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Absolute mobility Change in social position, regardless of what is happening with other people.
Absolute monarchy A form of government in which there are no laws restricting the power of the monarch over the people living in their territory.
Achieved status A status that can be earned through action.
Active audiences The idea that people are active, skillful interpreters of the world who have the ability to recognize and resist cultural power.
Acute disease A single or repeated episode of relatively rapid onset and short duration from which the patient usually returns to his/her normal or previous state or level of activity.
Agenda-setting The idea that news media set the public agenda. They do not shape what people think, but they do have great influence on what people think about.
Agents of socialization Forces, settings, and relationships that most powerfully affect human socialization.
Alienation A condition where humans have no meaningful connection to their work, or to each other
Allostatic load The wear and tear on the body due to stress.
Anomie In organic societies, the condition of feeling isolated and disconnected in the absence of rich social connection.
Applied research Research with the goal of solving practical problems in society.
Ascribed status A status assigned to people by society, which is not chosen and which cannot be changed easily.
Ascriptiveness The degree to which characteristics at birth like race, gender, ethnicity, parents’ background, or nationality, determine life outcomes in a stratification system.
Assimilation When minority groups fully embrace the culture of the dominant group and lose their distinctive racial and/or ethnic characteristics.
Basic research Research with the goal of advancing our fundamental knowledge and understanding of the world.
Beliefs All the things we think are true, even in the absence of evidence or proof; ideas about the world that come through divine revelation or received tradition.
Big data Refers to the large amount of data produced by our technological ability to capture the behavior of humans (and machines and others) over huge populations and time spans.
Blended family A household that includes a step-parent, step-sibling, or half-sibling.
Blockbusting A practice where real estate agents would go to a neighborhood where racial minorities were beginning to move in, convince the white residents there that their property values were going to decrease, and encourage them to sell their houses below market value.
Boomerang kids Young adults who move back home to live with their parents after a period of independence
Brain drain When highly educated people in poor countries leave for places with more economic opportunity.
Broken windows theory A theory of policing stating that ignoring small crimes and minor violations creates a spiral of increasing deviance and more serious criminality.
Bureaucracy An organizational form with a clearly defined hierarchy where roles are based on rational, predictable, written rules and procedures to govern every aspect of the organization and produce standardized, systematic, and efficient outcomes.
Canon The set of thinkers and ideas that serve as a standard point of reference for a scholarly or artistic tradition.
Capitalism An economic system based on the private ownership of property, including the means of material life such as food, clothing, and shelter, and in which the production of goods and services is controlled by private individuals and companies, and prices are set by markets.
Capitalist crisis of care The shortage of reproductive labor created by the capitalist organization of work.
Case study research Research that relies on a small number of cases that offer special insight into a particular social process and are studied in depth, typically using comparative methods.
Caste systems An extremely unequal stratification system in which people are born into a particular social group and have virtually no opportunity to change their social position.
Categorical inequality The inequality between social categories or social groups.
Categorical or nominal variable A variable that measures phenomena that are not inherently numerical, such as gender, race, or ethnicity. In this case the numerical code assigned to a quality is more a name than a number.
Causation Causation occurs when two variables share a pattern because one variable produces the pattern in the other.
Cause Something that produces an outcome. Technically, a cause is where a first event is understood to produce a material effect on a second event.
Census An official count of the population.
Charismatic authority A form of persuasive power in which people follow a leader’s orders because of the personal qualities that the leader possesses.
Chronic disease A permanent, nonreversible condition that might leave residual disability, and that may require long-term treatment and care
Citizenship education Curriculum dealing with history, laws, main social institutions, and political organization of the nation in which students live.
Citizenship The laws that define who is a legal member of a country.
Civil law Law that deals with disputes between individuals and organizations. Most legal cases are civil cases.
Classification systems Elaborate and nuanced identifications of similarity and difference based on cultural patterns that develop over time when people place beliefs, practices, and cultural objects into groups of similar things and groups of different things.
Code-switching Adapting behavior to meet different role expectations across interactional contexts.
Coercive power The system of punishments and rewards that are used to try to force people to act in a particular way.
Cohabitation An arrangement in which romantic couples choose to live together instead of getting married.
Collective representations Pictures, images, or narratives that describe the social group and are held in common.
Colonialism A global stratification system in which powerful nations used their military strength to take political control over other territories and exploit them economically.
Colorblind racism A form of racism based on the refusal to discuss or notice race.
Commercial culture Cultural commodities that exist to be bought and sold compose the commercial culture.
Commodity An object that is bought and sold in a market. Commodity production is a system of producing goods and services to be bought and sold on markets.
Comparative-historical methods A set of research methods that uses comparison of events and processes in the past to understand the development and operation of social things.
Complicit masculinity A form of masculinity where an individual may not meet all the requirements of hegemonic masculinity but still benefits from the gender order in which they are viewed as masculine.
Compulsory heterosexuality A social order in which sexual desire between males and females is understood to be the only normal form of sexuality, and is enforced through medical, legal, religious and other social institutions.
Concentrated disadvantage A structural outcome in which the poorest and most racially segregated communities suffer the most from environmental risk.
