Study Guide Exam 1 - Professor Davita Glasberg PDF

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Professor Davita Glasberg...

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Short Essays 1. Personal troubles/public issues, role conflict/role strain, ascribed status/achieved status, manifest functions/latent functions of institutions, core/peripheral nations in the world system, primary/secondary groups, statuses/roles, norms/values, folkways/mores/laws ●

PERSONAL TROUBLES VS. PUBLIC ISSUES ○ Personal troubles: affect relatively few people, can be controlled by the victim to some extent ■ Getting fired from your job ○ Public issues: affect many, are widespread and hard to control ■ Unemployment causing layoffs

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ROLE CONFLICT VS. ROLE STRAIN ○ Role strain: tension within one role ■ A store manager struggling between being a disciplinarian and being friendly with employees ○ Role conflict: tension between two or more roles ■ A student athlete must fulfill the requirements of being an athlete while also maintaining a good academic standing

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ASCRIBED STATUS VS. ACHIEVED STATUS ○ Ascribed status: one has little control over this, isn’t earned but is rather given or assigned ■ Sex of a child ○ Achieved status: one that is earned (whether for the better or worse), one has more control over this, can also be based on life chances/opportunities that are available to you ■ Promotion at a job, paralysis after a car crash

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MANIFEST FUNCTIONS VS. LATENT FUNCTIONS ○ Manifest functions: the goals/functional imperatives that a certain institution is established to address ■ A school fulfills the requirement of education ○ Latent functions: “side effects” or unforeseen consequences that the institution simultaneously produces ■ Colleges and high schools become mating grounds

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CORE VS. PERIPHERAL NATIONS (GLOBAL NORTH/GLOBAL SOUTH) ○ Core/Global North: have generally always been in power, high wages, high standard of living, rely more on modern technology than on human labor, labor is relatively skilled ■ U.S., Germany, Japan ○ Peripheral/Global South: produce using high levels of unskilled human labor, low wages, lower standard of living and higher presence of poverty; are less powerful economically, politically, and militarily

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Bangladesh, Ethiopia

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PRIMARY VS. SECONDARY GROUPS ○ Primary: smaller groups that see each other on a routine basis and develop close relationships; interaction is continuous and face-to-face; strong emotional and personal ties exist; the group will likely be enduring; fill emotional needs ■ Family, close friends ○ Secondary: larger groups organized to fulfill instrumental needs; interaction is less constant and personal; not much emotion is involved; existence is relatively fleeting ■ Work peers, classmates

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STATUSES VS. ROLES ○ Status: the positions people fill in the social structure that determine where they fit in society ■ Mother, father, worker, daughter, man, women, white, black, old, young, athlete, veteran, girlfriend ○ Roles: expectations, obligations, privileges, and behaviors that are expected of somebody who fills a certain position; the duties one must carry out that are attached to your status ■ A mother/father must care for their children, a soldier must defend his/her country, a spouse must support their partner, an athlete must perform, etc.

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NORMS VS. VALUES ○ Values: assumptions and judgments about the goods, goals, or states of existence that are deemed important, desirable, and worth striving for ■ Respect, justice, honesty, freedom ○ Norms: developed to support/uphold these values; the standards that define the obligatory and expected behaviors of people in various situations ■ Raising your hand in class, telling the truth, maintaining personal space

● FOLKWAYS VS. MORES VS. LAWS ○ Folkways: should and should nots; the least important social codes that one should follow; may cause embarrassment but no serious consequences ■ Dressing in unconventional ways, violating social etiquette ○ Mores: more seriously regarded than folkways; must and must not occur; concern more ethical behavior ■ Plagiarism on school papers, sex before marriage in some religions/cultures, acts of racism or sexism ○ Laws: the most serious of the three, laws are mores that are deemed so important that legal, official sanctions are created and even visitors must comply; punishments are severe; laws protect the values/interests of dominant culture ■ Murder, stealing, violence, abuse, sexual assault 2. Pros/cons of identifying oneself/your purpose to participants when conducting research and using the method of participant observation

