A global problem that afflicts half the world’s population, the term for people who are so poor they do not have the ability to sustain their lives and lack the most basic necessities like food and shelter.
Status or social position based on one’s accomplishments or activities.
The process of acquiring a new culture and language.
A life stage between childhood and adulthood that gained its meaning late in the nineteenth century.
The belief that men must look like Greek gods, with perfect chins, thick hair, rippling muscles, and washboard abdominal muscles.
Christine Williams and Catherine Connell’s term for employment practices designed to attract middle-class workers to relatively poor, low-wage retail jobs by attempting to attract employees who embody the look and feel they are attempting to sell without necessarily appearing to do so.
A group of people who are born within a specific time period and therefore assumed to share both chronological and functional characteristics, as well as life experiences.
The term sociologists use to refer to the forms of social organization that are based on age and through which we pass over the course of our lives.
Distinctive cultural values, pursuits, and pastimes that are culturally prescribed for each age cohort.
The people, groups, and institutions that teach all of us how to be functioning members of society.
A person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God, usually asserting that nothing is known or can be known about the existence or nature of God.
The transition from a society dependent on hunting and gathering for food to one that maintains a diet cultivated through farming.
The state or experience of estrangement from a group to which one should belong.
Between 1776 and 1838, European society underwent a dramatic change—politically, economically, and intellectually—in part inspired by the work of Enlightenment thinkers. These revolutions replaced absolutist monarchs with republics, where power rested not on the divine right of kings and queens but on the consent of the people.
The practice, conscious or not, of placing males or masculinity at the center of one’s worldview and treating masculinity as though it has higher status and value than femininity.
A term developed by Émile Durkheim to describe a state of disorientation and confusion that results from too little social regulation, in which institutional constraints fail to provide a coherent foundation for action.
The process of learning and adopting the beliefs, values, and behaviors of groups that one anticipates joining in the future.
A race-based caste system that mandated segregation of different racial groups. In South Africa it was a political system institutionalized by the White minority in 1948 and remained in effect until 1990.
The abandonment or renunciation of a religious belief.
Prejudice or discrimination based on physical appearance and particularly physical appearance believed to fall short of societal notions of beauty.
Status that is assigned to a person and over which he or she has no control.
A sexual identity organized around having no sexual desire for anyone.
A process of decline in cultural distinctions between immigrants and mainstream society.
The idea that as we are around one another for sustained periods of time, ethnic distinctions will gradually erode.
A person who does not believe in the existence of God.
When power is vested in a single person or small group. Sometimes that person holds power through heredity, sometimes through force or terror, as with totalitarian regimes.
Power that is perceived as legitimate, by both the holder of power and those subject to it.
This large generation born after the end of World War II between 1946 to 1964 created a big bulge in the populations of Europe and North America and is the biggest age cohort in American history—77 million babies in the United States.
The name given to the social scientific finding that, confronted with evidence challenging their beliefs, people tend to reject the evidence and become even more attached to their challenged belief.
A systematic prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another.
Tracing one’s ancestry through both parents, rather than only the mother (see matrilineal) or only the father (see patrilineal).
The variety of life in the world or in a particular habitat or ecosystem
A sexual identity organized around attraction to both women and men.
Speaking profanely about God or sacred things.
Families formed when two divorced or unmarried parents with children marry (with stepparents, stepsiblings, and possibly half-siblings as well).
Jobs involved with production rather than knowledge.
The subjective picture or mental image of one’s own body.
An active process in which we all participate, it refers to the ways we selectively call attention to gender difference (and simultaneously ignore gender similarities).
Popularized by Karl Marx, term for the upper-class capitalists who owned the means of production. In Marx’s time, they owned factories instead of farms. Today the term is also used to refer to upper-class managers who wield a lot of power.
Originally derived from the French word bureau, or office, a formal organization characterized by a division of labor, a hierarchy of authority, formal rules governing behavior, a logic of rationality, and an impersonality of criteria.
Robert Merton’s term to describe those people who become more committed to following the correct procedures than they are to getting the job done.
Someone who witnesses something wrong, harmful, dangerous, or illegal, yet does nothing to intervene
The diffusion of responsibility among groups of bystanders, in which they assume that as long as others are observing the problem, they are no more responsible than anyone else to intervene.
A process by which a young man (a “suitor”) would obtain permission for access to a young woman, and ascertain her interest in forming a romantic attachment, all beginning with a request to “call,” or visit her at home, initially under the watchful eyes of her parents and extended family.
The officially recognized set of foundational sociologists.
Natural resources, manufactured goods, and professional services.
An economic system in which free individuals pursue their own private interests in the marketplace. In laissez-faire capitalism, markets freely compete without government intervention. State capitalism requires that the government use a heavy hand in regulating and constraining the marketplace, and welfare capitalism creates a market-based economy for most goods and services, yet also has social welfare programs and government ownership of essential services.
All tasks that directly involve care processes done in service of others.
A fixed and permanent stratification system to which one is assigned at birth.
A relationship between two or more variables in which one (independent) variable can be shown to actually cause a change in a dependent variable or variables in reliable ways.
The term used when one variable causes another to change.
Form of authority derived from the personal appeal of a specific leader.
Actions on the part of parents or caretakers that result in physical, emotional, or psychological harm (or the risk of such harm) to children.
The sexual exploitation of children.
A term for women and men who forego having children as a personal choice.
A term for women and men who forego having children out of necessity.
The subtle ways teachers reinforce both gender difference and gender inequality through class materials and interaction dynamics that often reflect stereotyped differences between women and men, boys and girls.
The sociological thesis that women are treated more leniently for committing certain crimes by police, judges, and juries who are likely to perceive them as less dangerous and their criminal activities less consequential. Women who belong to stigmatized groups—who are black, Hispanic, or lesbian, for instance—are more likely to be arrested and convicted, perhaps because they are not granted the same status as more privileged women in the mainstream.
A person’s age as determined by the actual date of his or her birth.
People whose gender identities are consistent with the identities they were assigned at birth based on sex characteristics.
Robert Bellah’s term for the values that hold societies together that are expressed through “religious-like” practices—defining moral and ethical boundaries through ritualized practices (like the Pledge of Allegiance in the United States)
A group of people sharing the same social position in society. Class is based on income, power, and prestige.
Awareness of social class and class inequality.
System of stratification in which people are ranked according to their economic position.
A small group of people with shared interests or other features in common who spend time together and do not readily allow others to join them.
One in which membership is not voluntary, with elaborate formal rules and sanctions.
Once called “shacking up” or “living in sin,” now more often called just “living together,” the sociological term for people who are in a romantic relationship but not married living in the same residence.
A political-economic system under which powerful countries establish, for their own profit, rule over weaker peoples or countries and exploit them for natural resources and cheap labor.
The process of disregarding race as a method attempting to realize or express equality, it has the unintended consequence of reproducing racial inequality in new ways.
Envisioned as the ideal economic system by Karl Marx, communism would produce and distribute resources “from each according to his or her ability, to each according to his or her need,” erasing social inequalities along with crime, hunger, and political strife.
The (historically recent) idea that people should select their own marriage partner based on compatibility and mutual attraction.
An error in logic that results when comparing two groups that are different, assuming they are the same, and drawing an inference based on that false assumption.
The extreme density of socio-economic deprivation in a particular area.
The tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of our existing beliefs.
Theoretical approach that stresses the competition for scarce resources and unequal distribution of those resources based on social status (such as class, race, gender).
The elements that impede accurate measurements of the impact of one variable on another.
Thorstein Veblen’s term to describe a new form of prestige based on accumulating and displaying possessions.
An economy driven by consumer spending
The purchase and use of goods and services.
Research method in which one analyzes artifacts (books, movies, TV programs, magazine articles, and so on) instead of people.
Provisional group of workers who work on a contract, project, or other nonpermanent basis.
In an experiment, the comparison group that will not experience the manipulation of the independent variable (the experimental group). Having a control group enables sociologists to compare the outcomes of the experiment to determine if the changes in the independent variable had any effects on the dependent variable.
Punishment that is physical, often involving hitting someone.
The term for the fact of some relationship between two phenomena.
