Exam 2
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129 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Industrial Food System | One that produces high-calorie, nutrient-low, processed food that is more available, affordable, and aggressively marketed than nutritious food. It is a food system in which the goal is to maximize profit, achieved by speeding up the production process, increasing the amount produced , cutting labor costs, and finding the lowest-cost ingredients |
| Formal Organization | Coordinating mechanisms that bring together people, resources, and technology and then channel human activity toward achieving a specific outcome |
| Secondary Groups | Impersonal associations among people who interact for a specific purpose |
| Voluntary Organizations | Formal organizations that draw together people who give time, talent, or treasure to support mutual interests, meeting important human needs, or achieve a not-for-profit goal |
| Coercive Organizations | Formal organizations that draw in people who have no choice but to participate; such organizations include those dedicated to compulsory socialization or to resocialization or treatment of individuals labeled as deviant |
| Utilitarian Organizations | Formal Organizations that draw together people seeking material gain in the form of pay, health benefits, or a new status |
| Bureaucracy | An organization that strives to use the most efficient means to achieve a valued goal |
| Ideal Type | A deliberate simplification or caricature that exaggerates defining characteristics, thus establishing a standard against which real cases can be compared |
| Formal Dimension | The official aspect of an organization, including job descriptions and written rules, guidelines, and procedures established to achieve valued goals |
| Informal Dimension | The unofficial aspect of an organization, including behaviors that depart from the formal dimension, such as employee-generated norms that evade, bypass, or ignore official rules, guidelines, and procedures |
| Rationalism | A process in which thought and action rooted in custom, emotion, or respect for mysterious forced is replaced by instrumental-rational thought and action |
| McDonalidization | "The process by which the principles of the fast food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American Society as well as the rest of the world" |
| Efficiency | An organization's claim offering the "best" products and services, which allow consumers to move quickly from one state of being to another (for example, from hungry to full, from fat to thin, or from uneducated to educated) |
| Quantification and Calculation | Numerical indicators that enable customers to evaluate a product or service easily |
| Predictability | The expectation that a service or product will be the same no matter where or when it is purchased |
| Control | The guiding or regulating, by planning out in detail, the production or delivery of a service or product |
| Iron Cage of Rationality | The set of irrationalities that rational systems generate |
| Multinational Corporations | Enterprises that own, control, or license production or service facilities in countries other than the one where the corporations are headquartered |
| Externality | Hidden costs of using, making, or disposing of a product that are not figured into the price of the product or paid for by the producer |
| Trained Incapacity | The inability, because of specialized training, to respond to a new or unusual circumstances or to recognize when official rules or procedures are outmoded or no longer applicable |
| Statistical Measures of Performance | Quantitative (and sometimes qualitative) measures of how well an organization and its members or employees are performing |
| Oligarchy | Rule by the few, or the concentration of decision- making power in the hands of a few people, who hold the top positions in a hierarchy |
| Professionalization | A trend in which organizations hire experts with formal training in a particular subject or activity-training needed to achieve organizational goals. |
| Alienation | A state of being in which human life is dominated by the forced of its inventions |
| Deviance | Any behavior or physical appearance that is socially challenged or condemned because it departs from the norms and expectations of a group |
| Conformity | Behavior and appearances that follow and maintain the standards of a group; also the acceptance of the cultural goals and the pursuit of those goals through means defined as legitimate |
| Social Control | Methods used to teach, persuade, or force a groups members, and even nonmembers, to comply with and not deviate from its norms and expectations |
| Folkways | Customary ways of handling the routine matters of everyday life |
| Mores | Norms that people define as essential to the well-being of their group. People who violate _______ are usually punished severely. |
| Sanctions | Reactions of approval or disapproval to others' behavior or appearance |
| Positive Sanction | An expression of approval and a reward for compliance |
| Negative Sanction | An expression of disapproval for noncompliance |
| Informal Sanctions | Spontaneous, unofficial expressions of approval or disapproval that are not backed by the force of law |
