SOC 111 Foundations in Sociology

Sociological Imagination

C. Wright Mills' concept that neither individual life nor societal history can be understood without understanding both.

The Real

The real world that exists outside of human understanding, free from social construction like gravity or chemical reactions.

Nomos

Ancient Greek term for customs, laws, values, norms, and traditions—what is considered normal.

Ethnocentrism

Judging other peoples through the normal of your own culture and identifying them as abnormal or wrong.

Racism

Judging other people through the normal of your own body and identifying them as abnormal or wrong.

Racialization

The process of culture where the content of race is applied to a person or group.

René Descartes

Philosopher who attempted to provide a sound scientific method basis from the mind, known for I think therefore I am.

Social Facts

Things produced by people that are historical and require repetition to exist, making up the social or culture.

Protagoras

Sophist teacher who stated that man is the measure of all things, separating understanding from religion.

Ship of Theseus

A philosophy paradox questioning whether an object remains the same after all its original parts have been replaced.

Scientific Racism

The 1800s-1880s view holding that races are valid biological categories producing behavioral differences.

Genetic Variation

Human DNA sequences are 99.5% similar, and average genetic differences between groups are smaller than between individuals.

Terra Nullius

No man's land or virgin territory doctrine used to legitimize colonial dispossession of land.

Doctrine of Discovery

Christian legal principle used to legitimize the dispossession of land and removal of sovereignty from non-Christian peoples.

Social Darwinism

Applying biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to human societies and politics.

Indian Act (1876)

Canadian federal legislation that consolidated laws concerning First Nations and created a socio-legal category of Indian.

Residential Schools

Canadian schools operating from 1840 to 1996 designed to assimilate First Nations children into European culture.

Permit System (1885-1941)

Canadian system that restricted First Nations people from leaving reserves and selling farm goods without permission.

Pass System

A coercive 19th-century Canadian governance system requiring First Nations individuals to carry passes to leave reserves.

Ujamiit (Inuit Disk Numbers)

Government-issued identifying disk tags given to Inuit in the 1940s to replace traditional naming systems for record keeping.

Bagot Commission (1842-44)

Inquiry that established goals for First Nations management, including land centralization and European agricultural training.

Three Sisters

The three main agricultural crops of winter squash, maize, and climbing beans grown by Native American groups.

Zoonotic Transfer

The transmission of diseases from animals to humans, facilitated by high-density city populations.

First Principles

Foundational ideas starting without prior assumptions upon which further decisions and understandings are built.

Herodotus

Ancient Greek historian known as the Father of History who documented different cultures and customs in his work Histories.

Model Villages

Late 19th-century coercive Canadian reserves where agents strictly regulated daily life to prevent assimilation regression.

Captain Al Cohol (1974)

A Northwest Territories government comic book designed to educate Inuit about the dangers of alcohol.

Hymn to Nomos

Ancient text praising celestial law and order as the unchanging baseline of justice and divine stability.

Natural Selection

Charles Darwin's theory that individuals with particular traits are more likely to reproduce, causing gradual change over time.

Forced Enfranchisement

Historical Canadian policy stripping First Nations status for achievements like earning a degree or joining holy orders.

Functionalism

The sociological belief that things within society serve a specific function, heavily influenced by biology.

Dialectical Thinking (Hegel)

The concept that cause and effect is mutual; when A acts on B, B also impacts A.

Collective Consciousness

Shared beliefs, values, and norms that establish what is considered normal within a culture.

Mechanical Solidarity

A type of society where everyone does the same kind of work and shares rigid conformity and repressive justice.

Organic Solidarity

A type of society based on specialized labor and interdependence, featuring restitutive justice.

Anomie

A lack of social regulation and state of normlessness tied to moments of social change.

Law of Three Stages

Comte's theory that society evolves through the theological, metaphysical, and positive stages.

Social Statics

Comte's term for the requirements of social order and the maintenance of society.

Social Dynamics

Comte's term for the determinants and drivers of social change.

Sui Generis Society

The idea that the social is emergent from individual minds but cannot be reduced or studied as only a group of individuals.

Max Weber

German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist known for methodological antipositivism and interpretive sociology.

Verstehen

German term meaning empathetic understanding of human behavior and interpretation of subjective meaning.

Ideal Type

A research tool and conceptual model of a pure or simplified version of a social phenomenon used for comparison.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Weber's work arguing that ascetic Protestant religious values contributed to the rise of early capitalist economic systems.

Iron Cage

Weber's term describing the trap of rationalization, efficiency, and bureaucracy that limits individual freedom.

Traditional Authority

Authority based on long-standing customs, divinity, folklore, or hereditary traditions.

Charismatic Authority

Authority derived from an individual's extraordinary personal charm, appeal, or leadership qualities.

Bureaucratic Authority

Power achieved through specialized knowledge within a rationalized administrative system.

Suicide (1897)

Durkheim's landmark empirical study using statistical indicators to prove that suicide rates are shaped by social facts.

The Division of Labour in Society (1893)

Durkheim's historical study examining the shift from mechanical to organic solidarity in social organization.

Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912)

Durkheim's ethnographic study showing how religious institutions mirror and reinforce the entire society.

Egoism

A state where the individual ego or body is insufficiently constrained by society's collective consciousness.

Functional Rebel

An individual whose non-conformity or rebellion acts as an agent of positive social change.

Sociology of Knowledge

Durkheim's concept examining how social institutions shape the creation, sharing, and content of knowledge.

Sociology of Morality

Durkheim's concept exploring how institutions shape societal understandings of right and wrong.

Carding

Police street check data collection practices involving discretionary stops and institutional knowledge production.

Versaterm

Police record management and database software used to cross-reference and store personal contact information.

Hub Program / Situation Table

A multi-agency collaborative risk-intervention model designed to address individuals at acutely elevated risk.

Modernity

A shorthand term for modern society or industrial civilization characterized by science, capitalism, and the nation-state.

Adam Smith

Scottish economist and philosopher known as the father of capitalism, author of The Wealth of Nations (1776).

Hidden Hand

Adam Smith's concept that individuals pursuing self-interest unintentionally promote collective societal interests through self-regulating markets.

Base and Superstructure

Marx's model where the economic base (means of production and relations) supports the ideological superstructure.

Means of Production

The raw materials, factories, and tools needed to create food, water, shelter, and reproduction.

Social Relations of Production

How people organize themselves and their relationships within the production process.

Bourgeoisie

The capitalist class who own the means of production.

Proletariat

The working class who do not own the means of production and must sell their labour time.

Primitive Accumulation

The historical process of dispossessing people from the commons to create wage labour and capitalist property.

Socially Necessary Labour Time

The labour time required to produce a commodity under normal conditions with average skill and intensity.

Rational Purposeful Action

Weber's term for goal-oriented action utilizing calculated means and ends.

Value-Rational Action

Action guided by a subjective belief in the absolute value of behavior for its own sake, regardless of success.

Affective Action

Non-rational action driven by emotional states, feelings, and impulses.

Traditional Action

Non-rational action guided by customary habits, traditions, and taken-for-granted routines.

Reification

The process of treating social relations and human constructs as if they were natural, objective things outside human control.