Sociology Names (1-6) – Flashcards
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Auguste Comte (1798-1857)
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A French philosopher who coined the term sociology, believed that just as science had discovered the laws of nature, sociology could discover the laws of human social behavior and thus help solve society's problems. Positivism.
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Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)
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A British citizen, embarked on a long tour of the United States in 1834. She was fascinated by the newly emerging culture in America. Her book Society in America (1837) is an analysis of the social customs that she observed. Also wrote the first sociological methods book, How to Observe Morals and Manners (1838), in which she discussed how to observe behavior when one is a participant in the situation being studied.
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Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
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During the early academic career of the Frenchman, France was in the throes of great political and religious upheaval. Anti-Semitism (hatred of Jews) was being expressed, along with ill feeling among other religions, as well. Being Jewish, he was fascinated by how the public degradation of Jews by non-Jews seemed to calm and unify a large segment of the divided French public. He later wrote that public rituals have a special purpose in society, creating social solidarity, referring to the bonds that link the members of a group. Some of his most significant works explore the question of what forces hold society together and make it stable.
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Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
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According to him, people in society are glued together by belief systems. The rituals of religion and other institutions symbolize and reinforce the sense of belonging. Public ceremonies create a bond between people in a social unit. He thought that by publicly punishing people, such rituals sustain moral cohesion in society.
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Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
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He also viewed society as an entity larger than the sum of its parts. He described this as society sui generis (which translates as "thing in itself"), meaning that society is a subject to be studied separately from the sum of the individuals who compose it. Society is external to individuals, yet its existence is internalized in people's minds—that is, people come to believe what society expects them to believe.
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Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
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He conceived of society as an integrated whole—each part contributing to the overall stability of the system. His work is the basis for functionalism, an important theoretical perspective
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Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
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Created the term social facts to indicate those social patterns that are external to individuals. Things such as customs and social values exist outside individuals, whereas psychological drives and motivation exist inside people. Social facts, therefore, are not to be explained by biology or psychology but are the proper subject of sociology; they are its reason for being.
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Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
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He analyzed rates of suicide in a society, as opposed to looking at individual (psychological) causes of suicide. He showed that suicide rates varied according to how clear the norms and customs of the society were, whether the norms and customs were consistent with each other and noncontradictory.
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Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
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He argued that people in society had a collective consciousness, defined as the body of beliefs common to a community or society that give people a sense of belonging and a feeling of moral obligation to its demands and values. According to him, collective consciousness gives groups social solidarity because members of a group feel they are part of one society.
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C. Wright Mills (1916-1962)
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One of the first to write about the sociological perspective in his classic book, The Sociological Imagination (1959). He wrote that the task of sociology was to understand the relationship between individuals and the society in which they live.
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C. Wright Mills (1916-1962)
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Sociology should be used, he argued, to reveal how the context of society shapes our lives. He thought that to understand the experience of a given person or group of people, one had to have knowledge of the social and historical context in which people lived.
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C. Wright Mills (1916-1962)
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Troubles and Issues.
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Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
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A French citizen, traveled to the United States as an observer beginning in 1831. He thought that democratic values and the belief in human equality positively influenced American social institutions and transformed personal relationships.
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Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
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He felt that in the United States the tyranny of kings had been replaced by the "tyranny of the majority." He was referring to the ability of a majority to impose its will on everyone else in a democracy. He also felt that despite the emphasis on individualism in American culture, Americans had little independence of mind, making them self-centered and anxious about their social class position.
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W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
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One of the most important early sociological thinkers in America. He was a prominent Black scholar, a cofounder in 1909 of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), a prolific writer, and one of America's best minds. He received the first Ph.D. ever awarded to a Black person in any field (from Harvard University), and he studied for a time in Germany, hearing several lectures by Max Weber.
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W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
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He was deeply troubled by the racial divisiveness in society, writing in a classic essay published in 1901 that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." Like many of his women colleagues, he envisioned a community-based, activist profession committed to social justice; he was a friend and collaborator with Jane Addams. He believed in the importance of a scientific approach to sociological questions, but he also thought that convictions always directed one's studies.
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W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
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What Would They Say Now? Classical Theorists on Hip-Hop! I've said that Black people have a "double consciousness"—one where they always have to see themselves through the eyes of a world that devalues them—American and "Black" at the same time. But, concurrently, the "twoness" that Black people experience generates wonderful cultural forms such as hip-hop that reflect the unique spirit of African Americans. I once wrote that "there is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave," but I wish I had lived to see this new spirited and soulful form of musical expression!
