MATSEC AM Sociology cheat sheet

Functionalism (Durkheim, Parsons, Merton): society is a system of interdependent parts; each institution contributes to stability. Merton splits functions into manifest (intended) and latent (unintended), and identifies dysfunctions that undermine integration.

Marxism: base (forces and relations of production) shapes superstructure (law, politics, religion, education). Class is defined by relationship to the means of production; surplus value is extracted from labour and produces alienation and false consciousness.

Weber's interpretive sociology (Verstehen): social action is behaviour to which actors attach subjective meaning. His four ideal types are instrumentally rational (zweckrational), value-rational (wertrational), affectual and traditional.

Weber's authority types: traditional (custom and inheritance), charismatic (personal exceptionality, unstable, routinised after the leader dies) and legal-rational (impersonal rules and office, the basis of bureaucracy).

Symbolic interactionism (Mead, Blumer): meanings arise from social interaction and are modified through interpretation; the self has an 'I' (impulsive) and a 'me' (internalised social expectations); the looking-glass self (Cooley) is formed by imagining others' judgements.

Dramaturgy (Goffman): social life is performance with front stage (managed impression), back stage (preparation) and impression management; total institutions strip and rebuild identity through mortification.

Feminist perspectives: liberal feminism targets legal and educational inequality; radical feminism locates patriarchy in personal and sexual relations; Marxist/socialist feminism links women's subordination to unpaid domestic labour and capitalism.

Structuration (Giddens): structure and agency are a duality, not opposites; structures are reproduced and altered through recursive social practices. Bourdieu adds habitus (durable dispositions) and field.

Postmodern and late-modern theory: Bauman's liquid modernity (unstable bonds), Beck's risk society (manufactured risks, individualisation) and Lyotard's incredulity toward grand narratives challenge the classical assumption of a single social order.

Validity asks whether a measure captures the concept it claims to measure; reliability asks whether repeating the procedure yields consistent results. A measure can be reliable but invalid (consistently wrong); it cannot be valid without being reliable.

Positivism (Durkheim) models sociology on natural science: quantitative, hypothesis-testing, seeking causal laws. Interpretivism (Weber, Blumer) seeks Verstehen and meaning; critical realism accepts unobservable structures as real causes.

Sampling: probability designs (simple random, systematic, stratified, cluster) allow statistical generalisation; non-probability designs (quota, purposive, snowball, convenience) do not. A sampling frame is the list from which a sample is drawn.

Survey methods: questionnaires give standardised, comparable, replicable data with high reach but risk low response rates, interviewer effects and imposed meanings. Structured interviews control the interaction; unstructured interviews gain depth and rapport but reduce comparability.

Observation: participant observation yields validity and insight into meaning but risks going native, observer bias, reactivity and ethical problems; non-participant observation reduces reactivity but may miss subjective meaning.

Documents and secondary data: official statistics are cheap and large-scale but reflect recording practices (dark figure of crime); personal documents give meaning but raise authenticity, credibility and representativeness questions.

Experiments in sociology are limited by the impossibility of controlling social variables; field and natural experiments (e.g. labelling in schools) increase realism but weaken control and raise ethical problems.

Ethics: informed consent, no harm to participants, confidentiality and anonymity, right to withdraw, and honesty in reporting. Covert research and deception require strong justification and debriefing.

Triangulation (methodological, data, investigator, theoretical) increases confidence in findings; mixed methods combine quantitative pattern-finding with qualitative meaning, but require skills in both paradigms.

Culture = shared learned beliefs, values, norms, symbols and material objects. Norms are specific rules of behaviour; values are general standards of desirability; sanctions (positive/negative, formal/informal) enforce norms.

Cultural relativism suspends judgement of other cultures; ethnocentrism judges others by one's own standards. Subcultures share elements of the dominant culture but add distinctive norms; countercultures reject core values.

Primary socialisation occurs in the family (language, basic values, gender identity); secondary socialisation occurs through school, peers, media, religion and work. Mead's 'significant others' precede the 'generalised other'.

Nature vs nurture: sociobiology and genetics explain some traits, but feral children (e.g. Genie) and cross-cultural variation show socialisation is decisive for language, identity and social competence.

