SOCIOLOGY FINAL Flashcards
Charles Wright Mills and The sociological imagination
The ability to understand the dynamic relationship between individual lives and the larger society
Quality of mind
The ability to look beyond personal circumstance and into social context
Cheerful robots
Mills created this term which describes people who could not see the social world
Peter Berger
Seeing the general in the particular is the ability t look at seemingly unique events (particular) and then recognize the larger (general) features involved. and seeing the familiar and the strange.
The scientific revolution
hard science should be applied to the social world
Comte’s Theological stage
religious outlook, the world is an expression of God
Comte’s Metaphysical stage
a period of questioning and challenging (including the teachings of the Church)
Comte’s positive stage
rules of observation, experimentation and logic
Positivism
A theoretical approach that considers all understanding to be based on science
Anti positivism
A theoretical approach that considers knowledge and understanding to be the result of human subjectivity
Quantitative
Measurable behaviour tends to be positive
Qualitative
Non measurable subjective behaviors, anti positivist in nature
The political revolution
Promotion of individual rights and social responsibility, equal opportunity, and the political ideology of democracy
Machiavelli
human behavior motivated by self interest
Descartes
“I think therefore I am”, we are all masters of our own destiny
Hobbes
True nature of humankind is self-preservation
Locke
Knowledge is the result of experience
Rousseau
We achieve more working together than we can apart
The industrial revolution
associated with technological advancement. society went from agricultural to industrial.
Macro
Refers to attempting to understand society as a whole
Micro
Refers to attempting to understand individual or small group dynamics
macro-sociologists
Marx, Durkheim, and Weber
micro-sociologists
Mead, Cooley, and Blumer
Sociology in Canada
- Geography and regionalism
- Political economy
- Canadianization movement
- Radical nature
Annie Marion MacLean
first Canadian woman to receive a PHD in sociology
Carl Dawson
co authored an introductory sociology textbook that was widely used in North American
Helen Abell
regarded as the founder of rural sociology
John Porter
wrote the seminal work “the vertical mosaic: an analysis of social class and power in Canada”
Globalization
A worldwide process involving the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services
Thomas Hobbes
- people are responsible for creating their social worlds
- natural state: how humans existed prior to the emergence of social structures
- people are motivated by self interest and the pursuit of power
John Locke
- God was responsible for the emergence of society and government
- Tabula Rasa
- right to self preservation and to private property
- individual autonomy and freedom
Charles Montesquieu
- people never existed outside or without society
- humans created and defined by society
- laws define the spirit of the people; the republic, the monarchy, and despotism
- appreciation for cultural diversity and comparative methodology
Jean Jacques Rousseau
- the social contract
- human beings are perfectible and can achieve their potential only through society
- entered into the social contract as free and equal individuals
The enlightenment
philosophers advocated for critical thinking and practical knowledge and built on the natural sciences
conservative reaction
Sociology was born out of the conservative reaction against enlightenment thinking . conservatives believed that society was not the product of individuals, but was an entity in itself
Functionalism
social world is a dynamic system of interrelated and interdependent parts
Organic analogy
Human society is similar to an organism, which is fails to work together the system will fail
Herbert Spencer
-Survival of the fittest
-Social Darwinism
Darwin’s idea of natural selection, asserts societies evolve according to the same principles as biological organisms
Emile Durkheim
- founder of modern sociology
- collective conscious drives behaviour
- social facts are general social features that exist on their own and are independent of the individual manifestations
Anomie
State of normlessness that results from the lack of clear goals and creates feelings of confusion that may ultimately result in higher suicide rates
Mechanic solidarity
Describes early societies based on similarities and differences
Organic solidarity
Describes later societies organized around interdependence and the increasing division of labour
Talcott Parsons
created social action theory;
A framework which attempts to separate behaviours from actions to explain why people do what they do
Four functional imperatives (AGIL)
Adaption
Goal attainment
Integration
Latency
Robert Merton
- social structures have many functions
- manifest content
- latent content
Criticisms of the functionalist approach
- does not account for social change
- overemphasis on the extent to which harmony and stability actually exist in society
- often overlooked the positive consequences that can result from conflict and struggle
Conflict theory
society is grounded upon inequality and competition
Karl Marx