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W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
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What Would They Say Now? Classical Theorists Reflect on the War in Afghanistan War has a disproportionate impact on people of color. African-Americans (and, he would now note, Latinos) are most likely to be recruited to fight wars, and thus there is a disproportionate impact of tragedy on these as well as low-income, working-class families.
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Jane Addams (1860-1935)
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One of the most renowned sociologists of her day. But, because she was a woman, she was never given the jobs or prestige that men in her time received. She was the only practicing sociologist ever to win a Nobel Peace Prize (in 1931), never had a regular teaching job. Instead, she used her skills as a research sociologist to develop community projects that assisted people in need. She was a leader in the settlement house movement providing services and doing research to improve the lives of slum dwellers, immigrants, and other poor people.
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Jane Addams (1860-1935)
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What Would They Say Now? Classical Theorists Reflect on the War in Afghanistan As a sociologist who won the Nobel Peace Prize, I must advocate for peaceful resolutions to world conflicts. Were the more pacifist values of women to guide international affairs, we would not experience as many conflicts as we do in a more masculine-based political culture.
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Karl Marx (1818-1883)
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Derived from his work, conflict theory pictures society as fragmented into groups that compete for social and economic resources. Social order is maintained not by consensus but by domination, with power in the hands of those with the greatest political, economic, and social resources. When consensus exists, according to conflict theorists, it is attributable to people being united around common interests, often in opposition to other groups.
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Karl Marx (1818-1883)
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His work was devoted to explaining how capitalism shaped society. He argued that capitalism is an economic system based on the pursuit of profit and the sanctity of private property.
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Karl Marx (1818-1883)
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He used a class analysis to explain capitalism, describing capitalism as a system of relationships among different classes, including capitalists (also known as the bourgeois class), the proletariat (or working class), the petty bourgeoisie (small business owners and managers), and the lumpenproletariat (those "discarded" by the capitalist system, such as the homeless).
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Karl Marx (1818-1883)
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What Would They Say Now? Classical Theorists Reflect on the War in Afghanistan Wars must be understood as the result of the dynamics of capitalism. Not only do they involve economic greed (such as the profits garnered from the pursuit of oil), but private, economic interests are paramount in understanding war, such as the businesses that profit from them.
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Karl Marx (1818-1883)
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What Would They Say Now? Classical Theorists on Hip-Hop! It is interesting that White youth are now the major consumers of hip-hop. Hip-hop originated from young, Black youth who are disadvantaged by the economic system of society. Now capitalism has appropriated this creative work and turned it into a highly profitable commodity that benefits dominant groups who control the music industry. As this has happened, the critical perspective originated by young, Black urban men has been supplanted by race and gender stereotypes that support the interests of the powerful.
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Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
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What Would They Say Now? Classical Theorists Reflect on the War in Afghanistan War, although involving human tragedy, also promotes a sense of group and national identity. Patriotic symbols, such as bumper stickers saying Support Our Troops, promote a collective sense of national identity.
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Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
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According to him, there are two types of social solidarity: mechanical and organic.
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Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
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He described the state were roles are no longer necessarily similar, but they are necessarily interlinked as the division of labor, defined as the relatedness of different tasks that develop in complex societies —the performance of multiple roles is necessary for the execution of society's complex and integrated functions.
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Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
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Along with his collaborator, Karl Marx, he not only changed intellectual history but world history too. He was a German social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx.
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Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
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He revolutionized biology when he identified the process termed evolution, a process by which new species are created through the survival of the fittest.
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Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
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He wrote, "The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind."
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Max Weber (1864-1920)
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The functional perspective, based in this case on his early writings, argues that certain functions, called eufunctions (that is, positive functions), characterize bureaucracies and contribute to their overall unity. Dysfunctions (negative functions) have the consequence of contributing to the disunity, lack of harmony, and less efficiency in the bureaucracy.
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Max Weber (1864-1920)
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He described the ideal type bureaucracy—a model rarely seen in reality but that defines the principal characteristics of a social form.
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Max Weber (1864-1920)
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He looked at the impact of culture on the formation of social and economic institutions. In his classic analysis of the Protestant work ethic and capitalism, he argued that the Protestant faith rested on cultural beliefs that were highly compatible with the development of modern capitalism.
