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What is the significance of culture for humans?
- Because humans lack the instinct of wild animals.
- Culture give predictability and comprehensibility to life. How we interpret and give meaning to world, ourselves, relations, and others.
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What were two early perspectives on culture and how did they differ?
Culture versus Civilization
Culture as a way of life
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What is meant by "Nothing is natural about culture"
Culture is ever changing and is not universal, culture is connected to the material world
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What is meant by the Sociological Imagination?
This idea of viewing ones society as an outsider would
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What is ethnocentrism?
The tendency to assume that one’s own culture and way of life represent the norm or are superior to all others.
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Cultural relativism?
The viewing of people’s behavior from the perspective of their own culture.
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Pluralism?
Mutual respect for one another's cultures among the various groups in a society, which allows minorities to express their own cultures without experiencing prejudice.
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What is the significance of language?
It provides the foundation of common culture. It is the foundation for interaction and collective action.
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How does language affect our understanding of reality?
Word symbols and grammar organizes the world for us. Culture creates language to shape his or her perception of reality, therefore his or her thoughts and actions
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How does technology mediate our conversations and thus affect our culture?
It allows us to stay in touch with family and friends almost anytime and anyplace. However, we lose the awareness of possible alternatives due to this convenience.
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What does it mean to argue that technological change is “ecological”?
Technology does not add to or subtract something, it changes everything.
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How does technology use us?
Conversations controlled by the few are delivered to the masses
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What is material culture?
The physical or technological aspects of our daily lives.
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What is nonmaterial culture?
Ways of using material objects, as well as customs, ideas, expressions, beliefs, knowledge, philosophies, governments, and patterns of communication.
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What is socialization?
The lifelong process through which people learn the attitudes, values, and behaviors appropriate for members of a particular culture.
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What are agencies of socialization?
Family, School, Peer Groups, Religion, Workplace, and mass media
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Why do agencies of socialization matter?
It is through the comparison and interaction of the agencies that we develop and grow by comparing to ourselves. We begin to role play.
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Why are sociologists so fascinated by “feral children” (like Genie)?
They demonstrate the importance of socializations. They prove that humans learn and grow through interactions with each other.
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What is Mead’s argument about how socialization occurs across the life course?
Mead argued that there are two core components of the self: the I (our acting self) and the Me (our socialized self). He described a three-stage process of self-development: the preparatory stage, the play stage, and the game stage
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What is a generalized other?
The attitudes, viewpoints, and expectations of society as a whole that a child takes into account in his or her behavior.
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What is a significant other according to Meade?
An individual who is most important in the development of the self, such as a parent, friend, or teacher.
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Describe Impression management
The altering of the presentation of the self in order to create distinctive appearances and satisfy particular audiences.
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Describe the Me.
The socialized self that plans actions and judges performances based on the standards we have learned from others.
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Describe the I.
The acting self that exists in relation to the Me.
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To what does the “looking glass self” refer?
A concept that emphasizes the self as the product of our social interactions.
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What do sociologists mean by sex and gender?
What is the difference?
Sex- The biological differences between males and females.
Gender-The social and cultural significance that we attach to the biological differences of sex.
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What does the ‘idealization of gender’ refer to and why does it matter?
This refers to how agents of society influence our attitudes and beliefs of what is appropriate for the different sexes. This tends to define roles society expects certain sexes to play.
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What is hegemonic masculinity? Hegemonic
femininity?
This is the image that society portrays as the way women or men are suppose to be. It is an unrealistic expectation.
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What did Jackson Katz argue was the relationship between masculinity and violence in
the U.S.?
Katz argued that society tends to be more forgiving with women, however when men commit a crime, society tends to focus on the crime as well as keeping the theory that men are just violent.
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What explains why women tend to earn less than men do in the U.S. labor market?
Men are considered the the main source of income for the family; therefore they more commonly receive higher wages
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What is the motherhood penalty and why does it
matter?
This refers to how society views women as being high risk do to perceived obligation to children and other stereotypical mother roles.
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When are people most likely to deviate from institutions (routinized behavior) and
why?
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What is the main purpose of breaching experiments (Garfinkle)?
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What is an ascribed/assigned status?
Ascribed is a status that is assigned or imposed
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What is an achieved/asserted status?
Achieved is an achieved status that you assert
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What is a formal organization? What is the
significance of a formal organization generally?
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What is a bureaucracy? What are the patterns of
bureaucratization in the U.S. today?
Mechanism combined energy, Knowledge based, that provides regulations towards one common goal Most bureaucracies focus on the economic benefits in the US today.
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What does the concept of rationalization refer to?
What is its significance?
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What does it mean to argue that deviance is culturally and contextually grounded?
Culture defines what deviance is; also we react differently towards different groups involved in the same type of deviance.
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In what kinds of societies did the possibility for widespread inequality arise? Why?
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How did Dr. Frank Weyher describe and explain culture?
Culture is a web, draws our attention to certain things and lets us ignore others, Culture connects us, Culture is a meaning of life, Culture is strong
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What is does alienation mean (Marx)?
Loss of control our creative human capacity to produce, separation from the products we make, and isolation from our fellow producers
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conformity
The act of going along with peers—individuals of our own status who have no special right to direct our behavior.
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Innovation
The process of introducing a new idea or object into a culture through discovery or invention.
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ritualism
refers to the way Society handles every day business without regard to who it may affect or hurt
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Retreatism
A form of deviance in which a person withdraws from social life by rejecting values and norms without offering alternatives.
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Labeling theory
An approach to deviance that attempts to explain why certain people are viewed as deviants while others engaged in the same behavior are not.
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Deviance
Behavior that violates the standards of conduct or expectations of a group or society.
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Cultural transmission
A school of criminology that argues that criminal behavior is learned through social interactions.
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What does the phrase, ‘society is greater than
the sum of its parts,’ mean (Durkheim)?
Society is greater than just the combined group of individuals; it is the product of individual's interaction with each other.
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What is the main sociological theory of suicide that we discussed in class (Durkheim)?
We find meaning in our life through the interconnections with others; when these meanings are missing or fall apart, one loses the courage to live.
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What is egoistic?
Egoistic is when an individual integrates with society very little and has excessive individualism.
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Altruistic suicide
self sacrifice suicide, to benefit others.
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Anomic suicide
man’s actions lacking regulation, therefore suffering his consequences.
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Fatalistic suicide
over regulation of society on man’s activities, choking out his passions.
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What is a Social Fact?
patterns or behaviors characteristic to a certain group.
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Fetishism of commodities
seeing relations with things as opposed to relations between people.
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Class conflict
- to the tensions which exist in society
- due to conflicting interests that arise from different social positions.
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Gemeinschaft
Being loyal to the community one belongs, his/her motive revolves around the betterment of the community as a whole, this maybe best associated to the modern family or religious organizations in today’s society
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Gesselschaft
- refers to the best interest of the individual within the community. The ideal of capitalism in today’s community
- correlates to this idea.
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What are the patterns of privatization in the U.S. prison system and how might these patterns affect future incarceration rates? Why?
Taxpayers reject prisons be built in there are, therefore prisons are being built by private company. The more criminals the more revenue for these private prisons.
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What explains inequalities in criminalization/incarceration rates in the U.S. today?
The folks that statistically committing more crime are arrested less. The effects of the economic perspective as working capable individuals are in jail and are not counted towards unemployed
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What are the patterns of victimization in the U.S. today? Who is most likely to be victimized?
More privileged less likely to be victimized
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