Foundations
The scientific study of social behavior and human groups.
What is sociology?
Holds that society is structured in ways that maintain social stability, so that social change tends to be slow and evolutionary.
What is the functionalist perspective?
The totality of learned, socially transmitted customs, knowledge, material objects, and behavior.
What is culture?
The self is the product of one’s social interactions with other people (C. H. Cooley).
What is the looking-glass self?
A small group characterized by intimate, face-to-face association and cooperation.
What is a primary group?
The study of an entire social setting through extended, systematic fieldwork.
What is ethnography?
Emphasizes the importance of conflict between competing social groups, so that social change tends to be swift and revolutionary.
What is the conflict perspective?
A gesture, object, or language that forms the basis of human communication.
What is a symbol?
The individual characteristics, attitudes, needs, and behaviors that set one person apart from another.
What is personality?
A formal, impersonal group in which there is little social intimacy or mutual understanding.
What is a secondary group?
An artificially created situation that allows the researcher to manipulate variables.
What is an experiment?
The perspective that studies everyday forms of interaction to explain society as a whole.
What is the interactionist perspective?
An established standard of behavior maintained by a society.
What are norms?
The process through which people learn the basic attitudes, values, and behaviors.
What is socialization?
Any group that individuals use as a standard in evaluating themselves and their own behavior.
What is a reference group?
A set of statements that seeks to explain problems, actions, or behavior.
What is a theory?
Concentrates on large-scale phenomena or entire civilizations.
What is macrosociology?
The evaluation of a people’s behavior from the perspective of their own culture.
What is cultural relativism?
A set of expectations regarding the proper behavior, attitudes, and activities of males and females.
What are gender roles?
A group or category to which people feel they do not belong.
What is an out-group?
An awareness of the relationship between an individual and the wider society (C. Wright Mills).
What is the sociological imagination?
Concentrates on small groups, often through experimental means.
What is microsociology?
The tendency to assume that one’s own culture and way of life represent the norm or are superior to all others.
What is ethnocentrism?
The altering of the presentation of the self in order to create distinctive appearances and satisfy particular audiences.
What is impression management?
A collective consciousness resting on the need a society’s members have for one another.
What is organic solidarity?