Subculture that identifies itself through its difference and opposition to the dominant culture.
The violent replacing of one political leader with another; often doesn’t bring with it any change in the daily life of the citizens.
A society based more on the credentialing aspects of education—diplomas, degrees, and certificates—than any substantive knowledge.
A deviant act that lawmakers consider bad enough to warrant formal laws and sanctions.
The study of crime that has developed into a subdiscipline separate from the sociology of deviance, with its own special theories about the causes and consequences of different kinds of crimes.
An aggregate of individuals who happen to be together but experience themselves as essentially independent.
The simplest form of religious organization, characterized typically by fervent believers and a single idea or leader.
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s term for the cultural articles—ideas, artistic expressions, forms of music or literature—that function as resources that people in the dominant class can use to justify their dominance.
The spreading of new ideas through a society, independent of population movement.
The vast differences between the cultures of the world as well as the differences in belief and behavior that exist within cultures.
The deliberate imposition of one country’s culture on another country.
Sociologist Richard Peterson’s term for people with more cosmopolitan tastes.
A position that all cultures are equally valid in the experience of their own members.
A repertoire of habits, skills, and styles from which people construct their identities.
One of the rituals, customs, and symbols that are evident in all societies.
Sociologist Richard Peterson’s term for people with narrow ranges of tastes.
Both the material basis for social life and the sets of values and ideals that we understand to define morality, good and evil, appropriate and inappropriate.
The relatively gradual process by which nonmaterial elements of culture catch up with changes in material culture and technology.
A culture driven and defined by consumption choices and behaviors.
Oscar Lewis’s theory that poverty is not a result of individual inadequacies but larger social and cultural factors. Poor children are socialized into believing that they have nothing to strive for, that there is no point in working to improve their conditions. As adults, they are resigned to a life of poverty, and they socialize their children the same way. Therefore poverty is transmitted from one generation to another.
A feeling of disorientation when the cultural markers that we rely on to help us know where we are and how to act have suddenly changed.
Often symbolic clashes of ideas, symbols, or values between groups who support certain changes and those who want to resist change.
The parent whose residence is considered a “primary residence” for the child or children after separation or divorce.
The growing array of crimes committed via the Internet and World Wide Web, such as Internet fraud and identity theft.
The plural of datum. Data are systematically collected and systematically organized bits of information.
A courtship practice that arose in the 1920s in which young adults participated in recreational activities in pairs rather than groups prior to engaging in long-term commitments to one another.
Reasoning that logically proceeds from one demonstrable fact to the next. It often moves from the general to the more specific.
The clearing of forests for crops and development.
The re-integration of the sick back into society, instead of isolating them in separate places like mental institutions.
In the 1970s, advocates sought to relocate patients to “half-way” houses and community-based organizations to help reintegrate them into society, yet care alternatives were plagued by disorganization and under-financing, and many severely and persistently mentally ill people were left without essential services resulting in increasing numbers of mentally ill people on the streets or in prisons because there is no place else for them to go.
Derived from the Greek word demos (people); puts legislative decision making into the hands of the people rather than a single individual or a noble class.
A population theory that shows that the transition from high birth and death rates to lower birth and death rates as a country or region develops from a preindustrial to an industrialized economic system.
The scientific study of human populations; one of the oldest and most popular branches of sociology. Demographers are primarily concerned with the statistics of birth, death, and migration.
A large-scale, extremely organized religious body with established hierarchy and methods for credentialing administrators, and much more social respect than either a cult or a sect.
Theory of poverty that focuses on the unequal relationship between wealthy countries and poor countries, arguing that poverty is caused by policies and practices by the rich that block economic growth of poor countries and exploit workers.
The variable whose change depends on the introduction of the independent variable.
The process by which fertile land becomes desert, usually as a result of deforestation, drought, or indiscriminate human use for agriculture, such as intensive farming, overgrazing, or repeated burning.
A perspective that constrains the researcher from becoming in any way involved in the event he or she is observing. This reduces the amount that the researchers’ observations will change the dynamic that they are watching.
Violating a social or moral rule, or refusing to follow one, whether or not that act is illegal.
A type of totalitarian political system in which power is held by one person, who may or may not have a hereditary claim on power, usually with military support.
Edwin H. Sutherland’s theory suggesting that deviance occurs when an individual receives more prestige and less punishment by violating norms than by following them.
According to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, disability is “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.”
Is more interested in patterns of portrayal evident in a collection of “texts” that might be difficult to quantify.
A set of actions based on prejudice and stereotypes.
How many new cases of a disease are reported in a given place during a specified time frame.
The distribution of the disease over different groups of the same population.
The ways couples divide up all of the chores and obligations necessary to run a household.
The assignment of different tasks to different people to improve efficiency in production.
The legal dissolution of a marriage.
A social scientific measure of the proportion of marriages that end in divorce.
The ways couples divide up all of the chores and obligations necessary to run a household.
W. E. B. Du Bois term for the social experience of black Americans as divided, often against oneself, as “two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
Erving Goffman’s conception of social interaction as like an actor preparing to perform a part in a play.
Erving Goffman’s conception of social life as being like a stage play wherein we all work hard to convincingly play ourselves as “characters,” such as grandchild, buddy, student, employee, or other roles.
The pervasive condition in the United States in which work and workers are divided into different sectors—primary or secondary, formal or informal, and also male or female.
A group of two people, the smallest configuration defined by sociologists as a group.
Three other major religions of the world—Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism (plus some minor ones)—are called “Eastern” because they arose in Asia, although, like the Western Religions, they have adherents around the world.
A political assembly of the faithful in which the clerical elite often serve as political leaders or at least formal advisors to political leaders. Everyone in the society belongs to that faith by birth, not individual decision, and those who do not belong to the faith cannot become citizens.
A mechanism that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services in a particular society.
A set of institutions and relationships that manage capital.
An interdependent system in which the animals, plants, and the material substances that make up the physical world live.
A social institution through which society provides its members with important knowledge—basic facts, job skills, and cultural norms and values and lessons in socialization, cultural innovation, and social integration.
Marriage between people who are similar to one another in educational attainment.
The extent to which different groups lack access to the educational opportunities and experiences systematically made more available to other groups.
Freud’s term for the balancing force in the psyche between the id and the superego; it channels impulses into socially acceptable forms.
The physical, sexual, psychological, and financial abuse and neglect of people of a vulnerable age.
Outflow of people from one society to another.
The number of people leaving a territory each year for every 1,000 in the population.
Arlie Hochschild’s phrase for the process by which workers are expected to manage their feelings in accordance with organizationally defined rules and guidelines.
The strong tendency to marry within one’s own social group (often with the same race, religion, class, educational background for instance).
Also called “The Age of Reason,” theorists challenged the established social order, like the rule of the monarchy and hereditary aristocracy, and the ideas that justified it, like the “divine right of kings.” It was during the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the idea of the “individual” took shape.
A sudden environmental change that results in a major loss of life and/or property; it can originate in nature, be human-orchestrated, or be a combination of the two.
The ways that different groups in society experience uneven exposure to environmental risks and hazards.
The idea that all groups, people, and communities are entitled to equal protections by environmental health laws and regulations.
In the United States, the environmental movement has organized itself around two different claims, both still with us in policies and organizations today: conservationists, who want to manage the United States’ natural resources for long-term use and exploitation, and protectionists, who seek to protect the land for its own sake and urge the setting aside of land and resources to be protected from human exploitation.
A type of discrimination where people of low-income or minority communities are forced to live in close proximity of environmentally hazardous or degraded environments (like landfills, toxic waste, pollution, or urban decay).
The study of the causes and distribution of disease and disability.
The mass expulsion or killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society.
Ethnically and linguistically contained neighborhoods.
A group that is set apart from other groups by language and cultural traditions. Ethnic groups share a common ancestry, history, or culture.
Process by which ethnic identities are reconstituted and reclaimed after having been discarded earlier.
Social category that depends on an assumption of inherent cultural differences to rate and organize social groups.
The use of one’s own culture as the reference point by which to evaluate other cultures; it often depends on or leads to the belief that one’s own culture is superior to others.
A type of field method in which the researcher inserts him- or herself into the daily world of the people he or she is trying to study to understand the events from the point of view of the actors themselves.
