Exam 3 Flashcards
(118 cards)
1
Q
Social Institutions
A
Patterned, enduring sets of practices and ideas that perform a function in society
2
Q
Politics
A
Methods/techniques by which power and influence are exercised and negotiated.
3
Q
Pluralism
A
Sees power as spread across a variety of organizations and institutions.
4
Q
Special interest groups
A
Organizations that raise money to influence government.
5
Q
PACs
A
Groups that raise money to campaign for political candidates or legislation (usually support a specific group or agenda).
6
Q
Super PACs
A
PACs that can raise and spend unlimited amounts to influence elections.
7
Q
Education
A
(A social institution that) disseminates knowledge, values, and expectations that are necessary for social functioning.
8
Q
Tracking
A
Students’ placement into educational “tracks” that then shape which classes are available.
9
Q
Hidden curriculum
A
Lessons that are taught indirectly via education (e.g. how to follow the rules).
10
Q
Cultural capital
A
Knowledge, skills, expectations, preferences, and other cultural assets that help individuals succeed in society.
11
Q
Religion
A
A social institution that bonds communities through shared beliefs and rituals.
12
Q
Religiosity
A
Measure of individual religiousness; participation in religious beliefs, activities, and practices; extrinsic (public) or intrinsic (personal).
13
Q
Spirituality
A
The search for meaning and purpose; trusting in a higher power.
14
Q
Fundamentalism
A
Emphasizes conservative and traditional religious practices; strict interpretation.
15
Q
Secularization
A
Trend towards a non religious society; movement away from identification with religious values and institutions.
16
Q
Economy
A
A social institution that organizes production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services.
17
Q
Labor markets
A
Markets in which labor is bought (by employers) and sold (by workers).
18
Q
Labor market considerations
A
How people find jobs; how salaries/wages are set; how job applicants are evaluated.
19
Q
Cyber vetting
A
Employers’ practice of using online information (particularly social media) to evaluate job applicants.
20
Q
Cyber vetting considerations
A
Credentials; experience; information consistency; reputation; “fit;” “red flags.”
21
Q
“Red flags” (in work)
A
Dishonesty; illegal activity; alcohol or drug use; sexual behavior; profanity; bad grammar and spelling; anything negative about work; posting too frequently; unemployment (stereotypes: lazy, hard to work with)(“Looking for work” equates with “unemployment”).
22
Q
Globalization
A
Changes arising from increased trade and exchange
23
Q
Family
A
A social group with legal, biological, and/or emotional ties; A social institution that socializes children and provides practical and emotional support.
24
Q
Medicine
A
A social institution that supports health and prevents, diagnoses, and treats health issues.
25
Social change
Transformation of culture and social institution over time.
26
Collective behavior
Action taken by a group or crowd of people working toward a shared goal
27
Crowds
Temporary public gathering with a shared purpose.
28
Mass behavior
Groups engaging in similar behavior but not necessarily in the same place.
29
Cultural diffusion
Spread of material and symbolic culture to other groups.
30
Cultural imperialism
Imposing cultural beliefs through media and other products.
31
Cultural leveling/homogenization
Cultures becoming increasingly similar.
32
Polysemy
Cultural products have many possible meanings.
33
Demography
Size, composition, movement, and changes in populations.
34
Suburbanization
Development of and movement to suburbs.
35
Gentrification
Shift in neighborhood demographics: lower-income communities of color —> wealthier white communities.
36
Framing theory
Social movements gather participants/ supporters by creating effective frames.
37
Frames
Ways of describing the situation.
38
Resource mobilization theory
Social movements are helped or hindered by their access to resources.
39
Political opportunity theory
Opportunities and perceived opportunities help to mobilize collective action.
40
Government
The formal, organized agency that exercises power and control in modern society, especially through the creation and enforcement of laws.
41
Power
The ability to control the actions of others.
42
Authority
The legitimate right to wield power.
43
Authoritarianism
A system of government by and for a small number of elites that does not include representation of ordinary citizens.
44
Monarchy
A government ruled by a king or queen, with succession of rulers kept within the family.
