Module 1

Sociology
- Scientific study of human activity in society
- Study of social forces that affect human behavior and thought, including the things
people do with and to one another

Social forces
- Anything human or otherwise created that influences, pressure, or push people to
interact, behave, or think in specified ways.
a. Globalization
- largely invisible social force, but it affects our daily lives in countless
ways
- Globalization ever- increasing the flow of goods, money,people,
technology, information, and other things that move across national
borders.
b. Technology
- technology changes how people behave from manually cooking food
to just putting it in a microwave.
- Technology includes any human inventions created to meet some
need.
c. Symbolic meanings
- diamonds may not be the rare stone but it is a sign of love and wealth,
which create an almost insatiable demand for the stones
d. Institutions
- humans create institutions or relatively predictable arrangements that
channel and coordinate human activity in a way to meet some need.

Why study sociology?

- It offers a framework to help us understand how social forces one to be and how they
affect our sense of self.
- we must understand the social forces that shape and constrain human relationships
and activities

Social Facts
- Collectively imposed ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving that are usually not
created by humans who experience them but have the power to influence, pressure,
or force them to behave and think in certain ways.
- Influence, pressured, or forced. not the creations of the people experiencing them
- Overtimes becomes a habit

Sociological Imagination (C. Wright Mills, 1963)

- A practice of being able to “think ourselves away” from the familiar routine of our daily
lives to look at them with fresh, critical eyes.
- Defined as “the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the
wider society.”
Biography
- Consists of all the events and the day-to-day interactions from birth to death that
make up a person’s life.

Troubles vs. Issues

Troubles
- Individual problems, or difficulties that are caused by personal shortcomings related
to motivation, attitude, ability, character, or judgment.
Issue
- Societal matter that affects many people and that can only be explained by larger
social forces that transcend the individuals affected.

Module 2

Industrial Revolution
- Name given to the changes in manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, and mining
that transformed virtually every aspect of society from the 1300s on.

Mechanization
- Process of replacing human and animal muscle as a source of power with external
sources of power derived from burning wood, coal, oil, and natural gas
- Defining feature of the Industrial Revolution
- changed how goods were produced and how people worked.

Changes to Society
a. Weakened people’s ties to their community and within their home
b. Dependent on machinery to produce goods
c. People become interconned due to urbanization and the increased of human
population
d. The ways in which people negotiated time and space

The Enlightenment
- 100-year-plus revolutionary intellectual and social movement that took place in
Europe and the United States between 1680 and 1789
- Great division existed between peasants and the aristocratic landowners who
monopolized food sources
- The industrialization and the rise of a global trading system helped create a new
class of people–merchant class.

By 1822, a field of study named sociology, devoted to the scientific study of society,
emerged. Among other things, it emphasized the need to understand and solve the many
social problems generated by the Industrial Revolution.

The Early Sociologists

Auguste Comte (1798-1857)
- Father of positivism
- Gave sociology its name in 1839
 - Positivism holds that valid knowledge about the word can be derived only from sense
experience or knowing the world through the senses
- Positivism (Scientific Method) rejects personal opinions and political agendas as a
basis for decision making and gives favor to disciplined thought and objective
research.
- Four Major Methods
a. Observation
b. Experimentation
c. Comparison
d. Historical research

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

- The sociologist’s task is to analyze and explain conflict, the major force that drives
social change.
- Class conflict as the vehicle that propelled society from one historical epoch to
another
- Describes class conflict as an antagonism growing out of the opposing interest held
by exploiting and exploited classes and being shaped by the means of production
- Called the drive for profit a “boundless thirst that takes no account of the health and
the length of life of the worker unless society forces it to do so.

Emile Durkheim (1858-1918)

- Focused on the division of labor and solidarity
- Division of labor is the way a society divides and assigns day-to-day tasks needed to
produce goods and deliver services.
- Interested in how division of labor affected solidarity, the system of social ties that
connects people to one another and to the wider society
- Observed that industrialization changed the division of labor from relatively simple to
complex and, by extension, changed nature and solidarity.
- Believed that the sociologist’s task is to analyze the factors that strengthen, break
down and otherwise shape the character of solidity.
- Four types of social ties
a. Egoistic - describes a state in which the ties attaching the individual to others
and to the society are weak
b. Altruistic - a state in which the ties attaching the individual to others and
society are such that the person has no life beyond the group
c. Anomic - a state in which the ties attaching an individual to a group are
disrupted due to dramatic changes in social circumstances.
d. Fatalistic - a state in which the ties attaching an individual to others and
society involve discipline so oppressive it offers no chance of release.

Max Weber (1864-1920)

- Social action, actions people take in response to others–with emphasis on what
motivates people to act.
- Suggested that sociologists focus on the meaning guiding thought and action
- Believed that social action is motivated in one of four ways, but in reality it is a
mixture of the four
a. Traditional - a goal is pursued because it was pursued in the past
 b. Affectional, a goal is pursued in response to an emotion such as revenge,
love or loyalty
c. Value-rational - a desired goal is pursued with a deep and abiding awareness
that the ways in which people go about pursuing a goal are valued as much
or more than achieving the desired goal.
d. Instrumental rational - a valued goal is pursued by the most efficient means at
any cost and irrespective of the consequences.

