Chapter 1- Textbook Flashcards
What is sociology?
the systematic study of human groups and their interactions
What is the sociological perspective?
a view of society based on the dynamic relationships between individuals and the larger social network in which we all live
What did CW Mills suggest?
that people who do not, or cannot, recognize the social origins and character of their problems may be unable to respond to them effectively
What was linked for Mills?
the individual and the social
What did Mills highlight the difference between to explore the connection between the individual and the social?
personal troubles and social issues
What are personal troubles?
personal challenges that require individual solutions
What are social issues?
challenges cured by larger social factors that require collective solutions
Why do many personal troubles never become social issues?
Because people rarely equate what is happening to them with the larger social worlds in which they exist
What is not seeing personal troubles as partially or entirely the result of social forces a lack of?
Quality of mind
How can you improve quality of mind?
by using the sociological imagination
What is the sociological imagination?
C.W. Mill’s term for the ability to perceive how dynamic social forces influence individual lives. It involves stepping outside of your own condition an looking at yourself from a new perspective–seeing yourself as the product of your family, income level, race, and gender.
What was Mill’s term for people who are unwilling or unable to see the social world as it truly exists?
cheerful robots
What did Peter Berger define the sociological perspective as?
the ability to view the world from two distinct yet complementary perspectives: seeing the general in the particular and seeing the strange in the familiar.
What is seeing the general in the particular?
the ability to look at seemingly unique events or circumstances and then recognize the larger (or general) features involved.
What is seeing the strange in the familiar?
by thinking about what is familiar and seeing it as strange
-seems familiar and normal, if you really think about it, it is truly strange
What is agency?
the assumption that individuals have the ability to alter their socially constructed lives
What is structure?
the network of relatively stable opportunities and constraints influencing individual behaviours
-opportunities and constrains that exist within a network of roles, relationships, and patterns that are relatively stable and persistent over time
What is the structure-versus-agency debate?
revolves around whether or not individuals behave autonomously or are the expressive agents of the social structure
What are the five social factors that are the most influential in defining the person you have become?
- Minority Status
- Gender
- Socioeconomic Status
- Family Structure
- Urban-Rural Differences
What is minority status?
People who are members of a visible minority face various forms of discrimination
How does gender define you?
Society treats mens and women differently
-Canada is a patriarchy–a system of rule that translates to “rule by father” in which men control the political and economic resources of society
What is socioeconomic status?
A combination of variables (income, education, occupation, etc.) used to rank people into a hierarchical structure.
How does socioeconomic status define you?
Children from wealthier families whose parents are well educated, have good jobs, and live in a nice part of town have an advantage over children who do not share the same level of prosperity.
What is ascribed status?
Attributes (advantages and disadvantages) assigned at birth (e.g., sex).
What is achieved status?
Attributes developed throughout life as a result of effort and skill (e.g., course grades).
How does family structure define you?
Children’s well-being appears to be almost always associated with the household income of their families. Regardless of a child’s age, higher income tends to be related to better physics, social/emotion, cognitive, and behavioural well-being. Family structure influences a child’s development to the extend that female lone-parents families tend to have lower incomes than two-parent family structures. Loving parents with adequate incomes more often than not raise productive and well-adjusted children.
How do urban-rural differences define you?
People who live in small towns report that they are distinct from urban dwellers and that their rural connections are an important defining feature. While there are structural differences between small towns and large cities, the nature of growing up in either location is more subtle and contextual. Where you grew up may influence how you view the world.
Who were the first paid teachers?
The Sophists
When was the term sociology coined and by whom?
1838 by Auguste Comte.
Who is referred to as the father of sociology?
Auguste Comte
What were the three revolutionary events that inspired the rise of sociology?
1) The scientific revolution
2) The political revolution
3) the industrial revolution
What is the scientific revolution?
the development of the scientific method during the enlightenment period facilitated the pace of social change
What did Auguste Comte believe?
That techniques used in the hard sciences used to explain the physical world should be applied to the social world as well.
What is Comte known for?
The law of three stages which defines how advances of the mind created three different types of societies
What is the Theological Stage?
Longest period of human thinking, beginning with our earliest human ancestors and ending during the Middle Ages. Characterized by a religious outlook, the world and human society are an expression of God’s will and science is a means to discover Gods intentions. People would explain what they could see through the actions of spiritual or supernatural beings.
