Praxis Sociology cheat sheet

Comte coined 'sociology' and ranked disciplines; his law of three stages: theological, metaphysical, positive.

Durkheim's social facts are external, coercive, and general; suicide types: egoistic, altruistic, anomic, fatalistic.

Weber's verstehen means interpretive understanding of actors' subjective meanings; ideal types are analytic constructs, not averages.

Marx: base (mode of production) determines superstructure; alienation, false consciousness, and class conflict drive change.

Mead's symbolic interactionism: self arises through role-taking; 'I' is spontaneous, 'me' is internalized social expectations.

Functionalist requisites (AGIL): adaptation, goal attainment, integration, latency - Parsons' four system problems.

Conflict theory treats inequality and coercion, not shared values, as the basis of social order.

Micro vs. macro: symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology are micro; functionalism and conflict theory are macro.

Validity = measuring the intended concept; reliability = consistency across repeated measurement; reliability is necessary but not sufficient for validity.

Correlation coefficient r ranges -1 to +1; r measures linear association only and does not establish causation.

Random sampling supports generalization (external validity); random assignment to groups supports causal inference.

Independent variable is manipulated or hypothesized as cause; dependent variable is the measured outcome.

Mean is sensitive to outliers; median and mode are resistant; standard deviation measures dispersion around the mean.

Qualitative methods: participant observation, in-depth interviews, focus groups, content analysis; grounded theory builds theory from data.

Ethics: informed consent, voluntary participation, confidentiality/anonymity, no harm, IRB review; deception requires debriefing.

Hawthorne effect: subjects alter behavior when aware of being observed; reactivity threatens validity.

Norms: folkways (customary, mild sanction), mores (moral significance), laws (codified and formally enforced).

Material culture = physical objects; nonmaterial culture = beliefs, values, norms, symbols, language.

Ethnocentrism judges other cultures by one's own standards; cultural relativism evaluates a culture in its own terms.

Subculture differs within a society while sharing its mainstream; counterculture rejects core mainstream norms and values.

Status is a social position; role is the expected behavior attached to it; role conflict = incompatible roles, role strain = one role's conflicting demands.

Ascribed status is assigned at birth or involuntarily; achieved status is earned or chosen.

Primary groups are small, intimate, and enduring (family, close friends); secondary groups are formal and instrumental.

Social structure: statuses, roles, groups, organizations, and institutions; anomie is normlessness from weakened regulation.

Cooley's looking-glass self: we imagine how others see us, imagine their judgment, and develop self-feeling from it.

Mead's stages: preparatory (imitation), play (taking roles of specific others), game (taking the role of the generalized other).

Primary socialization occurs in childhood via family; secondary socialization occurs later through school, peers, and work.

Agents of socialization: family, school (hidden curriculum), peers, mass media, religion, workplace.

Freud: id (instinct), ego (reality principle), superego (internalized morality); the superego is the socialized component.

Goffman's dramaturgy: front stage vs. back stage, impression management, and face-saving; total institutions resocialize.

Thomas theorem: situations defined as real are real in their consequences.

Socialization is lifelong; resocialization involves abandoning prior roles and internalizing new ones, often abruptly in total institutions.

Stratification is hierarchical ranking of categories with unequal access to valued resources; it is social, not biological.

Caste systems are closed and ascribed; class systems are relatively open with achieved mobility.

Socioeconomic status combines income, occupational prestige, and education; it predicts health and life chances.

Absolute poverty = below a fixed survival threshold; relative poverty = below the society's prevailing standard.

Intergenerational mobility compares child's status with parents'; intragenerational mobility tracks change within one lifetime.

Structural mobility results from economy-wide change; exchange (circulation) mobility results from individual movement.

Davis-Moore: stratification is functional because unequal rewards attract talent to important roles - a contested claim.

Marx's classes derive from relation to means of production; Weber adds class, status (prestige), and party (power).

