Sociology is the systematic study of human society.

Define Culture shock

Culture shock is personal disorientation when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life.

ex; people experience such disorientation when they immigrate to or visit a new country, or to a lesser extent, when they move b/n social enviroments within their own country.

Define symbols

Anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share a culture.

ie; a whistle, a wall of graffiti, a flashing red light, and a fist raised in the air will all serve as symbols.

Define language

The key to the world of culture, is a system of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another.

What is values?

Values are culturally defined standards that people use to decide what is desirable, good, and beautiful, and that serve as broad guidelines for social living.Values are standards that people who share a culture use to make choices about how to live.

What is cultural norms?

Cultural norms is rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of it members. Some norms are proscriptive, stating what we should not do as when health officials warn us to avoid casual sex. Prescriptive norms on the other hand, state what we should do, as when our schools teach us safe sex practices.

Define mores

Mores to refer to norms that are widely observed and have great moral significance. Mores or taboos, include our society's insistence that adults not engage in sexual relations with children.

Define folkways

Folkways are norms for routine or casual interaction. Examples include ideas about appropriate greetings and proper dress. In short, mores distinguish b/n right and wrong, and folkways draw a line b/n right and rude.

Define social control

Social control is defined as attempts by society to regulate people's thoughts and behavior.

Define subculture

Subculture refers to cultural patterns that are set apart some segment of society's population.

ie; Teenagers, First Nations on Reserves, homeless people, race-car drivers, jazz musicians, hockey fans, the police, and even sociologists all display subculture patterns.

 Define eurocentrism

Eurocentrism is defined as the dominance of European cultural patterns.

 Define Cultural Relativism

The practice of judging a culture by its own standards.

Define anomie

Anomie is described as a condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals.

Define Self

Self is defined as the part of and individual's personality composed of self-awareness and self-image.

Social interactions

Social interactions is defined as the process by which people act and react in relation to others.

Define looking-glass self

The looking glass self is defined as to mean a self-image based on how we think others see us.

Define ascribed Status

Defined as a social position that someone recieves at birth or assumes involuntarily later in life.

ie; Being a daughter, and Aboriginal person, a teenager, or a widower. Ascribed statuses are matters about which people have little or no choice.

Define role conflict

defined as a conflict among the roles connected to a single status. A college professor may enjoy being friendly with students; at the same time, however, the professor must maintain the personal distance needed in order to evaluate students fairly.

Define role

behavior expected by someone who holds a particular status. A person holds a status and performs a role.

ie; holding the status of student leads you to perform the role of attending classes and completing assignments.

Define role set

is to identify a number of roles attached to a single status.

Define role strain

Refers to a tension among the roles connected to a single status.

ie; A college professor may enjoy being friendly with students; at the same time, however, the professor must maintain the personal distance needed in order to evaluate students fairly. In short, performing the various roles attaced to even one status can be something of a balancing act.

Define deviance

The recognized violation of cultural norms.

Define social control

 Attempts by society to regulate people's thoughts and behaviour. Often this process is informal, as when parents praise or scold their children, ow when friends makes fun of a classmates unusual choice of music. 

Labelling theory

the idea that deviance and conformity result not so much from what people do as from how others, respond to those actions.

Labelling theory stresses the relativity of deviance, the idea that people may define the smae behaviour in any number of ways. Consider these situations of a university student takes an article of clothing from a roommate's drawer, a married woman at a convention has sex with a former boyfriend, a mayor gives a big city contract to a major campaign contributor. The consequences in eah cas depends on detection and labelling as deviant as ciminal.

Define white collar crime

Crimes commited by person of high social position in the course of their occupation.

White collar crimes rarley involve uniformed police converging on a scene with drawn guns; thus it does not reer to such crimes as murder, assult, sexual assult (rape) that happen to be carried out by people of high social position. Instead, white collar crimes are acts by powerful people making use of their gally, often causing significant public harm in the process. Crime in government offices and corporate boardrooms is crime in the suites not in the streets.

Define social stratification

A system by which a society ranks categories of people in a heirarchy, is based on four basic principles.

1. Socical stratification is a trait of society, not simply a reflection of individual differences. Many of us think of social standing in terms of personal talent and effort and, as a result, we often exaggerate the extent to which we control our own fate. Did a higher percentage of the first-class passengers on the Titanic survive because they were better swimmers than second- and third-class passengers? No! they did better because of their priveledged position on the ship, which gave them first access to the lifeboats.

2. Social stratification carries over from generation to generation. We have only to look at how parents pass their social position on to their children to see that stratification is a trait of societies rather than individuals. Some individuals, especially in high income societies, do experience social mobility, a change in position withing the social heirarchy. Social mobility maybe upwards or downwards. Or society celebrates the achievements of Jean Chretiaen, a Celine Dion, a Jim Carey, or a Wayne Gretzky, all of whom rose to prominence from modest beginnings. But we also acknowledge that people move downwards as a result of business setbacks, unemployment or illness. More often, people move horizontally, exchanging one occupation for another at a comparable level.

3. Social stratification is universal but variable. Social stratificaion is found everywhere. Yet what is unequal, and how unequal it is, varies from one society to another. In some societies, inequality is mostly a matter of prestige, in others, wealth or power is the key element of difference. In addition, some societies contain more inequality than others.

4. Social stratification involves not just inequality but beliefs as well.

Any system of inequality not only gives some people more than others but also defines these arrangements as fair. Like the what of inequality, the explanation of why people should be unequal differs from society to society.

