Praxis Sociology flashcards

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

Sociological imagination

Mills's term for linking personal troubles to public issues and to the historical structure of society, seeing individual experience as shaped by larger social forces.

Social facts

Durkheim's term for external, coercive, and general patterns of behavior and thought that constrain individuals and exist independently of any single person's will.

Verstehen

Weber's method of interpretive understanding: the researcher grasps the subjective meanings and motives that actors attach to their own conduct.

Manifest and latent functions

Merton's distinction between intended, recognized consequences of a social arrangement (manifest) and unintended, unrecognized ones (latent).

Anomie

Durkheim's term for normlessness, a condition in which social regulation is weakened and individuals lack clear standards to guide their conduct and aspirations.

Reliability and validity

Reliability is consistency of repeated measurement; validity is whether a measure captures the intended concept. Reliability is necessary but not sufficient for validity.

Operational definition

A statement specifying exactly how a concept or variable will be observed and measured in a particular study, making abstract ideas researchable and replicable.

Random sampling

Selecting subjects so that every member of a population has an equal chance of inclusion, which supports generalizing findings to that population.

Independent and dependent variables

The independent variable is the presumed cause, manipulated or hypothesized to affect the dependent variable, which is the measured outcome of interest.

Hawthorne effect

Reactivity in which people change their behavior because they know they are being studied, threatening the validity of observational and experimental findings.

Informed consent

The ethical requirement that research participants be told the purpose, procedures, risks, and right to withdraw, then agree voluntarily without coercion.

Ethnocentrism

Judging another culture by the standards of one's own, typically treating one's own practices as normal and others as inferior or strange.

Cultural relativism

The methodological stance of understanding a culture's practices and beliefs in terms of that culture's own context rather than by outside standards.

Norms: folkways, mores, laws

Folkways are customary conventions with mild sanctions; mores carry moral weight and stronger sanctions; laws are formally codified and enforced by official authority.

Status and role

A status is a social position a person occupies; a role is the set of expected behaviors attached to that status, providing scripts for interaction.

Role conflict and role strain

Role conflict is tension between the demands of two or more different statuses; role strain is tension among incompatible demands within a single role.

Primary and secondary groups

Primary groups are small, intimate, and enduring, such as family; secondary groups are larger, formal, and goal-oriented, such as a workplace team.

Looking-glass self

Cooley's idea that the self develops by imagining how others see us, imagining their judgment, and forming self-feelings such as pride or shame.

Generalized other

Mead's concept for the internalized attitudes of the wider community, which the child takes into account during the game stage of development.

Anticipatory socialization

Learning the norms and behaviors of a role or group one expects to enter, easing later adjustment and often shaping present identity and conduct.

Resocialization

The process of abandoning previously internalized norms and roles and learning new ones, often abruptly within total institutions such as prisons or the military.

Dramaturgical approach

Goffman's view of social interaction as theater, with impression management on the front stage and relaxation of performance in the back stage.

Thomas theorem

The principle that situations defined as real are real in their consequences, so subjective interpretations shape objective outcomes and behavior.

Social stratification

A system of hierarchical ranking among social categories that produces unequal access to wealth, power, prestige, and other valued resources.

Socioeconomic status

A composite measure of social position based on income, educational attainment, and occupational prestige, strongly predicting health and life chances.

Intergenerational mobility

Movement of individuals up or down the stratification system relative to their parents' social position, used to gauge openness of a society.

Absolute and relative poverty

Absolute poverty is falling below a fixed minimum standard of survival; relative poverty is falling below the prevailing living standard of one's society.

Davis-Moore thesis

The functionalist claim that stratification is necessary because unequal rewards motivate talented people to fill functionally important roles; widely contested by conflict theorists.

Endogamy and exogamy

Endogamy is marriage within one's own group, such as caste or religion; exogamy is marriage outside it, as required by incest taboos.

Hidden curriculum

The unofficial lessons schools teach through routine and rules, such as punctuality, obedience, and competition, transmitting values beyond academic content.

Sick role

Parsons's concept describing the rights and obligations of the ill: exemption from normal duties plus an obligation to seek help and want to recover.

Rational-legal authority

Weber's type of legitimate domination resting on enacted rules and the official positions they create, typical of modern bureaucracies rather than personal loyalty.

Resource mobilization

The theory that social movement success depends mainly on money, organization, networks, and political opportunity rather than on the intensity of shared grievance.

Emergent norm theory

The view that crowd members facing ambiguity develop new shared norms that guide collective action, rather than simply transmitting emotion through contagion.

Relative deprivation

The perception that one's attainments fall short of expectations or of a comparison group, a condition often linked to the outbreak of social movements.

Demographic transition

The historical shift from high birth and death rates to low ones, occurring as mortality falls first and fertility declines later with development.