Sociology Midterm 1

Front 1

Beliefs

Back 1

Systems of symbols organized into cognitions about what should and does occur in specific type of social situations.

Front 2

Cultural Conflict

Back 2

Differences in cultural values and beliefs that place people at odds with one another, and hence, in potential conflict.

Front 3

Cultural Contradiction

Back 3

Inconsistencies in the various systems of symbols making up the culture of a society.

Front 4

Culture

Back 4

Those systems of symbols that humans create and use to guide behavior, interaction, and patterns of social organization.

Front 5

Material Culture

Back 5

Term used by some analysts to denote the artifacts and objects created by humans.

Front 6

Empirical Beliefs

Back 6

Cognitions that people hold about what actually occurs in situations.

Front 7

Ethnocentricism

Back 7

Tendency to view one's own culture or subculture as superior to the culture of other people or societies.

Front 8

Ideology

Back 8

Evaluate beliefs that say what should occur in situations.

Front 9

Institutional Norms

Back 9

Systems of symbols organized into very general expectations about beahvior in basic types of situations in a society.

Front 10

Language

Back 10

Systems of symbols used in communication

Front 11

Norms

Back 11

systems of symbols informing individuals about how they are expected to bheave and interact in a situation.

Front 12

Postmodernists

Back 12

General school of thinking, some of whose practitioners emphasize the effects of media and global capitalism in commodifying symbols systems.

Front 13

Stocks of Knowledge

Back 13

Implicit stores of information that individuals use to guide their behavior and interactions.

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Subculture

Back 14

Subpopulation of individuals in a society that posseses at lease some symbols that are unique to this subpopulation and, at times, at odds with the broader culture of a society.

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Technology

Back 15

Systems of symbols organized into knowledge about how to manipulate the environment.

Front 16

Values

Back 16

Systems of symbols organized into abstract moral ideas about goodbad, appropriate-inappropriate, and right-wrong. Values cut across diverse situations because they are general and abstract.

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Community

Back 17

Social structures organizing residence and activities of people phsyical space.

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Focused Encounters

Back 18

Episodes of face-to-face interaction revolving around an ecological huddle, eye-to-eye contact, focused talk, and solidarity.

Front 19

Unfocused Encounters

Back 19

Episodes of mutual monitoring of people's movements without focusing attention on each other.

Front 20

Group

Back 20

Small social structures composed of only a few different status positions, small numbers of incumbents, relatively dense ties among positions, and clear cultural expectations about role behaviors.

Front 21

Institutions

Back 21

Society-wide structure that organize groups, organizations, social categories, and communities to resolve problems.

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Inter-societal Systems

Back 22

Processes that create relations among societies, including trade, migrations, and political or economic coalitions.

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Networks (of Status Positions)

Back 23

Ties and connections that link status positions together, thereby forming a social structure.

Front 24

Organizations

Back 24

Goal-directed social structures revealing a division of albor and hiearchies of positions linked together by authority and clear norms.

Front 25

Role

Back 25

The behavior of individuals in status positions, as they take account of each other, norms, and other cultural symbols.

Front 26

Role-Conflict

Back 26

A situatoin where the roles associated with different status positions are incompatible, placing the individual tyring to play the roles of these different positions in a situation of conflict.

Front 27

Role-Set

Back 27

The expected array of behaviors for a given status position.

Front 28

Role-Strain

Back 28

A situatoin where there are either too many or contradictory expectations in the role-set of a status position, thereby creating tension and strain for individuals tyring to meet all expectations.

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Categoric Units, Social Categories

Back 29

Structures that are created when cohorts and types of individuals are defined and treated differently on the basis of their perceived attributes and characteristics.

Front 30

Society

Back 30

Structures encompassing all other structures (groups, organizations, institutions, categories, and stratification) that organize a population and provide political regualtion for these structures in geographical space and in relation to other societies.

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Status Position

Back 31

The location of an individual within a network of positions; the basic element of all social structures.

