Sociology Exam 1

1/27 

• A successful sociologist makes the familiar strange 

What is sociology?  

• Sociology is the study of human society 

• Thinking like a sociologist requires you to reconsider your assumptions about society and question what you have taken for granted so you can better understand the world around you 

Sociological imagination: the ability to connect the most basic, intimate aspects of an individual’s life to seemingly impersonal and remote historical forces 

• Coined by C. Wright Mills, encourages questioning and “making the familiar strange” 

Why go to college: 

• College grads earn about 2.9 million more over their lifetimes than people with only a high school education 

• Informal mechanisms in place, like networks of alumni 

• Everyone has different reasons for going to college vs not. They have different outside influences and upbringings that contribute to that decision 

What is a social institution? 

• Social institution: a complex group of interdependent positions that, together, perform a social role and reproduce themselves over time 

• Also defined in a narrow sense as any institution in society that works to shape the behavior of the groups or people within in 

• Institution can change its name and still retain its identity 

• An institution may try to rebrand a damaged identity 

• Social structures that make up college 

• The legal system 

• Primary and secondary education system 

• The Educational Testing Service and ACT 

• The wage labor market 

• The English language 

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Auguste Comte (1798-1857): believed the best way to understand society is by determining the logic or scientific laws governing human behavior which he called “social physics” 

Positivism: the approach to sociology that emphasizes the scientific method as an approach to studying the objectively observable behavior of individuals irrespective of the meanings those actions have for the subjects themselves 

Harriet Martineau (1802-1976): first person to translate Comte’s written works into English and one of the earliest feminist social scientists 

•  Addressed topics ranging from the education of children to the relationship between the federal and state governments 

Karl Marx (1818-1883): proposed theory of historical materialism, which identifies class conflict as the primary cause of social change 

• Marxism (an ideological alternative to capitalism) derives from his name, and his writings provided the theoretical basis for Communism 

• Class conflict drives social change  

Max Weber (1864-1920): emphasized subjectivity. According to him, to truly understand why people act the way they do, a sociologist must understand the meanings they attach to their actions 

• Verstehen: German for “understanding” the concept comes from Weber and is the basis of interpretive sociology 

• Interpretive sociology: a type of scholarship in which researchers imagine themselves experiencing the life positions of the people they want to understand rather than treating them as objects to be examined 

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917): wanted to understand how society holds together and how modern capitalism and industrialization have transformed the ways people relate to each other 

• Anomie: a sense of aimlessness or despair that arises when we can no longer reasonably expect life to be predictable; too little social regulation; normlessness 

• Positivist sociology: emphasizes the scientific method as an approach to studying the objectively observable behavior of individuals irrespective of the meanings of those actions for the subjects themselves 

George Simmel (1858-1918): proposed a formal sociology based on pure numbers (how a group of 2 is different from a group of 3 or more, regardless of who made up the group) 

• His work was influential in the development of urban sociology and cultural sociology and his work with small-group interactions served as a precedent for later sociologists who came to study micro interactions 

American sociology 

• Early American sociology became prominent at the University of Chicago 

• The “Chicago School” perspective focused on empirical research built on a central belief that people’s behaviors and personalities are shaped by their social and physical environments 

• Robert Park 

• Louis Wirth 

• George Hebert Mead 

• Charles Horton Cooley 

W.E.B. Du Bois (1869-1963): First African American to receive a PhD from Harvard and first sociologist to undertake ethnography in the African American Community 

• Double consciousness: a concept conceived by WEB Du Bois to describe the use of two behavioral scripts, one for moving through the word and the other incorporating the external opinions of prejudiced onlookers 

• These two scripts are constantly maintained by African Americans 

Jane Addams (1860-1935): found Hull House, where the ideas of the Chicago School were put into practice 

• Was a prolific author on both the substance and methodology of community studies, and her work at Hull House was influential in the development of the Chicago School’s theories, yet she was never afforded the same respect as male contemporaries 

Functionalism: the theory that various social institutions and processes in society exist to serve some important function to keep society running (Emile Durkheim) 

• Talcott Parsons (1902-1979): was a leading theorist of functionalism in the mid-twentieth century 

Conflict theory: conflict between competing interests is the basic, animating force of social change and society in general (Karl Marx) 

• Inequality exists as a result of political struggles among different groups (Classes) in a particular society) 

• Although functionalists theorize that inequality is a necessary and beneficial aspect of society, conflict theorists argue that it is unfair and exists at the expense of less powerful groups 

