1. Alienation - this concept describes the estrangement of individuals from one another, or from a
specific situation or process (Marxist sociology)
It is impossible to extricate Marx's ideas about alienation from his wider sociological discussion of
the division of labour, the evolution of private property relations, and the emergence of
conflicting classes. In the Marxian terminology, alienation is an objectively verifiable state of affairs,
inherent in the specific social relations of capitalist production.
2. Anomie - An absence, breakdown, confusion, or conflict in the norms of a society (Durkheim, Suicide)
The argument is further developed in his discussion of suicide—where anomie is one of the four causes
of suicide identified. Anomic suicide occurs increasingly in organic societies, notably at times of
economic depression or boom, when there is a lessening of economic (and possible normative)
regulation. In such periods, people are less closely locked into their society, so their basic desires may
become limitless and confused. At this point, anomie results in a psychological state of disorder and
meaninglessness. The concept is often contrasted with Marx's idea of alienation.
3. Authority
4. Base and Superstructure - ‘base is a real foundation, on which rises a legal and political
superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness’ (Marx
Marx himself wrote that the base comprised ‘relations of production which correspond to a definite
stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production
constitutes the economic structure of society’. What has been at issue is the meaning of ‘correspond’
and the composition of the ‘relations of production’.
5. Capital (economic, social, cultural) - 1) economic - one of four factors of production—the others
being land, labour, and enterprise; 2) Social - the types of relations that exist between individuals as
located within both families and communities, and that are said to exert a strong influence on levels of
educational achievement (Coleman); 3) Cultural - refer to the symbols, ideas, tastes, and preferences
that can be strategically used as resources in social action, refers as "habitus" (Bourdieu); symbolic –
arises from an individual’s social position
6. Circular reasoning
7. Consent
8. Cultural Hegemony
9. Determinism
10. Deviance - an attribute, as something inherent in a certain kind of behaviour or person: the delinquent,
the homosexual, the mentally ill, and so forth; formal property of social situations and social systems.
(Durkheim)
Criteria: 1) pattern of norm violation; 2) Stigma construct, a label bestowed upon certain classes of
behaviour to certain times, which then become devalued, discredited, and often excluded.
11. Division of Labor - It denotes any stable organization, co-ordinating individuals, or groups carrying
out different, but integrated activities (Adam Smith, Durkheim)
For Émile Durkheim, the principal interest of the division of labour is its moral consequences, that is, its
effect on the underlying solidarity of the society, which should restrain individual egoism, ruthlessness, and
licence.
According to Adam Smith, division of productive labour greatly increases the wealth-creating capacity of a
society. Unrestrained by government or administrative rules, the free market encourages producers to
specialize in activities where they have a natural advantage.
1. Domination - Rule by coercion or noncoercive compliance.
These types are: rational-legal (legitimacy claimed from a generally agreed set of rules and procedures);
traditional (legitimacy based on continuity over time); and charismatic (legitimacy based on the
extraordinary personal qualities of the leader).
,1. Essentialism - essentialists make the twin claims that it is possible to establish definitively the truth of a
scientific theory, and that scientists can arrive at complete explanations by discovering the essence or reality
that lies behind the appearance of a phenomenon. However, the term is also applied to the theory of
descriptions which states that definitions are descriptions of the essential properties of things, and that one
can evaluate attempts at definitions in terms of the falsity or truth of the descriptions given by them.
2. Exploitation - The use for unacceptable purposes of an economic resource, be it land, labour, or market
position
3. Field
4. Functionalism - A functional explanation accounts for the existence of a phenomenon or the carrying out
of an action in terms of its consequences—its contribution to maintaining a stable social whole (Durkheim)
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199533008.001.0001/acref-
9780199533008-e-880?rskey=ELeDdd&result=861
5. Habitus - A set of acquired dispositions of thought, behaviour, and taste, which is said by Pierre Bourdieu
(Outline of Theory and Practice, 1977) to constitute the link between social structures and social practice
(or social action) + Norbert Elias (1939)
6. Historical Materialism - Historical’ entailed the analysis of how particular forms of society had come into
existence, and the specific historical contexts within which apparently universal or eternal social forms—
state, religion, market, and so forth—were located. Materialism denoted the rejection
of Hegelian idealism and the primacy of socio-economic processes and relations. (Karl Marc describing his
own theory)
7. Homophily
8. Inequality - Unequal rewards or opportunities for different individuals within a group or groups within a
society. If equality is judged in terms of legal equality, equality of opportunity, or equality of outcome, then
inequality is a constant feature of the human condition (Hayek)
9. Interactionism - it is a perspective that sees society as the product of human interactions, and the meanings
that individuals place on those interactions. acknowledging that humans have agency and are not swept
away by forces outside their control and create their own meanings.
