PA 1 Vocab - Intro to Sociology

Sociology - the scientific and systematic study of groups and group interactions, societies, and social interactions, from small and personal groups to very large groups

Society - a group of people who live in a defined geographic area, who interact with one another, and who share a common culture

Sociologist - study social events, interactions, and patterns, and they develop theories to explain why things work as they do

micro-level - small groups/individual interactions

Macro-level - large groups and societies

Culture - group's shared practices, values, and beliefs (way of life + social rules)

Sociological imagination - pioneered by sociologist C. Wright Mills, awareness of the relationship between a person's behavior and experience and the wider culture that shaped the person's choices and perceptions

Figuration - founded by German sociologist Norbert Elias, the process of simultaneously analyzing the behavior of individuals and the society that shapes that behavior

Positivism - coined by Comte, the scientific study of social patterns

Hypothesis - a testable proposition

Social Solidarity - social ties within a group

Grand theories - attempt to explain large-scale relationships and answer fundamental questions

Paradigms - philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and experiments performed in support of them (pg. 30)

Social Institutions - patterns of beliefs and behaviors focused on meeting social needs, such as government , education, family, religion, and the economy

Function - the part it plays in social life as a whole

Dynamic Equilibrium - all parts work together to maintain stability

Dysfunctions - social processes that have undesirable consequences for the operation of society

Manifest functions - sought for and anticipated

Latent functions - unsought consequences

Dramaturgical analysis - like actors in a play, we switch roles in different situations