Glossary

A severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information.

Refers to holding responsibility for participants but also communities at large, the environment, the land, homelands, ancestors, and lived history.

The status a person chooses, such as a level of education or income.

Crowds of people who are focused on a specific action or goal.

The ability for the individual to act in the world to create change and alter the conditions of social life.

An individual’s isolation from his society, his work, and his sense of self.

A term used by Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island to describe the interconnected relationships of all things.

Social movements that limit themselves to self-improvement changes in individuals.

A type of unilateral descent that follows either the father’s or the mother’s side exclusively.

A breakdown or absence of social norms.

The status outside of an individual’s control, such as sex or race.

A theory that credits individuals in crowds as behaving as rational thinkers and views crowds as engaging in purposeful behaviour and collective action.

The process by which a minority individual or group takes on the characteristics of the
dominant culture.

The act of entering into marriage while still married to another person.

The tracing of kinship through both parents’ ancestral lines.

In capitalism, the owning class who live from the proceeds of owning or controlling productive property (capital assets like factories and machinery, or capital itself in the form of investments, stocks, and bonds).

An organization with formal procedures and standards, explicit rules around the division of labour, and a hierarchy of authority.

Systems in which people are born into a social standing that they will retain their entire lives.

People who share close proximity without really interacting.

A large, bureaucratically organized religious organization that is closely integrated into the larger society.

A term that refers to individuals whose gender identity matches the gender and sex they were assigned at birth.

A group who shares a common social status based on factors like wealth, income, education, and occupation.

The awareness of one’s rank in society.

A set of guidelines that the American Sociological Association has established to foster ethical research and professionally responsible scholarship in sociology.

When a couple shares a residence but is not married.

A non-institutionalized activity in which several people voluntarily engage.

The combined mental contents of a society that manifests itself through a religious framework.

A feeling experienced by individuals when they come together to express beliefs and perform rituals together as a group.

The belief that one type of skin tone is superior or inferior to another within a racial group.

Buying and using products to make a statement about social standing.

Applying a systematic approach to record and value information gleaned from secondary data as it relates to the study at hand.

People who come together for a regularly scheduled event.

Dominant capitalist countries.

Crime committed by white-collar workers in a business environment.

Groups that reject and oppose society’s widely accepted cultural patterns.

A behaviour that violates official law and is punishable through formal sanctions.

A fairly large number of people sharing close proximity.

Cultural knowledge that serves (metaphorically) as currency to help one navigate a culture.

The practice of assessing a culture by its own standards, and not in comparison to another culture.

Cultural traits found the world over.

Shared beliefs, values, and practices.

The theory that prejudice is embedded in our culture.

An experience of personal disorientation when confronted with an unfamiliar way of life.

A thesis that argues some social stratification is a social necessity.

The process by which new members of a total institution lose aspects of their old
identities and are given new ones.

Theory stating that global inequity is due to the exploitation of peripheral and semi-peripheral nations by core nations.

A variable changed by other variables.

A violation of contextual, cultural, or social norms.

When the social problem is stated in a clear, easily understood manner.

A theory that states individuals learn deviant behaviour from those close to them, who provide models of and opportunities for deviance.

The spread of material and nonmaterial culture from one culture to another.

Prejudiced action against a group of people.

The performance of tasks based upon the gender assigned to us by society and, in turn, ourselves.

A group of people who have more power in a society than any of the subordinate groups.

Women (or other categories of individual) who break both laws and gender (or other) norms.

A lowering of one’s social class.

A perspective that emphasizes the importance of social norms in crowd behaviour.

Shared culture, which may include heritage, language, religion, and more.

Evaluating another culture according to the standards of one’s own culture.

Social relationships are based on giving and returning valued goods or services. Individuals seek to maximize their rewards in their interactions with others.

Crowds that share opportunities to express emotions.

The act of a dominant group forcing a subordinate group to leave a certain area or even the country.

A household that includes at least one parent and child as well as other relatives like grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Socially recognized groups of individuals who may be joined by blood, marriage, or adoption, and who form an emotional connection and an economic unit of society.

The family into which one is born.

A family that is formed through marriage.

The process of simultaneously analyzing the behaviour of an individual and the society that shapes that behaviour.

A large group of people who gather together in a spontaneous activity that lasts a limited amount of time.

Direct, appropriate behaviour in the day-to-day practices and expressions of a culture.

Established, written rules.

Sanctions that are officially recognized and enforced.

A way in which experience is organized conceptually.

Using bridging, amplification, extension, and transformation as an ongoing and intentional means of recruiting participants to a movement.

A term that refers to social or cultural distinctions of behaviors that are considered male or female.

A person’s deeply held internal perception of one's gender.