Confirmation bias The tendency to look for information that reinforces prior beliefs; when research is biased to confirm the researcher’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.
Conflict Disagreement, opposition, and separation between individuals or groups.
Conflict theory Conflict theorists argue that social structures and social systems emerge out of the conflicts between different groups.
Consensus theory Consensus theorists focus on social equilibrium, which is the way that different parts of society work together to produce social cohesion.
Conspicuous consumption A way to display privilege, wealth, and social status to others.
Constitutional monarchy A form of democratic government where power is held by elected officials and there is a king or queen who serves as the ceremonial head of the nation.
Consumerism A widespread ideology grounded in conspicuous consumption that encourages buying and consuming goods, including buying more than an individual needs.
Content analysis A sociological method to systematically evaluate and code text documents in which word frequencies or other textual features can be turned into quantitative variables.
Contentious politics The use of social conflict and other disruptive techniques to make a political point in an effort to change government policy.
Contingency Openness in social life produced by human choices and actions.
Continuous or linear variable A measure of inherently numerical phenomena that can be counted, divided and multiplied, such as money or time.
Controlled experiment Scientific method that systematically controls the factors that affect some outcome of interest and studies it systematically to isolate the causal logic that produces the observed effects.
Conurbation A process in which urban and suburban development reaches a point where different cities begin to be connected together in a large, continuous metropolitan space.
Convenience sample A sample collected from a research population on the basis of convenience, or easy access.
Corporate social responsibility A social movement to convince business leaders to adopt sustainable and environmentally responsible practices.
Correlation A correlation is an observed statistical dependence between two variables, but it does not mean the variables are causally related.
Cosmology The system of knowledge and beliefs that a society uses to understand how the world works and how it is organized.
Counterfactual reasoning An analytical strategy for investigating the causal logic of research that asks what factors might have led to a different social outcome.
Credentialism A process in which formal educational qualifications are used to determine who is eligible to work in a given occupation.
Crime Deviant behavior that is defined and regulated by law.
Crime rate Calculated in the United States as the number of criminal offenses committed per 100,000 people in the population.
Criminal justice system All the government agencies that are charged with finding and punishing people who break the law.
Criminal recidivism The likelihood that a person will engage in future criminal behavior.
Critical race theory A theory that first developed in critical legal studies to critique the notion that social identity is only based on a single category, like race.
Crystallization The degree to which one dimension of inequality in a stratification system is connected to other dimensions of inequality.
Cultural capital Education, cultural knowledge, and cultural consumption that signals privilege to others; the knowledge and consumption of culturally valued things.
Cultural competence The ability to perceive and engage other cultural ideas. In medical settings cultural competence means the ability to meet the cultural, social, and linguistic needs of patients.
Cultural gatekeepers Decision-makers who control access to or influence what kind of culture is available to an audience.
Cultural hierarchies Socially organized inequality based on ideas about what counts as “good” or worthwhile culture.
Cultural humility An approach to health care where medical professionals develop a stance that is open to the patient and that seeks to learn from them how they perceive the situation on an ongoing basis.
Cultural imperialism When a small number of countries dominate the market for culture and destroy smaller, local cultures.
Cultural pluralism An alternative to the idea of assimilation that imagines a society where people maintain their unique cultural identities while also accepting the core values of the larger society.
Cultural relativism The idea that all meaning is relative to time and place.
Cultural turn An interdisciplinary movement in sociology and other disciplines that emphasizes the collective cultural dimension of social life.
Culture The entire set of beliefs, knowledge, practices, and material objects that are meaningful to a group of people and shared from generation to generation.
Culture war A profound, society-threatening conflict over values.
Curative medical care Care focused on curing disease or relieving pain to promote recovery.
Cybercrime Crime conducted using computer networks.
Davis–Moore theory of inequality The theory that some level of inequality is necessary to motivate people to do the most difficult and important jobs in a society.
Decoding The process in which cultural messages are interpreted by specific people.
Degree of inequality The level of concentration of a specific asset within the larger population.
Deinstitutionalization A historical process in the United States and other countries where populations once housed in long-term care facilities like psychiatric hospitals and facilities for the developmentally disabled declined sharply over time.
Deliberation The practice of discussing matters of collective importance, so that after debating the merits of competing positions, people can reach a shared agreement about the best course of action.
Democratic republic A form of democratic government where power is held by elected officials and there is no monarch.
Demographic divide A general pattern of global population growth, in which poor countries have higher birth rates and lower life expectancies, while wealthy countries have lower birth rates and higher life expectancies. The demographic divide is a significant cause of global inequality and global immigration patterns.
Demographic transition The historical decline in the birth rate and the death rate. The demographic transition began during the 19th century, and accelerated throughout the 20th century.
Demography The study of human populations.
Denomination A religious sect that has begun to develop a more established bureaucracy and a common set of ritual practices.
Dependent variable The outcome to be explained in a research study; the researcher wants to identify what produces the effects on the dependent variable.
Deviance Any behavior that is outside social boundaries for what counts as normal and acceptable.