The study of the social knowledge, codes, and conventions that underlie everyday interactions and allow people to make sense of what others say and do.
Small-scale political acts in the context of everyday life that connect us to political life just as civil religion allows us to connect in religious-like ways even when we’re participating in things that might not seem all that “religious.”
The belief, typically used to justify traditional assumptions about masculinity and femininity, that males and females developed different reproductive strategies to ensure that they reproduce successfully and are able to pass on their genetic material to the next generation.
Marriage among people who belong to meaningfully different social groups (race, religion, social class, etc.).
As people are living longer, this trend describes the increasing time they will spend in bad health.
A research process that is performed under controlled conditions to examine the validity of a hypothesis by carefully varying conditions between groups.
In an experiment, the group that will experience the experimental condition being measured to examine what happens. See control group.
The family model in which two or three generations live together: grandparents, parents, unmarried uncles and aunts, married uncles and aunts, sisters, brothers, cousins, and all of their children.
Risks produced by the natural environment, and thus, largely outside of human control (e.g., earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and tornados).
In dramaturgical theory, the possible performance of ourselves, because when we make a mistake or do something wrong, we feel embarrassed, or “lose face.”
Short-lived, highly popular, and widespread behavior, style, or mode of thought.
The basic unit in society, these social groups are socially understood as either biologically, emotionally, and/or legally related.
The family a child is born or adopted into, with biological parents or others who are responsible for his or her upbringing.
The family one creates through marriage or cohabitation with a romantic partner, to which one chooses to belong.
Arising in the nineteenth century, the term refers to a wage sufficient for a single wage earner to support a family (spouse and children).
A behavior, style, or idea that is more permanent and often begins as a fad.
The maximum number of children a woman could have during her childbearing years.
Arlie Hochschild’s term for socially shared norms that influence how people should demonstrate how they feel in different settings.
Punitive U.S. policy that denies people convicted of a felony the right to vote even after a sentence has been served. The presence of restrictions, and their extent, vary by the state in which the felony was committed and the year in which it was committed.
The belief that women should have equal political, social, sexual, economic, and intellectual rights and opportunities to men.
A worldwide phenomenon that also afflicts U.S. women, this term describes women’s overrepresentation among the world’s poor and tendency to be in worse economic straits than men in any given nation or population.
Widely demonstrated sociological phenomenon in which salaries drop as women’s participation increases in a particular job category or profession.
The number of children a woman bears.
The number of births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 in a calendar year.
A fixed and permanent social structure based on mutual obligation, in which peasants worked the estates belonging to a small group of feudal lords, who fed and protected them. A peasant’s only avenue to social advancement was to enter a convent or monastery.
Similar to “urban tribes,” the term refers to people with whom we form kinship ties and family networks even though they are not legally or biologically tied to us as kin.
Any site where the interactions or processes you want to study are taking place, such as an institution like a school or a specific community.
The experimental examination of an intervention in a naturally occurring environment rather than in the laboratory.
Students whose parents did not go to college.
One of the relatively weak and informal norms that are the result of patterns of action. Many of the behaviors we call “manners” are folkways.
Business ventures offering higher education courses attuned to adult learners seeking practical, job-related skills.
A set of observable characteristics and attributes that are used to categorize people into different age cohorts.
Forms of religion that uphold belief in strict, literal interpretations of scripture.
Calling people or something they do “gay” as a way of ridiculing them or putting them down. Usually applied to men, it has little to do with sexual orientation, but instead accuses them of acting or appearing insufficiently masculine.
Social relations based on close personal and family ties.
A socially constructed definition based on sex category, based on the meanings that societies attach to the fact of sex differences.
The ways we systematically treat men and women (and boys and girls) differently.
The belief that humans come in two types: males, who behave in masculine ways, and females, who behave in feminine ways, which is a belief sociological research has shown is better understood as rooted in our culture than our nature.
One of the central social dynamics of gender noted by sociologists today, it refers to the gradual closing of the gender gap in many aspects of social life, rendering women’s and men’s lives increasingly more equal.
Our understanding of ourselves as male or female, masculine or feminine.
Gender inequality has two dimensions: the domination of men over women, and the domination of some men over other men and some women over other women.
Situations in which people react to ruptures in assumptions about gender assumed to be based in our biology by frantically reasserting the supposed “naturalness” of the male/female gender binary.
Student peers who act to enforce gender rules against transgressions large and small.
The enforcement of normative gender ideals by rewarding normative gender performances and punishing transgressions.
Sociologists today are more likely to use gender relations (rather than “role”) to emphasize how the definitions of masculinity and femininity are developed in relation to each other and to systems of social power and inequality.
The bundle of traits, attitudes, and behaviors that are associated with biological males and females.
Janet Hyde’s assertion, based on meta-research, that men and women are similar until proven otherwise.
Process by which males and females are taught the appropriate behaviors, attitudes, and traits associated with their biological sex in a particular culture.
The consistent, worldwide difference between what men are paid and what women are paid for the same labor.
Also called external validity or applicability; the extent to which the results of a study can be generalized to the general population.
The organized rules, judgments, and attitudes of an entire group. If you try to imagine what is expected of you, you are taking on the perspective of the generalized other.
Differences in outlook and opinion that arise between generations.
Sometimes called the “baby bust,” this generation born after the Baby Boom, between 1965 and 1979, is a small age cohort.
The generation of people born since 2000.
The planned, systematic destruction of a racial, political, or ethnic group.
The process by which poorer urban neighborhoods are “upgraded” through renovation and development, often pushing out long-time residents of lesser means who can no longer afford to live there.
The theory that some diseases are caused by microorganisms that invade humans, animals, and other living hosts. Their growth and reproduction within living hosts causes disease.
Scientific study of the biological, psychological, and sociological phenomena associated with old age and aging.
Social relations based on impersonal relations and formal organization, detached from traditional or sentimental concerns.
An unofficially acknowledged barrier to advancement in a profession, especially affecting women and members of minorities.
Christine Williams’s phrase for her research finding that men doing “women’s work” receive more, on average, than do the women doing that work.
Saskia Sassen’s term for cities around the world—New York, London, and Tokyo, for example—marked by so many multinational ties that their physical location within a country has a diminished impact on their social and cultural outlook and practices.
Worldwide network of labor and production processes, consisting of all pivotal production activities that form a tightly interlocked “chain” from raw materials to finished product to retail outlet to consumer. The most profitable activities in the commodity chain (engineering, design, advertising) are likely to be done in core countries, while the least profitable activities (mining or growing the raw materials, factory production) are likely to be done in peripheral countries.
A term that describes how the products we buy are likely made of materials from several countries, assembled in another country, packaged and distributed from yet another, with advertising campaigns and marketing schemes drawn from yet another.
Systematic differences in wealth and power among countries, often involving exploitation of the less powerful by the more powerful countries.
A term that describes how, in a global economy, goods are manufactured from raw materials and produced in factories all over the world in complex production chains and international labor forces.
Marshall McLuhan’s term for his vision of the way global electronic media would unite the world through mutual interaction and involvement.
A set of processes leading to the development of patterns of economic, cultural, and social relationships that transcend geographical boundaries; a widening, deepening, and speeding up of worldwide interconnectedness in all aspects of contemporary life.
The organization and administration of the actions of the inhabitants of communities, societies, and states.
A new category of advanced manufacturing jobs, it denotes work involved in environmental and renewable energy industries.
Caused by gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane, a phenomenon in which earth’s atmosphere traps radiation emitted by the sun, causing the planet’s surface to warm.
The total value of goods produced and services provided in a country during one year.
Collection of individuals who are aware that they share something in common and who interact with one another on the basis of their interrelated roles and statuses.
The degree to which individual members of a group identify with each other and with the group as a whole.
Rare marriage arrangement in which two or more men marry two or more women, with children born to anyone in the union “belonging” to all of the partners equally.
Irving Janis’s term for social process in which members of a group attempt to conform their opinions to what they believe to be the consensus of the group, even if, as individuals, they may consider that opinion wrong or unwise.
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s term for the practical mastery of self that arises, in part, out of class location and distance from necessity.