Front 32

Status-Set

Back 32

The complex or array of positions that an individual person occupies.

Front 33

Stratification System

Back 33

Structures revolving around (a) the enequal distribution of valued resources to the members of a society and (b) the distinctive categories therby created by virtue of the shares of resources held by different subpopulations in a society.

Front 34

Backstage

Back 34

Places where the self-conscious manipulation of gestures can be relaxed.

Front 35

Ethnomethods

Back 35

Concept introduced by Harold Garfinkel to denote the implicit interpersonal signals emitted to create the presumption that people in interaction share a common view of reality.

Front 36

Encounter

Back 36

Episodes of face-to-face interaction in which individuals present fronts and play roles.

Front 37

Front

Back 37

Erving Goffman's term to denote the use of gestures to present oneself in a particular way and in an identifiable mode of action.

Front 38

Frontstage

Back 38

Erving Goffman's term to denoting situations where individuals con-others, especially with respect to one's self on self.

Front 39

Impression-Management

Back 39

Erving Goffman's term to denote the deliberate manipulation of gestures and physical props to project a particular image of oneself to others.

Front 40

Interaction

Back 40

Process of individuals mutually emitting gestures, interpreting these gestures, and adjusting their respective courses of action.

Front 41

Mind

Back 41

George Herbert Mead's term to designate the process by which individuals covertly rehearse alternative lines of conduct, anticipate or imagine the consequences of each of these potential lines of behavior, and select that line of beahvior most likely to faciliate cooperation.

Front 42

Reference Group

Back 42

Perspectives of groups, both those in wich one is participating and those that are remote, which are used as a frame of reference fro self-evaluation and for guiding conduct.

Front 43

Role-Take

Back 43

Concept introduced by George Herbert Mead to denote the capacity to read the gestures of otheres and, thereby, to sense what they are likely to do in terms of their dispositions to act and the cultural symbols relevant to a situation.

Front 44

Self/Self-Conception

Back 44

Capacity to see oneself as an object in a situation and to carry cognitions, feelings, and evaluations of oneself as a certain type of person who is deserving of particular responses.

Front 45

Cultural Directives

Back 45

Profile of values, beliefs, norms, and other symbol systems that individuals use in guiding their behaviors and interactions.

Front 46

Emotions

Back 46

Moods or states of individuals revolving around, and involving elaborations of, such primary states as anger, fear, sadness, happiness, and surprise.

Front 47

Generativity vs. Self-Absorption or Stagnation

Back 47

Seventh stage in Erik Erikson's developmental scheme, lasting through mature adulthood, and during which success in family, work, and community lead to a feeling of being able to give to others, or if not, to self-absorption and stagnation in life.

Front 48

Identity

Back 48

Conception that people have of themselves in a particular social context and role.

Front 49

Motives/Motivation

Back 49

An individual's level of energy, and nature of energy, devoted to occupying positions and playing roles in society.

Front 50

Role-Playing Skills

Back 50

An individual's ability and capacity for role-taking and role-making in interactions with others.

Front 51

Self-Conception

Back 51

An individual's view of himself or herself as a cetain type of person with particular attributes and, hence, deserving of certain kinds of responses from others.

Front 52

Socialization

Back 52

Those interactions instilling in individuals the basic components of personality that are necessary for their participation in society.

Front 53

Control Theory

Back 53

Utilitarian theory of deviance, stressing that calculations of cost and investments determine whether or not people will deviate.

Front 54

Deviance

Back 54

Behavior that violates accepted norms.

Front 55

Differential Association Theory

Back 55

Theory aruging that deviance is created when there is an excess of criminal to noncriminal defintions of appropriate behavior in a person's biography.

Front 56

Labeling Theory

Back 56

The view that the labels bestowed on individuals become self-fulfilling prophecies that create expectations for deviance which, in turn, lead to deviance and deviant careers.

Front 57

Structural Strain

Back 57

Robert Merton's "anonmie theory" between goals and mens to achieve these goals.

