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Flashcards · 9292 · Topic 2
Paper 2 – Exploring Sociology flashcards
32 cards on Topic 2, subtopics 3.2.1 to 3.1.3. Pick a subtopic or study them all.
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3.2.1 Differences and inequalities
- Name ways sociologists classify groups of people
- By social class, status, caste, slavery, sex and gender, race and ethnicity, age and generation, religion, ability/disability and nationality.
- What are life chances?
- A person's chances of good outcomes in life, such as employment, education, health, life expectancy and social mobility.
- What is intersectionality (Crenshaw)?
- The way inequalities such as gender, race and class overlap and combine, so a person's experience cannot be understood through one inequality alone.
- Marxist vs functionalist views of social class
- Marxist: classes are in conflict; the ruling class exploits workers, who have false consciousness. Functionalist: class inequality is functionally necessary and reflects meritocracy.
- What did Weber add to the study of inequality?
- Inequality has three dimensions: class (economic position), status (prestige) and party (power), which can vary separately.
- Upward vs downward, intragenerational vs intergenerational mobility
- Upward or downward: moving to a higher or lower class. Intragenerational: within one person's lifetime. Intergenerational: compared with one's parents.
- What is patriarchy, and what did Walby argue?
- Patriarchy is male domination of society. Walby argued it works through several structures, such as paid work, the household, violence and the state.
- What is hegemonic masculinity (Connell)?
- The dominant, most valued form of masculinity in a society, against which other masculinities and femininities are ranked.
- What is the glass ceiling?
- An invisible barrier that stops women reaching top positions in employment.
- Race vs ethnicity
- Race is a socially constructed category based on supposed physical differences. Ethnicity refers to shared culture, such as language, religion, traditions and history.
- Assimilation vs multiculturalism
- Assimilation: minority groups are expected to adopt the majority culture. Multiculturalism: different cultures coexist and are respected within one society.
- What did du Bois argue about race?
- He described the "color line" dividing society and "double consciousness": Black Americans seeing themselves both through their own eyes and through the eyes of a racist society.
- Give three attempts to reduce inequality in the specification
- The Marxist goal of abolishing capitalism, social democratic welfare states, and development aid.
3.2.2 Socialisation and social control
- What is the sociological imagination (Mills)?
- The ability to connect personal troubles (e.g. one person's unemployment) to public issues (e.g. economic change causing mass unemployment).
- Primary vs secondary socialisation
- Primary: early learning of norms and values, mainly within the family. Secondary: later learning through wider agencies such as school, peers, media and the workplace.
- Re-socialisation vs inadequate socialisation
- Re-socialisation: learning new norms and values that replace earlier ones, often after a major life change. Inadequate socialisation: socialisation that fails to instil shared norms and values.
- How does the school socialise pupils?
- Through the formal curriculum and the hidden curriculum, and through rewards and sanctions for behaviour.
- Formal vs informal social control
- Formal: government and laws, the police and other enforcement agencies, and criminal justice systems. Informal: families, schools, peers, media, religion and the workplace, through approval and disapproval.
- Positive vs negative sanctions
- Positive sanctions reward conformity, e.g. praise. Negative sanctions punish deviance, e.g. fines or exclusion.
- What is a stigmatised identity (Goffman)?
- An identity "spoiled" by a discrediting label, which leads others to treat the person as less acceptable. Othering defines a group as different from and inferior to "us".
- Name the types of crime listed in the specification
- Violent, property, cyber, white collar, corporate, state, green/environmental and "victimless" crimes.
- Official statistics vs self-report studies vs victim surveys
- Official statistics: crimes recorded by the police. Self-report studies: people describe crimes they have committed. Victim surveys: people describe crimes committed against them.
- What did Stanley Cohen show about moral panics?
- Media exaggeration of a group's behaviour, such as the mods and rockers, turns them into "folk devils", creating public alarm and stronger social control.
- What is surveillance capitalism (Zuboff)?
- Companies profit from collecting and analysing data on people's online behaviour, which also acts as a new form of surveillance and control.
3.1.3 Research methods (also assessed in Paper 1)
- What is operationalisation?
- Turning an abstract concept into something that can be measured, e.g. measuring "poverty" by household income.
- Population vs sampling frame
- The population is the whole group being studied. The sampling frame is the list from which the sample is drawn.
- Random vs systematic vs stratified random sampling
- Random: everyone has an equal chance. Systematic: every nth name on the list. Stratified random: random selection within groups in proportion to the population.
- Quota vs snowball vs multistage sampling
- Quota: the researcher fills set numbers in each category. Snowball: participants introduce others, useful for hard-to-reach groups. Multistage: sampling in stages, e.g. areas, then households.
- What is a pilot study?
- A small trial run of the research to find and correct problems with questions or procedures before the main study.
- Name the ethical issues in the specification
- Informed consent, confidentiality, anonymity and participant wellbeing. Research with children also needs parental or guardian consent.
- Causation vs correlation
- Correlation: two things change together. Causation: one causes the other. A correlation does not prove cause.
- How do you interpret data from qualitative sources?
- Look for recurring themes and meanings in field notes or interview extracts, consider who is speaking and in what context, and avoid generalising from a few cases.