Статьи обзорного типа

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We shall consider/establish/assume...;

in the rest of article I will be concentrated on;

the same observation can be made for;

it is difficult to draw a line of demarcation be­tween...;

a certain amount of self-criticism and awareness of the status of theoretical concepts...;

I have given these preliminary remarks by way of introduction to the topic at hand, etc.

As a criterion of;

to accept the judgement as it is present­ed;

my reasons for maintaining this are two;

I would not ac­cept B’s view which seems to me to be based on am outdated notion...;

I realize that a lot of scientists would not agree with ... assertion I am making now, etc.

We shall leave it for the reader to decide in favour of a particular theory; once we abandon the assumption that...;

the main advantage of... is;

it is now generally accepted by those...;

the data from which these estimations are made are of the type commonly used in ...;

I would maintain the view..., etc.

None the less, scientists must come to terms with...;

The macro-problem which I see here...;

a ... approach has proved valuable to ..., etc.

Приложение 4 Глоссарий

A

Absolute surplus value This was a Marx term for profit in the capitalistic system; plus value that is picked up as a result of working day lengthening.

Acculturation The voluntary adoption of the norms, values and lifestyle of the dominant culture (or: the process whereby through contact between different cultures, a complex process of cultural adaptation and change occurs).

Achieved status Any social position held by an individual as a result of his or her personal accomplishments in open formal or market competition with others

(educational success, employment position, etc.).

Activity The quality or state of being active; a normal function of the body or mind.

Adaptation Adaptation represents changes that occur in order to maintain various aspects of culture or its structures or, in extreme cases, to aid survival in any form at all. Every social system must adapt itself in relation to other systems and the natural environment.

Adequate Enough in quantity, or good enough in quality, for particular purpose or need; sufficient; suitable.

Aggression An unprovoked attack or warlike act; the use of armed force by a state in violation of its international obligations (or: acts of hostility, injury, violence, or extreme self-assertion).

Agrarian society The most technologically advanced form of preindustrial society. Members are primarily engaged in the production of food but increase their crop yield through such innovations as the plow.

All-aged death rate (mortality rate) The death-rate, usually standardized by sex and age, to facilitate comparisons between areas and social groups. It provides a measure of health risks, improvements in the quality of health care, and the comparative over-all health of different groups in the population. It is thus used as a reliable indicator of social and economic change, and of comparative standards of living, as well as by epidemiologists who are interested in monitoring the risk of death from infectious diseases and other causes. Some mortality rates are already age-standardized.

Alternative question (dichotomic question) A question proposing a right choice of two given answers.

Ambivalence Display both good and bad feelings about somebody (or: the coexistence, in one person, of opposing emotions or attitudes).

Amnesty An official statement that allows people who have been put, for example, in prison for crimes against the state to go free.

Anomaly A situation or a thing, etc. that is different from what is normal or expected (or: departure from the regular arrangement, general rule, or usual method; abnormality).

Anthropology Academic study of all the cultures and societies within the world. Traditionally, anthropologists focused on non-Western cultures; today they can equally study cultural life in industrial and urban locations.

Apparatus Political organization or movement (or: the means or system by which something is kept in action or a desired result is obtained).

Asiatic mode of production Found in least developed societies according to Marx for example in India, Egypt. According to Marx Asiatic mode of production explains the stagnation of oriental societies. Basic features of society having Asiatic mode of production are absence of private property, self-sufficient village economy, control of public works by state (in particular irrigation system, hence the related description “hydraulic societies”), absence of autonomous cities and simplicity of production methods, absence of class and thus class struggle which causes a stagnant society in absence of social change. This notion was developed by Karl Wittfogel in his “Oriental Despotism”.

Assimilation A term synonymous with acculturation, used to describe the process by which an outsider, immigrant, or subordinate group becomes indistinguishably integrated into the dominant host society.

Association The process of interaction. The process where new groups are formed or group cohesion is strengthened. A number of formally organized people who are bound together by the fact they are seeking some objectives (or: an organization of persons having common interests, purposes, etc.; society; league. The term describes either a process or an entity. The process is of a number of individuals interacting for a specific end or set of purposes. The entity is an organization of individuals who are held together by a recognized set of rules governing their behaviour to one another for a specific end or set of purposes).

Authoritative leadership An individual who exercises leadership in a strong and individual fashion.

Authority The right to exercise power (or: an expression of power exercised through the acceptance by the less powerful of the legitimacy of those in dominant position).

Autonomous family The sphere of life that is separate from the intimate bounds of family and autonomous from regulation and scrutiny of the state. It generally refers to the social interactions between individuals as free makers of contracts acting with rational self-interest in a society where all have equal legal status. The concept of civil society also implies limits on the state’s role in regulating social life and a generalized responsibility of individuals to act with due regard to the interests and collective life of the community.

Autonomous system A political system similar to a kingdom that brings together a number of partly autonomous villages or communities under the hierarchical rule of grand chief.

B

Behaviour The way a person acts, conduct; manners; (or: an organism’s responses to stimulation or environment, especially those responses that can be observed).

Bogardus social distance scale It is named for Emery S. Bogardus, the American sociologist. The scale is based on a series of questions asking respondents whether they would be willing to tolerate various levels of social distance - from living in the same neighbourhood, to inviting to dinner, to marrying.

Broken family A family which once consisted of a husband and a wife from whom one parent is permanently absented either because of divorce, death or desertion.

Bureaucracy A component of formal organization in which rules and hierarchical ranking are used to achieve efficiency (or: An organization of a hierarchical sort, which takes the form of a pyramid of authority. The term “bureaucracy” was popularized by Max Weber. According to Weber, bureaucracy is the most efficient type of large-scale human organization. As organizations grow in size, Weber argued, they inevitably tend to become more and more bureaucratized. A type of organization run by officials, and based on a hierarchical structure of authority, best suited for the efficient pursuit of organizational goals.

Bureaucratization The process by which formal social organizations take on the characteristics of a bureaucracy. Central to this process is the formalization, standardization, and impersonalization of rules, regulations (laws), and hierarchy. As Weber has pointed out, this type of social organization is especially useful to the money economy and nationality of the modern age. Bureaucratic social organization typifies modern industrial corporations, governments, labor unions, and educational, health, and military organizations.

