Sociology Lecture Flashcards

These vocabulary flashcards cover key sociological concepts, theories, and terms from the lecture notes, including social facts, interactionism, gender inequality, and class-based parenting styles.

Social facts

Products of human interaction with persuasive or coercive power that exist externally to any individual.

Agency

The power we have as individuals.

Social reproduction

Institutionally reinforced ideas that work to maintain existing social structure through cultural advantages and routine practices.

Sociological sympathy

The skill of understanding others as they understand themselves to avoid bias in study.

Social patterns

Explainable and foreseeable similarities and differences among people influenced by their social conditions.

Sociological theory

Empirically based explanations and predictions about relationships between social facts.

Me (Sociological Theory of the Self)

The object of thought; the identity we see in the mirror.

I (Sociological Theory of the Self)

The subject of thought; the judging, monitoring, and impressionable entity that feels pride or embarrassment.

Theory of mind

The recognition that other minds exist, followed by a realization that we can try to imagine others’ mental states.

Looking-glass self

A self that emerges as a consequence of seeing ourselves as we think other people see us.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

A phenomenon where people believe in something that becomes true, even if it was not originally true.

Specific others

Imagined members of social groups that influence an individual's self-concept.

Generalized others

Types of people categorized with a degree of specificity, such as musicians, teens, or dog people.

Sociological imagination

The ability to connect individual, personal experiences to broader historical and social forces (C. Wright Mills).

Inverted quarantine

An individualized attempt to avoid environmental harm through personal consumption, focusing on self-protection rather than fixing the cause.

Socialization

The process where we become members of our cultures and subcultures through beliefs, values, and norms.

Self socialization

Active efforts by an individual to ensure they are culturally competent members of their culture.

Social network analysis

A research method involving the mapping of social ties and the exchanges between them.

Homophily

The tendency to connect with others who are similar to us.

Cultural objects

Items given symbolic meaning or that serve a cultural purpose.

Inheritance theory

The idea of parallel biological and cultural evolution where genetics influence culture.

Culture-as-value thesis

Culturally specific moralities that guide our feelings about right and wrong.

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one’s own culture is superior to others.

Social construct

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

Binaries

Social constructs consisting of categories viewed as opposites, such as good and evil or friends and enemies.

Anomie

A societal condition of normlessness, often caused by rapid social change rendering old norms obsolete.

Imagined communities

The concept that a community is abstract and exists in the mind because most members do not know or associate with each other.

Stigma

A personal attribute that is widely devalued by members of one’s society.

Controlling images

Pervasive negative stereotypes that serve to justify or uphold inequality.

Prejudice

Attitudinal bias against individuals based on their membership in a social group.

Status beliefs

Collectively shared ideas about which social groups are more or less deserving of esteem.

Social capital

Actual or potential resources linked to long-standing social networks and group memberships.

Cultural capital

Knowledge, skills, and cultivation considered normal or valuable by society; exists in embodied, objectified, and institutionalized forms.

Concerted cultivation

A middle-class parenting style where children's lives are filled with organized activities to foster cognitive and social skills.

Symbolic interactionism

The theory that social reality is the meaning we give to behavior, arising and evolving via interaction.

Impression management

Efforts to control how others perceive us.

Dramaturgy

Erving Goffman's practice of viewing social life as a series of performances based on the constraints of roles.

Folkways

Loosely enforced social norms.

Mores

Tightly enforced social norms that carry moral significance.

Taboos

Social prohibitions so strong that the thought of violating them can be sickening.

White space

Spaces where Black people are not expected, as part of social power and interaction (Elijah Anderson).

Androcentrism

The production of unjust outcomes for people who perform femininity.

Doing gender

The concept that gender is a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment achieved through interaction.

Chilly climate

A classroom environment that is unwelcoming for women, where participation is discouraged through subtle interactions.

Heteronormative

Promoting heterosexuality as the only or preferred sexual identity, making other desires invisible or inferior.

Hegemonic masculinity

The form of masculinity that is most widely admired and rewarded in a given culture.

Second shift

The unpaid work of housekeeping and childcare that family members do after returning from paid jobs.

Time-use diary

A research method where participants self-report activities at regular intervals over at least $24$ hours.

Ideal worker norm

The idea that employees should devote themselves wholly to their jobs without family distractions.

Shared division of labor

An arrangement where both partners do an equal share of paid and unpaid work.

Ideology of intensive motherhood

The idea that children require concentrated maternal investment.

Feminization of poverty

The concentration of women and non-conforming men at the bottom of the income scale.

Glass escalator

An invisible ride to the top offered to men in female-dominated occupations.

Androcentric pay scale

A positive correlation between the number of men in an occupation relative to women and the wages paid.

Care work

Work involving face-to-face caretaking of physical, emotional, and educational needs.

Male flight

A phenomenon where men abandon an activity when women start adopting it.

Stalled revolution

A sweeping change in gender relations that started but has yet to be fully realized.

Freedom/power paradox

A situation where women have more freedom than men but less power, while men have more power but less freedom.