Course Concepts Flashcards
Persons
Every person is uniquely influenced by and interacts with other people and groups.
Communication, the sharing of values and beliefs, and cooperation are major interactions.
Identity is the result of interactions at the micro, meso and macro levels of society.
Society
Made up of people, groups, networks, institutions, organisations and systems.
May include local, national, regional and international patterns of relationships and organisation.
People belong to informal and formal groups, where there are patterns of interactions that contribute to unique cultures.
Culture
Refers to the shared knowledge, attitudes and behaviours that give each society its coherence, identity and distinctive way of life.
Demonstrated by the beliefs, customs, values, norms, rules, laws, governance, arts, technologies and artefacts that people generate and use to solve present and future problems.
Dynamic and undergoes change and is therefore not static.
Environment
Every society is located in a particular physical setting and interacts with its environment.
The attitudes and values that people have in regard to their environment greatly affect interactions between persons, society, culture and the environment.
Unique culture is generated from the interactions with the immediate environment. Different locations and their environments present societies and their cultures with both opportunities and constraints.
Time
Can be examined as past, present and future, as our perceptions of time are drawn from past events which influence our ideas about the present which need not determine possible ideas of a future.
Best studied in context or as a particular decade and is relates to continuity and change.
Power
The ability or capacity to influence or persuade others to a point of view or action to which they may not always agree.
Exercising power is important in initiating or preventing change.
Authority
Linked to power and the right to make decisions and to determine, adjudicate or settle issues and disputes in society.
Best understood as the legitimate use of power, important in the process of decision-making, initiating change and maintaining continuity.
Gender
Refers to the socially constructed differences between females and males as social life is organised around the
dimensions of this difference.
Also refers to the cultural ideals, identities and stereotypes of masculinity and femininity and the sexual division of labour in institutions and organisations.
Reflects the value a society places on these social constructs, which are particular and unique to a society.
Identity
Refers to the sense of self and can be viewed from a personal, social and cultural level.
Formed over a period of time and is the result of interactions at the micro, meso and macro levels of society
Has dimensions or layers that create a sense of inclusion in a group or culture, contributed to by factors such as gender, sexuality, family, class, ethnicity, beliefs, social status, group membership and national pride.
Technologies
Refers to all the tools that we use to assist our interactions in society.
Can lead to innovation and can initiate change to micro, meso and macro operations in society.
Constantly changing and adapting so impact varies over time.
Communication-based technologies facilitate the interaction between the levels of society.
Globalisation
The process of integration and sharing of goods, capital, labour, services, knowledge, leisure, sport, ideas and culture between countries.
Evidenced in the emergence of global patterns of consumption and consumerism; the growth of transnational corporations; global sport; the spread of world tourism; and the growth of global military and economic systems.
Assisted by technologies and media integration, resulting in an increasing consciousness of the world as a single place.
