Sociology Flashcards
Endogamy
The practice of marrying within one’s own social group or category
Tangible objects that are necessary or desired are referred to as
Goods
Describe the industry sectors:
Primary sector of the economy (the raw materials industry)
Secondary sector of the economy (manufacturing and construction)
Tertiary sector of the economy (the “service industry”)
The quaternary sector of the economy (information services)
The quinary sector of the economy (human services)
Capitalist
Capitalist economies are based on private property and the pursuit of wealth.
The means through which power is acquired and exercised by some people and groups are
politics:
Groups and individuals seek political power in order to control access to scarce resources.
Power that people accept as legitimate rather than coercive is known as
authority
ideology to conflict theorists on rich people
Ideology is a means of encouraging members of society to believe that the status quo is acceptable and desirable.
The type of social arrangement in which people are able to gain higher positions based on their intellectual and educational credentials rather than through the influence of personal contacts is
a meritocracy
The study of the causes and distribution of health, disease, and impairment throughout a population is
Social epidemiologists (examine disease agents, the environment, and the human host.)
Marx’s term for all institutions that produce and disseminate ideas that perpetuate the current exploitatory system.
Superstructure
According to sociologist C. Wright Mills, the ability to see the relationship between individual experiences and the larger society is referred to as
The sociological imagination - helps us to distinguish between personal troubles, which affect an individual, and public issues, which affect large numbers of people or an entire society.
According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
language precedes thought.
According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, languages provide mental categories that determine how speakers of each language think.
An organized group that acts consciously to promote or resist change through collective action is
Social movement
The statement “The greater the degree of social harm, the more the offender should be punished” reflects the principle of
Retribution - is based on the idea that the punishment should fit the crime. More serious crimes should receive more serious sanctions.
Systematic practices developed by social groups to encourage conformity to social norms are referred to as mechanisms of
Social control - may be internal (socialization) or external (sanctions).
Which of the following concepts is illustrated by the fact that a successful college president need not be effective in designing the college’s promotional brochures and a successful corporate executive need not be able to program the department’s computer system?
Division of labor
In a bureaucracy, each person performs a specialized task and is responsible for the correct performance of that task.
The situation in which members of the board of directors of one corporation also sit on the boards of other corporations is known as
interlocking corporate directorates.
Scholars have expressed concern that interlocking corporate directorates may lessen the amount of competition between corporations in the capitalist marketplace
The political entity that possesses a legitimate monopoly over the use of force within its territory to achieve its goals is
The state - is sometimes referred to as the government, which is the formal organization that has the legal and political authority to regulate the relationships among members of a society and between the society and those outside its borders.
What term do sociologists use to refer to social assets that include values, beliefs, attitudes, and competencies in language and culture?
Cultural capital
Students with more cultural capital are more highly rewarded by the educational system.
Which of the following educational funding systems allows students and their families to spend a specified sum of government money to purchase education at the school of their choice?
Voucher systems - are controversial because they can result in radical shifts in funding from one school or school system to another, and from the public to private schools.
What is the term that Max Weber used to describe the extent to which persons within a particular layer of stratification have access to important scarce resources?
Life chances
The conflict approach to measuring class
identifies ownership of the means of production as the distinguishing feature of classes. The conflict approach is based on the views of Karl Marx, who believed that ownership or nonownership of property determines the class to which a person belongs.
People who are poor, seldom employed, and caught in long-term deprivation are members of the
Members of the underclass must often rely on public assistance (welfare) for their survival.
The situation in which women are disproportionately represented among individuals living in poverty is referred to as
the feminization of poverty.
Which of the following refers to a reduction in the proficiency needed to perform a specific job that leads to a corresponding reduction in the wages for that job?
Job deskilling has resulted from the introduction of computers and other technology.
The shift from manufacturing to service occupations in the U.S. economy has contributed to
the loss of higher-paying positions.
The new occupations in the service sector do not offer the wages, job security, or advancement potential of the manufacturing jobs that have been lost.
Which of the following concepts is illustrated by the situation in which a local church is destroyed by fire and the congregation members still worship together in a makeshift setting?
Social solidarity - refers to a group’s ability to maintain itself in spite of obstacles.
The number of deaths per 1,000 people in a population in a given year is the
The crude death rate - is the simplest measure of mortality, the incidence of death in a population.
Which of the following is the process by which members of the middle and upper-middle classes, especially whites, move into the central city area and renovate existing properties?
Gentrification - is controversial because it often results in the displacement of poorer persons who live in the affected neighborhoods.
New urban fringes that have arisen beyond central cities and suburbs are referred to as
Edge cities develop as cities expand to encompass the areas between them, and as businesses take advantage of favorable tax structures and the availability of land.
Grassroots environmental movements are types of
reform movements
Members of reform movements usually work within the system to change public policy so that it more closely reflects their values.
Which approach to social movements assumes that a collective definition of appropriate and inappropriate behavior emerges during episodes of collective behavior?
Emergent norm theory - suggests that crowds develop their own definition of the situation and establish norms for behavior that fit the occasion.
It has been said that some Native North American languages have over 20 words to describe snow, which is an illustration of
According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language shapes the view of the reality of its speakers.
The standards by which people define what is right and wrong, good and bad, desirable and undesirable are called
Values are collective ideas by which people evaluate people, objects, and events.