Module 3

Sociological Theory
- A framework for thinking about and explaining how societies are organized and/or
how people in them relate to one another and respond to their surroundings.
Two broad divisions
a. Macrosociology, focuses on large-scale conditions and processes such as it
emphasizes process on urbanization
b. Microsociology, focuses on small-scale interpersonal processes like study how
urbanization shapes social interactions

Functionalist Perspective
- How is social order in society maintained?
- See society as a system of independent parts.
- Function is the contribution a part makes to maintain the stability of an existing social
order.
- Argue that all parts of society contribute in some way to maintaining order and
stability in society.
- Robert K. Merton Functions and Dysfunction, a framework for analyzing a part’s
contribution to not only order and stability but also to discovery and instability.
Functions - seeks to identify how a part contributes to maintaining the current social
order
Dysfunctions - how a part can have disruptive effects to that order

Manifest Functions, a part’s anticipated, recognized, or intended effects on

maintaining order
Latent Functions, are a part’s unanticipated, unintended, and unrecognized effects on
an existing social order

Manifest Dysfunction - part’s anticipated disruptions to an existing social order.

Latent dysfunctions - are unanticipated disruptions to the existing social order.

Conflict Perspective
- Who benefits and who loses from the ways in which society is organized?
- Seek to identify dominant and disadvantaged groups, to document structural
inequalities, and to identify the practices that dominant groups have
established to promote and protect their interests.
- See conflict as an inevitable fact of social life that takes many forms, including
violent confrontations, competition, and arguments.
 - Ideologies are seemingly common sense views justifying the existing state of
affairs.
- Strength: forces us to consider the ways dominant groups control scarce and
valued resources
- Weakness: simplistically portrays the advantaged group as all-powerful and
the disadvantaged as victims are incapable of changing their circumstances.

Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

- Herbert Blumer coined the term and outlined its essential principles
- - focus on social interaction, ask how do people involved in interaction
- Process depends on (1) self-awareness, (2) shared symbols, and (3) negotiated
order
- Self-awareness – occurs when a person is able to observe and evaluate the self from
another’s viewpoint
- Symbol - is any kind of object to which people assign a name, meaning, or value.
- Negotiated order – the sum of existing expectations and newly negotiated ones
Module 4

Research Design
- A plan for gathering data on a chosen topic
- Specifies the population to be studied and the methods of data collection, or the
procedures used to gather relevant data

Sociologists also study traces, documents, territories, households, and small groups. Traces
consist of material evidence that yields information about some human activity.

Sample
- A portion of the cases from the population of interest
- Researchers study random samples, which is a subset of the target population in
which every case has an equal chance of being selected.

Sampling Frame
- A complete list of every case in the population and the researchers must begin with.

Nonrandom Samples
- A subset of the targeted population that is accessible for the study.

Data Gathering Strategies

a. Surveys and Interviews
Self-administered survey, a set of questions that respondents read and answer
Interviews are more personal, can be structured, unstructured or both
Structured interviews, the wording and sequence of questions, and response choices
are set in advance and cannot be altered.
Unstructured Interview, a flexible and open-ended
b. Observation
- Involves watching, listening to, and recording human activity as it happens.
- Useful for (1) learning things that cannot be surveyed easily, (2) experiencing
the situation as those being observed experience it.
- Two forms: nonparticipant and participant
- Hawthorne effect, a phenomenon in which research subjects alter their
behavior simply because they are being observed, hence it necessary for the
researchers to hide their identity and purpose.

Secondary Sources or Archival Data

- Data includes that gathered by census bureaus, research centers, and survey
companies.
- Use this already-collected data as it is often free or cost less.
- Content Analysis, in which sociologists identify themes, sometimes counting the
number of times something occurs or specifying categories in which to place
observations.

Case Studies
- Objective accounts intended to educate readers about a person, group, or situation.
 - Well-written case studies shed light through in-depth descriptions of an individual, an
event, a group, or an institution.

Experimental Design
- Highly systematic method used to study people assigned to two groups where
theoretically, the only difference is that people in one group are exposed to some
action.

Generalizability
- The extent to which their findings can be applied to the larger population of which
their sample was a part.

Research Methods
- Various techniques that sociologists and other investigators use to formulate and
answer meaningful questions and to collect, analyze and interpret data.

Scientific method
- A carefully planned research process with the goal of generating observations and
data that can be verified by others.

Steps
a. Determining the topic or research question
b. Reviewing the literature
c. Choosing a research design
d. Identifying the variables and specifying hypotheses
e. Collecting and analyzing data
f. Drawing conclusions
Module 5

Culture
- The way of life of a people
- Includes the shared and human-created strategies for adapting and responding to
one’s surroundings
- Cannot exist without a society, as a group of interacting people who share and pass
on, and create culture.

The Challenge of Describing Culture is that we often think of it as a concept with clear
boundaries but there are challenges in defining a culture’s boundaries:
a. Describing a culture
b. Determining who belongs to a culture
c. Identifying the distinguishing makers that set one culture apart from others

Cultural Universals vs. Cultural Particulars

Cultural Universals
- Those things that all cultures have in common. Every culture has natural resources
such as trees, plants, and rocks that people put to some use.

Cultural Particulars
- Include the specific practices that distinguish cultures from one another.

Material and Nonmaterial Culture

Material Culture
- Consists of all the physical objects that people have invented or borrowed from other
cultures.
- From a sociological point of view, physical objects are windows into a culture
because they offer clues about how its people relate to one another and about what
is important.

Nonmaterial Culture
- Intangible human creations that include beliefs, values, norms, and symbols

Beliefs
- Conceptions that people accept as true concerning how the world operates and the
place of the individual in relationship to others.

Values
- General shared conceptions of what is good, right, desirable, or important.

Norms
- Written and unwritten rules that specify behaviors appropriate and inappropriate to a
particular social situation.

