More key terms Flashcards
(20 cards)
Moral systems
A system of coherent, systematic, and reasonable principles, rules, ideals, and values which work to form one’s overall perspective. Link to religion, beliefs, ethics, right, wrong, good, evil.
Power
Is an essential part of social relations and can be considered as a person’s or group’s capacity to influence, manipulate or control others and resources. In its broadest sense, power can be understood as involving distinctions and inequalities between members of a social group.
Kinship
The web or pattern of social relationships, which connects people through descent or marriage, although other forms of social connection may be included.
Consumption
The meaningful use that people make of the objects that are associated with them. The use can be mental or material, the objects can be things, ideas or relationships.
Social movement
Is a type of group action. Social movements can be defined as ‘organisational structures and strategies that may empower oppressed populations to mount effective challenges and resist the more powerful and advantage elites’. Link to power and resistance
Ideology
A system of ideas, morals and ideals, including ones which forms the basis of social, economic and/or political theory and policy. The set of beliefs characteristic of a social group or individual.
Social relations
Any relationship between two or more individuals in a network of relationships. Social relations involve an element of individual agency as well as group expectations and form the basis of social organisation and social structure.
Reproduction
The transmission of existing cultural values and norms and other aspects of society from generation to generation.
Knowledge system
Culture is socially learned and provides people with what they need to know to act appropriately.
Political organisation
Any organisation that involves itself in the political process, including political parties, non-governmental organisations, advocacy groups and special interest groups. Link to power, resistance and inequality.
Identity
Identity can refer either to the individual’s private and personal view of self, or the view of an individual in the eyes of the social group. Identity also refers to group identity, which may take the form of religious identity, for example.
Resistance
Social groups may not accept change in its apparent form, either refusing it outright or moving to accommodate it in a modified form.
Caste
A form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a lifestyle which often includes an occupation, status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion. Link to social reproduction and lack of social mobility.
Commodification
The transformation of goods and services, as well as concepts that normally may be considered goods, into a commodity, something of value.
Inequality
The existence of unequal opportunities and rewards for different social positions or statuses within a group or society. Link to social class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, caste, social reproduction, power, ideology.
Power relations
The positive or negative exercise of power between social groups or individuals.
Reciprocity
Mutual exchange or obligation between people.
Generalised (no expectation of return)
Balanced (exchange of equal value)
Negative (one party seeks to benefit at the expense of the other)
Belief and knowledge
A set of convictions, values and viewpoints regarded as ‘the truth’ and shared by members of a social group. These are underpinned and supported by known cultural experiences.
Symbolism
The study of the significance that people attach to objects, actions, and processes creating network of symbols through which they construct a culture’s web of meaning.
Economic organisation
Processe of production, circulation and consumption of different sorts of objects in social settings. ‘objects includes material things, as well as what people do for each other (such as provide labour and services).
