Sociology Midterm 2
Terms
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- crime funnel
- the process by which the actual number of crimes is reduced through loses attributable to fear, bias, discretion and human error
- institutional completeness
- development of a full set of institutions in an ethnic community that parallels those in larger societies
- rebellion
- for Merton, this refers to the situation where individuals rejects society's ultimate goals and the means to achieve those goals and instead advocate for a new social system
- abnormal
- when something deviates from the typical pattern of behaviour and violates a norm, implying that the behaviour is wrong
- displacement
- the process whereby criminals respond to anti-crime initiatives by conducting their criminal behaviour in another location
- ethnic group
- a people sharing a common origin and race
- vertical mobility
- movement up or down a status hierarchy
- post-modern perspective
- a skeptical, critical perspective that attempts to de-mystify thethe claims of those wih more power and authority
- class
- a set of individuals sharing a similar economic status or market position
- chain migration
- sequential movement of persons from a common place of origin to a common destination with the assistance of relatives already settled in the country
- ascribed status
- a position is a status hierarchy that is inherited or assigned
- primary deviance
- deviant behaviour that occurs prior to any labelling process
- self-fulfilling prophecy
- the posibility that the act of predicting a particular outcome helps to bring about that outcome
- horizontal mobility
- movement by an individual from one status to another of similar rank within the same status hierarchy
- employment equity
- create a workplace free of cultural discrimination
- prejudice
- prejudging people based upon characteristics they are assumed to share as members of a social category
- status inconsistency
- dissimilarity in the ranking of an individual's status in a set of power hierarchies
- civilizing process
- defined by Norbert Elias, the historical process whereby people acquire greater capacity to control their emotions
- reaction formation
- Cohen's name for the tendency of working-class deliquents to invert middle class values as a form of protest
- vicitimization survey
- asking individuals to reveal the nature and amount of criminal behaviour they have personally experienced
- power
- a differential capacity to command resources and thereby control social situations
- dark figure of crime
- the unknown amount of crime that is not contained in official crime stats or social science methodologies
- anomie
- a state of normlessness caused by a large-scale breakdown of conformity to societal rules
- achieved status
- a position in a status hierarchy attained by individual effort or accomplishment
- intERgenerational mobility
- movement or change between parental status and a child's status in the same status hierarchy
- hedonistic calculus
- the philisophical assumption that people behave in light of conscious considerations of the anticipated costs and benefits of their actions
- status
- any position occupied by an individual in a social position
- techniques of neutralization
- rationalizations that allow deviants to define their behaviour as acceptable
- structural assimilation
- acceptance of a minority group by a dominant group
- minority group
- a social category usually ethnically or racially labelled
- race
- category where membership is based on physical characteristics
- status set
- the combination of statuses that any one individual occupies
- stratum
- set of statuses of similar rank in any status hierarchy
- crime
- behaviour that has been officially recognized by the state as serious forms of antisocial behaviour
- pluralism
- view that power in modern society is shared among competing interest groups
- discrimination
- the denial of opportunities, generally available to all members of society, to some people because of their membership in a social category
- assimilation
- group member of a specific culture becoming more and more like the dominant group
- racialization
- assigning people to socially constructed racial categories and behaving toward them as though these categoris were real
- institutionalized power
- sometimes called domination
- status hierarchy
- any one set of rankings along which statuses are related in terms of their power
- differential association
- theory that sees deviance as learned in small-group association, wherein an individual internalizes pro-deviant perspectives
- informal social control mechanisms
- actions by individuals or groups designed to alter the behaviours of others that don;t use the criminal justice system... ex. gossip, shaming etc
- acculturation
- the learning of the language, values, and customs of a dominant group by an ethnic group; also called cultural assimilation
- status consistency
- similarity in the ranking of an individual's statuses in a set of status hierarchies
- ritualism
- for Merton, this refers to when individuals adhere to social norms while disregarding the fact that they have little prospect of becoming successful
- stigma
- a physical or social attribute that can devalue a person's social identity
- pluralism
- the view that in western societies, power is shared among competing interest groups
- bourgeoisie
- the capitalist class, as defined by Marx.
- proletariat
- marx's word for the working calss, the non-owners of the means of production
- intRAgenerational mobility
- movement from one status to another in the same status hierarchy during a single lifetime or career
- social inequality
- the general pattern in inequality, or ranking, of socially differentiated characteristics