Sociology Midterm Exam Overview

Midterm Exam Overview

• The midterm exam is on October 17th from 6:50 pm to 8:15 pm.
• Bring two sharpened pencils and your student card.
• The exam consists of 21 True/False questions and 49 Multiple Choice questions.
• 65% of the questions are from lectures.
• 35% of the questions are from the textbook and some are from Blackboard readings.
• No numbers or specific places will be included on the exam.

Week 1: Social Patterns and Processes

• Social patterns and social processes: How individuals interact in patterned ways.
• Micro and macro levels of analysis: Micro examines individual interactions, while macro focuses on large-scale social structures.
• Sociological perspective: Viewing the world through a lens that emphasizes social factors influencing individual behavior.
• Seeing the general in the particular: Recognizing patterns in individual behavior that reflect larger social trends.
• Uncovering surface reality: Questioning the taken-for-granted and analyzing social behavior using categories like social class, gender, race, and sex.
• Seeing the strange in the familiar: Viewing familiar situations from a detached perspective, highlighting their social significance.

Week 2: What is Sociology?

• Sociology as a way of knowing: Not just a body of knowledge, but a method of understanding the social world.
• Limited and partial ways of knowing: Direct experience, conventional wisdom, art/aesthetics, and religious knowledge all provide perspectives but are not always comprehensive.
• Sociology as a scientific approach: Using systematic methods to acquire knowledge and understanding of the social world.
• Sociological perspective: Recognizing the social context and patterns shaping individual lives and interactions.
• Social structure: The underlying framework of social relationships, patterns, and institutions that shape social life.

Week 2 Readings: Sociological Imagination

• C. Wright Mills' Sociological Imagination: Connecting personal troubles to public issues and recognizing the influence of social forces on individual lives.
• Quality of mind: The ability to see the connection between personal experiences and broader social contexts.
• Intersections of biography, social structure, and history: Understanding how individual lives are shaped by social structures within historical contexts.

Week 2 Readings: Invitation to Sociology

• First Wisdom of sociology: The recognition that what seems natural or obvious is often socially constructed.
• Underlying assumption of sociology: Society is a human product, but society is also a powerful force shaping individuals.

Week 3: Theoretical Paradigms

• Scientific approach in sociology: Understanding the social world through systematic observation, analysis, and testing of hypotheses.
• Six premises of science: Including the concept of causality, which involves identifying cause-and-effect relationships.
• Obstacles to applying scientific methods to the social world: Complexity, subjectivity, reactivity, ethics, and the difficulty of controlling variables.
• Paradigms in sociology: Models or theoretical frameworks that guide our understanding of the social world.
• Three main paradigms: Social conflict, symbolic interactionist, and structural functional.
• Importance of theory in social research: Theories guide research questions, data collection, and interpretation.
• Hypothesis: A testable statement proposing a relationship between variables.
• Conceptualization: Defining abstract concepts and specifying their meaning for research purposes.
• Variables: Factors that can vary or change in research studies.
• Independent and dependent variables: Independent variables influence the dependent variables.
• Operationalization: Developing concrete measures for variables to allow for empirical study.
• Research design: The overall plan for a study, including the timeframe (longitudinal vs. cross-sectional).
• Methodology: The methods used to collect and analyze data (content analysis, field research, survey research, experiments).

Week 3 Readings: Positivism, Variables, and Research Methods

• Positivism: An approach to sociology that emphasizes objective observation and measurement.
• Variables: Factors that can vary or change in research studies.
• Operationalization: Developing concrete measures for variables to allow for empirical study.
• Validity: Whether the research measures what it intends to measure.
• Reliability: Whether the research produces consistent results over time.
• Causality and objectivity: Identifying cause-and-effect relationships while minimizing bias.
• Three types of sociology: Positivist, critical, and interpretive.
• Interpretive sociology: Emphasizing understanding the meaning people attribute to social phenomena (Max Weber's Verstehen).