C

Causal modelling A causal model is an abstract quantitative representation of real-world dynamics. Hence, a causal model attempts to describe the causal and other relationships, among a set of variables. The best-known form of causal modelling is path analysis. Most causal modelling is associated with survey research. Essentially, causal models are based on structural equations of the form z=b₁ x+b₂ y, and are analysed using regression techniques. However, a simpler way to understand the principle of causal models is to think of them as hypotheses about the presence, sign, and direction of influence for the relations of all pairs of variables in a set. Causal models incorporate the idea of multiple causality, that is, there can be more than one cause for any particular effect.

Charismatic authority (power) Authority that derives its source of power from the magnetic personality of the leader. Max Weber’s term for power made legitimate by a leader’s exceptional personal or emotional appeal to his or her followers; (or: it is based on the social attribution of extraordinary personal characteristics or abilities to a person. Charismatic authority is socially bestowed and may be withdrawn when the leader is no longer regarded as extraordinary. Charismatic authority is attached to a person and not to the social status occupied by the person.).

Charismatic leader A person whose influence is based on his exceptional personal or emotional appeal to his or her followers.

Civil society According to Karl Marx, civil society is a fragmented capitalist world organized around individualism and materialistic competition of all against all. The modern state became necessary to regulate and contain the resulting conflict and misery. According to Antonio Gramsci, the core of civil society is not only the individual and individualism but also private organizations such as corporations.

Class A term used by Max Weber to refer to a group of people who have a similar level of wealth income (or: a stratification system in which members of society are hierarchically ranked according to money, education, race, etc).

Class struggle According to Karl Marx class struggle (class conflict) is the inevitable dissension that occurs because of the economic organization of most societies. Such struggle (Karl Marx) was the engine that drove and shaped social change. The results of class conflict are reflected in virtually every aspect of social life, from unionizing efforts and strikes to political campaigns, to immigration policies to content of art, literature and popular culture.

Cluster analysis It is a statistical technique that is used to identify how various units, such as people, organizations, or societies, can be grouped or “clustered” together because of characteristics they have in common. Cluster analysis includes a collection of techniques used to identify clusters in a set of data. In the most general sense, it is a way to identify “types”, whether types of societies, people or organizations.

Cluster sampling Cluster sampling is a type of complex sample used to save travel time and expense in conducting surveys without incurring an unacceptable increase in error. Clustering is well worth the effort. It substantially cuts survey costs while introducing only a slight amount of bias.

Coalition A temporary or permanent alliance geared toward a common goal (or: a government where two or more political parties join forces to form a voting majority in the legislative branch (or: is two or more people, groups, or other units in a social system who combine in order to have greater power or influence. Coalitions are an important ingredient in political sociology because through them otherwise relatively powerless groups can combine to exert considerable influence).

Cohort A cohort is a collection of all people who share a particular experience, especially through being born during the same period (or: the cohort is an important sociological concept, especially in the study of social change. Because each new cohort experiences its society in its own way under unique historical conditions, it inevitably contributes to social change by reinterpreting cultural values, beliefs and attitudes).

Cohort analysis A term is now used to describe any group of people with the same time-specific experiences: for example being born, entering university or joining the police force in a particular year. The cohort is important because its experience represents one of three possible explanations of change.

Cohort effect Effects on people’s lives that arise from the characteristics of the historical periods during which they experienced stages of life such as childhood or middle age.

Collective conscience The shared common values, outlooks, interpretations of events, languages and dialects of a society or social group (term associated with Emile Durkheim to mean shared moral value derived from religion or from the education system. Today it may be associated with the mass media).

Community A spatial or political unit of social organization that gives people a sense of belonging, based either on shared residence in a particular place or on a common identity.

Componential analysis A technique used to describe the bases and contrasts by which the constituent terms differ in a language and/or culture. Thus, in kinship analysis, son, daughter, and cousin are all in the same generation, and whilst son and daughter share the same component of children of a parent, they differ in the male/female component.

Conflict Competing for power and domination between social groups. This social perspective is associated with Marxism and feminism.

Conflict theories Theories of deviance, based on the conflict perspective in sociology, which view deviance as arising when groups with power attempt to impose their norms and values on less powerful groups.

Consensus A commonly agreed position or set of values. Consensus is a key concept associated with the functionalist perspective. Sometimes consensus need not mean that what is agreed to is in fact in the best interests of society as a whole or all or even most of its people. Rather, consensus can reflect the power of some groups to shape things in their own interests; (or: agreement over basic social values by the members of a group, community or society. Some thinkers in sociology strongly emphasize the importance of consensus as a basis for social stability. These writers believe that all societies which endure over any substantial period of time involve a “common value system” of consensual beliefs held by the majority of the population. Consensus is important in sociology because beliefs about its extent identify a major fault line).

Content analysis It is the systematic coding and objective recording of data, guided by some rationale (or: it is a research method that is used to analyze social life by interpreting words and images contained in documents, films, art, music and other cultural products and media. In general practice it tends to be more subjective than other research methods unless done very carefully. At its simplest, content analysis is the reduction of freely occurring text (e.g. a speech or a newspaper article) to a summary that can be analysed statistically.

Contradiction In sociological thinking (especially in the tradition of Karl Marx) a contradiction is any instance in which two or more aspect of a social system are incompatible or conflict with one another.

Control group A group used for comparison with another, either because it represents the most common or typical case, or because it illustrates the absence of some phenomenon being studied. Human beings are not inert, lifeless matter, and hence cannot be studied simply by carrying out before-and-after studies around some experimental stimulus applied to them. Many other developments and changes will be occurring spontaneously at the same time, as people go about their lives, and it is difficult to disentangle the effects of one particular stimulus from all the others affecting people, as individuals or as groups, at the same time. The solution is to identify a group, or social aggregate, that serves as a control group in providing information on characteristics or changes in a baseline situation that is as close to ‘ordinary’ as possible, or illustrates social behaviour in the absence of the key factor of interest. Control groups can be created at the sampling stage, through statistical manipulation of the data-set, or during analysis.

