Sociology Midterm Review

Question 1

Sociological imagination

Answer 1

See private troubles as public issues

Question 2

When did sociology emerge?

Answer 2

19th century Industrialization Europe

Question 3

What is sociology?

Answer 3

Making the familiar strange (not the study of the obvious because different communities have their own “common sense”)

Question 4

Social structure

Answer 4

Patterns of group behavior

Question 5

Social Institutions

Answer 5

System of social norms, roles, and structures

Question 6

Macro sociology

Answer 6

How society makes us

Question 7

Micro sociology

Answer 7

How we make society

Question 8

Empirical evidence

Answer 8

Evidence coming from real-world observations

Question 9

Science

Answer 9

Hypothesis testing

Question 10

Issue of Objectivity

Answer 10

Sociologists study self-aware subjects; must guard against our own bias and subjects “lying”

Question 11

Positivism

Answer 11

Auguste Comte: we can adapt natural science methods to study human science, to make them better

Question 12

Anomie

Answer 12

Emile Durkheim: happens when society transitions from mechanic solidarity to organic solidarity

Question 13

Example of anomie

Answer 13

The suicide rate varies with the changes in the quality of group ties

Question 14

Functionalism

Answer 14

Emile Durkheim: society is a social organism; we must pay attention to the interdependence between each institution and the larger social health as a whole

Question 15

Karl Marx view of sociology

Answer 15

“society” doesn’t have needs; social change occurs through class struggles (especially between capitalists and the working class)

Question 16

Rationalization Thesis

Answer 16

Max Weber: human life is being organized around the principles of CALCULABILITY, PREDICTABILITY, and CONTROL

Question 17

Bureaucracy

Answer 17

Impersonal, merit-based, specialized, and rule governed