Glossary of Important Terms

ABSOLUTE POVERTY. Poverty as defined in terms of the minimal requirements necessary to afford minimal standards of food, clothing, health care and shelter.

ADAPTATION. Refers to the ability of a sociocultural system to change with the demands of a changing physical or social environment.

AGE STRUCTURE. The relative proportions of different age categories in a population.

AGEISM. Prejudice against a person on the grounds of age in the belief that the age category is inferior to other age categories and that unequal treatment is therefore justified.

AGENCIES OF SOCIALIZATION. Groups or institutions within which processes of socialization take place (see also SOCIAL REPRODUCTION).

AGRARIAN SOCIETIES. Societies whose mode of production is based on agriculture (crop-growing) primarily through the use of human and animal energy.  Also referred to as agricultural societies (see also TRADITIONAL STATES).

AGRIBUSINESS. The mass production of agricultural goods through mechanization, and rationalization.

AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency). A disease that attacks the immune system of the body that is often passed on through sexual contact.

AIR POLLUTION.  Refers to the contamination of the atmosphere by noxious substances (see also ENVIRONMENT, and INTENSIFICATION).

ALIENATION. The sense that we have lost control over social institutions that we have created. Often characterized as estrangement from the self and from the society as a whole. Marx believed that general alienation was rooted in the loss of control on the part of workers over the nature of the labor task, and over the products of their labor.

ANOMIA. A condition of anxiety and confusion that exists in individuals who are not given clear social guidance through social norms.

ANOMIE.  A structural condition in which social norms are weak or conflicting.

ANIMISM. A type of religion that believes that events in the world are often caused by the activities of spirits.

ANTHROPOLOGY. A social science, closely linked to sociology, which concentrates (though not exclusively) on the study of traditional cultures--particularly hunting and gathering and horticultural societies--and the evolution of the human species.

APARTHEID. Until recently, the system of strict racial segregation established in South Africa.

ARMS RACE. A competition between nations in which each side attempt to achieve or maintain military superiority.

ARMS TRADE. The international selling of armaments for profit, carried on by governments and by private contractors around the world.

ASSIMILATION. A minority group's internalization of the values and norms of the dominant culture.

AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY. A set of distinctive personality traits, including conformity, intolerance, and an inability to accept ambiguity.

AUTOCRATIC RULE. Rule by a specific leader, who concentrates power in his own hands.

AUTOMATION. The replacement of many workers by machines, as well as the monitoring and coordination of workers by machines with only minimal supervision from human beings.

BUREAUCRACY. A formal organization marked by a clear hierarchy of authority, the existence of written rules of procedure, staffed by full-time salaried officials, and striving for the efficient attainment of organizational goals.

BUREAUCRATIZATION.  Refers to the tendency of bureaucracies to refine their procedures to ever more efficiently attain their goals.  More generally, refers to the process of secondary organizations taking over functions performed by primary groups (see also INTENSIFICATION, and RATIONALIZATION).

CAPITALISM. An economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and distribution in which the goal is to produce profit.

CAPITALISTS. Those who own companies, or stocks and shares, using these to generate economic returns or profits.

CASH-CROP PRODUCTION. Production of crops for world markets rather than for consumption by the local population.

CASTE. A closed form of stratification in which an individual's status is determined by birth and cannot be changed.

CHURCH. A body of people belonging to an established religious organization.

CITIZEN. A member of a state, having both rights and duties associated with that membership.

CIVIL RELIGION. Secular forms of ritual and belief similar to those involved in religion--such as political parades or ceremonies.

CIVIL RIGHTS. Legal rights held by all citizens in a given state.

CLAN. A broad extended kin group found in many preindustrial societies.

CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS. An objective awareness of the class system, including the common interests of people within your class.

COGNITION. Human thought processes including perception, reasoning, and remembering.

COHABITATION. Living together in a sexual relationship of some permanence, without being  legally married.

COLONIALISM. The process whereby nations establish their political and economic rule over less powerful nations.

COMMUNISM. A set of egalitarian political and economic ideas associated with Karl Marx in which the means of production and distribution system would be owned by the community. "Communism" as developed by Lenin and institutionalized throughout Eastern Europe (until 1990) and China bears little resemblance to Marx's vision.

CONGLOMERATES. Large corporations made up of separate companies producing or trading in a variety of different products and services. Conglomerates are usually the result of mergers between companies or take-overs of one firm by another.

CONTRADICTION. Marx's term to refer to mutually antagonistic tendencies within institutions or the broader society such as those between  profit and competition within capitalism.

