(See related pages)
Numbers following the definitions indicate pages where the terms were identified. Consult the index for further page references.
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| Absolute poverty | A standard of poverty based on a minimum level of subsistence below which families should not be expected to exist. (122) |
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| Achieved status | A social position attained by a person largely through his or her own efforts. (66, 110) |
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| Affirmative action | Positive efforts to recruit minority group members or women for jobs, promotions, and educational opportunities. (154) |
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| Agrarian society | The most technologically advanced form of preindustrial society. Members are primarily engaged in the production of food but increase their crop yield through such innovations as the plow. (74) |
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| Anomie | Durkheim's term for the loss of direction felt in a society when social control of individual behavior has become ineffective. (93) |
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| Anomie theory of deviance | A theory developed by Robert Merton that explains deviance as an adaptation either of socially prescribed goals or of the norms governing their attainment, or both. (94) |
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| Anticipatory socialization | Processes of socialization in which a person "rehearses" for future positions, occupations, and social relationships. (54) |
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| Applied sociology | The use of the discipline of sociology with the specific intent of yielding practical applications for human behavior and organizations. (28) |
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| Argot | Specialized language used by members of a group or subculture. (44) |
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| Ascribed status | A social position "assigned" to a person by society without regard for the person's unique talents or characteristics. (65, 110) |
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| Authority | Power that has been institutionalized and is recognized by the people over whom it is exercised. (196) |
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| Basic sociology | Sociological inquiry conducted with the objective of gaining a more profound knowledge of the fundamental aspects of social phenomena. Also known as pure sociology. (29) |
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| Bilateral descent | A kinship system in which both sides of a person's family are regarded as equally important. (185) |
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| Birthrate | The number of live births per 1,000 population in a given year. Also known as the crude birthrate. (215) |
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| Bourgeoisie | Karl Marx's term for the capitalist class, comprising the owners of the means of production. (113) |
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| Bureaucracy | A component of formal organization in which rules and hierarchical ranking are used to achieve efficiency. (77) |
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| Capitalism | An economic system in which the means of production are held largely in private hands and the main incentive for economic activity is the accumulation of profits. (113, 201) |
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| Caste | Hereditary system of rank, usually religiously dictated, that tends to be fixed and immobile. (111) |
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| Causal logic | The relationship between a condition or variable and a particular consequence, with one event leading to the other. (20) |
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| Census | An enumeration, or counting, of a population. (215) |
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| Charismatic authority | Max Weber's term for power made legitimate by a leader's exceptional personal or emotional appeal to his or her followers. (197) |
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| Class | A term used by Max Weber to refer to a group of people who have a similar level of wealth and income. (114) |
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| Class consciousness | In Karl Marx's view, a subjective awareness held by members of a class regarding their common vested interests and need for collective political action to bring about social change. (113) |
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| Classical theory | An approach to the study of formal organizations that views workers as being motivated almost entirely by economic rewards. (80) |
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| Class system | A social ranking based primarily on economic position in which achieved characteristics can influence mobility. (111) |
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| Clinical sociology | The use of the discipline of sociology with the specific intent of altering social relationships and facilitating change. (29) |
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| Closed system | A social system in which there is little or no possibility of individual mobility. (127) |
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| Code of ethics | The standards of acceptable behavior developed by and for members of a profession. (27) |
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| Colonialism | The maintenance of political, social, economic, and cultural dominance over a people by a foreign power for an extended period. (130) |
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| Communism | As an ideal type, an economic system under which all property is communally owned and no social distinctions are made on the basis of people's ability to produce. (203) |
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| Community | A spatial or political unit of social organization that gives people a sense of belonging, based either on shared residence in a particular place or on a common identity. (216) |
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| Concentric-zone theory | A theory of urban growth devised by Ernest Burgess that sees growth in terms of a series of rings radiating from the central business district. (221) |
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| Conflict perspective | A sociological approach that assumes that social behavior is best understood in terms of conflict or tension between competing groups. (14) |
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| Conformity | Going along with peers--individuals of our own status, who have no special right to direct our behavior. (88) |
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| Contact hypothesis | An interactionist perspective that states that interracial contact between people of equal status in cooperative circumstances will reduce prejudice. (151) |
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| Content analysis | The systematic coding and objective recording of data, guided by some rationale. (27) |
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| Control group | Subjects in an experiment who are not introduced to the independent variable by the researcher. (26) |
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| Control variable | A factor held constant to test the relative impact of an independent variable. (23) |
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| Correlation | A relationship between two variables in which a change in one coincides with a change in the other. (21) |