Believed that the caste struggle was the most important inspiration behind the historical transformation of societies. He viewed social stratification as a mechanism that institutionalizes inequality and promotes social stability over time
idealism
human mind and consciousness are more important in understanding the human condition than is the material world
Base/superstructure
dynamic relationship between the material and social elements of society
Base
material and economic foundation for society, includes the forces and relations of production
Superstructure
all the things that society values and aspires to once its material needs are met. Includes religion, politics, law
False consciousness
Belief in and support of the system that oppresses you
Class consciousness
Recognition of domination and oppression, and the collective action that follows
Symbolic interactionism
Society and all social structures are nothing more than the creations of interacting people, and therefore can be changed
Ritzer’s principles of symbolic interactionism
-people learn meanings and symbols in social settings -humans have the capacity for thought
Max weber
Verstehen- a deep understanding and interpretation of subjective social meanings
Georg Simmel
society is the summation of human experience and its patterned interactions. he came up with formal sociology: different human interactions can be similar in form
George Herbert Mead
- I+me=self
- gaining approval from significant others
- generalized others
Charles H Cooley
Sympathetic introspection: putting yourself into someone else’s shoes
Looking glass self: we develop our self image through the cues we receive from others
self fulfilling prophecy: internalize impressions and as a result become the kind of person we believe others to see us as
Erving Goffman
-dramaturgical analysis: the “self” emerges from the performances we play and how the other actors relate to us
Western Marxism
Gramsci’s concept of hegemony
Gramsci
diverged from Marx in his analysis of how the ruling class ruled -two forms of political control: domination ad hegemony
Domination
Physical and violent coercion
Hegemony
Domination through ideological control
Superstructure
Divided into the state and civil society
-prevailing consciousness internalized by population and becomes common sense
Dorothy Smith
second wave feminist that believed that knowledge production has been androcentric
Discourse
social organized activity among people
Ruling relations
Socially organized practices of individuals
People actively constitute social relations
Complex relations
the same set of social relations that produces men’s privilege also produces women’s oppression
Bell Hooks
third wave feminist. Black feminist thought criticized feminist theorizing that automatically positions households as places of patriarchal oppression for women
Post structuralism
Concerned with how knowledge is socially produced
Foucault
focused on power, knowledge, and discourse
Power
Created within social relationships
Knowledge
Can never be separated from relations of power
Queer theory
problematizes the standard of equality based on sameness
-three main areas of queer theory : desire, language, and identity
Imperialism
The ideas, practices, and attitudes of colonizers
Colonialism
The effects of imperialism within colonized spaces
Orientalism
A western style of thought that creates a false opposition between the Orent (East) and the Occident (West)
Academic orientalism
Knowledge produced by academics, experts, about the Orient
Imaginative orientalism
Representations including art, novel, poems, images, that make a distinction between the orient and the occident
Institutional orientalism
Institutions created by Europeans such that they could gain authority over, alter and rile the Orient
critical race theory
seeks to understand inequality and racism
Anthony Giddens
transformation of time and space in our lives
Time-space distinction
the separation of time and space which allows social relations to shift from a local to a global context
Disembedding mechanisms
Mechanism that aids in shifting social relations from local to global contexts
Symbiotic token
Medium of exchange
Expert systems
Systems of knowledge on which we rely on but we may never be in direct contact
Functionalist research
A researcher working from a functionalist perspective is interested in the smooth functioning of society—for example, how roles and shared values promote equilibrium.
Conflict theorists research
a conflict theorist may be interested in how families cope with current economic strains. Researchers working from this perspective may be interested in examining government and corporate policies that disadvantage families by privatizing or withdrawing particular social supports.
Symbolic interactionists research
Examining individuals and small groups. A symbolic interactionist researcher may be interested in how immigrant families negotiate their sense of identity in their new surroundings.
Inductive logic
moves from data to theory
Deductive
moves from theory to data
Independent variables
can be varied or manipulated by researchers.
Dependent variables
is the reaction (if one occurs) of the participants to this manipulation.
Operational definition
a description of something that allows it to be measured