sociology
•the scientific study of human society
•what seems natural or normal to a given group of people
•how groups interact with one another
•is distinct from other academic disciplines in its attempt to detect patterns in how different societies handle or respond to similar phenomena
Quote from Pierre Bourdieu
The function of sociology as of every science, is to reveal that which is hidden.
Auguste Comte
•father of positivism or social physics, idea that society can be studied scientifically or logically
•argued for the importance of identifying scientific laws that govern human behavior
Comte's historical Epistemological Stages
1) Theological Stage
2) Metaphysical Stage
3) Scientific Stage
Harriet Martineau
•first to translate Comte's works to English
•1 of the earliest feminist social scientists
•put together a book, "How to Observe Morals & Manners" (argued in this book that marriage was an institution that favored men)
social institutions
•networks of structures in society that socialize groups of people within them
•a group of social positions, connected by social relations, that perform a social role
•do not have to be established by any particular organization or group and do not necessarily have physical locations
•Ex: legal system, education system, marriage, & government
social identity
how individuals define themselves in relation to groups they are a part of or in relation to groups they choose not to be a part of
Sociological Imagination
•C. Wright Mills
-historical context: connecting biography and history
-make the familiar strange
-question habits or customs that seem "natural"
-using your sociological imagination allows you to recognize how the social world works and why
What is an example of using one's sociological imagination?
being puzzled by how people in another country greet one another and then thinking about how people in your own country greet one another and why they do it the way they do
Questioning the reasons why people choose to attend college and the importance of a college degree is an example of
sociological imagination
Karl Marx
•a unique gentleman w/ a bad and good reputation
•Marxist question: who benefits?
•came up w/ theory of historical materialism, which identifies class conflict as the primary cause of social change
•Conflict drives social change throughout history
-Humans dominate environment
-Humans dominate other humans
Max Weber
•Came up w/ Verstehen: "understanding" in German
•Emphasis on subjectivity became a foundation of interpretive sociology
•put forth the idea that sociologists should examine social behavior from the perspective of those engaging in the behavior
Emile Durkheim
•Considered founding practitioner of positivist sociology
•Considered one of the early functionalists
•developed the division of labor, which helps to determine how social cohesion is (or is not) maintained (people are matched up with jobs they are best suited for)
•Division of labor: different people have different jobs, holds society together
•Major cause of suicide is anomie
The Chicago School of American Sociology emphasized the importance of
the environment in shaping people's behavior and personalities
Which of the following American sociologists applied Durkheim's theory of anomie to explain African American crime rates?
W. E. B. DuBois
Functionalism
•concerned with how society functions; viewed as an organism; each institution is part of a whole and serves a function
•Society is a living organism
•Institutions are like vital organs
•Education: keeps institutions going
•Emphasizes the role of agreement (consensus) in maintaining order
•**** Idea of everything working together
Conflict Theory
• Social inequality results from power struggle b/t groups
•What conflicts would see is dominance of one theory over another
• Marx's theory
• Based on Marx's rhetoric
double consciousness
takes the external opinions of an often racially prejudiced onlooker into consideration
Justin enters a clothing store and a security guard immediately notices him and follows Justin's actions on a security monitor. Justin is aware of the security guard's actions and adjusts his own behavior to avoid potential confrontation with the security guard. This is an example of which sociological concept?
double consciousness
Feminist research
focuses on inequalities based on gender categories and researchers study women's experiences at home and in the workplace
Your friend Allison is concerned with the messages that young girls and boys receive about careers that are suitable for them from their elementary school teachers. Based on Allison's position, it is likely that she is a
feminist
Symbolic Interactionism
•Starts at a small interaction & work your way up
•Individuals act based on symbolic meanings attached to people and objects
Examining the interactions between people with a focus on how the people talk, dress, and use body language is an example of which theory?
symbolic interaction
Which of the following is an example of an application of midrange theory?
exploring the role of churches in rural areas
Postmodern theorists argue that
all phenomena have multiple meanings and no one meaning can be more valid than another
Which of the following describes a difference between sociology and psychology?
Sociology focuses on social structures and group interactions, while psychology focuses on the urges, instincts, and mind of the individual.
Microsociology
•The examination of everyday human social interactions on a small scale
•Local interactional contexts
-Face-to-face encounters
-Data: in-depth interviews, observations
Justin decides to conduct research for a class project by recording and assessing how people choose where to sit on a public bus. Which type of sociology is this?
Microsociology
Macrosociology
•Large-scale dynamics
-Whole societies or large parts of them
-Often uses statistical analysis
Which of the following describes the deductive approach to research?