Folkways
 - Norms that apply to the mundane aspects or details of daily life: when and what to
eat, how to greet someone, etc.
- Gives us discipline and support of routine and habit.

Mores
- Norms that people define as essential to the well-being of a group.
- Regarded as the only way, in which people who violate mores are usually punished
severely.

Symbols
- Anything, a word, an object or a sound – to which people assign a name and a
meaning.
- Language is a symbol system that assigns meaning to particular sounds, gestures,
pictures, or a specific combination of letters.

Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis/Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

- No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the
same social reality.

Cultural Variety

Cultural Diversity
- Used by sociologists to capture the cultural variety that exists among people who find
themselves sharing some physical or virtual space.

Subcultures
- A group in society that shares in certain parts of mainstream culture but have
distinctive values, norms, beliefs, symbols, language, and/or material culture that set
them apart in some way.

Countercultures
- In reference to subcultures that challenge, contradict, or maintain that members of
countercultures feel strongly that the society as structured cannot bring them
satisfaction.

The Home Culture as the Standard

Ethnocentrism
- A point of view in which people use their home culture as the standard for judging the
worth of another culture’s ways.
- One can think so exclusively in terms of his own social world that he simply has no
set of concepts for comparing one social world with another (Everett Hughes, 1984).
- Puts one culture at center of everything and see other cultures as strange or as
inferior

Reverse Ethnocentrism
- Home culture is regarded as inferior to a foreign culture.
- Idealize other cultures but also rejects any information that might challenge their
assessment
Cultural Relativism
- An antidote to ethnocentrism
- Means two things: (1) that a foreign culture should not be judged by the standards of
a home culture
- That a behavior or way of thinking must be examined in its cultural context

Cultural Diffusion
- Process by which an idea, an invention, or a way of behaving is borrowed from a
foreign source and then adopted by the borrowing people.

Selective borrowing
- Even if people in one culture accept a foreign idea or invention, they are nevertheless
choosy about which features of the item they adopt
- People borrow the most concrete and most tangible elements and then shape the
item to fit in with their larger culture (Linton 1936).

The Diffusion Process

How quickly others in the culture acquire, learn about, and/or come to use or consume it?
The answer depends on a variety of factors, including
a) The extent to which that borrowing causes people to change ways of thinking and
behaving
b) The existence of a media structure that lets people learn about it
c) The social status of the first adopters

Adoptive Culture
- Role that norms, values, and belief of the borrowing culture play in adjusting to a new
product or innovation, specifically adjusting to the associated changes in society.

Cultural Lag (Ogburn)

- Refer to a situation in which adaptive culture fails to adjust in necessary ways to a
material innovation and its disruptive consequences.
- Ogburn emphasized the failure of society to adjust to material innovations but said
little about how societies muster a response or about why people are often slow at
creating new technologies and reorganizing human activity to address drawbacks.

Module 6

Human Nature
- it is culture and society that make us human
- things that we have created also make us who we are

Nature Versus Nurture

Nature
- behavioral traits can be explained by genetics
- sociobiologists, psychologists, and natural science
Nurture
 - human behavior is learned and shaped through social interaction
- sociologists and others in the social sciences
Both are right
- complex relationship between nature and nurture
- Either one alone is insufficient to explain what makes us human.
- Hereditary gives us a basic potential, but it is primarily our social environment that
determines whether we will realize or fall short of that potential or develop new ones.
- I.E. testosterone contribute to stereotypically masculine traits such as
aggressiveness and competitiveness However, it is also true that facing a competitive
challenge causes testosterone levels to rise

The Process of Socialization

Socialization
- is a twofold process of individual and social level
- It includes the process by which a society, culture, or group teaches individuals to
become functioning members, and the process by which individuals learn and
internalize the values and norms of the group.
- Two Mail Goals:
- First, it teaches members the skills necessary to satisfy basic human needs
- Second, socialization teaches individuals the norms, values, and beliefs to
adhere to their shared way of life.
Social Isolation
- Shows the importance of socialization
- socialization process begins in infancy and is a lifelong process that continues to
shape us through experiences
-
Theories of the Self
- René Descartes “I think, therefore I am,”
Self
- our experience of a distinct, real, personal identity that is separate and different from
all other people
- our thoughts and feelings emanate both from and toward ourselves; this is, in effect,
how we come to “know” ourselves

Psychoanalytic Theory: Sigmund Freud

- emphasizes childhood and sexual development as indelible influences on an
individual’s identity.
- conscious level of awareness was but the tip of the iceberg and that just below the
surface was a far greater area of the mind, the subconscious and the unconscious
- mind consists of three interrelated systems:
- ID
- composed of biological drives, is the source of instinctive, psychic
energy
- achieve pleasure and to avoid pain in all situations
- EGO
- part that deals with the real world.
 - It operates on the basis of reason and helps to mediate and integrate
the demands of both the id and the superego.
- SUPEREGO
- develops as a result of parental guidance
- composed of two components: the conscience and the ego-ideal
- conscience serves to keep us from engaging in socially undesirable
behavior
- ego- ideal upholds our vision of who we believe we should ideally be
- Four sycho-sexual stages of development
- first three stages of development between the ages of one and five
- set stage for the rest of one’s adult life.
- last stage of development begins around the age of twelve, but few people
successfully complete this final transition to maturity.
- Fixated
- Not successful transitions through the first three stages
- stuck in the first stage = smoke, overeat, or be verbally aggressive
- Second stage= “anal retentive”—a neatnik, tightwad, or control freak

