Final Flashcards
(152 cards)
1
Q
Collective action
A
action that takes place in groups and diverges from the social norms of the situation.
2
Q
Convergence theory
A
theory of collective action stating that collective action happens when people with similar ideas and tendencies gather in the same place.
3
Q
Contagion theory
A
theory of collective action claiming that collective action arises because of people’s tendency to conform to the behavior of others with whom they are in close contact.
4
Q
Emergent norm theory
A
theory of collective action emphasizing the influence of keynoters in promoting new behavioral norms.
5
Q
Social movement
A
collective behavior that is purposeful, organized, and institutionalized but not ritualized.
6
Q
Alterative social movements
A
social movements that seek the most limited societal change and often target a narrow group of people.
7
Q
Redemptive social movements
A
social movements that target specific groups but advocate for more radical change in behavior.
8
Q
Reformative social movements
A
social movements that advocate for limited social change across an entire society.
9
Q
Revolutionary social movements
A
social movements that advocate the radical reorganization of society.
10
Q
Classical model
A
model of social movements based on a concept of structural weakness in society that results in the psychological disruption of individuals.
11
Q
Resource-mobilization theory
A
model of social movements that emphasizes political context and goals but also states that social movements are unlikely to emerge without the necessary resources.
12
Q
Political process model
A
model of social movements that focuses on the structure of political opportunities. When these are favorable to a particular challenger, the chances are better for the success of a social movement led by this challenger.
13
Q
Emergence
A
the first stage of a social movement, occurring when the social problem being addressed is first identified.
14
Q
Coalescence
A
the second stage of a social movement, in which resources are mobilized (that is, concrete action is taken) around the problems outlined in the first stage.
15
Q
Routinization or institutionalization
A
the final stage of a social movement, in which it is institutionalized and a formal structure develops to promote the cause.
16
Q
Social movement organization
A
a group developed to recruit new members and coordinate participation in a particular social movement; these groups also often raise money, clarify goals, and structure participation in the movement.
17
Q
Grassroots organization
A
a type of social movement organization that relies on high levels of community-based membership participation to promote social change. It lacks a hierarchical structure and works through existing political structures.
18
Q
Premodernity
A
social relations characterized by concentric circles of social affiliation, a low degree of division of labor, relatively undeveloped technology, and traditional social norms.
19
Q
Modernity
A
social relations characterized by rationality, bureaucratization, and objectivity—as well as individuality created by nonconcentric, but overlapping, group affiliations.
20
Q
Postmodernity
A
social relations characterized by a questioning of the notion of progress and history, the replacement of narrative with pastiche, and multiple, perhaps even conflicting, identities resulting from disjointed affiliations.
21
Q
Paradigm
A
the framework within which scientists operate.
22
Q
Normal science
A
science conducted within an existing paradigm, as defined by Thomas Kuhn.
23
Q
Paradigm shift or scientific revolution
A
when enough scientific anomalies accrue to challenge the existing paradigm, showing that it is incomplete or inadequate to explain all observed phenomena.
24
Q
Normative view of science
A
the notion that science should be unaffected by the personal beliefs or values of scientists but rather follow objective rules of evidence.
25
Boundary work
work done to maintain the border between legitimate and nonlegitimate science within a specific scientific discipline or between legitimate disciplines.
26
Matthew effect
a term used by sociologists to describe the notion that certain scientific results get more notoriety and influence based on the existing prestige of the researchers involved.
27
Global warming
rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, resulting in higher global average temperatures.
28
Risk society
a society that both produces and is concerned with mitigating risks, especially manufactured risks (ones that result from human activity).
29
Religion
a system of beliefs, traditions, and practices around sacred things; a set of shared "stories" that guide belief and action.
30
Sacred
holy things put to special use for worship and kept separate from the profane; the sacred realm is unknowable and mystical, so it inspires us with feelings of awe and wonder.
31
Profane
the things of mundane, everyday life.
32
Theism
the worship of a god or gods, as in Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.
33
Ethicalism
the adherence to certain principles to lead a moral life, as in Buddhism and Taoism.
34
Animism
the belief that spirits are part of the natural world, as in totemism.
35
Denomination
a big group of congregations that share the same faith and are governed under one administrative umbrella.