Deviant subculture A group of people who set themselves apart as being different from the larger mainstream culture of the society.
Diaspora A type of transnational community that develops when specific populations are forced to leave their homeland and to scatter across different communities around the globe.
Discourses Organized systems of knowledge and power that define what meanings we count as normal, and what kinds of meanings we attach to people who are “not normal.”
Discrimination Negative and unequal treatment directed at a particular group.
Disease A disorder in the structure or function of the human organism.
Disenchantment The condition of rationalized bureaucratic societies characterized by the growing importance of skepticism and the decline of belief as a source of social action.
Division of labor A central principle for organizing the productive work in society that sorts different people into different work roles to ensure the production and reproduction of human life. This includes the separation of work and life into different, more specialized parts.
Dominant culture The ideas, values, beliefs, norms, and material culture of society’s most powerful groups.
Dramaturgical theory A theory of society developed by Erving Goffman that refers to social life as a series of theatrical performances.
Dyad A group of two people with one relationship.
Ecological modernization A sociological theory focused on the expectation that growing expert knowledge and public awareness of environmental risks will lead to the development of more sustainable policies and practices.
Economy All the activities and organizations that are involved in the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Ego The part of the mind that balances the demands of the id and the superego to determine the most practical course of action for an individual in any given situation.
Elites An elite is formed through high-status behavior and the formation of institutions to create a community of privilege and control.
Emphasized femininity A counterpart to the idea of hegemonic masculinity, where women perform in stereotypically feminine ways that conform to a patriarchal gender order.
Empirical evidence Fact-based information about the social or natural world.
Encoding The process through which people with power try to create forms of material and ideal culture that encourage cultural consumers to adopt specific shared meanings.
Epidemic A widespread or high incidence of an infectious disease.
Epidemiology The study of the social dimensions of disease patterns to discover the way diseases are spread and communicated.
Epigenetics The study of how genes interact with wider natural and social environments.
Epistemic privilege The privilege that attaches to the knowledge of powerful people.
Epistemology A branch of philosophy that explores how we know whether a statement or a fact is actually true.
Ethics Critical reasoning about moral questions. Ethical research weighs the benefits of research against possible harm to human subjects of research.
Ethnic cleansing The forcible removal of an entire group of people from a society because of their race, ethnicity, or religion.
Ethnic enclaves Geographical areas defined by high levels of ethnic concentration and cultural activities and ethnically identified economic activities.
Ethnicity A system for classifying people into groups on the basis of shared cultural heritage and a common identity.
Ethnocentrism When people assume that their society is superior to others and when they use their own cultural standards to judge outsiders.
Ethnography A sociological research method based on participant-observation in the field where researchers try to capture social life in all of its detail and complexity.
Experiments A sociological research method that controls the conditions of observation with the goal of isolating the effects of different factors on some outcome of interest.
Extended family A type of family in which the household includes parents, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other relatives.
Falsifiability The idea that scientific statements define what condition or evidence would prove them wrong.
Family A group of related people, who are connected together by biological, emotional, or legal bonds.
Feminine The set of personal, social, and cultural qualities associated with females and women.
Feminism A theoretical critique and historical series of social movements that proposed women as equal to men and argued that women should be treated as equals in major social institutions.
Feudalism An economic system in which a small number of people owned most of the land, and everyone else was completely dependent on the landowner.
Field experiments Research using experimental methods in natural settings outside of the laboratory.
Focus groups A sociological research method that gathers groups of people together for discussion of a common question or a particular social issue to collect data.
Folkways Common sense and fairly unserious norms.
Free-rider problem A collective action problem, in which people in large groups will not act in a way that helps the common good unless it benefits their own personal interests. In social movement contexts, the situation where the people who benefit from a social movement’s activities assume that others will do the work.
Game stage A stage of social development when children are around seven years old and begin to make friends, learn to pick games that other people want to play, and learn how to avoid or to quickly resolve arguments that arise when a game is being played.
Gender cue Part of a social script that tells other people what gendered behavior to expect in the future and how to orient their own behavior in the present.
Gender dysphoria A diagnosis in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to describe when people experience “intense, persistent gender incongruence.”
Gender order A characterization of society as fully organized by gender.
Gender performance Actions and behaviors that conform to widespread gendered understandings of social roles and social identities.
Gender script A set of social norms that direct people to act in accordance with widely understood gender expectations.
Gender socialization The social interactions and experiences through which individuals learn how to occupy the gender roles considered appropriate to their sex status.
Gender stereotypes Widespread cultural understandings about the different and contrasting qualities associated with women and men.
Gender The socially constructed roles for women and men that define expected behaviors for individuals of each sex.
Genealogy The study of family history in order to document how family members are related to each other.
Generalize To make the argument that the finding from a particular sample of people or a single research study applies to a wider research population.
Generalized other The rules of society that the child internalizes through the process of socialization.
Generation A group of individuals who are of a similar age and are marked by the same historical events that take place during their youth.
Genetics The study of how genes function in the biological system.
Genocide The systematic killing of people on the basis of their race, ethnicity, or religion.
Global/globalization The interconnection of social life on the planet.