The small number of group members, the “inner circle,” who wield a great deal of power to make policy decisions.
A criminal act committed by an offender motivated by bias against race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or disability status. Anyone can commit a hate crime, but perpetrators usually belong to dominant groups (white, Christian, straight) and victims to disenfranchised groups (black, Jewish, Muslim, or gay).
Groups with beliefs or practices that attack or malign a class of people often due to immutable characteristics associated with the group (like sexual orientation, skin color, ancestry, gender identity).
The alteration of behavior by the subjects of a study because of their awareness of being observed.
Sociological term to refer to the ideology by which heterosexuality is simultaneously understood as both normal and normative.
The most common sexual orientation worldwide, it is sexual attraction between people of different sexes.
A means of socialization through which education not only creates social inequalities but makes them seem natural, normal, and inevitable.
A concept used to measure a range of sexual prejudices toward people identifying with sexual identities other than heterosexual, anything from distrust to disgust to hatred to violence.
A sexual identity organized around sexual desire for members of one’s own sex. In colloquial terms, homosexuals are often called gay.
A deliberately vague term for a sexual encounter that can refer to a great variety of different relationships and interactions, may nor may not include sexual intercourse, and usually occurs on only one occasion between two people who are strangers or brief acquaintances. Although that seems to cover most cases, it fails to include those heterosexuals who hook up more than once or twice, or “sex buddies” (acquaintances who meet regularly for sex but rarely if ever associate otherwise), or “friends with benefits” (friends who do not care to become romantic partners but may include sex among the activities they enjoy together).
A testable prediction for an event or phenomenon that assumes a relationship between two or more variables.
Sigmund Freud’s label for that part of the human personality that is pure impulse, without worrying about social rules, consequences, morality, or other people’s reactions.
The abstract mental concept of what a pure version of a social phenomenon, such as a bureaucracy, would look like.
The unique combination of group affiliations and social characteristics that each individual develops.
The concern with and performance of physical, symbolic, verbal, and behavioral self-representations designed to be taken as part of one’s identity.
The number of people entering a territory each year for every 1,000 people in population.
The number of people entering a territory each year for every 1,000 of the population.
Karl Marx’s theory that, as capitalism proceeded, the rich would get richer and the poor would get poorer, and that eventually the poor would become so poor that they had nothing else to lose and would revolt.
Erving Goffman’s term for our attempts to control how others perceive us by changing our behavior to correspond to an ideal of what they will find most appealing.
Sigmund Freud identified the taboo that one should not have sex with one’s own children as a foundation of all societies.
How a nation’s income is distributed among the population—within each individual nation, of the level of economic stratification in different societies. What it does is give us a better understanding of where economic growth is occurring.
In an experimental study, the agent of change, the ingredient that is added to set things in motion.
Research in which one reasons to a conclusion about all or many members of a collectivity based on examination of only a few members of that class. Loosely, it is reasoning from the specific to the general.
Economy based on factory production and technologies.
The rapid development of industry that occurred in numerous countries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reorganized the production and distribution of goods from the quaint system of craft production, in which apprentices learned trades and entered craft guilds, to large-scale factory production in which only the very few owned the factories and many workers had only their ability to work to sell to the highest bidder.
Those societies driven by the use of technology to enable mass production, supporting a large population with the capacity for a high division of labor.
The number of deaths per year per 1,000 infants (up to 1 year old) in a population.
Refers to economic activities and income that are partially or fully outside government regulation, taxation, and observation.
An act of Congress in 1970 made this a requirement of research. Only after all adult subjects of research (or the parents of minors) are clearly informed about its object and assured of confidentiality can they consent to participate. And only then can research proceed.
A group with which you identify and that you feel positively toward, producing a “we” feeling.
The social tendency to be keenly aware of the subtle differences among the individual members of your group.
The most subtle and pervasive type of discrimination, it is deeply embedded in such institutions as the educational system, the business world, health care, criminal justice, and the mass media. These social institutions promote discriminatory practices and traditions that have such a long history they just “seem to make sense,” and minority groups become the victims of systematic oppression, even when only a few people, or none at all, are deliberately trying to discriminate.
A committee established to review and approve research involving human subjects, it works to ensure that researchers comply with standards and ethics in conducting their research.
The physical intermingling of the races organized as a concerted legal and social effort to bring equal access and racial equality through racial mixing in institutions and communities.
An organized group that tries to influence the government to adopt certain policies or measures.
Changes in social status between different generations within the same family.
Moving from one region to another within a territory.
Once labeled “miscegenation,” a relationship between people of different racial categories.
Sociological term for the ways that different identities “intersect” with one another to shape our social identity and our experience of inequality.
People are said to have intersex traits when their bodies cannot be clearly categorized as fully male or female.
A variable that may not have been measured, but is responsible for the presumed relationship between independent and dependent variables in research.
Research method in which a researcher asks a small group of people open-ended questions.
Violence between people who either are or were in a sexual or romantic relationship with one another. It is commonly called “domestic violence,” but because some does not occur in the home, IPV is the preferred term.
Changes in a person’s social mobility throughout the course of a lifetime.
While Weber contended that rationality can free us from the theocratic past, he also argued that rationality can imprison us in an utterly dehumanized and mechanized world he termed “the iron cage.”
Cultural groupings that locate individuals in society by reference to their families, typically mapped as a network from closest (mother, father, siblings) to a little more distant (cousins, aunts, uncles) to increasingly distant (second-cousins twice removed).
An economy oriented around knowledge, and the quantity, quality, and accessibility of information, rather than on the production of commodities.
One defining element of the postindustrial economy; it is work that produces ideas and information as a new form of capital.
Often associated with self-fulfilling prophecy and stereotyping, labeling theory describes how self-identity and behavior of individuals may be determined or influenced by the terms used to describe or classify them.
Howard Becker’s term stresses the relativity of deviance, naming the mechanism by which the same act is considered deviant in some groups but not in others. Labels are used to categorize and contain people.
Class-based social movement that would instill a democratic society (actual rule by the numerical majority).
The original form of capitalism, theorized by Adam Smith, “laissez-faire” means “to leave alone” in French; under this system, governments would leave the marketplace alone to organize the economy, without government interference. (Smith believed that there were natural limits to people’s greed.) Markets should be able to compete freely to sell goods, acquire raw materials, and hire labor. No government interference is necessary: The “invisible hand” of supply and demand creates a self-regulating economy.
An organized set of symbols by which we are able to think and communicate with others; the chief vehicle by which human beings create a sense of self.
The unintended consequences of an action or event.
Refers to workplace discrimination that hampers or prevents LGBTQ people from being promoted.
One of the norms that has been organized and written down. Breaking this norm involves the disapproval not only of immediate community members but also of the agents of the state, who are charged with punishing such norm-breaking behavior.
People in charge, whether they were elected, appointed, or just informally took control of a group.
Those enduring forms of racial inequality that result from generations of systematic, institutionalized, legal forms of racial oppression.
Form of authority where leaders are to be obeyed not primarily as representatives of tradition or because of their personal qualities but because they are voicing a set of rationally derived laws.
A movement in Christian theology, developed mainly by Latin American Roman Catholics, that focuses on Jesus not only as savior but as the savior of the poor and emphasizes liberation from social, political, and economic oppression.
A person’s abilities to have access to material goods (food and shelter) and social resources (health care, education) that together control the quality of life.
The average number of years a person can expect to live; varies greatly by country and region.
The span of time during which a person is alive, which all societies—whether tribal, agrarian, or industrial—have always divided into stages, seasons, or age groups.
The most common form of survey coding; arranges possible responses from lowest to highest.
A minimum income necessary for a worker to meet his or her basic needs.
The cultural norms, roles, values, expectations, and beliefs that shape distinct social contexts.
An observational research method in which data is gathered for the same subjects repeatedly over a period of time that can extend over years or even decades.
Cooley’s term for the process of how identity is formed through social interaction. We imagine how we appear to others and thus develop our sense of self based on the others’ reactions, imagined or otherwise.
Sometimes called the “working poor”—they have a household income of less than $20,000 per year. They hold unskilled and semiskilled jobs. They are service workers, maintenance workers, clerical workers. They deliver pizzas, wait on customers at retail stores, and clean homes and offices.
