Državna Matura Sociology cheat sheet

Subject matter: social action, social structures, institutions and the reciprocal relationship between individual and society; sociology is a generalising, empirical social science, not a normative one.

Comte's hierarchy of sciences places sociology at the top as the most complex and most specific; he coined the term in 1838 and distinguished social statics (order) from social dynamics (change).

Durkheim's rule: treat social facts as things - external to the individual, constraining, and explicable by other social facts, not by psychological or biological reduction.

Weber's Verstehen: interpretive understanding of the subjective meaning actors attach to action; ideal types are heuristic constructs, not descriptions of reality.

Quantitative logic: operationalisation, measurement, hypothesis testing, representativeness, statistical inference from sample to population; survey, experiment, content analysis, secondary data.

Qualitative logic: grounded theory, participant observation, in-depth interview, focus group, case study, biographical method; aim is understanding meaning, not statistical generalisation.

Validity types: internal (causal inference), external (generalisability), construct (measures the concept); reliability = consistency of repeated measurement; validity is limited by reliability.

Sampling: random/probability (simple, stratified, cluster) permits inference; non-probability (quota, purposive, snowball, convenience) does not; sampling error shrinks with sample size.

Research ethics: informed consent, anonymity and confidentiality, no harm, voluntary participation, right to withdraw, honest reporting of data and sources.

Culture has material and non-material components; norms (shared expectations), values (shared ideals), symbols, language, knowledge and technology are its core elements.

Norms vary by strength: folkways (customs), mores (moral imperatives), laws (codified and sanctioned by the state); sanctions may be positive/negative and formal/informal.

Ethnocentrism judges other cultures by one's own standards; cultural relativism interprets a culture in its own terms; xenocentrism overvalues the foreign.

Subculture differs from dominant culture without opposing it; counterculture rejects or challenges central norms and values of the dominant culture.

Cultural universals (language, family, ritual, incest taboo) coexist with enormous cultural variability; cultural lag = material culture changes faster than non-material culture.

Socialisation into culture occurs through language and symbols; Sapir–Whorf hypothesis holds language shapes perception (strong version contested).

Goffman's dramaturgy: front stage/back stage, impression management, role distance; interaction is a performance adjusted to audience.

Symbolic interactionism (Mead, Blumer): meaning arises in interaction; three premises - people act on meanings, meanings arise socially, meanings are modified by interpretation.

Ethnomethodology (Garfinkel): social order is a practical accomplishment; breaching experiments reveal taken-for-granted background expectancies.

Nature vs nurture: biology sets limits, socialisation actualises potential; feral and isolated children show irreversible deficits from early deprivation.

Mead: the self arises through taking the role of the other; play stage (significant others) → game stage (generalised other); the 'I' is spontaneous, the 'me' is internalised social expectation.

Cooley's looking-glass self: we imagine how we appear, imagine the judgement, and develop self-feeling (pride or mortification) from that reflection.

Freud: id (pleasure principle), ego (reality principle), superego (internalised norms); socialisation is the internalisation of parental and social authority.

Piaget's stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational; Kohlberg's moral stages: preconventional, conventional, postconventional.

Primary socialisation occurs in the family in early childhood (emotional, diffuse, particularistic); secondary socialisation in school, peer group, workplace (formal, specific, universalistic).

Agents of socialisation: family, peer group, school, media, work, religion; peer group becomes decisive in adolescence; resocialisation occurs in total institutions.

Total institutions (Goffman) strip identity through mortification and rebuild it through a privilege system; examples: prison, army barracks, monastery, psychiatric hospital.

Role conflict = incompatible demands of two roles held by one person; role strain = conflicting demands within a single role; role set = roles attached to one status.

Status: ascribed (inherited, e.g. sex, caste) vs achieved (earned, e.g. occupation); role is the dynamic side of status; status inconsistency = mismatch across dimensions.

Social stratification = hierarchical ranking of categories with unequal access to scarce resources; dimensions: class, status/prestige, power (Weber), plus gender and ethnicity.

Marx: class defined by relation to means of production (bourgeoisie/proletariat); exploitation through surplus value; class in itself vs class for itself.

Weber: class (market situation), Stand/status (social honour), party (power); a class is not necessarily a community, unlike a status group.

Functionalist view (Davis–Moore): stratification motivates filling important roles via unequal rewards; conflict view: stratification serves dominant groups and reproduces inequality.

Social mobility: vertical (up/down) vs horizontal; intragenerational (career) vs intergenerational; structural mobility results from changes in the occupational structure.

Poverty: absolute (subsistence minimum) vs relative (below prevailing standard); culture of poverty (Lewis) vs structural explanations (unemployment, segregation, institutions).

Intersectionality (Crenshaw): class, gender, ethnicity and other positions interact, producing disadvantage that cannot be read off any single dimension.

Caste and estate are closed strata (ascribed, endogamous, no mobility); class is comparatively open (achieved, exogamous, mobility possible).

Family functions: reproduction, socialisation, economic support, emotional security, regulation of sexuality; nuclear vs extended, patrilineal/matrilineal, patrilocal/matrilocal, endogamous/exogamous.

Family forms: monogamy/polygamy (polygyny, polyandry), conjugal vs consanguineous, symmetrical family (Young and Willmott), single-parent, blended, same-sex.

Education manifest functions: transmission of knowledge, skills, credentials; latent functions: socialisation, sorting, custodial care, social networks (Merton's manifest/latent distinction).

Education and inequality: Bernstein's elaborated/restricted codes, Bourdieu's cultural and social capital and habitus, Bowles and Gintis's correspondence principle.

Religion (Durkheim): sacred/profane division, collective effervescence, totem as symbol of society; function integrates community and legitimises norms.