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| Counterculture | A subculture that deliberately opposes certain aspects of the larger culture. (45) |
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| Crime | A violation of criminal law for which formal penalties are applied by some governmental authority. (101) |
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| Cultural relativism | The viewing of people's behavior from the perspective of their own culture. (47) |
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| Cultural transmission | A school of criminology that argues that criminal behavior is learned through social interactions. (96) |
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| Cultural universal | A general practice found in every culture. (35) |
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| Culture | The totality of learned, socially transmitted behavior. (34) |
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| Culture lag | Ogburn's term for a period of maladjustment during which the nonmaterial culture is still adapting to new material conditions. (38, 255) |
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| Culture shock | The feeling of surprise and disorientation that is experienced when people witness cultural practices different from their own. (45) |
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| Curanderismo | Traditional Latino or Hispanic folk practices for holistic health care and healing. (233) |
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| Death rate | The number of deaths per 1,000 population in a given year. Also known as the crude death rate. (216) |
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| Degradation ceremony | An aspect of the socialization process within total institutions, in which people are subjected to humiliating rituals. (55) |
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| Deindustrialization | The systematic, widespread withdrawal of investment in basic aspects of productivity such as factories and plants. (205) |
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| Demography | The scientific study of population. (213) |
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| Dependency theory | An approach that contends that industrialized nations exploit developing countries for their own gain. (132) |
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| Dependent variable | The variable in a causal relationship that is subject to the influence of another variable. (20) |
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| Deviance | Behavior that violates the standards of conduct or expectations of a group or society. (91) |
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| Differential association | A theory of deviance proposed by Edwin Sutherland that holds that violation of rules results from exposure to attitudes favorable to criminal acts. (96) |
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| Diffusion | The process by which a cultural item is spread from group to group or society to society. (36) |
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| Discovery | The process of making known or sharing the existence of an aspect of reality. (36) |
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| Discrimination | The process of denying opportunities and equal rights to individuals and groups because of prejudice or other arbitrary reasons. (152) |
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| Dominant ideology | A set of cultural beliefs and practices that helps to maintain powerful social, economic, and political interests. (43) |
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| Downsizing | Reductions taken in a company's workforce as part of deindustrialization. (206) |
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| Dramaturgical approach | A view of social interaction, popularized by Erving Goffman, that examines people as if they were theatrical performers. (53) |
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| E-commerce | Numerous ways that people with access to the Internet can do business from their computers. (207) |
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| Economic system | The social institution through which goods and services are produced, distributed, and consumed. (201) |
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| Education | A formal process of learning in which some people consciously teach while others adopt the social role of learner. (191) |
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| Egalitarian family | An authority pattern in which the adult members of the family are regarded as equals. (186) |
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| Elite model | A view of society as ruled by a small group of individuals who share a common set of political and economic interests. (198) |
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| Environmental justice | A legal strategy based on claims that racial minorities are subjected disproportionately to environmental hazards. (241) |
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| Equilibrium model | Talcott Parsons's functionalist view of society as tending toward a state of stability or balance. (251) |
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| Esteem | The reputation that a particular individual has earned within an occupation. (119) |
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| Ethnic group | A group that is set apart from others because of its national origin or distinctive cultural patterns. (142) |
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| Ethnocentrism | The tendency to assume that one's culture and way of life represent the norm or are superior to all others. (46, 152) |
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| Ethnography | The study of an entire social setting through extended systematic observation. (25) |
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| Evolutionary theory | A theory of social change that holds that society is moving in a definite direction. (250) |
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| Experiment | An artificially created situation that allows the researcher to manipulate variables. (26) |
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| Experimental group | Subjects in an experiment who are exposed to an independent variable introduced by a researcher. (26) |
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| Exploitation theory | A Marxist theory that views racial subordination in the United States as a manifestation of the class system inherent in capitalism. (150) |
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| Expressiveness | Concern for maintenance of harmony and the internal emotional affairs of the family. (165) |
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| Extended family | A family in which relatives-such as grandparents, aunts, or uncles-live in the same home as parents and their children. (184) |
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| False consciousness | A term used by Karl Marx to describe an attitude held by members of a class that does not accurately reflect its objective position. (113, 247) |
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| Family | A set of people related by blood, marriage (or some other agreed-upon relationship), or adoption who share the primary responsibility for reproduction and caring for members of society. (183) |
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| Feminist perspective | A sociological approach that views inequity in gender as central to all behavior and organization. (17) |
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| Fertility | The amount of reproduction among women of childbearing age. (213) |
