Term 2 Flashcards
Homogeneity
the quality or state of being all the same or all of the same kind
Educational attainment
The number of years of schooling successfully completed or, for higher learning, the degrees or certificates earned
Assertive mating
Occurs when marriage partners are selected so that spouses are similar on various criteria of social rank
Meritocracy
Social hierarchy in which rank corresponds to individual capacities fairly tested against a common standard
Social exclusion
Achieve by creating barriers so that certain social opportunities and positions are not open to all
Subjugated knowledge
Includes descriptions and explanations of events that dominant groups selectively devalue or ignore
Credential inflation
Occurs when overtime qualifying for specific jobs requires ever more certificates or degrees
Professionalization
Occurs to the degree that certain levels and types of schooling are established as criteria for gaining access to an opportunity
Pedagogic violence
Bourdieu’s term for teachers’ application of punishments intended to discourage deviation from the dominant culture
The reproduction of the existent stratification system
Refers to social processes that ensure that offspring enter a rank or class similar or identical to that of their parents
Hidden curriculum
Teaches obedience to authority and conformity to cultural norms
Concerted cultivation
The middle class parenting style that systematically organizes and direct children’s time to activities that prepare them for success in school
Natural growth
The parenting style of working/
lower class families that leaves children largely to their own devices, except when parents demand obedience to authority
High culture
Enjoyed mainly by upper classes
Popular culture
Is enjoyed by all classes
Dominant culture
Helps rich and powerful categories of people exercise control over others
Subordinate culture
contests dominant culture to varying degrees
Culture
Consists of the shared symbols and their definitions of people create to solve real-life problems
Symbols
Concrete objects or abstract terms that represent something else
Abstraction
The ability to create general concepts that meaningfully organize sensory experience
Beliefs
Cultural statements that define what community members consider real
Cooperation
The capacity to create a complex social life by establishing generally accepted ways of doing things and ideas about what is right and wrong
Norms
Generally accepted ways of doing things
Values
Ideas about what is right and wrong, good and bad, desirable and undesirable, beautiful and ugly…etc
Production
The human capacity to make and use the tools and technology that improve our ability to take what we want from nature
Material culture
Comprises the tools and techniques that enable people to accomplish tasks
Non-material culture
composed of symbols, norms, and other intangible elements
Social organization
The orderly arrangement of social interaction
Folkways
Norms that specify social preferences.
Because they are the least important norms, violating them evokes the least severe punishment.
Mores
Core norms that most people believe are essential for the survival of the group or their society
Taboos
The strongest norms.
When someone violates a taboo, it causes revolvetion in the community and punishment is severe.
Laws
Norms that are coified and enforced by the state
Sapir-Whorf thesis
 Describes that when we experience certain things in our environment and form concepts about those things. We then develop language to express our concepts.
Language itself influences how we see the world.
Rape culture
A culture in which sexual harassment, slut shaming, but trivialization of rape, victim blaming, and sexual assault or widespread and, for large sections of the population, these actions seem normal.
Ethnocentrism
The tendency for people to judge other cultures exclusively by the standards of their own culture
Caste
A hereditary class authorized by religion
Multiculturalism
A federal government policy that promotes in funds the maintenance of culturally diverse communities the strengthening the trend towards cultural diversification
Cultural relativism
The belief that all cultures have equal value
The rights revolution
The process by which socially excluded groups struggled to win equal rights under the law and in practice beginning in the second half of the 20th century
Rites of passage
Cultural ceremonies that mark the transition from one stage of life to another
Postmodernism
Characterized by an eclectic mix of cultural elements, the erosion of authority, and the decline of consensus around core values
Rationalization
The application of the most efficient means to achieve given goals and the unintended, negative consequences of doing so
Consumerism
The tendency to define ourselves in terms of the goods we purchase
Countercultures
Subversive subcultures that opposed dominant values and seek to replace them
Subculture
A set of distinctive values, norms, and practises within a larger culture
Cultural capital
Refers to the beliefs, taste, norms, and values that people draw on in their every day life
Cultural jamming
Refers to the creative methods used by individuals and groups to challenge dominant cultural beliefs, taste, norms, and values
Ontology
Concerned with the nature of existence (what does or what doesn’t exist)
Epistemology
Concerns the nature of reliable knowledge; how do we know what we know? What counts as evidence?
What is theory? (Joas and Knobl)
“At the very basic level, the different theoretical schools and disciplines are at least in agreement that the theories should be understood as generalizations”
(Every generalization is a theory)
Ex) _______ is always late.
Karl Marx
Studied historical materialism:
Theory of historical change = the 2 elements of the mode of production exist in tension.
Mode of production
The system by which people collectively produce their means of subsistence.
(Means of production & relations of production)
Marxism categories
Capitalist mode of production
1. Means of production
2. Relations of production
a) owning class
b) working class
Weber + Verstehen sociology
Weber: influenced by Marx but thought he didn’t pay enough attention to how material conditions of life were interpreted by members of society, and how it influenced the character of society.
Verstehen sociology: The social world cannot simply be described, it must be interpreted.
Class
Describes a persons relationship to the economy.
Status
Describes a persons relationship to the cultural order.
Functionalism (durkheim)
Social institutions may have features that are not part of their explicit design, that nevertheless serve to keep society together and facilitate its reproduction.
Basic concepts described by Bourdieu
SOCIAL REPRODUCTION
Habitus
Capital
Field
Habitus
A persons way of being in the world.
How they present themselves and their subjective experience
Ex) aesthetic tastes, style of speech
Field
An arena of social activity
Ex) education system, economy
Field logic
Boirdieu says every field has unspoken logic about what is and isn’t acceptable
(What are the rules?)
Capital
Marx: describes the value that capitalists invest in ownership of the means of production.
Bourdieu: economic capital is the only form of capital in society that people use to position themselves within various fields.
Culture shock
Feelings of confusion or anxiety people may experience in a new country
Social construction
Occurs when shared culture creates a social object towards which people orient as if it were objective.
Settled times (Ann swidler)
I’m “settled times” culture takes the form of traditions and so called common sense.
Unsettled times (Ann swidler)
In “unsettled times” culture increasingly takes the form of novel ideology (a new story about the existing structure)
In such times culture creates new strategies that oppose existing habitus and traditions
Mass media
Media technologies that reach a large audience via some means of mass communication
Ex) radio, newspaper, tv broadcast