| Formal Sanctions | Expressions of approval or disapproval backed by laws, rules, or policies that specify (usually writing) the conditions under which people should be rewarded or punished and the procedures for allocating rewards and administering punishments |
| Censorship | A method of preventing information from reaching an audience |
| Censors | People whose job is to shift information conveyed through movies, books, letters, email, TV, the internet, and other media and to remove or block any material that is considered unsuitable or threatening |
| Prison-Industrial Complex | The corporations and agencies with an economic stake in building and supplying correctional facilities and in providing services |
| Surveillance | A mechanism of social control that involves watching and otherwise monitoring the movements, activities, conversations, and associations of people to prevent them from engaging in wrongdoing; to catch those who are engaged in wrong doing; and to ensure that the public is protected from wrongdoers. |
| Disciplinary Society | A social arrangement that normalizes surveillance, making it expected and routine. |
| Conformists | People who have not violated the rules of a group and are treated accordingly |
| Pure Deviants | People who have broken the rules of a group and are caught, punished, and labeled as outsiders |
| Secret Deviants | People who have broken the rules of a group but whose violation goes unnoticed or, if it is noticed, prompts those who notice to look the other way rather than reporting the violation |
| Falsely Accused | People who have not broken the rules of a group but are talented as if they have |
| Witch Hunt | A campaign to to identify, investigate, and correct behavior that has been defined as undermining a group or country. Usually this behavior is not the real cause of a problem but is used to distract peoples attention from the real cause or to make the problem seem manageable |
| Primary Deviants | Those people whose rule breaking is viewed as understandable, incidental, or significant in light of some socially approved status they hold |
| Secondary Deviants | Those who rule breaking is treated as something so significant that it cannot be overlooked or explained away |
| Master Status of Deviant | An identification that proves to be more important than most other statuses that person holds, such that he or she is identified 1st and foremost as a deviant |
| Constructionist Approach | A sociological approach that focuses on the way specific groups, activities, conditions, or artifacts become defined as problems |
| Claims Makers | People who articulate and promote claims and who tend to gain in some way if the targeted audience accepts their claims as true |
| Claims-Making Activities | Activities taken to draw attention to a claim, such as "demanding services, filling out forms, lodging complaints, filing lawsuits, calling press conferences, writing letters of protest, passing resolutions, publishing exposes, placing ads in newspapers,...... setting up picket lines or boycotts" |
| Structural Strain | Any situation in which (1) the values goals of a society have unclear limits, (2) people are unsure whether the legitimate means will allow them to achieve the goals, and (3) legitimate opportunities for reaching the goals remain closed to a significant portion of the population |
| Innovation | The acceptance of cultural goals but the rejection of the legitimate means to achieve them |
| Ritualism | The rejection of cultural goals but a rigid adherence to the legitimate means of achieving them |
| Retreatism | The rejection of both culturally valued goals and the means of achieving them |
| Rebellion | The full or partial rejection of both the goals and the meaning of attaining them and the introduction of a new set of goals and means |
| Deviant Subcultures | Groups that are part of the larger society but whose members share norms and values favoring violation of that larger society's laws |
| Illegitimate Opportunity Structures | Social setting and arrangements that offer people the opportunity to commit particular types of crime |
| White-Collar Crimes | Crimes committed by those with high status, respectable positions as they carry out the duties and responsibilities of their occupation |
| Corporate Crimes | Crimes committed by a corporation through the way that it does business as it competes with other companies for market share and profits |
| Absolute Poverty | A situation in which people lack the resources to satisfy the basic needs no person should be without |
| Relative Poverty | A situation measured not be some objective standard, but rather by comparing against that of others who are more advantaged in some way |
| Extreme Wealth | The most excessive form of wealth |
| Social Stratification | The systematic process of ranking people on a scale of social worth such that the ranking affects life chances in unequal ways |
| Life Chances | The probability that an individuals life will follow a certain path and will turn out in a certain way |
| Social Inequality | A situation in which these values resources and desired outcomes are distributed in such a way that people have unequal amounts and/or access to them |
