Wharton County Junior College

SOCI MISC

Final Sociology Study Guide - Ch 1

1)Functionalist theory is very concerned with the ways that structures contribute to the stability of society. What is a structure?

2. Which school of social theory argues that everything is relative, fragmented, temporary, contingent, and ephemeral?
3. How does Karl Marx differentiate between members of the proletariat and the bourgeoise?
4. What economic system emerged during the Industrial Revolution?
5. Sociology is a social science. What is another example of a social science?
6. A graduate student in a sociology department is taking a course on the sociology of the economy, in this class, she learns that, even though she always thought of her family as middle class, her parents’ income compared to that of the rest of the country actually qualifies them as upper class. What just happened?
7. Durkheim theorized that rapidly changing conditions of modern life lead to anomie. What is anomie?
8. What is the social imagination?
9. Teaching students to solve math problems would be an example of_______function of education.
10. Although Karl Marx died long before anyone had used the word “postmodern,” many theorists still draw on elements of his work to inform their own theories. Given what you know about postmodernism, which of the following quotes from Marx’s writings reveals his “postmodern side”?
11. Humans are essentially social beings.
12. Which of the following theories views society as a whole unit, made up of interrelated parts that work together?

13. A researcher studying the interaction between a cashier and a customer at a grocery store is doing what?
14. A functionalist analysis of education might focus on:
15. Which of the following is a paradigm interested in the power imbalances within a society?
16. Durkheim suggested that mechanical solidarity:
17. Society is:
18. Which of the following is true about the sociological imagination?

19. How is sociology different from other disciplines?
20. The idea that societies can evolve, and that “survival of the fittest” might apply to societies was first discussed by:
21. According to Emile Durkheim, industrialized societies display organic solidarity. What is the basis for organic solidarity?
22. Emile Durkheim argued that even an action as seemingly individual as suicide has important social components. What social factors did he examine?
23. Postmodern social theorists attempt to construct “grand narratives,” overarching theories that give a sense of order and coherence to the world.
24. Macrosociology and microsociology seem to make very different assumptions about how society works. How does sociology, as a discipline, deal with these two very different perspectives?

25. Conflict Theory uses a dynamic model of historical change that presents change as constant, ongoing, and inevitable.
26. If you find a sociologist who studies simple greetings in hallways, the way that people play tic-tac-toe, or some other element of everyday interaction, what sort of sociologist have you found?
27. Which of the following people’s teachings would be most associates with Symbolic Interactionalism?
28. If you’ve ever gone to a new place, and suddenly felt disorientated because the environment was so strange to you, you may have experiences:
29. Seeing some event without and preconceptions in order to view things in a new way is using:
30. According to C. Wright Mills, what one quality of a mind do all great sociologists possess?