A researcher starts with a theory, forms a hypothesis, makes observations, and then analyzes the data to confirm, reject, or refine the original theory.
Quantitative
•Data in numeric form
•Surveys, statistical analysis
•Allows you to reach more people
•Much less work on the front end
•Majority of the research is quantitative
What is an example of a quantitative research method?
conducting a survey of people's reading habits
Survey research
•form of quantitative research with some sort of scale attached to it
-Questionnaire
-Phone, mail, door-to-door, internet
Qualitative
•Data communicates meaning in text, graphic, or other media form
•Interviews, observations, experiments
•Much more time-consuming, involves more work
A researcher observes that most women entering a café choose to sit near other occupied tables, whereas most men choose a table that is further away from other customers. The researcher then theorizes that women like to feel part of a larger group of people, whereas men are more comfortable being alone. This is an example of which kind of research approach?
inductive reasoning
Participant observation
•A research method that seeks to observe social action in progress
•A researcher participates in social action with the group they are studying
Content analysis
•when you look at the content of objects
•examines content rather than the structure of communication
•Performed on media: books, documents, paintings, video
Amber is conducting research on employment discrimination against Hispanics. She searches through newspapers to document instances of discriminatory language toward Hispanics. What type of research is Amber conducting?
content analysis
Interviews
•ask people questions or what's going on w/ them
•Can be structured or conversational
-Structured: a series of questions
Experimentation
•not all that frequently used in sociology
•Common in social psychology, highly controlled environment
•Attempt to examine the social world and phenomenon in a controlled, discrete way
Which of the following is an example of a correlation?
The more education a person has, the higher his or her income will be.
What three factors are needed to establish causation?
correlation, time order, and a ruling out of alternative explanations
Hypothesis: Children in families that eat dinner together at least four times per week experience fewer behavior problems in school. In this hypothesis, what is the dependent variable?
how often children misbehave in school
negative relationship b/t an independent variable & a dependent variable means
one variable increases, the other decreases
Which of the following is an example of a negative relationship between an independent and a dependent variable?
The more responsibility an employee has, the less likely he or she is to miss work.
moderating variable
a factor that affects the relationship between the independent and dependent variables
Reliability
•consistency in measurement
•refers to how likely you are to obtain the same result using the same measure the next time.
A thermometer that consistently gives readings that are five degrees cooler than the actual temperature is _____
reliable but not valid
In an experiment, Duncan Watts created a website for respondents to rate songs. His sample size was 14,341 respondents. If Dr. Watts selected a new sample of 14,341 different respondents and their average ratings of each song were significantly different than the first sample, what problem would Dr. Watts's research suffer from?
low reliability
reflexivity
being aware of the effects that researchers have on the processes and relationships they are studying
Which of the following elements describe feminist approaches to social research?
•observing female and male behaviors that traditional social scientists have not thought significant
•engaging in research that may bring about policy changes to help improve women's lives
Which of the following data collection methods are commonly used in social research?
audit study, surveys, interviews
Which of the following is an example of a panel survey?
a study of 1,000 high school seniors who are then contacted every two years for a ten-year period to participate in a follow-up survey
In social research, the term "protected populations" refers to _____
•segments of the population that a researcher may need special approval to study
•under the age of 18, cannot participate; not old enough to make a decision
Informed consent
the right of a research subject to know he or she is participating in a study & what the study consist of
In an interview with the author, Mitchell Duneier describes his desire to conduct research that adheres to the ethical guidelines of social research. If Dr. Duneier had interviewed street vendors by secretly recording their interactions, what ethical guideline would he have violated?
informed consent
public sociology
•Social research that tries to engage a nonacademic audience and influence society
•Using sociology to influence social change
•Social research mostly read by sociologists
Comparative research
usually involves studying 2 or more countries or cultures that have a # of things in common but differ in 1 particular dimension that becomes the subject of the study
Culture=man-nature
•anything that humans create
•a set of beliefs, traditions, and practices
•social categories, ideologies, and symbolic representations that a group of people embrace and identify with
Ethnocentrism
•Believing your own culture is superior
•Viewing all cultures from your own culture's perspective
Ideology
can be described as a system of concepts and relationships that guides an individual or large group
Cultural Relativism
•Understanding cultural difference w/out assigning value
•recognizing differences across cultures without judging those differences as positive or negative
What is an ex. of using cultural relativism to think about cultural differences?
You see a news story about a country where people often eat spicy seafood dishes in the morning & then wonder what people there would think of eating chocolate-flavored cereal & milk for breakfast.
