SOF01 - REVISION FINAL EXAM REVISION

Unit 6: Race and Ethnicity

  • Ethnicity: Shared cultural traits and a shared group history.
  • Stereotype:
    • A certain characteristic or expectation is predominant for all members of an identifiable group.
    • Stems from prejudice, an adverse opinion that is formed without knowledge or relevant facts about a person or a group.
  • Majority Group: The social group that holds and exercises the most power.
  • Institutional Discrimination: Acceptable practices that create opportunities and privilege for some and disadvantage and inequality for the remainder.
  • Symbolic Interactionist Theory: Racial inequality is the result of dominant members sharing and distributing their prejudices in social institutions they dominate.
  • Conflict Theory: Competition over control of resources reinforces racial inequalities. Those in control (usually whites) favor other whites and exploit and discriminate against non-whites.
  • Structural Functionalist Theory: Social stability occurs when racial and ethnic groups are assimilated into society.
  • Prejudice: Unjustified or incorrect attitude (usually negative) towards an individual based solely on the individual’s membership of a social group.
  • Race: Pacific people are classified into three main groups: Melanesians, Micronesians, and Polynesians.
  • Multiculturalism: Promotes diversity through the recognition and celebration of separate cultures that co-exist peacefully.
  • Discrimination: To refuse anyone from using the sports facilities on the grounds of their ethnic origins.
  • Racism: A manager doesn’t hire people from visible minorities because his clients prefer being served by whites.

Unit 7: Religion, Society and People of the Pacific

  • Sect: A small and relatively new group. They are a breakaway group that may be in tension with the larger society.
  • Cult: A new religion whose beliefs and practices may differ extensively from other religions.
  • Religion:
    • A system of roles and norms that is organized around the sacred realm and binds people together in a social group.
    • Comprises of beliefs and practices that people develop to help them answer questions about meaning of mankind’s existence.
  • Function of Religion: Influences people to try and attain salvation with a god by removing guilt and bondage.
  • Emile Durkheim: Religion serves as a way to unite members of the group and provide a sense of identity and cohesion.
  • Mecca: Considered a holy place for Islam religion.
  • Islam: Two beliefs associated with Islam are giving to charity and fasting during Ramadan.
  • Judaism: Rabbis are their religious leaders, and their sacred book is called the Torah.
  • Hinduism: A religion that believes in reincarnation.
  • Confucianism: A religion that developed a practical philosophy for life and government.
  • Denomination: Members tend to be from the middle class.
  • Max Weber: Religion is based on the ideology based of predestination and a rational view of world on hard work and abstaining qualities of worldly comforts.
  • Role of Religion in the Pacific:
    • Unifies people in times of crisis
    • Encourages society to resist changes in society that is not accepted in pacific communities
  • Karl Marx: The poor used religion as a means to find comfort in their circumstances that is, suffering and oppression.
  • Emile Durkheim: Studied the use of totemism to understand the relationship between sacred symbols and what they represented.

Unit 3: Culture and Society

  • Real Culture: Refers to actions, behaviors and practices enacted by members of society.
  • Ethnocentrism: The tendency to view the world from the perspective of one’s own ethnic group and the belief that it is in fact the right way to look at the world.
  • Cultural Relativism: We should not judge behavioural norms and values that exist in another culture based on our cultural standards.
  • Subculture: A unique culture shared by a small group of people who are also part of a larger group; a cultural group has its own separate values, practices and beliefs like religion, ethnicity and social or economic status.
  • Counterculture:
    • A type of subculture that rejects some of the larger culture’s norms and values.
    • May actively defy the larger society by developing their own set of rules and norms to live by and sometimes even creating communities that operate outside of the greater society.
  • Ideal Culture: Refers to shared values that are accepted and expressed by a culture or its public norms and values.

Unit 4: Social Stratification and Inequalities

  • Open Stratification System: Mobility is fluid and individuals can move up or down the ladder. An example refers to is a person through acquiring an education and improving his/her social status in society.
  • Closed System: Examples include Apartheid system & Caste system.
  • Closed Stratification System: The monarch system in Tonga.
  • Apartheid System: System of government in place from 1948-1990 which mandated the segregation of each racial groups in South Africa. For example, Black South Africans were required to carry a passbook at all times when travelling.
  • Estate System: A kind of social stratification based on control of land.
  • Blackbirding System: People were either forced or were tricked. Example is people from Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, PNG, Fiji, Kiribati, and Tuvalu were recruited in the 1860s who arrived and worked on slave typed conditions on the plantations in Queensland.
  • Intergenerational Mobility: This type of mobility means that one generation changes its social status in contrast to the preceding generation. This mobility can be upward or downward. For example, a daughter of a taxi driver who earns a degree and goes on to become a successful medical doctor.
  • Social Stratification: Structured inequalities between different groups of people who occupy different social status because of the position that they occupy in the hierarchical system in society. There is an unequal distribution of rights and privileges through the social strata.
  • Characteristics of Social Stratification: Inequalities, ancient, universal, hierarchical.
  • Reasons for Downward Social Mobility:
    • Personal factors such as illness, divorce, or retirement – people not contributing to society and often their social mobility drops.
    • Technological change altering the demand for labour – robots replacing humans at work, and this means loss of employment, wealth and income so social mobility drops
    • Overall economic health – for example, COVID-19 saw people lose their jobs and downward mobility.
  • Factors Contributing to Social Mobility:
    • Motivation
    • Achievements and Failures
    • Migration and Industrialisation

Unit 5: Crime and Deviance

  • Reasons Culture Plays a Role in Perpetuating Violence Against Women:
    • Gender stereotypes
    • Culture of silence
    • Cultural obligations to use physical punishment to ensure conformity with women and children
  • Deviance in Society: Walking with shoes in a holy place like a mosque.
  • Consequence of Breaking Deviant Behavior in a Society: Societal pressure
  • Organized Crime: A crime that is has characteristics of orthodox business, but illegal.
  • Corporate Crime: Bank fraud, environmental pollutions and faulty manufacturing of dangerous products.
  • White Collar Crime: A crime characterized by deceit to obtain or avoid losing money, or to gain personal advantage.
  • Merton’s Strain Theory: Deviance occurs when people either reject the accepted goals or cannot pursue them through socially accepted, or institutionalized means. People adapt to this strain in the following ways: Retreatism, rebellion, ritualism, and innovation.
  • Labeling Theory: If individuals are socially referred to as thugs or gangsters, this can then encourage them to behave in ways associated with the role of thug or gangster.
  • Components of the Criminal Justice System: Law enforcers, court system and corrections system.
  • Incapacitation: To prevent future crime by removing the defendant from society.