Sociology Midterm

Flashcards to study the definitions and sociological thinkers of all time.

The Sociological Imagination

• Written by C. Wright Mills

• Nowadays men feel that their private lives are a series of traps

• They never think outside of theirselves

• Being a spectator of their own lives

What is Sociology according to Mills?

Sociology enables us to grasp history and biography (in tandem) —> small individual actions can influence history while being shaped by past histories.

Personal troubles

According to C. Wright Mills, a personal trouble refers to an individual's private problems that arise from their immediate social setting and personal characteristics. These issues are often seen as individual shortcomings or failures, rather than being connected to larger social structures or institutions.

Public issues

According to Mills, a public issue refers to a matter that affects the general population and involves collective concerns, such as social, political, or economic problems. It is distinct from personal troubles, which are individual in nature. Public issues require collective action and analysis to address them effectively.

Examples of Personal Troubles

1. Financial difficulties: Struggling to make ends meet, facing debt, or experiencing unemployment.

2. Health issues: Dealing with chronic illnesses, mental health challenges, or physical disabilities.

3. Relationship problems: Going through a divorce, experiencing domestic violence, or facing difficulties in maintaining healthy relationships.

4. Educational obstacles: Struggling academically, lacking access to quality education, or facing barriers to educational opportunities.

5. Substance abuse: Battling addiction or dependency on drugs or alcohol.

6. Housing problems: Facing homelessness, living in inadequate or unsafe housing conditions, or struggling with housing affordability.

7. Personal loss: Coping with the death of a loved one, experiencing grief, or going through a traumatic event.

Example of Public Issues

Public issues are topics or problems that affect a large number of people in a society. Here are some examples of public issues:

1. Climate change: The global issue of rising temperatures and its impact on the environment and human well-being.

2. Poverty and inequality: The unequal distribution of wealth and resources, leading to social and economic disparities.

3. Education: Access to quality education, funding for schools, and educational equity.

4. Healthcare: Availability, affordability, and quality of healthcare services for all individuals.

5. Immigration: Policies and debates surrounding the movement of people across national borders.

6. Racial discrimination: Addressing systemic racism and promoting equality for all races and ethnicities.

7. Gender equality: Advocating for equal rights and opportunities for all genders.

Thomas Theorem

“If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences“, hence if it is real to them, they will take real actions in consequence

Reification

Reification refers to the process of treating abstract concepts or ideas as if they were concrete, tangible objects. It involves attributing physical or material characteristics to something that is actually abstract or intangible. This term is commonly used in philosophy, sociology, and psychology to describe the tendency to objectify or concretize abstract concepts.

Socialization

Socialization refers to the process through which individuals acquire the knowledge, skills, values, and behaviors that enable them to function effectively in society. It involves learning and internalizing social norms, customs, and expectations, as well as developing social relationships and identities. Socialization occurs through various agents such as family, peers, schools, and media, and plays a crucial role in shaping an individual's social development and integration into society.

Self-fulfilling Prophecy

• By Robert K Merton

• In the beginning, there is a false definition of a situation

• This definition evokes a new behavior, which manifests the definition into reality.

• In other words, specious validity perpetuated by reign of error

How to fix SFPs (Self-fulfilling Prophecies)

Redefine the originally false proposition

Essentialism

The theory of essentialism posits that objects or concepts have inherent and unchanging qualities that define their true nature. It emphasizes the existence of essential characteristics that are necessary for an object or concept to be what it is. (Think Binaries)

Social Constructivism

Social constructivism emphasizes social interactions and cultural contexts in shaping knowledge. It suggests individuals actively construct knowledge through interactions with others and the environment. This theory highlights the importance of social and cultural factors in learning.

Institutionalization

Institutionalization is the establishment of formal structures, systems, and practices in an organization or society. It involves creating rules, norms, and procedures to guide behavior. It ensures stability and consistency. It is seen in government, education, and social institutions.

The Process of Social Construction

Here is the process by Berger & Luckmann

1. Humans classify experiences/people

2. People used shared language to create and express those classifications (socialization)

3. People act on those classes and institutionalize them

4. It then becomes reified

Spitz’s study of the orphanage

Experiment was the orphans’ and nursery with their mothers in prison. Conditions were bad for the orphans 2/5 died. Nursery babies were overall healthy.

What is “the self“?

