SOC 1 - Midterm 1 Study Guide (Flashcards): Fall Quarter 2025

SOC 1 - Midterm 1 Study Guide

There are 15 general topics to organize my information: 

1. Positivism 4. Marx 8. Weber

2. Science     5. Alienation     9. Rationalization

3. Society       6. Exploitation   10. Disenchantment

    7. Capitalism   11. Iron Cage 

      12. Durkheim

          13. Collective Consciousness

          14. Solidarity

          15. Anomie

Key Terms:

1. Positivism

• A philosophical approach that emphasizes the scientific method to study society and understand its funciton

• Issues: 

  • Has the tendency to 

2. Science 

• Developed to understand nature of material reality. (helps us understand how the operates)

3. Society

• A system of interrelationships, informal and formal, that connects people. They’re also enduring over time and couldn’t have existed w/out a degree of common culture (a set of shared values to guide behavior)

4. (Karl) Marx (1818-1883)

• A revolutionary socialist, and sociologist. His ideas are the foundation of modern socialism and communism and had significant impact on social and political theory.

5. Alienation

• The separation of the worker from power where workers may feel from the products of their labor, the production process, and other workers

  • Gives more value to an object than to self

6. Exploitation

• Unfair or unequal treatment of workers. In Marxist terms, this occurs when workers are paid less than the value of what they produce, and the surplus is instead kept as profit for the production company

  • “... the basic conflict has always been between a class of exploiters and a class of the exploited” (Erickson 97) in reference to Marx’ thoughts

7. Capitalism

• An economic system in which goods and services are exchanged for money, which Marx argues will ultimately result in disproportionate distributions of wealth and class division; total anarchy and chaos

8. (Max) Weber (1864-1920)

• “A German sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economist who was one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sciences more generally.” - (Wikipedia)

9. Rationalization

• the declining group of human action around traditional or religious motivations, and the growing organization of human action around principles of efficiency, calculability, and systematic rules, especially in economic life

10. Disenchantement

• Secular (nonreligious), scientific, and bureaucratic forms of understanding, organizing life which replace religious ones. 

  • No more religion/superstition

11. Iron Cage

• A metaphor used to describe the inescapable conditions of modern capitalism, driven by logic of knowledge accumulated; increasingly organized around instrumental and formal-rational systems of control

12. (Emile) Durkheim (1858-1917)

• Was one of the earliest sociologists alongside Marx and Weber; he is considered the father of functionalism and he believed that society functioned around social structures and questioned why society follows these social structures and how they maintain stability in a given society.

13. Collective Consciousness

• The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members a society forms

• A determinate system w/a life of its own. Its independent from the particular conditions of individuals and existed long before and after they came to be members of society.

  • For Ex., an act is cosiderted a crime when it offends the collective consiousness.

14. Solidarity

• A concept that refers to the sense of unity and mutual support among people in a group or society

• There are 2 forms of solidarity:

1. Mechanical Solidarity

• The cohesion of a society based on shared values, beliefs, and lifestyles

2. Organic Solidarity

• A system of special functions built upon individualism and bound through definite relationships.

15. Anomie

• Each role people have in society which creates a functioning society

______________________________________________________________________________

16. Social Inequality

• The general process of a social environment influenced by people creates a system that systemically and socially produces inequality w/in a community. Usually, the inequality stems from certain stereotypes or oppression that benefits or screws over certain groups of people

17. Gender Inequality

• Related to → Gender (Erickson pg. 314-19)

  • “The project of splitting humankind into categories and of arranging those categories into grades began in earnest soon after the expulsion.” (Erickson 314)

  • Gender (“men” and “women”) are the categories we’re sorted into, and men are ranked above women

  • People claim that the idea of men being higher ranked in society than women came from “a higher power”

18. Race Inequality

• Race is a social construct where a group of people are placed into a category, labeled along w/certain stereotypes and assumptions that also lead to differ. types of oppression crossing; this limits a person's true sense of identity over their own lives

• “African Americans are put through a different filtering system” in everyday life, employment, criminal justice, housing market, etc.” (Erickson pg. 313, 374) 

19. Commodity Fetishism

• When a product or commodity is removed from its source and seen only a price in part of a payment. Not an item created by a human.