Front 58

Categorization

Back 58

Process of placing others in the appropriate categoric unit; of determing the appropriate level of intimacy or formality to be exhibited; and of dtermining the realtive amounts of social, work-practical, or ceremonial content in the encounter

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Demography

Back 59

Number of people present, the social categories to which they belong, and their movements in and out of an encounter.

Front 60

Display Rules

Back 60

Normative agreements about what emotions are to be displayed in a situation.

Front 61

Ecology

Back 61

Nature of the space, partitions I space, props in space, and the distrubution of people in a space during the course of interaction in an encounter.

Front 62

Emotion Work

Back 62

Efforts to display the appropriate emotions in a situation, even when these emotions are not felt.

Front 63

Feeling Rules

Back 63

Normative agreements about what emotions should be, and are to be, felt in a situation.

Front 64

Frames

Back 64

Boundaries that are invoked by gestures singaling to tohers what is to be includied and exluded form the interaction.

Front 65

Keying/Re-keying

Back 65

Interpersonal gestures, often ritualized, that establish a frmae and that change the frame guiding an interaction.

Front 66

Rituals

Back 66

Stereotyped sequences of behavior that open, close, and structure the flow of interpersonal behavior.

Front 67

Roles

Back 67

Behavior of individuals occupying positions as well as the sytle of behavior that they exhibit.

Front 68

Self

Back 68

General conception and role identity about oneself that a person seeks to confirm in an interaction.

Front 69

Territories of Self

Back 69

Space that people can claim around themselves in pulbic settings and that others are not to violate.

Front 70

Forms of Talk

Back 70

Use of the right form of speech in an encounter, with respect to the volume, tone, formality or informality, ritual address, and other aspects of talk that give it its form.

Front 71

Cliques

Back 71

Division of group members into two or more subgroups of dense ties.

Front 72

Diffuse Status Characteristics

Back 72

Membership in a categoric unit that generates evaluations and expectations for how those in a social category are to behave. These expectations are carriend into any group as diffse status characteristics.

Front 73

Free Riding

Back 73

Tendency of group members to avoid making their fair contribution to group goals wihile still receiving benefits of this activity from other group members.

Front 74

Group

Back 74

Small social structures composed of only a few different status positions, small numbers of incumbents, relatively dense ties among positions, and clear cultural expectations about role behaviors.

Front 75

Groupthink

Back 75

Process in a group decision making in which members reinforce each other to the pint that the decision does not bear a close relationship to the realities of the situation.

Front 76

Primary Group

Back 76

Small, face-to-face groups in which people feel more involved, more intimate, and cohesive.

Front 77

Reference Group

Back 77

Perspectives of groups, both those in wich one is participating and those that are remote, which are used as a frame of reference fro self-evaluation and for guiding conduct.

Front 78

Secondary Groups

Back 78

Larger groups where face-to-face interaction among all members ins not possible, with a corresponding decrease in intimacy, cohesiveness, and duration.

Front 79

Socio-Emotional Leader

Back 79

Individual who seeks to smooth out tensions that arise as the members of the group seek to realize the group's goals.

Front 80

Task Leader

Back 80

Individual in groups who directs and coordinates other members' activities to accomplish the group's goals.

Front 81

Coercive Organizations

Back 81

Those bureaucratic structures in which members are forced to remain isolated from the society.

Front 82

Formal Organization/Bureaucracy

Back 82

goal-directed social structures revealing hiearchies of positions, linked together by authority and clear norms, with increasing numbers of incumbents at the lower levels of the hiearchy.

Front 83

Informal System

Back 83

System of ties that people develop within the formal structure of an organization; such ties often supplant but always supplement formal lines authority.

Front 84

Niche Density

Back 84

In organizational ecology, the total number of organizations of a given type seeking the same or similar resources.

Front 85

Utilitarian Ogranizations

Back 85

Those bureaucratic structures that people enter on the basis of calculations of costs and benefits.

Front 86

Voluntary Organizations

Back 86

Those bureaucratic structures in which people freely enter or leave the organization.