Individual reflection on one’s own identity and social position. The social self is the only kind of self, and it is a process of interaction that evolves over time.

Cooley’s Looking Glass Self

The main idea of Cooley's "Looking Glass Self" is that our self-concept is formed through our perception of how others perceive us. It suggests that we develop our sense of self based on the reactions and judgments of others towards us.

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism is a sociological perspective that focuses on how individuals create and interpret symbols in their interactions with others. It emphasizes the role of symbols, language, and social interactions in shaping our understanding of the world and constructing our identities.

Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

According to Goffman, he tried to check himself inside an asylum and tried to get out, and came up with something called the dramaturgical model of social life.

What is the Dramaturgical model of social life?

social interaction is life a performance

• front stage —> to the audience, acting as if people are watching you.

• Back stage —> Not being watched: may behave differently; can truly be themselves and rid of the roles they play.

Mead’s generalized other

Common sense understanding of common expectations around where is appropos. in a specific time and place

social structure

Social structure refers to the organized patterns of relationships, roles, and institutions that shape and govern human societies. It encompasses the way individuals and groups interact, their positions and statuses within society, and the hierarchies and norms that guide their behavior.

Social Boundaries

rules and resources

• rules:formal or informal norms and regulations in a given society

• resources: things we may have or acquire that are valuable or allow us to accomplish goals

Social Status

A person or groups’ social determined position within a large group or society

Social Hierarchies

Ranking systems

What are the two types of social status’?

• Achieved: results, or at least in part, from your effort (occupation, education)

• Ascribed: Assigned to you regardless of your unique talents or efforts: often happens at birth.

Social Status as a Structural Resource

Shapes life chances: opportunities to provide oneself with material goods, positive living conditions

Social Role

Set of expectations about the behavior and attitudes or people who occupy a particular social status. Contribute to social stability by enabling us to anticipate the behavior of others and adapt our own actions accordingly

Social group

>2 people with similar values and expectations who interact with one another on a regular basis.

Social network

Series of social relations that links a person directly to other individuals or indirectly to even more people

Social Institutions

Enduring practices and rules that organize a central domain of social life like family or religion.

Stratification

Categorization of people into layers, can be based on people’s occupation/income/wealth/status

Inequality

the distance between strata; the dispersion or concentration of rewards or assets across multiple individuals in the population

How is inequality produced?

• There are two types of matching processes

  • Roles are attached to reward packages or unequal value

  • People are not equally or randomly allocated to those positions

Master Status

Status that dominates others and thereby determines a person’s general position in society

Functionalist Theory of Stratification

By Davis and Moore (for inequality)

• Inequality is functional in society

• Societies must motivate the best workers and fill the most important and difficult positions

• Stratification is therefore universal, necessary, and inevitable

• Some flaws with theory (up to you)

Conflict Theory of Stratification

• Stratification is not necessarily functional or inevitable; can be exploitative

Marxist Theory of Value

There are two classes of people: bourgeoise and the proletariat. The proletariat generate surplus value for the bourgeoise with almost nothing in return

Income

Income is the money or earnings received by an individual, household, or organization as a result of various economic activities such as employment, investments, or business operations. It is typically measured on a regular basis, like monthly or annually, and serves as a crucial factor in determining one's financial well-being and standard of living.

Wealth

Wealth refers to the accumulation of valuable assets, resources, or possessions that an individual or entity possesses, often measured in terms of monetary value. It can include a wide range of assets such as money, property, investments, and possessions, and is a key indicator of financial prosperity and economic well-being.

Why has inequality increased?

• Takeoff of incomes at the end of distribution

• Decreases in the real value of the minimum wage

• Declining union membership

• Rising returns to higher education

• Rise in contingent labor

Between-group vs. within-group inequality

Large share of growth in disparities is within-group and therefore not accounted for by education or experience w/in occupation wage inequality

• The US has lower redistribution of wealth compared to other developed nations

• Increased healthcare costs

Social Mobility

The ability to move up and down social strata, either within their lifetime (intra) or across generations (inter)

The American Dream

The ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative (mobility is the bedrock of American “meritocracy“).

Upward and Downward Mobility

Moving up or down the income ladder

Absolute vs. Relative Mobility

In summary, absolute mobility looks at whether an individual or group is better off in absolute terms, while relative mobility assesses their position relative to others in society. Both concepts are important in understanding economic mobility and inequality within a society.

