MATSEC IM Sociology cheat sheet

Norms are shared expectations of behaviour; folkways are mild everyday norms, mores are strongly held norms, and laws are norms formalised and enforced by the state.

Values are general beliefs about what is desirable; norms are specific rules derived from values, so a value such as honesty underlies the norm of not lying.

Culture has material elements (objects, technology) and non-material elements (beliefs, values, norms, symbols, language); ethnocentrism judges other cultures by one's own standards, cultural relativism does not.

Socialisation is lifelong: primary socialisation occurs in infancy within the family and builds basic identity and language; secondary socialisation occurs later through school, peers, media and work.

Mead distinguishes the 'I' (spontaneous, unsocialised self) from the 'me' (internalised social expectations); the self develops through play and games by taking the role of the other and finally the 'generalised other'.

Cooley's looking-glass self holds that self-image arises from imagining how others see us, imagining their judgement, and reacting with pride or mortification.

Freud's model divides personality into id (instinctual drives), ego (reality-testing mediator) and superego (internalised moral rules acquired through socialisation).

Nature versus nurture: sociologists stress nurture, but recognise biological factors set limits; feral-child cases and institutionalisation studies show severe isolation impairs language and social development.

Roles are expectations attached to a status; role conflict arises when demands of two roles clash (worker versus parent), role strain when one role makes incompatible demands.

Social stratification is hierarchical ranking of groups with unequal access to scarce resources; the main forms are slavery, caste (ascribed, closed, endogamous), estate and class (achieved, open, with mobility).

Social class in the functionalist tradition (Davis and Moore) is seen as necessary role allocation; conflict theorists (Marx, Weber) see it as produced by unequal economic and social power.

Marx: class is defined by relationship to the means of production (bourgeoisie owners versus proletariat wage-labourers); exploitation arises from surplus value extracted from labour, producing false consciousness unless class consciousness develops.

Weber adds status (social honour) and party (power) to class (market situation); life chances depend on all three, so class position alone does not determine lifestyle or influence.

Social mobility is intragrade (movement within a class), intergrade (between classes), intergenerational (compared with parents) or intragenerational (within one career); absolute mobility compares rates, relative mobility compares chances.

The functionalist 'American Dream' claim of high mobility is qualified by evidence that relative mobility rates are low and education mediates much mobility; meritocracy assumes rewards match ability plus effort.

Poverty is absolute (below a fixed minimum such as basic food and shelter) or relative (below the customary standard of the society); the poverty line is usually set relative to median income.

Social exclusion describes being cut off from participation in key social activities (work, education, civic life), not merely low income; the underclass debate concerns a persistently excluded group.

Gender stratification: patriarchy is male dominance institutionalised in family, work and state; the gender pay gap and the 'glass ceiling' are measurable outcomes, while the 'second shift' describes unpaid domestic labour after paid work.

Family types: nuclear (two parents and dependent children), extended (kin beyond the nuclear unit), single-parent, reconstituted (step-family), and same-sex-parent families; residence can be patrilocal, matrilocal or neolocal.

Functionalist views of the family (Murdock, Parsons): functions include reproduction, sexual regulation, economic provision and socialisation; Parsons adds stabilisation of adult personalities and distinguishes instrumental (male) and expressive (female) roles.

Marxist and feminist critiques: the family reproduces class inequality and unpaid domestic labour; Oakley's housework study and the 'dual burden' concept show gendered division of labour persists even when women work full time.

Trends in family life: rising divorce and cohabitation, later marriage, falling fertility, smaller households and ageing populations; divorce rates measure divorces per 1,000 population, not the proportion of marriages ending in divorce.

Education functions: socialisation, transmission of skills, selection and allocation, and social control; the hidden curriculum (rules, punctuality, deference) transmits values not formally taught.

Theories of education and achievement: functionalists stress meritocracy; Marxists stress reproduction of class (Bowles and Gintis, correspondence principle); cultural capital (Bourdieu) and labelling/self-fulfilling prophecy (Rosenthal and Jacobson) explain differential attainment.