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| Folkway | A norm governing everyday social behavior whose violation raises comparatively little concern. (40) |
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| Force | The actual or threatened use of coercion to impose one's will on others. (196) |
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| Formal norm | A norm that generally has been written down and that specifies strict rules for punishment of violators. (39) |
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| Formal organization | A special-purpose group designed and structured for maximum efficiency. (76) |
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| Formal social control | Control carried out by authorized agents, such as police officers, physicians, school administrators, employers, military officers, and managers of movie theaters. (90) |
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| Functionalist perspective | A sociological approach that emphasizes the way that parts of a society are structured to maintain its stability. (13) |
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| Gemeinschaft | A term used by Ferdinand Tönnies to describe close-knit communities, often found in rural areas, in which strong personal bonds unite members. (72) |
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| Gender role | Expectations regarding the proper behavior, attitudes, and activities of males or females. (56, 161) |
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| Generalized other | A term used by George Herbert Mead to refer to the attitudes, viewpoints, and expectations of society as a whole that a child takes into account in his or her behavior. (52) |
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| Gesellschaft | A term used by Ferdinand Tönnies to describe communities, often urban, that are large and impersonal, with little commitment to the group or consensus on values. (73) |
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| Glass ceiling | An invisible barrier that blocks the promotion of a qualified individual in a work environment because of the individual's gender, race, or ethnicity. (152, 172) |
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| Globalization | The worldwide integration of government policies, cultures, social movements, and financial markets through trade and the exchange of ideas. (132) |
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| Goal displacement | Overzealous conformity to official regulations within a bureaucracy. (79) |
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| Group | Any number of people with similar norms, values, and expectations who regularly and consciously interact. (68) |
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| Growth rate | The difference between births and deaths, plus the difference between immigrants and emigrants, per 1,000 population. (216) |
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| Hawthorne effect | The unintended influence that observers or experiments can have on their subjects. (26) |
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| Health | As defined by the World Health Organization, a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity. (224) |
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| Homophobia | Fear of and prejudice against homosexuality. (162) |
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| Horizontal mobility | The movement of an individual from one social position to another of the same rank. (127) |
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| Horticultural society | A preindustrial society in which people plant seeds and crops rather than merely subsist on available foods. (74) |
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| Human ecology | An area of study concerned with the interrelationships between people and their spatial setting and physical environment. (221, 238) |
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| Human relations approach | An approach to the study of formal organizations that emphasizes the role of people, communication, and participation within a bureaucracy and tends to focus on the informal structure of the organization. (80) |
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| Hunting-and-gathering society | A preindustrial society in which people rely on whatever foods and fibers are readily available in order to live. (74) |
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| Hypothesis | A speculative statement about the relationship between two or more variables. (20) |
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| Ideal type | A construct or model that serves as a measuring rod against which specific cases can be evaluated. (10, 77) |
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| Impression management | A term used by Erving Goffman to refer to the altering of the presentation of the self in order to create distinctive appearances and satisfy particular audiences. (53) |
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| Incidence | The number of new cases of a specific disorder occurring within a given population during a stated period of time. (230) |
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| Income | Salaries and wages. (109) |
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| Independent variable | The variable in a causal relationship that when altered, causes or influences a change in a second variable. (20) |
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| Industrial city | A city characterized by relatively large size, open competition, an open class system, and elaborate specialization in the manufacturing of goods. (219) |
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| Industrial society | A society that depends on mechanization to produce its economic goods and services. (74) |
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| Infant mortality rate | The number of deaths of infants under one year of age per 1,000 live births in a given year. (216) |
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| Influence | The exercise of power through a process of persuasion. (196) |
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| Informal norm | A norm that generally is understood but is not precisely recorded. (40) |
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| Informal social control | Control used casually by people to enforce norms. (89) |
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| In-group | Any group or category to which people feel they belong. (70) |
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| Innovation | The process of introducing new elements into a culture through discovery or invention. (36) |
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| Institutional discrimination | The denial of opportunities and equal rights to individuals and groups that results from the normal operations of a society. (153) |
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| Instrumentality | Emphasis on tasks, focus on more distant goals, and a concern for the external relationship between one's family and other social institutions. (165) |
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| Interactionist perspective | A sociological approach that generalizes about fundamental or everyday forms of social interaction. (16) |
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| Intergenerational mobility | Changes in the social position of children relative to their parents. (128) |
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| Interview | A face-to-face or telephone questioning of a respondent to obtain desired information. (24) |
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| Intragenerational mobility | Changes in a person's social position within his or her adult life. (128) |