Global city Cities that serve as the centers of global finance, international law, management consulting, and global marketing and communication. Examples include London, New York, and Tokyo.
Global culture Beliefs, knowledge, practices, and material objects that are shared all around the world.
Globalization A concept that refers to the growing social, economic, cultural, and political interdependence of the world’s people; the process of international integration in many domains affecting cultural, economic, and political relationships and made possible by changes in transportation, telecommunications, media, and information technology.
Hate crime Acts of violence and intimidation against people because of their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, gender or disability.
Health care systems Contractual connections between medical organizations.
Health demography The study of the prevalence, or the distribution, of disease and illness in a population.
Health insurance A way to pay for health care where members pay a regular fee into a larger pool, to be drawn on when they need medical care.
Hegemonic masculinity A form of power that enshrines an ideal standard of masculinity and justifies all the ways our society is organized to reinforce the leading role of men.
Hegemony A form of power where dominant groups are able to make their worldview seem like “common sense” to the rest of the population.
Heteronormative A social order that assumes compulsory heterosexuality and links it to binary sex categories to gender roles at work, in the family, and in the nation, and also to heterosexual sex roles.
Heterosexuality Sexual desire and sexual relations between males and females.
Hidden curriculum The rules of behavior students need to learn to function effectively in the school and the larger society.
Hierarchy of masculinities A social order where some masculinities are seen as superior to others, and all are superior to femininity.
High culture All the cultural products that are held in the highest esteem by a society’s intellectuals and elites.
Homeschooling A type of schooling in which parents choose to educate their children at home instead of sending them to a traditional school.
Horizontal mobility Social movement in people’s life that occurs without changing their overall position in the socioeconomic stratification system.
Horizontal occupational segregation A pervasive pattern of gender segregation where women are concentrated into female-typed, lower-earning jobs.
Hypothesis A specific statement about the causal relationship between variables that is falsifiable, which means it is a statement that can be proved wrong on the basis of empirical evidence.
Id The unconscious part of the mind, which seeks immediate pleasure and gratification.
Ideal culture All the social meanings that exist in nonmaterial form, such as beliefs, values, expectations, and language.
Identity theft When criminals use stolen personal and financial information to assume a person’s identity in order to obtain credit and other financial advantages in that person’s name.
Ideology A system of shared meaning that is used to justify existing relationships of power and privilege.
Illness experience The way in which illness is understood and managed by patients and their carers.
Immigrant enclave A community in which there are successful immigrant-owned businesses that serve to anchor the community. Immigrant enclaves are highly desirable destinations for new immigrants.
Immigration The movement of people from one nation to another.
Incarceration A form of punishment in which the offender is confined in prison.
Income The flow of earnings over a delimited time period including rents, salaries, and income transfers like pensions or dividends.
Independent variable The factor that produces a change in the dependent variable.
In-depth interviews A sociological research method that uses extended, open-ended questions to collect data.
Inequality The unequal distribution of social goods such as money, power, status, and social resources.
Informed consent The idea that people must consent to being studied and that researchers must give their subjects enough information about the study so that they can make a truly voluntary decision about whether or not to participate.
In-group A reference group that a person is connected to in a positive way and feels bonded to, whether or not they know people in the group personally.
Institution An established system of rules and strategies that defines how people are related to each other and how they should act in a given social situation.
Institutional level of analysis The intermediate level of analysis, between microsociology and macrosociology, of specific institutions and social relationships.
Institutional reflexivity The phenomenon where people change their behavior in response to social research.
Institutional Review Board (IRB) A governing group that evaluates proposed research with the goal of protecting human subjects from physical or psychological harm.
Integrated medical care Systems of medical care that are coordinated to meet the multiple needs of clients.
Interest group An organization that brings people together on the basis of a common issue, and attempts to influence political decision-makers on topics related to that issue.
Intergenerational mobility The change in social status between different generations in the same family, or the change in the position of children relative to their parents.
Internal migration The movement of people within the same country. Internal migration is different than international migration, which is what people usually refer to when they talk about immigration.
Intersectional health perspective A multilevel approach to health care and medicine that emphasizes the multiple systems of oppression that shape health outcomes and how they interact.
Intersectionality A perspective that identifies the multiple, intersecting, and situational nature of the categories that shape people’s identities.
Intersex The medical term for people born with primary sex characteristics that are not easily classified into the dichotomous male/female categories. More recently the term “disorders of sex development" (DSD) has been recommended by persons with intersex conditions.
Job training When schools teach students specific skills that will help them enter the workforce and earn a decent wage.
Kinship system The set of rules that define who counts as a member of the family, the names that are given to different types of family members, and the expectations about how different family members will relate to one another.
Labeling theory A theory that people become deviant when they are labeled as deviant people.
Laws Attempts by governments to establish formal systems of rules about how people are allowed to behave, as well as a system of punishments for when they break those rules.
Level of analysis The size or scale of the objects sociologists study.
Life expectancy The amount of time an individual can expect to live.
Literacy The ability to read, write, communicate, and use other skills that allow people to participate fully in their society.
Local The specific particular settings of everyday life, including face-to-face relationships.
