Perspectives & Pioneers
This sociologist coined the 'sociological imagination' - linking personal troubles to public issues.
C. Wright Mills
Tools, buildings, and clothing are examples of this kind of culture.
Material culture
The lifelong process of learning your society's norms, values, and roles.
Socialization
Ranking people into layers based on wealth, power, and prestige.
Social stratification
Any behavior that violates a society's norms.
Deviance
This trophy is awarded every year to the most outstanding player in college football.
The Heisman Trophy
This thinker coined the word 'sociology' and promoted positivism.
Auguste Comte
Everyday customs like table manners, whose violation is rude but not immoral.
Folkways
The agent of socialization that teaches a child their first language and values.
The family
A system where your position is fixed at birth and cannot be changed.
A caste system
Everyday pressure (a frown, teasing) that enforces norms, as opposed to police and courts.
Informal social control
Texas and Oklahoma play the Red River Rivalry every October at the State Fair in this city.
Dallas
He studied suicide rates to show that social forces, like integration, shape even the most personal acts.
Emile Durkheim
Judging another culture by the standards of your own.
Ethnocentrism
Cooley's idea that we form our self-image from how we imagine others see us.
The looking-glass self
A house and a stock portfolio you OWN are examples of this, not income.
Wealth
Merton's theory: blocked from legal paths to success, some people turn to illegal means.
Strain theory
This school finished a perfect season by beating Miami 27-21 for its first-ever national championship in January 2026.
Indiana
For this theorist, history is driven by conflict between social classes over the means of production.
Karl Marx
A group that rejects and actively opposes the dominant culture's values.
A counterculture
Unlearning old norms and learning new ones, as when a civilian becomes a soldier.
Resocialization
A coal miner's daughter who becomes a doctor shows this type of mobility.
Intergenerational mobility
Becker's theory: an act becomes deviant when society reacts to it and applies a tag.
Labeling theory
In 2024, the College Football Playoff expanded from 4 teams to this many.
12 teams
This early sociologist is best known for his analysis of race and inequality in America.
W.E.B. Du Bois
Ogburn's term for norms and laws changing more slowly than technology.
Cultural lag
Goffman's term for a setting (prison, boot camp) that controls all of life and strips the old self.
A total institution
Your realistic odds of good health, housing, and opportunity, based on your class position.
Life chances
Durkheim argued deviance is useful because, when punished, it does this to a society's rules.
Clarifies and reaffirms the norms (and unites people)
This Tennessee Volunteers quarterback finished 2nd in the 1997 Heisman voting, then went #1 overall in the 1998 NFL Draft, winning two Super Bowls in the process.
Peyton Manning