The Vocabulary of Sociology Flashcards
‘The ways human behaviour, interaction and social institutions change over time and vary across social and cultural contexts’
Social Construction of reality
‘The idea that social relations are organised along patterned lines that endure over time and that act as a constraint on the individuals living within them, even though they may not be aware of it’
Social Structure
‘A way of acting, thinking and feeling, independent of the will of the individual’
Social Fact
(Emile Durkheim)
Another definition:
In sociology, social facts are values, cultural norms, and social structures that transcend the individual and can exercise social control. Emile Dirkheim argued that the discipline of sociology should be understood as the empirical study of social facts ‘consist of manners of acting, thinking, and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him.
‘The symbolic, learned and socially constructed aspects of society that include language, morals, values, meanings, beliefs and lifestyles, as well as scientific knowledge and technology’
Culture
‘Rules of behaviour about how people should behave’
Social Norms
‘How people interpret their situation and negotiate with those around them according to that interpretation and the opportunities available to them’
Human Agency
‘The transmission or reproduction of socially patterned behaviours that exist within [a] culture’
Socialisation
‘The characteristics that people regard as part of their self but which are derived from their social environment’
Identity
‘The complex range of phenomena associated with the historical process, commencing in the 17th century, which saw Western societies change from an agricultural to an industrial foundation, and from a feudal to a capitalist economy’
Modernity
‘The ways in which European modernity has also been associated with the spread of empire by the British, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Germans, Dutch and Belgians in India, SouthEast Asia, Indonesia, Fiji, New Caledonia, the Middle East, the Caribbean, most of Africa, and Central and South America’
Colonialism
‘The process by which people’s daily lives are increasingly influenced by the growing technological and economic, political and legal, social and cultural integration of people and communities around the world’
Globalisation
‘The new social order that is believed by some sociologists to be replacing ‘modernity’ in advanced industrial societies’
Postmodernity
