Sociological Perspective & Theory
The systematic study of human society focused on groups, patterns, and social forces, not individuals.
What is sociology?
The type of evidence sociologists rely on is observable and measurable, not based on opinion or intuition.
What is empirical evidence?
The general term for rules and expectations that guide how people behave in society.
What are norms?
The lifelong process through which people learn norms, values, behaviors, and social skills.
What is socialization?
The term for any behavior that violates social norms, whether or not it is illegal.
What is deviance?
C. Wright Mills' term for the ability to connect personal troubles (like job loss) to broader public issues like unemployment rates.
What is the sociological imagination?
The variable in a study that the researcher changes or manipulates is the cause in a cause-and-effect relationship.
What is the independent variable?
The less serious type of norm (think dress codes or table manners) has only minor consequences when violated.
What are folkways?
The first and most influential agent of socialization is where children first acquire language, values, and expectations.
What is the family?
A powerful negative label that follows a person in every context and becomes their master status, even after any punishment is served.
What is a stigma?
Merton's term for consequences of social structures that are unintended and hidden, like schools inadvertently providing childcare.
What are latent functions?
The process of defining exactly how an abstract concept like 'poverty' or 'success' will be measured in a specific study.
What is operationalization?
Named after two linguists, this hypothesis argues that the language you speak actually shapes how you think and perceive reality.
What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
Mead's concept of the internalized expectations of society as a whole, which guides your behavior even when no specific person is watching.
What is the generalized other?
Merton's theory: when society promotes goals like wealth but blocks the legitimate paths to reach them, this results.
What is strain?
Structural-functionalism and social-conflict theory share this level of analysis, making both different from symbolic interactionism.
What is the macro level?
The ethical principle violated in the Tuskegee Study, participants must know the study's purpose and be free to withdraw at any time.
What is informed consent?
While ethnocentrism judges other cultures by your own standards, this approach suspends judgment and tries to understand them on their own terms.
What is cultural relativism?
In Mead's theory, this spontaneous part of the self acts on the world; this other social part reflects, evaluates, and applies society's expectations.
What are the 'I' and the 'Me'?
Primary deviance is an isolated act that doesn't change your identity. This type occurs when a label is accepted and identity shifts to match it.
What is secondary deviance?
Durkheim famously used data on this act (widely considered deeply personal) to prove that even our most private decisions are shaped by social forces.
What is suicide?
Unlike positivist sociology, which measures, and interpretive sociology, which seeks meaning, this third orientation aims to change society altogether.
What is critical sociology?
The disorientation felt when your own cultural assumptions are suddenly exposed because another society's rules have made your own feel strange.
What is culture shock?
These three children (raised in severe social isolation) became sociology's most powerful evidence that human development requires social interaction.
Who are Anna, Isabelle, and Genie?
Laws that once criminalized reading, gathering, and running away from slavery are sociology's clearest evidence of this principle about laws.
What is that crime is socially defined and reflects who holds power?