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PROS ○ Scientist may better understand matters from the position and perspective of those he/she is studying ○ Fully address the participants’ rights to privacy - they can provide informed consent ○ Scientists may observe behavior as it occurs ○ May observe “deviant behavior” because the participation of these individuals in surveys/studies would be unlikely

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CONS ○ ○ ○ ○

May introduce bias or skew participants’ behavior Personal limitations or prejudices may affect the scientist’s observations Time commitments Practical ways to record data discreetly

3. Diagram a simplified role set of a student teacher, a student athlete, a residential assistant in the dorms, a teaching assistant for this class, or a supervisor on a factory floor. Identify at least 4 roles relative to that of the main role in this example, and identify the specific norms associated with each role relation. Residential Assistant: ROLES & THEIR NORMS: ● Act as a disciplinary figure/figure of authority - “PARENT” ○ Regulate noise in the halls ○ Report illegal activity - smoking, drinking, vandalism ○ Reprimand or report violators ● Act as a mentor for students - MENTOR ○ Provide academic advice and motivation ○ Offer tips on getting involved in clubs and activities ● Providing emotional support - FRIEND ○ Always having an open door - being present whenever possible ○ Showing real interest and commitment to the lives of students on their floor ○ Talking to, consoling, and advising students ● Strengthening the bond between members on the floor - ORGANIZER ○ Organizing meetings, events, and dinners for the floor ● Maintaining their own academic excellence - STUDENT ○ Making time for independent study ○ Devoting time to classes and schoolwork ● Maintaining their own happiness - DAUGHTER, FRIEND, GIRLFRIEND, ETC. ○ Keeping a consistent social life ○ Strengthening bonds with friends ○ Spending time with family

4. Compare and contrast 3 functions of language - role of politically correct speech ●

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DESCRIBING THE WORLD ○ Categorization of events - wars, natural disasters, celebrations, etc. ■ Groups together events in order to connect them through a common thread provides a word which creates an association to a concept, which can then be more easily understood and communicated CONSTRUCTING REALITY ○ Language contains hidden assumptions about the world around us ■ Gender abilities, worth & value - symbolic annihilation ○ People’s understanding of the world around them can be limited by the language that they know - more extensive vocabulary allows the speaker to grasp deeper concepts and conceptualize abstract phenomena ■ Reinforces stereotypes/discrimination ■ Black for evil and white for purity - comparisons to race relations VEHICLE FOR CHANGE ○ Allows less powerful people to introduce change into a culture ■ Generating new concepts, using common words in new ways POLITICALLY CORRECT SPEECH ○ Breaking down stereotypes or negative conceptions of people by eradicating derogatory terms ■ “Nigger” for African Americans, “retard” for mentally disabled person ○ Is a forceful expression of challenge and resistance to social views

5. Social structures, from most macro to most micro ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

WORLD-SYSTEMS - most complete structure because it encompasses entire nations and links them together; encompasses all of the other layers of social structure below it SOCIETIES INSTITUTIONS NETWORKS GROUPS ROLES STATUSES

6. Ascribed status vs. achieved status SELF ● ASCRIBED STATUS ○ Female ○ Daughter ○ Sister ○ Neice

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○ Granddaughter ○ Catholic ○ Italian ○ Teenaged ACHIEVED STATUS ○ Student ○ Employee ○ Friend ○ Girlfriend ○ Dancer ○ Writer

MY MASTER STATUS - I would pick my age; adults are wary of millennials these days, and being 18 years old in the height of smartphones and social media and technology often gives others the preconceived notion that teenagers of my generation are all careless, lazy, entitled, and underprepared to conquer the world around them. My age on paper doesn’t usually make one think of an educated student, a thoughtful writer, a loving family member, etc. Age, in my case, defies the concept of selflessness and responsibility in general terms. 7. Compare and contrast bureaucratic and democratic groups - which one is my family? ●