36
Congregation
a group of people who gather together, especially for worship.
37
Secularism
a general movement away from religiosity and spiritual belief toward a rational, scientific orientation, a trend adopted by industrialized nations in the form of separation of church and state.
38
Pluralism
the presence and engaged coexistence of numerous distinct groups in one society.
39
Sacred canopy
Peter Berger's term to describe the entire set of religious norms, symbols, and beliefs that express the most important thing in life—namely, the feeling that life is worth living and that reality is meaningful and ordered, not just random chaos.
40
Evangelicals
members of any denomination distinguished by four main beliefs: the Bible is without error, salvation comes only through belief in Jesus Christ, personal conversion is the only path to salvation (the "born again" experience), and others must also be converted. They proselytize by engaging with wider society.
41
Fundamentalists
religious adherents who follow a scripture (such as the Bible or Qur'an) using a literal interpretation of its meaning.
42
Religious experience
an individual's spiritual feelings, acts, and experiences.
43
Reflexive spirituality
a contemporary religious movement that encourages followers to look to religion for meaning, wisdom, and profound thought and feeling rather than for absolute truths on how the world works.
44
Megachurch
typically, a conservative Protestant church that attracts at least 2,000 worshippers per week.
45
Supernatural compensators
promises of future rewards, such as salvation or eternity in heaven.
46
Churches
religious bodies that coexist in a relatively low state of tension with their social surroundings. They have mainstream, "safe" beliefs and practices relative to those of the general population.
47
Sects or sectarian groups
high-tension organizations that don't fit well within the existing social environment. They are usually most attractive to society's least privileged—outcasts, minorities, or the poor—because they downplay worldly pleasure by stressing otherworldly promises.
48
Cult
religious movement that makes some new claim about the supernatural and therefore does not easily fit within the sect–church cycle.
49
Politics
power relations among people or other social actors.
50
Authority
the justifiable right to exercise power.
51
Charismatic authority
authority that rests on the personal appeal of an individual leader.
52
Traditional authority
authority that rests on appeals to the past or traditions.
53
Legal-rational authority
authority based on legal, impersonal rules; the rules rule.
54
Routinization
the clear, rule-governed procedures used repeatedly for decision making.
55
Rationalization
an ever-expanding process of ordering or organizing.
56
Bureaucracy
a legal-rational organization or mode of administration that governs with reference to formal rules and roles and emphasizes meritocracy.
57
Specialization
the process of breaking up work into specific, delimited tasks.
58
Taylorism
the methods of labor management introduced by Frederick Winslow Taylor to streamline the processes of mass production in which each worker repeatedly performs one specific task.
59
Meritocracy
a society that assigns social status, power, and economic rewards on achievement, not ascribed, personal attributes or favoritism.
60
Milgram experiment
an experiment devised in 1961 by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, to see how far ordinary people would go to obey a scientific authority figure.
61
Power
the ability to carry out one's own will despite resistance.
62
Domination
the probability that a command with specific content will be obeyed by a given group of people.
63
State
as defined by Max Weber, "a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory."
64
Coercion
the use of force to get others to do what you want.
65
Paradox of authority
although the state's authority derives from the implicit threat of physical force, resorting to physical coercion strips the state of all legitimate authority.
66
International state system
a system in which each state is recognized as territorially sovereign by fellow states.
67
Welfare state
a system in which the state is responsible for the well-being of its citizens.
68
Citizenship rights
the rights guaranteed to each law-abiding citizen in a nation-state.
69
Civil rights
the rights guaranteeing a citizen's personal freedom from interference, including freedom of speech and the right to travel freely.
70
Political rights
the rights guaranteeing a citizen's ability to participate in politics, including the right to vote and the right to hold an elected office.
71
Social rights
the rights guaranteeing a citizen's protection by the state.
72
Soft power
power attained through the use of cultural attractiveness rather than the threat of coercive action (hard power).
73
Democracy
a system of government wherein power theoretically lies with the people; citizens are allowed to vote in elections, speak freely, and participate as legal equals in social life.
74
Dictatorship
a form of government that restricts the right to political participation to a small group or even to a single individual.
75
Game theory
the study of strategic decisions made under conditions of uncertainty and interdependence.