Conversation (sequential) analysis A research method that takes conversations in real-life settings as the object of study, and as a window on to the roles, social relationships, and power relations of participants. Conversation analysis sets out to record patterns of conversation in order to detect underlying rules that enable communication to proceed in a largely orderly fashion. It focuses on the structure, cadences, and other characteristics of verbal interactions, usually in dyads or very small groups.

Correlation If a change in the amount of one variable is accompanied by a comparable change in the amount of another variable, and the latter change does not occur in the absence of the former change, then the variables are said to be correlated. Correlations may be linear or curvilinear; they may be positive or negative.

D

Data analysis Searching for patterns in the information you’ve collected so you can make sense out of social reality.

Deprivation In general, deprivation refers to a condition in which people lack what they need. The concept is sociologically important because of social significance of what people are willing to go through in order to improve their lives, from crime to participation in social movements.

Diachronic analysis (DA) Studies change in a phenomenon (such as a code) over time (in contrast to synchronic analysis). Saussure saw the development of language in terms of a series of synchronic states. Critics argue that this fails to account for how change occurs.

Division of labour One of the oldest concepts in the social sciences. It denotes any stable organization, co-ordinating individuals, or groups carrying out different, but integrated activities. According to Adam Smith, division of productive labour greatly increases the wealth-creating capacity of a society.

Documentary research Research that uses personal and official documents (newspapers, diaries, stamps, directories, handbills, maps, government statistical publications, photographs, paintings, gramophone records, tapes, and computer files) as a source material. The most important consideration in using documents is their quality as evidence on social meanings and social relations. Unlike survey questionnaires or interview transcripts, documents have generally been compiled for purposes other than research, and their value must be thoroughly assessed before they can be used. It has been suggested that documents must be assessed against four criteria: authenticity, credibility, representativeness, and meaning. A useful recent overview of documentary research can be found in Lindsay Prior’s Using Documents in Social Research (2003).

Dysfunction An element or a process of society that may disrupt a social system or lead to a decrease in stability.

E

Elite A group of people in a society who are powerful, rich, intelligent and have influence within society.

Ethnic group Individuals who consider themselves, or are considered by others, to share common characteristics that differentiate them from the other collectivities in a society, and from which they develop their distinctive cultural behaviour form an ethnic group. Ethnic groups are fluid in composition and subject to changes in definition. New ethnic groups are constantly being formed as populations move between countries.

Evaluation research A type of policy research devoted to assessing the consequences, intended and unintended, of a new policy programme or of an existing set of policies and practices, including measurement of the extent to which stated goals and objectives are being met, and measurement of displacement and substitution effects.

Expressive leader The expressive leader pays attention to how well everyone gets along, to managing conflict, soothing hurt feelings, encouraging good humour, and taking care of the countless little things that contribute to good feelings about being in the group.

Extended family Two or more closely related families who share a household and are emotionally and economically bound to others in the group. This term refers to a family system in which several generations live in one household.

F

Factor analysis It is a technique for replacing a large number of variables with a smaller number of “factors” that reflect what sets of variables have in common with one another. It was developed by Charles Spearman. Factor analysis is most often used in an exploratory way to identify what underlies a set of otherwise loosely related variables (eg: measures of people’s attitude toward social issues).

Family The family is an intimate domestic group made up of people related to one another by bonds of blood, marriage or adoption, who share the primary responsibility for reproduction and caring for members of society.

Focused interview ­­Interview of small groups of people on a given “focus” or issue, usually on a number of occasions over a period of time.

Formal group A secondary group charged with the responsibility of achieving explicit objectives (or: a special–purpose group designed and structured for maximum efficiency).

Formal organization It is a social system organized around specific goals and usually consisting of several interrelated groups or subsystems. They are governed by clearly stated, rigidly enforced norms. Corporations, court systems, university administrations and military organizations all have properties of formal organizations.

G

Group Any number of people with similar norms, values and expectations who interact with one another on a regular basic.

Group compatibility The tendency of the members of the group to follow rules and expected behaviours.

Group dynamics Group dynamics is the process that actually happens as people interact with one another. The concept is important because it calls attention to the difference between what happens and what might be expected to happen given the group's culture and structure.

Guttman scale A method of quantifying the strength of a person’s opinion on a topic of interests. Sometimes also known as a scalogram analysis. It consists of a set of dichotomous items with a simple unidimensional cumulative structure: a positive response to a higher item implies the same to all lower items, and individual response patterns interlock to form a joint ordinal scale. Perfect forms rarely occur empirically (except in the cases of social distance and psychosomatic symptoms) and methods exist to obtain a “best solution”.

H

Horizontal group A group of individuals with the same social status.

Horticultural Society A society in which hand tools are used to grow domesticated crops.

I

Image The impression that an individual gives to the public; (or: the concept of a person, product, institution, etc. held by the general public, often one deliberately created or modified by publicity, advertising, propaganda, etc.).

Index A quantitative social, economic, or political measure, often a weighted combination of a number of selected individual indicators for the domain of interest. Indexes usually employ standardization to facilitate comparisons, for example showing the initial year of the time-series as base 100, or using the national figure as base 100 for presenting sub-national figures - as illustrated by standard mortality rates.

Indicator A question used to measure a concept that can’t be directly observed or measured. A quantitative measure which reflects change in some aspect of the economy or of society – such as mortality rates, measures of job segregation, or the retail price index.

Infrastructure Marxist term to describe the economic base which is the foundation to capitalism, and the class relationship that is based upon the relations of production.

In-group Any group or category to which people feel they belong (or: groups with which we identify and to which we are strongly attached and loyal to).

Institution A large important organization that has a particular purpose; a system that has existed for a long time among a particular group of people.

Institutionalization A term used to describe the adverse psychological effects on individuals of residence in institutions, especially of long stays in large-scale institutions, such as mental hospitals and prisons. Most frequently mentioned effects, whose precise causes are debated, are dependency, passivity, and lethargy. These effects are sometimes termed institutionalism.

Instrumental leader A leader who has the best knowledge and competence that is necessary for solution group problems and achieving goals in a social system.

Interest group A group of people who share political aims and join together to further their point of view (or: a collection of people who has organized to influence government action and legislation).

