Sociology Key Concepts: Socialization, Theories, and Research Methods

Achieved status

status that results from your efforts

Agency

acting on your own will

Agents of socialization

individuals, groups, and organizations that influence your sense of self and help you learn the ways of being a member of society

Ascribed status

status assigned by society without regard for the person's unique talents, efforts, characteristics

Audit studies

research methods where trained 'auditors' interact with a real-world system or service to discreetly measure behaviors or discrimination

Beliefs

subjective attitudes or ideas that an individual accepts as true serving as mental models for understanding the world and guiding actions even without full justification or evidence

Boundary work

creating and maintaining symbolic boundaries to limit group membership and access to resources

Bureaucracies

system of government in which important decisions are made by state officials rather than elected officials

Confirmation bias

tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values

Conflict theory

sociological framework suggesting society is characterized by inherent conflict due to competition for limited resources, power, and status

Conspicuous consumption

gaining prestige by exhibiting valuable cultural goods

Content analysis

analysis of existing sources, focusing on key themes and patterns

Cultural appropriation

members of a dominant culture adopting cultural goods of other cultural groups for profit

Cultural capital

non-economic cultural resources attuned to a particular sphere of social life

Culture jamming

efforts to raise awareness around issues of hegemony through informal and often illegal guerilla marketing campaigns

Dependent variable

variable that changes in response to another

Experiments

research method in which the environment is controlled to isolate the effect of one factor or characteristic

Feudalism

land ownership, hierarchical structure of kings, lords, vassals, and serfs bound by reciprocal obligations of land for military service and labor for protection

Folkways

unwritten everyday social customs or informal norms that dictate the expected though not necessarily morally binding behaviors in society, things people do that will not get a strong reaction

Functionalism

(macro sociology) views society as a complex system of interconnected parts, or institutions that work together to promote stability and solidarity

Generalized other

values and norms of the larger culture that guide your actions

Globalization

integration of political and economic systems: has brought about intercultural communication and an exchange of ideas and values

Habitus

a learned disposition, based within the particular social world a person inhabits

Hypothesis

statement about how variables are expected to relate to each other

Independent variable

variable that causes a change in another

Industrial Revolution

the rapid development in the late 1700s and throughout the 1800s of manufacturing and industry, enabled by technological changes in machinery and power sources

Informed consent

consent after knowing all of the information

Me

I=self that is thinking, Me=the one being thought about

Life chances

opportunities to provide yourself with material goods, positive living conditions, and favorable life experiences

Looking-glass self

the way our perception of how others see us affect our sense of self

Macro-sociology

analysis of large-scale social structures and forces

Material culture

physical goods, not necessarily essentials, often placed within an economic system

McDonaldization

Ritzer's term for the increased rationalization and globalization of culture

Micro-sociology

analysis of individual identities and interactions

Mores

the essential or characteristic customs and conventions of a community and people will react strongly if u break them

Non-participant observation

a research method where the researcher observes a subject or group from a distance, without actively participating in their activities, often described as a 'fly on the wall' approach

Norms

rules and expectations by which a group guides the behavior of its members

Participant observation

research method in which researcher spends time among a group, observing and participating in their daily lives

Qualitative data

non-numerical data

Quantitative data

data in the form of numbers that reflect amounts

Reflexivity

process of evaluating our position in the social world the rules we are expected to follow and the resources we have or can acquire

Regulations

formal rules, norms, and mechanisms of social control by which society guides behavior and maintains order

Research ethics

provides moral guideline to protect research participants from harm and ensure and integrity of the research process by adhering to principles like informed consent confidentiality and anonymity

Resocialization

socialization process by which we adopt new norms and identities

Role conflict

inconsistency between two or more roles

Roles

expectations associated with statuses; they shape how the person is supposed to behave and how others are supposed to behave towards them

Self-concept

thoughts and feeling we have of ourselves as physical, social, and emotional beings

Social desirability bias

problems introduced to data when respondents give answers they believe are socially acceptable

Social groups

two or more people with similar values and expectations who interact with one another on a regular basis

Social networks

series of social relationships that link a person directly to other individuals and indirectly to even more people

Social structure

the set of social statuses, roles, groups, networks, and institutions that organize and influence the way people go about their lives

Socialization

experiences that give us an identity and that teach us how to be members of society

Sociological imagination

perspective in which we think about our own personal experience in relation to a larger set of social forces that influence every aspect of our lives

Sociology

the study of how societies are organized and how the organization of a society influences the behavior of people living in it

Status

a person or group's socially determined positions within a larger group or society

Structure of opportunity

the organized framework of relationships, roles, and statuses that shape social interactions and activities

Subcultures

a group that uses alternative symbolic and material culture goods to distinguish themselves from the wider society

Surveys

gathering data by asking people sets of questions

Symbolic culture

aspect of culture that includes beliefs, values, norms, and language

Symbolic interactionism

the study of human interaction by focusing on the words and gestures that people use and the meanings they create about the world : 3 assumptions (people act on meaning, meaning does not depend on object, meanings are not fixed)

Total institutions

institutions that exert near-total control over members' lives and engage in resocialization

Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

observes effects of untreated syphilis in AA men

Values

shared cultural conceptions of what is good, desirable, proper, or important within a society

Charles Horton Cooley

the looking glass SELF, we learn to see ourselves as others see us

Wright Mills

Cant understand the individual without the society and vice versa; looked into how culture, structures, policies, economics, politics, media, popular culture, etc. of the society we live in shape our individual actions/decisions.

Emilie Durkheim

Functionalism, mechanical vs organic solidarity, analogy or the body, self sufficient, social institutions play a key role in keeping a society stable

George Herbert Mead

Developing the I vs Me, self-concept, generalized other.

Harriet Martineau

Translated and spread the work of Auguste Comte who coined the term 'sociology', spoke out against slavery.

Ida Wells Barnett

Documented extent of lynching, debunked idea that black men were lynched for terrible crimes, instead argued that lynching was done to keep African Americans from challenging the white power structure.

Jane Addams

Social work, 1st woman to win Nobel Peace Prize, socially engaged scholarship Hull House helping women and children.

Karl Marx

Studies history, economics, politics, philosophy, and psychology, and spent most of his career writing about capitalism and changing economic relations it brought about. Defined by relations with others, competitive drives social change

Max Weber

Emphasized methodological individualism, the world needed to focus on the individual. Symbolic interactionalism

Pierre Bourdieu

Social structures and individual agency (boundary work, symbolic boundaries, habitus, culture capital).

W.E.B. DuBois

Racism is number 1 problem.

Methodology, Philadelphia Nego and Atlanta group

Triangulation

Not one research method is perfect but multiple can bounce off others and make them stronger.