Define Introduction to Sociology Flashcards

- Scientific study of human social life, group, and societies
- Interactions among people, groups of humans
- How individuals come together in patterns

- What separates sociologists from non-sociologists
- Seeing the relationship between biography and history
- Linking one's fate to larger social forces
- You contribute to the larger social world
- Public Issues: Mainstream Cultural and Societal Problems
- Personal Troubles: Individuals problems

- Sociology can be an objective science
- Society is a living organism
- Social Solidarity: people act in ways to maintain solidarity
- People must conform for society
- Structural-Functionalism Theory

- Economic change and how it causes social change
- Society is filled with conflicts within groups: Class Conflict
- Interested in capitalism

- Status hierarchy
- Thought life would become more defined by bureaucracy (huge, complex organizations)
- As modern life progresses, people would become more rational
- Rational Choice Theory

- Former dominate theoretical perspective
- Durkheim influential
- Looks at the function something serves within society, societal parts must serve societal functions
- Society is composed of interdependent parts
- Critiques: Whose interests are being served?

- Critique of Functionalism
- Focus on struggle and conflict within society
- Marx and Weber influential
- Whose interests are being served? and Who has the power? are central questions
- Critiques: What about gender or race/ethnicity?

- Individuals are rational beings who decide to exchange goods/services for benefits they will receive
- Weber influential - rationalization
- Gary Becker – U of C, economist/sociologist (in marriage, men earn money, women raise children, most efficient)
- Critiques: Assumes people are rational and that people
come to an exchange with equal resources Interactionism

- Focus on social interaction
- People are interpretive beings
- Through interaction: socialization and self-image/identity
- Critiques: What about the big picture?

- Focus on gender relations
- Gender is fundamental status in society
- Gender as basis of inequality
- Questions gender expectations and roles in society and how gender structures institutions and opportunities
- Critiques: Depending on the scholar what about race/ethnic, sexual orientation, or class variation?

- The process of learning cultural values and norms
- Social processes through which an individual becomes integrated into a social group by learning the group's culture and his/her role in group
- Identity formation occurs via socialization
- Occurs over the life course - not just for kids
- Aids in social stability

- Individual gives up one way of life and one set of values for another
- Socialization can be learned and unlearned
- ex: military, mental institution, prisoners

- The shared ways of a human social group
- Its socially constructed, passed on, and includes values, norms, behavioral dimensions, and material artifacts
- Not just values

- A system of values, attitudes, modes of behavior, and lifestyles of a social group that is distinct from, but related to,
the dominant culture of a society
- Can exist, but doesn't mean everyone is equally involved in it
- Not everything is one ex: fans of a TV show

- Relatively stable patterns of social behavior which includes the structure of positions in society and the routine relationships between them