introduction unit

• culture

  the way of life of a group of people
• values


  standards shared by members of a culture and used to judge whether behaviour is right or wrong
• norms


  the behaviour that societies expect of their members in particular situations
• social interaction

  any situation in which two or more people have social contact with each other
• customs

  norms in a particular society that are widely accepted and carry on over time
• laws

  rules that are given force by being formalised by governments
• status

  a position that someone has in society; status can be ascribed or achieved
• role


  a part (role) that an individual plays in society and the expectations of behavior for that part. e.g parent's should be caring and take responsibility for their children.
• role model


  People we look up to and copy their behaviour
• social institutions


  parts of society such as the family and education system
• social identity

  individuals' perception of themselves, based partly on ideas about how others see them
• gender

  relates to socially constructed or cultural differences between men and women that are associated with masculinity and femininity
• stereotype


  the attributes that people think characterise a group
• social control


  ways in which members of society are made to conform to norms and values
• rewards


  a positive sanction so that someone is praised or better off for behaving a certain way
• sanctions

  ways of rewarding or punishing acceptable or unacceptable behaviour
• sub-culture


  a group within a larger culture that has its own distinctive norms and values
• value consensus


  general agreement across a society on a set of values
• conformity


  acting in accordance with norms and social expectations
• informal social control

  ways of controlling behaviour imposed by people informally such as the approval or disapproval of others
• peer group

  people of the same status (for example, they are the same age)
• formal social control

  social control imposed by a person or organisation who has the authority to implement rules or laws
• agencies of socialisation

  institutions by which people are socialised e.g family, media, education
• primary socialisation

  the first and most important period of socialisation by the family in which the individual learns the basic norms of behaviour
• hidden curriculum


  what pupils learn in schools apart from the content of lessons, such as the importance of following rules and the consequences of not doing so
• peer pressure


  the influence that a peer group has to force or persuade its members to conform
• social order

  the ways in which societies and their institutions remain stable over time
• childhood

  the period before adulthood in which individuals are not granted full adult rights
• adulthood


  when an individual is accepted by their culture as a full member
• masculinity

  the expected behaviour for those who are male
• ethnic minority

  an ethnic group that is relatively small in number compared with the majority in a society and is seen as different
• cultural diversity

  where there are many differences; cultural diversity refers to the wide differences between human cultures
• lifestyle


  the way in which people live, including their leisure and work patterns, religion, age, income and social class
• cultural relativism

  considering all cultures on their own terms rather than from a Western point of view.
• multicultural society


  a society in which people of many different cultures exist alongside each other
• ethnicity

  cultural traditions, norms and values that distinguish the members of a particular social group from other groups. May be linked to race or nationality
• social construction

  a product of society or culture e.g crime statistics are the end product of a series of decisions and interactions by people
• child-centered


  a society in which children are highly valued and alot of time and effort are devoted into their well-being
• secondary socialisation


  socialisation that begins in later childhood and continues throughout our adult life performed by agencies such as education, religion, peer groups and the media
• imitation

  young children learning by copying the behaviour of others