Review Sheet - Exam 4 Flashcards
Family:
- The family is a social institution found in all societies that unites people in cooperative groups to care for one another, including any children.
- Family ties also reflect kinship, a social bond based on common ancestry, marriage, or adoption
Marriage:
A legal relationship, usually involving economic cooperation, sexual activity, and childbearing.
Sociology of family and symbolic interactionism:
- Ideally, family living offers an opportunity for intimacy, a word with Latin roots that mean “sharing fear.”
- As family members share many activities and establish trust, they build emotional bonds. bonds. Of course, the fact that parents act as authority figures often limits their closeness with younger children. Only as young people approach adulthood do kinship ties open up to include sharing confidences with greater intimacy.
Structural functionalism/functions of family:
- Socialization
- Regulation of sexual activity
- Social placement
- Material and emotional security.
Social-conflict analysis of family:
- Property and inheritance - property and inheritance through history has been down the line of men. Thus, wealth and class structure are reproduced in each new generation.
- Patriarchy - ‘’men control the sexuality of women’’ - women are sexual and economic property of men.
- Race and ethnicity - racial and ethnic categories and inequality persists due to endogamy.
Social exchange theory and marriage:
Social-exchange theory, another micro-level approach, describes courtship and marriage as forms of negotiation (Blau, 1964). Dating allows each person to assess the advantages and disadvantages of a potential spouse. In essence, exchange theory suggests, people “shop around” to make the best “deal” theycan.
Alternate family forms:
- One parents families - 30% of families - ran by women. One parents by stable parent better than two instable parents.
- LAT (living apart together) - career, education, economically influenced.
- Cohabitation - sharing of household by unmarried couple - financially stable.
- LGBT Families.
Cohabitation:
Cohabitation is the sharing of a household by an unmarried couple. In global perspective, cohabitation as a long-term form of family life, with or without children, is especially common in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries and is gaining in popularity in other European nations.
Singlehood:
Because nine out of ten people in the United States marry, we tend to see singlehood as a temporary stage of life. However, increasing numbers of people of all ages are living alone, often by choice.
Reproductive technologies:
- Artificial insimanation - IUI.
- Test tube babies - IVF -> ethnical debate -> class/access?
Endogamy vs. Exogamy:
- Endogamy: marriage between people of the same social category.
- Exogamy: marriage between people of different social categories.
Homogamy:
Our society “arranges” marriages by encouraging homogamy (literally, “like marrying like”), marriage between people with the same social characteristics.
Hypergamy:
Hypergamy (colloquially referred to as “marrying up”) is a term used in social science for the act or practice of marrying someone who is wealthier or of higher caste or social status than oneself.
Polygamy:
When one has two or more spouses.
Religion versus ethnicity:
- Ethnicity is a method of classification based upon a common trait of the population, such as a common heritage, a common culture, a shared language or dialect. - - On the other hand, a religion is a belief in or the worship a god.
Religion:
Religion, then, is a social institution involving beliefs and practices based on recognizing the sacred.
Sacred vs. Profane:
- Sacred: is set apart as extraordinary, inspiring awe and reverence.
- Profane: is just things included as a part of everyday life.
Symbolic interactionism, “sacred canopy” & Peter Berger (Religion):
- Religion is a social construction. We turn to religion is terms of chaos and tragedy. Makes us feel safe.
- From a symbolic-interaction point of view, religion (like all of society) is socially constructed (although perhaps with divine inspiration).
- Through various rituals—from daily prayers to annual events such as Easter, Passover, or Ramadan—people sharpen the distinction between the sacred and the profane.
- Using the symbolic-interaction approach, religion gives everyday life sacred meaning.
Social conflict theory, Marx and religion:
- Karl Marx believes that religion is a mechanism to control the peasants. ‘’Religion is the opium of the masses’’.
- Religion was created by man, to control less fortunate people.
Durkheim claims that there are three functions of religion:
- Religion unites people (creates community),
- Social control: promotes conformity, rules to live by (10 commandments etc.),
- Religion provides meaning and purpose - we mark lives most important transitions with religious (birth, marriage, death etc.)
Interpretive sociology, Protestant Ethic, and Weber:
- Interpreting the power of religion to change society.
- Calvinism vs. Capitalism for example.
Religious revival:
At the same time as New Age spirituality is flourishing, a great deal of change has been going on in the world of organized religion. As noted earlier, membership in established, mainstream churches has fallen in recent decades. Since then, not only has interest in New Age spirituality increased, but affiliation with other formal religious organizations, including the Mormons, Seventh-Day Adventists, and especially Christian sects, has risen dramatically.
Tenets of fundamentalism:
Fundamentalism is a striking religious trend growing today. A conservative religious doctrine that opposes intellectualism and worldly accommodation in favor of restoring traditional, otherworldly religion. As fundamentalists see it, liberal churches are simply too open to compromise and change.
- Fundamentalists take the words of sacred texts literally.
- Fundamentalists reject religious pluralism.
- Fundamentalists pursue the personal experience of God’s presence.
- Fundamentalists oppose “secular humanism.”
- Many fundamentalists endorse conservative political goals.
Secularization:
Secularization, the historical decline in the importance of the supernatural and the sacred. Secularization (from a Latin word for “worldly,” meaning literally “of the present age”) is commonly associated with modern, technologically advanced societies in which science is the major way of understanding.
