Introductory Sociology Flashcards
The biggest group of human beings who share the same geographic territory and institutions.
Society
Term coined by C. Wright Mills to highlight the connection between our personal troubles and public issues.
Sociological Imagination
Most sociological research is done within three primary areas of focus:
- The study of social inequality
- The role of social institutions in society
- The study of social change
The gap between advantaged and disadvantaged people in human society.
Social Inequality
The norms, values, rules of conduct, and social arrangements that shape social interactions in human societies.
Social Institutions
The loss of religious authority over the lives of individuals and human societies.
Secularization
There are four main types of suicide that differ depending on the degree of integration (social ties) in a society and the degree of regulation (or external constraint).
- Egoistic suicide occurs in societies with low levels of integration.
- Altruistic suicide occurs in societies with high levels of integration.
- Anomic suicide occurs in societies with excessively low regulation.
- Fatalistic suicide occurs in societies with excessively high regulation.
Egoistic suicide occurs in societies with
low levels of integration.
Altruistic suicide occurs in societies with
high levels of integration.
Anomic suicide occurs in societies with
excessively low regulation.
Fatalistic suicide occurs in societies with
excessively high regulation.
To help identify the historical and societal forces influencing our daily lives o To offer the kinds of questions to ask in a study of social behaviour and provides specialized language (a metalanguage)
Sociological theory
things that we want to observe, explain, and understand can’t normally be directly observed
sociological paradox
Studies about individuals and small groups of people and their patterns of action or sense of self * Questions of subjectivity, or a social sense of self
Microsociology
Middle level of analysis of groups or organizations
Mesosociology
- Focuses on the “big picture” of society and its institutions
- Structural phenomena
Macrosociology
A sociological theory is better thought of as a paradigm, which is a particular philosophical or theoretical way of thinking about the world.
best known for his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, gives us the core components of a paradigm:
* What is to be observed;
* The kinds of questions to be asked;
* How these questions should be structured;
* What predictions would be made by these paradigms; and
* How to interpret the results of these investigations
Thomas Kuhn
Conflict theory is based on the four C’s
- Conflict: exists in all large societies
- Class: has existed in every society
- Contestation: functions can be contested by asking “What group does this function best serve?”
- Change: society either will or should be changed
Is based on the idea that conflict exists in all large societies due to class division and is the motor of major socio-historical change
Critical Theory
Uses an organic or biological analogy for society Identifies the various structures of society (e.g., the family), and describes the functions the structure performs to maintain the entire social system and produce social cohesion Focuses on explaining social form and their contributions to social cohesion and social reproduction, over conflict and social change This approach has fallen out of favour amongst most practicing sociologists.
Structural Functionalism
Ways social conflicts overlap or become exaggerated as they interact
- i.e gender inequalities in income in a workplace are intersected by racial classifications so that women as a group earn 90 percent of what men make as a group, but prejudicially racialized women as a group earn even less in relation to other women.
Intersectionality