*Symbolic Interactionism - A leading American social psychological theory which focuses upon the ways
in which meanings emerge through interaction.
10. Interdependence - is a social exchange theory that states that interpersonal relationships are defined
through interpersonal interdependence, which is "the process by which interacting people influence one
another's experiences"
11. Intersectionality - theory in sociology that outlines how an individual may face multiple types of
overlapping discrimination depending on their race, gender, age, ethnicity, physical ability, class or any
other characteristic that might place them in a minority class. (Crenshaw)
12. Labeling Theory - Labelling theory was a major thrust of the sceptical revolution in the sociology
of deviance during the 1950s and 1960s. Labelling theorists addressed a number of definitional issues
hitherto largely ignored: ‘Why does a particular rule, the infraction of which constitutes deviance, exist at
all?’; ‘What are the processes involved in identifying someone as a deviant and applying the rule to him or
her?’; and ‘What are the consequences of this application, both for the society and the individual?’
13. Legitimacy - process by which power is not only institutionalized but more importantly is given moral
grounding. Legitimacy (or authority) is what is accorded to such a stable distribution of power when it is
considered valid. (Max Weber)
14. Life chances - The ownership of property and the disposal over goods and services in the marketplace,
which are outcomes of the distribution of power in society, determine the ‘chance’ to realize an
individual’s goals in social action. (Weber - analysis of class and status)
15. Methodological Individualism - Broadly any set of ideas emphasizing the importance of the individual
and the individual’s interests, the term is used to characterize a range of ideas, philosophies, and doctrines.
, Thus, the American sociologist Robert N. Bellah and his colleagues proposed the controversial thesis,
owing much to Durkheim’s account of anomie and egoism, that American individualism is becoming
excessive, since it is destroying the moral integrity of that society
1. Modernity - A term used to characterize the stage in the history of social relations, dating roughly from the
end of the 18th century, that is characterized by the democratic and industrial revolutions.
While modernism is a relatively recent intellectual movement in the arts, modernity refers to much earlier
and more enduring social conditions
2. Norms - is a shared expectation of behaviour that is considered culturally desirable and/or appropriate.
Norms are similar to rules or regulations in being prescriptive, although they lack the formal status of rules.
Actual behaviour may differ from what is considered normative and, if judged by existing norms, may be
deemed deviant
3. Role - is a key concept in sociological theory. It highlights the social expectations attached to particular
social positions and analyses the workings of such expectations.
4. Self-Fulfilling Prophesy - famous theorem that ‘when people define situations as real, they are real in their
consequences’.(William Isaac Thomas, Robert Merton). Merton suggests the self-fulfilling prophecy is an
important and basic process in society, arguing that ‘in the beginning, a false definition of the situation
evokes a new behaviour which makes the originally false conception come true. [It] perpetuates a reign of
error’.
5. Social action- is an action behind which an individual attaches meaning and one witch may affect other
6. Social class
7. Social construction - theory that belongs to the symbolic interactionist perspective. Social realities are
constructed and maintained in social interaction: we do not find or discover knowledge or reality so much
as we construct it. In some ways an institution can be seen as a sort of ‘super-custom’, a set
of mores, folkways, and patterns of behaviour that deals with major social interests: law, church, and
family for example. Thus, a social institution is a cluster of specialized normative expectations and consists
of all the structural components of a society through which the main concerns and activities are organized,
and social needs (such as those for order, belief, and reproduction) are met. (Parsons, SpenceR)
8. Social facts
9. Social institutions - meaning established aspects of society
10. Social outcomes
11. Social reproduction - describes the reproduction of social structures and systems, mainly based on
particular preconditions in demographics, education and inheritance of material property or legal titles (as
earlier with aristocracy). Reproduction is understood as the maintenance and continuation of existing social
relations. Originally proposed by Karl Marx in Das Kapital, this concept is a variety of Marx's notion of
economic reproduction.
12. Social stratification - is usually applied to studies of structured social inequality; that is, studies of any
systematic inequalities between groups of people, which arise as the unintended consequence of social
processes and relationships.
Social stratification is thus at the heart of macrosociology—the study of whole societies, in comparative
perspective, in an attempt to understand processes of social stability and change. Social stratification begins
from Weber's limiting cases of the more traditional status-based society
1. Social structure - A term referring to any recurring pattern of social behaviour; or, more specifically, to
the ordered interrelationships between the different elements of a social system or society. Structure is
generally agreed to be one of the most important but also most elusive concepts in the social sciences
(status hierarchies, identities, cultural and legal rules)
More typically, however, it is seen as designating the actual arrangement of individuals and groups into those
larger entities that Durkheim saw as social facts.
