SOC Chapter 13: Education and Religion AND Chapter 14: Population and Urbanization Flashcards
Credential Society
Chapter 13, page 411
the use of diplomas and degrees to determine who is eligible for jobs, even though the diploma or degree may be irrelevant to the actual work
Mandatory Education Laws
Chapter 13, page 414
laws that require all children to attend school until a specified age or until they complete a minimum grade in school
Cultural Capital
Chapter 13. page 414
privileges accompanying a social location that help someone in life;
included are more highly educated parents, from grade school through high school being pushed to bring home high grades, and enjoying cultural experiences that translate into higher test scores, better jobs, and higher earnings
Manifest Functions
Chapter 13, page 416
the intended beneficial consequences of people’s actions
Latent Functions
Chapter 13, page 416
unintended beneficial consequences of people’s actions
Cultural Transmission of Values
Chapter 13, page 416
the process of transmitting values from one group to another;
often refers to how cultural traits are transmitted across generations;
in education, the ways in which schools transmit a society’s culture, especially its core values
Inclusion
Chapter 13, page 417
helping people to become part of the mainstream of society;
also called mainstreaming
Social Placement
Chapter 13, page 417
a function of education - funneling people into a society’s various positions
Gatekeeping
Chapter 13, page 418
the process by which education opens and closes doors of opportunity;
another term for the social placement function of education
Tracking
Chapter 13, page 418
the sorting of students into different educational programs on the basis of real or perceived abilities
Hidden Curriculum
Chapter 13, page 419
the unwritten goals of schools, such as teaching obedience to authority and conformity to cultural norms
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
Chapter 13, page 421
Robert Merton’s term for an originally false assertion that becomes true simply because it was predicted
Grade Inflation
Chapter 13, page 424
higher grades given for the same work;
a general rise in student grades without corresponding increase in learning
Social Promotion
Chapter 13, page 424
passing student on to the next level even though they have not mastered basic materials
Functional Illiteracy
Chapter 13, page 424
refers to high school graduates who have difficulty with basic reading and math
Sacred
Chapter 13, page 428
Durkheim’s term for things set apart or forbidden that inspire fear, awe, reverence or deep respect
Profane
Chapter 13, page 428
Durkheim’s term for common elements of everyday life
Religion
Chapter 13, page 428
according to Durkheim, beliefs and practices that separate the profane from the sacred and unite its adherents into a moral community
Church
Chapter 13, page 428
according to Durkheim, one of the three essential elements of religion - a moral community of believers;
also refers to a large, highly organized religious group that has formal, sedate worship services with little emphasis on evangelism, intense religious experience, or personal conviction
Rituals
Chapter 13, page 431
ceremonies or repetitive practices; in religion, observances or rites often intended to evoke a sense of awe of the sacred
Cosmology
Chapter 13, page 431
teachings or ideas that provide a unified picture of the world
Religious Experience
Chapter 13, page 431
a sudden awareness of the supernatural or a feeling of coming in contact with God
Born Again
Chapter 13, page 434
a term describing Christians who have undergone a religious experience so life transforming that they feel they have become a new person
Modernization
Chapter 13, page 435
the transformation of traditional societies into industrial societies
Spirit of Capitalism
Chapter 13, page 435
Weber’s term for the desire to accumulate capital - not to spend it, but as an end in itself - and to constantly reinvest it
Protestant Ethic
Chapter 13, page 435
Weber’s term to describe the ideal of a self-denying, highly moral life accompanied by thrift and hard work
Cult
Chapter 13, page 436
a new religion with few followers, whose teachings and practices put it at odds with the dominant culture and religion
Charismatic Leader
Chapter 13, page 437
literally, someone to whom God has given a gift;
in its extended sense, someone who exerts extraordinary appeal to a group of followers
Charisma
Chapter 13, page 437
literally, ab extraordinary gift from God;
more commonly, an outstanding, “magnetic” personality
Sect
Chapter 13, page 438
a religious group larger than a cult that still feels substantial hostility from and toward society
Ecclesia
Chapter 13, page 439
a religious group so integrated into the dominant culture that it is difficult to tell where the one begins and the other leaves off;