The Looking-Glass Self: Charles Horton Cooley

- Each to each a looking-glass, Reflects the other that doth pass.
- Three steps
1. We imagine how we look to others—not just in a physical sense, but in how we
present ourselves.
2. We imagine other people’s judgment of us. We try to picture others’ reactions and to
interpret what they must be feeling.?
3. We experience some kind of feeling about ourselves based on our perception of
other people’s judgments.
- these perceptions, not reality, that determine the feelings we ultimately have about
ourselves.
- the way we see ourselves reflected back from others together with the feelings we
develop as a result of what we imagine they see in us, forms our concept of self
Mind, Self and Society: George Herbert Mead
1. Preparatory stage
- Children under the age of three lack a completely developed sense of self,
and so they have difficulty distinguishing themselves from others
- imitating or mimicking others around them
2. play stage
- development when they start to pretend or play at being “mommy,”
“firefighter,” “princess,” or “doctor
- taking the role of the particular or significant other
3. game stage
- children’s self-awareness increases through a process Mead described using
the example of game
- Perspective of the generalized other.
- each child must follow the rules of the game, which means that he or
she must simultaneously take into account the roles of all the other
players.
- Children see themselves as objects
 - Dual Nature of Self “I and Me”
- “I” is the subject component—the experience of a spontaneous, active, and
creative part of ourselves, somewhat less socialized.
- “me” is the object component—the experience of a norm-abiding, conforming
part of ourselves, more socialized and therefore reliant on others.
- The two components are inseparable and are united to form a single self in
each of us.

Dramaturgy: Erving Goffman

- The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
- Thomas theorem: “if people define situations as real, they are real in their
consequences”
- we encounter ambiguous situations every day, many meanings are possible. The
way we define each situation, then, becomes its reality.
- Each definition of the situation lends itself to a different approach, and the
consequences are real.
- expressions of behavior= interaction, tools we use to project our definitions of the
situation to others. I.e. eyeroll
- expressions given = typically verbal and intended—most of our speech falls
into this category
- Expressions given off = typically nonverbal but observable in various ways
and may be intended or unintended.
- IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT
- social life as a sort of con game, in which we work at controlling the
impressions others have of us
- Like actors on a stage, we play our parts and use all of our communicative
resources (verbal and nonverbal) to present a particular impression to others
- Dramaturgy— performance strategies of impression management
- The Front =setting that helps establish a particular meaning
- Personal Front = appearance, manner, and style of dress (or
“costume”), as well as gender, race, and age
- Social setting, or region = makes a big difference in how we perceive
and interact with the people we encounter there
- back regions, or backstage, where we prepare for our
performances—which take place in front regions, or frontstage
- self is a social construction
- something that is created or invented in interaction with others who
also participate in agreeing to the reality or meaning of that self as it is
being presented in the situation.
- Our Claims about ourself in a interaction can be either accepted or
contradicted by others, which can make things either easier or harder for our
self-image
- cooling the mark out = we support the selves that people present is to allow
them to save face—to prevent them from realizing that they’ve done some-
thing embarrassing

Agents of Socialization
1. The Family
 - single most significant agent of socialization in all societies
- Original group; primary socialization
- emotional and social bonds are created
- language is learned
- internalize the norms and values of our society
2. Schools
- helps them to become less dependent on the family, providing a bridge to
other social groups
- learn that they will be judged on their behavior and on academic performance
- hidden curriculum (jackson) = a set of behavioral traits such as punctuality,
neatness, discipline, hard work, competition, and obedience
- Moral standing
- take on even more responsibilities
3. Peers
- groups of people who are about the same age and have similar social
characteristics.
- have the most intense and immediate effect on each other
- need to “fit in” with a peer group may seem overwhelming to some young
people
4. Mass Media
- most significant sources of socialization is a somewhat recent phenomenon.

Adult Socialization
- adults are by no means completely socialized
- College training, profession, workplace
- marrying, being divorced or widowed, raising a family, moving to a new community,
losing a job or retiring—all of which require modifying attitudes and behaviors.
- Resocialization = replacement of previously learned norms and values with different
ones
- I.e. total institutions where residents are severed from their previous relations
with society, and their former identity is systematically stripped away and
reformed (cults, prison, mental hospital, etc)

Statuses and Roles

- help shape our identities by providing guidelines (sometimes formal, sometimes
informal) for our own behavior and by providing the patterns that others use to
interact with us
Status
- position in a social hierarchy that comes with a set of expectations.
- Sometimes these positions are formalized—“professor,” “president,” or even “parent.”
- Some statuses change over the course of a lifetime (e.g., marital or parental status),
while others usually do not (e.g., gender).
- kinds of statuses
- Ascribed status is one we are born with that is unlikely to change (such as our
gender or race).
- achieved status is one we have earned through our own efforts (such as an
occupation, hobby, or skill) or that has been imposed on us in some way
(such as a criminal identity, mental illness, or drug addiction).
 - All statuses influence how others see and respond to us.
- master status—a status that seems to override all others in our identities.
- carry with them expectations that may blind people to other facets of
our personalities (stereotyping)
Role
- set of behaviors expected from a particular status position

Multiple Roles and Role Conflict

Role Conflict
- multiple roles clash in our everyday lives
- tensions between professional and familial roles
Role strain
- contradictory expectations within the same role
- mothers and fathers feel torn between their parental duties to nurture and to
discipline and may be able to do one or the other but not both.
Role Exit
- we leave a role we had once occupied

Module 7

Group
- collection of two or more people who have some- thing in common( appearance,
culture, etc)
- Sociologist: collection of people who not only share some attribute but also identify
with one another and have ongoing social relations—like a family
- For lasting social relations

