FINAL EXAM REVIEW GUIDE

Chapters: 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10

Chapter 6: Deviance
Vocabulary Terms

Deviance – the act of disregarding/rejecting the norms of society

Stigma – negative label that is associated with an individual/group; a characteristic that discredit
people

Positive sanctions – good consequences when you follow the norm

Negative sanctions – bad consequences when you deviates from the norm

Ijime – the act/concept of bullying in Japanese culture

Yakuza – organized crime/mafia groups

Hikikomori – people who likes indoor activities, dislike going outside; retreats from society

Wagamama – individuals who are selfish, egoistic, self-loving, disobedient, self-indulged;

disapproved by the Japanese society; popular name for unmarried women who lives with parents,
pay no rent, do no housework.

Frietas – male equivalent of wagamama

Symbolic Interactionism
Labeling Theory: the significance of reputations, how they help us on paths that propel into or
divert away from deviance
Some people reject labels; believe they are conforming members of society. They use the
Techniques of neutralization:
 _Denial of responsibility: “not responsible for what happened”; “it’s an accident”
_Denial of injury: “what I did wasn’t wrong because no one got hurt”; stealing =
borrowing, fights = quarrel; just having fun
_Denial of a victim: revenge; people “deserve what they got”
_Condemnation of the condemners: “who are they to accuse me of something?”; deny
others the right to judge them
_Appeal to higher loyalties: Loyalty to their groups; “I had to help my friend”

Control Theory: The idea that two control systems– inner controls and outer controls– work
against our tendencies to deviate.

_Inner controls: internalized morality (conscience, religious principles, ideas of right and
wrong; fear of punishments, feelings of integrity and desire to be a ‘good’ person)
_Outer controls: people (family, friends…) who influence us not to deviate

Functionalism: Robert Merton’s Strain Theory

Strain Theory: Feelings of frustration that stem from mainstream norms not allowing you to get
ahead in society The way that people react to the goals and means in society.

Innovator: Reject the means but accept the goals – yakuza

They still want to achieve the final goal, but reject the normal ways into getting it,
either because they can’t or they don’t want to
Ritualists: Accept the means and reject the goals – fired men who still pretend to go to work
They don’t care about the ending goal anymore, but still want to do the norms, or at
least pretend like they fit in and do the work
Retreatist: Reject the means and reject the goals – suicide, school violence and refusals

Rebels: Reject both but replace them with ones that they accept – extreme example: revolutionist
 - Injustices in the U.S. prison systems; for profit prisons (Conflict Theory Perspective)

Chapter 7: Global Stratification

Terms:

Social Stratification: Society’s categorization of society based on socioeconomic status

Social mobility: movement of individuals up or down the social ladder according to property,
power, prestige

Intergenerational mobility: changes in social status between different generations in the same
family

Structural mobility: changes in society that allow large numbers of people to move up and down
the class ladder

Exchange mobility: large numbers of people move up and down the social class ladder but the
proportions of the social classes remain the same

Globalization of capitalism: adoption of capitalism around the world

Neo-colonialism: selling least industrialized nations weapons on credit so they can keep
themselves in power and trap them in a circle of debt

Multi-national corporations: companies that operate across many national boundaries help to
maintain global dominance of least industrialized

Identify:

Toussiant Louveture: Leader of the Haitian Revolution

Abraham Lincoln: President during the Civil War

Karl Marx: Social class derived from people’s relationship to the means of production.
-There are only two classes of people

Weber: Property, power, prestige

-These are the things that determine social class

*Be able to distinguish Weber and Marx’s ideas on social class and where social class is derived.

Chapter 8: Social Class

Terms:

Deferred gratification: Resisting temptation of an immediate reward and wait for a later and
better reward

Feminization of poverty: association of poverty with women

Power, property and prestige: Three things that Weber associates with social status

Poorest 20% of US Families have grown poorer and the wealthiest have grown wealthier

Herbert Gans: Theory that poverty helps society because people can make the poor work bad
jobs for little pay

-Creates jobs for people who serve the poor

-Can be punished to uphold societal norms

-They vote and participate less than other groups

Chapter 9: Race and Ethnicity

Terms:

race : group of people with inherited physical characteristics

ethnicity: cultural characteristics that distinguish a group of people

W.E.B. Du Boise: first African American to obtain a PhD from Harvard; co-founded NAACP

Raphael Ezekiel: “The Racist Mind” published by Ezekiel on who is attracted to racism and
why.
Who?: Promises dignity and meaning to their lives, they worked for a specific cause with other
people in a group, people who have few skills and are failing in the highly competitive economy

“When interviewing the young neo-Nazis in Detroit, I often found myself driving with them past
the closed factories, the idled plants or our shrinking manufacturing base. The fewer and fewer
plans that remain can demand better educated and more highly skilled workers. These fatherless
Nazi youths, these high school dropouts, will find little place in the emerging economy…”

*Patterns of Inter Group Relations:

Terms

Multiculturalism/pluralism: encourages racial/ethnic variation

Assimilation: process of a minority group being absorbed into mainstream culture

Segregation: separation of racial or ethnic groups

Internal colonialism: how a country’s dominant group exploits minority groups for economic
advantage

Population transfer (direct/indirect): indirect is making a minority group’s life miserable so they
leave voluntarily and direct is when a dominant group expels a minority group

Genocide: attempt to kill a group of people because of their race or ethnicity

Chapter 10: Gender & Age

Terms

Gender: attitudes that a group considers proper for males and females

Sex: biological characteristics that distinguish male from female

Gender stratification: males and females unequal access to property, power and prestige

Feminism: biology is not destiny, and that stratification by gender is wrong and should be
resisted

Patriarchy: men dominating society

Ageism: prejudice because of age

Matina Horne: experiment on women’s FEAR OF SUCCESS. (Mary gets no. 1 reactiong vs
John gets no. 1 reaction). Both men and women had the same reaction to the experiment

Rosabeth Mark Canton: experiment on preference of boss. Both male and female want male
bosses.
Be Familiar with which Sociological Perspective is illustrated with the following
Theories on Aging: Disengagement Theory and Activity Theory.

Disengagement Theory: Functionalist (MACRO)

-Elaine Cumming and William Henry

-This theory illustrates the connection between the aging individual and all of society.

-As people age, they loose many roles. They retire from their role as a teacher, or
manager.

People maintain higher levels of health when they remain socially integrated.

Activity Theory: Symbolic Interactionism (MICRO)

-This examines how personal relationships with others affect aging people.

-Study “The Importance of Mattering” in elderly.

Results found that people fared better in their later years when they had a strong
network of family and friends; the study rated their sense of mattering or
belonging to social networks.

-This perspective also examines individual efforts that elderly take to stay active.
(Volunteering, church attendance, amount of time spent in outdoors).

-How is disengagement functional and dysfunctional?

-Informal activities are more satisfying than formal