Family functions: reproduction, socialization, economic support, emotional intimacy; kinship may be consanguineal or affinal.

Endogamy marries within a group; exogamy marries outside it; monogamy, polygyny, and polyandry are marriage forms.

Education transmits knowledge and also sorts students; tracking and credentialism reproduce inequality.

Religion's functions (Durkheim): social cohesion, social control, meaning; sacred vs. profane is the defining distinction.

Economy: capitalism (private ownership, market allocation) vs. socialism (state or collective ownership); division of labor raises productivity.

Government types: democracy, monarchy, authoritarianism, totalitarianism; legitimacy (Weber) is traditional, charismatic, or rational-legal.

Health care: functionalism stresses the sick role (Parsons); conflict theory stresses unequal access and medicalization.

Institutional interdependence: change in one institution (e.g., economy) typically produces change in family, education, and politics.

Evolutionary theories see gradual differentiation; cyclical theories see rise and decline; conflict theories see change through struggle.

Social movements: alternative (individual change), reform (limited change), revolutionary (fundamental change), redemptive (total personal change).

Resource mobilization theory: movement success depends on money, organization, networks, and political opportunity, not just grievance.

Crowd types (Blumer): casual, conventional, expressive, acting; a panic is a self-defeating collective flight.

Contagion theory vs. emergent norm theory: the latter holds that crowds develop new shared norms rather than merely spreading emotion.

Modernization involves industrialization, urbanization, and rationalization; dependency theory blames core-periphery exploitation for underdevelopment.

Collective behavior is relatively spontaneous and unstructured; it becomes institutionalized when routinized into organizations and rules.

Demographic transition: high birth and death rates shift to low birth and death rates through declining mortality, then fertility.

Sociological imagination (Mills): connect personal troubles to public issues and to historical structure.

Positivism holds that social phenomena can be studied with the same logic as natural phenomena; interpretivism stresses meaning.

Manifest functions are intended and recognized; latent functions are unintended and unrecognized.

Dysfunctions are consequences that disrupt system stability; functionalism analyzes interdependence among parts.

Operational definition specifies how a variable is measured in a given study.

Survey advantages: large samples and generalizability; disadvantages: superficiality and response bias.

Experiments establish causation via control and random assignment; field experiments trade control for realism.

Longitudinal studies follow the same subjects over time; cross-sectional studies compare different subjects at one time.

Language is a symbol system; the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis holds that language shapes perception and thought.

Cultural universals are traits found in all known societies, such as language, family, and incest taboos.

Sanctions are rewards or punishments enforcing norms; internalization makes conformity habitual.

Ideal culture is what a society professes; real culture is what it actually does.

Nature vs. nurture: biology sets potentials; social experience shapes their expression.

Isolated children (e.g., feral cases) show that without social contact, normal human development fails.

Anticipatory socialization prepares for future roles; re-socialization replaces earlier ones.

Reference groups supply standards for self-evaluation, whether or not one belongs to them.

Social class is a category sharing similar economic position; status group shares prestige and lifestyle.

Life chances (Weber) are probabilities of obtaining valued goods, shaped by class position.

Poverty line is an absolute income threshold adjusted for family size; it undercounts noncash aid.

Glass ceiling: invisible barriers limiting advancement of women and minorities into top positions.

Bureaucracy (Weber): hierarchy, written rules, division of labor, impersonality, merit-based employment.

McDonaldization (Ritzer): efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control through nonhuman technology.

Sacred/profane, church/sect/denomination/cult are standard typologies in the sociology of religion.

Hidden curriculum transmits values like punctuality and obedience, not just academic content.

Social change is alteration of culture, structure, and institutions over time; it may be gradual or abrupt.

Diffusion spreads innovations across societies; invention recombines existing elements.

Relative deprivation: people rebel when they perceive a gap between expectations and attainments.

Fads are short-lived; fashions change slowly; both are forms of collective behavior.