Crowd
- not usually be considered a group in the sociological sense.
- They are aggregates—people who happen to find themselves together in a particular
physical location.
- don’t form lasting social relations

Primary and Secondary Groups

Primary groups
- more face- to-face interaction, greater cooperation, and deeper feelings of belonging.
- Members often associate with each other for no other reason than to spend time
together
- provide most of our emotional satisfaction through interaction with other members,
are responsible for much of our socialization, and remain central to our identity
throughout our lives

Secondary groups
- Larger, less intimate groups
- Interaction here is more formal and impersonal
 - Membership is often temporary and usually does not carry the same potential for
emotional satisfaction
- Can be anonymous

Social Networks
- Constituted by you and your family, your friends, peers, colleagues, teachers, and
coworkers
- Sociologist are concerned not only with how networks are constructed but also with
how influence moves along a network

Social Ties
- connections between individuals
- can be direct(between you and your friend) or indirect(between you and your friend’s
cousin, whom you’ve never met.)

Jobs and Networks

- Some sociologists look at how personal networks, including both direct and indirect
ties, influence a person’s life
- The Strength of Weak Ties” (1973), Mark Granovette
- An individual with high socioeconomic status, or SES (taking into account income,
education, and occupation), for example, usually has relatives and acquaintances
with similarly high SES.
- job seeker now has indirect 56 connections with a vast array of high-SES contacts
who can provide job leads

Group Dynamics

Dyads, Triads and More

Dyad
- the smallest possible social group, consists of only two members—a married couple,
two best friends, or two siblings
- usually intense and fundamentally unstable(one person wants out of group, it’s over)
Triad
- more stable because the addition of a third person means that conflicts between two
members can be refereed by the third
More
- may no longer be possible for everyone to know or interact with everyone else
personally
- the smaller a group is, the more likely it is to be based on personal ties; larger groups
are more likely to be based on rules and regulations

In-Groups and Out-Groups

- Group loyalty and cohesion intensify when differences are strongly defined between
the “us” of an in-group and the “them” of an out-group; we may also feel a sense of
superiority toward those who are excluded from our in-group
In-group
- is a group a member identifies with and feels loyalty toward
 - can be a source of prejudice and discrimination based on class, race, gender, sexual
orientation, religion, or political opinion

Out-groups
- feels a certain distinctness from or even hostility toward other groups

Reference Groups
- a group provides standards by which a person evaluates his own personal attributes
- may also be one to which we aspire to belong but of which we are not yet members

Group Cohesion
- the sense of solidarity or team spirit that members feel toward their group
- Force that binds them together
- A group is said to be more cohesive when individuals feel strongly tied to
membership
- enhanced in a number of ways: rely heavily on interpersonal factors such as shared
values and shared demographic traits like race, age, gender, or class

GROUP THINK
- highly cohesive groups may demand absolute conformity and punish those who
threaten to undermine the consensus
- Help maintain solidarity, it can also shortcircuit the decision-making process
- letting a desire for unanimity prevail over critical reasoning

Social Influence (Peer Pressure)

- When individuals are part of groups, they are necessarily influenced by other
members.
- Almost all members of society are susceptible to what is either real or imagined
social pressure to conform
- Reasons to conform:
- gain acceptance and approval (positive sanctions)
- avoid rejection and disapproval (negative sanctions).
- Follow prescriptions, doing the things we’re supposed to do
- proscriptions, avoiding the things we’re not supposed to do.
- three kinds of conformity:
1. Compliance
- mildest kind of conformity
- going along with something because you expect to gain rewards or
avoid punishments
- When people comply, however, they don’t actually change their own
ideas or beliefs.
2. Identification
- stronger kind of conformity
- induced by a person’s desire to establish or maintain a relationship
with a person or group
- A person who identifies with a group conforms to their wishes and
follows their behavior.
3. Internalization
 - strongest kind of conformity
- individual adopts the beliefs of a leader or group.
- When internalization occurs, people believe in what they are doing.

Bureaucracy
- specific type of secondary group, are everywhere in your life—your university,
employer, internet service provider, fast-food restaurant, and even church
- designed to perform tasks efficiently, and they approach their tasks, whatever they
are, with calculations designed deliberately to meet their goals
- Bureaucracies have certain organizational traits, which help them operate efficiently.
Max Weber identified these characteristics in 1921 (1921/1968):
1. Specialization: All members of a bureaucracy are assigned specialized roles
and tasks.
2. Technical competence: Bureaucratic members are specially trained for their
specific roles.
3. Hierarchy: Bureaucracies always feature the supervision of subordinates by
higher ranking managers and bosses.
4. Rules and regulations: These are meant to make all operations as predictable
as possible.
5. Impersonality: In a bureaucracy, rules come before people; no individual
receives special treatment.
6. Formal written communication: Documents such as memos (or e-mails) are
the heart of the organization and the most effective way to communicate.