Logic Valid reasoning.
Looking-glass self A concept that describes how we develop a social self based on how we think other people perceive us.
Lower-middle class A social class group below the middle class composed of families with a household income of between $15,000 and $60,000 per year.
Macrosociology The analysis of large-scale structural patterns and historical trends, including the workings of the economic, political, and cultural systems.
Male breadwinner A social role for adult men based on the expectation that men should earn enough in wages to support a dependent wife and family.
Marginal productivity theory The theory that inequality is a way of rewarding people who make a greater contribution to society, by encouraging them to work hard and use their talents.
Marriage market Institutionalized spaces where individuals select potential sexual, romantic, and marriage partners.
Masculine The set of personal, social, and cultural qualities associated with males and men.
Master status A single status that becomes so important that it is the only one that matters in social interactions.
Material culture All the cultural objects that are produced by a social group or a society.
Matthew Effect A tendency in science in which the most eminent scientists get most of the recognition and rewards for scientific research.
Means of symbolic production The organized social resources for creating, producing, and distributing communications.
Mechanical solidarity A system of social ties that produces social cohesion on the basis of similar work and life in less complex divisions of labor.
Media concentration A situation when a few large companies control the majority of commercial culture.
Medical institutions Organizational arrangements in which medical therapies are developed and practiced.
Medical risk Any condition or factor that increases the likelihood of disease or injury.
Medicalization A process where a social problem comes to be created or redefined as a medical issue.
Medicine The social response to illness that attempts to identify, prevent, and cure disease.
Meritocracy Stratification systems where high position is held by those who perform the best on examinations and other formal tests of ability.
Microsociology The analysis of individuals and small-group interaction.
Middle class A social class group below the upper-middle class composed of families with an annual income of between $60,000 and $90,000.
Modern era/modernity The period of history in which the combined effects of industrialization, colonization, and the democratic revolutions created massive social change.
Modern world system A term coined by Immanuel Wallerstein to describe the economic integration that occurred with the massive expansion of global trade in modernity.
Monotheism A religious cosmology in which there is only one deity.
Moral indifference When we distance ourselves from the consequences of our actions for others.
Moral order A social arrangement that is organized around widely understood and institutionally enforced ideas of right and wrong; the gender order is a moral order since it defines what is right and wrong for women and men.
Multicultural marketing Advertising that tailors specific messages to target minority groups.
Moral education A form of education where students learn social skills, the values of self-determination and autonomy, and how to attach to social groups.
Moral panic When an event, situation, individual or group come to be defined as a threat to social values.
Mores Norms that define serious expectations about behavior that invoke central values.
Multiculturalism A culturally pluralist society that officially recognizes the existence of different cultural groups and identities, and that develops policies promoting cultural diversity.
Multilevel approach to health and illness A part of an intersectional health perspective that emphasizes the systemic sources of health and illness as well as individual characteristics.
Multilineal A kinship system that traces both the maternal and the paternal lines of descent, giving equal significance to each.
National health care Government-based health care systems where all citizens are guaranteed access to a basic bundle of medical services.
Net worth Wealth and income minus any debt owed.
Network centrality A network position with many individual direct ties with many people in the network, or someone who is highly influential in a network.
Normalization The process through which social standards of normal behavior are used to judge people and to reform those who are determined not to be normal
Norms Shared expectations, specific to time and place, about how people should act in any particular situation.
Nuclear family A traditional image of the family, which consists of a heterosexual couple living together with their children.
Operationalization The process of defining measures for a sociological study.
Opinions Ideas about the world that stem from common values or experience.
Ordinal variable A measure of categorical order, such as more and less, where the distances between categories are not numerically precise.
Organic solidarity A system of social ties that produces social cohesion based on differences in a complex divisions of labor.
Organizational culture The distinctive beliefs and patterns of behavior that develop within an organization.
Out-group A reference group toward which a person has a negative connection.
Palliative care Medical care offered to a person and that person’s family when it is recognized that the illness is no longer curable.
Pandemic An epidemic that not only affects a large number of people but is also spread over a large geographical area of the world.
Parliamentary system A form of democratic government where the head of government is chosen from the legislature, and is also usually the leader of the largest political party in parliament.
Parole A process through which prisoners who appear to have reformed themselves can earn an early release from their prison sentence.
Participant-observation A research method of observing people in social settings by participating in those social settings with them.
Party system A stratification system where power and privilege come from the effective leadership of important organizations.
Patriarchy A social system rooted in male power, where men and qualities associated with men are considered to be superior to women and to qualities associated with women.
Patrilineal A kinship system that privileges the male line of descent.
Peer groups Groups of people of similar age who share the same kinds of interests.
Peer pressure Peer groups encourage adolescents and teens to engage in behaviors that they would not perform if their parents were watching.
Peer review The process of review of proposed research or publication by the community of scientific experts in a profession or scientific field.
Persuasive power The ability to convince other people that a particular choice or action is the appropriate one.
Pink-collar jobs A term coined to describe the kind of jobs done by women entering the labor force in the 1970s and 1980s.
Play stage A stage of social development when children around three years old begin to engage in role-playing games.