Caste Systems

Is social stratification based on ascriptions, or birth. A pure caste system is closed because of birth alone determines a person's entire future, allowing little or no social mobility based on individual effort people live out their lives in the rigid categories assigned to them, without the possibility of change for the better or worse. Many of the world's societies, most of them agrarian, are caste systems.

Social mobility

A change in position within the social hierarchy

Class systems

Social stratification based on both birth and individual achievement.

Class systems are more open than caste systems, so people who gain schooling and skills may experience social mobility.

Status consistency

the degree of consistency in a person's social standing across various dimensions of social inequality. A caste system has limited social mobility and high status consistency, so the typical person has the same relative ranking with regard to wealth, power, and prestige. The greater mobility of class systems produces less status consistency.

Socioeconomic status

A composite ranking based on various dimensions of social inequality.

Race

A socially constructed category of people who share biologically transmitted traits that members of a society consider important. People may classify one another racially based on physical characteristics such as skin color, facial features, hair texture and body shape. Physical diversity appeared among our human ancestors as the result of living in different geographic regions of the world.

Ethnicity

A shared cultural heritage. People define themselves or others as members of an ethnic category based on common ancestry, language, or religion that gives them a distinctive social identity.

Minority

Any group of people distinguished by physical or cultural differences that a society sets apart and subordinates.

Minority standing can be based on race, ehnicity or both.

In recent years, the breadth of the term "minority" has expanded in meaning to include not only people with particualr racial and ethnic traits but also people with physical disabilities as well as women.

Elderly people, gays, and lesbians can also be considered minorities.

Minorities have 2 mojor characteristics- one trait is that they share a distinctive identity. because race is highly visible- and virtually impossible for a person to change, most minority men and women are keenly aware of their physical differences.

2nd characteristic of minorities is subordination. Minorities in Canada may have lower incomes and less occupational prestige than those of British or French origin, even if- as in the case of black and asian people-their levels of education attainment are as high or higher. Thus class, race, and ethnicity, as well as gender, are overlapping and reinforcing dimensions of social stratification.

Prejudice

A rigid and irrational generalization about an entire category of people. Prejudice is irrational to the extent that people hold inflexible attitudes that are supported by little or no direct evidence. Further, prejudice leads to characterize an entire category, the vast majority of whom they never even met.

Prejudices are prejudgements that may be positive or negative.

Authoritarian Personality Theory

Authoritarian personalities rigidly conform to conventional cultural values and see moral issues as clear-cut matters of right and wrong. People with authortarian personalities also view society as naturally competitive and hierarchical, with "better" people- like themselves-inevitably dominating those who are weaker, including all minorites.

Adorno also found that people talerant towards one minority are likely to be accepting of all. They tend to be more flexible in their moral judgements and treat all people as equals.  Adorno thought that people with little schooling and those raised by cold and demanding parents tend to develop authoritarian personalities. filled with anger and anxiety as children; they grow into hostile; agressive adults who seek out scapegoats.

Conflict Theory

A fourth analysis views prejudice as the product of social conflict. According to this theory, powerful people use prejudice to justify their oppression of minorities. Canadians certainly did this with the Chinese labourers who were allowed to come to Canada to work- under appaulling conditions- on the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1870's and 1880's. similarily, all elites benefit when prejudice divides workers along racial and ethnic lines, and discourage them from working together to advance their common interests.

A different conflict-based argument, advanced by Shelby Steele (1990), is that minorities themselves cultivate a climate of race consciousness in order to win greater power and priveleges. In raising race consciouness, Steele explains, minorities argue that they are victims and that White people are their victimizers. Because of their historic, disadvantage, minorities claim that they are entitled to special considerations based on their race. While this category may yield short term gains, Steele cautions that such policies are likely to spark a backlash from White people and others who condemn "special treatment" for anyone on the basis of race or ethnicity.

The Quebecois have made precisely that kind of claim on the basis of past injustices and the threat of assimilation in an English-speaking North America. Some non-Quebecers feel that the wrongs of the past have now been redressed and that entrenching special status (that is recognition as a "distinct society") in Canada's constitution is going too far. The Charlottetown Accord of 1992, along with many other matters, proposed such distinct society status for Quebec, the accord was rejected but Canadians in a referendum.

Discrimination

Closely related to prejudice is discrimination, unequal treatment of various ctegories of people. Prejudice refers to attitudes, but discrimination is a matter of action. Like prejudice, discrimination can either be positive-providing special advantages, or negative-creatingobstacles, and ranges from subtle to blatant.

Pluralism

A state in which racial and ethnic minorities are distinct but have social parity.  In a pluralist society, categories of people are different but share resources more less equally. The relationship b/n quebec and the rest of Canada provides and example of pluralismin action.

Assimilation

The process by which minorities gradually adopt patterns of the dominant culture, thereby becoming more similar to the dominant group. Assimilation involves changing modes of dress, vlaues, religion, language and friends.

Segregation

Refers to the physical and social separation of categories of people. Some minorities, especially religious orders such as the Huderites, voluntarily segregate themselves. the concentration of various ethnic and racial groups in Canada's cities results, at least in part, from voluntary action (that is people want to live near people like themselves).

Genocide

The systematic killing of one category of people by another. This deadly form of racism and ethnocentrism violates nearly every recognized moral standards, yet it has occurred time and time again in human history. Genocide figured prominently in centuries of contact b/n Europeans and the original inhabitants of the Americas.

Labelling Deviance:Symbolic Interaction Analysis

The symbolic interaction approach explains how people define deviance in everyday situations. From this point of view, definitions of deviance and conformity are surprisingly flexible.