Annual household incomes of more than $150,000 but less than $1 million; they are the “everyday” rich. They tend to have advanced degrees from high-ranking colleges. Though they have substantial investment incomes, they still have to work: They are upper-level CEOs, managers, doctors, and engineers.
Analysis of the large-scale patterns or social structures of society, such as economies or political systems.
A group whose members experience privilege and access to power because of their group membership. With regard to race, lighter-colored skin usually means membership in the majority group.
Developed by the English economist and clergyman Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), the theory held that population would increase by geometric progression, doubling in each generation—while the food supply would only increase arithmetically, ultimately leading to mass starvation, environmental disaster, and eventual human extinction.
Rules enacted across the United States in the early 1990s that were supposed to be tough on crime and eliminate bias in prosecutions and sentencing. The primary result, however, has been an explosion in the prison population.
The intended consequences of an action or event.
The production of values and emotions (in addition to the actual things they produce) that bind workers to their company.
Risks produced by the process of modernization, especially through advances in science and technology.
Specific life stages that define who qualifies as an “adult,” such as finishing school, getting a job, moving out of the parental home, marrying, and having a child.
Regular exchange of goods and services within an economy.
Theories that stress the wisdom of the capitalist marketplace. They assume that the best possible economic consequences will result if individuals are free to make their own economic decisions, uninhibited by any form of governmental constraint.
The annual number of marriages in a given geographical area per 1,000 inhabitants.
The shift in gendered sexual scripts toward a masculine model of sexuality that emphasizes the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, increased attention to orgasm, increased numbers of sexual partners, interest in sexual experimentation, and the separation of sexual behavior from love.
Any of the means of communication, such as books, newspapers, magazines, comic books, films and DVDs, radio, television, CDs and MP3s, and a range of digital and social media platforms, that reach large numbers of people.
An ascribed or achieved status presumed so important that it overshadows all of the others, dominating our lives and controlling our position in society.
The physical objects and spaces that people use to define their culture, including homes, cities, mosques, factories, works of art, clothes and fashions, books and movies, as well as the tools they use to make them.
Families centered on mothers.
Tracing one’s ancestry through the mother and maternal side of the family.
The various and overlapping intersections of inequality an individual might experience based on age, race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and the like.
The homogenizing spread of consumerism around the globe.
Émile Durkheim’s term for a traditional society where life is uniform and people are similar. They share a common culture and sense of morality that bonds them.
The plural form of "medium," it is the term for the ways that we communicate with each other, from voice to gestures to methods of mass communication like publishing, broadcasting and the internet.
The process by which human conditions come to be defined and treated as medical conditions such that they also become subject to medical study, diagnosis, and treatment.
A term coined by Jean Gottmann in 1961 to describe the integration of large cities and sprawling suburbs into a single organic urbanized unit, such as “Bo Wash,” the Boston to Washington, D.C., corridor that includes New York and Philadelphia as well as the suburbs.
Beginning in the 1970s, an effort by men to challenge and revise traditional definitions of masculinity.
Among the least understood illnesses, any impairment of thought, mood, or behavior that can be attributed to a psychiatric disease, disorder, or condition.
Social system in which the greater the functional importance of the job, the more rewards it brings in salary, perks, power, and prestige.
A quantitative analysis of several separate but similar experiments or studies conducted to test the pooled data for statistical significance.
When a bank lends tiny amounts of money to local poor people.
Analysis of small-scale social patterns, such as individual interactions or small-group dynamics.
Household incomes between $40,000 and $80,000 these are the “average” American citizens. Most hold white-collar jobs: technicians, salespeople, business owners, educators, etc. Many blue-collar workers and high-demand service personnel, like police, firefighters, and military, have incomes high enough to place them in the middle class. Most have attended college, and many have college degrees.
The generation of nearly 50 million people born after 1980—the first generation to come into their adulthood in the new millennium.
The lowest wage permitted by law.
A group one is born into, which has a distinguishable identity and whose members have less power and access to resources than other groups in society because of that group membership.
Sociologist Theda Skocpol’s term for the gradual disappearance of the middle class as the nation becomes increasingly polarized into rich and poor.
The organization of society to produce what people need to survive.
W. W. Rostow’s theory focusing on the conditions necessary for a low-income country to develop economically. Arguing that a nation’s poverty is largely due to the cultural failings of its people, Rostrow believed poor countries could develop economically only if they give up their “backward” way of life and adopt modern Western economic institutions, technologies, and cultural values that emphasize savings and productive investment.
Stanley Lieberson’s explanation for the reduction in pressures associated with social institutions like extended family rituals or religious rituals associated with the naming of children—trends that led to more name diversity.
One of the first political systems; rule by a single individual (mono means “one,” and archy means “rule”), typically hereditary.
Marriage between two (and only two) people.
The process of arousing social concern that the well-being of society is threatened by a particular issue.
The rates of new infections from disease.
Informally enforced norms based on strong moral values, which are viewed as essential to the proper functioning of a group.
The death rate as a percentage of the population.
In the workplace, mothers encounter systematic disadvantages in pay, perceived competence, and benefits relative to childless women.
The doctrine that several different cultures (rather than one national culture) can coexist peacefully and equitably in a single country.
Large, international companies, also called transnational corporations, that manage production and/or deliver services in more than one country at once. Multinational corporations have a powerful influence in the local economies of the countries in which they operate, and in the global economy.
The laws some countries have that legally restrict the names parents can give their children.
A sovereign state whose citizens or subjects are relatively homogenous in factors such as language or common descent.
Simple calculation of the number of deaths every year subtracted from the number of births.
Refers to the fact that physiological differences in X and Y chromosomes result in a male-to-female ratio at birth that is never 50:50. The natural sex ratio is 104–105 boys born for every 100 girls.
The provision of less-favorable treatment to those with certain characteristics, typically to a disadvantaged group, than to those without them.
The difference between immigration and emigration rates in a given year.
The sociological idea that we end up sharing a lot in common with people with whom we share a social network.
Sex outside of marriage.
Often just called “culture,” the ideas and beliefs that people develop about their lives and their world.
The communication with others that occurs without words, including apparent behaviors such as facial expressions and less obvious messaging including posture and the spatial distance between two or more people.
One of the rules a culture develops that defines how people should act and the consequences of failure to act in the specified ways.
The social expectation that people will respond to us favorably, or with hostility or indifference depending upon how we interact with them.
Seemingly trivial errors within complex systems that have cascading effects and the potential to create much larger events with severe consequences.
A voluntary organization wherein members serve because they believe in the goals of the organization.
The presumed model of the modern American family structure consisting of a breadwinning husband, homemaker wife, their children, and no extended family members.
A posited ideal for social science researchers, it is a perspective that is free of bias, judgment, or prejudice.
The direct effect that observation can be shown to have on the phenomenon being observed.
The use of one’s professional position to illegally secure something of value for oneself or for the corporation.
The degree of status accorded to an occupation.
Refers to women’s and men’s different concentrations in different occupations, different industries, different jobs, and different levels in a workplace hierarchy.
The term for people ages 75 to 85.
The term for people ages 85 and older.
The process of attempting to define the topic of your study into measurable factors.
Cloward and Ohlin’s 1960 theory of crime, which holds that those who have many opportunities— and good ones at that—will be more likely to commit crimes than those with few good opportunities.
Émile Durkheim’s term for a modern society where people are interdependent because of the division of labor; they disagree on what is right and wrong but share solidarity because the division of labor makes them dependent on each other.
A formal group of people with one or more shared goals.
Illegal actions committed in accordance with the operative goals of an organization, such as antitrust violations, false advertising, or price fixing.
The system of norms and values, routines and rituals, symbols and practices that governs an organization.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s term to describe the gendered expectations for behavior within organizations. The differences in men’s and women’s behaviors have far less to do with their characteristics as individuals than with the “characteristic images of the kinds of people that should occupy” particular positions. People who do occupy them, whether women or men, exhibited those necessary behaviors.
Like corporate or white-collar crime, it is a business operation whose purpose is to supply illegal goods and services to others.