Symbolic interactionism: a micro-level theory in which shared meanings, orientations, and assumptions for the basic motivations behind people’s actions (Max Weber) 

• Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical theory of social interaction laid the groundwork for symbolic interactionism. He used language of theater to describe the social facade we create 

• According to Goffman, we make judgments about class and social status based on details of how people present themselves to others 

Postmodernism: a condition characterized by the questioning of the notion of progress and history, the replacement of narrative with pastiche or imitation of other work in the service of satire or subversion and multiple, perhaps even conflicting, identities resulting from unconnected affiliations 

Social construction: an entity that exists because people behave as if it exists and whose existence is perpetuated as people and social institutions act in accordance with widely agreed-upon formal rules or informal norms of behavior associated with that entity 

Midrange theory: a theory that attempts to explain generalizable patterns of behavior that are neither all-encompassing of society as a whole nor focused on very particular groups or individuals 

• Exists somewhere between macrosociology and microsociology 

Feminist Theory: feminism is a catchall term for many theories that emphasize the experiences of women and a belief that sociology and society in general subordinate women 

• Early feminist theory focused on defining concepts such as sex and gender, and questioning the conventional meanings assigned to these concepts 

Sociology and its cousins 

• History and anthropology tend to focus on particular circumstances than sociology does 

• Psychology and biology examine things on a more micro level than sociology 

• Economics is an entirely quantitative discipline 

• Political science focuses on only one aspect of social relations: power 

Divisions within sociology 

• Microsociology: a branch of sociology that seeks to understand local interactional contexts 

• Microsociology’s methods of choice are usually ethnographic, generally including participant observation and in-depth interviews. 

• Macrosociology: a branch of sociology generally concerned with social dynamics at a higher level of analysis—that is, across the breadth of society 

• Macrosociology’s method is statistical analysis, but also qualitative methods (e.g., historical comparisons and in-depth interviews 

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Culture: the sum of the social categories and concepts we operate within in addition to beliefs, learned behaviors, and practices 

• Culture is everything but the natural environment that surrounds us 

• Culture is always a relative concept; we cannot talk about culture without reference to the global world 

Ethnocentrism: the belief that one’s own culture or group is superior to others, and the tendency to view all other cultures from the perspective of one’s own 

• European colonialism put westerners in contact with non-westerners, and European philosophers began to define culture against what other people did 

• In the 19^th century, Matthew Arnold redefined culture as the pursuit of perfection and broad knowledge of the world in contrast to narrow self-centeredness and material gain 

• Arnold saw culture as the aspiration toward ideal forms 

Nonmaterial culture: values, beliefs, social norms, and ideologies 

Material culture: everything that is a part of our constructed, physical environment, including technology 

Cultural lag: the time gap between the appearance of a new technology and the words and practices that give it meaning 

• Culture feels normal or natural to us, but it is in fact socially produced. It is what we do not notice at home but would spot in a foreign context 

• Culture shock: doubt, confusion, or anxiety arising from immersion in an unfamiliar culture 

• Code switch: to flip fluidly between two or more languages and sets of cultural norms to fit different cultural contexts 

• Language is an important part of culture 

• According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in linguistics, the language we speak directly influences the way we think about and experience the world 

• Concepts like race, gender, class, and inequality are specific to certain cultures 

• In some cases, when opposing concepts come to contact, one will necessarily supplant the other 

• Values: moral beliefs 

• Culture affects us by shaping our values; an example of this process is the belief in the American dream, a concept based more in fiction than reality 

• Norms: how values tell us to behave 

• Ideology: a system of concepts and relationships; an underlying explanation of phenomena in society; a framework of causes and effect 

• Ideology is embedded within an entire series of suppositions, and if you cast aside some of them, they will no longer hold together as a whole 

• Hegemony: a condition by which a dominant group uses its power to elicit the voluntary “consent” of the masses 

• All ideologies are systems of thought that help us organize the world 

• Some ideologies are so entrenched and powerful that we don't even realize their power over us, or that they are ideologies at all. This type of ideology is hegemonic 

• Antonio Gramsci devised the concept of hegemony to explain the rise of fascism and why the Marxist revolution he predicted never came to pass in western Europe 

• Cultural relativism: taking into account the differences across cultures without passing judgment or assigning value 

• Interpreting culture relativism can be difficult when local traditions conflict with universally recognized human rights 

