"Thinking Like a Sociologist" Chapter 1 pg. 4 - 25 Flashcards
- Sociological Imagination - History & development of sociology - Social structure, society, social institutions and roles - 4 theoretical approaches: conflict, feminism, functionalism, and symbolic interactionalism - how sociology can be useful in life
Sociological Imagination
The abilitiy to see the underlying societal causes of individual experiences and issues
Society
a group of people who occupy a particular territory, feel they make up a unified and distinct entity, and share a standard set of assumptions about reality.
Norms
The rules of expectations of behaviour people consider acceptable in thier group or society. Norms vary from one community to another and change over time.
Values
A shared understanding of what a group or society considers suitable, right, or desirable; a way of viewing the world and attatching negative or positive comments. Values vary between communities and change over time.
Social structure
Any enduring, predictable pattern of social relations among people in society that constrains and transforms people’s behaviour, shaping it to the requirments of the social situation
Culture
The shared lens of values and beliefs throughj which we view reality.
Constraining power
The ability of a social institution to control people’s behaviour and increase their obedience to social norms, and to limit thier life chances and opportunities.
Transformative power
The ability of a social institution or expereince to radically change people’s routine practice.
Social institution
A social structure governed by stable patterns of rules and expectations. This includes family, school, church, economy, and polity.
Social relationship
A pattern of continuing contact and communication between two more people that follows an expected pattern
custodians, and administrators are all goverend by different rules, but
Status
The rights, duties, and lifestyle that people associate with a particular role in an institution or society.
Being a teacher or student defines ones status in an educational institu
Role
The way people expect us to act in a social situation.
How we are expected to act as a man or woam, teacher, student…
Interaction
A patterened exchange of information, judgement, confirmation, or emotion between at least two people in a social setting.
Negotiation
An interaction whose goal is to define the expectations or boundaries of a relationship
Trying to make sense of one another by conferring, bargaining, compromis
Conflict Theory
- Unequal distribution of wealth and power in a society
- Marx and Weber
- gender, sexual orientation, disability,class
Functionalism
- The way social roles and institutions fit together to maintain social life and social stability
- Each part of society plays an essential and complmentary role
- Work together for societies survival
- strong ties to institutions can reduce crime
Symbolic intractionism
- focuses on small group interactions
- Weber & Simmel
- When people act in the world they are responding to a reality they can see, wherther others see it or not
Feminism
- Gender based inequality in our own and other societies & its effects on our social institutions
- how gender makes the lives of women and non binary people different than men
- gender roles assigned at birth
- people who fail to stay within thier gender role face consequences
Symbolic violence
Nonphysical violence or harm perpetrated by the powerful against the powerless
Intersectionality
social disadvantes related to ethnicity, class, gender, which creates complex interdependent systems of opression
Skills gained from studying sociology
- all ab world we live in (current)
- gives you concepts with which to understand the world - building blocks for thoeries and explanations
- insight into classic thinking
- Gives you context for understanding an issue or situation
- critical thinking skills