Plea bargaining A process in which a defendant pleads guilty to a lesser charge that has been negotiated by the prosecuting and defense attorneys.
Police A group of people authorized to enforce the law, prevent crime, pursue and bring to justice people who break the law, and maintain social order.
Political opportunity structure The political opportunities available for successful social movement action that occur when there are changes in political alliances, political conflicts among elites, or when there are clear alliances that can be made with specific political groups.
Politics The struggle for influence and control over the state.
Polytheism A religious cosmology in which there is a group of deities
Popular culture Objects of material culture industrially produced and distributed for the masses.
Popular sovereignty The“ rule of the people.”
Post-colonial theory A critical perspective that argues that the ways we see globalization, power, and economic systems in the modern world are all shaped by the conquest and subordination of the world’s peoples by Western European powers dating from the 15th and 16th centuries.
Post-industrialism An economy in which manufacturing becomes less important as a source of wealth, and where the production of information, knowledge, and services becomes more important.
Post-secular society A society in which religion and science coexist harmoniously, and where there is an attempt to create mutual learning and respect between religious ideas and scientific ideas.
Power A social relationship in which one individual or group is able to influence the conduct of other individuals or groups either directly through force or indirectly through authority, persuasion, or cultural expectation; the ability of individuals or groups to get what they want, even against the resistance of others who are participating in the same action.
Presidential system A form of democratic government where there is a formal separation of powers between the head of government and the legislature, and the president is usually elected by a democratic vote of the people.
Preventive medical care Care aimed at preventing disease before it occurs.
Primary deviance A deviant act or behavior that does not result in the person adopting an identity as a deviant person.
Primary groups Small groups typically based in face-to-face interaction that foster strong feelings of belonging.
Primary school The part of the education system that focuses on the learning needs of children from the ages of five to 12, with an emphasis on basic academic learning and socialization skills.
Primary sexual characteristics The organs required for physical reproduction.
Primogeniture A system in which the first-born child (or, more commonly, the first-born son) inherits the entire family estate.
Prison-industrial complex A profit-making system that uses prison labor and prisons to support a wide array of economic activities.
Private school A school that charges tuition for each student it educates.
Privilege The greater resources possessed by some individuals and groups compared to others.
Professionalization A process where a group of workers come to control a particular space in the division of labor on the basis of their expertise.
Property crime Defined by the Uniform Crime Reporting Program as burglary (entering a home or business to commit theft) motor vehicle theft, larceny (other forms of theft), and arson.
Proselytizing The attempt by an individual or an organization to convert other people to their own religious beliefs.
Public health education Educational efforts to prevent disease, promote healthy behaviors, and preempt risky ones.
Public health The health of the whole population.
Public health policy The norms, rules, and laws that attempt to shape public health behavior.
Public opinion The public expression of the different attitudes and beliefs that people have about a particular issue.
Public religion A situation in which individuals and organizations make faith-based moral arguments about the public good.
Public school A school that is run by the state and receives all or most of its funding from the government.
Public sociology A commitment to bringing sociological knowledge to a general public audience, and participating in wider public conversations and struggles for social justice.
Public sphere The collection of places where private individuals and elected officials gather together to discuss matters of common concern.
Punishment A social response to deviance that controls both deviant behavior and the offender, and that aims to protects the social group and its social standards.
Qualitative methods Sociological research methods that collect nonnumerical information, such as interview transcripts or images.
Quantitative methods Sociological research methods that collect numerical data that can be analyzed using statistical techniques.
Queer Any idea or practice that actively disturbs the binaries describing a neat concurrence of sex, gender, and desire in society.
Queer theory A critical perspective that identifies the logic of homophobia and heterosexism in social practice and social institutions, and how that logic works to maintain social order.
Race A system for classifying people into groups on the basis of shared physical traits, which people in society treat as socially important and understand to be biologically transmitted.
Racial determinism A dominant social theory in the 19th century that argued that the world was divided into biologically distinct races, and that there were fundamental differences in ability between the different racial groups.
Racial formation theory A critique that analyzes modern Western society and particularly US society as structured by a historically developed “racial common sense.” Racial stereotypes and institutionalized patterns of inequality are embedded in the fundamental fabric of modern social life at both the individual and the institutional levels.
Racial profiling The police practice of targeting an individual because of their race or ethnicity.
Racial steering A practice in which realtors would encourage people to look for homes in specific neighborhoods depending on their race, as a way to ensure the “desirable” neighborhoods were reserved for whites.
Random sample A selection from a research population based on a random mechanism, such as a dice roll, a flipped coin, or a random number generator.
Rationalization A major dynamic of modernity in which social relationships become more predictable, standardized, systematic, and efficient.
Rational-legal authority A form of persuasive power based on clearly defined rules that are written down.
Reactivity When the researcher has an effect on the behavior and the responses of the interview subject.
Redlining A practice where banks would not give mortgages to people who lived in minority-dominated neighborhoods.
Reference group A group that people use to help define how they fit in society by providing standards to measure themselves.
Reflexivity The imaginative ability to move outside of yourself in order to understand yourself as part of a wider social scene.