Socialization
•Process of internalizing values, beliefs, & norms
-Learning to function as a member of society
Cultural Scripts
•Behaviors and understandings that are not universal or natural
•are important b/c show how the larger culture reflects the individual
Your friend Jerome argues that culture is an innate biological aspect of human societies. He believes that people are born with certain value systems in place. Having already taken an introductory sociology class, you argue that modes of behavior and understanding are not universal or natural. Your supporting argument is based on the idea of _____.
cultural scripts
subculture
can be defined as a group that shares distinct cultural values & behavioral patterns that distinguish it from others within the same culture or society
Some businesses in the United States, especially food-service establishments, will post a sign reading something like, "No shirt, no shoes, no service." This is an example of which of the following?
reinforcement of a cultural norm
The idea that culture is a projection of social structures and relationships is fundamental to which of the following theories?
Reflection Theory
Reflection Theory: Limitations
•Does not explain why some cultural products
-Remain popular or fade away
-Change meaning over time
•Unidirectional - says culture has no impact on society
Media
•Formats or vehicles that carry, present, or communicate info
•Examples of media: Telegraph, radio, email, tv
Which of the following media became widely available in American homes in the 20 years following World War II?
televisions
Hegemony
•The idea that a dominant group creates a popular consensus with persuasion
•The hegemonic power of advertising
•can be defined as a process in which a dominant group, by virtue of its moral and intellectual leadership in society, secures the voluntary "consent" of the masses
For a research project in your introductory sociology course, you decide to compare the coverage of health and beauty topics to that of career and professional topics in women's magazines. You are conducting _____.
textual analysis
Herbert Gans researched the various influences and biases that affect the choices made about the content of _____.
print and television news
he television ad campaign for a new car starts playing nationwide. Within weeks, people are bombarding the car maker for information about a song that is featured in the ad and trying to find it online. This is an example of a _______.
short-term, unintended media effect
The use of stereotypes allows people to
ignore complex, underlying issues that are difficult to talk about
Soft power
the cultural and diplomatic dominance that persuades, rather than forces, others to do one's bidding
Which of the following is an example of soft power?
the enduring worldwide popularity of Michael Jordan
Limits of Socialization
•Cannot explain everything about development and personality
•Both biology and social interactions make us who we are
The nature versus nurture debate examines the importance of _____ in shaping human behavior.
biology, on the one hand, and social interaction, on the other
In social development theory, the "self" can be defined as _____
the individual identity of a person as perceived by that same person
Mead
•Childhood development of social self
•Infants start out knowing "I"
-Through interaction they learn "me" and the "other"
•First step: "generalized other"
-Internalized sense of total expectations of others in a variety of settings
According to George Herbert Mead's stages of development, children learn to recognize an "other" through _____.
imitation
Which of the following is an example of recognizing the "generalized other"?
A child is taught to hold the door for her parents or siblings when they are carrying something into the house. While at the mall she holds the door for a stranger who is carrying several bags.
Feral children
•Raised in isolation, confinement, or by animals
•~100 known cases
•Rarely able to function normally in society
Total Institutions
an institution in which one is totally immersed and that controls all the basics of day-to-day life
Which of the following scenarios involves the use of peer pressure?
A member of a college football team is ostracized by his teammates when he refuses to get a tattoo of the team mascot.
Resocialization
the process by which one's sense of social values, beliefs, and norms are reengineered, often deliberately through an intense social process that may take place in a total institution
Resocialization would be most likely to occur in which of the following situations?
A man makes a career change from being an accountant with a large auditing company to being a graphic designer in a small ad agency.
Role conflict
the tension caused by competing demands b/t two or more roles pertaining to different statuses
A college student who works part time and cares for her grandmother must take off work one day to drive her grandmother to a doctor's appointment. She turns in a class project late because she has to make up the time at work. This is an ex. of _____.
role conflict
The interview with CJ Pascoe highlights the peer pressure that males can face in school to conform to certain ideals of masculinity. If a high school football player were to face pressure from peers to live up to the woman-chasing "stud athlete" role, while also attempting to be a model "pure" Christian to his church peers, what sociological problem would this student be facing?
role conflict
Your introductory sociology professor argues that people and institutions interact differently with boys and girls and thus socialize them into different roles. Which of the following answers best describes your professor's perspective?
gender theorist
The Social Constructing of Reality
•Ideas and objects gain their meaning through social interaction
•Individuals can share common norms, beliefs, and values
Symbolic Interaction
•Micro-level Theory
•Humans react based on shared symbolic meanings
-Produced by social interactions
-Filtered through individual interpretation
Which of the following theories argues that people's choices about how to act are based on shared meanings, orientations, and assumptions?
