sociol 1 - midterm

• Social facts


  • Anything produced collectively by people that exerts a social force on us
  • Patterns of behavior in society. Individuals have little social agency to change social facts
• Social facts


  • Bigger than individuals
  • Constrains individuals
  • They can be passed through generations
• Social agency


  The capacity of individuals to have the power to fulfill their potential
• Social facts are created through interactions with other people and are driven by agency which collectively forms and transforms it
• Features of social facts


  • Produced by humans
  • Powerful influences on individuals
  • Larger than individuals
  • Longer lifespan than most individuals, can change
• Social reproduction


  The process by which a society maintains an enduring characteristic or value from generation to generation
• Social reproduction


  • In education, where sending children to a better school will increase school performance and lead to higher-paying jobs
• Social reproduction refers to the process by which social inequalities, norms, and structures are transmitted and perpetuated from one generation to the next, maintaining the existing social order
• Social institutions such as family, education, and the media play crucial roles in social reproduction by socializing individuals into societal norms, values, and roles that perpetuate existing social structures and inequalities
• Sociological sympathy


  The ability to understand others and show compassion and empathy towards others
• Quantitative research method


  Examining numerical data with mathematics
• Qualitative research method


  Careful consideration and discussion of non-numerical data, which might come from in-person interviews, images, text, or through observation
• Sociological theory of the self


  One's "self" is made up of social interactions and internal feelings of themselves. The "self" is not fixed at birth and changes over time. The 'self" consists of 'me' and 'I'. 'I' is the response of an individual to the attitudes of others, while 'me' is the organized attitudes that the individual assumes
• The self is a reflection of how we are perceived by others
• Our identity is shaped by our interactions with our surrounding societies
• The reflection of ourselves is just as real as our physical selves
• Specific others


  People that have direct influence on our behaviors/identity (family members, friends, colleagues, and others who play specific roles in shaping the individual's self-concept through direct communication and social interaction)
• Generalized others


  Surroundings (this can be nonphysical) that influence our behaviors/identity
• Sociological imagination


  The capacity to consider how the lives of people, including our own, are shaped by social facts that surround us
• To use a sociological imagination is to acknowledge the things beyond our control: where we're born on the globe, when we're born in the span of time, where in the social structure we land, what identities we carry, and more
• Looking at social issues through a broader lens of social structures
• We need to adopt a 'sociological imagination' in order to achieve social change through collective action
• Understanding situations in your life by looking at situations in broader society
• Mills: 'the awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society'
• Taking multiple perspectives of a social phenomenon to get a bigger picture of how it operates
• Mills: 'Contemporary man's self-conscious view of himself as at least an outsider, if not a permanent stranger, rests upon an absorbed realization of social relativity and of the transformative power of history'
• Human nature


  Not fixed, but rather shaped by social and historical circumstances
• Sociologists are skeptical of 'human nature'
• Sociologists don't care to get to the bottom of human nature, sociology begins when human nature is not an explanation, universal human nature is not an explanation for much of aspects, explain things not of human nature
• We need perspective that can cope with world war, genocide, violence
• Sociological questions


  • What is the whole social structure of our society, how does it work, what makes it different from other forms of social organization?
  • What is the significance of this society in history? What's causing change?
  • What are people like in this place and time? Why?
• Inverted Quarantine


  The act of isolating oneself from society to protect themselves from society
• Inverted Quarantine


  • Enrolling in private schools if public schools are not being adequately funded; drinking bottled water if the tap water is not being regulated
• The issue with Inverted Quarantine is that individual behavior doesn't address structural causes of collective problems and, as a result, reproduces existing social problems
• Inverted Quarantine


  Connects to Mill's concept of sociological imagination because it contributes to the idea that individual action can not achieve social change
• Institutions change through collective action, and therefore we must have a sociological imagination (a collective perspective; considering the perspectives of many) to find a collective solution and solve the problem at its root instead of resorting to inverted quarantine
• Inverted quarantine exists because of a lack of social imagination
• Inverted Quarantine


  Connects to environmental activism because opting out of the social problem (e.g. buying organic foods) but not willing to address the environmental issue at its root
• Inverted Quarantine


  Connects to consumer politics because consumer choices cannot change underlying problems, as they always have an institutional cause (institutions are usually not changed, which continues the problem)
• Socialization


  The process by which we learn the rules and values of our society. It happens through family, friends, school, and other influences, teaching us how to behave and fit in. It helps shape our identity and how we see ourselves in the world. It's a lifelong process of learning and adapting to our culture's norms and expectations