- •4. What factors influence the rate of change experienced by a society?
- •5.Discuss the pros and cons of considering the economy as part of the infrastructure of sociocultural systems
- •6 Who are the power elite? What is the source of their power?
- •7.What social forces have made the masses (and even the middle level) powerless?
- •8.Population, Urbanization, & Environoment
- •9. Government & Politics
- •10. Role of religion in society
- •11) Role of education in society
- •12) The role of family in socialization
- •13) The problem of stratification in Sociology
- •14) Hawthorne experiment
- •16) Scope of the subject of sociology and comparison with other social sciences.
- •17) Sociology and common sense.
- •18) Sociology as Science
- •19) Positivism and its critique
- •20) Research Methods and Analysis
- •21) Techniques of data collection
- •22) Variables, sampling, hypothesis, reliability and validity.
- •23) Sociological Thinkers
- •24) Karl Marx - Historical materialism, mode of production, alienation, class struggle.
- •25) Emile Durkheim- Division of labour, social fact, suicide, religion and society
- •26) Robert k. Merton- Latent and manifest functions, conformity and deviance, reference groups
- •27) Mead - Self and identity
- •28) Stratification and Mobility
- •29. Dimensions – Social stratification of class, status groups, gender, ethnicity and race
- •31. Social organization of work in different types of society- slave society, feudal society, industrial /capitalist society
- •32. Labour and society
- •34 Power elite, bureaucracy, pressure groups, and political parties
- •35 Protest, agitation, social movements, collective action, revolution
- •36 Religion and Society
- •37. Sociological theories of religion
- •38 Types of religious practices: animism, monism, pluralism, sects, cults
- •39. Religion in modern society: religion and science, secularization, religious revivalism, fundamentalism
- •40. The object and the subject of Sociology
- •41. The main categories (terms) of Sociology
- •42. Specializations of Sociology
- •43. The main techniques (methods) of Sociology
- •1 Please explain how Durkheim’s study of suicide and d. Snow’s study of homelessness reflected both a sociological and a scientific approach to their topics
- •2 What is the difference between micro-sociology and macro-sociology
- •3.Why does this course focus exclusively on macro-sociology
- •4. What is a paradigm?
- •5.Of what use is social theory?
- •6. How is this different than earlier industrial societies?
- •7. How does the capitalist world-system maintain political stability?
- •8. Describe the social condition Durkheim calls "anomie.
- •10) What is the role of religion in society?
- •11) What are manifest and latent functions? What is a dysfunction?
- •12) What is Durkheim's anomie theory of deviance?
- •13) Conflict Theory
- •14) Social Classes
- •15 Social mobility
- •16) Race and Ethnicity
- •17) Minority Groups
- •18 Money, economy and social relevance
- •19 The role of mass media in our life
- •20 Censorship and freedom of speech
- •21 Environmental health
- •23) How has television affected social and political discourse in modern society?
- •24) In what sense is technological change "ecological" in nature?
- •25) In what ways has our production system become hostile to the environment?
- •26) Why did America go into Iraq?
- •27) Why did nato help to drive out Muamar Kaddafi in Libya?
- •28) Please explain the significance of the Hawthorne experiment to the development of applied Sociology.
- •29 Is it possible to replicate Hawthorne experiment in nowadays (you can try and remember the case from the text “Replication as a research tool
- •30 How to avoid the Hawthorne Effect?
- •31. How do sociologists use scientific method?
- •32. How can researchers develop a sample of homeless persons in order to study the issue of homelessness?
- •33. Why does the conclusion of a sociological study invariably point the way to new research?
- •36, Why is it valuable for sociologists to have a code of professional ethics?
- •38. Please explain and describe the difficulties that you can encounter in defining a problem when you are conducting a sociological research
- •39. Please explain how sociologists define operational definitions in their sociological project
- •40. Please explain and give reasons why sociologists review special literature on their social problem
- •41. Please explain and define how sociologists give variables in their sociological research
- •42. Explain how sociologists use definite method(s) for gathering data
- •6) Social ideas of Herbert Spencer
- •8) The problems of social interaction and reality in sociology
- •10) The meaning of ascribed and achieved status. Master status.
- •11) Conflict view to the social institutions
- •12) The problems of social structure and modern society
- •13) The problem of anomie in sociology
- •14) Interactionist view to the social institutions
- •15)Functionalist view to the social institutions.
- •16) How has the socialization process changed in the 20th century? How have these changes affected childhood?
- •17) Patriarchy and sexual division of labour
- •18) Agents of social change
- •19) Education and social change
- •20) Science, technology and social change
- •21) Society, community, association, institution
- •22) Social Groups - primary, secondary and reference groups.