Term for the pattern of pleasure discrepancy between women and men that often occurs between hook-up sex and relationship sex.
One to which you do not belong and toward which you feel either neutral or hostile; the “they” who are perceived as different from and of lower stature than ourselves.
The social tendency to believe that all members of an out-group are exactly the same.
Also called offshoring, it refers to the practice of hiring out any phase(s) of product development to lower-wage countries or groups.
Systematic prejudice applied to members of a group in clear, manifest ways, such as speech, discrimination, or a refusal to associate with members of that group.
An example, pattern, or model, especially an outstandingly clear or typical example or archetype.
Sociological research method in which one observes people in their natural habitat.
Also called “pure democracy,” a political system in which every person gets one vote and the majority rules.
Form of employment that carries fewer hours than a full-time job. In the United States, part-time work is generally considered to be 30 hours per week or less.
Literally, “the rule of the fathers”; a name given to the social order in which men hold power over women.
Tracing one’s ancestry through the father and paternal side of the family.
Our group of friends and wider group of acquaintances who have an enormous socializing influence, especially during middle and late childhood.
A process by which other scholars in the field are asked to anonymously evaluate one’s research before it is published, to ensure it meets the standards of sociological research.
Louise Kay Howe’s coinage for types of employment traditionally held by women, especially in relatively low pay service positions, such as secretarial, sales clerks, and wait staff.
Maintains that different groups in a stable society can treat each other with mutual respect and that minority cultures can maintain their own distinctiveness and still participate in the greater society without discrimination.
This perspective argues that assimilation is not inevitable and that ethnic identities are not necessarily abandoned as ethnic groups become less isolated.
A type of partisan political organization that is not subject to the same regulations as political parties, and attempt to influence elections and mobilize public opinion.
Refers to the indifference of a member of a society with regard to their attitude toward political activities.
Refers to any action or behavior that either aims to affect or has the consequence of influencing governmental action.
Groups that bands together to petition for political chances or to support candidates for elected office.
Changes the political groups that run the society, but they still draw their strength from the same social groups that supported the old regime.
The term for how group leaders exercise their authority. Virtually all political systems fall into one of two categories, “authoritarian” or “democratic.”
The art and science of government.
Committed relationships among three or more people.
Rare form of polygamy in which one woman marries two or more men.
Marriage between three or more people. (See polyandry and polygyny.)
The most common form of polygamy, a marriage between one man and two or more women.
The culture of the masses, the middle and working classes, that includes a wide variety of popular music, nonhighbrow forms of literature, any forms of spectator sports, and other popular forms of entertainment, like television, movies, and video games.
The comparative numbers of men and women and various age groups in an area, region, or country.
The number of people per square mile or kilometer.
Type of graph that shows five- or ten-year age groups as different-sized bars, or “blocks.”
The provision of special opportunities to those with certain characteristics than to those without them, typically to a disadvantaged group.
Economy that shifts from the production of goods to the production of ideas.
Estimated minimum income required to pay for food, shelter, and clothing. Anyone falling below this income is categorized as poor.
The ability to extract compliance despite resistance or the ability to get others to do what you want them to do, regardless of their own desires.
The degree to which a correct prediction of a research outcome can be made.
A set of beliefs and attitudes that cause us to negatively prejudge people based on their social location.
Any minor, usually unnoticed, act of deviance committed irregularly that does not have an impact on one’s self-identity or on how one is labeled by others.
One such as friends and family, which comes together for expressive reasons, providing emotional support, love, companionship, and security.
A culture’s most basic values, which are passed on to children beginning in earliest infancy.
The creation of value or wealth by producing goods and services.
That which is not sacred or Biblical, or not concerned with religion or religious purposes.
Christopher Lasch’s idea that industrialization and modernization made it customary for children to be independent from their parents in going to school, looking for work and choosing a spouse, increasingly reducing extended family arrangements and promoting the nuclear family model of household structure and child-rearing.
Popularized by Karl Marx, the term for the lower classes who were forced to become wage laborers or go hungry. Today, the term is often used to refer to the working class.
In contrast to the winner-take-all system used in the United States, proportional representation gives each party a proportion of the legislative seats based on the number of votes its candidates garner.
Reasons voluntary migrants want to settle in a particular territory, the most common of which are a strong economy, political and cultural tolerance, and civil stability.
Sample in which respondents are not selected randomly and are not representative of the larger population but are selected precisely because they possess certain characteristics that are of interest to the researcher.
Reasons voluntary migrants want to leave their home territory, the most common of which are a sluggish economy, political or cultural oppression, and civil unrest.
Inductive and inferential means to drawing sociological understanding, usually about less tangible aspects of social life, such as the actual felt experience of social interaction.
Numerical means to drawing sociological conclusions using powerful statistical tools to help understand patterns in which the behaviors, attitudes, or traits under study can be translated into numerical values.
Gradual but wide-sweeping changes that have resulted from the increase in the number of women in the workforce during the past 50 years, transforming consumer patterns, workplace policies, dating and relationship norms, parenting practices, household maintenance, and self-concepts for both men and women.
Social category, still poorly defined, that depends on an assumption of biological distinction to rate and organize social groups.
An ethnic group believed to also have common psychological characteristics.
A theory that understands race and ethnicity as socially constructed identities. This means that both the content and importance of racial and ethnic categories are determined by the societies in which they exist.
The gap in income between blacks and whites. The gap between high-income whites and blacks is astonishingly high, and because of the racial income gap over time, even middle-income whites have far more wealth than high-income blacks.
Stopping and searching minorities because members of minority groups are seen as “more likely” to be criminals. It’s more a self-fulfilling prophecy: Believing is seeing.
Gap in wealth—based on total financial assets including home equity—between blacks and whites. Because whites make more than blacks, are more likely to be in the professions, and more likely to own their own homes, the gap between them has continued to widen.
Twin processes of ascribing either racial or ethnic qualities to groups who did not identify themselves as such.
An ideology that holds that inequality based on race is justified because of assumed natural differences between races.
A sample chosen by an abstract and arbitrary method, such as tossing a piece of paper with each person’s name on it into a hat.
A chief interest of Max Weber, who argued that rationality was the foundation of modern society—an escalating process of order and organization with dire consequences.
An individual’s relapse into criminal behavior after having served time or endured some intervention aimed to affect their future behavior. Thus, the “recidivism rate” is the rate at which people who have served time will commit another crime after leaving.
A dynamic cause-and-effect relationship in which two or more social phenomena can be shown to be both cause and effect, for example, fatness and social class.
A group toward which one is so strongly committed, or one that commands so much prestige, that we orient our actions around what we perceive that group’s perceptions would be.
Describes how misery is socially experienced by constantly comparing yourself to others. You are not down and out: You are worse off than you used to be (downward mobility), not as well off as you think you should be (rising expectations), or, perhaps, not as well off as those you see around you.
The ability of people to afford only the basic necessities of life; those who live in relative poverty are unable to maintain an adequate standard of living.
Means that another researcher can use the same data you used and would find similar results.
A set of beliefs and practices relating to the origins and meaning of life, usually based on a belief in the existence of a supernatural power.
Sociological term for the numerous aspects of an individual’s religious activity, dedication, and belief. A more colloquial term would be “religiousness.”
The term sociologists use for people entering a new marriage after leaving at least one previous marriage by divorce.
One of the main principles of the scientific method, replication is the ability of an entire experiment or study to be duplicated by others.
System in which citizens elect representatives to make the decisions for them; requires an educated citizenry and a free press.
A sample that is scientifically designed to accurately reflect a larger population.
The processes used to systematically collect and analyze information from the social world for the purposes of sociological study and understanding.
Institutional discrimination of housing created neighborhoods, usually with lower quality infrastructure, for whites and other race and ethnic groups.
The process of learning a new set of beliefs, behaviors, and values that depart from those held in the past.
Refers either to a direction of cause-and-effect contrary to the presumed relationship between variables or to a two-way causal relationship in, as it were, a loop (a relationship sociologists refer to as “reciprocal”).
The attempt to overthrow the existing political and social order of a society and replace it with a new one.
A marker, often a ceremony, that denotes an important stage in someone’s life, such as birth, puberty, marriage, death.