Interview A face-to-face or telephone questioning of a respondent to obtain desired information (or: a research method that involves asking people questions. These can be structured where all the questions are written down in advance, or unstructured, where the interview is like a conversation).

Investigation/research/study/survey A study technique involving research of a large number of people (or: a study generally in form of interviews or questionnaires that provides sociologists and other researchers with information concerning how people think and act).

K

Kinship group A network of people whose social relationships are based on common ancestry (“blood”), marriage, adoption, and/or affiliation (e.g., godparents)

L

Law A binding custom or practice of society that is codified (written down) and enforced by legitimate governmental authority. Governmental social control.

Leader Someone who exercises formal or informal influence over those within the group; (or: who possesses necessary knowledge and focuses on achieving goals in a social system).

Leadership It is the ability to influence what goes on in social systems. In most cases it is based on some forms of legitimate.

Legal-rational authority Authority based on explicit rules, regulations, and procedures that define who holds power, how power is to be exercised and distributed and what rights and duties are attached to various political status (or: it is based on formally enacted norms that are codified usually, but not always, in written form. A person who exercises legal-rational authority does so because the codes grant that authority to whoever occupies that particular position. This is the form of authority found in government, schools and most major social institutions).

Longitudinal study A study which follows a cohort of people through a number of years of their lives.

M

Marginalization A process by which a group or individual is denied access to important positions and symbols of economic, religious, or political power within any society. A marginal group may actually constitute a numerical majority and should perhaps be distinguished from a minority group, which may be small in numbers, but has access to political or economic power.

Market In both economics and sociology a market is understood to be an area over which any well-defined commodity is exchanged between buyers and sellers. Such commodities are considered to be of two kinds-goods and services. The total amount of a commodity produced and available for purchase is referred to as the supply of the commodity, while the total amount being sought for purchase is termed the demand.

Marriage Marriage is a socially supported union involving two or more individuals in what is regarded as a stable, enduring arrangement based at least in part on a sexual bond of some kind. It is the basis for the institution of the family.

Mass society Refers to a society with a mass culture and large-scale, impersonal, social institutions. Even the most complex and modern societies have lively primary group social relationships, so the concept can be thought of as an 'ideal type', since it does not exist in empirical reality. It is intended to draw attention to the way in which life in complex societies, with great specialization and rationalized institutions, can become too anonymous and impersonal and fail to support adequate bonds between the individual and the community. The concept reflects the same concern in sociology - loss of community – that Ferdinand Tonnies expressed in his idea of Gesellschaft (or: according to one view it is a social system marked by mindless uniformity and egalitarianism, the decline of religion, a sense of alienation and moral emptiness, weak family and community ties, political apathy and the replacement of high culture (such as great art and literature) by low culture catering to unsophisticated and bland tastes. Research demonstrates that modern societies are far more complex than the idea of mass society would suggest).

Microsociology Sociological investigation that stresses study of small groups and often used laboratory experimental studies. Terms that encompasses or interpretive approach where the focus is upon the individual (rather than the wider social structure) and the meanings that lie behind behaviour.

Middle class The social class whose members are neither very rich nor very poor and that includes professional and business people. In popular perception, all white-collar work is middle class, but sociologically it is necessary to sub-divide this class into distinct groups sharing similar market, work, and status situations.

Minority group A subordinate group whose members have significantly less control or power over their own lives than the members of a dominant or majority group have over their (or: a status reserved for those groups singled out by the dominant or more powerful members of society for different treatment).

Monopoly In general terms, monopoly refers to exclusive possession or control of some resource by a single actor or group of actors. In an economic context, it refers to market concentration and imperfect competition; that is, the dominance by one firm of a particular commodity market which gives it the power to set prices, rather than be subjected to price competition with other firms.

Multi-dimensional scaling Often, a set of data cannot be represented in one dimension, such as in a unidimensional scale or factor analysis. The items may then be modified or selected, so that they can be so represented (as in item analysis and scale construction); or, alternatively, a representation can be sought in a space of two or more dimensions. The purpose of multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) is to seek as good a representation of the data as possible in as few dimensions as possible.

Multivariate analysis Multivariate analysis (MVA) considers the simultaneous effects of many variables taken together. MVA models are often expressed in algebraic form and can also be thought of geometrically. A common use of MVA is to reduce a large number of inter-correlated variables into a much smaller number of variables, preserving as much as possible of the original variation, whilst also having useful statistical properties such as independence.

N

Natural growth The difference between births and deaths, plus the difference between immigrants and emigrants, per 1.000 population.

New urban sociology An approach to urbanization that considers the interplay of local, national and worldwide forces and their effect on local space with special emphasis.

Non-participant observation A research technique whereby the researcher watches the subjects of his or her study, with their knowledge, but without taking an active part in the situation under scrutiny.

Norm In sociology a norm is a shared expectation of behaviour that connotes what is considered culturally desirable and appropriate. The term norms is also frequently used in a statistical sense to refer to what is common or typical, whether of behaviour or some other phenomenon.

Nuclear family This family usually consists of parents and their children, living apart from other kin.

O

Obedience Compliance with higher authorities in a hierarchical structure.

Observation A research technique in which an investigator collects information through direct participation in and/or observation of a group, tribe or community (or: a study technique that involves watching people in their normal social settings – Covert, overt, participant, non-participant watching others).

Oligarchies Any form of government in which the exercise of power is divided among a small group.

Oligopoly A situation that exists when a few firms dominate the world market for a particular product (or: competition amongst the few, where perceptions of competitors’ policies and reactions to perceived intentions count for more than price-output considerations).

Open system A social system in which the position of each individual is influenced by his or her achieved status.

Operationalization The process of devising a measurement instrument in order to measure a concept. There are usually many different ways to operationalize the same concept. This process is very important.

Opinion The formal judgment of an expert on a matter in which advice is sought (or: an evaluation, impression, or estimation of the quality or worth of a person or thing).

Opinion polls The measurement of opinions on specific issues through interviews with a representative sample of the group whose views are to be described. The most common topics in polls are voting intentions and political party support, views on the government of the day and its policies, and views on major current public issues; hence opinion polls are regularly used to forecast election results, often successfully.

