What is a total institution?
Answer: A place where people are isolated and controlled in all aspects of life, such as prisons or boot camps (Goffman).
Explanation
Resocialization often occurs there.
Explore · Flashcard deck
Sociology: Introduction and Key Theories (University)
SocializationResearchStratificationDevianceGroupsInteractionFoundationsCultureTheory
Shared from Quizcard. Flip through the cards below, or copy the deck to edit and study it in your own account — free.
Space flips · arrows move · Esc exits
Socialization
What are Mead's 'I' and 'me'?
Answer: The 'I' is the spontaneous, acting self; the 'me' is the socialized self that takes the role of others.
Explanation
The generalized other is society's expectations internalized.
What is the looking-glass self?
Answer: Cooley's idea that we form our self-concept by imagining how others see us.
Explanation
Three steps: imagine appearance, imagine judgment, develop feeling.
What is socialization?
Answer: The lifelong process of learning the norms, values, and behaviors of one's society.
Explanation
Agents: family, school, peers, media, religion, workplace.
Research
What is the Hawthorne effect?
Answer: People change their behavior because they know they are being observed.
Explanation
Named after studies at the Hawthorne Works.
Quantitative vs qualitative research?
Answer: Quantitative uses numerical data and statistics (surveys); qualitative uses in-depth, non-numerical data (interviews, ethnography).
Explanation
Mixed methods combine both.
Stratification
What is intersectionality?
Answer: How overlapping identities (race, class, gender) combine to shape experiences of privilege and oppression.
Explanation
Term by Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Ascribed vs achieved status?
Answer: Ascribed status is assigned at birth (race, sex, caste); achieved status is earned (occupation, education).
Explanation
A master status dominates others.
What is social mobility?
Answer: Movement between social positions; can be upward, downward, intergenerational, or intragenerational.
Explanation
Structural mobility comes from changes in the economy.
Deviance
What is differential association?
Answer: People learn deviance from close associates who favor it (Sutherland).
Explanation
Deviance as learned behavior.
What is Merton's strain theory?
Answer: Deviance results when people cannot reach cultural goals through legitimate means; responses include conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, rebellion.
Explanation
Innovation: accept goals, reject means (crime for money).
What is labeling theory?
Answer: Deviance is created by society's reaction; being labeled 'deviant' can lead to secondary deviance and a deviant identity.
Explanation
Becker; self-fulfilling prophecy.
What is deviance?
Answer: Behavior that violates social norms and provokes a negative reaction.
Explanation
Relative to time, place, and culture.
Groups
What did Milgram and Asch demonstrate?
Answer: Milgram: obedience to authority. Asch: conformity to group pressure even against clear evidence.
Explanation
Both show the power of the situation.
What is groupthink?
Answer: Pressure for consensus that suppresses dissent and leads to poor decisions.
Explanation
Janis studied the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Primary vs secondary groups?
Answer: Primary groups are small, intimate, and enduring (family, close friends); secondary groups are larger and goal-oriented (coworkers).
Explanation
Cooley's distinction.
Interaction
What is a role conflict vs role strain?
Answer: Role conflict is tension between different roles; role strain is tension within a single role.
Explanation
Worker vs parent (conflict); teacher who must grade and support (strain).
What is dramaturgy?
Answer: Goffman's view of social life as theater, with front stage (public performance) and back stage (private) behavior.
Explanation
Impression management.
Foundations
What is the sociological imagination?
Answer: C. Wright Mills's idea of seeing the connection between personal troubles and public issues, between biography and history.
Explanation
Unemployment as a social pattern, not just personal failure.
Who is considered the founder of sociology?
Answer: Auguste Comte, who coined the term and promoted positivism, studying society scientifically.
Explanation
Other founders: Durkheim, Marx, Weber.
Culture
What is a subculture and a counterculture?
Answer: A subculture shares the larger culture but has distinct values; a counterculture actively opposes dominant values.
Explanation
Skateboarders vs 1960s hippies.
Ethnocentrism vs cultural relativism?
Answer: Ethnocentrism judges other cultures by one's own standards; cultural relativism understands them on their own terms.
Explanation
Relativism is a method, not necessarily moral approval.
Norms, folkways, mores, and laws?
Answer: Norms are expected behaviors; folkways are everyday customs; mores are morally significant norms; laws are formally codified.
Explanation
Violating mores brings stronger sanctions than folkways.
What is culture?
Answer: The shared beliefs, values, norms, symbols, and material objects of a group.
Explanation
Material and non-material culture.
Theory
What is Marx's concept of class conflict?
Answer: History is driven by struggle between the bourgeoisie (owners of production) and the proletariat (workers).
Explanation
False consciousness keeps workers from seeing their exploitation.
What are Weber's three dimensions of stratification?
Answer: Class (economic), status (prestige), and party (power).
Explanation
Weber also studied bureaucracy and the Protestant ethic.
What did Durkheim mean by anomie?
Answer: A state of normlessness when social norms break down, as during rapid change.
Explanation
Linked to higher suicide rates in his study.
What is symbolic interactionism?
Answer: A micro-level perspective focusing on how people create meaning through everyday interaction and symbols.
Explanation
Mead and Blumer; the looking-glass self (Cooley).
What is conflict theory?
Answer: A perspective that sees society as groups competing for scarce resources, with inequality maintained by the powerful.
Explanation
Rooted in Marx; extended to race, gender, and class.
What is functionalism?
Answer: A perspective that sees society as a system of interrelated parts that work together to maintain stability.
Explanation
Durkheim; manifest vs latent functions (Merton).
Make your own deck like this
Upload a PDF, Word doc, or slides and Quizcard writes the cards for you, or build them by hand. Free to start, no credit card required.