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| Invention | The combination of existing cultural items into a form that did not previously exist. (36) |
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| Kinship | The state of being related to others. (185) |
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| Labeling theory | Theory that attempts to explain why certain people are viewed as deviants. (98) |
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| Laissez-faire | A form of capitalism under which people compete freely, with minimal government intervention in the economy. (201) |
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| Language | An abstract system of word meanings and symbols for all aspects of culture; includes gestures and other nonverbal communication. (38) |
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| Latent function | Unconscious or unintended function; hidden purpose. (14) |
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| Law | Governmental social control. (39, 10) |
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| Legal-rational authority | Max Weber's term for power made legitimate by law. (197) |
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| Life chances | Max Weber's term for people's opportunities to provide themselves with material goods, positive living conditions, and favorable life experiences. (125) |
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| Life expectancy | The average number of years a person can be expected to live under current mortality conditions. (216) |
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| Looking-glass self | A concept used by Charles Horton Cooley that emphasizes the self as the product of our social interactions with others. (50) |
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| Luddites | Rebellious craft workers in nineteenth-century England who destroyed new factory machinery as part of their resistance to the industrial revolution. (256) |
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| Manifest function | Open, stated, and conscious function. (14) |
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| Master status | A status that dominates others and thereby determines a person's general position within society. (66) |
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| Material culture | The physical or technological aspects of our daily lives. (37) |
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| Matriarchy | A society in which women dominate in family decision making. (186) |
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| Matrilineal descent | A kinship system that favors the relatives of the mother. (185) |
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| McDonaldization of society | The process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant have come to dominate certain sectors of society, both in the United States and throughout the world. (37) |
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| Minority group | A subordinate group whose members have significantly less control or power over their own lives than the members of a dominant or majority group have over theirs. (144) |
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| Modernization | The far-reaching process through which a society moves from traditional or less developed institutions to those characteristic of more developed societies. (135) |
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| Modernization theory | A functionalist approach that proposes that modernization and development will gradually improve the lives of people in peripheral nations. (135) |
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| Monogamy | A form of marriage in which one woman and one man are married only to each other. (184) |
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| Monopoly | Control of a market by a single business firm. (202) |
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| Morbidity rate | The incidence of disease in a given population. (230) |
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| Mores | Norms deemed highly necessary to the welfare of a society. (40) |
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| Mortality rate | The incidence of death in a given population. (230) |
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| Multilinear evolutionary theory | A theory of social change that holds that change can occur in several ways and does not inevitably lead in the same direction. (250) |
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| Multinational corporation | Commercial organization that is headquartered in one country but does business throughout the world. (133) |
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| Multiple-nuclei theory | A theory of urban growth developed by Harris and Ullman that views growth as emerging from many centers of development, each of which may reflect a particular urban need or activity. (222) |
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| Natural science | The study of the physical features of nature and the ways in which they interact and change. (14) |
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| Neocolonialism | Continuing dependence of former colonies on foreign countries. (131) |
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| New social movement | Organized collective activities that promote autonomy and self-determination as well as improvements in the quality of life. (249) |
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| New urban sociology | An approach to urbanization that considers the interplay of local, national, and worldwide forces and their effect on local space, with special emphasis on the impact of global economic activity. (223) |
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| Nonmaterial culture | Cultural adjustments to material conditions, such as customs, beliefs, patterns of communication, and ways of using material objects. (37) |
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| Nonverbal communication | The sending of messages through the use of posture, facial expressions, and gestures. (17) |
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| Normal accident | A failure that is inevitable, given the manner in which human and technological systems are organized. (261) |
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| Norm | An established standard of behavior maintained by a society. (39) |
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| Nuclear family | A married couple and their unmarried children living together. (183) |
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| Obedience | Compliance with higher authorities in a hierarchical structure. (88) |
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| Objective method | A technique for measuring social class that assigns individuals to classes on the basis of criteria such as occupation, education, income, and place of residence. (118) |
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| Observation | A research technique in which an investigator collects information through direct participation in and/or observation of a group, tribe, or community. (25) |
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| Open system | A social system in which the position of each individual is influenced by his or her achieved status. (127) |
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| Operational definition | An explanation of an abstract concept that is specific enough to allow a researcher to assess the concept. (19) |
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| Organized crime | The work of a group that regulates relations between various criminal enterprises involved in various illegal activities. (102) |
