TASC Sociology cheat sheet

Functionalism (Durkheim, Parsons): society is a system of interdependent parts; each institution contributes to stability, and dysfunction signals strain.

Conflict theory (Marx, Weber, Dahrendorf): society is organized around unequal distribution of scarce resources; institutions reflect and reproduce dominant-group interests.

Symbolic interactionism (Mead, Blumer): meaning is produced and negotiated through face-to-face interaction; society is reproduced at the micro level.

Feminist and race-centered perspectives treat gender and racial hierarchy as structural, not incidental, features of social organization.

Positivism (Comte, Durkheim): social facts are external, constraining, and explainable by causal analysis; treat social rates as things.

Durkheim's study of suicide distinguishes egoistic, altruistic, anomic, and fatalistic types; integration and regulation are the two governing dimensions.

Weber's verstehen: interpretive understanding of actors' subjective meanings is required alongside causal explanation; ideal types are analytic constructs, not descriptions.

Correlation does not establish causation; valid causal claims require temporal order, nonspuriousness, and a plausible mechanism.

Sampling decision rule: use random/probability sampling for generalizability, purposive or snowball sampling for hidden populations, and note that sample size affects precision, not representativeness.

Culture = shared beliefs, values, norms, symbols, language, and material objects; values are ideals, norms are rules with sanctions attached.

Norms: folkways (mild, customary), mores (strong moral weight), laws (codified and formally enforced), taboos (absolute prohibition).

Ethnocentrism judges another culture by one's own standards; cultural relativism interprets practices within their own cultural context.

Subculture differs from parent culture while remaining within it; counterculture actively opposes dominant norms and values.

Material culture = physical objects; nonmaterial culture = ideas, values, and norms; culture lag (Ogburn) is the delay of nonmaterial culture behind technological change.

Cooley's looking-glass self: we imagine how we appear, imagine judgments of that appearance, and develop self-feeling from those imagined judgments.

Mead: the self develops through play and games by taking the role of the other; the generalized other is the internalized attitude of the community.

Kohlberg's moral stages run preconventional, conventional, postconventional; Gilligan argued the model undervalues an ethic of care.

Agents of socialization: family (primary, early), peers, schools (hidden curriculum), media, and later workplace and total institutions (resocialization).

Status is a social position; ascribed status is assigned at birth or without choice, achieved status is earned, and master status overrides others in interaction.

Role set = all roles attached to one status; role conflict is between roles of different statuses, role strain is within a single status.

Primary groups are small, intimate, and enduring (family, close friends); secondary groups are impersonal and instrumental (classmates, coworkers).

In-group/out-group boundaries generate loyalty and bias; reference groups supply standards of comparison for self-evaluation.

Group size effects: dyads are fragile and personal, triads permit coalitions and mediation, and larger groups increase formality and free-riding.

Asch conformity and Milgram obedience studies show that group pressure and legitimate authority can override individual judgment.

Bureaucracy (Weber) features division of labor, hierarchy, written rules, impersonal treatment, and merit-based careers; its dysfunctions include ritualism and goal displacement.

Groupthink (Janis) is a decision failure marked by illusion of unanimity, self-censorship, and suppression of dissent; devil's advocacy and outside review counter it.

McDonaldization (Ritzer) describes efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control spreading from fast food to other institutions.

Stratification is ranked, persistent, and institutionalized inequality in access to valued resources; class, status, and power are Weber's three dimensions.

Marx: class is defined by relation to the means of production; bourgeoisie and proletariat, with class consciousness and false consciousness as key concepts.

Socioeconomic status combines income, occupational prestige, and education; occupational prestige rankings are strikingly stable across societies.

Davis-Moore functionalism argues stratification motivates filling important roles; conflict theorists counter that it legitimizes inherited advantage.

Social mobility types: vertical (up or down), horizontal, intergenerational, and intragenerational; structural mobility results from changes in the occupational structure.

Poverty measures: absolute poverty uses a fixed threshold, relative poverty compares to median income, and the official U.S. measure predates in-kind benefits.

Race is a socially constructed category, not a biologically discrete one; ethnicity is shared ancestry, language, religion, or national origin.

Intersectionality (Crenshaw) holds that race, class, gender, and other statuses interact to produce outcomes not predictable from any one alone.

Gender pay gap components include occupational segregation, work experience and hours, and unexplained residual often attributed to discrimination.

Family functions: reproduction, socialization, economic support, emotional intimacy, and status placement; kinship may be consanguineal or affinal.

Marriage and descent patterns: endogamy/exogamy, monogamy/polygamy, patrilineal/matrilineal/bilateral descent, and patrilocal/matrilocal/neolocal residence.

Education transmits knowledge and also sorts students (tracking), socializes through the hidden curriculum, and reproduces cultural capital (Bourdieu).

Religion (Durkheim): beliefs, rituals, and a sacred/profane distinction; collective ritual generates solidarity; Weber linked Protestant ethic to capitalism.

Types of religious organization: church, sect (schism from church, high tension), denomination (settled sect), and cult/new religious movement.

Economy: capitalism (private ownership, market coordination) vs. socialism (collective ownership, state coordination); mixed economies combine both.

Politics and authority (Weber): traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal; rational-legal authority is legitimated by rules and office, not persons.

Health and medicine: the sick role (Parsons) grants exemption from duties in exchange for seeking help; medicalization expands medicine's jurisdiction over deviance.

Institutions are interdependent; change in one (e.g., economy) typically produces strain and adaptive change in others (family, education).

Collective behavior is emergent, relatively unstructured action by a collectivity; it includes crowds, fads, fashions, panics, and rumors.

Crowd explanations: contagion/le Bon, convergence (participants share predispositions), emergent norm (norms arise in the situation), and value-added (Smelser).

Relative deprivation: grievances arise from a perceived gap between expectations and attainments, not from absolute hardship alone.

Social movement types: reform, revolutionary, reactionary, redemptive (personal transformation), and alternative (limited individual change).

Resource mobilization theory: movement success depends on money, organization, leadership, and external allies more than on grievance intensity.

Political process model adds political opportunity structure - elite divisions, access, and repression levels - to explain movement emergence.

Framing processes (Snow, Benford): diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing, plus frame alignment such as bridging and amplification.

Tilly's repertoire of contention: the historically available forms of protest (strikes, petitions, boycotts, sit-ins) shape what challengers can do.

Modernization, dependency, and world-systems theories give competing accounts of global social change and inequality.

Goffman's dramaturgy: social life is performance with front stage, back stage, props, costume, and impression management.

Presentation of self involves giving expressions (intentional) and giving off expressions (unintentional cues); embarrassment signals a broken frame.

Civil inattention (Goffman) is the everyday practice of acknowledging others while avoiding intrusive attention in public space.

Ethnomethodology (Garfinkel): the study of the methods people use to produce and recognize ordinary social order; breaching experiments reveal taken-for-granted rules.

Conversational analysis findings: turn-taking, adjacency pairs, and repair maintain order; silence and interruption carry meaning.

Personal space zones (Hall): intimate, personal, social, and public distance; violations produce discomfort and are culturally variable.

Accounts and vocabularies of motive (Mills) are verbal justifications that make conduct intelligible to others.

Status cues and deference/ demeanor (Goffman) sustain the ritual order of face-to-face encounters.

Nonverbal channels include proxemics, kinesics, paralanguage, and eye contact; these often carry more relational meaning than words.