Basic Sociological Glossary

The following is a list of sociological terms that you may need to be familiar with during the course of the term. All definitions come from the second edition of Diana Kendall’s Sociology In Our Times: The Essentials (Wadsworth: Belmont, CA). It is important to realize, however, that this is not a complete list of terms. If you come across any terms that you are not familiar with while reading or during lecture, please do not hesitate to ask the instructor.

Agents of Socialization: The persons, groups or institutions that teach us what we need to know in order to participate in society.

Alienation: A feeling of powerlessness and estrangement from other people and from oneself.

Capitalism: An economic system characterized by private ownership of the means of production, from which personal profits can be derived through market competition and without government intervention.

Civil Religion: The set of beliefs, rituals, and symbols that makes sacred the values of the society and places the nation in the context of the ultimate system of meaning.

Collective Behavior: Voluntary, often spontaneous activity that is engaged in by a large number of people and typically violates dominant group norms and values.

Comparable Worth (or Pay Equity): The belief that wages ought to reflect the worth of a job, not the gender or race of the worker.

Conflict Perspectives: The sociological approach that views groups in society as engaged in a continuous power struggle for control of scarce resources.

Conformity: The process of maintaining or changing behavior to comply with the norms established by a society, subculture, or other group.

Conglomerate: A combination of businesses in different commercial areas, all of which are owned by one holding company.

Corporations: Large-scale organizations that have legal powers, such as the ability to enter into contracts and buy and sell property, separate from their individual owners.

Counterculture: A group that strongly rejects dominant societal values and norms and seeks alternative lifestyles.

Crime: Behavior that violates criminal law and is punishable with fines, jail terms, and other sanctions.

Cultural Capital: Pierre Bourdieu’s term for people’s social assets, including values, beliefs, attitudes, and competencies in language and culture.

Cultural Imperialism: The extensive infusion of one nation’s culture into another nation’s.

Cultural Relativism: The belief that the behaviors and customs of any culture must be viewed and analyzed by the culture’s own standards.

Cultural Universals: Customs and practices that occur across all societies.

Culture: the knowledge, language, values, customs, and material objects that are passed from person to person and from one generation to the next in a human group or society.

Culture Shock: The disorientation that people feel when they encounter cultures radically different from their own and believe they cannot depend on their own taken-for-granted assumptions about life.

Democracy: A political system in which the people hold the ruling power either directly or through elected representatives.

Democratic Socialism: An economic and political system that combines private ownership of some o f the means of production, governmental distribution of some essential goods and services and free elections.

Deviance: Any behavior, belief, or condition that violates cultural norms.

Discrimination: Actions or practices of dominant group members (or their representatives) that have a harmful effect on members of a subordinate group.

Economy: the social institution that ensures the maintenance of society through the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

Education: The social institution responsible for the systematic transmission of knowledge, skills, and cultural values within a formally organized structure.

Egalitarian Family: A family structure in which both partners share power and authority equally.

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

Ethnic Pluralism: the coexistence of a variety of distinct racial and ethnic groups within one society.

Ethnocentrism: The assumption that one’s own culture and way of life are superior to all others.

Families: Relationships in which people live together with commitment, form an economic unit and care for any young, and consider their identity to be significantly attached to the group.

Feminzation of Poverty: the trend in which women are disproportionately represented among individuals living in poverty.

Functionalist Perspectives: The sociological approach that views society as a stable, orderly system.

Gender: The culturally and socially constructed differences between females and males found in the meanings, beliefs, and practices associated with “femininity” and “masculinity.”

Gender Bias: Behavior that shows favoritism toward one gender over the other.

Gender Socialization: The aspect of socialization that contains specific messages and practices concerning the nature of being female or male in a specific group or society.

Gentrification: The process by which members of the middle and upper-middle classes, especially whites, move into the central-city area and renovate existing properties.

Hidden Curriculum: The transmission of cultural values and attitudes, such as conformity and obedience to authority, through implied demands found in rules, routines, and regulations of schools.

