CSS Sociology key facts

Foundations

Nature, scope and founders of sociology

• Auguste Comte: coined 'sociology'; law of three stages (theological, metaphysical, positive); social statics (order) and social dynamics (change).
• Herbert Spencer: society as an organism; social evolution; 'survival of the fittest'; 'Principles of Sociology'.
• Emile Durkheim: social facts; 'The Division of Labour in Society' (1893), 'The Rules of Sociological Method' (1895), 'Suicide' (1897).
• Max Weber: verstehen (understanding the actor's meaning); social action; 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism'.
• Karl Marx: class struggle and the economic base of society; 'The Communist Manifesto' (1848, with Engels), 'Das Kapital'.
• Ibn Khaldun (1332 to 1406): 'Muqaddimah'; asabiyyah; cyclical rise and fall of dynasties.
• Formal school (Simmel): study the forms of relationships. Synthetic school (Durkheim): study social life as a whole.

Theoretical perspectives

• Functionalism: Durkheim, Parsons, Merton. Parsons's AGIL: adaptation, goal attainment, integration, latency.
• Conflict theory: Marx (class), Dahrendorf (authority), C. Wright Mills (power elite).
• Symbolic interactionism: G. H. Mead's ideas; Herbert Blumer coined the name.
• C. Wright Mills, 'The Sociological Imagination' (1959): personal troubles versus public issues.
• Merton: manifest function = intended and recognised; latent function = unintended and unrecognised; dysfunction = a consequence that harms stability.
• Merton also asked for theories of the middle range: limited in scope and testable.

Sociological research methods

• Probability sampling (every member has a known chance): simple random, systematic (every nth name), stratified (random sample from each subgroup), cluster.
• Non-probability sampling: quota, purposive, convenience, snowball (members lead to other members).
• Experiment: the experimental group receives the independent variable; the control group does not.
• Participant observation: the researcher joins the group. Non-participant: the researcher only watches.
• Structured interview: fixed questions, easy to compare. Unstructured: flexible, deeper, harder to compare.
• Case study: in-depth study of one unit (a village, a family, an institution).
• Correlation does not prove causation; a third variable may produce a spurious link.

Culture, socialisation and groups

Culture

• W. G. Sumner ('Folkways', 1906): folkways = everyday customs, mild disapproval if broken; mores = norms of great moral weight, strong disapproval.
• Taboo: a very strong prohibition. Law: a norm enforced by the state.
• Subculture: shares the main culture but has some distinct norms. Counterculture: rejects and opposes the dominant values.
• Ethnocentrism (Sumner's term): judging other cultures by the standards of one's own.
• Cultural relativism (Franz Boas): understanding a culture by its own standards.
• Diffusion: the spread of cultural traits from one society to another.
• Cultural lag (William Ogburn): non-material culture changes more slowly than material culture.

Socialisation and personality

• Cooley's looking-glass self: we imagine how we appear to others, imagine their judgement, and feel pride or shame as a result.
• Mead: the 'I' is the spontaneous self; the 'me' is the socialised self. Stages: preparatory (imitation), play (one role at a time), game (many roles, the generalised other).
• Freud: id (pleasure principle), ego (reality principle), superego (conscience, the moral demands of society).
• Freud's psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital.
• Piaget's cognitive stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational.
• Erikson: eight psychosocial stages, the first being trust versus mistrust. Kohlberg: three levels of moral development (preconventional, conventional, postconventional).
• Hidden curriculum: the informal lessons of school, such as obedience and punctuality.

Social groups, status and roles

• Primary group: C. H. Cooley, the 'nursery of human nature' (family, play group, neighbourhood). Secondary group: e.g. a company or a political party.
• In-group ('we') and out-group ('they'): W. G. Sumner.
• Reference group: a group used as a standard for judging oneself, whether or not one belongs to it.
• Dyad = two members; triad = three members (Georg Simmel).
• Ascribed status: given at birth or without choice (sex, age, caste). Achieved status: gained by effort (doctor, graduate). Distinction made by Ralph Linton.
• Role conflict: clashing demands of two different statuses. Role strain: clashing demands within one status. Role set (Merton): all the roles attached to one status.
• Social processes: cooperation, competition, conflict, accommodation, assimilation.

Social institutions: family, religion, education and economy

• Nuclear family: parents and unmarried children. Extended or joint family: three or more generations or married brothers in one household.
• Family of orientation: the one you are born into. Family of procreation: the one you form by marriage.
• Monogamy: one spouse. Polygamy: more than one; polygyny = one man, several wives; polyandry = one woman, several husbands.
• Endogamy: marriage inside the group. Exogamy: marriage outside it. Residence: patrilocal, matrilocal, neolocal.
• G. P. Murdock's four family functions: sexual, reproductive, economic, educational (socialisation).
• Religion: Durkheim, sacred versus profane, religion binds society together; Marx, 'the opium of the people'.
• Weber: the state claims a monopoly of legitimate force; authority is traditional, charismatic or rational-legal.