| Ascribed Statuses | Social positons assigned on the basis of attributes people possess through no fault of their own-those attributes are acquired at birth or are possessed through no effort or fault of their own |
| Achieved Statuses | Attained through some combination of personal choice, effort and ability |
| Social Prestige | A level of respect or admiration for a status apart from any person who happens to occupy it |
| Esteem | The reputation that someone occupying an ascribed or achieved status has earned from people who know and observe the person |
| Caste System | Any form of stratification in which people are categorized and ranked by characteristics over which they have no control and that usually cannot change. |
| Class System | A system of social stratification in which people are ranked on the basis of achieved characteristics, such as merit, talent, ability, or past performance |
| Social Mobility | Movement from one social class to another |
| Modernization | A process of economic, social, and cultural transformation in which a country "evolves" from preindustrial or underdeveloped status to a modern society in the image of the most developed countries |
| Colonialism | A form of domination in which a foreign power uses superior military force to impose its political, economic, social, and cultural institutions on an indigenous population so it can control their resources, labor, and markets |
| Decolonization | A process of undoing colonialism such that the colonized country achieves independence from the so-called mother country |
| Neocolonialism | A new form of colonialism where most powerful foreign governments and foreign-owned businesses continue to exploit the resources and labor of the post-colonial peoples |
| Brain Drain | The emigration from a country of the most educated and most talented people |
| Class | A person's overall economic and social status in a system of social stratification |
| Finance aristocracy | Bankers and stockholders seemingly detached from he world of "work" |
| Negatively Privileged Property Class | Weber's category for people completely lacking in skills, property, or employment or who depend on seasonal or sporadic employment; they constitute the very bottom if the class system |
| Positively Privileged Property Class | Weber's category for the people at the very top of the class system |
| Status Group | Weber's term for an amorphous group of people held together both by virtue of a lifestyle that has come to be expected of "all those who wish to belong to the circle" |
| Political Parties | According to Weber,"organizations oriented toward the planned acquisition of social power [and] toward influencing social action no matter what its content may be." |
| Income | The $ a person earns, usually on an annual basis through salary or wages |
| Wealth | The combined value of a persons income and other material assets such as stocks, real estate, and savings minus debt |
| Urban underclass | The group of families and individuals in inner citis who live "outside the mainstream of the American occupational system and [who] consequently represent the very bottom of the economic hierarchy" |
| Race | Human-constructed categories that assume great social importance. These categories are typically based on observable physical traits (for example, skin shade, hair texture, and eye shape) and geographic origin believed to distinguish one race from another |
| Racial Common sense | Shared ideas believed to be so obvious or natural about racial groups that they need not be questioned |
| Reify | Treating labels and categories as if they are real and meaningful and to forget that they are made up |
| Ethnic Group | People within a larger society (such as a country) who possess group of consciousnesses because they share or believe they share a common ancestry, a place of birth, a history, a key experience, or some other distinctive social traits they have defined as the "essence of their peoplehood" |
| Selective Forgetting | A process by which people forget, dismiss, or fail to pass on a connection to one or more ethnicities |
| Ethnic Renewal | This occurs when someone discovers an ethnic identity, as when an adopted child learns about and identifies with newly found biological relatives or a person learns about and revives lost traditions |
| Involuntary Ethnicity | When a government or other dominant group creates an umbrella ethnic category and assigns people from many different cultures and countries to it |
| Ethnicity | People who share, believe they share, or are believed by others to share a national origin; a common ancestry; a place of birth |
| Dominant Ethnic Group | The most advantaged ethnic group on a society; it is the ethnic group that possesses the greatest access to valued resources, including the power to create and maintain the system that gives it these advantages |
| Hidden Ethnicity | A sense of self that is based on little to no awareness of an ethnic identity because its culture is considered normative, or mainstream |
| Chance | Something not subject to human will, choice or effort; it helps determine a persons racial and ethnic classification |
| Context | The social setting in which racial and ethnic categories are recognized, created, and challenged |
| Choice | The act of choosing from a range of possible behaviors or appearances |