Stickiness at the ends

Not everyone gets the same chance —> people at the top and bottom have typically less social mobility

Meritocratic Society

Equality of opportunity vs. equality of condition

• everyone has the same opportunities

• different conditions at the start

Fortune-cookie society

Society based on pure luck of the draw

Class-Stratified Society

The correlation between generational income and class is high (lower social mobility)

Procedural vs. Substantive Fairness

Procedural is meritocratic, and rewards based off of effort and merit, while substantive fairness only cares about the distribution of rewards (class-stratified)

What is America’s situation currently?

Americans have a high belief in meritocracy and believe that they are one. But, the US is actually more of a class-stratified society with relatively low mobility.

Culture

A tool kit or a set of idea and skills that we learn through the environment we live in and apply to practical situations in our own lives.

Pierre Bourdieu: Distinction

Broad theory of the maintenance and production of inequality through elite tastes, associations, and dispositions. In addition to reflecting social position, culture also helps to produce it.

What are the 3 types of capital

According to Bourdieu, there are 3 types of capital:

• Economic capital - immediately and directly convertible to money: home, bank accounts, stocks, bonds

• Social Capital - who you know & access to those resources, may be convertible to economic capital

• Cultural Capital - Your education, tastes, and cultural knowledge and your ability to display sophistication in your speech, manners, and other everyday acts.

  • Your cultural capital, as much as your wealth or connections, confers on you higher or lower status in the eyes of others

What is capital?

According to Adam Smith: “that part of a man’s tock which he expects to afford him revenue“.

According to Bourdieu: “All the goods material and symbolic that present themselves as rare and worthy of being sought after“

For the three different types of capital, what are its three forms

According to Bourdieu, they are:

• Embodied state: bringing it into reality

• Objectified state: High cultural things you own

• Institutionalized state: backed by institutions

Example of cultural capital

• Educational credentials

  • Reflect more than just skills or knowledge, but also reflect certain cultural competencies

Habitus

Habits that in the course of growing up and socializing become so routine we don’t even realize that we are following them

The Working Poor

People who spend 27+ weeks in a year working or looking for work but their incomes fall under the poverty line

• Blacks, Hispanics, and women in general are more likely to be poor

The Poverty Level

1. Measured by how much money is needed to buy a basket of perishable goods multiplied by 3

2. The line is updated for inflation

3. Used for whether or not someone qualifies for social welfare

   1. 14K USD is the poverty line in 2023

Problems with the Poverty Line

1. Different costs depending on socio-economic factors

2. Assumes ⅓ of income goes to food

   1. Doesn’t account for the proportion of income being varied

Why not fix it?

1. Political hot potato

   1. Poverty might “increase” a lot based on a new system of measurement

2. Definitions of problems affects solutions

Living at the Poverty Level

1. Federal poverty line: $14K in 2023

2. Minimum wage in Texas: $7.25/hr

3. Working 40 hours/week, 52 wk/yr = $15K

4. Average one bedroom apartment in Austin = $1536/month

5. In essence, just for necessities, you would need to share an apartment

Why is the Working Class poor?

1. Low earnings 

2. Unemployment

3. Involuntary part time work

Poverty in the US

1. The state of being extremely poor

2. 11.6% of US population is living at or below poverty line in 2023

3. Who is most likely to experience it?

   1. The US

   2. Children: 21.1% live in poverty

   3. People in households headed by single mothers → 36.5%

   4. Low education

   5. Not attached to labor market

   6. Gender is complicated

      1. Women are less poor than men (considering no income)

   7. Disability

   8. Black, Hispanic, Native American

   9. Regional Disparities Geographically

Concentrated Poverty

1. High-poverty neighborhoods are Census tracts where at least 40% of the population is poor

2. Being a poor individual in a poor neighborhood is different than being a poor individual in a non-poor neighborhood

3. Poor people tend to cluster with each other due to the inequality created by liberalism

Absolute vs. Relative Poverty

1. Absolute Poverty → A condition where an individual does not have the financial means to obtain commodities to sustain life

2. Relative Poverty → standard of living compared to economic standards of living within the same surroundings

What is Homelessness?