• Cultural scripts: modes of behavior and understanding that are not universal or natural 

• Margaret Mead introduced the idea that cultural scripts shape our notion of gender 

Subculture: the distinct cultural values and behavioral patterns of a particular group in society; a group united by sets of concepts, values, symbols, and shared meanings specific to the members of that group and distinctive enough to distinguish it from others within the same culture and society 

• Unique features different from the dominant culture define subcultures 

Counterculture: a large cultural group defined in opposition to the ideologies, values, and norms of the mainstream culture 

• While subcultures generally do not seek to revolutionize all of society, countercultures do 

• Culture war: a conflict between distinct cultures within a given society 

Socialization: the process by which individuals internalize the values, beliefs, and norms of a given society and learn to function as members of that society 

Reflection theory: the idea that culture is a projection of social structures and relationships into the public sphere, a screen onto which the film of the underlying reality of social structures of a society is projected 

- A Marxist version of reflection theory argues that cultural objects reflect the material labor and production relationships that went into making them 

2/5 

Media: any formats, platforms, or vehicles that carry, present, or communicate information 

• Discussions about media are generally about mass media (books, movies periodicals, Tv, internet) 

• Media and mass media were virtually synonymous until the rise of social media 

• The development of moveable type for the printing press in the 1440s meant that books and periodicals could reach large audiences, becoming the first form of mass media 

• Different forms of media change how we understand the world 

Texts: 

• Textual analysis allows us to critically examine the content of media and its various forms 

• We do not passively receive media; as readers or viewers, we experience texts through the lens of our own critical, interpretive, and analytical processes 

Who decides what the news is? 

• News outlets make decisions on editorial content according to what Herbert Gans called the “unwritten rules of journalism.” These rules reflect values 

• Societies values shapes what counts as “objective”  

Social media 

• Social media: technology that allow users to produce, share, and consume media in a variety of formats 

• Unlike users of mass media, users of social media are the primary providers of the content; that content is stored and accessible for future use 

• Users of social media internalize norms and reinforce them though their own posts 

• Authoritarian governments can limit, control, and even secretly produce content online 

• Media effects can be placed into the following categories according to their duration and intention 

• Short term and deliberate: advertising 

• Long-term and deliberate: a campaign 

• Short-term with unintended effects: violence in the media that encourages violent behavior 

• Long-term with unintended effects: desensitazation to violence, sexual imagery, and other content 

Racism in the media 

• The media can create, reinforce, and perpetuate racist ideologies and stereotypes based on ethnicity, gender, religion, and other factors 

• White people make most of the decisions in the media, making up 86% to 89% of the publishing industry 

• Black media producers and authors rarely get the representation they deserve 

• Ex. Hurricane Katrina. Black survivors described as “looting a grocery store” while white survivors were described as “find bread and soda at a store” 

Sexism in the media 

• Media depictions of women often create highly skewed versions of femininity, glamorizing and perpetuating unrealistic ideals of female beauty, including thinness 

• Antifatness is a relatively recent phenomenon, based in colonialism and racism 

• Feminist media critiques also focus on images of violence against women, especially in advertising 

• There is some resistance. There are pro-women magazines like Ms. Magazine do not accept advertising from huge makeup companies and fashion houses 

• Pro-women magazines are less economically viable than women mainstream magazines 

Corporate control and the censorship of the media 

• As corporate control of the media becomes more and more centralized (owned by fewer and fewer groups), the range of opinions available will decrease 

• Corporate censorship is the act of suppressing information that may reflect negatively on certain companies and/or their affiliates 

• The major corporations that own the backbone of how we interact with the internet have a profit incentive to feed us news/posts that confirm our preexisting desires and beliefs—because we’re more likely to click on such links 

• Consumerism: the steady acquisition of materials possessions, often with the belief that happiness and fulfillment can be achieved 

• Fashion brands, real estate agents, and others are not only selling brands, goods, and possessions; they are also selling a self-image, a lifestyle, and a sense of belonging and self-worth 

Advertising and children 

• Advertising is increasing presence in school 

• The result of such advertising is the creation of a self-sustaining consumer culture among children 

• This culture is different for low-income and high-income families 

• Culture jamming: the act of turning media against themselves 

• This is part of a larger movement against consumer culture and consumerism, based on the notion that advertisements are a form of propaganda 

2/10 

• The most important concepts of social life are learned without anyone teaching us 

Socialization: the process by which individuals internalize the values, beliefs, and norms of a given society and learn to function as a member of that society 