Out-group As opposed to in-group, one toward which we express resentment and competition and sometimes outright hatred, (or: a group that people do not identify with and that they consider less worthy and less desirable than their own).

P

Participant observation A major research strategy which aims to gain a close and intimate familiarity with a given area of study (such as a religious, occupational, or deviant group) through an intensive involvement with people in their natural environment. Such research usually involves a range of methods: informal interviews, direct observation, participation in the life of the group, collective discussions, analyses of the personal documents produced within the group, self-analysis, and life-histories. Thus, although the method is usually characterized as qualitative research, it can (and often does) include quantitative dimensions.

Pastoral Society It is a society that depends for its livelihood on domesticated animals.

Peer group A set of individuals who, sharing certain common characteristics such as age, ethnicity, or occupation, perceive themselves and are recognized by others as a distinct social collectivity. The group is seen to have its own culture, symbols, sanctions, and rituals, into which the new member must be socialized, and according to which those who fail to comply with group norms may be ostracized.

Personality In everyday speech a person’s typical patterns of attitudes, needs, characteristics and behaviour; (or: the complex of qualities and characteristics seen as being distinctive to a group, nation, place, etc.)

Polarization Term for the division of society to extremes, such as the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

Political system The social institution that relies on a recognized set of procedures for implementing and achieving the goals of a group.

Politics/policy In Harold D. Lasswell’s words: “who gets what, when and how” (it is a social process through which people and groups acquire, exercise, maintain, or lose power over others).

Population In its most general sense, a population comprises the totality of the people living in a particular territory, but it has a more specific meaning in statistics. In statistical terms, a population refers to the aggregate of individuals or units from which a sample is drawn, and to which the results of any analysis are to apply-in other words the aggregate of persons or objects under investigation.

Post-industrial society, post-industrialism Terms popularized by the publication of Daniel Bell’s The Coming of Post-Industrial Society in 1973. According to Bell, a post-industrial society is one where knowledge has displaced property as the central preoccupation, and the prime source of power and social dynamism. It is therefore also one in which technicians and professionals are the “pre-eminent” social groups, as well as one in which the service industries are more important than manufacturing.

Poverty A state in which resources, usually material but sometimes cultural, are lacking. It is common to distinguish between absolute and relative definitions of poverty. Poverty defined in absolute terms refers to a state in which the individual lacks the resources necessary for subsistence. Relative definitions, frequently favoured by sociologists (especially when studying poverty in advanced industrial societies), refer to the individual’s or group’s lack of resources when compared with that of other members of society-in other words their relative standard of living .

Power The ability to obtain through a variety of means what one wants from others; (or: the ability to exercise one’s will over others).

Power elite A small group of very wealthy and powerful people control society. They are interchangeable members of the military, big business and the government for the sole purpose of perpetuating their own interest.

Pressure group A voluntary association of citizens who attempt to influence public policy. Pressure group is an organization whose purpose is to influence the distribution and use of political power a society. This is done primarily through influencing elected officials – a practice known as lobbying – by providing information promoting a particular point of view, or by offering support for reelection (or threatening to oppose a candidate’s reelection). Pressure group differs sharply from political parties.

Primary group A small group characterized by close intimate, face-to-face association and cooperation. People in this group are emotionally committed to the relationship. An example would be our families or friendship circles. It is the second of Cooley’s lasting concepts which he contrasted with the larger and more disparate “secondary group”.

Probability sampling A probability sampling method is any method of sampling that utilizes some form of random selection. In order to nave a random selection method, you must set up some process or procedure that assures that the different units in your population have equal probabilities of being chosen. Humans have long practiced various forms of random selection, such as picking a name out of a hat, or choosing the short straw.

Process A continuing development involving many changes (the process of digestion); (or: particular method of doing something, generally involving a number of steps or operations).

Professional authority It is based on expertise. As societies become increasingly dependent on sophisticated technology, for example, and as divisions of labour become increasingly complex, those who can create and sustain the impression of possessing specialized knowledge are likely to achieve some measure of authority as a result.

Prognosis A judgment about how something is likely to develop in the future.

Public opinion It is an opinion that consists of the aggregated views of members of a population on various issues. Although public opinion often reflects cultural ideas such as values and attitudes, it is distinct from culture. Public opinion is measured as the simple aggregation of individuals’ views at a given time; it is rooted in individuals and their changeable personal perceptions and judgments.

Purposive sampling When deliberately unrepresentative samples are chosen in order to prove a point.

Q

Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) The name given by Charles Ragin to his proposed technique for solving the problems that are caused for comparative macrosociologists by the fact that they must often make causal inferences on the basis of only a small number of cases. The technique is based on the binary logic of Boolean algebra, and attempts to maximize the number of comparisons that can be made across the cases under investigation, in terms of the presence or absence of characteristics (variables) of analytical interest.

Question Social problem that needs to be discussed or dealt with.

Questionnaire A document containing all the questions, closed and open-ended, for a survey. Normally, a separate questionnaire is used for each respondent to a survey, providing enough space for answers to be recorded, and subsequently coded for computer-based analysis of all replies to each question. Questionnaires range from the postcard, with a few questions to be filled in by respondents, to long documents to be filled in by trained interviewers. Good questionnaires require a great deal of care and effort, to ensure that the questions are clear and easy to answer, to exclude leading questions unless by conscious design, to prompt and probe respondents’ recollections of events that may not always be very recent, and to shape the interview overall so that it is a pleasant and interesting experience for respondents. Questionnaires help to standardize interviews, increasing the consistency of enquiry and response, but they cannot completely eliminate interviewer bias.

R

Reference group The term reference group was coined by Herbert Hyman in Archives of Psychology, to apply to the group against which an individual evaluates his or her own situation or conduct. Hyman distinguished between a membership group to which people actually belong, and a reference group, which is used as a basis for comparison. A reference group may or may not be a membership group.

Regression analysis Regression analysis is a statistical technique for describing and analyzing relationships between a dependent variable and one or with multiple regression, two or more independent variables, which must naturally take the form of numbers (such as income or age).

Religious cult Rarely used sociologically, a cult is a new religious movement. A small group of people who have extreme religious beliefs and who are not part of any established religion. Cultic practices appear to satisfy the needs of alienated sections of urban, middle-class youth.

