Sociology 101 Exam 1 Study Guide Questions and Complete Solutions

Sociology 101 Exam 1 Study Guide Questions and Complete Solutions Stereotype - Answer: a simplified generalization about a roup that is often false or exaggerated. Stereotypes are most often negative, although positive stereotypes can sometimes be found Sociology - Answer: the study of societies and the social worlds that individuals inhabit within them sociological imaginations - Answer: the capacity to think systematically about how many things we experience as personal problems are really social problems that are widely shared by others social network - Answer: the ties or connections between people, groups, and organizations Society - Answer: a large group of people who live in the same area and participate in a common economy or culture Social context - Answer: The social environments, including economic and cultural conditions, that influence people's lives Social hierarchy - Answer: A set of important social relationships that provide individuals and groups with different kinds of status in which some are elevated above others. Identity - Answer: The social characteristics and group affiliation an individual has Institution - Answer: Structured and enduring practices of human life that are built around well-established roles and norms Social structure - Answer: The external forces, most notably social hierarchies, norms, and institutions, that provide the context for individual and group action norm - Answer: Basic rule of society that helps us know what is and is not appropriate to do in a situation. Can evolve over time Social interaction - Answer: The way people act together, including how they modify and alter their behavior in response to the presence of others; governed by norms Interdisciplinary research - Answer: a method of research that integrates ideas, theories, and data from different academic fields Industrialization - Answer: a process of economic change characterized by the decline of farming and the growth of factories and large-scale good production urbanization - Answer: the growth of cities urban area - Answer: A geographic area with a high population density (1000 people per 1 square mile) reference group - Answer: a set of individuals who share similar preferences or social positions and have an influence on an individual or members of a group self - Answer: the conscious being, personified in a human body, which is made and reformulated through social interaction looking-glass self - Answer: a term coined by sociologist Charles Horton Cooley to emphasize the extent to which our own self-understandings are dependent on how others view us generalized other - Answer: the social control exercised by commonsense understandings of what is appropriate given a specific time and place significant other - Answer: a term coined by George Herbert Mead to mean individuals close enough to us to have a strong capacity to motivate our behavior role model - Answer: a specific individual who exhibits influence on others and acts as a reference for how to act civil inattention - Answer: The act of ignoring other people to an appropriate degree even while noticing that other people are present Ethnomethodology - Answer: A line of sociological inquiry (introduced by Harold Garfinkel) that studies the ways (tools and methods) members of a particular group construct social order and make sense of their everyday lives deviant - Answer: an individual whose actions or attitudes fall outside the generally accepted norms of a given group or society. What is "deviant" behavior is subject to change, depending on which groups have the power to define what is "normal" role - Answer: the expected way to act given a particular set of social relations self-fulfilling prophecy - Answer: a term coined by Robert Merton to mean the process by which someone is defined in a particular way and then comes to fulfill the expectations of that definition role conflict - Answer: when two or more discordant demands are placed on individuals, rendering them unable to fulfill their own or others' expectations status - Answer: a distinct social category that is set off from others and has associated with it a set of expected behaviors and roles for individuals to assume. The category can often involve prestige, such as that awarded to individuals and to important social or economic roles (like a priest, lawyer, or truck driver). An individual's status may reflect some accomplishment or position attached, one's membership in a particular group, or both. life course - Answer: the transitions individuals make as they age through their lives. A typical life course includes childhood, adolescence, the transition to adulthood, becoming a parent, retiring, and death social movement - Answer: a conscious, conceited, and sustained effort by ordinary people to change (or preserve) some aspect of their society by using extra-institutional means. Refers to collective actions undertaken outside existing institutions, like courts and legislatures. discrimination - Answer: any behavior, practice, or policy that harms, excludes, or disadvantages individuals on the basis of their group membership. power - Answer: Three distinct dimensions in the sociological sense: the power of an individual/group to get another to do something; the power to control the agenda of issues that are to be decided; and the power to persuade others. privilege - Answer: The ability/right to have access to opportunities or claims on resources curriculum - Answer: The structure of coursework and content of a sequence of courses making up a program of study ina school or school system institutionalization - Answer: the process by which a social practice or organization begins to become an institution; the introduction of formal rules and roles in an organized form socialization - Answer: the process by which individuals come to understand the expectations and norms of their groups as well as the various roles they transition into over the life course and how to behave in society or in particular social settings interest group - Answer: an organization established to promote the interests of a group or corporation especially in Congress or at the level of state governments path dependency - Answer: the process by which the historical legacies and outcomes of the past impact actors and organizations in the present, making some choices or outcomes appear logical and others illogical digital divide - Answer: the social, economic, and cultural gap between those with effective access to information technology and those without such access symbol - Answer: something that communicates an idea while being distinct from the idea itself habitus - Answer: a concept introduced by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to refer to the diverse ways in which individuals develop intuitive understandings and ingrained habits reflecting their class background and upbringing mass communication - Answer: communication within society as a whole through the mass media (television, internet, newspapers, radio, etc) as opposed to between individuals culture - Answer: systems of belief and knowledge shared by members of a group or society that shape individual and group behavior