2. Socialization (Primary, Secondary, Latent, Manifest) – internalization of social norms
Manifest – deliberate and systematic educational efforts
specific situation or process (Marxist sociology)
It is impossible to extricate Marx's ideas about alienation from his wider sociological discussion of
the division of labour, the evolution of private property relations, and the emergence of
conflicting classes. In the Marxian terminology, alienation is an objectively verifiable state of affairs,
inherent in the specific social relations of capitalist production.
2. Anomie - An absence, breakdown, confusion, or conflict in the norms of a society (Durkheim, Suicide)
The argument is further developed in his discussion of suicide—where anomie is one of the four causes
of suicide identified. Anomic suicide occurs increasingly in organic societies, notably at times of
economic depression or boom, when there is a lessening of economic (and possible normative)
regulation. In such periods, people are less closely locked into their society, so their basic desires may
become limitless and confused. At this point, anomie results in a psychological state of disorder and
meaninglessness. The concept is often contrasted with Marx's idea of alienation.
3. Authority
4. Base and Superstructure - ‘base is a real foundation, on which rises a legal and political
superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness’ (Marx
Marx himself wrote that the base comprised ‘relations of production which correspond to a definite
stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production
constitutes the economic structure of society’. What has been at issue is the meaning of ‘correspond’
and the composition of the ‘relations of production’.
5. Capital (economic, social, cultural) - 1) economic - one of four factors of production—the others
being land, labour, and enterprise; 2) Social - the types of relations that exist between individuals as
located within both families and communities, and that are said to exert a strong influence on levels of
educational achievement (Coleman); 3) Cultural - refer to the symbols, ideas, tastes, and preferences
that can be strategically used as resources in social action, refers as "habitus" (Bourdieu); symbolic –
arises from an individual’s social position
6. Circular reasoning
7. Consent
8. Cultural Hegemony
9. Determinism
10. Deviance - an attribute, as something inherent in a certain kind of behaviour or person: the delinquent,
the homosexual, the mentally ill, and so forth; formal property of social situations and social systems.
(Durkheim)
Criteria: 1) pattern of norm violation; 2) Stigma construct, a label bestowed upon certain classes of
behaviour to certain times, which then become devalued, discredited, and often excluded.
11. Division of Labor - It denotes any stable organization, co-ordinating individuals, or groups carrying
out different, but integrated activities (Adam Smith, Durkheim)
For Émile Durkheim, the principal interest of the division of labour is its moral consequences, that is, its
effect on the underlying solidarity of the society, which should restrain individual egoism, ruthlessness, and
licence.
According to Adam Smith, division of productive labour greatly increases the wealth-creating capacity of a
society. Unrestrained by government or administrative rules, the free market encourages producers to
specialize in activities where they have a natural advantage.
1. Domination - Rule by coercion or noncoercive compliance.
These types are: rational-legal (legitimacy claimed from a generally agreed set of rules and procedures);
traditional (legitimacy based on continuity over time); and charismatic (legitimacy based on the
extraordinary personal qualities of the leader).
,1. Essentialism - essentialists make the twin claims that it is possible to establish definitively the truth of a
scientific theory, and that scientists can arrive at complete explanations by discovering the essence or reality
that lies behind the appearance of a phenomenon. However, the term is also applied to the theory of
descriptions which states that definitions are descriptions of the essential properties of things, and that one
can evaluate attempts at definitions in terms of the falsity or truth of the descriptions given by them.
2. Exploitation - The use for unacceptable purposes of an economic resource, be it land, labour, or market
position
3. Field
4. Functionalism - A functional explanation accounts for the existence of a phenomenon or the carrying out
of an action in terms of its consequences—its contribution to maintaining a stable social whole (Durkheim)
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199533008.001.0001/acref-
9780199533008-e-880?rskey=ELeDdd&result=861
5. Habitus - A set of acquired dispositions of thought, behaviour, and taste, which is said by Pierre Bourdieu
(Outline of Theory and Practice, 1977) to constitute the link between social structures and social practice
(or social action) + Norbert Elias (1939)
6. Historical Materialism - Historical’ entailed the analysis of how particular forms of society had come into
existence, and the specific historical contexts within which apparently universal or eternal social forms—
state, religion, market, and so forth—were located. Materialism denoted the rejection
of Hegelian idealism and the primacy of socio-economic processes and relations. (Karl Marc describing his
own theory)
7. Homophily
8. Inequality - Unequal rewards or opportunities for different individuals within a group or groups within a
society. If equality is judged in terms of legal equality, equality of opportunity, or equality of outcome, then
inequality is a constant feature of the human condition (Hayek)
9. Interactionism - it is a perspective that sees society as the product of human interactions, and the meanings
that individuals place on those interactions. acknowledging that humans have agency and are not swept
away by forces outside their control and create their own meanings.
