Principles Short Essay Questions

The immediate area surrounding a person that the person claims as private.

The study of social interaction that compares everyday life to a theatrical presentation.

Gender, race, social class, and the personal contexts in which they occur.

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.

The hierarchical arrangement of large social groups based on their control over basic resources.

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.

• 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.

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.

According to Max Weber, the ability of people or groups to achieve their goals despite opposition from others.

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.

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.

Deviance that occurs when a person who has been labeled a deviant seeks to normalized the behavior by relabeling it as nondeviant.

A violation of law or the commission of status offense by young people.

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.

Leaders who encourage group discussion and decision making through consensus building.

A psychological construct that describes those workers who are more concerned with following correct procedures than they are with getting the job done correctly.

An organization people join to pursue goals they consider worthwhile.

A group to which a person belongs and with which the person feels a sense of identity.

Functionalist, Conflict, symbolic Interactionist, and Postmodernist.

Harriet Martineau, Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, and Emile Durkeim.

That is, an event occurs as a result of many factors operating in combination.

A study approach in which every member of an entire population being studied has the same chance of being selected.

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.

Appearance, activities, social institutions, and customary practices.

The practice of judging all other cultures by one's own 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.

Folkways, mores, and laws.

Survey Research, Analysis of Existing Data, Field Research, and Experiments.

• 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.

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.

Rewards for appropriate behavior or penalties for inappropriate behavior.

Customs and practices that occur across all societies.

A variable that is assumed to depend on or be caused by one or more other (independent) variables.

A variable that is presumed to cause or determine a dependent variable.

An approach that examines whole societies, large-scale social structures, and social systems.

Sociological theory and research that focus on small groups rather than on large-scale social structures.

A collection of people distinguished, by others or by themselves, primarily on the basis of cultural or nationality characteristics.

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.

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.

A person or group that is incapable of offering resistance to the hostility or aggression of others.

Behavior consisting of one-on-one acts by members of the dominant group that harm members of the subordinate group or their property.

The coexistence of a variety of distinct racial and ethnic groups within one society.

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.