CONTRADICTORY CLASS LOCATIONS. Positions in the class structure which share characteristics of the class positions both above and below them--the classic position would be that of a foreman in a factory or a department chair in academe.

CORE COUNTRIES. The advanced industrial societies of America, Western Europe and Japan are often referred to as core countries because of their central position on the world stage (see also PERIPHERY COUNTRIES and SEMI-PERIPHERY COUNTRIES)..

CORPORATIONS. A legally recognized organization set up for profit--the powers and liabilities of the organization are legally separate from the owners or the employees.

COUP D'ETAT. An armed takeover of government by a small group of conspirators--often military officers( See also REBELLION and REVOLUTION) .

CULT. A fragmentary religious group which lacks permanent structure.

CULTURAL PLURALISM. The more or less peaceful coexistence of  multiple subcultures within a given society.

CULTURAL SUPERSTRUCTURE.  Sociocultural materialism term used to refer to the shared symbolic universe within sociocultural systems.  It includes such components as the art, music, dance, rituals, sports, hobbies and the accumulated knowledge base of the system  (see also MENTAL SUPERSTRUCTURE, and SUPERSTRUCTURE ).

CULTURAL UNIVERSALS. Values or practices shared by all human cultures.

DEFORESTATION.  The removal of all trees from an area.

DEMOCRACY. A form of government that recognizes the citizen as having the right to participate in political decision-making, or to elect representatives to government bodies.

DEPENDENCY THEORY. The thesis that many Third World countries cannot control major aspects of their economic life because of the dominance of industrialized societies.

DEPLETION.  One of the primary constraints of the environment on sociocultural systems.  Refers to the limited supplies of natural resources (although the limits are unknowable, that there are limits can be inferred).  These limits can often be stretched through the use of technology (see also POLLUTION, and INTENSIFICATION).

DESERTIFICATION.  A fertile region that has been made barren by the activities of human    societies (see also DEPLETION, and POLLUTION).

DETERRENCE THEORY. The prevention of military conflict through the build up of armaments. The basis of deterrence theory is in ensuring that a potential aggressor would suffer too many losses to make the initiation of hostilities worthwhile --M.A.D. or mutually assured destruction was based on this theory.

DEVIANT SUBCULTURE. A subculture which has values and norms which differ substantially from those of the majority in a society.

DIALECTICAL. An interpretation of change emphasizing the clash of opposing interests and the resulting struggle as the engine of social transformation.

DIFFERENTIATION. The development of increasing complexity and division of labor within sociocultural systems.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. Violent behavior directed by one member of a household against another.

DOUBLING TIME. The time it takes for a particular level of population to double in size.  A fairly accurate doubling time estimate can be computed by taking the annual growth rate and dividing it by 70.  At 2% annual growth world population (5.5 billion in 1996) will double in size (to 11 billion) in about 35 years (2031) assuming the annual growth stays constant (see also EXPONENTIAL GROWTH).

ECONOMIC INTERDEPENDENCE. Comte and Durkheim both refer to the fact that in societies with a high division of labor individuals depend more on others to produce most of the goods they need to sustain their lives.

EDUCATION SYSTEM. The system of formalized transmission of knowledge and values operating within a given society.

ENDOGAMY. A system in which an individual may only marry within the same social category or group.

ENTREPRENEUR. A person who organizes and manages a business firm.

ENVIRONMENTALISM. Refers to a concern with preserving the physical environment in the face of the impact of industrialism.

ESTATE. A form of stratification established by law.

ETHNOCENTRISM. The tendency to judge other cultures by the standards one's own culture.

EVOLUTION. The change of biological organisms by means of the adaptation to the demands of the physical environment. Organisms that successfully adapt pass on their genes to future generations thereby changing the species itself.

EXOGAMY. A system in which an individual may only marry outside their social category or group.

EXPERIMENT.  A research method in which variables can be analyzed under carefully controlled conditions--usually within an artificial situation constructed by the researcher.

EXPONENTIAL GROWTH. A geometric rate of progression which has the potential of producing a very fast rise (or an "explosion") in the numbers of a population experiencing such growth (see also DOUBLING TIME).

EXTENDED FAMILY. A family group consisting of more than two generations of the same kinship line living either within the same household or, more usually in the west, very close to one another.

FAMILY. A group of individuals related to one another by blood ties, marriage or adoption. Members of families form an economic unit, the adult members of which are responsible for the upbringing of children. All societies involve some form of family, although the form the family takes is widely variable. In modern industrial societies the main family form is the nuclear family, although a variety of extended family relationships are also found.

FAMILY OF ORIENTATION. The family into which an individual is born.