Enactment by which members of a culture engage in a routine behavior to express their sense of belonging to the culture.
Behavior expected of people who have a particular status.
What happens when we try to play different roles with extremely different or contradictory rules at the same time.
The process we go through to adjust when leaving a role that is central to our identity.
The particular emphasis or interpretation each of us gives a social role.
The experience of difficulty in performing a role.
The experience of having few or no ties and no real place in society, often as the result of economic and/or social change.
Holy moments that evoke a sense of reverence and unity.
That which is profane, blasphemous, impious, irreverent, or sinful.
A limited group of research subjects whose responses are statistically developed into a general theme or trend that can be applied to the larger whole.
With the increase in life expectancy and the delay in childbearing, many middle-aged adults find themselves “sandwiched” between caring for dependent children and aging parents at the same time.
A theory that language shapes our reality because it gives us a way to talk about the categories of life that we experience.
The term for research demonstrating the ways student outcomes are meaningfully shaped by school characteristics.
The capacity to understand scientific concepts and processes necessary for complete participation in economic, civic, and cultural life.
The science of “breeding,” and encouraged laws that would help the country breed a superior race, eugenics.
Arlie Hochschild’s term for the dual day experienced by working women in which they perform the lion’s share of the housework and childcare after a regular working shift is over.
Analysis conducted using data previously collected by others for other reasons.
The moment when someone acquires a deviant identity, occurring when he or she repeatedly breaks a norm and people start making a big deal of it, so the rule breaking can no longer be attributed to a momentary lapse in judgment or be justifiable under the circumstances but is an indication of a permanent personality trait.
Coworkers, club members, or another group that comes together for instrumental reasons, such as wanting to work together to meet common goals. Secondary groups make less of an emotional claim on one’s identity than do primary groups.
Occurring throughout the life span, it is the adjustments we make to adapt to new situations.
A small subculture within an established religious institution. Like cults, they break from traditional practices, but unlike cults, they remain within the larger institution.
The process of moving away from religion and toward the worldly.
The practice of physically separating races by law and custom in institutions and communities.
In explaining deviance, places the emphasis on inadequate socialization and thus a weakened internal monitoring system.
The social phenomenon that when we expect something to happen, it often does.
Black defendants receive harsher sentences from judges and juries, on average, when compared with white defendants on trial for the same crimes (even when we account for prior offenses and other issues that affect both conviction rates and other decisions regarding sentencing).
A set of beliefs that coalesced as a distinct ideology in Europe and North America during the Industrial Revolution, it assigned to women and men distinct and virtually opposite functions, duties, characteristics, and activities in society.
A growing sector of work in the United States, this category includes food preparation and service, personal services (hair stylists, launderers, childcare workers), and maintenance workers (janitors, garbage collectors), plus police officers and firefighters.
A biological distinction; the chromosomal, chemical, and anatomical organization of males and females.
The ratio of males to females in a population.
A procedure in which women terminate pregnancies after finding out that they are carrying girls.
Any behavior that brings sexual pleasure or release (typically, but not always, involving sex organs).
Any intense sexual feelings associated with specific environmental, cultural, or biological stimuli.
Discrimination against a person on the grounds of sex or sexual identity.
The social standard that encourages men to pursue sex as an end in itself, to seek a lot of sex with many different partners, outside of romantic or emotional commitment, and teaches women to consider sex with one partner and only in the context of an emotional relationship.
Typically, it is understood to refer to an identity that is organized by the gender of the person (or persons) to whom we are sexually attracted. Also called sexual orientation.
Negative attitudes about an individual or group based on sexual identity.
A cognitive map about how to have sex and with whom.
The process by which your sexual scripts begin to cohere into a preference and sexual identity.
An identity we construct that is often based on our sexual conduct and often intersects with other sources of identity, such as race, class, ethnicity, age, or gender.
Islamic religious law, outlined in the Koran, which, when strictly interpreted, includes such penalties as cutting off the hand for robbery and death by stoning for adultery.
Talcott Parsons’ coinage to describe how we learn to “be” sick; it is a social role we learn to occupy and with which we learn to interact.
Modern term for people living alone, often by choice.
The name for sociological research conducted by Milgram and others that suggests human society is a small network characterized by short paths between strangers. The research is often associated with the phrase “six degrees of separation” (although Milgram himself did not use that phrase).
Jack Katz’s concept that crimes like shoplifting, burglary, joyriding, and vandalism are committed by amateurs, mostly adolescents, for the fun of it, not necessarily to acquire money or property. Katz theorized that sneaky thrills offer the adolescent perpetrators an experience similar to sexual experimentation.
The social process by which we construct our gender identities throughout our lives, using the cultural ideas and materials we find around us.
As Walter Reckless theorized, people don’t commit crimes even if they could probably get away with them due to social controls. There are outer controls—family, friends, teachers, social institutions, and authority figures (like the police)—who influence (cajole, threaten, browbeat) us into obeying social rules; and inner controls—internalized socialization, consciousness, religious principles, ideas of right and wrong, and one’s self-conception as a “good person.”
A model of social change that saw each succeeding society as developing through evolution and the “survival of the fittest.”
The term social scientists use to describe a form of response bias wherein people being studied tend to present themselves in a manner they believe will be perceived favorably.
The study of both biomedical elements of disease and the social and behavioral factors that influence its spread.
Émile Durkheim’s term for the values, norms, and structures that transcend individuals, exercising social control over them, and amenable to scientific study.
A special task of sociology is to study the forms of social interaction apart from their content. Georg Simmel assumed that the same social forms—competition, exchange, secrecy, domination—could contain quite different content and that the same social content could be embodied in different forms. Each social form, according to Simmel, would have distinctive properties.
A collection of individuals bound by a common social identity or by some shared goal and purpose.
The ways through which these social stratification arrangements are defined as fair, just, and reasonable.
The social process by which valued goods, opportunities, and experiences are unequally distributed throughout a population.
Patterned sets of interactions that work to meet collective needs that are not easily met by individuals working alone. They include such social arenas as markets, families, schools, corporations, factories, and prisons.
The foundation for societal groups and relationships and the process of how people behave and interact with each other.
The process of moving between different positions in social hierarchies within society (e.g., from one social class to another).
Collective attempt to further a common interest or secure a common goal through action outside the sphere of established institutions.
Often conceived as a web of social relationships, a type of group that is both looser and denser than a formal group but connects people to each other, and, through those connections, with other people.
Alongside considering how acts correspond with normative expectation, we also consider the social reactions and evaluations of groups. This produces four distinct types of deviance: negative; positive; deviance admiration; and rate busting.
The structures and activities that transmit social inequality from one generation to the next.
Revolution that changes the social groups or classes that political power rests on.
Sets of behaviors expected of a person who occupies a certain social status.
Term for a sequence of expected behaviors in a given situation.
Émile Durkheim’s term for the moral bonds that connect us to the social collectivity.
Disapproval or discontent with a person or group that differs from cultural norms, which often serves to distinguish that person or group from other members of a society.
Taken from the geological term for layers of rock, or “strata,” the ranking of people into defined layers. Social stratification exists in all societies and is based on things like wealth, race, and gender.
A complex framework composed of both patterned social interactions and institutions that together organize social life and provide the context for individual action.
Refer to the social connections or relationships between individuals and groups.
Economic system in which people are meant to cooperate rather than compete, share goods and services, own property collectively, and make decisions as a collective body.
The process by which we become aware of ourselves as part of a group, learn to communicate with others, and learn how to behave as expected.
An organized collection of individuals and institutions, bounded by space in a coherent territory, subject to the same political authority, and organized through a shared set of cultural expectations and values.
Your social connections, your taste in art, your ascribed and attained statuses, and more. Because there are so many components, sociologists today tend to prefer the concept of socioeconomic status to that of social class, to emphasize that people are ranked through the intermingling of many factors, economic, social, political, cultural, and community.
The ability to see the connection between our individual identities and the social contexts (family, friends, and institutions) in which we find ourselves.
The study of human behavior in society.
The widespread change in gender relations whereby women are much more likely to earn a living wage on their own but men have not responded in kind and participated more in work around the house.
