Agriculture

large-scale cultivation using plows harnessed to animals or more powerful energy sources.
Alienation
the experience of isolation and misery resulting from powerlessness
Anomie
Durkheim's designation of a condition in which society provide little moral guidance to
individuals
Bureaucracy
an organizational model rationally designed to perform tasks efficiently.
Capitalism
an economic system in which natural resources and the means of producing goods and
services are privately owned.
Capitalists
people who own and operate factories and other businesses in pursuit of profits
Class consciousness
worker's recognition of themselves as a class unified in opposition to capitalists and, ultimately,
to capitalism itself.
Class-conflict
conflict between entire classes over the distribution of a society's wealth and power.
cohort
category of people with a common characteristic, usually their age
Communism
a system by which people share more-or-less equally in the production of food and other
material goods
Division of labor
specialized economic activity
Emile Durkheim
helps to see the different ways that traditional and modern societies hang together.
Ego
Freud's term for a person's conscious efforts to balance innate pleasure-seeking drives with
demands of society.
False consciousness
(Marx) Explanations of social problems as the shortcomings of individuals rather than as the
flaws of society.
generalized other
George Herbert Mead's term for widespread cultural norms and values we use as a reference in
evaluating ourselves