45
Democracy
A political system in which all citizens have the right to participate.
46
Disenfranchised
Stripped of voting rights, either temporarily or permanently.
47
Gerrymandering
Redrawing the boundary lines of state voting districts in order to advantage one political party over another.
48
Power elite
A relatively small group of people in the top ranks of economic, political, and military institutions who make many of the important decisions in American society.
49
Pluralist model
A system of political power in which individuals and groups have equal access to resources and the mechanisms of power.
50
Opinion leaders
High-profile individuals whose interpretation of events influences the public.
51
Simulacrum
An image or media representation that does not reflect reality in any meaningful way but is treated as real.
52
Credential society
A society that emphasizes the attainment of degrees and certificates as necessary for the job market and social mobility.
53
Charter schools
Public schools run by private entities to give parents greater control over their children’s education.
54
School vouchers
Payments from the government to parents whose children attend failing public schools; the money helps parents pay for private school tuition.
55
Homeschooling
The education of children by their parents, at home.
56
Unschooling
A homeschooling alternative that rejects the standard curriculum in favor of student-driven types of learning.
57
Early college high schools
Institutions in which students earn a high school diploma and two years of credit toward a bachelor’s degree.
58
Dual enrollment
Programs that allow high school students to simultaneously enroll in college classes, earning credit for both high school and college degrees.
59
Community College
Two-year institution that provides students with general education and facilitates transfer to a four-year university.
60
Sacred
The holy, divine, or supernatural.
61
Profane
The ordinary, mundane, or everyday.
62
Liberation theology
A movement within the Catholic Church to understand Christianity from the perspective of the poor and oppressed, with a focus on fighting injustice.
63
Evangelical
A term describing conservative Christians who emphasize converting others to their faith.
64
Unchurched
A term describing those who consider themselves spiritual but not religious and who often adopt aspects of various religious traditions.
65
Capitalism
An economic system based on the laws of free market competition, privatization of the means of production, and production for profit.
66
Socialism
An economic system based on the collective ownership of the means of production, collective distribution of goods and services, and government regulation.
67
Communism
A system of government that eliminates private property; it is the most extreme form of socialism, because all citizens work for the government and there are no class distinctions.
68
Sweatshop
A workplace where workers are subject to extreme exploitation, including below-standard wages, long hours, and poor working conditions that may pose health or safety hazards.
69
Outsourcing
“Contracting out” or transferring to another country the labor that a company might otherwise have employed its own staff to perform; typically done for financial reasons.
70
Nuclear family
A heterosexual couple with one or more children living in a single household.
71
Agricultural revolution
The social and economic changes, including population increases, that followed from the domestication of plants and animals and the gradually increasing efficiency of food production.
72
Alienation
The sense of dissatisfaction the modern worker feels as a result of producing goods that are owned and controlled by someone else.
73
Information revolution
The recent social revolution made possible by the development of the microchip in the 1970s, which brought about vast improvements in the ability to manage information.
74
Telecommuting
Working from home while staying connected to the office through communications technology.
75
Union
An association of workers who bargain collectively for wages and benefits and better working conditions.
76
Contingent and alternative workforce
Those who work in positions that are temporary or freelance or who work as independent contractors.
77
Independent (or third) sector
The part of the economy composed of nonprofit organizations; their workers are mission driven, rather than profit driven, and such organizations direct surplus funds to the causes they support.
78
Homogamy
The tendency to choose romantic partners who are similar to us in term of class, race, education, religion, and other social group membership.
79
Endogamy
Marriage to someone within one’s social group.
80
Exogamy
Marriage to someone from a different social group.
81
Propinquity
The tendency to partner with people who live close by.
82
Antimiscegenation
The prohibition of interracial marriage, cohabitation, or sexual interaction.
83
Polygyny
A system of marriage that allows men to have multiple wives.
84
Polyandry
A system of marriage that allows women to have multiple husbands.
85
Instrumental tasks
The practical physical tasks necessary to maintain family life.
86
Expressive tasks
The emotional work necessary to support family members.