The McDonaldization of Society

- secondary groups that operate on the principle of rationalization, in which rules and
regulations are paramount and an individual’s unique personal qualities are
unimportant
- Trickling down to everyday life

Module 8
Deviance
- a behavior, trait, or belief that departs from a norm and generates a negative reaction
in a particular group
- importance of norms becomes clear when we remember that what is deviant in one
culture might be normal in another
- must be sufficiently serious or unusual to spark a negative sanction or punishment

Deviance Across Cultures

- If a particular behavior is considered deviant, this means that it violates the values
and norms of a particular group, not that it is inherently wrong or that other groups
will make the same judgment
- they also differ in how those crimes are punished

Theories of Deviance

Functionalism
 - argue that each element of social structure helps maintain the stability of society
- Function of Deviance : can help a society clarify its moral boundaries

Conflict Theory
- inequalities are present in our definitions of deviance as well
- elieve that rules are applied unequally and that punishments for rule violators are
unequally distributed:
- those at the top are subject to different rules and sanctions than those nearer the
bottom
- behaviors of less powerful groups and individuals are more likely to be criminalized
than the behaviors of the powerful.
- I.E. History of Vagrancy Law by William Chambliss
- target different groups—the homeless, the unemployed, racial
minorities—depending on who seemed most threatening to the elites at the
time

Symbolic Interactionism
- the way that interpersonal relation-ships and everyday inter- actions shape definitions
of deviance
- Edwin Sutherland’s differential association theory
- asserts that we learn to be deviant through our interactions with others who
break the rules
- Howard Becker’s labeling theory
- deviance is not inherent in any act, belief, or condition; instead, it is
determined by the audience

Stigma and Deviant Identity

Stigma
- meant to serve as an outward indication that there was something shameful about
the bearer
- this day we continue to use the term to signify some disgrace or failing
- Once an individual has been labeled as deviant, he is stigmatized and acquires what
Goffman calls a “spoiled identity.”
- There are three main types of stigma
- physical (including physical or mental impairments)
- moral (signs of a flawed character)
- tribal (membership in a discredited or oppressed group
- any departure from the norm can have a stigmatizing effect

“Positive” Deviance
- instances when a rule violation is actually a principled act that should generate a
positive rather than negative reaction
- I.e. simple act of civil disobedience by Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955

Module 9
Social stratification
 - One form or another is present in all societies. This means that members of a given
society are categorized and divided into groups, which are then placed in a social
hierarchy.
- according to their gender, race, class, age, or other characteristic, depending on
whatever criteria are important to that society
- Some groups will be ranked higher in the social strata (levels), while others will fall
into the lower ranks.
- higher-level groups enjoy more access to the rewards and resources within that
society, leaving lower-level groups with less.

Principles of Social Stratification

1. characteristic of a society, rather than a reflection of individual differences.
2. social stratification persists over generations.
3. while all societies stratify their members, different societies use different criteria for
ranking them.
4. social stratification is maintained through beliefs that are widely shared by members
of society.

social inequality
- Result of unequal distribution of wealth, power, and prestige

Systems of Stratification
1. Slavery
- the most extreme system of social stratification
- relegates people to the status of property, mainly for the purpose of providing
labor for the slave owner.
- can thus be bought and sold like any other commodity.
- Occupying the lowest rank in the social hierarchy, slaves have none of the
rights common to free members of the same societies in which they live.
- Historically, a person could become enslaved in one of several ways.
- debtt
- warfare
- caught committing a crime
- captured and kidnapped
- Slavery as an economic system was profitable for the slave owner.
- Children will become slaves too
2. caste system
- is based on heredity, whereby whole groups of people are born into a certain
stratum.
- may be differentiated along religious, economic, or political lines, as well as
by skin color or other physical characteristics.
- little or no chance of a person changing her position within the hierarchy, no
matter what she may achieve individually.
- marry within their own group, and their caste ranking is passed on to their
children.
- five categories(hindu): (spiritual rather than material)
- Brahman (scholars and priests)
- ksatriya or chhetri (rulers and warriors)
 - vaisya (merchants and traders
- sudra (farmers, artisans, and laborers)
- untouchables (social outcasts).
- reflection of what Hindus call karma, the complex moral law of cause
and effect that governs the universe (S. P. Cohen 2001).
3. Social class
- a system of stratification practiced primarily in capitalist societies, ranks
groups of people according to their wealth, property, power, and prestige.
- referred to by sociologists as socioeconomic status (SES).
- much less rigid than the caste system.
- children tend to “inherit” the social class of their parents, over the course of a
lifetime they can move up or down levels in the strata.

Theories of Social Class

1. Karl Marx
- The feudal system, which consisted of a hierarchy of privileged nobles who
were responsible for and served by a lower stratum of serfs (forced laborers),
was breaking down.
- concerned about a new kind of social inequality between the capitalists
(bourgeoisie), who owned the means of production, and the workers
(proletariat), who owned only their own labor.
2. Max Weber
- owning the means of production was not the only way of achieving
upper-class status; a person could also accumulate wealth consisting of
income and property
- Weber suggests that power (the ability to impose one’s will on others) should
be considered as part of the equation when measuring a person’s class
standing.
- Prestige
- the social honor granted to people because of their membership in
certain groups
- can affect not only their wealth or power but also how they are
perceived in social situations
- wealth, power, and prestige are interrelated because they often come
together, but it is also possible to convert one to the other
3. Symbolic Interactionism
- Interactionists believe that all social structures—including systems of
inequality—are constructed from the building blocks of everyday interaction.
- David Sudnow (1972) argues that we make split-second judgments about
who people are and which social status they occupy based on appearance.
- Aaron Cicourel (1972) suggests that we make inferences about the status of
others when we encounter them in different social situations
- Erving Goffman (1956) noted that we “read” different aspects of identity by
interpreting the behavior of others and that we become accustomed to others
“reading” our behavior in the same way
- class consciousness, or awareness of our own and others’ social status, is
important for us to understand but difficult to identify empirically
Race and Ethnicity as Lived Experience
- society categorizes people based on their race and ethnicity (and all societies do), it
creates a system of stratification that leads to inequality
Race
- social category, based on real or perceived biological differences between groups of
people.
- more meaningful to us on a social level than it is on a biological level (Montagu 1998)

Ethnicity
- another social category that is applied to a group with a shared ancestry or cultural
heritage

Racism, Prejudice and Discrimination

Racism
- an ideology or set of beliefs about the superiority of one racial or ethnic group over
another, provides this support;
- it is used to justify social arrangements between the dominant and minority groups.
- beliefs are often rooted in the assumption that differences between groups are
innate, or biologically based. T
- hey can also arise from a negative view of a group’s cultural characteristics. In both
cases, racism presumes that one group is better than another.
Prejudice
- literally a “prejudgment,” is an inflexible attitude about a particular group of people
and is rooted in generalizations or stereotypes.
- leads to discrimination
Discrimination
- an action or behavior that results in the unequal treatment of individuals because of
their membership in a certain racial or ethnic group.

