BSEH SS Sociology flashcards
BSEH SS Sociology · Build recall with a focused review session.
32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.
- Auguste Comte
- French thinker who coined the term sociology in 1838 and proposed the law of three stages and a hierarchy of sciences with sociology at the apex.
- Social fact
- Durkheim's term for external, constraining, and general phenomena of collective life that must be explained by other social facts rather than individual psychology.
- Verstehen
- Weber's method of interpretive understanding of the subjective meaning actors attach to their social action, combined with causal explanation of its course and effects.
- Community versus association
- A community is a territorial group bound by common life and we-feeling; an association is a deliberately formed organisation pursuing a specific stated interest.
- Primary group
- Cooley's term for small, face-to-face, intimate groups with diffuse ties, such as family and play groups, which shape basic social selves.
- Ascribed and achieved status
- Ascribed status is assigned at birth or by inheritance, such as caste or sex; achieved status is acquired through effort, such as occupation or educational qualification.
- Role set and role conflict
- A role set is the cluster of roles attached to a single status; role conflict occurs when expectations of different roles cannot be met simultaneously.
- Polyandry
- A marriage form in which one woman has several husbands simultaneously; rare, and often linked to scarce land or resources, as among certain Tibetan and Nair groups.
- Endogamy and exogamy
- Endogamy requires marriage within one's own group, such as caste endogamy in India; exogamy requires marriage outside a group, such as gotra or clan exogamy.
- Sacred and profane
- Durkheim's core dichotomy in religion: the sacred comprises things set apart and forbidden, the profane comprises ordinary everyday matters; religion unites a moral community.
- Mores and folkways
- Sumner's terms: folkways are customary everyday usages with mild sanctions; mores are morally binding norms whose violation provokes strong social disapproval.
- Cultural relativism
- The methodological principle that a culture's beliefs and practices must be understood in its own terms rather than judged by the standards of another culture.
- Generalised other
- Mead's concept for the internalised attitudes of the wider community that the individual takes into account during the game stage of self-development.
- Looking-glass self
- Cooley's idea that the self arises from imagining how others perceive us, imagining their judgement, and reacting with pride or mortification.
- Cultural lag
- Ogburn's concept that material culture and technology change faster than non-material culture such as norms and values, producing maladjustment and social problems.
- Sanskritisation
- Srinivas's term for lower castes adopting the rituals, diet, and customs of higher castes to claim improved ritual status and mobility within the caste order.
- Dominant caste
- Srinivas's term for a caste that, through numerical strength, landownership, and local influence, exercises decisive power in a village or region.
- Varna and jati
- Varna is the fourfold textual classification of Hindu society; jati is the actual endogamous local birth group. The two are distinct, though often conflated.
- Homo Hierarchicus
- Dumont's study presenting caste as a hierarchy founded on the opposition of pure and impure, ranking ritual status above economic and political power.
- Graded inequality
- Ambedkar's description of caste as a system in which each group is ranked below another, so that no group unites against the whole order.
- Patriarchy
- A system of male dominance embedded in family, economy, polity, and culture that subordinates women and structures unequal access to resources and authority.
- Formal and informal control
- Formal control operates through codified law, police, and courts; informal control operates through custom, public opinion, gossip, and social approval or disapproval.
- Strain theory
- Merton's explanation of deviance as arising when culturally prescribed goals are pursued through illegitimate means because legitimate opportunities are blocked.
- Labelling theory
- Becker's view that deviance is not inherent in an act but results from societal reaction that applies a deviant label, shaping further behaviour.
- Reliability and validity
- Reliability is consistency of a measure across repeated use; validity is whether it measures what it claims. A reliable measure may still be invalid.
- Participant observation
- A qualitative method in which the researcher takes part in the daily life of a group over time to understand its practices from within.
- Probability sampling
- Sampling methods such as simple random, systematic, stratified, and cluster sampling in which every unit has a known chance of selection, permitting statistical inference.
- G.S. Ghurye
- Founder of Indian sociology at Bombay, author of Caste and Race in India, known for diffusionist and Indological approaches to caste and kinship.
- Risk society
- Beck's thesis that modernisation generates global manufactured risks, such as pollution and climate change, that escape the control of nation-states and scientific institutions.
- Public sociology
- Burawoy's term for sociological work that engages publics beyond academia, alongside professional, critical, and policy sociology.
- Social impact assessment
- Applied sociological research that predicts and evaluates the social consequences of projects or policies, including displacement, livelihood change, and community effects.
- Digital divide
- Unequal access to and skill in using digital technologies across regions, classes, genders, and generations, producing new forms of social exclusion.