  • This leads to underpayment of workers to the items they are creating to sell

• Marx suggests that commodity fetishism is a part of the ideological structure of Capitalism, the real underlying exploitative relationships are hidden from view.

20. Distinguish Society from Culture

• Society and culture go hand in hand. Culture is the morale, ideals, and ease of living in a group or community whereas society is an interpretation of those communities as a whole

• Society:

  • A group of people living together in a community w/common traditions, interests, and institutions

• Culture:

  • Represents the beliefs and practices of a group, while society represents the people who share those ideals above. Neither society nor culture could exist w/out the other

21. Young Hegelians

• A group of the “Most radical” people that liked Hegel and his ideals

• Marx was a part of the group

22. Alienation

23. Qualitative vs. Quantitative; Micro vs, Macro

•  Quantitative research

  • Conducts research to answer questions by collecting data and statistics; its something you can qualify

• Qualitative research

  • Info gotten to answer a research question through social research and observation

24. Statistics

• Sociologist use statistics to formulate the basis for their arguments

• They are the result of certain field work

• Front eh stats people can formulate hypotheses about the way people interact w/the world around them

25. Field Work

• Possibly related to → farm workers, migrant (Erickson pg 8, 82, 141, 219, 228)

• Studies collecting empirical evidence of social forces, as promoted by Durkheim

• The observation of people in their natural environments

26. "Tool Kit"

• Involves symbols, rituals, practices, traditions, daily activities, stories, and belief systems that comprise a society's culture and help to shape the behavior of the members of society.

27. Symbolic Interactionism

28. Conflict Model

• Parts people and identities of society are always constantly in conflict w/one another

29.  Functionalism

• The design of an object should be based only on it’s functionality rather than on looks

• There's a structure to society and it functions a specific way

• Ties into structuralism

  • Focuses on contrasts mental concepts; analyzes human behavior, culture, experience, etc

30. Social Capital

• Social capital was physical capital and financial. A person with more money, material possessions, or ownership of property has higher social capital

31. Comparative Historical

32. Cultural Capital

33. Social Reproduction

• The way in which certain beliefs practices, and sounds in speech are reproduced and upheld by our social environment + the society we live in

34. Social change

• Changes in human interactions and relationships that transform cultural and social institution(s)

  • For Ex.: the use of new objects, more religious portrayal in thought or life, social movements etc.

35. Habitus

• Schemes, sensibilities, transposable dispositions, biases, tastes, expectations that shape orientation of mind

  • The way people interact w/and contribute to the social environment around them

36. Socialization

• The process of learning norms (through either following):

  • Through Institutions

1. Institutions

2. School

3. Government

4. Religion

• Groups

1. Sports

2. Friend groups

3. Clubs

• Media

1. News

2. Social Media

3. Television

• Erickson pg. 265, 280, 339 (related to → resocialization)

      22. Heteronormativity

• The base assumption that everyone is straight and acts as such

      23. The Ruling Class

• The server group of people who controls most of an environments caputo and most often benefits from the belittlement of lower classes

• Bourgeois

      24. Controlling Images

• "Patricia collins": 

  • Supported legitimizing existing inequality, justify exploitation, dehumanize and create the "other"

• Propaganda

  • Images or media that is used to control others

  • Media that perpetuates specific gender, racial, or religious stereotypes

  • Paints archetypes

      26. Stratification

• Hierarchical divison

  • Wealth and power

  • Social rank

      27. Differentiation

• A process that a social order people are put into divisional categories of gender, class, race, capabilities, etc

Q1. What is the sociological imagination and what is the view from the 14th floor according to Kai Ericson? Give Examples:

1. The Sociological Imagination (Erickson pg. 25)

   1. Idea started by C. Wright Mills

• “... is the idea that the individual can understand his own experiences and gauge his own fate only by locating himself within his period, and that he can know his chances in life by becoming aware of those of all individuals in his circumstances.” - C. Wright Mills

2. Looking at the individual factors influencing your life

• Race, class, gender, class, socioeconomic status

• Social issues like homelessness, unemployment, addiction, and crime can be examined w/the sociological imagination

2. View from the 14th floor (Erickson pg. 13)

   1. The “high up” vantage point sociologists see the world

   2. Social forces and patterns become clearer when you look at society from a removed perspective, as displayed by the 14th-floor metaphor