- •23) Social structure, social system, social action
- •24) Status and role
- •25) Norms and values-conformity and deviance.
- •26) Social stratification: forms and functions
- •27) Types of society: tribal, agrarian, industrial and post-industrial
- •28) Marriage : types and norms, marriage as contract, and as a sacrament.
- •29. Family : types, functions and changes.
- •30 Kinships : terms and usages, rules of residence, descent, inheritance.
- •31. What is the difference between micro-sociology and macro-sociology?
- •32 Why does this course focus exclusively on macro-sociology?
- •33 What is a paradigm in Sociology?
- •34 Of what use is social theory?
- •35 What is positivism?
- •36, What was Comte’s favored (principal) method of inquiry?
- •37, The role of social institutions in a modern society.
- •38. The problem of suicide in sociology.
- •39. Society as a category of Sociology.
- •40. Durkheim’s Study of Suicide.
- •41. Comte believed all human life had passed through the same 3 distinct historical stages – theology, … , … .Please complete the sentence and explain what Comte meant.
- •42. Sociologists often conduct research using the scientific method. Please, explain how they do it. Give definite example from your hand-outs.
- •43 Max Weber suggested that the best way to understand human behavior is by a direct ″sympathetic understanding″. Please, explain what Weber meant.
- •44 It is sometimes charged by nonsociologists that sociology is a science of the obvious. Please, give your own opinion about this problem.
- •45 There is a traditional commonsense explanation (statement) that more young people than old people commit suicide. How to prove or reject this statement using the method of natural science.
- •49 Please, examine sociological and psychological approaches to the issue of gambling.
- •50 Please, explain why Herbert Spencer did not feel compelled to correct or improve society.
- •52 Durkheim insisted that the growing division of labor found in industrial societies led to what he called anomie. Please, explain what Durkheim meant and what sociologists call anomie.
- •II Durkheim's Theory on Anomie
27) Mead - Self and identity
A sociological approach to self and identity begins with the assumption that there is a reciprocal relationship between the self and society. The self-influences society through the actions of individuals thereby creating groups, organizations, networks, and institutions. And, reciprocally, society influences the self through its shared language and meanings that enable a person to take the role of the other, engage in social interaction, and reflect upon oneself as an object. The latter process of reflexivity constitutes the core of selfhood. Because the self emerges in and is reflective of society, the sociological approach to understanding the self and its parts (identities) means that we must also understand the society in which the self is acting, and keep in mind that the self is always acting in a social context in which other selves exist. This chapter focuses primarily on the nature of self and identity from a sociological perspective, thus some discussion of society is warranted. The nature of the self and what individuals do depends to a large extent on the society within which they live. In general, sociologists are interested in understanding the nature of society or social structure: its forms and patterns, the ways in which it develops and is transformed. The traditional symbolic interactionist perspective known as the situational approach to self and society, sees society as always in the process of being created through the interpretations and definitions of actors in situations . Actors identify the things that need to be taken into account for themselves, act on the basis of those identifications, and attempt to fit their lines of action with others in the situation to accomplish their goals. From this perspective, the inference is made that individuals are free to define the situation in any way they care to, with the consequence that society is always thought to be in a state of flux with no real
organization or structure. Our view of self and society is rooted in the structural approach to the symbolic interactionist perspective. Within this perspective, we do not see society as tentatively shaped. Instead, we assume that society is stable and durable as reflected in the “patterned regularities that characterize most human action”. Patterns of behavior within and between individuals have different levels of analysis, and this is key to understanding the link between self and society. At one level, we can look at the patterns of behavior of one individual over time and come to know that individual. By pooling several such patterns across similar individuals, we can come to know individuals of a certain type. At still another level, we can look at the patterns of behavior across individuals to see how these patterns fit with the patterns of others to create larger patterns of behavior. It is these larger, inter-individual patterns that constitute social structure.
28) Stratification and Mobility
Social stratification: The division and hierarchical ranking of people into layers associated with different degrees of command over material resources, power, and prestige. Divisions upon which stratification may be based include:
Income and wealth: Closely related to occupational and educational status.
Race and ethnicity: Many sociologists believe that racial categories are false and refer to ethnic differences instead. Race is a socially constructed set of distinctions that categorize people on the basis of biological characteristics. Ethnicity is a way of categorizing people on the basis of their shared cultural, linguistic, or national identities.
Gender: The set of socially constructed meanings, practices, norms, skills, and other characteristics ascribed to people on the basis of biological sex.
Age: In many societies, power, prestige, rights, and obligations are assigned to people on the basis of their age.
Social mobility: The movement of individuals or groups up and down stratification hierarchies. Mobility depends on type of stratification: It is quite rare under slavery and more common under class systems.