Name/ID: _____DY TY__________________

Date: ________95878___________________

Midterm Exam

Political Sociology (SOC 431)

Dr. Raimund Weiss

1. Terminology (choose five terms, write minimum 2 lines), 5 points

a) Social evolution b) Latency function c) System d) Independent Variable e) Correlation

f) Culture g) August Comte h) Positivism i) Micro-Sociology j) Max Weber

2. Explanation I (choose one topic, write minimum one page), 10 points

a) Explain the main elements of the sociological theories of structural-functionalism

b) Explain the main elements of the sociological theories of conflict
c) Explain theoretical dilemmas of sociological theory

3. Explanation II (choose one topic, write a minimum of half a page), 5 points

a) Explain the main elements of culture

b) Explain the main types of societies
c) Explain theories of the direction of social change
 Answer
3. A. The main the elements of culture focus on
 Symbols: Every culture always have sign to make clarify with like language,
behaviour, gestures. Symbols are anything used to represent express and stand for an
event situation. Symbols direct to guide our behaviour. It is used to show an event of
past, present or future.
 Language: is the way that make people easy to communicate with each other in the
society. Language also can create some block easy to understand with they want to know.
 Values: are another important element of culture and involve judgments of what is good
or bad and desirable or undesirable. Values can show us about the symbolic of culture,
power of structure in the society, living up with standard, and meaningful of life for all
people in community.
 Norms is the elements of culture are the rules and the guidelines which specify the
behavior of an individual. Norms keep a person within the border of society and its
culture. It gives us restriction about something which to do and which not to do. It
required our behavior and gives as knowledge about wrong and right.
2. B. The real society we can see that the conflict theories is about the social life as a competition,
and focuses on the distribution of resources, power, and inequality. According to the Karl Marx who
saw society as being made up of individuals in different social classes who must compete for social,
material, and political resources such as food and housing, employment, educations. So in the social
institutions like government, education, and religion reflect this competition in their related to the
inequalities and help the maintain of the unequal social structure. According to the conflict
perspective, society is made up of individuals competing for limited resources and fighting with the
inequality of the society which happen in the society. For example, inequality of education many
states in the world have meet with the inequality of education because of the resource is not the same
and the power of states is focus on interest too much, they don’t care about the quality of education
in the society, so the society will be effected and face by this issues. Moreover, both of them they
cannot help society by using their knowledge, experiences, skills and values of education to develop
their society because of the limited of power that they have.
Too sum up with the conflict theories all of human being must be trying to competition with
the social and inequality of life.
1. Terminology
- Social Evolution is the change of cultures and societies over time. And change the social
relationship, values and beliefs that happen in human.
- Culture is the idea of thinking to know what happen in the society and acting.
- Positivism is the way that scientific skill to find the real society through monitoring and
participation.
- August Comte is French Philosophy (1798–1857) and the founder of positivism, a
philosophical and political movement.
- Max Weber is the German sociologist, historian, and political economist.