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| Refers to social patterns that guide our behavior in everyday life. The building blocks of social structure are |
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• The action expected of a person who holds a particular status
• A person holds a status and performs a role |
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involuntary status
For example, being a teenager, an orphan, or a Mexican American |
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Earned status
For example, being an honors student, a pilot, or a thief |
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Either ascribed of achieved, has special importance for a person’s identity
For example, being blind, a doctor, or a Kennedy |
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results from tension among roles linked to two or more statuses
For example, a woman who juggles her responsibilities as a mother and a corporate CEO |
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results from tension among roles linked to a single status
For example, the college professor who enjoys personal interaction with students but at the same time knows that social distance is necessary in order to evaluate students fairly |
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the process by which people act and react in relation to others; we construct the reality we experience
For example, two people interacting both try to shape the reality of their situation; |
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| a strategy to reveal the assumptions people have about their social world |
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Explores social interaction in terms of theatrical performance: A status operates as a part in a play, and a role is a script
The “Presentation of Self” |
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Are the way we present ourselves to others
are both conscious (intentional action) and unconscious (nonverbal communication)
include costume (the way we dress), props (objects we carry), and demeanor (tone of voice and the way we carry ourselves) |
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| Affects performances because men typically have greater social power than women. Gender differences involve demeanor, use of space, and staring, smiling, and touching |
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| With greater social power, men have more freedom in how they act |
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| Men typically command more space than women |
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| means we try to convince others that our actions reflect ideal culture rather than selfish motives |
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| is the “loss of face” in a performance. People use Tact to help others “save face” |
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| The Social Construction of Feeling |
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| The Social Construction of Gender |
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| The Social Construction of Humor |
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Refers to norm violations ranging from minor infractions, such as bad manners, to major infractions, such as serious violence
Defined as the recognized violation of cultural norms |
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| Biological Theories of deviance |
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Focus on individual abnormality
Explain human behavior as the result of biological instincts
Lombroso claimed that criminals have apelike physical traits; later research links criminal behavior to certain body types and genetics |
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| Psychological Theories of deviance |
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Focus on individual abnormality
See deviance as the result of “unsuccessful socialization”
Reckless and Dinitz’s containment theory links delinquency to weak conscience |
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| Sociological Theories of deviance |
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View all behavior, deviance as well as conformity, as products of society
Sociologists point out that
What is deviant varies from place to place according to cultural norms
Behavior and individuals become deviant as others define them that way
What and who a society defines as deviant reflect who has and does not have social power |
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| Structural-Function Analysis of deviance |
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Durkheim Claimed that deviance is a normal element of society that
• Affirms cultural norms and values
• Clarifies moral boundaries
• Brings people together
• Encourages social change |
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explains deviance in terms of a society’s cultural goals and the means available to achieve them.
• Deviant subcultures are discussed by Cloward and Ohlin, Cohen, Miller, and Anderson |
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Symbolic-Interaction Analysis
Labeling Theory |
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| • Claims that deviance depends less on what someone does than on how others react to that behavior. If people respond to primary deviance by stigmatizing a person, secondary deviance and a deviant career may result. |
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| Medicalization of deviance |
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| • This is the transformation of moral and legal deviance into a medical condition. In practice, this means a change in labels, replacing “good” and “bad” with “sick” and “well.” |
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| Sutherland’s differential association theory |
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| • Links deviance to how much others encourage or discourage such behavior |
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| • States that imagining the possible consequences of deviance often discourages such behavior. People who are well integrated into society are less likely to engage in deviant behavior. |
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| Deviance and Inequality: Social-Conflict Analysis |
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| Based on Karl Marx’s ideas, social-conflict theory holds that laws and other norms operate to protect the interests of powerful members of any society |
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| Are committed by people of high social position as part of their jobs. Sutherland claimed that such offenses are rarely prosecuted and are most likely to end up in civil rather than criminal court. |
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| Refers to illegal actions by a corporation or people acting on its behalf. Although corporate crimes cause considerable public harm, most cases of corporate crime go unpunished. |
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| Has a long history in the United States, especially among categories of people with few legitimate opportunities |
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are crimes motivated by racial or other bias; they target people with disadvantages based on race, gender, or sexual orientation
• In the United States and elsewhere, societies control the behavior of women more closely than that of men |
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s the violation of criminal laws enacted by local, state, or federal governments. There are two major categories of serious crime:
o Crimes against the person (violent crime), including murder, aggravated assault, forcible rape, and robbery
o Crimes against property (property crime), including burglary, larceny-theft, auto theft, and arson |
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maintain public order by enforcing the law
o use personal discretion in deciding whether and how to handle a situation
o Research suggests that they are more likely to make an arrest if the offense is serious, if bystanders are present, or if the suspect is African American or Latino. |
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rely on an adversarial process in which attorneys, one representing the defendant and one representing the state, present their cases in the presence of a judge who monitors legal procedures
o In practice, U.S. courts resolve most cases through plea bargaining. Though efficient, this method puts less powerful people at a disadvantage |
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| An act of moral vengeance by which society makes the offender suffer as much as the suffering caused by the crime |
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| the attempt to discourage criminality through the use of punishment |
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| A program for reforming the offender to prevent later offenses |
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| rendering an offender incapable of further offenses temporarily through imprisonment or permanently by execution |
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| remains controversial in the United States, the only high-income Western nation that routinely executes serious offenders. The trend is toward fewer executions. |
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| Community-based corrections |
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o Include probation and parole. These programs lower the cost of supervising people convicted of crimes and reduce prison overcrowding but have not been shown to reduce recidivism (later offenses by people previously convicted of crimes)
o Correctional programs operating within society at large rather than behind prison walls |
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Studies society by systematically observing social behavior
also called scientific sociology |
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• Requires carefully operationalizing variables and ensuring that measurements is both reliable and valid
• Observes how variables are related and tries to establish cause and effect
• Sees an objective reality “out there”
• Favors quantitative data
• Is well suited to research in a laboratory
• Demands that researchers be objective and suspend their personal values and biases as they conduct research |
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Focuses on the meanings that people attach to behavior
Weber’s concept of Verstehen refers to learning how people understand their world |
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• Sees reality as constructed by people in the course of their everyday lives
• Favors qualitative data
• Is well suited to research in a natural setting |
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Uses research to bring about social change
Marx, who founded the critical orientation, criticized scientific sociology as supporting the status quo |
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• Asks moral and political questions
• Focuses on inequality
• Rejects the principle of objectivity, claiming that all research is political |
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Gender, involving both researcher and subjects, can affect research in five ways:
o Androcentricity
o Overgeneralizing
o Gender blindness
o Double standards
o Interference |
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Researchers must:
o Protect the privacy of subjects
o Obtain the informed consent of subjects
o Indicate all sources of funding
o Submit research to an institutional review board (IRB) to ensure it doesn’t violate ethical standards |
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| allows researchers to study cause and effect between two or more variables in a controlled setting |
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research uses questionnaires or interviews to gather subjects’ responses to a series of questions
typically yield descriptive findings, painting a picture of people’s views on some issue |
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researchers join with people in a social setting for an extended period of time
also called fieldwork, allows researchers an “inside look” at a social setting. Because researchers are not attempting to test a specific hypothesis, their research is exploratory and descriptive |
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data collected by others
o Using existing sources, especially the widely available data collected by government agencies, can save researchers time and money
o Existing sources are the basis of historical research. |
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