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BUREAUCRACY ○ Clear cut division of labor ○ Hierarchy or authority ○ All activities are governed by a strict set of rules ○ No favoritism or bias ○ Recognition, rewards, and status are based on performance DEMOCRACY ○ Power is shared within the membership as a whole - decision making involves discussion, negotiation, and consensus ○ Rules are minimal - members are assumed to be capable of using direction and common sense ○ Sense of community - feel free to develop close relationships ○ Minimal division of labor ○ Material rewards come secondary; rewards are shared amongst the group and there is no hierarchy of authority

Although this defies the definition of a conventional, traditional family, mine is certainly more of a democracy. While a hierarchy does exist to a certain extent - at the end of the day, my parents call the shots - most rules (beyond serious ones that concern our safety) are malleable and up for discussion. For example, my tentative curfew on school nights was always 11 o’clock, but if something special was going on or I had been doing really well in school and working hard, I could easily get that extended. Decisions are also usually discussed - where we go on vacation, what we eat for dinner, what we do on the weekends, etc. is always discussed and decided upon in a general consensus. There is certainly a

community feel; my parents are also my friends, and I feel comfortable talking to them about personal matters and have a desire to spend time with them. Division of labor exists but isn’t set in stone - while somebody has to do the dishes, clean, fold clothes, etc., no chores are assigned to a specific person and whoever does them changes depending on the availability of everyone in my family from week to week. Rewards do exist, but they’re usually shared and no favoritism or shaming usually occurs. For example, whenever our report cards came out, my parents would take us all out to our favorite Hibachi restaurant. Although my sister’s grades may have been better than my brother’s, let’s say, they still both received the same praise, treatment, and reward.

Chapters 1-5

Chapter 1: Sociology - the scientific study of society, of the ways in which society is organized and operates, and of the factors contributing to both societal stability and social change Life chances - one’s ability to experience life and all its beneficial offerings

Personal troubles - matters involving a person’s character and his or her relations with others over which the individual has some control, and commonly affect relatively few people Public troubles - have to do with matters that transcend local environments of the individual Sociological imagination - refers to a way of thinking that enables individuals to understand how they are affected by broad features of the society in which they live Homogenization of news - a process that produces a single perspective and a single analysis of highly complex stories regardless of the variety of media sources we consult Core concepts - fundamental ideas that are helpful in analyzing features of U.S. society as well as those of other societies Functionalist perspective - asserts that human society is a naturally stable, harmonious social system Social facts - social and cultural features of a society, existing independently of the individuals who make it up, which influence people’s behavior Conflict perspective - represents an intellectual tradition within sociology whose roots go back to lateeighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe and the changes underway at that time - emphasizes social splits and divisions that often characterize human society Capitalism - an economic system in which the means of production were owned by relatively False consciousness - when people do not understand that a larger institution, like capitalism, is creating their poverty and misery Class consciousness - when people understand that larger institutions, like capitalism, are their problem and that their poverty and poor working conditions can only be ended with socialism Socialism - worker ownership of and control over the society’s means of productions Social stratification - bases on which different positions and the people in them are ranked or “stratified” from high to low in terms of wealth and income, prestige, or power. Human agency - used to the refer to the ability of humans to react to and change the social conditions surrounding them Social determinism - used to stress the importance of society’s features as determinants of what happens to individuals Symbolic interactionism - an intellectual tradition that’s highly critical of functionalist and conflict perspectives, arguing that they emphasize the significance of external social forces, such as cultural

