Principles Short Essay Questions

  1. Define personal space.
    The immediate area surrounding a person that the person claims as private.
  2. What is dramaturgical analysis?
    The study of social interaction that compares everyday life to a theatrical presentation.
  3. Nonverbal communication is influenced by 4 factors. List them.
    Gender, race, social class, and the personal contexts in which they occur.
  4. What is Gesellschaft?
    A large, urban society in which social bonds are based on impersonal and specialized relationships, with little long-term commitment to the group or consensus on values.
  5. What is a typology?
    A classification scheme containing two or more mutually exclusive categories that are used to compare different kinds of behavior or types of societies.
  6. What is social stratification?
    The hierarchical arrangement of large social groups based on their control over basic resources.
  7. What are life chances?
    Max Weber�s term for the extent to which individuals have access to important societal resources such as food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care.
  8. What is SES? Define the term.
    • Socioeconomic Status
    • A combined measure that, in order to determine class location, attempts to classify individuals, families, or households in terms of factors such as income, occupation, and education.
  9. Give an example of intragenerational mobility.
    Sarah begins career as a high-tech factory worker and through increased experience and taking specialized courses in her field became an entrepreneur, starting her own highly successful �dot.com� business. Upward intragenerational social mobility.
  10. According to Weber, what is power?
    According to Max Weber, the ability of people or groups to achieve their goals despite opposition from others.
  11. What are peripheral nations?
    According to world systems theory, nations that are dependent on core nations for capital, have little or no industrialization (other than what may be brought in by core nations), and have uneven patterns of urbanization.
  12. What is social exclusion?
    Manuel Castells�s term for the process by which certain individuals and groups are systematically barred from access to positions that would enable them to have an autonomous livelihood in keeping with the social standards and values of a given social context.
  13. Define tertiary deviance.
    Deviance that occurs when a person who has been labeled a deviant seeks to normalized the behavior by relabeling it as nondeviant.
  14. What is juvenile delinquency?
    A violation of law or the commission of status offense by young people.
  15. What is political crime?
    Illegal or unethical acts involving the usurpation of power by government officials, or illegal/unethical acts perpetrated against the government by outsiders seeking to make a political statement, undermine the government, or overthrow it.
  16. What is a democratic leader?
    Leaders who encourage group discussion and decision making through consensus building.
  17. What is a bureaucratic personality?
    A psychological construct that describes those workers who are more concerned with following correct procedures than they are with getting the job done correctly.
  18. What is a normative organization?
    An organization people join to pursue goals they consider worthwhile.
  19. According to Sumner, what is an ingroup?
    A group to which a person belongs and with which the person feels a sense of identity.
  20. What are the four major contemporary sociological perspectives?
    Functionalist, Conflict, symbolic Interactionist, and Postmodernist.
  21. Name 4 sociologists that developed their sociological theories before 1900?
    Harriet Martineau, Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, and Emile Durkeim.
  22. The theory and research cycle consists of two different approaches, name them.
    • The deductive approach, the researcher begins with a theory and uses research to test the theory.
    • The inductive approach, the researcher collects information or data (facts or evidence) and then generates theories from the analysis of that data.
  23. Describe multiple causation.
    That is, an event occurs as a result of many factors operating in combination.
  24. Define random sampling.
    A study approach in which every member of an entire population being studied has the same chance of being selected.
  25. What is the Hawthorne effect?
    A phenomenon in which changes in a subject's behavior are caused by the researcher's presence or by the subject's awareness of being studied.
  26. What are the four nonmaterial components of culture that are common in all cultures?
    Symbols, language, values, and norms.
  27. What is ethnocentrism?
    The practice of judging all other cultures by one's own culture.
  28. What is high culture?
    Consists of classical music, opera, ballet, live theater, and other activities usually patronized by elite audiences, composed primarily of member so the upper-middle and upper classes, who have the time, money, an knowledge assumed to be necessary for its appreciation.
  29. List the three main types of norms.
    Folkways, mores, and laws.
  30. What are the four major types of research methods?
    Survey Research, Analysis of Existing Data, Field Research, and Experiments.
  31. What are the primary agents of socialization?
    • The persons, groups, or institutions that each us what we need to know in order to participate in society.
    • Family**, Peer group, school, and mass media.
  32. When does socialization end?
    Never, socialization is a lifelong process, well maybe when you die. Throughout our lives we continue to learn. Every time we experience a change in status (get married) we learn a new set of rules, roles, and relationships.
  33. What is a total institution?
    Erving Goffman�s term for a place where people are isolated from the rest of society for a set period of time and come under the control of the officials who run the institution.
  34. What are sanctions?
    Rewards for appropriate behavior or penalties for inappropriate behavior.
  35. What are cultural universals?
    Customs and practices that occur across all societies.
  36. Define Dependent variable.
    A variable that is assumed to depend on or be caused by one or more other (independent) variables.
  37. Define independent variable.
    A variable that is presumed to cause or determine a dependent variable.
  38. Define Macroanalysis.
    An approach that examines whole societies, large-scale social structures, and social systems.
  39. Define micro analysis.
    Sociological theory and research that focus on small groups rather than on large-scale social structures.
  40. Define ethnic group.
    A collection of people distinguished, by others or by themselves, primarily on the basis of cultural or nationality characteristics.
  41. Define racism.
    A set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices that is used to justify the superior treatment of one racial or ethnic group and the inferior treatment of another racial or ethnic group.
  42. What is a subordinate group?
    A group whose members, because of physical or cultural characteristics, are disadvantaged and subjected to unequal treatment by the dominant group and who regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination.
  43. What is a scapegoat?
    A person or group that is incapable of offering resistance to the hostility or aggression of others.
  44. What is individual discrimination?
    Behavior consisting of one-on-one acts by members of the dominant group that harm members of the subordinate group or their property.
  45. What is ethnic pluralism?
    The coexistence of a variety of distinct racial and ethnic groups within one society.
  46. Describe the split-labor-market theory.
    A term used to describe the division of the economy into two areas of employment, a primary sector or upper tier, composed of higher-paid (usually dominant-group) workers in more-secure jobs, and a secondary sector or lower tier, composed of low-paid (often subordinate-group) workers in jobs with little security and hazardous working conditions.
  47. What are WASPS?
    • White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
    • They have been the most privileged group in this country. Most of the WASP immigrants arriving from northern Europe were advantaged over later immigrants because they were highly skilled and did not experience high levels of prejudice and discrimination.
  48. Bureaucracies have many strengths and many problems. List three problems that were discussed in the text.
    • Inefficiency and Rigidity
    • Resistance to Change
    • Perpetuation of Race, Class, and Gender Inequalities
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Principles Short Essay Questions
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Principles Short Essay Questions
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