• The way young children are taught in school to raise their hand when they want to speak 

Limits of socialization 

• Socialization cannot explain everything about a person’s development and personality 

• Biology is also a very important component of who a person is 

• It is a combination of the biology and social interactions that makes us who we are 

Human Nature: blend of “organic equipment” (the raw material we are physically made of) and social interaction (the environment which we are raised) 

• Interaction shapes us; without society the human part of human nature would not develop 

The development of the self and other 

• Self: the individual identity of a person as perceived by that same person 

• I: one’s subjective sense of having a consciousness, agency, action, or power 

• Me: the self perceived as an object by the “I” the self as one imagines others perceive one 

• Other: someone or something outside of oneself 

Charles Horton Cooley: developed a theory of the social self 

• Theorized in Human Nature and the Social order that the “self” emerges from our ability to assume the point of view of others and imagine how those others see us 

George Hebert Mead 

• Developed a theory in the 1930’s about how the social self develops over the course of childhood 

• Infants only know the I, but through social interaction they learn about the me and the other 

• Generalized other: an internalized sense of the total expectations of others in a variety of settings—regardless of whether we’ve encountered those people or places before 

Mead’s stages of social development 

Mead on the role of play and games: 

• Mead stressed the importance of imitation, play, and games in helping children recognize one another, distinguish between self and other, and grasp the idea that other people can have multiple roles 

Families: 

• For most individual's, the family is the original source and primary unit of socialization 

• Socialization is a two-way street: information doesn’t always flow from the older to the younger family members 

• Ex: children of immigrants are likely to socialize their parents into the dominant culture of their current country 

• Socialization in the family can be affected by various demographics 

Social class and family socialization 

• Parents of different social classes socialize their children differently 

• Middle-class parents are more likely to value independence and self-direction in their children, whereas working-class parents prioritize obedience to external authority for their children 

School 

• When children enter school, the primary focus of socialization shifts to include peers and teachers 

• Schools teach us basic behavioral norms, and when students resist those norms, parents and teachers may turn to medication 

• Academic learning and the social interactions that students have with teachers and each other suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic 

Peers 

• Peers are particularly strong agents of socialization in adolescence, because adolescence spend a great deal of their free time in the company of their peers 

• Peer groups usually expect some sort of conformity from their members—a phenomenon called peer pressure—and these expectations can either reinforce or contradict messages taught at home 

2/12 

• Adult socialization refers to the ways we are continuously socialized as adults as we take on new roles and jobs 

• Resocialization: the process by which one’s sense of social values, beliefs, and norms are reengineered, often deliberately through intense social processes  

Total institutions: an institution which one is totally immersed and that controls all the basics of day-to-day life (ex. Military, boarding school, college) 

• No barriers exist between the usual sphere of daily life, and all activity occurs in the same place and under the same single authority 

Free write: 

• I have been socialized recently with being in college and joining a sorority. This impacted my sense of self because I've had to grow a lot to be more independent and adapt to make new friends. I have also had to change my routines/daily life to fit with my school/sorority/club schedules. 

Robert Merton: made role theory that provides vocabulary for describing interaction 

• Status: a recognizable social position that an individual occupies 

• Role: the duties and behaviors expected of someone who holds a particular status 

• Role strain: the incompatibility among roles corresponding to a single status 

• Role conflict: the tension caused by competing demands between two or more roles pertaining to different statuses 

Types of statuses 

• Status set: all the statuses one holds simultaneously 

• Ascribed status: a status into which one is born; involuntary status 

• Achieved status: a status into which one enters; voluntary status 

• Master status: one status within a set that stands out or overrides all others 

Gender roles: sets of behavioral norms assumed to accompany one’s status as masculine, feminine, or other 

• Gender theorists argue that the stuses of male/female have distinct power and significance that role theory doesn’t adequately capture 

Dramaturgical theory: the view of social life is essentially a theatrical performance, in which we are all actors on metaphorical stages, with roles, scripts, costumes, and sets 

• Each actor’s goal is to make a positive impression on others 

• How we do this will differ based on the setting 

Face: the esteem in which an individual is held by others 

The social construction of reality 

• Refers to how we assign meanings to objects or ideas through social interactions 

• Something is real, meaningful, or valuable when society tells us it is 

• Symbolic interactionalism: a microlevel theory in which shared meanings, orientations, and assumptions form the basic motivations behind people’s actions 

Ethnomethodology: “methods of the people” studies human interaction focusing on the ways in which we make sense of our world, conveying this understanding to others, and producing shared social order 

• Harold Garfinkel developed a method for studying social interactions, called “breaching experiments’ which involved having collaborators exhibit abnormal or atypical behaviors in social interactions in order to see how people would react 

What has the internet done to our interactions? 