| Minority Groups | Subgroups within a society that can be distinguished from members of the dominant group by visible identifying characteristics, including physical and cultural attributes. |
| Involuntary Minorities | Ethnic or racial groups that were forced to become part of a country by slavery, conquest, or colonization |
| Assimilation | A process by which ethnic and racial distinctions between groups disappear because one group is absorbed into another groups culture or because 2 cultures blend to form a new culture |
| Absorption Assimilation | A process by which members of a minority group adapt to the ways of the dominant group, which sets the standards to which they must adjust |
| Segregation | The physical and/or social separation of people according to their race or ethnicity |
| Spatial Segregation | A de facto or de jure situation in which racial or ethnic groups attend different schools, live in different neighborhoods, use different public facilities, or occupy the same facility but sit, work, or eat on different floors, in different rooms, or at separate tables |
| Melting Pot Assimilation | Cultural blending in which groups accept many new behaviors and values from one another. This exchange produces a new cultural system, which is a blend of the previously separate systems. |
| Scientific Racism | The use of faulty science to support systems of racial rankings and theories of social and cultural progress that placed whites in the most advanced ranks and stage of human evolution |
| Prejudice | A rigid and usually unfavorable judgment about an out-group that does not change in the face of contradictory evidence and that applies to anyone who shares the distinguishing characteristics of the out-group |
| Stereotypes | Inaccurate generalizations about people who belong to an out-group; give the illusion that one knows the other |
| Selective Perception | The process in which prejudiced people notice only those things that support the stereotypes they hold about an out-group |
| Discrimination | An intentional or unintentional act of unequal treatment of individuals or groups based on attributes unrelated to merit, ability, or past performance |
| Individual Discrimination | Any individual or overt action aimed at someone in an out-group that depreciates, denies opportunities, or does violence to life or property |
| Institutionalized Discrimination | The established, customary way of doing things in society-the unchallenged rules, policies, and day-to-day practices established by advantaged groups that impede or limit the opportunities and achievements of those in disadvantaged groups |
| Stigma | Physical trait or other attribute that is deeply discrediting. It can be physically evident or something feared will be uncovered |
| Mixed Contacts | Interactions between stigmatized persons and so-called "normals." |
| Sex | A biological concept based on primary sex characteristics |
| Intersexed | A broad term used by the medical profession to classify people with some mixture of male and female |
| Secondary Sex Characteristics | Physical traits not essential to reproduction (Such as breast development, quality of voice, distribution of skeletal form) that result from the action of so called male (androgen) and female (estrogen) hormones |
| Gender | A social distinction based on culturally conceived and learned ideals about appropriate appearance, behavior, and mental and emotional characteristics for males and females |
| Gender Polarization | The organizing of social life around male-female ideals, so that peoples sex influences every aspect of their life, including how they dress, the time they get up in the morning, what they do before they go to bed at night, the social roles they take on, the things they worry about and even the ways they express emotion and experience sexual attraction |
| Sexual Orientation | An enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions to men, women, or both sexes |
| Sexual Scripts | Responses and behaviors that people learn, in much the same way that actors learn lines for a play, to guide them in sexual activities and encounters |
| Commercialization of Gender Ideals | The process of introducing products to the market by using advertising and sales campaigns that promise consumers they will achieve masculine and feminine ideals if they buy and use the products |
| Structural Constraints | The established and customary rules, policies, and day-to-day practices that affect a person's life chances |
| Sexism | The belief that one sex and by extension one gender is innately superior to another, justifying unequal treatment of the sexes |
| Feminism | In its most basic sense, a perspective that advocates equality between men and woman |
| Intersexuality | The interconnections among socially constructed categories of sex, gender, race, class, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, age, nationality, disability, and other statuses. These statuses combine in complex ways to influence advantages and disadvantages |
| Penalties | Constraints on a persons opportunities and choices as well as the price paid for engaging in certain activities, appearances, or choice deemed appropriate of someone in a particular category |
| Privilege | A special often unearned advantage or opportunity |
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