   3. “Patterns” and “choreography” become clear

• “There is a pattern in the ways we humans grow, become adults, select occupations, form families, and raise children. There is a pattern in the way we compete for the scarce goods of the world. There is a pattern in the way we make common cause with some of our fellow human being and a pattern in the way we exploit, abuse, and sometimes slaughter others” - Erickson 14

• The same way stars are part of a galaxy are the same way when cells make up an organism. They are unified

Q2. What is the history of sociology and what makes it a science of society? Who is Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Du Bois?:

1. The study of how people interact w/the world around them; the why’s and how’s of society and it functioning

2. Auguste Comte (1798-1857): 

   1. Invented the term “sociology” & started the idea that the social sciences should be a separate branch

3. Karl Marx (1818-1883):

   1. Erickson pg. 94

      1. Studied at Bonn and Berlin

      2. Was reclusive and lonely; believed that society blinds itself to “inconvenient truths” (actual facts) and doesn’t acknowledge social issues, especially the ruling class

   2. Was good friends w/Friedrich Engels

   3. Created the Conflict Theory (Erickson 97)

• CT enthusiasts thought history was a documentation of the class struggle

  • “... the basic conflict has always been between a class of exploiters and class of the exploited” (Erickson 97)

        NOTE #2: The Ultra Wealthy (the exploiters) and the Proletariat

(the working class, the exploited)

4. Wanted to encourage society’s movement from → Socialism to → Communism & thought society would benefit (eventually) lead to a win for the Proletariat, but he didn’t want to rush it

5. Alienation, class consciousness & ideology are major themes in his sociological work

6. Argued/believed class structure/mode of production determines the “character” of society

4. Émile Durkheim (1858-1917):

Erickson pg. 103, 108-11, 115, 117-19 

^ (Not considered #1 b/c no quotes & info stated below were specifically from in these pages)

1. He was interested in forces that brought people together

2. Emphasized empirical (seen/verifiable) evidence and conducted studies to prove social forces

3. Wanted to give a “method and body” to sociology and stressed that it is a science

4. Believed the social order can’t be mapped out w/in a person’s mind, individual people become something completely differ. when they’re part of society, society gives people the “choreography” they act out

5. Durkheim was intrigued by a division of labor and why people participate in it

6. Conscience Collective:

• “The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average citizens of the same society.” - A shared ethos, worldview, a culture

7. Divided history in terms of then/”the horde” to → now/modern times

8. Stated work specialization created “specialized work skills & moral reflexes” like social niches that formed differences between people

9. Functionalism

5. Max Weber (1864-1920):

Erickson pg. 122, 130-32, 135-36  ← (Not considered #1 for the same reasons said above in red)

1. Weber was interested in “ambiguities and subjectivities of social life”

2. He wanted to explain the more nuanced (subtle)/complex aspects of society

3. Overworked himself → he had a nervous collapse at 33 and was only able to work in short, sporadic periods from then on

4. Thought of industrialism as a part of the progression of society needed to be studied objectively

5. He thought of capitalism as a “culture” and wanted to study it over time

6. Thought of the “rationalization (explanation of behavior or attitude w/logical reasons)” of everyday life like a calculation and bureaucracy, these didn’t use to be specialized

7. Weber had noticed a connection between Puritanism/Protestantism and Industrialization

• Spiritual ethos (Puritanism) created the conditions for an economic system (capitalism/industrialization) to take over everyones livelihoods in society

8. He developed a specialized system to look at/categorize “social acts” and “particles” of society 

NOTE: Info F is OPTIONAL

6. W. E. B. Du Boise (1868-1963):

1.  Touches on racial capitalism, and recognition that the black community did not get the capital associated with capitalism. The difference between property vs being property

2. Looking at the settling of suburbs, pointed segregation leading to the creation of urban ghettos

3. “Wages of whiteness” Wages of white workers concerning blacks

4. The social psychology of division is a forced mentality of inferiority

5. Commentary on racial differences

6. Taught other black scholars an intersectional lens on sociology

7. Head of NAACP

• Also the “Head of the African American experience within Sociology (HAAES)” Du Bois and the sociological canon

8. Philideflia Negro:

Questions the use of statistical analysis when it comes to analyzing African 

American experience

Q3. Use sociologists Sherry Turkle and/or Bob Farris to discuss the impact of digital and mobile communication technologies on human behavior (dating, conversations, lurking, subtweeting, sexting, bullying, Social Combat, Sins of Omission):

