Chapter 1 Flashcards
antipositivism
the view that social researchers should strive for subjectivity as they worked to
represent social processes, cultural norms, and societal values, instead of scientific study of social patterns
conflict theory
a theory that looks at society as a competition for limited resources
dramaturgical analysis
a technique sociologists use in which they view society through the
metaphor of theatrical performance
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 ie dropouts
figuration
the process of simultaneously analyzing the behavior of an individual and the society
that shapes that behavior
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
function
the part a recurrent activity plays in the social life as a whole and the contribution it
makes to structural continuity
grand theories:
attempts to explain large-scale relationships and answer fundamental questions
such as why societies form and why they change
latent functions
the unrecognized or unintended consequences of a social process
macro-level
a wide-scale view of the role of social structures within a society
manifest functions
sought consequences of a social process
paradigms
philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate
theories, generalizations, and the experiments performed in support of them. Three types: functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interactionism
quantitative sociology
statistical methods such as s urveys with large numbers of participants
social facts
the laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and all of the
cultural rules that govern social life