FAMILY OF PROCREATION. The family we create through marriage.

FECUNDITY. The number of children which is biologically possible for a woman to produce.

FEEDBACK LOOP.  Sociocultural materialism term referring to the dynamic relationships between the different components of sociocultural systems.  While the theory begins from an examination of infrastructural determinism, it recognizes that structure and superstructure can play an independent role in determining the character of the system (see also INFRASTRUCTURAL DETERMINISM).

FEMININITY. The characteristic behaviors expected of women in a given culture.

FIRST WORLD. A term now rarely used that refers to the group of nation-states that possess advanced industrial economies (see also SECOND WORLD and THIRD WORLD)

FORCES OF PRODUCTION. Marx's term to refer to the technology used to produce economic goods in a society (see also RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION).

FORDISM. The assembly line system of production pioneered by Henry Ford.  It should be pointed out that not all industrial processes are based on the assembly line.

FUNCTIONALISM. A theoretical perspective that focuses on the way various parts of the social system contribute to the continuity of society as well as the affect the various parts have on one another.

FUNDAMENTALISM. A commitment to, and a belief in, the literal meanings of scriptural texts.

GANG. An informal group of individuals that engage in common activities, many of these activities may be outside the law.

GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT (GDP). The total value of all goods and services produced within the boundaries of a particular country in any given year. In America, for example, this measure includes the value of the production of Japanese firms within the U.S. but not goods produced by U.S. firms on Japanese soil.  GDP is now the preferred measure of the wealth of nations.

GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT (GNP). The total value of all goods and services produced by nationals of a particular country in any given year. In America, for example, this measure did not include the value of the production of Japanese firms within the U.S. but did include the value of goods and services produced by U.S. firms on Japanese soil.  GDP is now the preferred measure of the wealth of nations, though GNP is often used in historical comparison.

GUERRILLA MOVEMENT. A non-government military organization that engages in fighting or harassment

HETEROSEXUALITY. An orientation in sexual activity towards people of the opposite sex.

HIDDEN CURRICULUM. Behavior or attitudes that are learned at school but which are not a part of the formal curriculum. For example, aspects of classism can often be "unintentionally" conveyed in learning materials.

HIGHER EDUCATION. Usually refers to education beyond high school level, often in colleges or universities.

HIGH-TRUST SYSTEMS. Work settings in which individuals have a great deal of autonomy and control.

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM. Marx's interpretation that processes of social change are determined primarily (but not exclusively) by economic factors.

HOMOSEXUALITY. Having sexual preference for persons of the same sex.

HOUSEWORK (DOMESTIC LABOR). Unpaid work carried on in and around the home such as cooking, cleaning and shopping. Studies show that the bulk of this labor is carried out by women despite the predominance of dual-income families.

HUNTING AND GATHERING SOCIETIES. Societies whose subsistence is based primarily on hunting animals and gathering edible plants.

HYPOTHESIS. A tentative statement about a given state of affairs that predicts a relationship between the variables, usually put forward as a basis for empirical testing.

IDEAL TYPE. Weber's construct of a 'pure type', constructed by emphasizing logical or consistent traits of a given social item.  The traits are defining ones, not necessarily desirable ones. Ideal types do not exist anywhere in reality, rather they are "measures" that we can use in comparing social phenomena. One example is Weber's ideal type of bureaucratic organization (which are anything but desirable). More widely used (and understood) examples would include "ideal democracy" and "ideal capitalism."

INCOME. Payment of wages usually earned from work or investments.

INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY. Democratic participation in the workplace.

INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION. Economic production carried on through the use of machinery driven by inanimate sources of power.

INFANT MORTALITY RATE. The number of infants who die during the first year of life, per thousand live births. Infant mortality rates have declined dramatically in industrial societies.

INFRASTRUCTURAL DETERMINISM.  The major principle of sociocultural materialism (borrowed and modified from Harris' cultural materialism).  "The mode of production and reproduction (probabalistically) determines primary and secondary group structure, which in turn determines the cultural and mental superstructure"  (see also MODE OF PRODUCTION, MODE OF REPRODUCTION, PRIMARY GROUP, SECONDARY GROUP, CULTURAL SUPERSTRUCTURE, MENTAL SUPERSTRUCTURE, and FEEDBACK LOOP).

INFRASTRUCTURE.  The interface between a sociocultural system and its environment.  In sociocultural materialism it contains the principle mechanism by which society regulates the amount and type of energy from the environment (see also MODE OF PRODUCTION, and MODE OF REPRODUCTION).