values or systems of inequality, in determining individuals’ behavior

Chapter 2: Research methods - procedures designed to establish facts about the social world Hypothesis - a carefully formulated statement that may be either verified or discarded on the basis of the examination of relevant data Variables - attitudes, behaviors, or conditions that can vary Independent variable - one that affects another variable Dependent variable - the one in which change is caused Open-ended research questions - no particular questions are necessarily assumed or anticipated to be tested Experimental research - conducted to find out how a particular organism or object is affected by different types of treatment selected by the researcher Experimental group - the one to which the researcher will give special treatment in order to determine its effect Control group - is not subjected to the same special treatment Bias - refers to unwanted influences that can produce research results that are invalid or without foundation Sample - consists of a set of subjects that is representative of of the total population of subjects Random - every individual in the total population has an equal chance of being selected Passive observation - simply watching, listening, and recording events for later analysis and interpretation Participant observation - playing an active role even to the point of becoming an actual participant in the activities of those being observed Survey - a set of questions administered to a sample of people Tracking - most United States high schools implement a form of formal or informal tracking; involves

dividing course offerings into academic (college-bound) and one or more vocational (employment-bound) curricular programs or “tracks”. Gatekeepers - example: high schools; acting as an institution that opens up different doors of opportunity for different populations Historical research - concerned with establishing facts about the past Primary sources - original records and diaries, official documents, eyewitness accounts, etc.; firsthand recollections of information Secondary sources - historical data described in the publications of scholars; secondhand recounts or descriptions of previously documented information Secondary data analysis - when data that has already been gathered by a previous team of sociologists is analyzed by sociologists engaging in their own research

Chapter 3: Social systems - ongoing ways that groups of people organize themselves and relate to one another in order to survive Social structure - the means of organizing recurring patterns of relationships within a social system Macro-level social structures - large-scale mechanisms that organize and distribute individuals in an entire society, as opposed to small-scale, or interpersonal structures World-system - the most complete macro-level structure, as it encompasses all the other levels of social structure below it on the continuum of social structures Global division of labor - the work required to produce goods and services is broken into separate tasks, each performed largely by different groups of countries or groups within countries Core nations - production is based on technology that relies more on the most modern machinery than on human labor and in which human labor is relatively skilled and highly paid (United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Germany) Peripheral nations - production here is based on technology that relies more on cheap human labor than on expensive machinery and state-of-the-art technology, except in cases where such technology is imported from the core nations (Bangladesh, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Nicaragua, Zaire, Lesotho) Semiperipheral nations - countries in which production is based on a mixture of intermediate levels of machinery, modern technology, and human labor and in which human labor is semi skilled and paid

intermediate levels of wages (India, Mexico, Egypt, Kuwait, South Africa) Division of labor - an arrangement of work in which tasks are broken into steps or jobs performed by different individuals or nations Global north nations - industrialized and post-industrialized nations that are and have historically been relatively powerful economically, politically, and militarily, and thus able to assert their interests over and above those of less advantaged and powerful nations Global south nations - semi-industrialized or largely agrarian nations that are relatively less powerful economically, politically, and militarily than the global north nations Life chances - quality of life and likelihood of survival Death rates - the number of deaths in a given year per 1,000 people in the population Birth rates - the number of births in a given year per 1,000 people in the population Infant mortality rate - the number of children who die per 1,000 live births per year Society - an organization of people who share a common territory, govern themselves, and cooperate to secure the survival of the group Nations - political entities with clearly defined geographical boundaries usually recognized by neighboring nations Functionalist perspective - societies are viewed as adaptive social structures that help human beings adjust to their physical, political, economic, and social environment Conflict perspective - challenges the assumption in the functionalist analysis that all of society benefits from the way it is structured and from the ways it adapts to challenges Functional imperatives - the same fundamental social needs that every society must fully address (LIST THE 6) Institutions - the social structures that all known societies possess to fulfill these fundamental social needs Manifest functions - the functional imperatives that an institution is meant to address Latent functions - unintended or often unrecognized outcomes or consequences that institutions produce Family - the institution whose manifest function is to contribute new members to society

Religion - manifestly motivates members to comply with their responsibilities and obligations by assigning meaning and purpose to such activities Economy - includes corporations, organized markets, the banking community, international trade associations, labor unions, and consumer organizations; primary purpose is to produce and distribute goods and services through...