also called a state religion
Demography
Chapter 14, page 447
the study of the size, composition, growth (or shrinkage), and distribution of human populations
Malthus Theorem
Chapter 14, page 447
an observation by Thomas Malthus that although the food supply increases arithmetically (from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 and so on), population grows geometrically (from 2 to 4 to 8 to 16 and so forth)
Exponential Growth Curve
Chapter 14, page 447
a pattern of growth in which numbers double during approximately equal intervals, showing a steep acceleration in the later stages
Demographic Transition
Chapter 14, page 449
a three-stage process of change in the size of populations:
first, high birth rates and high death rates;
second, high birth rates and low death rates;
and third, low birth rates and low death rates;
a fourth stage of population shrinkage in which deaths outnumber births has made its appearance in the Most Industrialized Nations
Population Shrinkage
Chapter 14, page 451
the process by which a country’s population becomes smaller because its birth rate and immigration are too low to replace those who die and emigrate
Population Pyramid
Chapter 14, page 456
a graph that represents the age and sex of a population
see Figure 14.7
Demographic Variables
Chapter 14, page 456
the three factors that change the size of a population:
fertility, mortality, and net migration
Fertility Rate
Chapter 14, page 456
the number of children that the average woman bears
Fecundity
Chapter 14, page 456
the number of children that women are capable of bearing
Crude Birth Rate
Chapter 14, page 457
the annual number of live births per 1,000 population
Crude Death Rate
Chapter 14, page 457
the annual number of deaths per 1,000 population
Net Migration Rate
Chapter 14, page 457
the difference between the number of immigrants and emigrants per 1,000 per population
Basic Demographic Equation
Chapter 14, page 459
the growth rate equals births minus deaths plus net migration
Growth Rate
Chapter 14, page 459
the net change in a population after adding births, subtracting deaths, and either adding or subtracting net migration;
can result in a negative number
Zero Population Growth
Chapter 14, page 461
women bearing only enough children to reproduce the population
City
Chapter 14, page 463
a place in which a large number of people are permanently based and do not produce their own food
Urbanization
Chapter 14, page 463
the process by which an increasing proportion of a population lives in cities and has a growing influence on the culture
Metropolis
Chapter 14, page 466
a central city surrounded by smaller cities and their suburbs
Megalopolis
Chapter 14, page 466
an urban area consisting of at least two metropolises and their many suburbs
Megacity
Chapter 14, page 466
a city of 10 million or more residents
Megaregion
Chapter 14, page 466
a merging of megacities and nearby
Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA)
Chapter 14, page 466
a central city and the urbanized countries adjacent to it
Edge City
Chapter 14, page 468
a large clustering of service facilities and residential areas near highway intersections that provides a sense of place to people who live, shop, and work there
Gentrification
Chapter 14, page 468
middle-class people moving into a rundown area of a city, displacing the poor as they buy and restore homes
Suburbanization
Chapter 14, page 470
the migration of people from the city to the suburbs
Suburb
Chapter 14, page 470
a community adjacent to a city
Human Ecology
Chapter 14, page 470
Robert Park’s term for the relationship between people and their environment (such as land and structures);
also known as urban ecology
Invasion-Succession Cycle
Chapter 14, page 470
the process of one group of people displacing another group whose racial-ethnic or social class characteristics differ from their own
Alienation
Chapter 14, page 473
Marx’s term for workers’ lack of connection to the product of their labor;
caused by workers being assigned repetitive tasks on a small part of a product, leads ti a sense of powerlessness and normlessness;
others use the term in the general sense of not feeling a part of something
Redlining
Chapter 14, page 477
a decision by the officers of a financial institution not to make loans in a particular area
Disinvestment
Chapter 14, page 477
the withdrawal of investments by financial institutions, which seals the fate of an urban area
Deindustrialization
Chapter 14, page 477
the process of industries moving out of a country or region
Urban Renewal
Chapter 14, page 477
the rehabilitation of a rundown area, which usually results in the displacement of the poor who are living in that area
Enterprise Zone
Chapter 14, page 478
the zone of economic incentives in a designated area to encourage investiment