1. Dept. of HUD defines homelessness as people who fit any of these criteria

   1. Live in a place not meant for human habitation or shelter

   2. Families that have children or unaccompanied youth that have had a lease or ownership interest in a housing unit in the last 2 months

   3. Families that have children or unaccompanied youth that have had two or more moves in the last 60 days, and who are likely to continue to be unstably housed because of disability or multiple other barriers to employment

   4. Individuals who are likely to lose their housing within two weeks

Race

System for classifying people who are believed to share common descent based on perceived physical similarities

Ethnicity

System for classifying people who are believed to share common descent based on cultural similarities (food, language, culture, and shared history)

Racial Formation Theory

Created by Michael Omi and Howard Winant, race is a socially constructed category, and its categories are shaped by social, economic, and political forces

Racial formation

The process through which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed.

The Social Construction of Race

(From Brown) Although the concept of race appeals to biologically-based human characteristics, selection of these particular human features for purposes of racial signification is always and necessarily a social and historical process

Brief History of Race

• Term first used around the 16th century

• Relevant social forces shaping race

  • Colonization

  • Slavery

  • Holocaust

  • Civil Rights Movement

The One-Drop Rule

Enshrined into law, created a small minority of “White“ people. If you have Black blood, you are Black

de jure vs. de facto

by law vs. by practice

The Souls of Black Folk

Written by WEB DuBois, went to Harvard

• “The problem of 20th Century is the problem of the color line“

  • Racial segregation existed after the abolition of slavery

• “Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others.. shut out from their world by a vast veil“

What is double-consciousness

Connecting back to Cooley’s Looking Glass Self, WEB DuBois was speaking of this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, thus resulting in self-marginalization

Which quote by WEB DuBois best connects to The Sociological Imagination by Mills?

“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships“

Who is Kimberlé Crenshaw

• Afro-Am. Civil Rights advocate and critical race scholar

• Noticed that anti-discrimination laws look at race and gender separately (as a single axis)

What is intersectionality?

According to Kimberlé Crenshaw and Pat. Hill Collins, intersectionality is the insight that race, class, gender, (along with other identities) operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive identities, but rather as reciprocally constructing phenomena that in turn shape complex social inequalities.

Feminism

It is the belief that men and women should have equal opportunities, and there were multiple waves:

• First Wave —> Voting Rights and right to own property

• Second Wave —> Women’s autonomy with reproduction

What was the Feminine Mystique?

Written by Betty Friedan, it spoke of the internal struggle many women had within themselves during the 50s. It main demographic was middle class White women, ignoring other intersections of society.

What is sex?

Different biological and physiological characteristics of males and females, such as reproductive organs, chromosomes, and average levels of certain hormones

Primary vs. Secondary Sex Characteristics

Primary: penis, vagina

Secondary: mammaries and beards

What is gender?

Socially-constructed characteristics of women and men, such as norms, rules, and relationships among and between groups of women and men, mascs and femmes.

What did Simone de Beauvoir say about gender?

“One is born, but rather becomes a woman, it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature which is described as feminine“

What does it mean to “do gender“?

Act your gender norms in our gendered society. Examples can be boys playing with trucks vs. girls with dolls

What is heteronormativity?

Assumption that heterosexuality is the norm, and is baked in culture and institutions

Occupational sex segregation

The distribution of people across and within occupations and jobs based on gender.

How do we know many differences between men and women are social constructs?

1. They vary across place

2. They change over time

3. People would not put any effort into showing differences because differences would be so obvious, so natural

What is sexual orientation?

Whether individuals are attracted to members of a different gender than your own, same gender, or both.

Kinsey Scale (1948)

Sexuality is a continuum rather than a binary

A person may be assigned different positions on the scale for different periods of their life.

Some key distinctions about the LGBTQ+

More people say that they have had same-sex experiences than identify as LGBTQ+ difference between desire and behavior

What was concluded in the Tearoom Trade?

According to Laud Humphreys, the majority of men engaging in oral sex with other were “heterosexuals“

What was the “Tearoom Trade“ method?

Humphreys acted as a lookout for people having sexual relations in the bathroom (while recording their license plates). He used those plates to visit their homes (posing as an interviewer) and asked some questions

What are some things wrong with the “Tearoom Trade“

Violation of ethics:

• They were not informed that they were being studied (informal consent)

• And their private information was leaked without their knowledge

What is social support?

Social support is the verbal or non-verbal message with the goal of aiding someone. Social support can be wanted or unwanted