Rehabilitation An approach to punishment that seeks to improve offenders and restore them to society.
Relationality The idea that social things take on meaning only in relationship to social other things.
Relative deprivation A form of inequality between groups where people believe that they are being treated unequally in comparison to another group they view as similar to themselves.
Relative mobility The understanding of change in social position compared to other groups.
Relativism The idea that truth depends on the group, the community, the society, and the culture to which a person belongs.
Reliability The consistent measurement of the object over units in a population or over repeated samples.
Religion A unified system of beliefs and practices related to sacred things, which unite all of its adherents into a single moral community.
Remittance A practice in which immigrants send money back to family members living in their country of origin.
Remittances The money a migrant sends back from their new country to family members in their country of origin.
Representative sample A selection from a research population that contains all the features of the wider population from which it is drawn.
Reproductive labor The work of producing and maintaining individuals for social participation in the economy and society
Research methods Strategies to collect accurate and useful information about the world.
Research population The entire universe of individuals or objects in a study.
Residential segregation A social practice in which neighborhoods are separated on the basis of group differences.
Resistance Opposition to the exercise of power.
Resocialization The process through which we adjust our lives, attitudes, and behaviors in response to new circumstances.
Resource mobilization theory A theory that links social movement success to resources of money, legitimacy, facilities, and labor.
Rigidity The degree to which movement is possible in a stratification system.
Ritual An event where people come together to reaffirm the meaning of the sacred, to acknowledge its special qualities and its separateness from ordinary (profane) life.
Role conflict When there are competing expectations coming from different statuses and role expectations clash, individuals become conflicted.
Role strain When the different expected behaviors associated with a status are in tension with one another, individuals experience strain trying to meet expectations.
Role The set of expected behaviors associated with a particular status.
Sample A selection from a research population for the purposes of research.
Sanctions Actions that punish people when they do not act in a way that accords with norms.
Sandwich parents The generational position where people are raising their children at the same time as their own parents are becoming elderly and need care.
Second shift The unpaid housework and child care women perform after returning home from their paid job.
Second-wave feminism. The movements and activism around women’s rights in the 1960s and 1970s, with a focus on reproductive rights, work, family, and equal pay.
Secondary deviance A deviant act or behavior that occurs when a person has taken on the role of the deviant person.
Secondary groups Large, impersonal groups usually organized around a specific activity or interest.
Secondary school The part of the education system in which students learn more specialized subject areas, and where they begin to develop the specific skills they will need to enter the workforce or university.
Secondary sex characteristics Physical features that emerge at puberty like body hair and breasts.
Sects A smaller and more loosely organized group of religious believers who disagree with the established church and try to create their own authentic expression of religious faith.
Secularization thesis The argument that religion will become less important in modern society.
Secular-rational values Widely held social beliefs that emphasize the importance of individualism, science, and critique.
Segregation A social practice in which neighborhoods, schools, and other social organizations are separated by race and ethnicity.
Selection effect The bias produced in data by the way the data are chosen, or selected.
Self A sociological term used in the symbolic interactionist tradition to describe the individual person and their social being. The self is produced and only takes on meaning in interaction and relationships with others.
Self-expression values Widely held social beliefs that emphasize the importance of tolerance, political participation, personal happiness, and environmental protection.
Separate spheres The idea that there are and should be separate social domains for women and men.
Sex The status of male or female, which is assigned at birth and is associated with physical attributes such as chromosomes and anatomical differences.
Sick role An idea developed by Talcott Parsons to describe social expectations for the behavior of sick people.
Single-party state A state in which all candidates in an election come from a single political party.
Snowball sample A selection from a research population taken by asking the first few research subjects to identify and recommend others for study.
Social capital Group ties and network attachments people have and the sense of trust and security that they get from their group memberships and network attachments; the relationships and experience of social connection and cooperation people have with each other that allow them to act together.
Social control theory A theory that people who have strong social bonds and attachments in their community are less likely to engage in deviant behavior.
Social demography Social research that uses demographic data in order to study key social institutions and social processes. Social demographers study trends in marriage and divorce, population aging, immigration and social mobility, urbanization, and health disparities between different population groups.
Social facts Facts about the collective nature of social life that have their own patterns and dynamics beyond the individual level.
Social group A set of people that are connected in some way.
Social mobility A change in a person’s social status or a movement to a different place in the stratification system.
Social movement A group of people acting together to try to create social or political change, usually outside the channels of institutionalized politics.
Social network A group organized through social ties between individuals that works through the connections that link individuals to one another.
Social research The systematic investigation of some aspect of the social world, which aims to contribute to our general understanding of society.
Social sciences The disciplines that use systematic scientific and cultural methods to study the social world, as distinct from the natural and physical worlds.
Social stratification A central sociological idea that describes structured patterns of inequality between different groups of people.
Socialism A type of economy in which goods are produced according to social needs, and economic production is controlled and owned collectively by the workers themselves.
Socialization All of the different ways that we learn about our society’s beliefs, values, and expected behaviors; the ongoing process of learning the social meanings of a culture.