symbolic interactionism
Dramaturgy (Goffman)
•Life=theater
•Humans=actors
-"Impression management": we are trying to control what people think of us
According to dramaturgical theory, the primary goal of every social interaction is _____.
to make a good impression
Dramaturgy
•front stage-public (out in the open)
-Ex: church,
•back stage-private (how we separate our work face from personal face)
•face
-esteem in which an individual is held by others
A classmate has been talking for weeks about trying out for the school dance team. The day after the tryouts, you ask her how it went and she answers that she didn't go because she was sick. In reality, however, she did try out but wasn't selected. The way your classmate handled the situation is an example of what?
saving face
Civic inattention
refraining from directly interacting with someone until an opening signal is given
Ethnomethodology
an approach to studying human interaction that focuses on how we make sense of our world, how we convey this understanding to others, and how we produce a mutually shared social order
A group of people is waiting to be helped at a customer service desk in a store. A woman in the waiting area suddenly clears her throat and spits on the floor. Everyone else in the room is taken aback and gives her a dirty look. How can this reaction be explained in sociological terms?
The woman who spit on the floor is not conforming to social norms that are shared by the other people in the room.
According to the sociologist Georg Simmel, what is the single most important factor in predicting the behavior of members of a social group?
the number of people in the group
Dyad
•group of 2
-Most intimate form of social life
-Mutually dependent: If one member leaves, the group ends
Melinda and Justin are co-leads on a project at work, but their working styles differ greatly and they are having trouble agreeing on procedures and objectives. Elena, a member of their team who is relatively new to the company, steps in and pulls together a crucial part of the project to meet a tight deadline. The account manager is impressed with her work and she ends up getting a promotion after the project is completed. In this triad, Elena could be said to have assumed what role?
Tertius gaudens
According to the sociologist Georg Simmel's categories, what is the key difference between a small group and a party?
A small group is unifocal, whereas a party is multifocal.
Jose goes to a training session for election volunteers in his precinct. There are 15 participants and two trainers. This would be an example of which kind of group?
a large group, The inclusion of trainers creates status differentiation, and thus makes this a large group instead of a small group.
primary group
are social groups, such as family or friends, composed of intimate face-to-face relationships that strongly influence the attitudes and ideals of those involved
Which of the following is an example of a primary group?
a family in which the parents live in California, one son lives in Colorado, and two daughters live in Florida
reference group
a group that helps us understand or make sense of our position in society relative to other groups
Embeddedness
refers to the degree to which ties are reinforced through indirect paths within a social network
Strength of Weak Ties
•weak ties=represent new info where you did not previously have information to
•Why does it matter? Sometimes these weak ties b/t groups are very important bc they bring new info
Marc wants to get an internship with a state legislator. He has talked to his family members and friends, but no one seems to have any useful contacts and he knows that the internships are highly competitive. One day he runs into a former classmate he hasn't seen for several years, and it turns out the classmate has a cousin who worked as the assistant campaign manager for a state senator in the most recent election. The classmate offers to put Marc in touch with his cousin. This is an example of what concept?
the strength of weak ties
structural hole
•a gap between two people or two groups that have complementary resources and could benefit from having a closer connection
•are gaps between network clusters.
In a re-examination of Stanley Milgram's six degrees of separation theory, Duncan Watts estimated that about half of the population is connected to each other through six degrees. If these networks were mapped what would you call the dead ends where groups lack connections between clusters?
structural holes
Social capital
•the information, knowledge of people or things, and connections that help individuals enter preexisting networks or gain power in them
•Ex of social capital: neighborhood watch
What social trend, related to social capital, did Robert Putnam focus on in his book Bowling Alone?
People are less involved in communal activities and organizations.
Sociologist Robert Wuthnow acknowledges there have been changes in Americans' sense of connection to one another and to communities, and he argues that _____.
those connections haven't disappeared and that people aren't necessarily worse off because of these changes
One advantage of network analysis over interpretive sociology is that _____.
it can reveal patterns in social structures that might not ever become evident through answers to direct questions
organizational structure
The ways in which power and authority are distributed within an organization
A company changes from an assembly-line approach to product development to a team-based approach. This involves a fundamental change to the company's _____.
organizational structure
Many cell phone companies have similar offers and restrictions for changing numbers, adding numbers to a plan, getting a new phone, paying for minutes used beyond the allotted free minutes, and so on. These similarities can be said to be due to what processes?
In this scenario, the cell phone companies have become more like each other. This is an example of institutional isomorphism.