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.

Industrialization: The process by which societies are transformed from dependence on agriculture and handmade products to an emphasis on manufacturing and related industries.

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

Institutional Discrimination: The day to day practices of organizations and institutions that have a harmful impact on members of subordinate groups.

Latent functions: Unintended functions that are hiddent and remain unacknowledged by participants.

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.

Manifest Functions: Functions that are intended and/or overtly recognized by the participants in a social unit.

Matriarchy: A hierarchical system of social organization in which cultural, political, and economic structures are controlled by women.

Meritocracy: A hierarchy in which all positions are rewarded based on people’s ability and credentials.

Military-Industrial Complex: The mutual interdependence of the military establishment and private military contractors.

Minority (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.

Mixed Economy: An economic system that combines elements of a market economy (capitalism) with elements of a command economy (socialism).

Mores: Strongly held norms with moral and ethical connotations that may not be violated without serious consequences in a particular culture.

Norms: Established rules of behavior or standards of conduct.

Outgroup: A group to which a person does not belong and toward which the person may feel a sense of competitiveness or hostility.

Patriarchy: A hierarchical system of social organization in which cultural, political and economic structures are controlled by men.

Pink-Collar Occupations: Relatively low-paying, non-manual, semiskilled positions primarily held by women, such as day-care workers, checkout clerks, cashiers, and waitpersons.

Political Action Committees (PACs): Organizatins of special interest groups that solicit contributions from donors and fund campaigns to help elect (or detfeat)candidates based on their stances on specific issues.

Politics: The social institution through which power is acquired and exercised by some people and groups.

Prejudice: A negative attitude based on faulty generalizations about members of selected racial and ethnic groups.

Prestige: The respect or regard with which a person or status position is regarded by others.

Race: A category of people who have been singled out as inferior or superior, often on the basis of physical characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, and eye shape.

Racism: A set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices tht is used to justify the superior treatment of one racial or ethnic group and the inferior treatment of another racial or ethnic group.

Religion: A system of beliefs, symbols, and rituals, based on some sacred or supernatural realm, that guides human behaviors from those in one’s previous background and experience.

Segregation: The spatial and social separation of categories of people by race, ethnicity, class, gender, and/or religion.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The situation in which a false belief or prediction produces behavior that makes the originally false belief come true.

Sex: The biological and anatomical differences between females and males.

Sexism: The subordination of one sex, usually female, based on the assumed superiority of the other sex.

Sexual Orientation: A person’s preference for emotional-sexual relationships with members of the opposite sex (heterosexuality), the same sex (homosexuality), or both (bisexuality).

Social Change: The alternation, modification, or transformation of public policy, culture, or social institutions over time.

Social Construction of Reality: The process by which our perception of reality is shaped largely by the subjective meaning that we give to an experience.

Social Control: Systematic practices developed by social groups to encourage conformity and to discourage deviance.

Social Interaction: The process by which people act toward or respond to other people; the foundation for all relationships and groups in society.

Social Mobility: The movement of individuals or groups from one level in a stratification system to another.

Social Movement: An organized group that acts consciously to promote or resist change through collective action.

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

Social Structure: The stable pattern of social relationships that exist within a particular group or society.

Socialism: An economic system characterized by public ownership of the means of production, the pursuit of collective goals, and centralized decision making.

Socialization: The lifelong process of social interaction through which individuals acquire a self-identity and the physical, mental and social skills needed for survival in society.

Society: A large social grouping that shares the same geographical territory and is subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations.

Sociology: the systematic study of human society and social interaction.

Subculture: A group of people who share a distinctive set of cultural beliefs and behaviors that differ in some significant way from that of the larger society.

Symbol: Anything that meaningfully represents something else.

Totalitarianism: A political system in which the state seeks to regulate all aspects of people’s public and private lives.

Values: Collective ideas about what is right or wrong, good or bad, and desirable or undesirable in a particular culture.