Unit one Flashcards
Sociological Imagination
Provide a description along with the Author and Timer Period
Book Definition: “The sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals.”
The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between
the two within society.
Simplified Definition: “The sociological imagination allows us to identify the links between our personal lives and the larger social forces of life—to see that what is happening to us immediately is a minute point at which our personal lives and society intersect”
Author: C. Wright Mills
Date: 1959
Troubles
Give Definition Author and time period introduced
Book definition: “Troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of his or her immediate relations with others; they have to do with one’s self and with those limited areas of social life of which one is directly and personally aware. Accordingly, the statement and the resolution of troubles properly lie within the individual as a biographical entity and within the scope of one’s immediate milieu - the social setting that is directly open to her personal experience and to some extent her willful activity. A trouble is a private matter: values cherished by an individual are felt by her to be threatened.”
Author: C. Wright Mills
Date: 1959
Issues
Give Definition Author and time period introduced
Book Definition: “Issues have to do with matters that transcend these local environments of the individual and the range of her inner life. They have to do with the organization of many such milieu into the institutions of an historical society as a whole, with the ways in which various milieux overlap and interpenetrate to form the larger structure of social and historical life. An issue is a public matter: some value cherished by publics is felt to be threatened. Often there is a debate about what that value really is and about what it is that really threatens it. This debate is often without focus if only because it is the very nature of an issue, unlike even widespread trouble, that it cannot very well be defined in terms of the immediate and everyday environments of ordinary people. An issue, in fact, often involves a crisis in institutional arrangements, and often too it involves what Marxists call ‘contradictions’ or ‘antagonisms.”
Author: C. Wright Mills
Date: 1959
Personal Family
Give Definition and author
Book: It is the people we feel related too and who we expect to define us as members of their family as well. By this definition, people who define themselves as family, based on their own understanding of the concept related.
“In short, defining our families is an important step in the construction
of our personal identities, and the personal family is the
definition we apply in that process.”
Author: Phillip Cohen
Interesting thought: “So even if our family choices seem highly personal, they reflect the interaction of our own decisions with all the influences we face and the practices of those around us.”
Legal Family
“A legal family is generally defined as a group of individuals related by birth, marriage, or adoption”
Household
A group of people that lives and eats separately from other groups.
As created 200 years ago when city living became more common, and it become more difficult to define family.
Family Arena
The institutional arena is where people practice intimacy, childbearing, socialization, and caring work.
-very child-centric
Institutional Arena
A social space in which relations between people in common positions are governed by accepted rules of interaction
State Arena
the institutional arena where, through political means, behavior is legally regulated, violence is controlled, and resources are redistributed.
Census Family
-A legal family (related by blood, marriage, or adoption) who lives together
-Census Bureau limits each family to one household, and people can only be counted in one place
Family of origin or natal family
Family you are born into
Family of procreation
The family you create
Nuclear Family
Parents and their (usually minor) children
Extended Family
-Anything beyond a nuclear family; can include grandparents, uncles, other relatives
Stem Family
A couple’s firstborn child stays in the family home, even after marriage; younger couple’s children are raised in a home with their parents and grandparents.
Blended Family
Includes children of a previous marriage/relationship of one or both spouses
consensus perspective
A perspective that projects an image
of society as the collective expression
of shared norms and values.
Author: Ritzer 2000
breadwinner-homemaker family
An employed father, a non-employed mother, and their children,
Author: Talcott Parsons
structural functionalism
Everything fills a function and is happening for a reason.
The assumption is that the nuclear family is best, e.g. men are the breadwinners.
Families serve roles as an instrument of social control serving the political system and economy
Book:
“a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability”.
“Researchers adopting this perspective, in general, examine some
common pattern of behavior and ask, “What are the functions of this? What
good is it doing that permits it to survive?” The theory often assumes that
there is a good reason for things to be the way they are and tries to explain
them based on this premise.”
Authors: Emile Durkheim (1858—1917). and Talcott Parsons (1902-1979).
conflict theory
- Full of conflict over scarce resources
-This conflict drives social change
-Power struggles occur within families
The view that opposition and conflict define a given society and are necessary for social evolution.
Author: Carl Marks
feminist theory
A theory that seeks to understand and ultimately/ reduce inequality between men and women
Author: Allen 2016
socialization
The process by which individuals internalize elements of the social structure in their own perspectives
Exchange Theory
The theory that individuals or groups with different resources, strengths,
and weaknesses enter into mutual relationships to maximize their
own gains.
symbolic interactionism
-People act based on the meaning they have assigned to things and those meanings are created in interactions.
-How we create meaning about family (how social norms shape us)
A theory concerned with the ability of humans to see themselves through the eyes of others and enact social roles based on others expectations