INSTINCT. A genetically fixed pattern of complex behavior (that is, beyond reflex) which appears in all normal animals within a given species.  The behavior of humans is not instinctual.

INSTITUTIONAL CAPITALISM. A condition that exists when large institutions such as pension plans, banks, and insurance companies hold large shares of capitalistic enterprises.

INTELLIGENCE. Level of intellectual ability in an individual.  Also refers to the gathering of information (defensive, offensive, and industrial capabilities) about one nation by another.

INTENSIFICATION.  Refers to the growth in the complexity of the mode of production (greater energy expenditures as well as energy produced/consumed), and population over the course of social evolution (see also BUREAUCRATIZATION, and RATIONALIZATION).

INTEREST GROUPS. Groups organized to pursue specific interests in the political arena. The interests of these groups is often economic, but many are organized around moral concerns. The major activity of interest groups is lobbying the members of legislative bodies (Congress as well as state legislators), contributing vast sums to political campaigns, and increasingly running their own propaganda campaigns to affect the legislative process.

INTERNATIONAL DIVISION OF LABOR. The interdependence of countries which trade on global markets.

INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY. Movement up or down the social hierarchy from one generation to another.

IQ (INTELLIGENCE QUOTIENT). A score attained on tests of symbolic or reasoning abilities. Most social scientists (excluding psychologists) do not put much stock in the validity of IQ tests.

LABELING THEORY. A theory that people become `deviant' because certain labels (thief, prostitute, homosexual) are attached to their behavior by criminal justice authorities and others. The resulting treatment of the individual pushes them into performing the deviant role. Also called "societal reaction" theory.

LATENT FUNCTIONS. The unintended consequences of one part of a sociocultural system. For example, the reform of big city political machines had a lot of unintended consequences on the governability of American cities (see also MANIFEST FUNCTION).

LAW. A written rule established by a political authority and backed by government.

LEGITIMACY. The generally held belief that a particular social institution is just and valid.

LEGITIMATION CRISIS. The lack of sufficient commitment on the part of members to a particular social institution for that organization to function effectively. Governments that lack legitimation often rely on repression to continue their rule (which is very inefficient).  Legitimation crisis in other institutions produce parallel responses on the part of administration.

LESBIANISM. Sexual activities and emotional attachments between women.

LIBERAL DEMOCRACY. Refers to those societies based on some form of democracy coupled with capitalism.

LIFE EXPECTANCY. The number of years a newborn in a particular society can expect to live. Also refers to the number of further years which people at any given age can, on average, expect to live.

LIFE-SPAN. The maximum length of life that is biologically possible for a member of a given species.

LIMITED WAR. Warfare fought principally by a relatively small number of soldiers to reach specific and politically limited objectives (see also TOTAL WAR).

LITERACY. The ability of individuals to read and write.

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE. Knowledge of a local community possessed by individuals who spend long periods of their lives in them.

LOW-TRUST SYSTEMS. Work settings in which individuals have little autonomy and control.

MACROSOCIOLOGY. The study of large-scale organizations, sociocultural systems, or the world system of societies.

MALE INEXPRESSIVENESS. The difficulties men have in talking about their feelings to others.

MALTHUSIANISM. T. Robert Malthus' theory of population dynamics, according to which population increase inevitably comes up against the 'natural limits' of food supply. Population grows geometrically (1, 2, 4, 8, 16,. . .) while food supply grows arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4,       5, . . .).  The debate rages on, there are neo-malthusians and anti-malthusians among us today!

MANAGERIAL CAPITALISM. A change in the control of capitalist enterprises from owners (which predominated in Marx's day) to control by (very well) salaried managers.

MANIFEST FUNCTION. The intended and known consequences of one part of a sociocultural system. For example, the reform of big city political machines had the intended consequence of limiting (relatively) corruption by city officials (see also LATENT FUNCTION).

MARXISM. Contemporary social theory deriving its main elements from Marx's ideas. Marxist theory strongly emphasizes class struggle and material causation.

MASCULINITY. The characteristic forms of behavior expected of men in any given culture.

MASS MEDIA. Forms of communication designed to reach a vast audience without any personal contact between the senders and receivers. Examples would include newspapers, magazines, video recordings, radio and television

MATERIALISM. The view that 'material conditions' (usually economic and technological factors) have the central role in determining social change.

MATRILINEAL DESCENT. The tracing of kinship through only the female line (see also PATRILINEAL DESCENT).

MATRILOCALITY. A family residential pattern in which the husband is expected to live near to the wife's parents (see also NEOLOCALITY).