Informal deviance
•minor violations
•Ex: anything that is not going to get you arrested (burping loudly)
What is an example of informal deviance?
telling the hostess of a dinner party that you didn't like the main dish
Mechanical solidarity
Based on sameness: means everyone is pretty much the same; naturally there are differences but we're still the same
Organic solidarity
•Based on difference and interdependence
•social cohesion based on the differences and the interdependence of specialized parts of society
Why is a society bound by mechanical solidarity more likely to apply punitive justice (rather than rehabilitative justice) to a person who violates a law or social norm?
People in such a society are bound by sameness and any violation of social norms must be punished severely in order to reinforce the boundaries of acceptable behavior.
What is the irony of the relationship between deviance and society?
Deviance helps hold societies together by uniting people in opposition to behavior that is deemed unacceptable.
Punitive justices (mechanical)
making the violator suffer, thus defining boundaries and strengthening the collective
Rehabilitative justice (organic)
•examines specific circumstances of deviants, attempts to reform them
•rehabilitative social response is designed to transform the transgressor into a productive member of society.
Which of the following is an example of rehabilitative justice?
entering a work training program after being released from prison
According to Émile Durkheim's theory of suicide, what two social factors have the most impact on suicide rates?
social integration and social regulation
Labeling Theory
•We notice how others see or label us
•Our reactions to those labels help form the basis of our self-identity
•a micro-level theory
A child struggles to learn how to read and is frequently teased about it by his siblings and is referred to as "slow" by his parents and teachers. He underperforms in school and never thinks about going to college. Ultimately he drops out before graduating from high school, telling the school counselor that he's just not a smart guy who can learn from books. This is an example of which theory of deviance?
labeling theory
Stigma
•Negative label that changes a person's self-concept and social identity
•Serious consequences
Broken windows theory of deviance
Social and environmental context and cues impact individual actions
There was an empty lot in a middle-class neighborhood that for years was maintained by a neighbor who lived next to it. That neighbor moved away and within a few weeks several bags of garbage and some old furniture were sitting in the lot. Shortly after that, an old car was parked in the lot and teenagers started to gather there to smoke and hang out. Within a few months, there was a mugging by the lot and the police made a couple of arrests for drug dealing there. This series of events is an example of what theory?
broken windows theory
Merton's strain theory
Deviance occurs when all members of society do not have equal ability to achieve socially acceptable goals
Rebels
Don't accept the goals of society of the means, so they creates their own goals using new means
Crime Reduction
•Reducing crime
•Every mayor or police will take credit for the drop in crime
•Can't predict crime: not possible
Recidivism
•Occurs when one who has been involved in the criminal justice system reverts back to crime
•Evidence=historically high rates of incarceration
Devah Pager's research on employment prospects for individuals with a prior criminal record exemplifies the serious consequences for certain stigmas. If an individual with a criminal record cannot easily find a job, due to this stigma, and thus decides to return to committing crimes to support their family, what sociological idea is this an example of?
recidivism
Informal social sanctions
•Unspoken rules of social life
-We are all simultaneously agents and objects of social order
-Foundation of formal social control
•understood by members of a social group without being openly expressed
Anomie
can be defined as a sense of aimlessness or despair that develops when an individual experiences a loss of order and normalcy from too little social regulation
Differential opportunity theory links what two things in analyzing deviance?
economic opportunities and crime rates
White-collar crime
refers to crimes committed by a professional against a corporation, agency, or other business
What is one explanation for why it can be difficult to accurately measure changes in crime rates?
Definitions of crimes change over time.
deterrence theory of criminal justice
arises from the view that crime results from a rational calculation of its costs and benefits
In order to combat rising crime rates, a state introduces tough new sentencing laws. The hopes of politicians and law-enforcement officials for a subsequent decrease in crime are based on _____.
deterrence theory
The goal of correctional centers and mental health institutions to help inmates or patients learn to be productive members of society may be at odds with _____.
the way life in a total institution can strip away a person's self-identity and leave him or her feeling lost and vulnerable
One of the effects of mass incarceration in the United States has been
the disenfranchisement of millions of former felons
In Discipline and Punish, the French theorist Michel Foucault examines how the modern penal system _____.
represents a transformation in social control
Foucault's idea of the panopticon
a metaphor for the general functioning of disciplinary techniques in society. In other words, the constant monitoring and policing that minority youth face
The interview with Victor Rios highlights the differential treatment that minorities, particularly those in the inner-cities, receive from a young age. In his youth, Professor Rios encountered police intrusion upon his daily life often, including at school. What sociological idea epitomizes Professor Rios's experience?
Foucault's panopticon