What is the Metaphysical Stage?
People began to question everything and challenge the power and teachings of the Church. It was characterized by the assumption that people could understand and explain their universe through their own insight and reflection.
How did people try to understand their world during the Metaphysical Stage?
People tried to experience and understand their world through abstractions such as emotion and beauty. Artists, musicians, and poets all attempted to inspire or capture some insight into the human condition through images, sounds, and worlds. Feelings, passions, and fears were explored during the Metaphysical Stage as an attempt to understand ourselves better.
What was the Positive Stage?
The world would be interpreted through a scientific lens–society would be guided by the rules of observation, experimentation, and logic.
Why do sociologists today not grant much credibility to Comte’s ideas?
1) the idea of having only three stages is difficult as it assumes that human thinking is currently as good as it will ever get.
2) the idea that the third (and final) stage was just emerging during Comte’s lifetime is somewhat self-serving
What is positivism?
A theoretical approach that considers all understanding to be based on science.
What are the three primary assumption a positivist approaches the world through?
1) There exists an objective and knowable reality- observation, experimentation, and logic
2) Since all science explore the same, singular reality, over time all sciences will become more alike- boundaries will fall away
3) There is no room ins science for value judgments- there is no good or bad science
What is anti-positivism?
A theoretical approach that considered knowledge and understanding to be the result of human subjectivity.
What are the three primary assumption an anti-positivist approaches the world through?
1) While hard science may be useful for exploring the physical world, the social world cannot be understood solely through numbers and formulas- numbers only have relative importance (when we assign social value to them)
2) All science will not merge over time and no single methodological approach (i.e., science) can reach a complete understanding of our world- appreciate and validate emotions, values, and human subjectivity
3) Science cannot be separated from our values- values as those cultural assessments that identity something as right, miserable and moral; what we choose to study is also a social expression
What are values?
Cultural assessments that identify something as right, desirable, and moral
What is quantitate sociology?
The study of behaviours that can be measured (e.g., income levels)
-Positivists’ belief
What is qualitative sociology?
The study of non measurable, subjective behaviours (e.g., the effects of divorce)
-Anti-Positivists’ belief
Who were the major sociologists of the political revolution?
- Machiavelli
- Descartes
- Hobbes
- Locke
- Rousseau
What did Machiavelli believe?
Human behaviour is motivated by self-interest and the desire for material gain
-assertion that everyone could become a prince
What did Descartes believe?
- “I think, therefore I am”
- we are thinking beings
- human beings were able to understand their world through rational reflection
- idea that we are the masters of our own destiny
What did Thomas Hobbes believe?
- that people were driven by two primary passions: fear of death and the desire for power
- the true nature of humankind is therefore self-preservation, and long-term stability can be achieved only when citizens join together and agree to forgo their individual power to the gains achieved within a collective
What did John Locke believe?
- people are born as blank slates
- we increase our knowledge by gathering information about the material world throughs science and experimentation
What did Rousseau believe?
- prior to organized society, human beings existed in a natural state where an individual’s desire was solitary and self-centred.
- early beings began to see the benefits they could achieve when they agreed to work together (the social contract)
What is the social contract?
The acknowledgement that we achieve more by working together than apart; while we lose some of our independence, the benefits we assume far outweigh the costs.
Who were the Renaissance thinkers?
Machiavelli, Descartes, Hobbes
Who were the Enlightenment thinkers?
Locke and Rousseau
What changed with the Industrial Revolution?
It changed virtually every aspect of life: family structures, how people make a living, and even people’s thought, dreams, and aspirations
What it really inspired were the profound social changes occurring at the time
What type of economy is based on local food production for local consumption?
an agricultural economy
What did most capitalist activity in an agricultural economy focus on?
mercantile activity rather than on production (the economy was local and people knew the makers of virtually all goods and services)
What was the movement from local production and consumption to regional and national distribution networks largely the result of?
mechanization and industrialization
What drove the conversion from an agricultural to an industrial economy?
expansion of trading networks for European goods
The emergence of what tool as a cheap means of power an locomotion was instrumental in facilitating the rise of the industrial Revolution?
the steam engine
Why did cities grow during the Industrial Revolution?
Millions of farmers abandoned traditional village life and moved into the rapidly growing cities in search of factory jobs. The move from a rural to an urban environment led to a new series of social problems.