87
Food desert
A community in which the residents have little or no access to fresh, affordable, healthy foods, usually located in densely urban areas.
88
Sick role
The actions and attitudes that society expects from someone who is ill.
89
Conglomeration
The process by which a single corporation acquires ownership of a variety of otherwise unrelated businesses.
90
Synergy
A mutually beneficial interaction between parts of an organization that allows it to create something greater than the sum of its individual outputs.
91
Concentration
The process by which the number of companies producing and distributing a particular commodity decreases, often through mergers and conglomeration.
92
Antitrust legislation
Laws designed to maintain competition in the marketplace by prohibiting monopolies, price fixing, or other form of collusion among businesses.
93
Deregulation
Reduction or removal of government controls from an industry to allow for a free and efficient marketplace.
94
Taste public’s
Groups of people who share similar artistic, literary, media, recreational, and intellectual interests.
95
Taste cultures
Areas of culture that share similar aesthetics and standards of taste.
96
Hypodermic needle theory (magic bullet theory)
A theory that explains the effects of media as if their contents simply entered directly into the consumer, who is powerless to resist their influence.
97
Active audiences
A term used to characterize audience members as active participants in “reading” or constructing the meaning of the media they consume.
98
Used and gratifications paradigm
Approaches to understanding media effects that focus on how the media fulfill individuals’ psychological or social needs.
99
Reinforcement theory
Theory that suggests that audiences seek messages in the media that reinforce their existing attitudes and beliefs and are thus not influenced by challenging or contradictory information.
100
Agenda-setting theory
Theory that the media can set the public agenda by selecting certain news stories and excluding others, thus influencing what audiences think about.
101
Two-step flow model
Theory on media effects that suggests audiences get information through opinion leaders who influence their attitudes and beliefs, rather than through direct, firsthand sources.
102
Interpretive strategies
The ideas and frameworks that audience members bring to bear on a particular media text to understand its meaning.
103
Encoding/decoding model
A theory on media that combines models that privilege that media producer and model that view the audience as the primary source of meaning; this theory recognizes that media texts are created to deliver specific messages and that individuals actively interpret them.
104
Textual poaching
Henry Jenkins’s term for the ways that audience members manipulate an original cultural product to create a new one; a common way for fans to exert some control over the media they consume.
105
Interpretive community
A group of people dedicated to the consumption and interpretation of a particular cultural product and who create a collective, social meaning for the product.
106
Contagion theory
One of the earliest theories of collective action; suggests that individuals who join a crowd can become “infected” by a mob mentality and lose the ability to reason.
107
Emergent norm theory
A theory of collective behavior that assumes individual members of a crowd make their own decisions about behavior and that norms are created though others’ acceptance or rejection of these behaviors.
108
Social dilemma
A situation in which behavior that is rational for the individual can, when practiced by many people, lead to collective disaster.
109
Tragedy of the commons
A type of social dilemma in which many individuals’ over exploitation of a public resource depletes or degrades that common resource.
110
Public goods dilemma
A type of social dilemma in which individuals incur the cost to contribute to a collective resource, though they may never benefit from that resource.
111
Cultural diffusion
The dissemination of material and symbolic culture from one group to another.
112
Technological determinism
A theory of social change that assumes changes in society, rather than vice versa.
113
Cultural lag
The time between changes in material culture or technology and the resulting changes in the broader culture’s relevant norms, values, meanings, and laws.
114
Relative deprivation theory
A theory of social movements that focuses on the actions of the oppressed groups seeking rights or opportunities already enjoyed by others in the society.
115
Global Village
Marshall McLuhan’s term describing the way that new communication technologies override barriers of space and time, joining together people all over the globe.
116
Cultural leveling
The process by which cultures that were once unique and distinct become increasingly similar.
117
Modernity
A term that characterizes industrialized societies, including the decline of tradition, and increase in individualism, and a belief in progress, technology, and science.
118
Postmodernity
A term that characterizes postindustrial societies, including a focus on the production and management of information and skepticism of science and technology.
