Sociology and Social Sciences Vocabulary

Vocabulary practice flashcards generated from introductory sociology lecture notes covering core concepts, theoretical perspectives, research methodologies, and definitions.

Social Sciences

A branch of academic study that deals with human behavior, society, and social relationships.

Sociology

How scientists study human social relationships, groups, and societies, rooted in the principle of social embeddedness.

Social Embeddedness

The idea that economic, political, and other forms of human behavior are fundamentally shaped by social relationships.

Society

A group of people who live in a distinct community and share many of the same cultural components with each other and self-reproduce over time.

Social Institutions

Complex social forms that reproduce themselves, including government, law, the economy, the family, religion, universities, corporations, and medicine.

Sociological Imagination

Coined by C. Wright Mills, the ability to grasp the relationship between individuals' lives and larger social forces that shape them.

Agency

The ability of individuals and groups to exercise free will and to make social changes on a small or large scale.

Structure

Patterned social arrangements that have effects on agency and are in turn affected by agency.

Critical Thinking

The ability to evaluate claims by using reasoning and evidence.

Positivism

An approach to research that is based on scientific evidence.

Auguste Comte

A French social theorist considered the father of sociology who gave sociology its name and introduced positivism to the study of society.

Norms

Accepted social behaviors and beliefs.

Anomie

A state of normlessness that occurs when people lose touch with the shared rules and values that gave order and meaning to their lives.

Social Facts

The aspects of social life that shape our actions as individuals.

Social Solidarity

The bonds that unite the members of a society.

Collective Consciousness

The common beliefs and values that bind a society together.

Class Conflict

Competition between social classes over wealth and power.

Proletariat

The working class in capitalist society.

Bourgeoisie

The capitalist or property-owning class.

Means of Production

The sites and technology that are used to produce goods.

Materialist Conception of History

The view that material or economic factors have a prime role in determining historical change.

Rationalization

The process by which modes of precise calculations and organization, involving abstract rules and procedures, increasingly come to dominate the social world.

Bureaucracy

Formal organizations characterized by written rules, hierarchical authority, and paid staff intended to promote organizational efficiency.

Ethnographic Study

A research method that uses in-depth and often extended study to describe and analyze a group or communities.

Deductive Reasoning

A process that starts from broad theories about the social world and proceeds to break them down into more specific and testable hypotheses.

Inductive Reasoning

A process that starts from specific data that may focus on a particular community or event and attempts to identify more general theories.

Quantitative Research

Gathers data that can be quantified and often offers insight into broad patterns of social behavior.

Qualitative Research

Characterized by data that cannot be quantified, focusing instead on generating in-depth knowledge of social life, institutions, and processes.

Operational Definition

Describes a concept in such a way that it can be observed and measured.

Spurious Relationship

A correlation between two or more variables caused by another factor.

Material Culture

The physical objects that are created, embraced, or consumed by society that shape people's lives.

Nonmaterial Culture

The abstract creation of human culture including language, ideas, beliefs about behavior, and social practices.

Folkways

Fairly weak norms that are passed down from the past, the violation of which is generally not considered serious within a culture.

Mores

Strongly held norms, the violation of which seriously offends the standards of acceptable conduct of people within a particular culture.

Taboos

Powerful mores, the violation of which is considered serious and even unthinkable within a particular culture.

Ethnocentrism

The act of using a worldview to judge other cultures by standards of our own and regarding our own way of life as normal.

Simulacra

Copies that generate a version of what is real that is separate from reality.

Hyperreality

A condition in which entertainment, info, and communication tech provide experiences more intense and pleasurable than experiences of everyday life.

Double Consciousness

An awareness among Black Americans of themselves as both American and Black, never free of racial stigma.

Structural Functionalism

A theory that seeks to explain social organization and change in terms of the roles performed by different social structures and institutions.

Manifest Functions

The function of a type of social activity that is known and intended by the individuals in the activity.

Latent Functions

Functional consequences that are not intended or recognized by the members of a social system in which they occur.

Symbolic Interactionism

A micro-sociological perspective pointing out that both the individual self and society as a whole are the products of social interactions based on language and other symbols.

Socialization

The lifelong and active process by which people learn the culture of their society and form their sense of identity.

Looking-Glass Self

The concept developed by Charles Horton Cooley that our self-image results from how we interpret other people's views of us.

Primary Groups

Small groups characterized by intense emotional ties, face-to-face interaction, intimacy, and a strong enduring sense of community.

Secondary Groups

Groups that are impersonal and characterized by functional or fleeting relationships.

Total Institution

Institutions that isolate individuals from the rest of society to achieve administrative control over most aspects of their lives.

Resocialization

The process of altering an individual's behavior through control of their environment.

Dramaturgical Approach

Erving Goffman's study of social interactions as if they were governed by the practices of theatrical performances.

Impression Management

Efforts to control how we are perceived by others.

Social Construction

An influential and shared interpretation of reality that will vary across time and space.

Social Closure

The ability of a group to strategically and consciously exclude outsiders from participating in groups or enjoying the group's resources.

Economic Capital

Money and material that can be used to access goods and services.

Social Capital

The personal connections and networks that enable people to accomplish their goals and extend their influence.

Cultural Capital

Wealth in the form of knowledge, ideas, verbal skills, and ways of thinking and behaving.

Habitus

The internalization of objective probabilities and subsequent expression of those probabilities as choices.

Deviance

Any attitude, behavior, belief, or condition that violates cultural norms or social laws and results in disapproval, hostility, or sanctions if known.

Structural Strain Theory

In Merton's reformation of Durkheim's functionalist theory, a form of anomie that occurs when a gap exists between the culturally defined goals of society and the means available to achieve those goals.

Labeling Theory

A symbolic interactionist approach holding that deviant behavior is a product of the labels people attach to certain types of behaviors.

Differential Association Theory

The theory that deviant and criminal behavior is learned and results from regular exposure to activities favored to acting in ways that are deviant or criminal.

Biological Essentialism

The view that differences between men and women are natural and inevitable consequences of intrinsic biological natures.

Misogyny

Hatred of women.