MEAN. A statistical measure of 'central tendency' or average based on dividing a total by the number of individual cases involved. The mean is very sensitive to extreme scores. For example, the average life expectancy for people in a society with high infant mortality would be a misleading measure (see MEDIAN).

MEANS OF PRODUCTION.  Marx's term referring to the means whereby the production of material goods is carried on in a society. Marx included in this concept both technology and the social relations among the producers (based on the ownership of that technology).

MEDIAN. The number that falls halfway in a range of numbers--the score below which are half the scores and above which are the other half.  The median is a way of calculating 'central tendency' which is sometimes more useful than calculating a mean (particularly when many extreme scores are in the distribution).

MEGALOPOLIS. A vast unbroken urban region consisting of two or more central cities connected by their surrounding suburbs.

MENTAL SUPERSTRUCTURE.  Sociocultural materialism term used to refer to conscious and unconscious motives for human behavior.  Borrowed from Max Weber, there are four basic motivations for human behavior:  wertrational (or value oriented rationality), affective action (action motivated by emotions), traditional action (action motivated by what Weber calls the "eternal yesterday"), and zweckrational (goal oriented rational action).  (See also SUPERSTRUCTURE , or CULTURAL SUPERSTRUCTURE).

MICROSOCIOLOGY. The study of small scale patterns of human interaction and behavior within specific settings.

MIDDLE CLASS. A social class broadly defined occupationally as those working in white-collar and lower managerial occupations; is sometimes defined by reference to income levels or subjective identification of the participants in the study.

MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. A reciprocal relationship (such as the interchange of personnel) between select business firms and the armed forces of a society, based on common interests in weapons production.

MILLENARIANISM. Beliefs held by the members of some religious movements that cataclysmic changes will occur in the near future (often centered around the year 2000 and the second coming of Christ) heralding the arrival of a new epoch in human affairs.

MINORITY GROUP (OR ETHNIC MINORITY). A group of people who, because of their distinct physical or cultural characteristics, are singled out for unequal treatment within that society.

MODE. The value that appears most often in a given set of data. This can sometimes be a helpful way of portraying central tendency (see also MEDIAN and MEAN).

MODE OF PRODUCTION.  The technology and the practices employed for expanding or limiting basic subsistence production, especially the production of food and other forms of energy.  Examples would include the technology of subsistence, technological/environmental relationships, and work patterns (see also MODE OF REPRODUCTION, and INFRASTRUCTURE).

MODE OF REPRODUCTION.  The technology and practices employed for expanding, limiting, and maintaining population size.  Examples of variables included are demography, mating patterns, fertility, natality, mortality, nurturance of infants, contraception, abortion and infanticide (see also MODE OF PRODUCTION, and INFRASTRUCTURE).

MONOGAMY. A form of marriage that joins one male and one female at any given time.

MONOPOLY. A situation in which a single producer dominates in a given industry or market (see also OLIGOPOLY).

MONOTHEISM. Belief in a single devine power.

MULTILINEAR EVOLUTION. An interpretation of social evolution that not all societies pass through predetermined stages of evolutionary development--there are varying paths of evolutionary change followed by different societies.

MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES. A business corporation that operates in two or more countries--also sometimes referred to as "transnational."

NATIONALISM. An individual's internalization of the set of beliefs and values expressing love, pride and identification with a given nation state. Ritual and symbols are important tools in fostering nationalism among the citizenry.

NATION-STATE. The modern state in which a government has sovereign power within a defined territorial area, and the mass of the population are citizens.

NEO-COLONIALISM. The informal dominance of some nations over others by means of unequal conditions of economic exchange (as between industrial and Third World countries)..

NEO-LOCALITY.  A family residential pattern in which the married couple lives apart from the place of residence of both the bride's and the husband's parents (see also MATRILOCALITY).

NON-STATE ACTORS. International agencies, such as the U.N. or the World Health Organization, which play a part in the world system.

NUCLEAR FAMILY. A family group consisting of wife, husband (or one of these) and dependent children living away from other relatives.

OLIGARCHY. Rule by a few within an organization or in the society as a whole.

OLIGOPOLY. A situation in which a small number of firms dominate a given industry or market. When four or fewer firms supply fifty percent or more of a given market the effects of oligopoly become apparent. These effects are reputed to be a rise in price and a lowering of quality because of the decline of competition (see also MONOPOLY)

OPEN LINEAGE FAMILY. A family system found in preindustrial Europe in which family relationships are closely intertwined with the local community.

ORGANIZED CRIME. Criminal activities carried out by organizations established as businesses.

PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY. A system of democracy in which all members of a group or community participate collectively in major decisions. Most nation states today are to large and complex for participatory democracy to be a feasible form of government.

