SOC100 - Midterm 1

• Sociology is the systematic study of human behaviour in social context using empirical methods
• A main goal for sociologists is to identify and explain how personal troubles are connected to social structures
• Social structures are relatively stable patterns of social relations
• Microstructures are patterns of intimate social relations formed during face-to-face interaction
• Macrostructures are patterns of social relations outside and above one’s circle of intimates and acquaintances
• Global structures are patterns of social relations outside and above the national level
• Sociological Imagination is the ability to see the connection between personal troubles and social structures
• Sociology emerges from the Scientific, Democratic, and Industrial revolutions
• Comte coined the word sociology
• Spencer advanced the idea of social Darwinism
• There is a tension between belief in the importance of science and the vision of an ideal society
• Smith stated that sociology is committed to the project of emancipation
• Modernity is the period in which liberal individualism (Volunteerism) comes to dominate
• Theories are tentative explanations of some aspect of social life that state how and why certain facts are related
• Research involves observations to validate theories
• Values are ideas about right, wrong, good, and bad
• Durkheim argued that social solidarity is a better explanation for suicide than individual problems
• Functionalism argues that human behaviour is governed by stable patterns of social relations
• Talcott Parsons stated that various institutions must work to ensure the smooth operation of society as a whole
• Robert Merton distinguished between manifest functions and latent functions of social structures
• Conflict theory shows how major patterns of inequality produce social stability in some circumstances and social change in others
• Cultural turn of conflict theory emphasizes that culture is a critical way that elites impose their ideas on everyone else
• Gramsci highlighted that groups compete to make their idea "common sense"
• Foucault argued that culture is the site of ongoing conflict between dominant and subordinate classes and other groups
• Horkheimer and Adorno stated that culture teaches the Proletariat "false consciousness"
• Poststructuralism denies the stability of social relations and cultures, their capacity to always shape how people think and act, and their neat categorization of social and cultural elements as binary opposites
• Symbolic Interactionism focuses on understanding people's motives and the meaning they attach to things in order to better understand the significance of their actions
• Social Constructionism suggests that apparently natural or innate features of life are often sustained by social processes that vary historically and culturally
• Queer theory denies the very existence of stable identities and views labels as forms of control and domination
• Feminism argues that male domination and female subordination are determined not by biological necessity, but by structures of power and social convention
• Shift to postindustrial economy and the advent of globalization offer challenges and opportunities
• Unscientific knowledge can be based on tradition, authority, casual observation, overgeneralization, selective observation, qualification, illogical reasoning, ego-defense, premature closure of inquiry, and mystification
• Quantitative research involves sample and population, insider vs outsider perspective, qualitative vs quantitative research, and ethical considerations such as voluntary participation, harm minimization, right to privacy, and authenticity
• Operationalization is the process by which a concept is translated into a variable
• Variable is a measure of a concept that has more than one value or score
• Hypothesis is the testable form of a proposition
• Experiment involves randomization and has an experimental group exposed to the independent variable, an independent variable as the presumed cause, and a dependent variable as the presumed effect
• Surveys can be open or close-ended, statistical significance requires a proper sample size for statistically significant results, and determining causes involves satisfying three criteria: relationship test, sequencing, and non-spuriousness
• Qualitative research focuses on understanding how people interpret social experience, is subjective, and includes methods like participant observation and interviewing (structured, unstructured, semi-structured)
• Culture is the shared symbols and their definitions that people create to solve real-life problems