Structure, order and change

Social stratification and mobility

• Marx: class depends on relationship to the means of production; bourgeoisie (owners) versus proletariat (wage workers); false consciousness and class consciousness.
• Weber: three dimensions, class (economic), status (prestige) and party (power).
• Davis and Moore (1945): unequal rewards are functional because they draw able people into important, demanding positions. Main critic: Melvin Tumin.
• Three estates: clergy, nobility, commoners.
• Vertical mobility: up or down in rank. Horizontal mobility: a change of position at the same rank.
• Intergenerational: compared with one's parents. Intragenerational: within one person's own working life.
• Structural mobility: many people move because the economy itself changes. Classic study: Sorokin, 'Social Mobility' (1927).

Deviance, crime and social control

• Durkheim: anomie = normlessness; crime marks moral boundaries and can bring change.
• Merton's strain theory, five adaptations: conformity (goals +, means +), innovation (goals +, means −), ritualism (goals −, means +), retreatism (goals −, means −), rebellion (replaces both).
• Differential association (Edwin Sutherland): criminal behaviour is learned in intimate groups.
• Labelling: Howard Becker, 'Outsiders' (1963); Edwin Lemert, primary deviance (the first act) and secondary deviance (after the label is accepted).
• Formal control: police, courts, prisons, written rules. Informal control: family, neighbours, gossip, ridicule, praise.
• Sanctions are positive (rewards) or negative (punishments), and formal or informal.
• Durkheim: mechanical solidarity goes with repressive law; organic solidarity with restitutive law.

Social change and social movements

• Evolutionary: Comte, Spencer. Cyclical: Ibn Khaldun, Spengler, Toynbee, Sorokin. Conflict: Marx. Technological: Ogburn.
• W. W. Rostow's five stages: traditional society, preconditions for take-off, take-off, drive to maturity, age of high mass consumption.
• Dependency theory (A. G. Frank): underdevelopment results from unequal ties with rich countries.
• Reform movement: changes part of the system by lawful means. Revolutionary movement: replaces the whole system.
• Reactionary movement: wants to restore an earlier order. Resistance movement: opposes a change under way.
• Relative deprivation: a gap between what people have and what they expect. Resource mobilisation: success depends on money, members, organisation and leadership.

Population, urbanisation and migration

• Malthus: population grows geometrically (1, 2, 4, 8), food arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4). Positive checks raise deaths (famine, disease, war); preventive checks lower births (late marriage, moral restraint).
• Demographic transition: stage 1 high birth and death rates; stage 2 death rate falls, rapid growth; stage 3 birth rate falls; stage 4 both low, slow growth.
• Crude birth rate and crude death rate: live births or deaths per 1,000 population per year.
• Rate of natural increase (%) = (crude birth rate − crude death rate) ÷ 10.
• Infant mortality rate: deaths under age one per 1,000 live births. Fertility = actual births; fecundity = biological capacity.
• Replacement-level fertility is about 2.1 children per woman.
• Push factors drive people out (no jobs, drought); pull factors attract (work, schools). Immigration = moving in; emigration = moving out.

Community, rural and urban life in Pakistan

• Ferdinand Tönnies, 'Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft' (1887): community versus association.
• Durkheim: mechanical solidarity (likeness) versus organic solidarity (interdependence through division of labour).
• Robert Redfield: the folk-urban continuum.
• Rural: small, homogeneous, primary ties, farming, informal control. Urban: large, dense, heterogeneous, secondary ties, formal control.
• Biradari: patrilineal kin group with reciprocal duties at weddings, funerals and disputes.
• Panchayat: village council of elders. Jirga: council of elders among the Pashtuns.
• Fragmentation of holdings: land divided among heirs into ever smaller plots.

Social problems and social policy

• Absolute poverty: lacking the basic needs of life. Relative poverty: being poor compared with the standard of one's own society.
• Vicious circle of poverty (Ragnar Nurkse): low income, low saving, low investment, low productivity, low income.
• Unemployment types: frictional (between jobs), structural (skills do not match jobs), cyclical (recession), seasonal, disguised (extra workers add nothing to output).
• Functional illiteracy: unable to use reading and writing in everyday tasks.
• White-collar crime (Edwin Sutherland): crime by people of high status in the course of their occupation.
• Beveridge Report (1942), five giants: Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, Idleness.
• Welfare state: the state accepts responsibility for health, education and income security.