Lecture 1: Basics of Sociology Flashcards
What is sociological imagination?
Ability to see interconnections between individual experiences and larger societal patterns, trends, or forces
What is sociology?
The study of development, structure, and functioning of human society
Functionalism
All aspects of society serve a purpose for society to live. Goal is to maintain societies survival
What was Durkheim’s most famous sociological investigation?
Suicide and social solidarity. More people less suicidal tendencies
What are the different kinds of social instability?
Dysfunctional, manifest, latent
Who created suicide and correlation of social solidarity?
Emile Durkhiem
Social solidarity definition
Degree which group members share beliefs, values, intensity and frequency of social interaction
Conflict theory
Collection of varied groups struggling to dominate society and institutions
Cultural-turn in conflict theory
How Language, Music, Literature, Fashion, Movies, Ads, and Other Contents of media express domination by the powerful (resistance by the not)
Poststructuralism
social relations and cultures form structures, or stable determinates of the way people think and act
Who were the founders of cultural-turning and poststructuralism?
Gramsci and Foucault
what are the 2 fundamentals conflict theory is on?
Power: Wealthy, resourceful, and landful
Powerless: wish to have what the power has
Who created conflict theory and what was the goal?
Karl Marx and the means to control production
Symbolic interactionism
The focus on social interactionism; you share your own meanings, circumstances and social reality
What are the 3 points that make up symbolic interactionism?
- Distribution of power
- Protestant ethic
- Capitalism was vigorous due to protestant ethic
Who was the founder of symbolic interactionism?
Max Weber
Feminist theory
Gender is a central part of identity, and gender inequality is the result of patriarchal structures
Who discovered feminist theory?
Harriet Martineau, Margit Eichler, and Dorothy Smith
Theory
An inbetween about the relationship between observed facts
Research
Process of carefully observed reality to “test” or assess a theory
Values
ideas of what is right/wrong or good/bad
How many steps in the research cycle?
6
What are the steps of the research cycle:
- Hypothesis
- Reviewing existing literature
- Select method
- collect data
- analyze data
- results
What are ethics in sociology?
- Right to privacy
- Right to safety
- Right to confidentiality
- Right to informed consent
- Transparency
- academic integrity
Experimental design
Carefully controlled artificial situations that allow researchers isolated causes and results
Survey
A widely used sociological method that asks people about their knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour
Field study
Systemically observing people in a natural setting
Detached observations
Classifying and counting behaviour of interest according to predetermined scheme
Participant observations
Observing people face-to-face and observing them in their life for a long time
Pros of analyzing existing documents and official stats
- save time and money
- data collected by using rigorous and uniform methods
- doesn’t require living things
cons of analyzing existing documents and official stats
- not created with researchers needs
- work within limitations of data
society
group of people who interact in a definable territory and share same culture
social institution
major social groups/structures which organize primary social practices/riles/relationship with a culture
1. gov
2. healthcare
3. education system
