CHSE Odisha Elective Sociology flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Sociological imagination

C. Wright Mills's term for the ability to connect personal troubles to public issues and to see individual biography in relation to historical and social structure.

Social fact

Durkheim's term for ways of acting, thinking and feeling that are external to the individual and exercise constraint over them, such as norms, laws and collective beliefs.

Verstehen

Weber's method of interpretative understanding, whereby the sociologist grasps the subjective meaning actors attach to their own conduct in order to explain it causally.

Association

A deliberately formed group organised around a specific purpose with formal rules and membership, such as a trade union, club or political party, unlike a community.

Institution

An established, enduring pattern of norms and procedures organised around a basic social need, such as family, religion, education or property, not a building.

Primary group

Cooley's term for a small, face-to-face, enduring group with diffuse ties and strong emotional bonds, such as family, close friends and play groups.

Culture lag

Ogburn's concept describing the delay of non-material culture, such as norms and values, in adjusting to changes in material culture and technology.

Role conflict

The tension experienced when the behavioural expectations attached to two or more of a person's statuses make incompatible demands at the same time.

Looking-glass self

Cooley's idea that the self develops through imagining how others see us, how they judge us, and the resulting feeling of pride or mortification.

Polyandry

A form of marriage in which one woman is simultaneously married to two or more men, often brothers as in fraternal polyandry historically practised in Tibet.

Endogamy

The rule requiring marriage within a specified group such as caste, clan or religious community, a defining feature of the Indian caste system.

Affinal kinship

Kinship relations established through marriage rather than blood descent, including spouse, in-laws and relatives created by the marriage tie.

Legal-rational authority

Weber's type of legitimate domination resting on belief in the legality of enacted rules and the right of those elevated to authority to issue commands.

Manifest function

Merton's term for the intended and recognised consequences of a social institution or action, as opposed to its unintended latent consequences.

Jajmani system

A traditional Indian village system of hereditary patron-client exchange in which occupational castes provide services to landowning families in return for grain and customary rights.

Dominant caste

M. N. Srinivas's concept for a caste that is numerically strong, owns most land and wields local political power, thereby setting village norms.

Sanskritisation

Srinivas's term for a low caste or tribe adopting the ritual practices, diet and customs of a higher caste in order to improve its social position.

Varna and jati

Varna is the fourfold classical ideal hierarchy of priest, warrior, merchant and servant; jati is the actual local endogamous birth group.

Vertical mobility

Movement of an individual or group upward or downward in the social hierarchy, involving a change of rank as well as of position.

Patriarchy

A system of male dominance operating in family, economy, polity and culture that subordinates women and gives men privileged access to power and resources.

Double burden

The unequal load carried by women who perform paid work outside the home and also bear most unpaid domestic and care work within it.

Relative deprivation

A felt gap between what people believe they deserve and what they actually receive, compared with a reference group, often prompting social movements.

Resource mobilisation

A theory explaining social movements by the resources, organisation, leadership and external support they can gather rather than by grievance alone.

Acculturation

The process by which a group acquires cultural traits from another society through sustained contact, often producing changes in both cultures.

New social movements

Movements organised around identity, environment, gender and lifestyle rather than class distribution, typically with loose, decentralised and participatory organisation.

Differential association

Sutherland's theory that criminal behaviour is learned through interaction with intimate groups that transmit techniques and favourable definitions of law violation.

Anomie

Durkheim's condition of normlessness arising when society's norms become weak or conflicting, associated with higher suicide and deviance rates.

Labelling theory

Becker's view that deviance is not inherent in an act but is a status conferred when powerful audiences successfully apply a deviant label.

White-collar crime

Sutherland's term for crimes committed by respectable persons of high status in the course of their occupations, such as fraud and embezzlement.

Informal social control

Unwritten means of enforcing norms through family, peers, custom, gossip, ridicule, public opinion and religion, without official legal sanction.

Dramaturgical approach

Goffman's interactionist perspective treating social life as theatre, with front-stage performance, back-stage preparation and impression management by actors.

Ideal type

Weber's deliberately exaggerated analytical construct formed from selected features of reality, used as a measuring rod for comparison, not as a description.