Agents of socialisation: family (particularistic, affective), school (universalistic, achievement-based, hidden curriculum), peer group (age-based, autonomy from adults), mass media (wide reach, selective exposure), religion (moral codes).

Identity is both ascribed (given at birth: sex, ethnicity, family class) and achieved (earned or chosen: occupation, education, lifestyle). Social identity comes from group membership; personal identity from individual biography.

Goffman's stigma: a discrediting attribute (physical, character-based, tribal) spoils identity; the stigmatised manage information (passing, covering) and may form in-groups with similar others.

Gender is socially constructed (masculinity and femininity vary by culture and period) and distinct from sex; gendered socialisation occurs through toys, language, school and media and is contested by feminist critique.

Stratification is hierarchical ranking with unequal access to scarce resources. Four main systems: slavery (ownership), caste (ascribed, closed, endogamous), estate (feudal legal status) and class (achieved, open, based on economic position).

Class theories: Marx (two classes defined by ownership of means of production, exploitation, class consciousness); Weber (class, status and party as three independent dimensions of stratification); functionalism (Davis and Moore: stratification motivates filling important roles).

Critiques of Davis and Moore: rewards do not always match functional importance, and inherited advantage limits mobility; conflict theory stresses that stratification benefits dominant groups and reproduces inequality.

Social mobility: vertical (up/down), horizontal (change of job without status change), intergenerational (between generations) and intragenerational (within a career). Absolute mobility is movement; relative mobility is comparative chance across classes.

Poverty: absolute (below a fixed minimum, e.g. Rowntree) vs relative (below prevailing standards, e.g. Townsend); the poverty line is often 60% of median income. The cycle of deprivation links poverty to poor housing, health and education.

Social exclusion is broader than poverty: it includes lack of participation in social, political and economic life. Social capital (Putnam) concerns networks and trust.

Gender stratification: the gender pay gap, occupational segregation (horizontal and vertical), the glass ceiling, and the second shift of unpaid domestic labour.

Ethnic stratification: racialisation, institutional racism (Macpherson definition: unwitting discrimination by organisations), and the impact of migration and citizenship status on labour market position.

The welfare state and redistribution: universal vs means-tested benefits, progressive vs regressive taxation, and debates over dependency culture vs structural explanations of inequality.

Family: functions (reproduction, socialisation, economic support, emotional support) and forms (nuclear, extended, lone-parent, reconstituted, same-sex). Changes include rising divorce, cohabitation, later marriage and smaller households.

Education: manifest functions (skills, qualifications) and latent functions (socialisation, social control, hidden curriculum). Theories: functionalism (meritocracy, role allocation), Marxism (reproduction of class), interactionism (labelling, self-fulfilling prophecy).

Religion: functionalist (Durkheim's sacred/profane, collective conscience; Malinowski's anxiety reduction); Marxist (opium of the people, legitimation of inequality); Weber's Protestant ethic thesis links ascetic values to capitalist development; secularisation thesis is contested.

Media: agenda-setting (what to think about), framing, cultivation (Gerbner), hypodermic needle vs two-step flow vs uses-and-gratitudes models; moral panics (Cohen: folk devils and deviance amplification).

Work and economy: Fordism (mass production, deskilling) vs post-Fordism (flexible specialisation); the division of labour (Durkheim: mechanical vs organic solidarity) and the informal economy.

Political institutions: power (Weber: the chance to impose one's will despite resistance), authority, legitimacy, democracy, citizenship (Marshall: civil, political, social rights) and the state's monopoly of legitimate violence.

Health and medicine: the medical model vs social model of health; the social gradient in health (Marmot); medicalisation (Illich) and the sick role (Parsons).

Social change: evolutionary (Comte, Spencer), cyclical (Toynbee), conflict-driven (Marx), and modernisation theories. Key drivers include industrialisation, urbanisation, technology, social movements and globalisation.

Globalisation: time-space compression (Harvey), global division of labour, cultural homogenisation vs hybridisation, and transnational migration; it weakens the nation-state's autonomy while creating global risks (Beck).