Society’s concept of how men and women should behave.

Society’s concept of how men and women should behave.

The common behavioural expectations of general society.

The deliberate annihilation of a targeted (usually subordinate) group.

A measure of income inequality in which zero is absolute equality and one is absolute inequality.

An invisible barrier that women encounter when trying to win jobs in the highest level of business.

Where women are likelier to be promoted in chaotic times, and therefore more likely to fail at the role.

The idea that society is constructed by us and those before us, and it is followed like a habit.

The physical embodiment of cultural capital, including the deeply ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions that we possess due to our life experiences.

An ideology and a set of institutional practices that privilege straight people and heterosexuality over other sexual orientations.

The informal teaching done in schools that socializes children to societal norms.

An aversion to gay, lesbian, bisexual, or all LGBTQ people, which often manifests as prejudice and bias.

A testable educated guess about predicted outcomes between two or more variables.

Variables that cause changes in dependent variables.

Casual behaviours that are generally and widely conformed to.

Sanctions that occur in face-to-face interactions.

New objects or ideas introduced to culture for the first time.

a condition where higher rates of criminal activity are attributed to the cultural pressure exerted by economic goals that are generalized throughout a society.

Racism embedded in social institutions.

A difference in social class between different generations of a family.

A sociological research approach that seeks in-depth understanding of a topic or subject through observation or interaction; this approach is not based on hypothesis testing.

A theory that suggests we cannot separate the effects of race, class, gender, sexual
orientation, and other attributes.

People born with sex characteristics (including genitals, gonads and chromosome patterns) that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies.

A difference in social class between different members of the same generation.

The accumulated effects of acts committed in former lives and their influence on fortunes and suffering in this life.

A person’s traceable ancestry (by blood, marriage, and/or adoption).

The unrecognized or unintended consequences of a social process.

A wide-scale view of the role of social structures within society.

A person’s traceable ancestry (by blood, marriage, and/or adoption).

A relatively large group with a common interest, even if the group members may not be in close proximity.

The objects or belongings of a group of people.

A type of unilateral descent that follows the mother’s side only.

A system in which it is customary for a husband to live with his wife’s family.

Productive property, including the things used to produce the goods and services needed for survival: tools, technologies, resources, land, workplaces, etc.

A type of social order based on sameness and maintained by the collective consciousness of a culture.

An ideal system in which personal effort—or merit—determines social standing.

The study of specific relationships between individuals or small groups.

Any group of people who are singled out from the others for differential and unequal
treatment.

A theory that low-income countries can improve their global economic standing by industrialization of infrastructure and a shift in cultural attitudes toward work.

When someone is married to only one person at a time.

The moral views and principles of a group.

A call to action.

Punishments for violating norms.

A set of policies in which the state reduces its role in providing public services, regulating industry, redistributing wealth, and protecting the commons while advocating the use of free market mechanisms to regulate society.

A small religious organization that is at great odds with the norms and values of the larger society.

Theory that attempts to explain the proliferation of postindustrial and postmodern movements that are difficult to understand using traditional social movement theories.

The ideas, attitudes, and beliefs of a society.

Using secondary data, does not include direct contact with research subjects and does not alter or influence people’s behaviors.

The process by which norms are used to differentiate, rank, and correct individual behaviour.

A cohabiting man and woman who maintain a socially approved sexual relationship and have at least one child.

Specific explanations of abstract concepts that a researcher plans to study.

A type of social order based around interdependence and acceptance of economic and social differences.

Jeremy Bentham’s “seeing machine” that became the model for the ideal prison.

Philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and the experiments performed in support of them.

When a researcher immerses herself in a group or social setting in order to make observations from an “insider” perspective.

Institutions of male power in society.

A type of unilateral descent that follows the father's side only.

A system in which it is customary for a wife to live with (or near) her husband’s family.

The difference in earnings between men and women.

A group made up of people who are similar in age and social status and who share interests.

Nations on the fringes of the global economy, dominated by core nations, with very little industrialization.

A sociological perspective that argues that all phenomena appear spontaneously and immediately within the experience and awareness of individual subjects before they become the basis for subjective and objective reality.

A society where minority groups participate in political life but maintain their own distinct cultural identities.

The practice of engaging in multiple romantic relationships, with the consent of all the people involved.

A form of marriage in which one woman is married to more than one man at one time.

The state of being committed or married to more than one person at a time.

A form of marriage in which one man is married to more than one woman at one time.

Mainstream, widespread patterns among a society’s population.

Rewards given for conforming to norms.

A theory of knowledge that is dependent on science for explanations.

A small group of wealthy and influential people at the top of society who hold the power and resources.