76
Collective action problem
the difficulty in organizing large groups because of the tendency of some individuals to freeload or slack off.
77
Altruism
an action that benefits a group but does not directly benefit the individual performing the action.
78
Political party
an organization that seeks to gain power in a government, generally by backing candidates for office who subscribe (to the extent possible) to the organization's political ideals.
79
Interest group
an organization that seeks to gain power in government and influence policy without campaigning for direct election or appointment to office.
80
Political participation
any activity that has the intent or effect of influencing government action.
81
Capitalism
an economic system in which property and goods are primarily privately owned; investments are determined by private decisions; and prices, production, and the distribution of goods are determined primarily by competition in an unfettered marketplace.
82
Feudalism
a precapitalist economic system characterized by the presence of lords, vassals, serfs, and fiefs.
83
Agricultural revolution
the period around 1700 marked by the introduction of new farming technologies that increased food output in farm production.
84
Corporation
a legal entity unto itself that has a legal personhood distinct from that of its members—namely, its owners and shareholders.
85
Alienation
a condition in which people are dominated by forces of their own creation that then confront them as alien powers; according to Marx, the basic state of being in a capitalist society.
86
Socialism
an economic system in which most or all of the needs of the population are met through nonmarket methods of distribution.
87
Communism
a political ideology of a classless society in which the means of production are shared through state ownership and in which rewards are tied not to productivity but to need.
88
Family wage
a wage paid to male workers sufficient to support a dependent wife and children.
89
Service sector
the section of the economy that involves providing intangible services.
90
Monopoly
the form of business that occurs when one seller of a good or service dominates the market to the exclusion of others, potentially leading to zero competition.
91
Productivity enhancing
economic activities that increase the total economic value available to society.
92
Rent seeking
economic activities that aim to move value from one person or company to another without increasing value.
93
Offshoring
a business decision to move all or part of a company's operations abroad to minimize costs.
94
Union
an organization of workers designed to facilitate collective bargaining with an employer.
95
Union busting
a company's assault on its workers' union with the hope of dissolving it.
96
Education
the process through which academic, social, and cultural ideas and tools, both general and specific, are developed.
97
Hidden curriculum
the nonacademic and less overt socialization functions of schooling.
98
Social capital
the information, knowledge of people, and connections that help individuals enter, gain power in, or otherwise leverage social networks.
99
Tracking
a way of dividing students into different classes by ability or future plans.
100
Credentialism
an overemphasis on credentials (e.g., college degrees) for signaling social status or qualifications for a job.
101
Affirmative action
a set of policies that grant preferential treatment to a number of particular subgroups within the population—typically, women and historically disadvantaged racial minorities.
102
Social class or socioeconomic status (SES)
an individual's position in a stratified social order.
103
Cultural capital
the symbolic and interactional resources that people use to their advantage in various situations.
104
Stereotype threat
when members of a negatively stereotyped group are placed in a situation where they fear they may confirm those stereotypes.
105
Resource dilution model
hypothesis stating that parental resources are finite and that each additional child gets a smaller amount of them.
106
Endogamy
marriage to someone within one's social group.
107
Exogamy
marriage to someone outside one's social group.
108
Monogamy
the practice of having only one sexual partner or spouse at a time.
109
Polygamy
the practice of having more than one sexual partner or spouse at a time.
110
Polyandry
the practice of having multiple husbands simultaneously.
111
Polygyny
the practice of having multiple wives simultaneously.
112
Nuclear family
familial form consisting of a father, a mother, and their children.
113
Extended family
kin networks that extend outside or beyond the nuclear family.
114
Cohabitation
living together in an intimate relationship without formal legal or religious sanctioning.
115
Kinship networks
strings of relationships between people related by blood and co-residence (that is, marriage).
116
Cult of domesticity
the notion that true womanhood centers on domestic responsibility and child rearing.
117
Second shift
women's responsibility for housework and child care—everything from cooking dinner to doing laundry, bathing children, reading bedtime stories, and sewing Halloween costumes.
118
Miscegenation
the technical term for interracial marriage, literally meaning "a mixing of kinds"; it is politically and historically charged—sociologists generally prefer exogamy or outmarriage.