Religion definitions: substantive (belief in the supernatural, Tylor, Frazer) versus functional (what religion does for society, Durkheim, Parsons); civil religion is collective ritual around national symbols.

Theorists of religion: Durkheim (collective conscience, sacred versus profane, totemism); Weber (Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism); Marx (religion as 'opium of the people'); Malinowski (religion relieves anxiety); Berger (religion as a socially constructed sacred canopy).

Secularisation thesis (Wilson, Bruce) claims declining religious practice and influence in modern societies; evidence includes church attendance, belief surveys and the rise of spirituality outside organised religion; critics cite religion's persistence and global growth.

Quantitative methods (surveys, structured interviews, official statistics, experiments) produce numerical data and are suited to testing hypotheses and establishing correlations; qualitative methods (participant observation, unstructured interviews, documents) produce rich meaning-laden data.

Reliability means consistency and replicability of a measurement; validity means measuring what is claimed to be measured; representativeness means the sample reflects the population, and generalisability is the ability to extend findings beyond the sample.

Sampling: random (each member has an equal chance), systematic (every nth case), stratified (random within strata), quota (proportional selection by characteristics), snowball (referral chains for hidden populations) and opportunity/convenience.

Questionnaire strengths: cheap, quick, standardised, high reliability; weaknesses: low response rate, superficiality, risk of interviewer effects in structured interviews and of respondents misunderstanding questions.

Participant observation: overt versus covert, and the observer may go native; strengths are validity and insight into meaning; weaknesses are low reliability, small unrepresentative samples, ethical problems and Hawthorne effects.

Interviews: structured (fixed schedule, reliable, comparable), semi-structured (guide with flexibility), unstructured (open-ended, depth); interviewer bias and social desirability are key threats to validity.

Experiments in sociology are rare because of control and ethical problems; field experiments and natural experiments are used where variables cannot be manipulated; the Hawthorne study showed subjects alter behaviour when observed.

Official statistics: positivists treat them as objective facts; interpretivists note they are social constructions produced by officials (dark figure of crime, police recording practices, coroners' verdicts).

Ethics: informed consent, confidentiality and anonymity, no harm, right to withdraw, and honesty with subjects; covert research and deception breach informed consent and require strong justification.

Triangulation combines methods (data, investigator, theory or method triangulation) to cross-check findings and offset the weaknesses of a single method; a pilot study tests instruments before the main study.

Power (Weber) is the capacity to impose one's will despite resistance; authority is legitimate power, with three types - traditional, charismatic and legal-rational (bureaucratic).

The state comprises institutions (government, courts, police, army, civil service) claiming a monopoly of legitimate force over a territory; pluralism sees power dispersed among competing groups, elite theory sees a ruling minority.

Political participation includes voting, party membership, pressure-group activity and protest; the 'democratic deficit' concerns low turnout and unequal participation by class and age.

Deviance is behaviour violating social norms; crime is behaviour violating legal norms; not all deviance is criminal and not all crime is regarded as deviant by everyone.

Functionalist theory (Durkheim) sees crime as normal and boundary-maintaining, producing social cohesion through punishment; Merton's strain theory explains deviance as a gap between cultural goals and legitimate means (conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, rebellion).

Interactionist theories: labelling theory (Becker) holds that deviance is behaviour so labelled and that labelling can create a self-fulfilling master status; differential association (Sutherland) says crime is learned in intimate groups.

Marxist and radical criminology holds that law protects ruling-class interests and that corporate and white-collar crime is under-policed; the criminal justice system processes the powerless more harshly.

Crime statistics are socially constructed: the dark figure of unreported and unrecorded crime, changes in recording practice and victim surveys (such as national crime surveys) reveal more than police figures.

Social change: evolutionary theories see gradual development, revolutionary theories abrupt transformation; factors include technology, ideology, population, conflict and social movements; modernisation involves industrialisation, urbanisation, rationalisation and secularisation.