The belief that the gods predetermine the fate of individuals.

Biased thought based on flawed assumptions about a group of people.

Data that are collected directly from firsthand experience.

The original theft of capitalism which allows the system to get started. It includes the seizure of land from peasant farmers and Indigenous peoples.

Everyday objects, states of being or practices that do not hold any spiritual or religious significance.

When social movements state a clear solution and a means of implementation.

An unorganized, relatively diffuse group of people who share ideas.

Non-numerical, descriptive data that is often subjective and based on what is experienced in a natural setting.

Data collected in numerical form that can be counted and analyzed using statistics.

refers to a type of non-probability sampling where participants are selected based on meeting various proportional requirements

A set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices that are used to justify the belief that one racial category is somehow superior or inferior to others.

A study’s participants being randomly selected to serve as a representation of a larger population.

A theory which states that human action is motivated by individual self-interest and that all social activities are a product of rational decision making that weighs costs against benefits.

A belief that modern society should be built around logic and efficiency rather than morality or tradition.

Movements that work to promote inner change or spiritual growth in individuals.

Movements that seek to change something specific about the social structure.

Refers to research being based in relationship and context.

Living without the minimum amount of income or resources needed to be able to participate in the ordinary living patterns, customs, and activities of a society.

A measure of a study’s consistency that considers how likely results are to be replicated if a study is reproduced.

A system of beliefs, values, and practices concerning what a person holds to be sacred or spiritually significant.

Movements that seek to prevent or undo change to the social structure.

The process by which old behaviours are removed and new behaviours are learned in their place.

Movements that seek to completely change every aspect of society.

Behaviours or practices that are either required for or expected of the members of a particular group.

The expression of a role.

Stress that occurs when too much is required of a single role.

Objects, states of being, or practices that are set apart and considered forbidden because of their connection to divine presence.

The way that people understand the world based on their form of language.

A change in a person’s self-concept and behaviour after his or her actions are labelled as deviant by members of society.

The process by which religion and the sacred gradually have less validity, influence, and significance in society and the lives of individuals.

The physical separation of two groups, particularly in residence, but also in workplace and social functions.

A person’s distinct sense of identity as developed through social interaction.

In-between nations, not powerful enough to dictate policy but acting as a major source of raw materials and providing an expanding middle-class marketplace.

A term that denotes the presence of physical or physiological differences between males and females.

The prejudiced belief that one sex should be valued over another.

A person’s physical, mental, emotional, and sexual attraction to a particular sex.

A form of non-probability sampling where new participants are recruited by existing participants.

The school of thought that race is not biologically identifiable.

The division of people into categories based on socially significant characteristics, identities, and roles.

an approach that links crime and delinquency to the disordered ecological characteristics of a neighbourhood.

Facts that transcend the individual and affect their lives and actions. They include such things as institutions, values, and norms.

The unequal distribution of valued resources, rewards, and positions in a society.

Patterns of beliefs and behaviors focused on meeting social needs, such as government, education, family, healthcare, religion, and the economy.

A purposeful, organized group hoping to work toward a common social goal.

A socioeconomic system that divides society’s members into categories ranking from high to low, based on things like wealth, power, and prestige.

The process wherein people come to understand societal norms and expectations, to accept society’s beliefs, and to be aware of societal values.

A group’s social position in a hierarchy based on income, education, and occupation.

The ability to understand how your own biography is shaped by larger social forces and the social structure you inhabit.

The responsibilities and benefits that a person experiences according to his or her rank and role in society.

Oversimplified ideas about groups of people.

A theory that addresses the relationship between having socially acceptable goals and having socially acceptable means to reach those goals.

Groups that share a specific identification, apart from a society’s majority, even as the members exist within a larger society.

Various means used to make the lives and activities of individuals visible to authorities.

Gestures or objects that have meanings associated with them that are recognized by people who share a culture.

An explanation for why God or gods or other spiritual system allows suffering, misfortune and injustice to occur.

Philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and the experiments performed in support of them.

How a subjective reality can drive events to develop in accordance with that reality, despite being originally unsupported by objective reality.

A plant, animal or object that serves as a symbolic, material expression of the sacred.

An adjective that describes individuals who identify with the behaviors and characteristics that are other than their biological sex.

A term used by some Indigenous people for what is colonially known as North America.

The tracing of kinship through one parent only.

The degree to which a sociological measure accurately reflects the topic of study.

A practice of remaining impartial, without bias or judgment during the course of a study and in publishing results.

A functionalist perspective theory that posits that several preconditions must be in place for collective behaviour to occur.

A culture’s standard for discerning desirable states in society (what is true, good, just, or beautiful).

The benefits people receive simply by being part of the dominant group.