Representative democracy A government in which citizens elect or appoint others to make decisions for them.

Representative sample A selection from a large population that is statistically found to be typical of that population (or: the extent to which a sample can be said to reflect the social characteristics of a target population).

Resocialization The process of discarding former behaviour patterns and accepting new ones as part of a transition in one’s life (or: the relearning of cultural norms and sanctions, on their return to a social system, by those who voluntarily or involuntarily left that system so that they can again be fully accepted within that system).

Role A set of social expectations, rights and duties that are attached to a particular status; or: a certain set of behaviours that are expected of and performed by an individual in society on the basis of his or her status or position in society. The concept of role, properly understood, remains a basic tool for sociological understanding.

Role conflict Difficulties that occur when incompatible expectation arise from two or more social positions held by the same person. Role conflict occurs when a person cannot fulfill the roles of one status without violating those of another.

Role set Multiple roles that are attached to almost every status.

Role strain Contradictory expectations and demands that are attached to a single role.

S

Sample A sample is any subject of a population selected to represent and draw inferences about that population. Today sampling techniques are used widely in the social sciences to gather information on large, complex populations without the expense of conducting a census. Many studies of sociological interest would be impossible without the use of samples.

Sample selection bias Non-random selection is both a source of bias in empirical research and a fundamental aspect of many social processes. When observations in social research are selected so that they are not independent of the outcome variables in a study, sample selection bias (sometimes labelled “selection effects”) leads to biased inferences about social processes. Sociologists have only recently begun to recognize the contaminating influence-as illustrated.

Sampling A method for collecting information and drawing inferences about a larger population or universe, from the analysis of only part thereof, the sample. Sampling allows surveys of the complete population of a country, or sub-sections of it, to be carried out far more cheaply and frequently, and with resources devoted to improving the depth and quality of the information collected in contrast with the shallow information obtainable from censuses. Within social science its use as the basis of sampling methodology and inferential statistics have contributed enormous improvements in the cost-effectiveness of empirical research.

Sampling distribution A sampling distribution is a theoretical mathematical distribution of all the possible sample outcomes that can be obtained by selecting samples from a population. The amount of variation in a sampling distribution is measured by a statistic known as a standard error. Sampling distributions are invaluable in research because they act as a statistical bridge between what we know (the data gathered in samples) and what we want to know (the characteristics of populations from which samples are drawn). This is accomplished through a process generally known as statistical inference.

Sampling error It is an error that occurs when using samples to make inferences about the populations from which they are drawn. There are two kinds of sampling error: random error and bias. Sampling bias is more serious than random error because the pattern of errors is loaded in one direction or another; and there is little if any way to estimate its presence in a set of data, which is why researchers go to such great lengths to design samples that minimize the probability of its occurrence.

Sampling weights Weights are used in sampling to achieve proportionality. Sampling weights are the inverse of sampling fractions. When different sampling fractions have been applied to particular sub-groups within the population studied, sampling weights are used to reinstate the original importance of each group within the population.

Secondary group A formal impersonal group in which there is little social intimacy or mutual understanding. They interact to accomplish a specific objective. An example would be a political interest group or a professional occupational group.

Segregation Social processes which result in certain individuals or social groups being kept apart with little or no interaction between them. The tendency for people with a common culture, nationality, race, language, occupation, religion, income level, or other common interests to group together in social or geographical space produces varying degrees of natural, voluntary, de facto segregation in patterns of private residence, business districts, educational institutions, clubs, leisure, and other activities. Even when patterns of segregation appear to emerge naturally, state policy may seek to destroy them, in the interests of achieving greater social integration and related benefits. In other cases state policy actively imposes de jure segregation: that is, a form of segregation imposed by the state, enforcing the rigorous separation of persons or social groups, and backed by law.

Selection The ability to restrict entrance to a school or other institution, usually on a social basis such as ability, gender or ethnicity.

Self A person’s conscious recognition that he or she is a distinct individual who is part of a larger society.

Self-management Any system of industrial production which attempts through worker councils, factory committee, or peer group supervision to place all or part of the management function in the hands of employees themselves.

Social action A behavior that comes about in terms of other people; it has a purpose that others would recognize. It is associated with the sociology of Max Weber.

Social administration The study of social arrangements and policies aimed at meeting social needs – especially state welfare systems. The social administration approach to social policy is well represented by the work of Brian Abel-Smith.

Social anthropology A branch of anthropology that studies how currently living human beings behave in social group (or: the study of the entire range of cultures and societies in the world. Modern social anthropology has developed an approach which is relevant for any area, and in ways which are distinctive. It challenges ethnocentrism, being ready with cross-cultural comparisons, yet is alert to possible universals. The practice of long-term participant observation is now standard. Social anthropology aims to make other cultures familiar, but it simultaneously makes the anthropologist’s own culture strange, exposing the taken-for-granded as in need of explanation.

Social behaviour Human activity which occurs in response to the meanings of the conduct of others or that which is intended to stimulate meaningful responses in others.

Social class Is a social distinction and division resulting from the unequal distribution of rewards and resources such as wealth, power and prestige; (or: a group of people who share a socio-economic position or status).

Social cohesion The strength of the bond uniting group members; (or: when there is a strong bonding and sense of belonging within a group of people or society. It is associated with E. Durkheim).

Social contradiction In sociological thinking (especially in the tradition of Karl Marx) a social contradiction is any instance in which two or more aspects of a social system are incompatible or conflict with one another.

Social control A term widely used in sociology to refer to the social processes by which the behaviour of individuals or groups is regulated. Social control is consequently a pervasive feature of society, of interest to a broad range of sociologists having different theoretical persuasions and substantive interests, and not just to sociologists of deviance.

Social deviance Behaviours that violate social norms and are negatively sanctioned by society.

Social differentiation A process in which people are set apart for differential treatment by virtue of their statuses, roles and other social characteristics.

Social expectations Our presumptions concerning how people will act, think, feel or say based on their role, power, prestige, wealth or status.