PASTORAL SOCIETIES. Societies whose subsistence is based on domesticated animals (see also TRADITIONAL STATES).

PATRILINEAL DESCENT. The practice of tracing kinship only through the male line (see also MATRILINEAL DESCENT)

PEASANTS. People in agrarian societies who produce food from the land, using traditional farming methods of plow and animal power.

PEER GROUP. A friendship group with common interests and position composed of individuals of similar age.

PERIPHERY COUNTRIES. The term refers to countries which have a marginal role in the world economy and are dependent on 'core' countries in their trading relationships (see also CORE COUNTRIES and SEMI-PERIPHERY COUNTRIES).

PLURALIST THEORY. An analysis of politics emphasizing the role of diverse and competing interest groups in preventing too much power being accumulated in the hands of political and economic elites.

POLITICAL PARTY. An organization of people with similar interests and attitudes established with the aim of achieving legitimate control of government and using that power to pursue a specific program.

POLLUTION.  One of the principal constraints of the environment.  Refers to the contamination of soil, water, or air by noxious substances (see also DEPLETION, ENVIRONMENT, and INTENSIFICATION).

POLYANDRY. A form of marriage in which a woman may have more than one husband.

POLYGAMY. A form of marriage in which a person may have more than one spouse.

POLYGYNY. A form of marriage in which a man may have more than one wife.

POLYTHEISM. A form of belief in which a person has two or more gods.

POSITIVISM. A philosophical position according to which there are close ties between the social and natural sciences, which share a common logical framework.

POWER ELITE. According to C. Wright Mills the power elite are men in the highest positions of government, corporations and the military who hold enormous power in modern industrial societies.

PRESTIGE. Social respect accorded to an individual or group because of the status of their position.

PRIMARY GROUP. A typically small group of individuals standing in an enduring personal relationship to one another--examples would include parents, spouse, or close friends (see also SECONDARY GROUP).

PRIMARY GROUP STRUCTURE.  A term used in sociocultural materialism to refer to structural groups in which members tend to interact on an intimate basis. They perform many functions such as regulating production, reproduction, socialization, education, and enforcing social discipline.  Examples include family, community, voluntary organizations, and friendship networks (see also STRUCTURE,  and SECONDARY GROUP STRUCTURE).

PRIMARY LABOR MARKET. The term refers to the economic position of individuals engaged in occupations that provide secure jobs, and good benefits and working conditions (see also SECONDARY LABOR MARKET).

PRIMARY SECTOR. That part of a modern economy based on the extraction of natural resources directly from the natural environment--includes such areas as mining and agricultural production.

PRIVATE HEALTH CARE. Fee-for-service health care available only to those who pay the full cost of them.

PROFANE. Elements which belong to the ordinary everyday world rather than the supernatural (see also SACRED).

PROFESSIONS. Occupations requiring extensive educational qualifications, with high social prestige, subject to codes of conduct laid down by central bodies (or professional associations).

PROSTITUTION. Having sex for economic gain.

PSYCHOPATH. A personality type that denotes a lack of moral sense and concern for others.

PSYCHOSIS. A serious mental disorder that involves a failure to distinguish between internal and external reality, the affected person cannot function effectively in social life.

PUBLIC HEALTH CARE. Government funded health-care services available to all members of the population.

RACE. A socially defined category of people who share genetically transmitted physical characteristics.

RAPE. The use of force to compel one individual to engage in a sexual act with another.

RATIONALIZATION. Weber's concept to refer to the process by which modes of precise calculation based on observation and reason increasingly dominate the social world. Rationalization is a habit of thought that replaces tradition, emotion, and values as motivators of human conduct. Bureaucracy is a particular case of rationalization applied to human social organization (see also MENTAL SUPERSTRUCTURE).

REFORM MOVEMENT. A social movement concerned to implement a limited program of social change, say changing the health care system to provide universal access to care.

RELATIVE DEPRIVATION. A perceived disadvantage in social or economic standing based on a comparison to others in a society.

RELATIVE POVERTY. Poverty defined by reference to the living standards of the majority in any given society.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY. Based on the existence of two or more political parties, in which voters democratically elect politicians to represent their interests.

RESOCIALIZATION. The relearning of cultural norms and values by mature individuals usually in the context of a total institution (see also TOTAL INSTITUTION).

RETIREMENT CENTER. A city or town to which many people move when they retire.

RIOTS. An outbreak of collective violence directed against persons, property or both.

SACRED. Something set apart from the everyday world which inspires attitudes of awe or reverence among believers (see also PROFANE).

