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Sociolofy Mid-Term: Chapters 1-8 sans 5
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14
Sociology
Undergraduate 1
02/19/2013

Additional Sociology Flashcards

 


 

Cards

Term
What is the sociological perspective?
Definition
Understanding human behavior by plaving it within its broader social context.
Term
What is a society?
Definition
A group of people who share a culture and a territory.
Term
What is social location?
Definition
The group memberships that people have because of their location in history and society (ex, "How would identifying as a male or female change your ideas about who you are?")
Term
What is science?
Definition
The application of systematic methods to obtain knowledge and the knowledge obtained by these methods.
Term
What is sociology?
Definition
The study of society and human behavior
Term
What are natural sciences?
Definition
The intellectual and academic disciplines designed to comprehend, explain, and predict events in our natural environments. Ex: biology, geology, chemistry, and physics
Term
What is the definition of social sciences?
Definition
The intellectual and academic disciplines designed to understand the social world objectively by means of controlled and repeated observations.
Term
What are the five divisions of social science?
Definition
  1. Anthropology (study of culture)
  2. Economics (study of production and distribution of material goods and services of a society)
  3. Political science (focuses on politics and government)
  4. Psychology (study of processes that occur within the individual)
  5. Sociology (overlaps the other social sciences)
Term
What are the three goals of science?
Definition
  1. To explain why something happens
  2. To make generalizations (statements that go beyond the individual case and are applied to broader groups or situations; they are found by observing patterns)
  3. To predict, i.e. to specify in the light of current knowledge what will happen in the future
Term
What is common sense?
Definition
Things that "everyone knows" are true. Sociologists move beyond this with their research to confirm or contradict commonsense notions about social life.
Term

When in history did sociology emerge?

 

 

What three events set the stage for its emergence?

Definition

 

 

 

Mid 1800's, when social observers began to use scientific methods to test their ideas

  1. Social upheaval of the Industrial Revolution (switch from agriculture to factory work conditions bred discontent)
  2. Social Upheaval of Revolutions (American & French--swept away existing social orders and tradition)
  3. Imperialism (because Europeans had conqured so many parts of the world, they were exposed to other ways of life, and wondered why cultures differed)

This all led to a questioning of traditional answers that the development of the scientific method.

 

 

 

Term
In sociology, what is the scientific method?
Definition
The use of objective, systematic observations to test theories.
Term
What is positivism and who came up with it?
Definition
The application of the scientific approach in the real world; Auguste Comte ("Father of Sociology")
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