*Symbolic Interactionism - A leading American social psychological theory which focuses upon the ways
in which meanings emerge through interaction.
10. Interdependence - is a social exchange theory that states that interpersonal relationships are defined
through interpersonal interdependence, which is "the process by which interacting people influence one
another's experiences"
11. Intersectionality - theory in sociology that outlines how an individual may face multiple types of
overlapping discrimination depending on their race, gender, age, ethnicity, physical ability, class or any
other characteristic that might place them in a minority class. (Crenshaw)
12. Labeling Theory - Labelling theory was a major thrust of the sceptical revolution in the sociology
of deviance during the 1950s and 1960s. Labelling theorists addressed a number of definitional issues
hitherto largely ignored: ‘Why does a particular rule, the infraction of which constitutes deviance, exist at
all?’; ‘What are the processes involved in identifying someone as a deviant and applying the rule to him or
her?’; and ‘What are the consequences of this application, both for the society and the individual?’
13. Legitimacy - process by which power is not only institutionalized but more importantly is given moral
grounding. Legitimacy (or authority) is what is accorded to such a stable distribution of power when it is
considered valid. (Max Weber)
14. Life chances - The ownership of property and the disposal over goods and services in the marketplace,
which are outcomes of the distribution of power in society, determine the ‘chance’ to realize an
individual’s goals in social action. (Weber - analysis of class and status)
15. Methodological Individualism - Broadly any set of ideas emphasizing the importance of the individual
and the individual’s interests, the term is used to characterize a range of ideas, philosophies, and doctrines.
, Thus, the American sociologist Robert N. Bellah and his colleagues proposed the controversial thesis,
owing much to Durkheim’s account of anomie and egoism, that American individualism is becoming
excessive, since it is destroying the moral integrity of that society
1. Modernity - A term used to characterize the stage in the history of social relations, dating roughly from the
end of the 18th century, that is characterized by the democratic and industrial revolutions.
While modernism is a relatively recent intellectual movement in the arts, modernity refers to much earlier
and more enduring social conditions
2. Norms - is a shared expectation of behaviour that is considered culturally desirable and/or appropriate.
Norms are similar to rules or regulations in being prescriptive, although they lack the formal status of rules.
Actual behaviour may differ from what is considered normative and, if judged by existing norms, may be
deemed deviant
3. Role - is a key concept in sociological theory. It highlights the social expectations attached to particular
social positions and analyses the workings of such expectations.
4. Self-Fulfilling Prophesy - famous theorem that ‘when people define situations as real, they are real in their
consequences’.(William Isaac Thomas, Robert Merton). Merton suggests the self-fulfilling prophecy is an
important and basic process in society, arguing that ‘in the beginning, a false definition of the situation
evokes a new behaviour which makes the originally false conception come true. [It] perpetuates a reign of
error’.
5. Social action- is an action behind which an individual attaches meaning and one witch may affect other
6. Social class
7. Social construction - theory that belongs to the symbolic interactionist perspective. Social realities are
constructed and maintained in social interaction: we do not find or discover knowledge or reality so much
as we construct it. In some ways an institution can be seen as a sort of ‘super-custom’, a set
of mores, folkways, and patterns of behaviour that deals with major social interests: law, church, and
family for example. Thus, a social institution is a cluster of specialized normative expectations and consists
of all the structural components of a society through which the main concerns and activities are organized,
and social needs (such as those for order, belief, and reproduction) are met. (Parsons, SpenceR)
8. Social facts
9. Social institutions - meaning established aspects of society
10. Social outcomes
11. Social reproduction - describes the reproduction of social structures and systems, mainly based on
particular preconditions in demographics, education and inheritance of material property or legal titles (as
earlier with aristocracy). Reproduction is understood as the maintenance and continuation of existing social
relations. Originally proposed by Karl Marx in Das Kapital, this concept is a variety of Marx's notion of
economic reproduction.
12. Social stratification - is usually applied to studies of structured social inequality; that is, studies of any
systematic inequalities between groups of people, which arise as the unintended consequence of social
processes and relationships.
Social stratification is thus at the heart of macrosociology—the study of whole societies, in comparative
perspective, in an attempt to understand processes of social stability and change. Social stratification begins
from Weber's limiting cases of the more traditional status-based society
1. Social structure - A term referring to any recurring pattern of social behaviour; or, more specifically, to
the ordered interrelationships between the different elements of a social system or society. Structure is
generally agreed to be one of the most important but also most elusive concepts in the social sciences
(status hierarchies, identities, cultural and legal rules)
More typically, however, it is seen as designating the actual arrangement of individuals and groups into those
larger entities that Durkheim saw as social facts.
2. Socialization (Primary, Secondary, Latent, Manifest) – internalization of social norms
Manifest – deliberate and systematic educational efforts
