Chapter 4 Flashcards
Analysis of social life that focuses on broad features of society, such as social class and the relationships of groups to one another, usually used by functionalist and conflict theorists.
Macrosociology
Analysis of social life that focuses on social interaction; typically used by symbolic interactionists.
Microsociology
One person’s actions influencing someone else; usually refers to what people do when they are in one another person’s presence, but also includes communications at a distance.
Social interaction
The framework of society that surrounds us; consists of the ways that people and groups are related to one another; this framework gives direction to and sets limits on our behavior.
Social structure
According to Weber; a large group of people who rank close to one another in property, power and prestige’ according to Marx. One of two groups capitalists who own the mans of production or workers who sell their labor.
Social Class
The position that someone occupies in a social group.
Status also called social status.
All the statuses or positions that an individual occupies
Status set
A position an individual either inherits at birth or receives involuntarily later in life.
Ascribed status
Positions that are earned, accomplished, or involve at least some effort or activity on the individual’s part.
Achieved statuses
Indicators of a stud; items that display prestige.
Status symbols
A status that cuts across the other statuses that an individual occupies.
Master status
Ranking high on some dimensions of social status and low on others; also called status discrepancy.
Status inconsistency.
The behaviors obligations and privileges attached to a status.
Role
People who interact with one another and who believe that what they have in common is significant also called a social group.
Group
The organized usual or standard ways by which society meets its basic needs.
Social institution
The degree to which members of a group or a society are united by shared values and other social bonds’ also known as social cohesion.
Social integration
Durkeim’s term for the unity that people feel as a result of performing the same or similar tasks.
Mechanical solidarity
The splitting of a group’s or a society’s tasks into specialties.
Division of labor
Durkheim’ term for the interdependence that results from the division of labor; as part of the same unit, we all depend on others to fulfill their jobs.
Organic solidarity
Type of society in which life is intimate; a community in which everyone knows everyone else and people share a sense of togetherness.
Gemeinschaft
Type of society that is dominated by impersonal relationships individual accomplishments and self interest.
Gesellschaft
assumptions of what people are like, whether true or false.
Stereotype
The ways in which people use their bodies to give messages to others.
Body language.
An approach, pioneered by Erving Goffman, in which social life is analyzed in terms of drama or the stage; also called dramaturgical analysis.
Dramaturgy
People’s efforts to control the impressions that others receive of them.
Impression management
Places where people give performances.
Front stages
Places where people rest from their performances, discuss their presentations, and plan future performances.
Back stages.
The ways in which someone performs a role’ showing a particular style or personality.
Role performance
Conflict that someone feels between roles because the expectations attached to one role are at odds with those attached to another role.
Role conflict
Conflict that someone feels within a role.
Role strain
The term used by Goffman to refer to how people use social setting, appearance and manner to communicate information about the self.
Sign vehicle.
The collaboration of two or more people to manage impressions jointly.
Teamwork
Techniques used to salvage a performance that is going sour.
Face-saving behavior
The study of how people use background assumptions to make sense out of life.
Ethnomethodology
A deeply embedded common understanding of how the world operates and off how people ought to act.
background assumption
William I and Dorothy S Thomas classic formulation of the definition of the situation: “If people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences”
Thomas theorem
The use off background assumptions and life experiences to define what is real.
Social construction of reality.
What are the major components of social structure.
Culture, social class, social status, roles, groups and social institutions.
