Key Sociological Concepts and Social Structures
Culture
- Linton states that a society’s culture is the lifestyle of its members, the collection of ideas and customs that are learned, shared, and transmitted from generation to generation.
- Taylor defines it as that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and all abilities and habits acquired by man as a member of a society.
Standards of Living
How norms and values that seem inconsistent or contradictory require different types of behavior in the same situation.
Values
Principles or criteria that define what is good or bad.
Rules
Specifications of these principles that guide behavior.
Act
A provision to legally formalize a mandate to do or not to do something.
Use
These are types of standards; applications have a weaker sanction.
Custom
This is a standard type and has a stronger punishment.
Idea
Ortega points out that “ideas are had.” Ideas are susceptible to empirical testing to conclude that they are true or false.
Social Change
A change in social structure. It may also be defined as a change in particular social institutions or relations between institutions.
Belief
Ortega says that “beliefs are held.” Beliefs cannot be subjected, in principle, to the test of facts.
Cultural Change
The cultural renewal that can affect a whole range of areas such as values, normal social relations, etc.
Symbol
Something that represents another. Example: language.
Structural Change
Those relating to institutions, economic organization, and political life.
Cultural Integration
The dominant groups try to impose their own views, pretending to be considered universal, i.e., the other social groups take them as the only valid, or in any case, the most valued.
Ethnocentrism
A personal or group position that tends to consider its cultural traits as the only valid or worthy of social recognition, coupled with the tendency to despise and undervalue the traits, beliefs, and values of other cultures or subcultures.
Cultural Relativism
The acceptance and integration of different cultures in our daily life on an equal footing.
Subculture
Those constituted by the practices of groups within a society, accepting or questioning a majority of the basic elements of the dominant culture in society, holding positions or attitudes in different respects.
Counterculture
Cultures of the different strata of society, even if they do not pose alternatives.
Socialization
The process by which new members are integrated into society by learning the basic instruments of coexistence.
Primary Socialization
That which takes place first in childhood within the family, for the acquisition and internalization of the basic rules of functioning in society.
Secondary Socialization
Which is incorporated into the individual and socialized in the basic standards.
Primary Agents of Socialization
The family is the primary agent of socialization par excellence, as it is within its structure that the first processes of internalization of social norms and principles are held. Particularistic criteria are transmitted, primarily role expectations, i.e., attached or principles of individuals or groups that own them. These values are derived from particularistic criteria, affective and a particular relationship.
Secondary Agents of Socialization
Convey universal criteria, general for all members of society. These values are derived from cognitive and normative generality of a rule. Examples: school, group of friends, media, work.
Social Groups
Any group of people identified with each other and maintaining lasting relationships with stable patterns of behavior, goal-based, mutually accepted beliefs or values.
Social Status
Any set of people who share the same social position, which is independent of their will and does not involve any social interaction or integration between them.
Added Statistics
People who share a social attribute that makes them more likely to be included in the same item at the time of measuring a social phenomenon.
Primary Group
Characterized by their small size and affective interaction, informal and face-to-face. It takes a certain intensity and frequency and a certain intimacy in relationships to speak of primary groups.
Secondary Group
Have a greater number of members and establish among themselves relationships more formal and distant in both space and time.
Social Institution
The set of norms and standards of conduct governing a core activity of a society, which have significant importance.
Ascribed Status
The set of positions a person occupies in the different groups which are related to inherited or assigned by birth.
Status Acquired
A set of positions a person occupies in the different groups which relates acquired during the socialization process and social interaction.
Role
Particularistic criteria affiliated or owned by individuals or groups.
Social Stratification
This refers to both action and the effect of the division of society into strata or layers, according to a given criterion or factor. It is both the process of that division, as the result of it.
Social Stratum
The set of people who enjoy the same rental property, prestige, or power.
Lifestyle
Ways to behave and interact socially, which take place in spaces and areas demarcated.
Slavery
Has been defined as a man considered by law and custom as a property of another.
Caste
Own ancient societies. One belongs to a caste by birth, and there is no way out of it. Caste is closed. Between breeds, there is a hierarchical organization and specialization of roles and professions, closely linked to the occupational structure of society. In its purest form, the caste system is sanctioned by religion.
Establishment
They appear in the European Middle Ages. Basically three: nobility, clergy, and peasantry. The possession of land was a discriminatory element. This defined law: each sector has a status in the sense of a complex lay in rights and duties, privileges, and obligations.
Social Class
In modern societies, stratification appears in the form of classes, which reproduce the features of previous systems, but in a soft and casual way. The classes are fairly open, allowing for upward and downward mobility. Its existence is not official, and there is no law governing the privileges of class.
Gender
The social differences that are built around the sex of the person.
Patriarchy
Hegemony of sex and age, this model represents the domination of the father over the mother and the children and adult men and over women and youth.
Social Mobility
The movement between social positions.
Upward Mobility
If it moves between positions of different strata. This in turn can be up and down.
Horizontal Mobility
When people move between positions in the same stratum. This is usually due to changes in business or within the same geographic social category.
Stereotype
A priori is the vision, distorted and simple, of a group of others.
Ethnic Group
A community or minority group within a society characterized by different cultural traits beyond their facial features or biological.
Community
The major ethnic groups in society. It is joined by bonds of familiarity and a sense of belonging and self-sufficiency. Mechanical solidarity.
Company
Organic solidarity.
Social Control
Refers to all the ways in which people are induced to act as presumed to do so. Not always social behavior is expected by the standards that regulate, for those cases, the company has several social control mechanisms.
Social Cohesion
A series of pressures on individuals to conform to the established ways of working and attitudes adopted.
Deviation Social
Non-conformity to a norm or a given set of rules that are accepted by a significant number of people in a community or society.