Sociology Exam 2 Chapter 3

• Do
• Use
• Produce
• Know
• Believe

• Culture is crucial to human existence.
• Humans learn how to meet their basic needs through culture.
• Culture is transmitted from one generation to the next through social interaction.

• Material Culture
• Nonmaterial culture
• Cognitive culture
• Language

• Everything human beings make and use.
• Allow shumans to cope with extreme environments and survive in all climates.
• Has made human beings the dominant life form on earth.

Knowledge, beliefs, values, and rules for appropriate behavior.

• Norms
• Mores
• Folkways
• Values

Language makes it possible for humans to share culture.

• FOXP2- the human gene involved in language was discovered in 2001.
• FOXP2 switches on other genes during the development of the brain

• Innovation
• Diffusion

• New concepts, ideas, and material objects
• Invention- recombining elements already available to a society
• Discovering new concepts
• Finding new solutions to old problems
• Devising and making new material objects

The movement of ucltural traits from one culture to another

• Many animals produce and use tools.
• Experiments have shown that apes are able to master fundamental aspects of language.

• Division of labor
• Incest taboo
• Marriage
• Family organization
• Rites of passage

• Families differ between cultures depending on who is allowed to marry and how many spouses are allowed
• The basic family unit of husband, wife, and children is recognized in almost every culture.
• Sexual relations among a family are almost universally taboo

• Helps keep sexual jealousy under control
• Prevents the confusion of authority relationships in the family
• Ensures family offspring will marry into other families, creating a network of social bonds

Standardized rituals marking life transitions.

• Help the individual achieve a social identity
• Map out the individual's life course
• Aid the individual in making life plans
• Provide people with a context to share emotions

Beliefs and values that help groups maintain identity as a social unit

• Culture tells humans what to do, how to do it, and when it should be done
• Humans have more individual freedom of action than any other creature
• Society and culture limit choices and make it difficult to act in ways that deviate from cultural norms

Most of our body proccesses are the result of the interaction of genes and the environment.

• Sensorimotor
• Preoperational
• Operational
• Formal, logical thought

Birth to age 2- Infant relies on touch and the manipulation of objects for information about the world, slowly learning about cause and effect.

About age 2- Child begins to learn that words can be symbols for objects. The child cannot see the world from another person's point of view.

Age 7 to about age 12- The child begins to think with some logic and can understand numbers, shapes, and spatial relationships.

Adolesence- People at this stage are capable of abstract, logical thought, are able to anticipate consequences of their actions.

Research suggets that not every person is capable of thinking about morality in the same way.

• Stage 1- Orientation toward punishment and obedience.
• Stage 2- Orientation toward individualism and exchange.
• Stage 3- Orientation toward good interpersonal relationsships.
• Stage 4- Orientation toward maintaining the social order.
• Stage 5- Orientation toward the social contract and individual rights.
• Stage 6- Orientation toward universal principles.

The process through which we develop a sense of self.

• 1. Preparatory stage
• 2. Play stage
• 3. Game stage

The chid imitates the behavior of others.

The child begins to formulate role expectations: Playing house, etc.

The child learns there are rules that specify the proper and correct relationship among the players.

• Id- the drives and insticts which remain unconscious
• ego- tries to mediate between the id and the superego
• superego- society's norms and moral values as learned primarily from our parents

• Family
• School
• Peer groups
• Mass media

• The first introduction to socialization occurs within the family
• Every family socializes its children to its own particular version of the societies culture
• The families role in socialization has come to be challenged

• An insitution intended to socialize children in selected skills and knowledge
• More recently it has had to encompass socialization as well as academic instruction
• By exposing students to a variety of ideas, teachers attempt to guide the development of the whole student

• Often peer influence is greater than that of any other source of socialization
• The power of the peer group is in direct proportion to the extent that the adolescent feels ignored by their parents.
• Peers have the greatest say in life issues

• Long term childhood exposure to TV is a causal factor behind approximately 1/2 of the homicides in the US
• Adolescents who watched more than one hour of TV a day (regardless of content) were four times more likely to commit aggrassive acts toward other people
• Of those who watched more than three hours 28.8% were later invovled in assaults, robberies, fights, and other aggressive behavior.

• Learned a language and can think logically.
• Accepted the basic norms and values of the culture.
• Developed the ability to pattern behavior in terms of these norms and values
• Assumed a culturally approprate social identity

• Isolation from the outside world
• Spending all of one's time in the same place with the same people
• Shedding individual identity by giving up old clothes and possessions for standard uniforms
• A clean break with the past
• Loss of freedom of action

Norms and vlues make up the moral code of a culture

Behavior that fails to conform to the rules or norms of the group in question

• Causes the group's members to close ranks
• Prompts the group to organize in order to limit future deviant acts
• Helps clarify for the group what it really does believe in
• Teaches normal behavior by providing examples of rule violation
• Tolerance of deviant behavior prevents more serious instances of nonconformity

• It is a threat to the social order because it make social life unpredictable
• It causes confusion about the norms and values of that society
• It undermines trust
• It diverts valuable resources

Spontaneous displays of approval

Planned public ceremonies that express social approval

Spontaneous displays of disapproval

Actions that express insitutionalized disapproval of behavior

• Endomorphic- round and soft
• Ectomorphic- Thin and linear
• Mesomorphic- ruggedly muscular

• endomorphs- relaxed creatures of comfort
• Ectomorphs- Inhibited, secretive, and restrained
• mesomorphs- asseritive, action oriented, and uncaring of others feelings

• Individual's who occupy faborable positons in the class structure have legitimate ways to acieve success
• Those who occupy unfaborable positions lack such means
• The goal of financial success combined with the unequal access to resources creates deviance

• Innovators
• Ritualists
• Rebels
• Retreatists

Accept the culturally validated goal of success but find deviant ways of reaching it

• Reject the importance of success once they realize they will never achieve it
• Remain within the labor force but refuse to take risks to jeopordize their job security

• Pull back from society
• Drug and alcohol addicts who can no longer function

Reject the goals of what to them is an unfair social order and the means of achieving them

• People are free to violate norms if they lack intimate attachments
• Without attachments, people can violate norms without fear of social diapproval
• This theory assumes the diapproval of others plays a major role in preventing deviance

• 1. attachment to others
• 2. Commitment to conformity
• 3. involvement in conventional activities
• 4. A belief in the moral validity of social rules

Based on the idea that criminal behavior is learned in the context of intimate groups.

• Criminal Techniques- how to break into houses
• Criminal attitudes- justifications for criminal behavior

• Factors that determine whether a person wil be labeled deviant
• 1. Importance of the norms that are violated
• 2. Social identity of the individual who violates them
• 3. Social context of the behavior in question

• Denial of responsibility
• Denying the jury
• Denial of the victim
• Condemnation of the authorities
• Appealing to higher principles or authorities

75% of all crime in the US is a property crime

Crimes committed in the course of one's job for the purpose of personal or organizational gain.

35, US government, US military

15, DC

1241

The year the modern death penalty was reinstated.

• 1. TX
• 2. VA
• 3. OK

OK

132

96

1990

OK

10

• Lethal injection
• Electrocution and firing squad as back-up