Sociology 7 And 8

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A form of family organization that emphasizes the marital bond and the nuclear family. These are less stable than consanguineal families owing to their lack of a close kinship network, but they tend to have more autonomy and independence.

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Conjugal Nuclear Family

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A form of family organization that includes the conjugal nuclear family as well as a larger kinship network of grandparents, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, and cousins. These families are more common in traditional societies than in modern and postmodern ones, and they tend to be more stable, remaining intact even after a disruption such as divorce, death, or financial difficulty occurs.

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Consanguineal family

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Binding relationships, often regulated or enforced by law, that specify and negotiate particular behaviors. Marriage is a type of this. For many, it is a contract between a man and a woman that is legally binding and lifelong. In today’s postmodern society, some have suggested that the marriage contract ought to be revised. Rather than requiring a lifelong, all-purpose, legally binding relationship between a man and a woman, they argue, it should be extended to include various types of relationships.

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Contracts

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The process by which something assumed to be normal, universal, and accepted is challenged or modified and thus no longer seems obvious or natural. For example, marriage has long been defined as a relationship between a man and a woman recognized by law (and often religion); however, the contemporary debates surrounding gay marriage have challenged this definition

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Denaturalization

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A form of family organization that combines several generations and a variety of different kinship relations, as when grandparents, aunts, or uncles live together with a traditional nuclear family.

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Extended Family

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A term introduced by William Goode that refers to the traditional understanding of the family as an interdependent group of individuals who work together as a micro-social system.

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Family System

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A term introduced by William Goode that refers to the modern understanding of the family as a self-sustaining group.

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Family Unit

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A set of ideologies that emerged from the women’s movement with the aim of promoting women’s equality and ending sexist practices; and, more broadly, a framework used to observe and interpret how gender and gender inequality are employed and enforced in society.

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Feminism

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An analytical perspective that views society as a system composed of various interdependent parts, such as actors, institutions, and the state. These parts have particular functions to serve within society and are assumed to work together with a tendency toward stability. For example, someone might describe the gendered division of labor as a required role specialization whereby men work outside the home, thus supporting the economy, and women remain at home, bearing responsibility for the socialization of children.

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Functionalism

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The differing ways that work and responsibility are divided up in the family between husband and wife. For a long time, husbands worked outside of the home whereas wives dedicated themselves to domestic tasks at home. With our movement toward an increasingly postmodern experience, however, the gendered division of labor has changed as well.

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Gendered Division of Labor

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The supposed postmodern phenomenon whereby the family is breaking down and its significance is declining. This is a critique of postmodernity often lodged by traditionalists in response to various postmodern trends including the transformation of marriage and changes in the gendered division of labor.

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Loss of Family Values

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The restricted supply of available partners that results when a woman chooses to delay marriage. Because cultural norms suggest that women should not marry younger men, and men have a tendency to marry women several years younger than them, women who choose to marry later may be caught in this.

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Marriage Squeeze

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Institutions that structure socialization and the affectual life. These institutions, such as the family, tend to be personal and private; they relate to our sense of personal security and shape the satisfaction we find in our personal interactions.

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Microinstitutions

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A form of family organization typically consisting of a husband, wife, and the children who are their offspring. Traditionalists would argue that this is the most natural form of family organization and should remain universal.

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Nuclear Family

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An adjective referring to the organization of the family around father-rule; and, more broadly, to the organization of a society or social system around the idea of male dominance, superiority, and power.

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Patriarchal

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The number of times a particular phenomenon takes place in a specific period of time. For example, the divorce ____ might be measured as the number of divorces that take place in one year.

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Rates

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Technological developments, ranging from contraception to artificial insemination, that have allowed sex to be entirely separated from child-bearing.

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Reproductive Technology

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A term that refers to postmodern efforts to denaturalize marriage and redefine the nature of the marriage contract. The movement in favor of gay marriage in the United States is perhaps the clearest example of this

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Transformation of Marriage

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The cultural model shared by many Americans whereby success and failure are believed to be the result of individual qualities and efforts and inequalities are assumed to be based on merit and personal shortcomings.

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American individualistic success model

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: The most rigid form of stratification. In this system, individuals are born into their social position and have few, if any, opportunities for upward or downward mobility. Traditional Indian society, in which the Hindu religion was dominant, is often cited as an example of this

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Caste

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A society whose inhabitants think of themselves more as consumers than as producers. America is often described as this

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Consumer Society

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A social group that occupies a position of prestige and power in society and is dominant as a result.

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Elite

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The manipulation of one person or group by another for the latter’s own benefit and profit. Marx argued that this is inherent to modern capitalism. The wages of workers, he said, are always less than the value of their contribution to the finished product, thereby benefiting the capitalist at the expense of the workers.

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Exploitation

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The opportunities for sharing in material or cultural goods during one’s lifetime. These are affected not only by personal merit and accomplishment but also by race, gender, and socioeconomic status.

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Life chances

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The “one big middle class” that many Americans identify themselves as part of.

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Middle America

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The esteem, honor, or deference assigned to one’s social position.

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Prestige

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The process by which people make the transition from identifying as part of a class or occupational group to thinking of themselves as individuals—specifically, as individual consumers.

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Privatization

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The ability of individuals or groups to change their social position or status, either for better or for worse, within a social hierarchy. Societal myths such as the “American dream” imply that society is open and meritocratic, and that ______ for the better is simply the result of hard work; however, long-standing inequalities suggest that this is not the case.

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Social Mobility

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The hierarchical ranking of people on the basis of social difference—specifically, with regard to their access to desirable resources, their life chances, and their social influence. Various theories of this have proposed different understandings of how these strata are defined and arranged. Marx, for example, maintained that class was the basis of this in modern capitalist society. Weber, on the other hand, distinguished between three different types of strata—class, status, and power. Other theories of this might consider gender or race to be the basis of this

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Social Stratification

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The enduring, orderly, and patterned relationships among elements of society that shape, and at times, regulate social behavior. This influences not only our actions and behavior but also our possibilities for action and behavior. The enduring theoretical debate, of course, is that between social structure and human agency.

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Social Structure

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A segment of society that, unlike other classes that are defined by property ownership or occupation, is composed of people who are underemployed or unemployed and may be dependent upon welfare benefits from the state. It is because of their dependency that members of the underclass are often negatively stigmatized.

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Underclass