119
Medicalization
the process by which problems or issues not traditionally seen as medical come to be framed as such.
120
Sick role
concept describing the social rights and obligations of a sick individual.
121
Morbidity
illness in a general sense.
122
Mortality
death.
123
Epigenetic mark
a chemical regulator of gene activity that may be switched "on" or "off" in response to environmental influence.
124
Culture of poverty
the argument that poor people adopt certain practices that differ from those of middle-class, "mainstream" society in order to adapt and survive in difficult economic circumstances.
125
Underclass
the notion, building on the culture of poverty argument, that the poor not only are different from mainstream society in their inability to take advantage of what society has to offer, but also are increasingly deviant and even dangerous to the rest of us.
126
Perverse incentives
reward structures that lead to suboptimal outcomes by stimulating counterproductive behavior; for example, welfare—to the extent that it discourages work efforts—is argued to have perverse incentives.
127
Absolute poverty
the point at which a household's income falls below the necessary level to purchase food to physically sustain its members.
128
Relative poverty
a measurement of poverty based on a percentage of the median income in a given location.
129
Parenting stress hypothesis
a paradigm in which low income, unstable employment, a lack of cultural resources, and a feeling of inferiority from social class comparisons exacerbate household stress levels; this stress, in turn, leads to detrimental parenting practices such as yelling and hitting, which are not conducive to healthy child development.
130
Race
a group of people who share a set of characteristics—typically, but not always, physical ones—and are said to share a common bloodline.
131
Racism
the belief that members of separate races possess different and unequal traits.
132
Scientific racism
nineteenth-century theories of race that characterize a period of feverish investigation into the origins, explanations, and classifications of race.
133
Ethnocentrism
the belief that one's own culture or group is superior to others and the tendency to view all other cultures from the perspective of one's own.
134
Ontological equality
the philosophical and religious notion that all people are created equal.
135
Social Darwinism
the application of Darwinian ideas to society—namely, the evolutionary "survival of the fittest.
136
Eugenics
literally meaning "well born"; a pseudoscience that postulates that controlling the fertility of populations could influence inheritable traits passed on from generation to generation
137
Nativism
the movement to protect and preserve indigenous land or culture from the allegedly dangerous and polluting effects of new immigrants.
138
One-drop rule
the belief that "one drop" of black blood makes a person black, a concept that evolved from U.S. laws forbidding miscegenation.
139
Miscegenation
the technical term for interracial marriage, literally meaning "a mixing of kinds"; it is politically and historically charged—sociologists generally prefer exogamy or outmarriage.
140
Racialization
the formation of a new racial identity by drawing ideological boundaries of difference around a formerly unnoticed group of people.
141
Ethnicity
one's ethnic quality or affiliation. It is voluntary, self-defined, nonhierarchal, fluid and multiple, and based on cultural differences, not physical ones per se.
142
Symbolic ethnicity
a nationality, not in the sense of carrying the rights and duties of citizenship but of identifying with a past or future nationality. For later generations of white ethnics, something not constraining but easily expressed, with no risks of stigma and all the pleasures of feeling like an individual.
143
Straight-line assimilation
Robert Park's 1920s universal and linear model for how immigrants assimilate: they first arrive, then settle in, and achieve full assimilation in a newly homogenous country.
144
Primordialism
Clifford Geertz's term to explain the strength of ethnic ties because they are fixed and deeply felt or primordial ties to one's homeland culture.
145
Pluralism
the presence and engaged coexistence of numerous distinct groups in one society.
146
Segregation
the legal or social practice of separating people on the basis of their race or ethnicity.
147
Genocide
the mass killing of a group of people based on racial, ethnic, or religious traits.
148
Subaltern
a subordinate, oppressed group of people.
149
Collective resistance
an organized effort to change a power hierarchy on the part of a less-powerful group in a society.
150
Prejudice
thoughts and feelings about an ethnic or racial group, which lead to preconceived notions and judgments (often negative) about the group.
151
Discrimination
harmful or negative acts (not mere thoughts) against people deemed inferior on the basis of their racial category, without regard to their individual merit.
152
Institutional racism
institutions and social dynamics that may seem race-neutral but actually disadvantage minority groups.
