Soc 101

• positivism: process of applying the scientific method to the social world
• social facts: patterns of behaviour that characterise a group
• gemeinschaft (mechanical solidarity): shared consciousness resulting from performing similar tasks
• Gesellschaft (organic solidarity): interdependence resulting from division of labour
• ascribed status (involuntarily): position inherited at birth or received involuntarily later in life
• achieved status (voluntarily): a position earned, accomplished or involves some effort / activity
• status inconsistency: contradiction or mismatch between statuses, upsets expectations, causing confusion or awkwardness
• social location underlies your perceptions, attitudes and behaviour
• occupy a status, play a role
• role conflict: performance of a role in one status clashes with the performance of another role in another status
• sociological perspective #1: seeing the general in the particular (identify general social patterns vs unique individuals)
• sociological perspective #2: seeing the strange in the familiar (society shapes our lives vs individual decisions)
• social structure: the organised pattern of social relationships and social institutions that together constitute society
• social location: group membership you have because of where you are in history and society
• anomic suicide (without order): occurs when norms governing behaviour are vaguely defined
• status set: all the statuses or positions that an individual occupies
• master status: cuts across all other statuses that an individual occupies
• egoistic suicide: results from a lack of integration of the individual into society because of weak social ties to others
• fatalistic suicide occurs when there is high solidarity and high integration (bonds too strong).
• altruistic suicide: high solidarity and high regulation
• Max Weber believe religion is the central force in social change and Karl Marx believe the central force in social change is economics.
• goals of science: explain --> generalise --> predict
• sociological perspective: a way of looking at people's behaviour through the social context they live in
• sociological imagination: C. Wright Mills' term for the ability to see the connection between personal troubles and public issues
• biography: individuals' specific experiences give them specific orientations to life
• history: each society located in a broad stream of events that gives each society its own specific characteristics
• common sense are ideas that can be misguided because it is not systematically researched
• another term for hypothesis is testable proposition
• concepts: analytical tools used in sociological studies
• theory: an explanation of how two or more "facts" are related to one another
• empirical evidence: data collected through observation, interviews, surveys, etc.
• hypothesis: a statement predicting a relationship between or among variables, often according to predictions from a theory
• variable: factor thought to be significant for human behaviour, which can vary from one case to another
• operational definition: the way in which a researcher measures a variable
• role strain: some of the roles of a single status clash
• Erving Goffman's dramaturgy (presentation of self)
• who believes in positivism?

  Auguste Comte
• who talks about social integration?

  Emile Durkheim
• who wanted value neutrality?

  Max Weber
• who believed engine of human history is class conflict


  karl marx