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
a general statement about how some parts of the world fit together and how they work; an explanation of how two or more facts are related to one another
Theory
a theoretical perspective in which society is viewed as composed of symbols that people use to establish meaning develop their views of the world, and communicate with one another.
Symbolic Interactions
a theoretical framework in which society is viewed as composed of various parts, each with a function that, when fulfilled, contribute to society’s equilibrium, also known as functionalism and structural functionalism
Functional Analysis
a theoretical framework in which society is viewed as composed of groups that are competing for scarce resources.
Conflict Theory
an examination of large-scale patterns of society; such as how Wall Street and the political establishments are interrelated
Macro-Level Analysis
an examination of small-scale patterns of society; such as how the members of a group interact.
Micro-Level Analysis
one person’s actions influencing someone else; usually refers to what people do when that are in one another’s presence, but also includes communication at a distance.
Social Interaction
communication without words through gestures, use of space, silence, and so on
Nonverbal Interaction
the growing interconnections among nations due to the expansion of capitalism
Globalization
capitalism (investing to make profits within a rational system) becoming the globe’s dominant economic system.
Globalization of Capitalism
Who founded the term positivism?
August Comte
Who used the term “survival of the fittest?”
Herbert Spencer
Who developed the term class conflict?
Karl Marx
Who came to the conclusion that human behavior is not individualistic and that we must always examine the social forces?
Emile Durkheim (also got sociology to be recognized as a separate academic discipline)
Who thought that social change was due to religion and the protestant ethnic?
Max Weber
What are the five types of social sciences?
Anthropology Economic Political Science Psychology Sociology
