WBCHSE HS Sociology flashcards
WBCHSE HS 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.
- Sociological imagination
- C. Wright Mills's term for connecting personal troubles to public issues by locating individual biography within larger social structures and historical processes.
- Social fact
- Durkheim's term for ways of acting, thinking and feeling that are external to the individual, exercise constraint over them, and are general throughout a society.
- Community
- A group of people sharing a defined territory and a common way of life, marked by close social relationships and a sense of collective belonging or we-feeling.
- Association
- A deliberately formed group with an explicit purpose, formal rules and defined membership, such as a trade union, club or professional body.
- Status and role
- Status is a position in a social structure; role is the set of expected behaviours attached to that position. Role conflict occurs when expectations of different roles clash.
- Norms and values
- Norms are specific shared rules of conduct backed by sanctions; values are general shared standards of what is desirable and good, which underpin those norms.
- Culture
- The total learned and shared way of life of a society, including material elements such as tools and non-material elements such as beliefs, values, norms, symbols and language.
- Kinship
- A system of social relationships based on descent and marriage. Consanguineal ties are by blood; affinal ties arise through marriage between spouses' families.
- Endogamy and exogamy
- Endogamy requires marriage within a defined group such as a caste; exogamy requires marriage outside a defined group such as a gotra. Both can operate simultaneously.
- Religion as social institution
- Durkheim defined religion as a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, uniting adherents into a moral community called a church.
- Caste system
- A closed system of stratification based on hereditary membership, endogamy, ritual ranking, purity and pollution rules, and traditionally linked occupations.
- Social mobility
- Movement of individuals or groups between positions in a stratification system; vertical mobility changes rank, horizontal mobility is lateral between equal-status positions.
- Gini coefficient
- A measure of inequality ranging from zero, indicating perfect equality, to one, indicating perfect inequality, commonly applied to income or consumption distribution.
- Cultural lag
- Ogburn's concept that material culture, especially technology, changes faster than non-material culture such as norms, values and laws, producing social problems.
- Modernisation
- A process of social change involving adoption of rational, secular and achievement-oriented orientations, typically associated with education, urbanisation and industrial employment.
- Globalisation
- The intensification of transnational flows of goods, capital, people, information and culture, linking distant localities and reshaping local economies and identities.
- Varna and jati
- Varna is the fourfold textual model of Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra; jati is the actual local endogamous caste group. The two are not identical.
- Sanskritisation
- M. N. Srinivas's term for lower castes emulating the ritual practices and lifestyle of higher castes in order to claim higher status over time.
- Patriarchy
- Institutionalised male dominance operating across family, economy, polity and culture, producing unequal access to resources, decision-making and social value.
- Participant observation
- A qualitative method in which the researcher joins a setting and takes part in its activities while systematically recording observations, typically over an extended period.
- Sampling error
- The difference between a sample estimate and the true population value arising from studying only part of the population; it decreases as sample size increases.
- Case study method
- An intensive, holistic study of a single case such as a person, group or institution, using multiple sources of evidence to understand process and context.
- Anomie
- Durkheim's term for a condition of normlessness; Merton extended it to describe a mismatch between culturally approved goals and legitimate means of attaining them.
- Verstehen
- Weber's method of interpretive understanding, requiring the researcher to grasp the subjective meanings that actors attach to their own social actions.
- Ideal type
- Weber's analytical construct formed by accentuating selected features of a phenomenon into a coherent model used as a measuring rod against empirical reality.
- Generalised other
- Mead's concept for the internalised attitudes and expectations of the wider community, which the individual takes into account when guiding their own conduct.
- Manifest and latent functions
- Merton's distinction between intended and recognised consequences of an institution, and unintended or unrecognised ones that may be equally important.
- Research hypothesis
- A testable and falsifiable statement predicting a relationship between two or more variables, which empirical data can either support or reject.
- Operational definition
- The specification of a concept in terms of observable indicators or procedures used to measure it, enabling systematic data collection and replication.
- Triangulation
- The use of multiple methods, data sources, investigators or theories in one study to cross-check findings and strengthen confidence in conclusions.
- Unity in diversity
- The coexistence of India's religious, linguistic, regional and caste diversity within a single political and constitutional framework of shared citizenship.
- Social change
- An alteration over time in social structure, institutions, norms or values, distinguished from short-term fluctuation and from individual-level change.