and attitudes. A society's culture includes its language, customs, symbols, rituals, and other forms of meaning that are widely shared tool kit - Answer: in the sociology of culture, the view that culture is a set of symbolic skills, devices, or strategies that people learn throughout their lives and can deploy strategically in different situations. The toolkit also supplies a set of ideas to justify a course of action retrospectively. language - Answer: a comprehensive system of words or symbols representing concepts, which is often, but not always, spoken. value - Answer: a judgement about what is intrinsically important or meaningful, when it comes to research, values held by sociologists shape their views of and perspectives on the questions they ask cultural universal - Answer: a cultural trait common to all humans and societies hegemony - Answer: widely shared beliefs about what is right or wrong that legitimize and empower a society's elites cultural relativism - Answer: the idea that cultural meanings and practices must be evaluated in their own social contexts counterculture - Answer: a group whose ideas, attitudes, and behaviors are in direct conflict with mainstream culture mainstream culture - Answer: the most widely shared systems of meaning in a society. Mainstream culture includes the most widely consumed cultural products (music, literature, films, foods, ways of speaking, etc.) and widely shared ideas about normal or appropriate behavior nationalism - Answer: a set of beliefs about the virtues of one's country. In the sociology of race and ethnicity, nationalism includes the assumptions that people are inherently members of a specific nation and that their identities are in large part determined by their national membership. multiculturalism - Answer: beliefs or policies promoting the equal accommodation of different ethnic or cultural groups within a society. It is sometimes also used to refer to the benefits of dialogue and interaction between different groups. Ethnocentrism - Answer: the inability to understand, accept, or reference patterns of behavior different from one's own subculture - Answer: a relatively small group of people whose affiliation is based on shared beliefs preferences, and practices that distinguish them from the mainstream or larger social group to which they also belong national culture - Answer: the set of shared cultural practices and beliefs of people living within a nation-state culture wars - Answer: disagreements about the proper role of family and religious values in society group style - Answer: the set of norms and practices that distinguishes one group from another cultural omnivore - Answer: a cultural elite that demonstrates high status through a broad range of cultural consumption and knowledge, including low-status culture class reproduction - Answer: the processes that cause class boundaries and distinctions to be maintained over time cultural capital - Answer: the type and level of education and cultural knowledge possesed by an individual. Having a high level of cultural capital signifies one's high status in the eyes of others taste - Answer: a person's cultural preferences culture industry - Answer: the production for profit of popular music, movies, books, television, social media, and other types of mass-culture products by capitalist enterprises networked public - Answer: an online public sphere public sphere - Answer: a social space- physical, virtual, or theoretical, where private citizens can come together as a public body to discuss and express opinions about matters of general interest. counterpublic - Answer: alternative public organizations created by disadvantaged social groups journalism - Answer: the production and dissemination of information about contemporary affairs of general importance patriarchy - Answer: a gender system in which men have substantially more power than women in politics, the economy, and the family gender - Answer: the ways that social forces create differences between men's and women's behavior, preferences, treatment, and opportunities and the characteristics of men and women that reflect these forces intersex individual - Answer: born with both male and female characteristics, including genitals. May be surgically altered to identify the child as male or female. However, individuals often identify as the other gender when they get older. random-assignment experiment - Answer: a study using a method of assigning participants or groups to receive different treatments that ensures that any post-treatment differences result from the treatment they received. social construction of gender - Answer: the social processes that create and sustain gender differences and gender inequalities transgender - Answer: individuals who were assigned a sex category at birth based on anatomical criteria but who come to identify with the other gender and take action to be in that category sex - Answer: whether a person is classified as male or female based on anatomical/chromosomal criteria occupational sex segregation - Answer: when women and men are distributed differently across occupations, such that some jobs are filled mostly by men and others by women. feminist movement - Answer: a social movement whose members advocate equality between men and women in rights and opportunities cisgender - Answer: individuals assigned a sex category at birth and who continue to identify with their assigned gender later in life sexual orientation - Answer: whether one's sexual attractions are to members of the same sex, opposite sex, or both. Double standard of sexuality - Answer: judging women more harshly than men for having sex outside of marriage or relationships heteronormativity - Answer: a type of prejudice that claims that being heterosexual is the only normal option for an individual's sexual orientation homophobia/heterosexism - Answer: discrimination against someone because they are not heterosexual/a fear of someone who isn't heterosexual probability sample - Answer: a technique for choosing participants for a research study in which each person in the population is assigned a known and likely chance of being selected cohabitation - Answer: an unmarried couple that lives together hookup - Answer: sexual behavior (not always intercourse) that occurs in a situation that was not a prearranged date and between individuals who may or may not be interested in an exclusive relationship hidden curriculum - Answer: the often unstated standards of behavior that teachers and administrators expect from children within the education system. These often unstated expectations may reflect the middle-class biases and norms of school professionals human capital - Answer: the stock of experience, knowledge, skills, and habits which an individual has that they can use to do productive labor soft skills - Answer: also called non-cognitive traits, these are social skills, such as knowing how to dress, the ability to hold a sophisticated conversation, or interacting well with a variety of other people- that may enhance a person's job performance credentialism - Answer: a requirement that one must obtain certain specific degrees or certificates before he/she can be considered for a particular job social closure - Answer: the process by which organized groups seek to establish or maintain privileged access to rewards or opportunities educational homogamy - Answer: the practice of people marrying individuals with education levels similar to their own allocation theory - Answer: a theory regarding the impact of education that focuses on how education transmits knowledge, skills, and values that persist in adulthood and their employers believe increase productivity social reproduction - Answer: the processes that transmit inequality from one generation to the next achievement gap - Answer: the gap in educational attainment between any two social groups (men and women, upper and lower class, etc.) hyper-segregated - Answer: in education, this term refers to schools where minority students comprise more than 90 percent of the student body tracking - Answer: a term used to describe how schools assign students to distinct groups based on ability or curriculum No Child Left Behind - Answer: legislation passed in 2001 which sought to reduce the achievement gap between low-income and minority children and higher-income white children social network - Answer: the ties or connections among people, groups, and organizations rational-choice perspective - Answer: a perspective in social and economic theory that emphasizes the centrality of individual decision-making based on how individuals think about their well-being and how best to advance it. While there are a variety of different versions of this, all emphasize that individual action is the foundation of society and social order. central planning - Answer: an economy in which governments plan the amount of goods to be produced and their price for consumers. It was commonly practiced in communist countries in the 20th century, such as the Soviet Union, China, and countries in Eastern Europe. market - Answer: any setting in which buyers and sellers engage in exchange state socialism - Answer: an economic system where to government owns most or some of all productive enterprises and makes decisions about the amount and type of goods and services to be produced capitalism - Answer: an economic system organized around private property and market exchange. In a capitalist economy, goods that are produced for consumption are distributed via exchange on the market entrepreneur - Answer: one who invests money in a business organization - Answer: a social group or social network that is unified by a common institutional structure, such as a government agency, a school, a business firm, the military, a religion, and many others bureaucracy - Answer: a type of organization that has rules and responsibilities for each position (or job) spelled out, in which selection into those positions occurs on the basis of merit (not typically by election or inheritance). Many bureaucracies are also responsible for setting out policies and procedures that are to be adhered to by others. loose coupling - Answer: an organizational environment in which those at the top do not have control over the activities and decisions underneath them. This often arises in complex organizations with multiple units organization isomorphism - Answer: the process by which similar organizations adopt similar rules and procedures normative (mimetic) isomorphism - Answer: the process of organizations becoming similar because of a widespread belief among their members and the members of similar organizations, that they should accept certain roles or procedures coercive isomorphism - Answer: similarities between organizations that arise out of legal or other requirements. Organizations become similar because they have no choice. niche - Answer: a unique place or opportunity that can be profitably filled by someone or some group. Niches arise in a variety of ways, especially when existing organizations or government agencies fail to meet some underlying social need scientific management - Answer: a movement that arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that attempted to improve productivity by ensuring that managers controlled all aspects of the labor process and would utilize the best practices available given existing technology and knowledge occupation - Answer: a job that has been formally established and has requirements (often formalized) for training or knowledge to perform it assembly line - Answer: a type of factor in which each worker performs one or a handful of small discrete tasks, with a conveyor belt moving pieces to each workstation. A finished product results from the input of many workers across an entire factory. labor process - Answer: the organization of work in terms of the relationship between workers and employers, the way specific work tasks are structured and performed, and the technologies and organizational environments in which the work is performed. Hawthorne Studies - Answer: An influential series at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric company in the 1920s. Two major findings emerged from these studies: the experiment effect, which is only change interpreted by workers as management's attempt to improve conditions especially those that provide mental stimulation, improve workers' productivity; and the social group effect, in which workers moved to separate spaces as a group develop bonds that increase their productivity. Industrial Revolution - Answer: the period in which mass production in factories began to develop and fostered rapid economic growth. The timing of the Industrial Revolution varied from country to country but is generally thought to have begun in the late 18th cetury and evolved throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. deskilling - Answer: the process of breaking down the tasks involved in the production of goods or services into parts that can be done by someone without specialized training division of labor - Answer: the specialization of individuals in any organization or group, or in society as a whole, particularly in relation to work. There is this a division of labor in all of society (with different people working in different occupations), a division of labor in individual organizations, and a division of labor in individual families. lean production - Answer: a term used to describe the efforts of economic organizations in recent years to achieve more efficiency by constantly scrutinizing and reducing costs in every possible way union - Answer: an organized association of workers created in order to protect and fight for rights or resources for their members. Unions can be organized at a single workplace, across multiple workplaces, of the same company, or in the same industry. Precariat - Answer: A new term that combines precariousness with Karl Marx's term for the working class (the proletariat) to describe the growing number of workers employed in part-time, insecure jobs with low wages and no control over their hours of work or working conditions autonomy - Answer: in work, the power to decide what and how one performs one's daily tasks, free of close supervision discretion - Answer: in regards to employment, the amount of trust (or lack thereof0 that an employer grants an employee. In particular, how much is an employee monitored in carrying out their daily task - Answer: