sociology midterm 1 vocab

the sociological imagination

our personal troubles are linked to public issues, our biography is linked to history

social structure

the systems, institutions, norms, and hierarchies that shape and constrain what people can do (public issues)

individual agency

a person’s capacity to act independently determine their own fate (personal troubles)

redlining

a government policy that denies financial services to residents of specific neighborhoods, typically based on their racial or ethnic makeup, rather than individual creditworthiness

human capital

children as investments: minimizing risks, maximizing returns so basically gen z childhood designed around increasing one’s future employability by outcompeting peers

zero tolerance policies

discipline policy that mandates automatic, predetermined punishments (suspension or expulsion) for a rule violation

school to prison pipeline

cops in schools comes with an increase likelihood students get arrested and enter the criminal justice system

higher education as a public good

vision: primary benefits of higher education are collective in nature

support: costs of higher education should be borne by the whole population through taxes

higher education as a private commodity

vision: primary benefits of higher education are individual in nature

support: costs of higher education should be borne by the families that choose to send kids to college

student debt**

cost of education is high so these schools get paid

social infrastructure

the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities needed to foster meaningful human interactions, connections, support, and collaboration

hostile architecture

defends a space from potential misuse, discourages loitering, deters homeless people from staying

third places

social environments that are not home or work but rather sites of community, conversation, and belonging

privately owned third spaces

coffee shops, bars, diners, bookstores

luddites

a group of people against the way technology degraded their lives

the lamp club

a group of people telling others to stop using technology

exploitation

process through which a capitalist extracts surplus value from workers, inevitable part of the wage labor system

alienation

human experience of labor under capitalism; sense of meaningless and estrangement when working a job

religion

creates a collective identity, provides a set of transcendent moral meanings, involves sacred objects and symbols, revolves around emotional ritual practices, so facilitates a social cohesion

hype culture**

brain share culture

taylorism

a system of labor management that aims to make work maximally efficient by scientifically analyzing and controlling how tasks are performed

social media algorithms

feeding the beast, metricized comparisons, toxic audiences

wage labor systems

a worker sells their labor to an employer in exchange for a set amount of money under a contract

labor union

an organization of workers who join together to bargain collectively with their employer over wages and working conditions, and to represent their shared interests at work and in politics

collective bargaining

when employees bargain together, making collective demands, they have more power