Chapter 1 Flashcards
Understanding human behavior by placing it within its broader social context.
Sociological Perspective
People who share a culture and territory.
Society
The group memberships that people have because of their location in history and society.
Social Location
The application of systematic methods to obtain knowledge and the knowledge obtained by those methods.
Science
The intellectual and academic disciplines designed to comprehend, explain, and predict events in our natural environment
Natural Sciences
The intellectual and academic disciplines designed to understand the social world objectively by means of controlled and repeated observations.
Social Sciences
A statement that goes beyond the individual case and is applied to a broader group or situation
Generalization
Those things that “everyone knows” are true
Common Sense
the use of objective, systematic observations to test theories.
Scientific Method
the application of the scientific approach to the social world
Positivism
the scientific study of society and human behavior
Sociology
Marx’s term for the struggle between capitalists and workers.
Class Conflict
The degree to which members of a group or a society feel united by shared values and other social bonds; also known as social cohesion.
Social Integration
Recurring behaviors or events
Patterns of Behavior
the view that sociologist’s personal values or beliefs should not influence social research.
Value Free
the standards by which people define what is desirable or undesirable, good or bad, beautiful or ugly.
Values
value neutrality in research
Objectivity
the repetition of a study in order to test its findings
Replication
a German word used by Weber that is perhaps best understood as “to have insight into someone’s situation”.
Verstehen
the meanings that people give their own behavior
Subjective Meanings
Durkheim’s term for a group’s pattern of behavior
Social Facts
sociological research for the purpose of making discoveries about life in human groups, not for making changes in those groups
Basic/Pure Society
the use of sociology to solve problems; from the micro level of classroom interaction and family relationships to the macro level of crime and pollution.
Applied Sociology
applying sociology for the public good; especially the use of the sociology perspective (how things are related to one another) to guide politicians and poly makers.
Public Sociology