Terms (Quiz 1) Flashcards
Social Institution
Anything that governs our behaviour at a large, societal level. Has norms, rules, and protocols for how we use or interact with activity, health, and well being.
4 Main Social Institutions Important for Activity, Health, and Well Being
1) Political
2) Economy
3) Medicine and Health
4) Sport, Leisure, and Recreation
Social Location
The combination of categories and groups that one belongs to including race, age, gender, class, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability status etc. which influence one’s identity.
Intersectionality
A conceptual lens for understanding how different forms of inequality coverage and compound.
Power
The ability to influence and make decisions that impact others.
Privilege
The advantages and benefits that someone receives based on the social groups they are perceived to be a part of.
Simultaneity
Social identities that someone holds are always present (must be considered together).
Multiplicativity
It is the unique intersections that matter (not just the sum of all of the identities).
Multiple Jeopardy
If you hold more identities towards the outside of the wheel, the more likely you will experience disadvantages.
Theory
Based on questions about why the world is the way it is and on ideas about how it might be different. Are tools. Are not hard and fast truths, they are subjective. Help us observe and find patterns in behaviour (why we do what we do, why we think what we think). Have practical implications because they help us to make choices and anticipate consequences.
Involve description, reflection, and analysis.
Main Theories in Sociology
1) Structural Functionalism
2) Conflict Theory
3) Symbolic Interactionism
4) Critical Social Theory
5) Post Structuralism
Structural Functionalism
- Emile Durkheim
- Macro-level
- How different social institutions work together for something to work well
- Traditional societal values are emphasized (not looking to improve)
Strengths
- Promotes solidarity and stability
- Society is organized in terms of rules (social facts)
Weaknesses
- Over-emphasizes the consensus that exists in society
- Difficulty explaining social change/the need for social change
Society exists to fulfill needs (when needs are met, no need to change)
Conflict Theory
- Karl Marx
- Macro-level
- Society is a system of structures and relationships shaped by economy
- Helps understand capitalism and money
- Wants to eliminate the “profit” motive in society
Strengths
- Focuses on class inequality
- Seeks moral ends
- “Unmasking” universality (the claim that you will do something to benefit everyone)
Weaknesses
- Limited to certain environments (poor choice for individual conflicts)
- Affirms the negative and conflicted state of society as normal behaviour. No act can just come from kindness.
Symbolic Interactionism
- Max Weber
- Micro-level
- Society is created and maintained through social interaction
- We create reality anew from situation to situation in interactions with others
- Our world views are created through interactions
Strengths
- Everyone interprets things differently
- Underscores the relationship between the meaning of symbols and our behaviour
- Gives insight into small-scale human interactions (the social environment matters)
Weaknesses
- Interactions can be interpreted incorrectly among different groups of people
- Overestimates the power of individuals to create their own reality
Critical Social Theories
- Dorothy Smith and George Sefa Dei
- Both micro and macro-level
- Combination of symbolic interactionism and conflict theory
- Society involves cultural production, power relations, and ideological struggles
- Understanding social organization, structure, power, and knowledge from the perspectives of marginalized folks.
Strengths
- Supposed to promote the equality and equity for all groups in society
- Empathize critical analysis and transformation of patriarchal social system (power and privilege)
Weaknesses
- Impossible to be objective
- Very difficult to generalize to larger society
Post Structuralism
- Michel Foucault
- Micro-level
- Truth and knowledge cannot be absolute across space or time. The truth is always changing for a person. If everyone experiences the world differently, there can be no one absolute truth.
- No universal or objective truths and interpreting our society cannot be value free (will have bias)
- Used to analyze, not solve
Strengths
- Can help bring a different focus on the consequences of how the body is defined and analyzed
- No restrictions of what can be analyzed
Weaknesses
- Makes almost no assertions of its own, merely an alternative way of studying society and it’s institutions
- No causal links can be made and no solutions to problems it seeks to identify through it’s analysis
Social Constructionism
The observation that nothing we think we know about the world, including health and illness, is either fixed or given (how we create and find meaning in health and illness).
Radical/Strict Constructionism
We cannot objectively say whether reality exists. We cannot know if anything is real beyond our own experiences. Our interpretations and sense of what is objectively real are all we really have.
Medicalization
The process by which conditions and behaviours come to be defined as a medical problem (an illness, disease, syndrome, or disorder). Taking symptoms and putting a label on it.
Mild/Contextual Constructionism
Objective reality does exist, our experience of this reality is mediated by the meanings we give this reality, therefore, holds beliefs that there are multiple realities (there is one truth but we all experience it differently).
Demedicalization
The process where conditions and behaviours once understood as medical problems are re-conceptualized. The social process that normalizes “sick” behaviour ex. homosexuality.
Contested Illness
Conditions in which sufferers and their advocates struggle to have medically unexplained symptoms recognized in orthodox biomedical terms despite resistance from medical researchers, practitioners, and institutions.
Well-Being
Centers on a state of balance (homeostasis) that can be affected by life events of challenges.
Flow Theory
Each person develops skills to cope with events (challenges).
Flow
Experienced when challenges meet skill.
Stable Well-Being
When people have the psychological, social, and physical resources they need to meet a particular psychological, social, and/or physical challenge.
Gender
Refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls, and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours, and roles associated with being a women, man, girl, or boy, as well as relationships with each other.
Cisgender
An adjective used to describe a person whose gender identity aligns with their sex assigned at birth.
Transgender
An encompassing term to describe the gender identities of those who do not identify (or exclusively identify) with their sex assigned at birth.
Sociology of A/H/WB
Focuses on the shared beliefs and social practices that constitute specific forms of Activity, Health, and Well-Being.
Lay Constructions
Concerned less about “official” recognition for certain understandings about illness and more about how we make sense of illness in our own lives.