Module 10
Social institutions
- systems and structures that organize our group life, such as school, religion, and the
government
- shape and constrain our everyday lives

1. Politics
- politics comes from the Greek politikos meaning citizens, civic, civil, and
political.
- pertains especially to the methods and tactics of managing a political entity
such as a nation or state
- attitudes and activities of groups and individuals.

Political Systems: Government

Government
- formal, organized agency that exercises power and control in modern society.
- vested with the power and authority to make laws and enforce them.
- power as the ability to get others to do one’s bidding.
 - Authority they refer to the legitimate, noncoercive exercise of power

TOTAL POWER AND AUTHORITY.

Authoritarianism
- political system that denies ordinary citizens representation by and control over their
own government.
- citizens have no say in who rules them, what laws are made, and how those laws
are enforced.
- political power is concentrated in the hands of a few elites who control military and
economic resources.
- A dictatorship is one form of authoritarian system. In most instances, a dictator does
not gain power by being elected or through succession but seizes power and
becomes an absolutist ruler.

Totalitarianism
- most extreme and modern version of authoritarianism.
- The government seeks to control every aspect, public and private, of citizens’ lives.
utilize all the contrivances of surveillance technology, systems of mass
communication, and modern weapons to control its citizens (Arendt 1958).
- headed by a dictator, whether a ruler or a single political party. Through propaganda,
- control the population by disseminating ideology aimed at shaping their thoughts,
values, and attitudes.

MONARCHIES AND THE STATE

Monarchies
- governments ruled by a king or queen.
- sovereignty is vested in a successive line of rulers, usually within a family
- not popularly elected and not usually accountable to the general citizenry, and some
may rule by “divine right,” the idea that they are leaders chosen by God

CITIZENS AND DEMOCRACY

Democracy
- originated in ancient Greece and represented a radical new political system.
- share in directing the activities of their government rather than being ruled by an
autocratic individual or authoritarian group.
- not only a political system but also a philosophy that emphasizes the right and
capacity of individuals, acting either directly or through representatives, to control
through majority rule the institutions that govern them.
- associated with the values of basic human rights, civil liberties, freedom, and equality.

2. Education
- central means by which a society transmits its knowledge, values, and
expectations to its members.
- general goal of education is to give students the necessary understanding for
effective social functioning.
- includes the transmission of principles and values, the regulation of personal
character, and discipline of the mind.
 - can be either formal or informal and can occur in a variety of settings,

Tracking
- in which students are identified as gifted or placed into remedial education, teach us
about success and achievement and our chances for both
Hidden curriculum
- the lessons that students learn indirectly but that are an implicit part of their
socialization in the school environment
- nonacademic roles filled by mass education

3. Religion
- For sociologists, religion includes:
- any institutionalized system of shared beliefs (propositions and ideas held on
the basis of faith)
- rituals (practices based on those beliefs) that identify a relationship between
the sacred (holy, divine, or supernatural)
- profane (ordinary, mundane, or everyday).
- Types of religious groups:
- denominations (major subgroups of larger religions, such as
Protestantism within Christianity or Shia within Islam)
- sects (smaller subgroups such as the Amish or Mennonites)
- cults (usually very small, intense, close-knit groups focused on
individual leaders—like David Koresh and the Branch Davidians—or
specific issues like the UFO cult Heaven’s Gate).
FUNCTIONS OF RELIGION.
1. shapes everyday behavior by providing morals, values, rules, and norms for its
participants.
- Religious practices usually include some type of penance or rehabilitation for
those who break the rules
2. religion is to give meaning to our lives
3. religion provides the opportunity to come together with others—to share in group
activity and identity, to form cohesive social organizations, and to be part of a
congregation of like-minded others.
Conflict perspective
- the doctrines of the three major monotheistic religions—religions that worship one
divine figure (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam)—are quite sexist.
- There are very few nonsexist religions, and those with strongly nonsexist values and
practices (such as Wicca) are usually marginalized.