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Max Weber (1864-1920)
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What Would They Say Now? Classical Theorists on Hip-Hop! Emile and Karl, you just see it one way. It's not that you are wrong, but you have to take a multidimensional view. Yes, hip-hop is an economic and a cultural phenomenon, but it is also linked to power in society. Haven't you noticed how political candidates try to use popular music to appeal to different political constituencies? Don't be surprised to find hip-hop artists performing at political conventions! That's what I find so intriguing: Hip-hop is an economic, cultural, and political phenomenon.
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Max Weber (1864-1920)
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What Would They Say Now? Classical Theorists Reflect on the War in Afghanistan War involves multiple dimensions of society. Wars are often fought for political reasons, but also involve economic forces (such as the need for oil in Western societies). Cultural forces, such as the conflict between western values and Islamic value systems, are also a major social force.
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Max Weber (1864-1920)
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He was greatly influenced by Marx's work and built upon it. But, whereas Marx saw economics as the basic organizing element of society, he theorized that society had three basic dimensions: political, economic, and cultural.
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Max Weber (1864-1920)
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According to him, a complete sociological analysis must recognize the interplay between economic, political, and cultural institutions. He is credited with developing a multidimensional analysis of society that goes beyond Marx's more one-dimensional focus on economics.
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Max Weber (1864-1920)
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He also theorized extensively about the relationship of sociology to social and political values. He did not believe there could be a value-free sociology because values would always influence what sociologists considered worthy of study.
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Max Weber (1864-1920)
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He professed that the task of sociologists is to teach students the uncomfortable truth about the world. Faculty should not use their positions to promote their political opinions, he felt; rather, they have a responsibility to examine all opinions, including unpopular ones, and use the tools of rigorous sociological inquiry to understand why people believe and behave as they do.
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Max Weber (1864-1920)
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An important concept in his sociology is verstehen (meaning "understanding" and pronounced "ver-shtay-en"). verstehen , a German word, refers to understanding social behavior from the point of view of those engaged in it.
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Max Weber (1864-1920)
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One major contribution from him was the definition of social action as a behavior to which people give meaning, such as placing a bumper sticker on your car that states pride in U.S. military troops.
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Edward Sapir (1884-1939)
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His hypothesis: A theory that language determines other aspects of culture because language provides the categories through which social reality is defined and perceived.
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Edward Sapir (1884-1939)
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He was an American anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the early development of the discipline of linguistics.
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Muzafer Sharif (1906-1988)
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He was a Turkish-American social psychologist. He helped develop social judgment theory and realistic conflict theory.
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Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
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Psychoanalytic theory originates in his work. Perhaps his greatest contribution was the idea that the unconscious mind shapes human behavior. He is also known for developing the technique of psychoanalysis to help discover the causes of psychological problems in the recesses of troubled patients' minds.
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Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
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This mechanistic view of social learning was transformed by the work of this Swiss psychologist, who believed that learning was crucial to socialization but that imagination also had a critical role. He argued that the human mind organizes experience into mental categories, or configurations, which he called schema.
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Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
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He proposed that children go through distinct stages of cognitive development as they learn the basic rules of reasoning. They must master the skills at each level before they go on to the next. Sensorimotor through Formal Operational stage.
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George Herbert Mead (1863-1931)
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One of two theorists that have greatly influenced the development of symbolic interactionist theory in sociology. He and Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929) were both sociologists at the University of Chicago in the early 1900s. They saw the self developing in response to the expectations and judgments of others in their social environment.
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George Herbert Mead (1863-1931)
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A member of The Chicago School, which is characterized by thinkers who were interested in how society shaped the mind and identity of people. He and Charles Horton Cooley thought of society as a human laboratory where they could observe and understand human behavior in order to be better able to address human needs, and they used the city in which they lived as a living laboratory.
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Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929)
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A member of The Chicago School, which is characterized by thinkers who were interested in how society shaped the mind and identity of people. He and George Herbert Mead thought of society as a human laboratory where they could observe and understand human behavior in order to be better able to address human needs, and they used the city in which they lived as a living laboratory.
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Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929)
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A famous sociologist of the Chicago School of sociology, introduced the concept of the primary group, defined as a group consisting of intimate, face-to-face interaction and relatively long-lasting relationships.
