTQ+ identification among youth is an artificial trend or grooming campaign, rather than the result of shifting survey measures and reduced social stigma.

Welfare Cliffs (Freeman and Dodson)

Sharp policy thresholds where a small hourly wage increase leads to an abrupt, complete loss of public safety-net benefits that exceeds the financial value of the raise.

Secondary Caretaking Labor (Freeman and Dodson)

Uncompensated domestic and childcare responsibilities assigned to older daughters in low-income families, enabling parents to work but disrupting the daughters' education and perpetuating poverty.

Reclaiming Race (Morning)

The sociological perspective demonstrating that race is not a fixed biological or genetic reality, but a flexible social construct adapted historically to maintain social and economic boundaries.

American Apartheid (Massey and Denton)

The demonstration that U.S. residential segregation stems from institutionalized federal policies and discriminatory real estate practices rather than natural individual preferences.

Redlining

A historical federal rating policy that color-coded neighborhoods to deny federally backed mortgages and financial investments to Black communities.

Racial Steering and Blockbusting

Historical and ongoing discriminatory banking and realtor practices that direct homebuyers to specific neighborhoods based on race, reinforcing residential segregation.

Medical Model of Health

A framework that explains illness through biological pathology, physiological mechanisms, individual diagnosis, and pharmacological or surgical treatments.

Sociological Model of Health

A framework examining how social determinants (such as class, race, income, environment, and public policy) systematically shape exposure to disease risks and access to care.

Health-Wealth Gradient

The direct, linear relationship wherein individuals positioned higher on the socioeconomic ladder consistently experience lower chronic stress, better overall health, and longer lifespans.

Food Deserts

Urban or rural areas lacking accessible, affordable fresh produce, which structurally drives reliance on cheap, calorie-dense processed foods and contributes to obesity disparities.

Thinking Sociologically

The practice of looking beyond individual explanations to examine how social structures, institutions, and historical power dynamics shape human behavior, linking personal troubles to public issues.

Systematic Research

The empirical gathering and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data to test theories and uncover social patterns, guarding against personal bias and selective observation.

Correlation

A statistical relationship in which two variables change or vary together without implying that one causes the other.

Causation

A relationship where a change in one variable directly produces a change in another, established through empirical correlation, temporal precedence, and non-spuriousness.

Race

A social categorization system based on perceived physical traits (such as skin tone or hair texture) created historically to establish and justify social hierarchies.

Ethnicity

A social identity based on shared cultural characteristics, including ancestry, language, nationality, traditions, and cultural heritage.

Sex (Biological Sex)

A classification based on biological and physiological traits, such as physical anatomy, reproductive organs, and chromosomes.

Gender

The socially learned meanings, roles, behaviors, expressions, and cultural expectations assigned to biological sex classifications.

Sexual Orientation

An individual's enduring pattern of romantic, emotional, or sexual attraction to other people (such as heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual, or asexual).

Occupational Sex Segregation

The distribution of men and women into distinct job categories, driven by gendered workplace cultures, implicit bias, the motherhood penalty, and unequal domestic burdens.

Intersectionality (Crenshaw)

A theoretical framework analyzing how overlapping social categories (such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability) interact to produce distinct systems of discrimination or privilege.