Socioeconomic status A general term referring to sociological measures of social position that include income, educational attainment, and occupational prestige.
Sociological imagination The ability to see the connections between individual lives, wider social structures, and the way they affect each other.
Sociological research methods All the different strategies sociologists use to collect, measure, and analyze data.
Sociology of health and illness A field of sociology that studies the relationship between health and society.
Solidarity The sense of belonging and the connection that we have to a particular group.
Standardized tests Forms of assessment that are administered and scored under conditions that are the same for all students.
State All of the institutions of government, which together rule over a clearly defined territory and have a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within the territory.
Status A specific social position that an individual occupies in the social structure.
Status group A group held together by a common lifestyle and shared characteristics of social honor.
Stereotypes A form of ideology that encourages people to believe in the natural superiority or inferiority of different groups of people.
Stigma A form of dishonor, discredit, or shame associated with illness; a spoiled identity.
Stratification A central sociological idea that describes structured patterns of inequality between different groups of people.
Structural mobility Changes in social position in the stratification system that occur because of structural changes in the economy and wider society.
Structural strain theory A theory about the connection between structural inequalities, grievances, and collective action.
Structure The seen and unseen regular, organized patterns of social life.
Subcultures The ideas, values, beliefs, norms, and material culture of all the nondominant groups in the society.
Suburb A residential area located within commuting distance of a city. Suburbs began to spread out from cities in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, first with improvements in railroad infrastructure and then with the spread of the automobile.
Superego The moral part of the mind, which acts as the conscience.
Surveillance Monitoring other people’s activites, often by using video and other media technologies.
Surveys A sociological research method that asks a series of defined questions to collect data from a large sample of the research population.
Survival values Widely held social beliefs that emphasize the importance of economic and physical security.
Symbolic ethnicity The way dominant groups feel an attachment to specific ethnic traditions without being active members of the ethnic group.
Symbolic interactionism A perspective associated with the Chicago school of sociology that argues that people develop a social self through interaction with others.
Symbolic meaning The broader cultural content of a cultural object, idea, or event which is based on the other images, emotions, meanings, and associations that come from the larger culture.
Symbolic politics A type of political activity in which the meanings associated with a political action are just as important as the policies or the social changes being proposed.
Theodicy The attempt to explain why suffering and injustice exist in the world.
Theoretical sample A selection from a research population that focuses a sample as research progresses and where the sampling strategy changes after the initial data have been collected, based on what is theoretically important.
Theories of the middle range Theories that focus on particular institutions and practices rather than an overarching theory of society
Thomas theorem The proposition that the way people interpret a situation has real consequences for how they act.
Total institutions Institutions like prisons, nursing homes, or the military that control every aspect of their members’ lives.
Traditional authority A form of persuasive power in which people follow a leader’s orders because of the weight of tradition or custom.
Traditional values Widely held social beliefs that emphasize the importance of traditional religion, family, national pride, and obedience to authority.
Transgender people People whose gender identity does not correlate with the sex status they were assigned at birth.
Transnational community A community that reaches beyond national boundaries.
Transnational family A household that is maintaining strong family bonds and simultaneous connections to multiple countries.
Treadmill of production A social process in which the continuous quest for economic growth encourages businesses to pursue strategies that cause large and unsustainable environmental damage.
Triad A group of three people with three relationships.
Underclass A social group described by William Julius Wilson that experiences long-term unemployment and social isolation, and often lives in impoverished urban neighborhoods.
Upper-middle class A social class group at the top of the class system with good job security and high-paying salaries of over $100,000 per year.
Urbanization A social process in which the population shifts from the country into cities, and where most people start to live in urban rather than rural areas.
Utopia An image of an imaginary, perfect world in which there is no conflict, hunger, or unhappiness.
Validity When data accurately measure the phenomenon under study.
Values General social ideas about what is right and wrong, good and bad, desirable and undesirable, important or unimportant.
Variable A quantity that changes, or varies, in a research population.
Vertical occupational segregation A pattern in occupations where men tend to hold higher, better-paid positions within the same occupation as women.
Vertical social mobility Social mobility up or down in the socioeconomic stratification system.
Violent crime Defined by the Uniform Crime Reporting Program as homicide, aggravated assault, rape, and robbery.
Warehousing theory A theory that focuses on the ways that postsecondary education acts as a holding place that protects people from unstable labor market conditions.
Wealth The stock of valuable assets including physical and intellectual property, art, jewelry, and other valuable goods.
White-collar crime Financially motivated nonviolent crime, usually committed by business professionals in the course of doing their jobs.
Working poor People and families in poverty despite having at least one person who works for a wage.
Workplace sexual harassment Unwelcome and offensive conduct that is based on gender that has become a condition of employment, or conduct that creates an intimidating, hostile, or abusive work environment.
World society The view that there is a common global culture consisting of shared norms about progress, science, democracy, human rights, and environmental protection.
World systems theory A way to think about global stratification that emphasizes the relative positions of countries in the world economy as crucial determinants of inequality.
Xenophobia Fear and hatred of strangers who have a different cultural background.
Zone of permitted variation A social space around a boundary where rules can be contested.