Weber's Protestant Ethic: ascetic Protestantism (Calvinist predestination anxiety) promoted rational economic conduct and the 'spirit of capitalism'.

Religion typology (Troeltsch): church (inclusive, bureaucratic) vs sect (exclusive, voluntary, protest); denomination and cult are later additions (Niebuhr, Becker).

Economy: sectors primary/secondary/tertiary/quaternary; Fordism (mass production, standardisation) vs post-Fordism (flexible specialisation, niche production).

Politics and power (Weber): traditional, charismatic, legal-rational authority; state = monopoly of legitimate use of physical force within a territory; Dahl's polyarchy.

Cooley: primary groups (face-to-face, intimate, whole person) vs secondary groups (formal, instrumental, segmental); in-groups/out-groups and reference groups (Merton).

Group size effects (Simmel): dyad is fragile and personal; triad allows coalition and majority rule; larger groups develop formal structure and division of labour.

Social aggregate = people in the same place without interaction; social category = people sharing a characteristic without interaction; only a group involves interaction and shared norms.

Formal organisation: deliberately constructed, with goals, rules, hierarchy, membership; informal structure (norms, cliques, grapevine) always coexists with the formal one.

Weber's ideal type of bureaucracy: hierarchy of authority, division of labour, written rules, impersonal office, merit appointment, career, files/records.

Bureaucracy dysfunctions (Merton): trained incapacity, goal displacement (means become ends), ritualism, red tape; Michels's iron law of oligarchy.

Taylorism/scientific management: time-and-motion study, task fragmentation, separation of planning from execution; Mayo's Hawthorne studies revealed the informal group's influence.

Oligarchy (Michels): all large organisations tend toward rule by a small leadership elite, even those professing democracy; goal displacement follows.

Organisational types (Etzioni): coercive (prison), utilitarian (firm), normative (church, voluntary association) - compliance rests on coercion, remuneration or moral commitment.

Deviance = violation of social norms; it is relative to time, place and group; not all deviance is crime, and not all crime is statistically deviant.

Durkheim: crime is normal and functional - it marks boundaries of the collective conscience, affirms norms, and is a source of social change; anomie = normlessness.

Merton's strain theory: goals/means gap produces conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, rebellion - classified by acceptance of goals and of legitimate means.

Sutherland's differential association: criminal behaviour is learned in intimate interaction, including techniques and rationalisations; nine propositions.

Hirschi's social bond: attachment, commitment, involvement, belief - weak bonds permit delinquency; control theory asks why people conform, not why they deviate.

Labelling theory (Becker, Lemert): deviance is a status conferred by audience reaction; primary deviance vs secondary deviance; self-fulfilling prophecy and stigma.

Crime statistics: dark figure of unrecorded crime; reporting and recording bias; victim surveys and self-report studies complement official statistics.

Social control: informal (gossip, ridicule, exclusion) vs formal (police, courts, prison); sanctions positive/negative; deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation, incapacitation.

Social pathology: deviance framed as illness of society (e.g. suicide rates, addiction, corruption); Durkheim's suicide types - egoistic, altruistic, anomic, fatalistic.

Evolutionary theories (Comte, Spencer, Durkheim: mechanical → organic solidarity) vs cyclical (Spengler, Toynbee) vs conflict-driven change (Marx: dialectic, base/superstructure).

Modernisation theory (Parsons, Rostow): development as transition from traditional to modern, with differentiation, rationalisation and achievement orientation.

Dependency and world-systems theory (Wallerstein): core, semi-periphery, periphery; unequal exchange reproduces underdevelopment rather than eliminating it.

Globalisation: time-space compression (Harvey), deterritorialisation, global division of labour, transnational corporations, global cities, migration and cultural hybridisation.

Cultural consequences of globalisation: homogenisation (McDonaldization, Ritzer), polarisation, hybridisation (glocalisation, Robertson).

Demographic transition: high birth/high death → falling death rates → falling birth rates → low/low; population ageing follows; migration and urbanisation reshape settlement.

Post-industrial society (Bell): shift from goods to services and knowledge; information society, network society (Castells), risk society (Beck: manufactured risks).

Social movements: new social movements (identity, environment, peace) vs old class-based movements; resource mobilisation and political opportunity structure explain success.

Digitalisation and the platform economy: algorithmic control, gig work, filter bubbles, surveillance capitalism (Zuboff), digital divide.

Functionalism (Durkheim, Parsons, Merton): society as a system of interdependent parts contributing to stability; manifest vs latent functions, functions vs dysfunctions.

Parsons's AGIL: adaptation, goal attainment, integration, latency (pattern maintenance) - four functional prerequisites of any social system.

Conflict theory (Marx, Dahrendorf, Coser): society as struggle over scarce resources; Dahrendorf locates conflict in authority relations; Coser stresses conflict's integrative functions.

Symbolic interactionism (Mead, Blumer, Goffman): micro-level, meanings negotiated in interaction; criticised for neglecting macro structures and power.

Exchange theory (Homans, Blau): social behaviour as exchange of rewards and costs; rational choice theory extends this to collective outcomes.

Phenomenology (Schutz) and social constructionism (Berger and Luckmann): reality is socially constructed through typifications and institutionalisation.

Structuration (Giddens): structure and agency are a duality - structures are both medium and outcome of action; rules and resources reproduced in practice.

Habitus, field, capital (Bourdieu): dispositions internalised from position in a field; symbolic violence and reproduction of inequality through cultural capital.

Critical theory (Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas): critique of instrumental reason and the culture industry; Habermas's communicative action and the public sphere.

Feminist theory: liberal (equal rights), radical (patriarchy), socialist/Marxist (capitalism and patriarchy), postmodern (Butler: gender as performative).