Sociology: Key Concepts

The view that social researchers should strive for subjectivity as they worked to represent social processes, cultural norms, and societal values.

A theory that looks at society as a competition for limited resources.

An extension of symbolic interaction theory which proposes that reality is what humans cognitively construct it to be.

A group's shared practices, values, and beliefs.

A technique sociologists use in which they view society through the metaphor of theatrical performance.

A stable state in which all parts of a healthy society work together properly.

Social patterns that have undesirable consequences for the operation of society.

The part a recurrent activity plays in the social life as a whole and the contribution it makes to structural continuity.

A theoretical approach that sees society as a structure with interrelated parts designed to meet the biological and social needs of individuals that make up that society.

The organized and generalized attitude of a social group.

An attempt to explain large-scale relationships and answer fundamental questions such as why societies form and why they change.

A testable proposition.

The unrecognized or unintended consequences of a social process.

Sought consequences of a social process.

Philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and the experiments performed in support of them.

The scientific study of social patterns.

Statistical methods such as surveys with large numbers of participants.

An error of treating an abstract concept as though it has a real, material existence.

The laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and all of the cultural rules that govern social life.

The ability to understand how your own past relates to that of other people, as well as to history in general and societal structures in particular.