What is macrosociology? What did it define?
The study of society as a whole
-defined early European sociology
What is microsociology? What did it define?
The study of individual or small-group dynamics within a larger society
-defined early American sociology
Who were the early European macrotheorists?
Marx, Durkheim, and Weber
What is Karl Marx known for?
- believed people were forced into competition with others because of the material changes brought about by the accumulation of wealth in early agricultural societies. This led to conflict because some people had more wealth than others
- all human relationships in capitalist economies have power imbalances
- power permeates the ways people interact, not only as individual but also as a society
What did Emile Durkheim believe?
- people wanted to work together for collective benefit
- new urban and industrial society presented many challenges to both the individual and the collective
- low levels of social integration and regulation were source of various social problems, including rising deviance and suicide rates
What did Durkheim believe would lessen the decline in moral society?
institutions of religion and education
What is Max Weber known for?
- his analysis of how the social world is becoming increasingly rationalized over time
- people are becoming more focused on selecting the most efficient means to accomplish any particular end
Who are the early American micro theorists?
Mead, Cooley, and Blumer
How did Mean view the individual mind and self?
As rising out of the social process of communication–in effect, we become ourselves through social interaction
-looked at individual factors
What did Mead’s approach become known as?
Symbolic interactionism
What is symbolic interactionism?
A perspective asserting that people and societies are defined and created through the interactions of individuals
What is Cooley’s known for?
Suggesting that people define themselves, at least in part, by how others view them. By considering how others view us, we actually become the kind of person we believe others see us to be.
What is Cooley’s approach known as?
“the looking-glass self”
Who named symbolic interactionism?
Blumer
What is Blumer known for?
Continued what Mead started. Analysis of meaning, language, and thought. These core principles led him to conclude how people create their sense of self within the larger social world.
What do some Canadian sociologists suggest that Canadian sociology is a product of?
Its experiences with, and at times resistance to, the larger and more dominant American sociological tradition.
What are the four defining features of Canadian sociology?
1) Geography and Regionalism
2) Focus on Political Economy
3) Canadianization Movement
4) Radical Nature
How is geography and regionalism a defining feature of Canadian sociology?
- ability to survive over time
- core theme of the development and maintenance of a community in the face of hostile elements
- role of regionalism in our country’s development (west versus east, for example) and, in particular, the role of Quebec
What is the political economy?
The interactions of politics, government and governing, and the social and cultural constitution of markets, institutions, and actors?
What did Wallace Clement believe?
That a defining element of Canadian sociology is its interest in the political economy.
Who was the first Canadian sociologist (arguable) to investigate Canada’s political economy? What did he develop? Explain.
- Harold A. Innis
- The staples thesis
- Canadian development was based on the exploitation of raw materials
- Canadians took on the mental role of “hewers of wood, drawers of water” (subordinate economic position to the British and American empires)
- Defined by the realization that Canada is not one of the world’s major economic or social forces
How did the Canadianization Movement define Canadian sociology?
Canadian English-speaking sociology was influenced a great deal by American sociology as practiced at the University of Chicago. Canadians sociologists felt a pressing need to hire and train more Canadian sociologists in order investigate and understand Canadian society from a Canadian perspective.
How is Radical Nature a defining feature of Canadian sociology?
- Is more radical than the American tradition because of its greater focus on macrosociology as well as a greater support for feminist ideas and social change
- The women’s movement inspired a new generation of women to reflect on their social surroundings and question social convention
What is globalization?
A worldwide process involving the production, distribution, and consumption of technological, political, economic, and sociocultural goods and services.
What is sociology in a global perspective?
It is important to look beyond our own Western boundaries and consider the dynamic forces of globalization. The world today is increasingly interconnected and intermingled.
What is Marshall McLuhan’s term global village?
Media collapse time and space and enable people everywhere to interact and experience life on a global scale. In effect, technology has shrunk the globe to the size of a village where we perceive a closeness that transcends the traditional boundaries of time and space.
What does globalization imply?
A realization of the primacy of capitalism as a defining feature of the global economy.
Of the roughly___billion people alive today, only___billion live in developed countries. The remaining___billion live in___countries. The___billion who live in developed countries control___percent of global resources. This leaves the___billion people to try to survive on the remaining___percent.
- 6
- 1
- 5
- developing
- 1
- 80
- 5
- 20
