Chapter 1

Question 1

AGIL Schema

Answer 1

Talcott Parsons’ division of society into four functional requisites: Adaptation, Goal attainment, Integration, and Latent pattern maintenance.

Question 2

anomie

Answer 2

A social condition or normlessness in which a lack of clear norms fails to give direction and purpose to individual actions.

Question 3

capitalism

Answer 3

An economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership and production of goods and their sale in a competitive market.

Question 4

content

Answer 4

The specific reasons or drives that motivate individuals to interact.

Question 5

culture

Answer 5

Includes the group’s shared practices, values, beliefs, norms and artifacts.

Question 6

dialectics

Answer 6

A type of analysis that proposes that social contradiction, opposition and struggle in society drive processes of social change and transformation.

Question 7

disenchantment of the world

Answer 7

The replacement of magical thinking by technological rationality and calculation.

Question 8

dominant gender ideology:

Answer 8

The belief that physiological sex differences between males and females are related to differences in their character, behaviour, and ability.

Question 9

dual consciousness:

Answer 9

The experience of a fissure or dividing point in everyday life where one crosses a line between irreconcilable forms of consciousness or perspective.

Question 10

dynamic equilibrium:

Answer 10

A stable state in which all parts of a healthy society are working together properly.

Question 11

dysfunctions

Answer 11

Social patterns that have undesirable consequences for the operation of society.

Question 12

empiricism

Answer 12

The philosophical tradition that seeks to discover the laws of the operation of the world through careful, methodical, and detailed observation.

Question 13

egoistic suicide:

Answer 13

Suicide which results from the absence of strong social bonds tying the individual to a community.

Question 14

feminism

Answer 14

The critical analysis of the way gender differences in society structure social inequality.

Question 15

figuration

Answer 15

The process of simultaneously analyzing the behaviour of an individual and the society that
shapes that behaviour.

Question 16

formal sociology:

Answer 16

A sociology that analytically separates the contents from the forms of social interaction to study the common forms that guide human behaviour

Question 17

functionalism

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

historical materialism:

Answer 18

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.

Question 19

latent functions:

Answer 19

The unrecognized or unintended consequences of a social process.

Question 20

manifest functions:

Answer 20

Sought consequences of a social process.

Question 21

mode of production:

Answer 21

The way human societies act upon their environment and its resources in order to use them to meet their needs.

Question 22

patriarchy

Answer 22

Institutions of male power in society.

Question 23

positivism

Answer 23

The scientific study of social patterns based on methodological principles of the natural sciences.

Question 24

rationalization

Answer 24

The general tendency of modern institutions and most areas of life to be transformed by
the application of instrumental reason.

Question 25

Rationalism

Answer 25

The philosophical tradition that seeks to determine the underlying laws that govern the truth of reason and ideas.

Question 26

reification

Answer 26

Referring to abstract concepts, complex processes or mutable social relationships as “things.”

Question 27

social facts:

Answer 27

The external laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and cultural rules that govern social life.

Question 28

social reform:

Answer 28

An approach to social change that advocates slow, incremental improvements in social institutions rather than rapid, revolutionary change of society as a whole.

Question 29

social solidarity:

Answer 29

The social ties that bind a group of people together such as kinship, shared location, and religion.

Question 30

sociological imagination:

Answer 30

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.

Question 31

standpoint theory:

Answer 31

The examination of how society is organized and coordinated from the perspective of a
particular social location or perspective in society

Question 32

Verstehen

Answer 32

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