Social fact Ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that are experienced by individuals as external and constraining, and that are general throughout a social group. The term originated with Emile Durkheim. Social facts include roles, institutions, monetary systems, language, and the measurable rates of such activities as crime, suicide, and poverty. Durkheim gave particular emphasis to what he called collective conscience and collective representations. Social facts result from collectively elaborated and therefore authoritative rules, maxims, and practices, both religious and secular. They constitute practices of the group taken collectively and thus impose themselves and are internalized by the individual. Because they are collectively elaborated they are moral and therefore constrain individual behaviour.

Social group Two or more people who interact with each other in patterned ways, have a feeling of unity and share certain interests and expectations.

Social indicators Easily identified features of a society which can be measured, which vary over time, and are taken as revealing some underlying aspect of social reality. In general, the most commonly used indicators are derived from official statistics, and include unemployment figures, health and mortality data, and crime-rates. Quite frequently social indicators are used to assess the extent to which a society is ‘progressing’. Similarly they can be used to predict what might happen. For these reasons, social indicators are an important aspect of policy-related studies, and are widely used by governments.

Social inequality A condition in which members of a society have different amounts of wealth, prestige or power. The existence of inequality, its causes and consequences, particularly as they relate to social class, gender, ethnicity, and locality, continues to occupy the sociological foreground.

Social institutions Sets of values, norms, beliefs, attitudes, behaviours and expectations surrounding necessary aspects of life, such as marriage, family, religion, education, politics, economics, law, health, science, recreation, military (or: social institution consists of all the structural components of a society through which the main concerns and activities are organized, and social needs are met).

Social interaction The mutual and reciprocal influence of two or more people on each other’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.

Social mobility The movement-usually of individuals but sometimes of whole groups-between different positions within the system of social stratification in any society.

Social norm A set of norms attached to a social position. Perceptions of what actions will lead others to validate an identity (rather than personal beliefs), so that people are thought to conform to norms in order to demonstrate to themselves and others that they are a particular kind of person (or: a social standard that specifies the kind of behaviour that is appropriate in a given situation).

Social order It is the social cohesion through which systems are held together. Social order is sometimes synonymous with social control, the institutional means and other methods used to ensure that people obey norms and support values. It refers to the relatively predictable patterns of behavior and experience that characterize life in the systems themselves (also referred to as social organization).

Social pathology An undesirable or threatening outcome, such as crime, that may be viewed as a sickness of society (or: the analogy that deviance is a disease that potentially threatens the survival of society).

Social policy Actions by public bodies such as government, councils, etc. in response to social issues and problems.

Social prestige According to Max Weber, social prestige is honour or deference attached to a social status and distributed unequally as a dimension of social stratification.

Social problems Problems that similarly affect groups of people, or problems that are caused by group attitudes, beliefs, values, or behaviors, or problems that are solved by changing them.

Social process Social interaction among persons. Any sequence of acts by a group of people. Any way in which groups of people act toward each other as they seek to achieve certain goals. Any development or evolution of society.

Social role A set of expectations of people who occupy a given social position or status (or: an expected way of acting for a specific social situation).

Social sanctions Any means by which conformity to socially approved standards is enforced. It can be positive in form of reward and negative in form of punishment. It can be formal (legal restraints ) and can also be informal.

Social selections A way of screening people so that only certain ones have opportunities and that others are not accepted.

Social statistics Quantitative information about social groups, including census and demographic data, used for descriptive policy and inferential analysis. As an application of statistical theory, increasing attention has been given to models of influence and measurement, and to multivariate models of analysis.

Social status A term used by sociologists to refer to any of the full range of socially defined positions within a large group, a society or a social system (or: it is a position occupied by an individual in a social system).

Social stratification A form of inequality in which categories of people are systematically ranked in a hierarchy on the basis of their access to scarce but valued resource (or: a pattern in which individuals and groups are assigned to different position in the social order, with varying amounts of access to the desirable things in the society); (or: ways that groups of people come up with to distinguish one another and to distribute social resources accordingly, such as social class, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, age, and disability).

Social structure The patterned and relatively stable arrangement of roles and statuses found within societies and social institutions. The idea of social structure points out the way in which societies, and institutions within them, exhibit predictable patterns of organization, activity the social interaction. This relative stability of organization and behaviour provides the quality of predictability that people rely on in every day social interaction. Social structures are inseparable from cultural norms and values that also shape status and social interaction; (or: the combined influence of all the social institutions and social stratification on individuals and groups’ behavior; or: how society is organized and constructed).

Social system A social system is any interdependent set of cultural and structural elements that can be thought of as a unit. The “parts” that make up a social system can be of almost any size or complexity (or: it is any interdependent set of cultural and structural elements or parts that can be thought of as a whole. It is particularly associated with Talcott Parsons).

Socialization It is a process whereby we learn and internalize the attitudes, beliefs, and norms of our culture and develop a sense of self.

Society Generally, a group of people who share a common culture, occupy a particular territorial area, and feel themselves to constitute a unified and distinct entity-but there are many different sociological conceptions.

Sociology Is a social science which studies the social lives of people, groups and societies. The subject-matter of sociology is the study of society and human social action, of the origins, institutions, organization and development of human life.

Solidarity Shared agreement and interests within a group or society (or: combination or agreement of all elements or individuals, as of a group; complete unity, as of opinion, purpose, interest, or feeling).

Standard error A standard error is a statistical measure of the amount of variation in a sampling distribution. In general, it is calculated as the square root of the result obtained from dividing the population variance by the sample size (making it essentially a kind of standard deviation). Since sample size is in the denominator, the standard error grows smaller as sample size is increased.

State A distinct set of institutions that has the authority to make the rules which govern a society. It is difficult to identify a state’s interests, since different parts of the state apparatus can have different interests and express conflicting preferences. Any definition of the state has to recognize its complexity. Its boundaries are not clearly defined and constantly changing.

Statistical control The ability to keep one variable’s values constant in an analysis so as to isolate the effect of a particular independent variable on a dependent variable; for example, being able to keep the influence of sex out of an analysis on the influence of education on occupational prestige.

Statistical variation The greater part of empirical research is concerned with the characteristics of groups, or aggregate social entities, rather than individual cases. A range of statistical measures of association are employed to describe the features of groups, or types of case in the aggregate. Most of them are based on the normal distribution, the binomial distribution, or the Poisson distribution, from which a number of statistical summary measures are derived. The mean, mode, and median provide measures of central tendency, the most common or typical value in the distribution, which coincide when the distribution is normal. Measures of dispersion attempt to concentrate information about the general pattern in single summary statistics. These include the range, mean deviation, quartile deviation, decile range, and the standard deviation, which is by far the most important.