A version of capitalism that requires that the government use a heavy hand in regulating and constraining the marketplace.
Theories that argue appropriate government policies do not interfere with economic development but that governments play a key role in bringing it about.
One’s socially defined position in a group; it is often characterized by certain expectations and rights.
Generalization about a group that is oversimplified and exaggerated and that fails to acknowledge individual differences in the group.
Term coined by Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou to address the “promise” of being viewed through the lens of a positive stereotype that leads one to perform in ways that confirms the positive stereotype (the counterpart to “stereotype threat”).
Term coined by Claude Steele to assess the extent to which labels about people “like us” have measurable impacts on their performances. It refers to the variation in performance measured when the belief that people who belong to an identity category you share are worse at a particular task than the comparison group.
An attribute that changes you “from a whole and usual person to a tainted and discounted one,” as sociologist Erving Goffman (1963) defined it. A stigma discredits a person’s claim to be normal.
Sample in which research subjects are divided into proportions equal to the proportions found in the population at large.
Mark Granovetter’s discovery that weak ties are valuable precisely because they provide new information that is often less available from strong ties.
Term used by Mark Granovetter to characterize those people in your interpersonal network who actually know you.
A sociological paradigm that contends that all social life consists of several distinct, integrated levels that enable the world—and individuals who are within it—to find stability, order, and meaning.
A concept from social network research, the term refers to a gap between two networks of individuals who have complementary sources to information.
A general upward trend of the entire society. Structural mobility means that the entire society got wealthier, as occurred in post–World War II America.
Robert K. Merton’s concept that excessive deviance is a by-product of inequality within societies that promote certain norms and versions of social reality yet provide unequal means of meeting or attaining them.
Group within a society that creates its own norms and values distinct from the mainstream and usually its own separate social institutions as well.
The complex of individual perceptions, motivations, ideas, and emotions that give each of us a point of view.
Individual or group that possesses little or comparatively less social power.
Systematic prejudice applied to members of a group in quiet or even unconscious ways; a simple set of mental categories that one may possess about a group based on stereotypes.
A residential community outside of a city but always existing in relationship to the city.
Freud’s term for the internalized norms, values, and “rules” of our social group that are learned from family, friends, and social institutions.
Individual or group that possesses social power.
Research method in which one asks a sample of people closed-ended questions and tabulates the results.
Anything—an idea, a marking, a thing—that carries additional meanings beyond itself to others who share in the culture. Symbols come to mean what they do only in a culture; they would have no meaning to someone outside.
Discrimination has largely disappeared and ethnic identity has become mostly a choice to be asserted in times and situations when it will increase their prestige and downplayed or ignored when it may decrease their prestige.
Sociological perspective that examines how individuals and groups interact, focusing on the creation of personal identity through interaction with others. Of particular interest is the relationship between individual action and group pressures.
A type of sample that starts at a random position on a list and selects every nth unit (skip interval) of a population until the desired sample size is reached.
Address social prohibitions viewed as essential to the well-being of humanity. To break a mos is bad or immoral, but breaking a taboo is unthinkable, beyond comprehension.
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s term for an abstract process through which we all adopt routines, practices, and interests which have their origins in material constraints.
Using acts of violence and destruction (or threatening to use them) as a political strategy.
Occurs when members of a group formerly labeled deviant attempt to redefine their acts, attributes, or identities as normal—even virtuous.
A group of four people.
The hypothesis that societies that restrict supply of religion—whether that is through imposed state religions or state-sponsored secularization—are the main causes of drops in religiosity. Simply put, the more religions a society has and acknowledges, the more likely the population is to be religious.
Research method that measures how people allocate their time during an average day by having subjects regularly record their activities in a diary, log, or other record.
Representative of a traditionally disenfranchised group whose hypervisibility results in constant pressure to reflect well on the group and to outperform co-workers just to be perceived as equal.
Suzanna Walters’ concept to capture the co-existence of enormous gains in popular, political, and cultural “inclusion” of gay people with the persistence of anti-gay laws and legislation, the spate of suicides by queer youth, homophobic bullying and violence, and more.
An institution that completely circumscribes your everyday life, cutting you off from life before you entered and seeking to regulate every part of your behavior.
A political system in which no organized opposition is permitted and political information is censored.
Common in American schools, it is the term for grouping students according to their academic abilities.
Dominant in premodern societies, including ancient Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica, the form of authority that people obeyed because they believed their society had always done things that way; derives from who the leaders are: the descendants of kings and queens, or perhaps the descendants of the gods, not from their educational background, work experience, or personality traits.
An umbrella term that describes a variety of people, behaviors, and groups whose identities depart from normative gender ideals of masculinity or femininity.
A group of three people.
A research technique that uses cross-verification to ensure the validity of conclusions. When several research methods are used to the study of the same phenomenon, researchers can be more confident with a result.
About 4 percent of the U.S. population, this group has no income, no connection to the job market, little education, inadequate nutrition, and substandard housing or none at all. They have no possibility of social mobility and little chance of achieving the quality of life that most people would consider minimally acceptable.
People educated and qualified for positions higher than the ones they occupy.
The measure of the prevalence of unemployment, it is calculated by dividing the number of unemployed individuals by all individuals currently in the labor force.
Granting of the vote to any and all citizens who meet specified, universal criteria, such as legal citizenship and a minimum age.
With household incomes above $80,000 but less than $150,000, they are the high-end professionals and corporate workers. Most have college degrees. Only a small percentage of their income comes from investments.
The superrich, with annual incomes of more than $1 million. They include the older established wealthy families, born into massive fortunes that their ancestors amassed during the industrial boom of the nineteenth-century Gilded Age.
An organization, like the college we attend or the company we work for, whose members belong for a specific, instrumental purpose or tangible material reward.
The extent to which a concept, conclusion, or question is well-founded, and measures what a researcher thinks it is measuring.
If norms tell us how to behave, values tell us why. Values constitute what a society thinks about itself and so are among the most basic lessons that a culture can transmit to its young.
Term for proportion of people 18 and older who therefore can vote.
Term for the proportion of people 18 and older who are not prohibited from voting.
A state of armed conflict between different nations, different states within a nation, or different groups within a nation or state.
Granovetter’s term for people in your interpersonal network whom you may not know personally, but perhaps you know of them, or they know of you.
A version of capitalism in most contemporary capitalist countries, it is concerned with the welfare of the worker as well as profits and includes such policies as collective bargaining and industrial safety codes while the government regulates some of the most essential services, such as transportation, health care, and the mass media.
The basic structural opportunities provided by most countries for people to work their way out of poverty: free education, national health care, welfare subsistence, housing allowances.
Three of the world’s major religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (plus a few smaller ones)—are called “Western” because, although they originated in the Middle East, their adherents are largely among Western nations.
Term for the pattern of movement by white people out of cities to escape immigrants and minorities.
Edward Sutherland’s term for the illegal actions of a corporation or people acting on its behalf, by using the authority of their position to commit crime.
Knowledge-based work, requiring considerable education, in which a typical day is spent manipulating symbols: talking, speaking, reading, writing, and calculating.
The movement to remove obstacles to women’s full participation in modern life. From its origins, the Women's Movement has been a global movement, yet each national and cultural expression has sought changes tailored to its specific context.
With household income between $20,000 and $40,000. They tend to be blue-collar workers, involved in manufacturing, production, and skilled trades, but also include some low-level white-collar workers and professionals (such as elementary school teachers) and some high-level clerical and service industry workers, especially those in two-income households.
Working people whose income nevertheless falls below the poverty line.
A form of discrimination based on race, gender, religion, national origin, physical or mental disability, and age by employers.
Religions with a long history, well-established traditions, and the flexibility to adapt to many different cultures.
Immanuel Wallerstein’s theory that the interconnectedness of the world system began in the 1500s, when Europeans began their economic and political domination of the rest of the world.
The life stage at which people are clearly no longer children or adolescents, but have not yet reached full adulthood either.
The term for people ages 65 to 75.
Paul Erlich’s (1968) modern solution to Malthus’s concerns, it entails a global effort to ensure that the number of births does not exceed the number of deaths, providing global population stability, a decrease in poor countries, and a redistribution of resources to those countries.