UCSP L1.docx

• Identity is the distinctive characteristic that defines an individual or is shared by those belonging to a particular group.
• Identity can also change over the course of a person’s lifetime. It is continuously shaped and reshaped through the passage of time as well as the overall context of one’s life cycle.

• Variation refers to the degree of dispersion, diversity, or inequality in a distribution: the extent to which observations of an attribute are similar to or different from one another.
• Variation is, in fact, inherent in every living species. It is the result of fundamental biological and environmental processes, and it is an important trait in ensuring the vitality of species, their ability to adapt to changing environments, and even their very survival.

• Cultural variation refers to the rich diversity in social practices that different cultures exhibit around the world. 

• Nationality is the identity that is tied to being part of a nation or country; a group of people who share the same history traditions and language and who inhabit a particular territory delineated by a political border and controlled by a government.
• It can be acquired by being born in a country or by a process of legal applications called naturalization.

• Within a nation are smaller cultural groups that share specific environments, traditions, and histories that are not subscribed to by a mainstream culture
• Ethnicity - refers to cultural factors, including nationality, regional culture, ancestry, and language.
• Race refers to a person’s physical characteristics, such as bone structure and skin, hair, or eye color.

• Your RACE is determined by how you look while your ETHNICITY is determined based on the social and cultural groups you belong to. 
• You can have more than one ethnicity, but you are said to have one race, even if it’s a mixed race.

• It includes categories of gender, socioeconomic class (social class and economic status), political identity and religion.

Refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviors activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women.

It refers to the biological characteristics of humans such as male and female.

• Relating to or characterized by sexual or romantic attraction between people of the opposite sex.
• The quality or characteristic of being romantically, and sexually attracted to the opposite sex or gender.
• Men – Women
• Women – Men

• Sexual interest in and attraction to members of one’s own sex.
• The term gay is frequently used as a synonym for homosexual.
• Female homosexuality is often referred to as lesbianism.

• Sexual or romantic attraction to people of one’s same-sex is often used to refer to men only.

• Relating to a woman who is sexually attracted to other women.
• Used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexuality.

• Characterized by sexual or romantic attraction to people of one’s same-sex and of the opposite sex.
• Referred to romantic, emotional, or sexual attraction to two, and no more than two genders, specifically men and women.

• Sexual attraction to multiple, but not all, genders.
• A polysexual person is characterized by many kinds of sexuality.
• A person of any gender that is attracted to multiple genders, but not all.

• A person whose gender identity differs from the sex the person had or was identified as having birth.
• Transgender people say they were assigned a sex that isn’t true to who they are.
• It isn’t about surgery, sexual orientation, or even how someone dresses, it’s how they feel.

• Someone who’s asexual experiences little to no sexual attraction.
• Asexuals still have romantic attractions-identifying themselves as straight, gay, or bisexual romantic form committed relationships and value all the non-sexual benefits of partnership that sexual individuals enjoy. Minus the sex.

• Sexual or romantic attraction that is not limited to people of a particular gender identity or sexual orientation.
• Pansexual people are attracted to all kinds of people, regardless of their gender, sex, or presentation.
• Not solely homosexual or heterosexual.

• A person who does not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth and wishes, whether successful or not, to realign their gender and their sex through the use of medical intervention.
• Historically and medically, the term transsexual was used to indicate a difference between one’s gender identity and sex assigned birth.

---------Socio Economic Class---------

• The concept of socioeconomic class varies between societies as the ideas associated with being poor or rich differ based on the collective experiences of individuals.

• refers to a group of people with similar levels of wealth, influence, and status. Sociologists typically use three methods to determine social class:

• The lower class is typified by poverty, homelessness, and unemployment.
• People of this class, few of whom have finished high school, suffer from a lack of medical care, adequate housing and food, decent clothing, safety, and vocational training.

• The middle class is the “sandwich” class.
• These white-collar workers have more money than those below them on the “social ladder,” but less than those above them.
• They are divided into two levels according to wealth, education, and prestige:

1. The lower middle class is often made up of less educated people with lower incomes, such as managers, small business owners, teachers, and secretaries.
2. The upper middle class is often made up of highly educated business and professional people with high incomes, such as doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, and CEOs.

- The working class is those minimally educated people who engage in “manual labor” with little or no prestige.

1. Unskilled workers in the class—dishwashers, cashiers, maids, and waitresses—usually are underpaid and have no opportunity for career advancement. They are often called the working poor.
2. Skilled workers in this class—carpenters, plumbers, and electricians—are often called blue-collar workers.

• They may make more money than workers in the middle class—secretaries, teachers, and computer technicians; however, their jobs are usually more physically taxing, and in some cases quite dangerous.

• Both groups have more money than they could possibly spend, which leaves them with much leisure time for cultivating a variety of interests.
• They live in exclusive neighborhoods, gather at expensive social clubs, and send their children to the finest schools. As might be expected, they also exercise a great deal of influence and power both nationally and globally.

1. The lower‐upper class includes those with “new money,” or money made from investments, business ventures, and so forth.
2. The upper‐upper class includes those aristocratic and “high‐society” families with “old money” who have been rich for generations.

-----Global North VS Global South----

NOTE: The north-south divide does not mean a division along the EQUATOR

• refers to the political and economically advanced societies in the world.
• Example: USA, Japan, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, South Korea, and United Kingdom

• refers to the countries whose political and economic indicators are within the developing category.
• Example: Africa and Philippines

• International organization affiliated with the United Nations (UN) and designed to finance projects that enhance the economic development of member states. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the bank is the largest source of financial assistance to developing countries.

• is a social category referring to the set of attitudes and practices that an individual adheres to in relation to the political system and actors within his/ her society.

• is an organized system of belief ceremonies and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods.
• human beings’ relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine, or worthy of special reverence.
• Believers and worshippers participate in and are often enjoined to perform devotional or contemplative practices such as prayer, meditation, or particular rituals. Worship, moral conduct, right belief, and participation in religious institutions are among the constituent elements of religious life.
• The earliest forms of religion revolved around making sense of natural occurrences such as extreme weather conditions, natural and man-made calamities sickness, and even death.

• The belief in the existence of multiple gods.
• Polytheistic religions include: Hinduism, Mahayana Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shintoism, tribal religions in the Americas and Africa, and modern neo-paganism.

• Believe in the existence of one God.
• Monotheistic religions include: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Shangdi, Zoroastrianism, and Atenism.

• Some individuals do not conform to behavioral or cognitive norms, not because they intend to deviate from such, but because they are exceptional.
• The concept of exceptionality leans on the non-average capacity of an individual. This could be understood in a spectrum of capabilities, wherein you have the geniuses in one extreme, and you have the disabled challenged in the other extreme.

• Is a perspective that promotes an individual’s culture as the most efficient and superior.
• Hence, the individual who exhibits ethnocentrism feels that his or her culture is the most appropriate as compared with other cultures.
• The term was subsequently adopted by William G. Sumner, an American social scientist known for his classical liberal views. Sumner elaborated on the term, stating it was the viewpoint that "one's group is the center of everything" and that it was "from this point of view that all other groups are judged".

• Promotes the perspective that cultures must be understood in the context of their locality. Using this perspective makes you tolerant of the differing attitudes and practices of others.

• The term race was used as a form of human classification that was based on observable human traits and characteristics, such as differences in skin color, size of the skull, height body frame, and other physical characteristics.
• The idea that the human species is divided into distinct groups based on inherited physical and behavioral differences.

• promotes the equality of our biological makeup despite our ancestry.