Chapter 1 Flashcards
AGIL Schema
Talcott Parsons’ division of society into four functional requisites: Adaptation, Goal attainment, Integration, and Latent pattern maintenance.
anomie
A social condition or normlessness in which a lack of clear norms fails to give direction and purpose to individual actions.
capitalism
An economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership and production of goods and their sale in a competitive market.
content
The specific reasons or drives that motivate individuals to interact.
culture
Includes the group’s shared practices, values, beliefs, norms and artifacts.
dialectics
A type of analysis that proposes that social contradiction, opposition and struggle in society drive processes of social change and transformation.
disenchantment of the world
The replacement of magical thinking by technological rationality and calculation.
dominant gender ideology:
The belief that physiological sex differences between males and females are related to differences in their character, behaviour, and ability.
dual consciousness:
The experience of a fissure or dividing point in everyday life where one crosses a line between irreconcilable forms of consciousness or perspective.
dynamic equilibrium:
A stable state in which all parts of a healthy society are working together properly.
dysfunctions
Social patterns that have undesirable consequences for the operation of society.
empiricism
The philosophical tradition that seeks to discover the laws of the operation of the world through careful, methodical, and detailed observation.
egoistic suicide:
Suicide which results from the absence of strong social bonds tying the individual to a community.
feminism
The critical analysis of the way gender differences in society structure social inequality.
figuration
The process of simultaneously analyzing the behaviour of an individual and the society that
shapes that behaviour.
formal sociology:
A sociology that analytically separates the contents from the forms of social interaction to study the common forms that guide human behaviour
functionalism
A theoretical approach that sees society as a structure with interrelated parts designed to meet the biological and social needs of individuals that make up that society.
historical materialism:
An approach to understanding society that explains social change, human ideas, and social organization in terms of underlying changes in the economic (or material) structure of society.
latent functions:
The unrecognized or unintended consequences of a social process.
manifest functions:
Sought consequences of a social process.
mode of production:
The way human societies act upon their environment and its resources in order to use them to meet their needs.
patriarchy
Institutions of male power in society.
positivism
The scientific study of social patterns based on methodological principles of the natural sciences.
rationalization
The general tendency of modern institutions and most areas of life to be transformed by
the application of instrumental reason.
Rationalism
The philosophical tradition that seeks to determine the underlying laws that govern the truth of reason and ideas.
reification
Referring to abstract concepts, complex processes or mutable social relationships as “things.”
social facts:
The external laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and cultural rules that govern social life.
social reform:
An approach to social change that advocates slow, incremental improvements in social institutions rather than rapid, revolutionary change of society as a whole.
social solidarity:
The social ties that bind a group of people together such as kinship, shared location, and religion.
sociological imagination:
The ability to understand how your own unique circumstances relate to that of other people, as well as to history in general and societal structures in particular.
standpoint theory:
The examination of how society is organized and coordinated from the perspective of a
particular social location or perspective in society
Verstehen
German for “understanding”; in sociology it refers to the use of empathy, or putting oneself in
another’s place; to understand the motives and logic of another’s action