SAMPLING. Taking a small representative part of a population for purposes of drawing inferences from the analysis of the sample characteristics to the population as a whole.

SANCTION. A reward for conformity or a punishment for nonconformity that reinforces socially approved forms of behavior.

SCAPEGOATING. Blaming, punishing, or stigmatizing a relatively powerless individual or group for wrongs that were not of their doing.

SCHIZOPHRENIA. A serious mental disturbance in which an individual typically has delusions or hallucinations and a distorted sense of reality.

SCIENCE. The application of systematic methods of observation and careful logical analysis; the term also refers to the body of knowledge produced by the use of the scientific method.

SECOND WORLD. Formerly communist industrial societies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (see also FIRST WORLD and THIRD WORLD)..

SECONDARY GROUP. A group of individuals who do not know each other on a personal level interacting in pursuit of a goal (see also PRIMARY GROUP).

SECONDARY GROUP STRUCTURE.  A term used in sociocultural materialism to refer to structural groups in which members tend to interact without any emotional commitment to one another.  These organizations are coordinated through bureaucracies.  They perform many functions such as regulating production, reproduction, socialization, education, and enforcing social discipline.  Examples include governments, parties, military, corporations, educational institutions, media, service and welfare organizations, and professional and labor organizations  (see also STRUCTURE,  and PRIMARY GROUP STRUCTURE).

SECONDARY LABOR MARKET. Refers to the economic position of individuals engaged in occupations that provide insecure jobs, poor benefits and conditions of work (see also PRIMARY LABOR MARKET).

SEMI-PERIPHERY COUNTRIES. Countries that are in the initial stages of industrialism which provide labor and raw materials to the core countries (see also CORE COUNTRIES and PERIPHERY COUNTRIES).

SERIAL MONOGAMY. The process of contracting several marriages in succession--marriage, divorce, and remarriage.

SEX. The biological categories of females and males.

SEXISM. Beliefs which hold one sex superior to the other thereby justifying sexual inequalities.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT. The making of persistent unwanted sexual advances by one individual towards another.

SOCIAL FORCES. The term refers to the fact that society and social organizations exert an influence on individual human behavior.

SOCIAL DARWINISM. An early and now largely discredited view of social evolution emphasizing the importance of "survival of the fittest" or struggle between individuals, groups, or societies as the motor of development. Social Darwinism became widely popular and was often used to justify existing inequalities.

SOCIAL REPRODUCTION. The processes which perpetuate characteristics of social structure over periods of time (see also AGENCIES OF SOCIALIZATION).

SOCIALISM. An economic system in which the means of production and distribution of goods and services are publically owned.

SOCIOBIOLOGY. An approach which attempts to explain the social behavior of humans in terms of biological principles.

SOCIOCULTURAL MATERIALISM.  An ecological-evolutionary world view.  A variant of cultural materialism, it is the world view developed and taught by your instructor, F. Elwell (see also CULTURAL MATERIALISM).

SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION. A term used by C. Wright Mills that refers to the application of imaginative thought to the asking and answering of sociological questions.

SOLID WASTE. Refers to the accumulation of noxious substances (see also DEPLETION,    ENVIRONMENT, and INTENSIFICATION).
 

STANDING ARMY. A full-time professional army.

STATE SOCIETY. A society which possesses a formal apparatus of government.

STATELESS SOCIETY. A society which lacks formal institutions of government.

STEP-FAMILIES (BLENDED FAMILIES). Families in which at least one partner has children from a previous marriage living in the home.

STEREOTYPE. A rigid and inflexible image of the characteristics a group.  Stereotypes attribute these characteristics to all individuals belonging to that group .

STRIKE. A temporary work stoppage by a group of employees.

STRUCTURE.  Sociological term to refer to all human institutions, groups and organizations.

SUBCULTURE.  A group within the broader society that has values, norms and lifestyle distinct from those of the majority.

SUBURBANIZATION. The development of areas of housing outside the political boundaries of cities.

SUPERSTRUCTURE.  A general term used in sociocultural materialism to refer to the symbolic universe--the shared meanings, ideas, beliefs, values, and ideologies that people give to the physical and social world. The superstructure, of course, can be divided into cultural and mental components (see also CULTURAL SUPERSTRUCTURE, and MENTAL SUPERSTRUCTURE).

SURPLUS VALUE. Marx's concept for the value of an individual's labor power (calculated by the amount of value the labor contributes to the product minus the amount of money paid to the worker by the capitalist). The conventional name for this difference is profit--thus the whole capitalist system is based on "expropriating" surplus value (or stealing labor) from workers.