4. Economic Systems
- social institution that coordinates human activity to produce, distribute, and
consume goods and services.
- Goods include any product that is extracted from the earth, manufactured, or
grown—corn, clothing, petroleum, automobiles, coal, and computers
- Services include activities performed for others that result in no tangible
product, such as theater productions, transportation, financial advice, medical
care, spiritual counseling, and education.
 - no economy fully realizes capitalist or socialist principles and that, in practice,
societies are some combination of these two systems.
Classification of Economic Systems
Capitalism
- economic system based on the laws of free market competition, privatization of the
means of production, and production for profit.
- In its purest form, values for goods and services are derived solely by the market
relationship between supply and demand.
- tends to encourage class stratification. Because owners, or capitalists, make profits,
they can accumulate wealth. Workers are not in a structural position to get ahead
financially.
- ideologies of the free market, private property, and profit-seeking motives that define
capitalism also shape institutions other than the economy.
- increasing privatization of basic human services such as health care, housing, and
education.
- encouraged to be productive and efficient or they will suffer reduced wages,
decreased social welfare services such as health insurance and retirement,
downsizing, and layoffs.
- encourages efficiency through technological innovation, expansion of markets, and
reduction of production costs.
Socialism
- economic system based on collective ownership of the means of production,
collective distribution of goods and services, and government regulation of the
economy.
- there are no private for-profit transactions.
- In its purest form, socialism seeks to meet the basic needs of all citizens rather than
encouraging profits for some individuals over others.
- government rather than individuals owns or at least regulates the ownership of all
businesses, farms, and factories, and profits are redistributed to the collective
citizenry.
- encourages a collectivist work ethic with workers theoretically working for the
common good of all citizens.
- services are an entitlement of all people, not just those who can afford them.
- In communism, the most extreme form of socialism, the government owns everything
and all citizens work for the government and are considered equal, with no class
distinctions.
- Theoreticals or ideal types

Welfare state
- an economic system that is a hybrid of capitalism and socialism.
- In this economic model the government (through taxes) assumes a key role in
providing social and economic benefits to some or all of its citizens, including
unemployment benefits, supplemental income, child care, social security, basic
medical care, transportation, education (including college), or housing.
- Under one welfare state model, such benefits are provided to those who fall below a
set minimum standard, such as a poverty line or a certain income level.
 - Under a second welfare state model, the benefits are awarded in a more
comprehensive way to everyone in the population (e.g., all families with children, all
college-age students, universal health care).

5. family
- social group whose members are bound by some type of tie—legal,
biological, emotional, or a combination of all three.
- an integral social institution found in every society.
- Before the Industrial Revolution, family tended to mean extended family—a
large group of kin, or relatives, which could include grandparents, uncles,
aunts, and cousins living in one household.
- After the Industrial Revolution, this configuration was largely superseded by
the nuclear family—a heterosexual couple in their own household raising
children.
- amily moved from a more public social institution to a private one, as many
functions formerly associated with the family were transferred to other
institutions.

Diversity in Families
Endogamy
- marrying someone of similar race or ethnicity, class, education, religion, region, or
nationality.
Exogamy
- marrying someone from a different social group.

Monogamy
- or marrying only one individual at a time, is still considered the only legal form of
marriage in modern culture.
Polygamy
- or having multiple spouses, may be practiced among some subcultures around the
world, but is not widely acknowledged as a legitimate form of marriage.
- polygyny, where a man is married to multiple wives.
- Polyandry, where a woman has multiple husbands

Forming Relationships, Selecting Mates

Homogamy
- means “like marries like”: we tend to choose mates who are similar to us in class,
race, ethnicity, age, religion, education, and even levels of attractiveness.
- There are considerable social pressures to adhere to homogamy.
Propinquity
- geographical proximity: we tend to choose people who live nearby.
- This is logical; mates among the people in our neighborhood, at work, or at school.
- The internet makes courtship and romance possible across much greater
geographical areas. But even this technology may intensify homogamy by bringing
together people with very specific interests and identities.
Module 11

Social Change
- Transformation of culture over time

Social Revolutions
- Periods of time during which large-scale social change took place so rapidly that the
whole of human society was dramatically redefined.

How does social change occur?

a. Major physical event that can radically alter the structures and cultures of the
communities when they strike
b. Demographic factors
c. Discoveries and innovations

Society is always changing and this social change is often the result of human action.

Population
- The study of population helps to understand the relationship between the social world
and the natural world.

Demography
- Study of the size, composition, distribution, and changes in human population
- Essentially a macro-level, quantitative approach to society
- Population dynamics are influenced both by biological and sociological factors
- Demographic variable
a. Fertility rate - the average number of births per 1,000 people in the total
population
b. Mortality rate - the number of deaths that can be expected per 1,000 people
per year
c. Infant mortality rate - the average number of deaths per 1,000 live births
d. Life expectancy – the average age to which a person can expect to live
e. Migration - the movement of people from one geographic area to another for
the purposes of resettling
i. Immigration - movement of people those coming into a country or
region that they are not native
ii. Emigration - movement of people in which departing from a country or
region with the intention of settling permanently elsewhere.
iii. International migration - patterns within a country, where the
movement is generally from rural to urban areas.
iv. Net migration - the difference between the number of persons entering
and leaving a country during the year per 1,000 persons.
- The study of population dynamics involves the interplay among the three sources of
population change: fertility, mortality, and migration

Urbanization
- The process of growing numbers of people moves from rural to urban areas.
 - The wide-scale development of cities was made possible by the significant social,
economic, and political changes.

Social Movements
- Collectives with a degree of leadership, organization, and ideological commitment to
promote or resist change (Perry and Pugh)
- Social movements challenge cultural codes and transform the lives of their
participants (Meyer)
- Social movements develop in stages, as it begins with few ideas and some people
believe in them
- Incipient stage, first stage, this when the public takes notice of a situation and defines
it as a problem
- Coalesce, second stage, in which their movement gained momentum, such as when
the people start to organize and pushing for legislation to improve the issue
- Bureaucratized, third stage, this when all successful movements are eventually
incorporated into institutions
- Perry and Pugh assert that in order to survive, social movements must adapt to their
host society or success in changing it
- Decline, stage 4, in which the social movement looks a lot like a failure or the
movement eventually declines. If it succeeds, it is incorporated into the dominant
culture, but when it fails, it ceases to exist as an active movement but may have left
an indelible mark on its host society nevertheless.