Bob Farris: Being Thirteen, inside the secret world of teens

1. Dating has become digitalized, people aren’t meeting each other in person

2. Lurking essentially is the act of checking social media multiple times a day

3. Sins of Omission: 

• Purposefully not tagging a person in a post

4. Sub-tweeting:

• Indirectly tweeting something about someone w/out mentioning their name

5. Social Combat:

• Bullying to gain status

6. Social media allows kids to avoid interaction or say things indirectly to each other that they’d never say or do in real life

7. A decline in a sense of conversation, the skill of negotiation, capacity for solitude

8. Rise in:

• Separation anxiety, cancel culture, social combat (bullying to gain status, propelled by group, “the self”, seeking predictability through technology, hidden warfare through subtweets

9. Substitution connection for conversation, losing intimate contact w/virtual communication

10. “Addiction to the image of themselves reflected in eyes of peers.”- Bob Faris documentary

Q4. What is Modern Industrial Capitalism, according to Karl Marx; explain the Communist Manifesto, Dialectical Materialism, alienation, exploitation, class consciousness, bourgeoisie, the proletariat, Communism, etc.:

Erickson pg. 94, 98, 101  ← (Not considered #1 for the same reasons said above in red)

1. Communist Manifesto:

   1. Bourgeois Vs. Proletarians

      1. Bourgeois = the Middle Class

• Resolution and production move history -} production relations

2. Proletarias = Working Class

2. Proletarian slaves to Bourgeoise

3. At first, the birth of proletarians leads to the fall of the outhouse. Industries spread rapidly, creation of property, and intellectual creation of nations. “Epidemic of overproduction”: in the end kills commerce Capitalism inherently is moved forward from big booms and lows

4. From the killing of commerce rose the modern-day working class, the Proletarians:

   1. Laborers

   2. People became a commodity (product)

   3. Turned into a Reactionary class

   4. Live to Work:

      1. Find work only if labor is demanded: demand must be created in an endless cycle

   5. The price of commodities should be equal to the work wage

5. The beginning clash between the two new classes cemented the class relations. As industrialization increased, the proletariat society increased

6. Communism:

• Main Objectives

1. Abolition of private property

2. Progressives or graduated incoming tax

3. No right to inheritance

4. Centralization to credit from the state

5. Equal liability of labor

6. Free education, child labor

• A classless, moneyless, stateless society

1. Local society

• Away from globalism; how society was before capitalism was created

• No free market for basic needs

• Live w/out inhibitions as long as social science and resources are made available

• No taxes

      b. Modern Capitalism:

1. Demand and Supply

   1. Naturally has ups and downs

   2. Causes further inequalities, driving toward revolution which pushes history forward

      c. Thought the “industrial order” created injustices on a massive scale and would be corrected by the move to → socialism to → communism transition

Q5. How would Marx describe the situation of the strikers in the film Harlan Country USA ie: class conflict, class consciousness, and ideology?:

1. He’d describe the strike as a normal course of action

   1. The miners are gaining class consciousness

2. Coal operators (Capitalists) who used law enforcement against the striking workers and the coal miners (Proletariat/workers) backed by union organizers (shaped by the communist party) were both violent and racist

3. Racial and class stereotypes of rural southern people were used to undermine labor’s quest for equality and a living wage. A living wage means a wage that allows a worker to live a basic decent life

4. Gender:

       i. Women were viewed as lesser b/c they were a part of the strike; they were just trying to keep themselves and their families alive. Women were focused more on getting the contract to support their families

5. Race:

       i. White and African-American Miners; an attempt to use race to reunify the strikers/protestors; didn’t work. History has whitewashed the miners

Q6. How did race and gender impact impact the strike and strikers in Harlan County?:

1. As the strikers began, tent residents were set up as new forms of housing to keep strikers on the front lines women changed their entire system of living to support the strikers their children, and the community around them living out of the temporary campsites 

2. When the strikes went off the company tried to hire new recruits. The women prevented them from entering the mines, harassed the workers, or even sabotaged train tricks

   1. Women fundraised, and women played a big role “American women” were seen as decent

NOTE: Many women were on the front lines

3. Miners all worked together for equal work for equal pay but the strike pitted the white workers against the black workers