sociology – Flashcard

for a child is very important because it sets the ground work for all future socialization. Primary Socialization occurs when a child learns the attitudes, values, and actions appropriate to individuals as members of a particular culture. It is mainly influenced by the immediate family and friends. For example if a child saw his/her mother expressing a discriminatory opinion about a minority group, then that child may think this behavior is acceptable and could continue to have this opinion about minority groups.

Sociologists make a clear distinction between the terms sex and gender. Sex refers to one's biological identity of being male or female while gender refers to the socially learned expectations and behaviors associated with being male or female. Sex is biologically assigned while gender is culturally learned.

Gender roles are cultural and personal. They determine how males and females should think, speak, dress, and interact within the context of society. Learning plays a role in this process of shaping gender roles. These gender schemas are deeply embedded cognitive frameworks regarding what defines masculine and feminine. While various socializing agents—parents, teachers, peers, movies, television, music, books, and religion—teach and reinforce gender roles throughout the lifespan, parents probably exert the greatest influence, especially on their very young offspring.

In economics, the glass ceiling is "the unseen, yet unbreachable barrier that keeps minorities and women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements."[1] Initially, the metaphor applied to barriers in the careers of women but was quickly extended to refer to obstacles hindering the advancement of minority men, as well as women

Sociologist Christine Williams first coined the term and in her research found that often men are subtly pushed to move up in their professions and as if on a moving escalator, they must work to stay in place. Because of these expectations, men starting in "pink-collar" fields can face negative stereotypes and gender-based discrimination from the public. On the other hand, men might also receive benefits because of their underrepresentation in these fields. NPR noted how male teachers can serve as a healthy male role model for children who may not otherwise have one; therefore they may be given special privileges among teaching staff.

Endogamy is the practice of marrying within a specific ethnic group, class, or social group, rejecting others on such basis as being unsuitable for marriage or other close personal relationships.

Exogamy is a social arrangement where marriage is allowed only outside of a social group. The social groups define the scope and extent of exogamy, and the rules and enforcement mechanisms that ensure its continuity. In social studies, exogamy is viewed as a combination of two related aspects: biological and cultural. Biological exogamy is marriage of non blood-related beings, regulated by forms of incest law. A form of exogamy is a dual exogamy, in which two groups engage in continual wife exchange.[1] Cultural exogamy is the marrying outside of a specific cultural group. The opposite of exogamy is endogamy, a marriage within a social group.

Credentialism is the over-emphasis on credentials when hiring staff or assigning social status.[1] An employer may require a diploma, professional license or academic degree, say, for a job which can be done perfectly well applying skills acquired through experience or mere informal study. Since blue-collar types of work have relied more commonly upon the apprentice system for confirmation of skills, the phenomenon is considered more prevalent among employers of white-collar labor.[citation needed]

Social epidemiology is defined as "The branch of epidemiology that studies the social distribution and social determinants of health,"[1] that is, "both specific features of, and pathways by which, societal conditions affect health."[2] Social epidemiology may focus on individual-level measures, or on emergent social properties that have no correlation at the individual level; simultaneous analysis at both levels may be warranted.[3] Use of such multilevel models (also known as hierarchical and mixed effects models) has grown in recent years, but as for all observational epidemiology, this approach suffers from theoretical and practical concerns.[4] Social epidemiology overlaps with fields in the social sciences, most notably medical anthropology, medical sociology, and medical geography. However, these latter fields often use health and disease in order to explain specifically social phenomenon (such as the growth of lay health advocacy movements), [5] while social epidemiologists generally use social concepts in order to explain patterns of health in the population.

In medicine and medical anthropology, a culture-bound syndrome, culture-specific syndrome or folk illness is a combination of psychiatric and somatic symptoms that are considered to be a recognizable disease only within a specific society or culture. There are no objective biochemical or structural alterations of body organs or functions, and the disease is not recognized in other cultures. While a substantial portion of mental disorders, in the way they are manifested and experienced, are at least partially conditioned by the culture in which they are found, some disorders are more culture-specific than others. Folk illnesses tend to carry psychological and/or religious overtones.[1]