Karnataka II PUC Sociology (KSEAB) flashcards

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

Sociology

The systematic, empirical study of human social life, groups, and societies, focusing on patterned behaviour and the social forces shaping individual action.

Positivism

Comte's doctrine that social phenomena should be studied using the methods of natural science, based on observable facts rather than speculation or metaphysics.

Sociological imagination

C. Wright Mills's term for the ability to connect personal troubles to public issues by seeing individual biography within broader social and historical structures.

Community

A group of people sharing a locality and common ties, interacting on the basis of shared interests or identity; narrower than society because it implies locality.

Association

A deliberately organised group formed to pursue a specific interest, with defined membership, rules, and goals, such as a trade union or club.

Social institution

An established, enduring pattern of norms and roles organised around a basic social need, such as family, education, religion, economy, or polity.

Status and role

Status is a position in a social structure; role is the set of expectations attached to that position. Role conflict occurs when expectations of different roles clash.

Socialisation

The lifelong process through which individuals acquire culture, norms, values, and a social self, through agents such as family, school, peers, and mass media.

Norms and values

Norms are shared rules of conduct guiding behaviour, such as folkways, mores, and laws; values are the broader shared standards of what is desirable and important.

Nuclear family

A two-generation household consisting of a married couple and their dependent children, typically with neolocal residence and fewer kinship obligations than a joint family.

Kinship

Relationships based on blood descent, marriage, or adoption, which define social obligations, inheritance, marriage rules, and patterns of residence and avoidance.

Endogamy and exogamy

Endogamy requires marriage within one's own group, such as caste or clan; exogamy requires marriage outside a defined group, such as the gotra or lineage.

Polyandry

A form of marriage in which one woman has more than one husband at the same time, historically practised in parts of the Himalayas and associated with scarce land.

Social stratification

The hierarchical ranking of social groups according to unequal access to valued resources such as wealth, power, and prestige, persisting across generations.

Caste and varna

Caste (jati) is a closed, endogamous local group ranked by purity and occupation; varna is the four-fold textual classification of Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra.

Social mobility

Movement of individuals or groups between social positions; vertical mobility changes rank, horizontal mobility is lateral, and intergenerational mobility compares parents and children.

Patriarchy

A system of male dominance operating through family, economy, law, and culture, producing unequal power, resources, and status between women and men.

Dominant caste

M.N. Srinivas's term for a caste that, through numerical strength, land ownership, and local political power, exercises dominance over other castes in a village.

Sanskritisation

M.N. Srinivas's term for a lower caste adopting the rituals, diet, and lifestyle of a higher caste to claim improved status, usually without changing the caste system itself.

Modernisation

A process of structural change toward industrial, rational, secular, achievement-based, and differentiated institutions, distinct from mere adoption of Western cultural practices.

Globalisation

The growing interconnectedness of economies, cultures, and politics through trade, capital flows, information technology, and migration, with effects on local cultures and labour.

Social movement

Sustained, organised collective action by a group seeking to promote or resist social change, distinguished from a crowd by continuity, organisation, and ideology.

Social control

The mechanisms by which society enforces conformity to norms, including formal means such as law, police, and courts, and informal means such as custom and ridicule.

Anomie

Durkheim's term for a condition of normlessness in society; Merton used it to describe the gap between cultural goals and available institutional means, producing deviance.

Unity in diversity

The coexistence of India's linguistic, religious, regional, and ethnic diversity within a shared constitutional framework of citizenship and common political institutions.

Functionalism

A perspective, associated with Durkheim, Parsons, and Merton, viewing society as a system of interdependent parts whose functions contribute to stability and continuity.

Conflict perspective

A perspective, rooted in Marx and developed by Dahrendorf and Coser, viewing society as marked by inequality and struggle over scarce resources such as wealth and power.

Symbolic interactionism

A perspective, associated with Mead, Blumer, and Goffman, holding that social reality is created and negotiated through face-to-face interaction and shared symbols.

Verstehen

Max Weber's method of interpretive understanding, requiring the researcher to grasp the subjective meanings that actors attach to their own social actions.

Participant observation

A qualitative technique in which the researcher joins a social setting and takes part in its activities while systematically recording observations, often over an extended period.

Case study method

An intensive, holistic investigation of a single person, group, institution, or event using multiple sources of evidence, strong on depth but limited for generalisation.