SURVEILLANCE. Monitoring the activities of others in order to ensure compliant behavior. Modern techniques of surveillance include not only video cameras and microphones but also a whole range of computer surveillance as well.

SURVEY. A questionnaire or interview.

SYMBOL. One item used to meaningfully represent another--as in the case of a flag which symbolizes a nation.

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM. A theoretical approach in sociology which focuses on social reality as constructed through the daily interaction of individuals and places strong emphasis on the role of symbols (gestures, signs, and language) as core elements of this interaction.

TAYLORISM. Also referred to as 'scientific management,' a set of ideas developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor involving simplifying and coordinating the actions of workers to produce maximum efficiency.

TECHNOLOGY. The application of logic, reason and knowledge to the problems of exploiting raw materials from the environment.  Social technologies employ the same thought processes in addressing problems of human organization. Technology involves the creation of material instruments (such as machines) used in human interaction with nature as well as social instruments (such as bureaucracy) used in  human organization (see also RATIONALIZATION, and BUREAUCRACY).

TERRORISM. The use of violence to achieve political ends.  Many would restrict the definition to include only those acts committed by non-government groups, but state terrorism is also a major factor in the social world.

TERTIARY SECTOR. That part of an economy that provides services (nursing homes, psychological counseling, and so forth)--engaged in by both private and government entitities.

THIRD WORLD. Societies in which industrial production is only developed to a limited degree. Many of these societies were former colonies of industrial states. The majority of the world's population (over 70 percent) live in Third World countries (see also FIRST WORLD and SECOND WORLD).

TOTAL INSTITUTION. An organization in which individuals are isolated for long periods of time as their lives are controlled and regulated by the administration of the organization--such as a prison, mental hospital, or army boot camps (see also RESOCIALIZATION)..

TOTAL WAR. Warfare in which all the resources of the modern state are committed including a large proportion of the population (both directly and indirectly), all of the armed forces, and a large proportion of the industrial sector of the society.

TOTEMISM. A system of religious belief studied by Durkheim which attributes sacred qualities to a particular type of animal or plant.

TRADING NETWORKS. Patterns of economic exchange between companies or countries.

TRADITIONAL STATES. Societies in which the production base is agriculture or pastoralism (see also AGRARIAN SOCIETIES and PASTORAL SOCIETIES)

TRANSFORMATIVE MOVEMENT. A social movement to produce major social change in a society.

TRANSITIONAL CLASSES. Marx's term to refer to social classes based on previous relations of production which linger on in the beginning stages a new one--such as peasants or landowners of a feudal system which has become capitalist.

TRANSNATIONAL COMPANIES.  A business corporation that operates in two or more countries--also sometimes referred to as a "multinational."

UNDERCLASS. A class of individuals in mature industrial societies situated at the bottom of the class system who have been systematically excluded from participation in economic life.  The underclass is normally composed of people from ethnic or minority groups.

UNILINEAR EVOLUTION. A largely discredited view of social evolution according to which all societies pass through the same stages of development.

UNION. A social organization set up to represent the worker's interests in both the workplace and in the broader society as well.

UPPER CLASS. A social class roughly composed of the more affluent members of society, especially those who have great wealth, control over businesses or hold large numbers of stocks and shares.

URBAN RENEWAL. Governmental programs of encouraging the renovation of deteriorating city neighborhoods through the renovation or destruction of old buildings and the construction of new ones.

URBANIZATION. The concentration of populations into cities.

VARIABLE. A characteristic that varies in value or magnitude along which an object, individual or group may be categorized, such as income or age.

VERTICAL MOBILITY. Movement up or down a social stratification system (see also STRATIFICATION).

VICTIMLESS CRIME. Violation of law in which there is no other person (aside from the offender) victimized, such as drug-taking or illegal gambling.

WEALTH. Accumulated money and material possessions controlled by an individual, group or organization.

WELFARE STATE. A government system which provides a range of human services for its citizens.

WHITE-COLLAR CRIME. Criminal activities carried out by white-collar or professional workers in the course of their jobs.

WORKING CLASS. A social class of industrial societies broadly composed of people involved in manual occupation. The bulk of these jobs are unskilled, poorly paid and provide few benefits or job security.

WORLD SYSTEM THEORY. Immanuel Wallerstein's theoretical approach which analyzes societies in terms of their position within global systems.

ZWECKRATIONAL.  Rational action in relation to a goal.  From Max Weber (the greatest sociologist who ever lived) and used extensively in his theory of social action (see also RATIONALIZATION, and MENTAL SUPERSTRUCTURE)