Week 4: Marco Level & Capitalism

• Capitalism as a social structure: A dominant economic system that shapes social life in various ways.
• Defining characteristics of capitalism: Private ownership of the means of production, a market economy, and a pursuit of profit.
• Key thinkers in the analysis of capitalism: Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim.
• Mode of production: The way a society produces the goods and services it needs.
• Capitalist mode of production: Characterized by specific means and relations of production, involving two primary classes: owners and workers.
• Commodification: The process of turning goods, services, and even people into marketable commodities.
• Complex division of labour: The specialization of tasks and roles within a capitalist system.
• Rationalization: The process of increasing efficiency, predictability, and control in various aspects of social life (Max Weber).
• Bureaucracy: A form of organization characterized by hierarchy, rules, and impersonality.

Week 4 Readings: Mcdonaldization of Society

• George Ritzer's Mcdonaldization: Extending Max Weber's analysis of rationalization to contemporary society, particularly fast food.
• Five key dimensions of Mcdonaldization: Efficiency, calculability, predictability, control, and the irrationality of rationality.
• Modernity and the loss of community: The social changes associated with industrialization, urbanization, and a shift from Gemeinschaft (traditional community) to Gesellschaft (large, impersonal society).

Week 5: Norms, Roles, And Socialization

• Norms: Rules and expectations that guide behavior and maintain social order.
• Role: A set of expected behaviors associated with a particular position or status within a social group.
• Structuralist and interactionist perspectives on social roles: Structuralism focuses on how roles are defined by social structures, while interactionalism emphasizes how individuals negotiate and enact roles in interactions.
• Four steps to role enactment: Role taking, role making, role expectation, and role performance.
• Socialization: The lifelong process through which we learn the norms, values, and behaviors of our culture.
• Primary socialization: The initial stages of socialization, primarily occurring in early childhood.
• Secondary socialization: Socialization that takes place throughout life, involving specific roles, norms, and values.
• Anticipatory socialization: Learning about and preparing for future roles.
• Resocialization: Replacing old norms and values with new ones, often as a result of major life changes.

Week 5 Readings: Socialization, Roles, and Dramaturgy

• Nature vs. nurture: The debate about the relative influence of genetic factors and social environment on shaping individual traits.
• Agents of socialization: Individuals, groups, and institutions involved in the socialization process (family, school, peers, media).
• Roles: Understand concepts including role strain, role conflict, and master status.
• Dramaturgical Analysis: Erving Goffman's approach to understanding social interactions as performances, with individuals presenting themselves in strategic ways.
• Body ritual: An article examining a seemingly bizarre cultural practice to highlight the subjectivity of social norms and the importance of understanding cultural context.

Week 6: Social Order, Social Conflict, and Social Stratification

• Social order: The stability and predictability in social life, maintained through shared norms, values, and institutions.
• Social conflict: Disagreements, tensions, and power struggles arising from unequal distribution of resources and social rewards.
• Social stratification: The hierarchical arrangement of individuals and groups in a society based on factors such as wealth, power, and prestige.
• Social inequality: Unequal distribution of resources, power, opportunities, and life chances.
• Three main divisions of inequality: Social class, gender, and race/ethnicity.
• Ascribed status: Social positions assigned at birth (e.g., race, gender).
• Achieved status: Social positions earned through effort, skills, and abilities.
• Consequences of inequality: Impact on life chances, access to resources, and social mobility.
• Social class: A group sharing similar economic, social, and cultural positions within a society.
• Karl Marx's theory of social class: Class conflict based on the relationship to the means of production (owners vs. workers).
• Max Weber's theory of social class: Recognizes economic factors, but also incorporates status (social honor and prestige) and power (influence and control).

Week 6 Reading: Davis-Moore Thesis

• Davis-Moore Thesis: Argues that social inequality serves a positive function in society by motivating individuals to fill essential roles and contribute to society. The thesis emphasizes the importance of social stratification in motivating people to pursue higher-ranking positions.