Soc 100: Section 1 Key Terms

Question 1

Social location

Answer 1

details about a person (e.g. gender, age, health status, interests, etc.) that inform
the individual’s perspective and shape his/her experience.

Question 2

Narratives

Answer 2

a person’s story told in their own words or voice

Question 3

intersectionality

Answer 3

describes how two or more aspects of your social location can combine together and increase the discrimination or privilege you experience.

Question 4

totalities

Answer 4

sum of interconnected social elements and the ways they are interconnected

Question 5

sociology

Answer 5

the social science that studies the development, structure, and functioning of human society.

Question 6

sociology (alt def.)

Answer 6

the study of the way that humans are shaped by things
that they don’t see.

Question 7

social variables

Answer 7

(e.g. age, gender, religion, ‘race’, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.)

Question 8

social institutions

Answer 8

(e.g. education, religion, the family, government)

Question 9

sociological imagination

Answer 9

Connection between how society works and how it affects our personal lives.

Coined by C. Wright Mills

Question 10

disproportionate representation

Answer 10

when an atypically high or low number of a particular social group is associated with a specific situation.

Question 11

Protestant ethic

Answer 11

Protestantism and its values towards hard work and savings led to the development of modern capitalism.

• max weber

Question 12

cultural mosaic

Answer 12

metaphor for any society in which individual ethnic groups are able to maintain distinctive identities.

Question 13

melting pot

Answer 13

encourages the rapid assimilation of recent
immigrants into their new society.

Question 14

vertical mosaic

Answer 14

systematic discrimination produces a hierarchy of
racial, ethnic, and religious groups

• John porter

Question 15

standpoint theory

Answer 15

knowledge is developed from a particular lived
position/standpoint, therefore objectivity is impossible.

Question 16

social structure

Answer 16

the way society is organized into different elements (think of nested boxes)

Question 17

sociological paradox

Answer 17

Many of the things that sociologists want to explain in the social world cannot be viewed directly by an observer.

Question 18

stasis

Answer 18

how social institutions were able to remain largely the same over time.

Question 19

kinesis

Answer 19

how and why societies change.

Question 20

Durkheim’s Normative:

Answer 20

normative = expected, usually happens
pathological = relatively rare

Question 21

Levels of analysis

Answer 21

the focus of sociological study

Question 22

micro-level

Answer 22

about individuals and small groups of people and their patterns of action or senses of self.

Question 23

meso-level

Answer 23

middle, level of analysis of groups or organizations in particular situations.

Question 24

macro-level

Answer 24

one that brings our attention to structural phenomena. At the institutional level.

Question 25

Agency

Answer 25

the capacity to influence what happens in one’s life

Question 26

systems explanations

Answer 26

how the internal dynamics and relations of social systems impact on sociological phenomena

Question 27

communities explanations

Answer 27

look to the relations and interactions between individuals
acting in a particular position in a social formation

Question 28

opportunities explanations

Answer 28

focuses on the ways in which groups of individuals assess
and access resources, as well as what they define as a resource

Question 29

meaningful behaviours

Answer 29

see the explanatory factor in the collection of individual actions and the motives behind those actions

Question 30

paradigm

Answer 30

a sociological theory; a particular philosophical or theoretical way of thinking about the world.

Question 31

structural functionalist

Answer 31

an approach that examines the way social systems operate by viewing those systems in terms of the various parts or structures of which they are made.

Question 32

social facts

Answer 32

social forces in our environment that exist outside of anyone individual but exert social control over people.

Question 33

manifest function

Answer 33

intended and easily recognized; expected

Question 34

latent function

Answer 34

unintended

Question 35

latent dysfunction

Answer 35

unintended and produces social negative consequences

Question 36

symbolic interactionism

Answer 36

looks at the meaning (symbols we use to make meaning) of the daily social interactions of individuals.

Question 37

conflict perspective

Answer 37

“four c’s”

Conflict, class, contestation, change

Question 38

Karl marx

Answer 38

Economic organization of society is the most important influence on what humans think and how they behave

everything in the ‘superstructure’ is based on the structure

Question 39

Professional sociology

Answer 39

involves research typically designed to generate highly specific information – often with an aim of applying it to a particular problem or intellectual
question.

Question 40

critical sociology

Answer 40

the conscience of professional sociology; but aims to bring about meaningful social change.

Question 41

policy sociology

Answer 41

generates sociological data for government and large corporations – used for developing laws, rules, and short/long term plans.

Question 42

public sociology

Answer 42

sociology that addresses an audience outside of the academy.
Can be understood by the college educated reader, not in the dense style of the academic/journal.

Question 43

research methodology

Answer 43

the system of methods a researcher uses to gather data on a particular question.

Question 44

positivism

Answer 44

belief that the social sciences could
be studied using the methods of the natural sciences – experiment, measurement, and systematic observation – the scientific method

Question 45

insider

Answer 45

the viewpoint of those who experience the subject being studied or written about.

Question 46

outsider

Answer 46

the viewpoint of those outside the group or culture being studied.

Question 47

quantitative research

Answer 47

focuses on social elements that can be counted or measured – can be used to generate statistics

Question 48

qualitative research

Answer 48

involves the close examination of characteristics that cannot be counted or measured.

Question 49

triangulation / mixed methods approach

Answer 49

qualitative research is used to confirm or expand on the results of quantitative research, vice versa.

Question 50

ethnography

Answer 50

a research method, in which communities or groups are studied through extensive
fieldwork.

Question 51

semi-structured interviews

Answer 51

informal, face to face interviews designed to cover specific
topics without the rigid structure of a questionnaire, but with more structure than an open interview.

Question 52

participant observation

Answer 52

entails both observing people as an outsider would and
actively participating in the various activities of the studied people’s lives.

Question 53

Institutional ethnography

Answer 53

a form of ethnography that challenges the need for a neutral stance in sociological research, claiming instead that any institution or organization can be seen as
having two sides
- ruling interests
- ruling relations

Question 54

case-study approach

Answer 54

a research design that explores a social entity or phenomenon by examining a single representative case or a few selected example.

Question 55

content analysis

Answer 55

involves studying a set of cultural artifacts or events by systematically counting them and interpreting the themes they reflect (‘pre-existing’)

Question 56

discourse analysis

Answer 56

An approach to analyzing a conversation, a speech, or a written text.
- may include entire fields of info

Question 57

genealogy

Answer 57

a form of discourse analysis that involves tracing the origin and history of modern discourses.

Question 58

operational definitions

Answer 58

the definition of an abstract quality (e.g. poverty, pollution) in such a way that it can be counted for statistical purposes.