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Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929)
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He postulated the looking glass self to explain how our conception of self arises through considering our relationships to others.
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George W.F. Hegel (1770-1831)
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He was a German philosopher, and a major figure in German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.
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W. I. Thomas (1863-1947)
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When groups have a sense of themselves as "us," they will also have a complementary sense of other groups as "them." The distinction is commonly characterized as in-groups versus out-groups. The concept was originally elaborated by this early sociological theorist.
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W. I. Thomas (1863-1947)
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An American sociologist. He is noted for his innovative work on the sociology of migration on which he co-operated with Florian Znaniecki, and for his formulation of what became known as the Thomas theorem, a fundamental principle of sociology: "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences."
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Erving Goffman (1922-1982)
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Impression management, a term coined by this symbolic interaction theorist, is a process by which people control how others perceive them.
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Erving Goffman (1922-1982)
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He has described coercive organizations as total institutions. A total institution is an organization that is cut off from the rest of society and one in which resident individuals are subject to strict social control
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Stanley Milgrim (1933-1984)
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In controlled experiments, deception is often employed, as in the now-famous studies this social psychologist, where people were led to believe that they were causing harm to another, when in fact they were not.
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Stanley Milgrim (1933-1984)
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In his study, a naive research subject entered a laboratory-like room and was told that an experiment on learning was to be conducted. The subject was to act as a "teacher," presenting a series of test questions to another person, the "learner." Whenever the learner gave a wrong answer, the teacher would administer an electric shock.
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Phillip Zimbardo (1933-)
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The conviction that one is impervious to social influence results in what this social psychologist calls the not-me syndrome: When confronted with a description of group behavior that is disappointingly conforming and not individualistic, most individuals counter that some people may conform to social pressure, "but not me"; or "some people yield quickly to styles of dress, but not me"; or "some people yield to autocratic authority figures, but not me.
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Phillip Zimbardo (1933-)
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In his study, Stanford University students were told by an experimenter to enter a dungeon-like basement. Half were told to pretend to be guards (to role-play being a guard) and half were told that they were prisoners (to role-play being a prisoner). Which students were told what was randomly determined.
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George Ritzer (1940-)
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He coined the term McDonaldization from the well-known fast-food chain. He noticed that the principles that characterize fast-food organizations are increasingly dominating more aspects of U.S. society, indeed, of societies around the world.
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Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931)
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She was another early sociologist, widely noted for her work in the anti-lynching movement. Born a slave, she learned to read and write at Rust College, a school established for freed slaves, later receiving her teaching credentials at Fisk University.
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Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931)
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She wrote numerous essays on the status of African Americans in the United States and was an active crusader against lynching and for women's rights, including the right to vote. Because she was so violently attacked—in writing and in actual threats—because of her passionate work, she often had to write under an assumed name.
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Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931)
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What Would They Say Now? Classical Theorists Reflect on the War in Afghanistan War has a profound influence on the lives of women and people of color, often resulting in rape and other atrocious human rights violations by occupying armies.
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Robert Merton (1910-2003)
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He further developed Functionalism. He saw that social practices often have consequences for society that are not immediately apparent, not necessarily the same as the stated purpose. He suggested that human behavior has both manifest and latent functions.
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Robert Merton (1910-2003)
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profoundly noted, we are "not born human." Helped develop ideas on Status Sets and Reference Groups.
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Carol Gilligan (1936-)
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She found that women conceptualize morality in different terms than do men. Instead of judging women by a standard set by men's experience, she showed that women's moral judgments were more contextual than those of men. In other words, when faced with a moral dilemma, women were more likely to consider the different relationships in the social context that would be affected by any decision instead of making moral judgments according to abstract principles.
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Robert Putnam (1941-)
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He examines this idea in his book Bowling Alone (2000), in which he argues that there has been a decline in civic engagement—defined as participation in voluntary organizations, religious activities, and other forms of public life—in recent years.
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Solomon Asch (1907-1996)
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Conformity experiments. He showed that even simple objective facts cannot withstand the distorting pressure of group influence. He discovered that social pressure of a rather gentle sort was sufficient to cause an astonishing rise in the number of wrong answers.
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Irving Lester Janis (1918-1990)
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He was a research psychologist at Yale University and a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley most famous for his theory of "groupthink" which described the systematic errors made by groups when making collective decisions.