• Social media has created social situations that were never before possible 

• How do we approach new situations? Those that don't have rules, scripts, establish norms? 

• Continuity exists between situations 

• We draw on previous knowledge to anticipate social situations 

• Social media creates an entirely new context 

2/17 - Social Control and Deviance 

Social deviance: any transgression of socially established norms 

Informal defiance: a minor violation of social norms that may or may not be punished 

Crime: the violations of laws enacted by society 

• Crime is a formal deviance 

Social control: mechanisms that create normative compliance in individuals 

• Normative compliance is the act of abiding by society’s norms or simply following the rules of group life 

Formal social sanctions: mechanisms of social control by which rules or laws prohibit deviant criminal behavior 

Informal social sanctions: the usually unexpressed but widely known rules of group membership 

• Informal social sanctions are the unspoken rules of social life 

Functionalism 

• Emile Durkheim, a founder of sociology, took a functionalist approach to explain the existence of social phenomena 

• According to this framework, society is a single complex organism with many internal organs that perform specific tasks to keep the social organism alive and healthy 

• Functionalists look at the various parts of society and the functions they perform 

• Ex. State develops because society needs a decision-making center to help organize and direct social life 

Social cohesion: social bonds; how well people relate to each other and get along on a day-to-day basis 

Mechanical or segmental solidarity: social cohesion based on sameness 

Organic solidarity: social cohesion based on difference and interdependence of the parts 

• Durkheim argues that when individuals commit acts of deviance, they offend the collective conscience (common faith or set of social norms) 

• When this happens society must repair itself 

Types of justice 

• Punitive justice focuses on making violators suffer and thus defines the boundaries of acceptable behavior 

• Rehabilitative justice examines the specific circumstances of the individual transgressors and attempts to find ways to rehabilitate them 

Durkheim’s Normative Theory of Suicide 

• Durkheim wanted to explain the social roots of suicide 

• Believed suicide was an instance of social deviance 

• Social Intergration: the extent to which you are integrated into your social group or community 

• Social regulation: the number of rules guiding your daily life and what you can reasonably expect from the world on a day-to-day basis 

Durkheim’s 5 types of suicide 

• Egoistic suicide: occurs when one is not well integrated into a social group 

• Altruistic suicide: occurs when one experiences too much social integration 

• Anomic suicide: occurs as a result of insufficient social regulation 

• Anomie: a sense of aimlessness or despair that arises when we cannot longer reasonably expect life to be predictable; when we have too little social regulation normlessness 

• Fatalistic suicide: occurs as a result of too much social regulation (doing the same thing every day) 

Robert Merton’s Strain Theory 

• Strain theory: deviance occurs when a society does not give all of its members equal ability to achieve socially accepted goals 

• Also called the “means-ends theory of deviance” 

• When someone fails to recognize and accept either socially appropriate goals or socially appropriate means (or both), they become social deviant 

• Ex. Deciding not to marry and have kids 

• Conformist: an individual who accepts both the socially accepted goals and strategies to achieve those goals 

• Ritualist: individual who rejects socially defined goals but not means. Ex. Do what’s needed to get by (go to class), don't care about how much money they earn as long as they can pay their bills, single 

• Innovator: socially deviant who accept socially acceptable goals but reject socially acceptable means to achieve them. Ex. Making money to pay for life but doing it through selling drugs 

• Retreatist: one who rejects socially acceptable means and goals by completely retreating from, or not participating in society (ex. Off the grid) 

• Rebel: individual who rejects traditional goals and traditional means and wants to alter or destroy the social institutions from which they are alienated (ex. Marxism) 

Conflict theory: extension of Marxist analysis that places class as the central factor in societal dynamics, offers an explanation for why society experiences crime and other forms of deviance 

• Stems from premise that social order results not from solidarity but from the domination of poorer classes by the richer ones 

Symbolic interactionist theories: take a micro view of society, examining the beliefs and assumptions people bring to their everyday interactions to find the causes of deviance 

Labeling theory: belief that individuals subconsciously notice how others see or level them, and their reactions to those labels over time form the basis of their self-identity