Status set All statuses a person occupies at a given time.

Status group A body of individuals who have an accepted social position within society or a component part of society (or: a term used by Max Weber to refer to people who have the same prestige or lifestyle, independent of their class position).

Stigma Although the term has a long history, it entered sociology mainly through the work of Erving Goffman. It is a formal concept which captures a relationship of devaluation rather than a fixed attribute. Goffman classifies stigmas into three types-bodily, moral, and tribal-and analyses the ways in which they and societal reactions to them affect human interactions.

Stratification The term stratification in sociology is usually applied to studies of structured social inequality; that is, studies of any systematic inequalities between groups of people, which arise as the unintended consequence of social processes and relationships. Social stratification is at the heart of macrosociology-the study of whole societies, in comparative perspective, in an attempt to understand processes of social stability and change. At the most general level social stratification is concerned in different ways with the issues of class and status-group formation as the key to understanding social integration; that is, the extent to which social relationships are cohesive or divisive, and the consequences of this for social order.

Stratified sample When samples are designed to contain percentages of social location such as class, gender, ethnicity, etc. (or: is a sampling design in which separate samples are drawn from different segments of population in order to ensure proportionate representation of each segment in the overall sample).

Stratum Any of the socioeconomic groups of a society as determined by birth, income, education, etc., having the same social status.

Surplus value It arises from the structure of capitalist relations among workers, capitalists and the means of production, all of which define advanced capitalism as an economic system. It is therefore a uniquely capitalist form of profit.

Survey The term survey is not the necessarily synonymous with “questionnaire survey”, since other methods of data collection (such as observation of behaviour) may be employed in a survey. In practice, however, most sociological surveys are based on written questionnaires. More precisely, the term usually refers to data collections that employ both interviewing and sampling to produce quantitative data-set, amenable to computer-based analysis. It is the combination of the two that has led to the social survey, or sample survey, becoming the most important single type of social research, used by all the social sciences, market research, and opinion polls. Surveys can be used to provide descriptive statistics for national, regional, or local populations; to examine the clustering of social phenomena; to identify the social location and characteristics of subgroups for more intensive follow-up case-study research; and to analyse causal processes and test explanations. Surveys can collect information on individuals, roles, social networks, social groups such as households or families, organizations such as schools, workplaces, or companies.

Synchronic analysis It studies a phenomenon as if it was frozen at one moment in time. Structuralist semiotics focuses on synchronic analysis rather than diachronic analysis and is criticized for ignoring historicity.

Systematic sample When sample members are chosen according to a formula, such as every fifth name on a register (or: a systematic sample is a design in which a list of the population is used as a sampling frame and cases are selected by “skipping” through the list at regular intervals).

T

Total institution Formal institutions designed for the purpose of resocializing individuals (or: a term coined by Erving Goffman in Asylums (1961) to refer to institutions that regulate all aspects of a person’s life under a single authority, such as prisons, the military, mental hospitals and convents; or: a total institution is an isolated social system such as a prison, mental hospital, cloister, boarding school, or military training camp whose primary purpose is to control most aspects of the lives of some if not all of its participants. How total institutions maintain their hold on people’s lives, the consequences they produce for individuals and social system, and how people adapt to the limitation imposed by their circumstances are all questions of sociological interest.

Traditional authority Authority legitimated by the acceptance of historical institutional arrangements, the belief in the sanctity of tradition, patterns of social relations, and the fact they exist now, that they “are”, i.e., existing institutions gain legitimacy because they have come through time to exist in their present states as well as legitimacy gained because institutions always exist prior to any specific individual so it appears that “that is the way things are”. Examples of traditional authority would be chiefs, warlords, and kings; (or: a form of authority based on customs and habits; it’s roots are in the distant past, and often it is religiously sanctioned; or: authority based on an uncodified collective sense that it is proper and longstanding and should therefore be accepted as legitimate).

U

Unemployment The state of being unable to sell one’s labour-power in the labour-market despite being willing to do so. In practice, unemployment is difficult to identify and measure, because willingness to be employed is partly affected by the extent and nature of demand for one’s services. Research on the unemployed has repeatedly shown that unemployment is rarely explicable simply as a private or individual problem of insufficient motivation and aptitude. It is, rather, a public issue caused by the failure of market processes. Unemployment is a major factor in poverty, especially where the unemployed experience spells of joblessness alternating with so-called sub-employment, that is, low paid and uncongenial work with a high degree of insecurity of tenure.

V

Vertical group Collection of people with different social position or a different rank.

Vital statistics Statistics of births, deaths, and marriages within a country, which provide the essential basis for demography. They include crude rates matching vital events to total populations, and more sophisticated measures of fertility, nuptiality, and mortality. Their quality depends on the accuracy of vital-event registers.

Voluntary associations Any public, formally constituted, and non-commercial organization of which membership is optional, within a particular society. Examples include churches, political parties, pressure groups, leisure associations or clubs, neighbourhood groups, and (sometimes) trade unions and professional associations.

W

Wage Applies to money paid an employee at relatively short intervals for manual or physical labour.

Welfare Refers to the well-being of individuals or groups and, by implication, those measures which can help to ensure levels of well-being through provision of education, health services, managed housing, and social security benefits. Thus where the state takes responsibility for such measures we can speak of a welfare state.

White collar Workers in the tertiary sector: clerical, professional and managerial. White-collar is generally regarded as having higher prestige than blue- collar, but many such occupations are in other important respects lower in class standing (have lower levels of power income and autonomy).

Y

Youth Typically regarded in sociology as an ascribed status, or socially constructed label, rather than simply the biological condition of being young. The term is used in three ways: very generally, to cover a set of phases in the life-cycle, from early infancy to young adulthood; in preference to the rather unsatisfactory term adolescence, to denote theory and research on teenagers, and the transition to adulthood; and, less commonly now, for a set of supposed emotional and social problems associated with growing up in urban industrial society.