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| Out-group | A group or category to which people feel they do not belong. (70) |
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| Patriarchy | A society in which men dominate family decision making. (186) |
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| Patrilineal descent | A kinship system that favors the relatives of the father. (185) |
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| Personality | In everyday speech, a person's typical patterns of attitudes, needs, characteristics, and behavior. (34) |
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| Peter principle | A principle of organizational life, originated by Laurence J. Peter, according to which each individual within a hierarchy tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence. (80) |
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| Pluralist model | A view of society in which many competing groups within the community have access to governmental officials, so that no single group is dominant. (200) |
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| Politics | In Harold D. Lasswell's words, "who gets what, when, and how." (196) |
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| Polyandry | A form of polygamy in which a woman can have several husbands at the same time. (185) |
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| Polygamy | A form of marriage in which an individual can have several husbands or wives simultaneously. (184) |
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| Polygyny | A form of polygamy in which a husband can have several wives at the same time. (184) |
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| Postindustrial city | A city in which global finance and the electronic flow of information dominate the economy. (220) |
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| Postindustrial society | A society whose economic system is primarily engaged in the processing and control of information. (75) |
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| Postmodern society | A technologically sophisticated society that is preoccupied with consumer goods and media images. (75) |
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| Power | The ability to exercise one's will over others. (114, 196) |
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| Power elite | A term used by C. Wright Mills for a small group of military, industrial, and government leaders who control the fate of the United States. (199) |
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| Preindustrial city | A city with only a few thousand people living within its borders and characterized by a relatively closed class system and limited mobility. (218) |
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| Prejudice | A negative attitude toward an entire category of people, such as a racial or ethnic minority. (151) |
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| Prestige | The respect and admiration that an occupation holds in a society. (119) |
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| Prevalence | The total number of cases of a specific disorder that exist at a given time. (230) |
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| Primary group | A small group characterized by intimate, face-to-face association and cooperation. (69) |
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| Professional criminal | A person who pursues crime as a day-to-day occupation. (101) |
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| Proletariat | Karl Marx's term for the working class in a capitalist society. (113) |
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| Protestant ethic | Max Weber's term for the disciplined work ethic, this-worldly concerns, and rational orientation to life emphasized by John Calvin and his followers. (189) |
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| Qualitative research | Research that relies on what is seen in the field or naturalistic settings more than on statistical data. (25) |
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| Quantitative research | Research that collects and reports data primarily in numerical form. (25) |
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| Questionnaire | A printed research instrument employed to obtain desired information from a respondent. (24) |
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| Racial group | A group that is set apart from others because of obvious physical differences. (142) |
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| Racism | The belief that one race is supreme and all others are innately inferior. (152) |
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| Random sample | A sample for which every member of the entire population has the same chance of being selected. (21) |
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| Reference group | Any group that individuals use as a standard in evaluating themselves and their own behavior. (70) |
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| Relative deprivation | The conscious feeling of a negative discrepancy between legitimate expectations and present actualities. (246) |
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| Relative poverty | A floating standard of deprivation by which people at the bottom of a society, whatever their lifestyles, are judged to be disadvantaged in comparison with the nation as a whole. (122) |
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| Reliability | The extent to which a measure provides consistent results. (22) |
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| Religion | According to Émile Durkheim, a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things. (186) |
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| Research design | A detailed plan or method for obtaining data scientifically. (24) |
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| Resocialization | The process of discarding former behavior patterns and accepting new ones as part of a transition in one's life. (54) |
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| Resource mobilization | The ways in which a social movement utilizes such resources as money, political influence, access to the media, and personnel. (247) |
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| Rite of passage | A ritual marking the symbolic transition from one social position to another. (54) |
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| Role conflict | The situation that occurs when incompatible expectations arise from two or more social positions held by the same person. (68) |
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| Role strain | The situation that occurs when the same social position imposes conflicting demands and expectations. (68) |
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| Role taking | The process of mentally assuming the perspective of another, thereby enabling one to respond from that imagined viewpoint. (52) |
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| Routine activities theory | The theory that criminal victimization is increased when motivated offenders and suitable targets converge. (97) |
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| Sample | A selection from a larger population that is statistically representative of that population. (21) |
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| Sanction | Penalty or reward for conduct concerning a social norm. (41, 87) |
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| Science | The body of knowledge obtained by methods based on systematic observation. (4) |
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| Scientific management approach | Another name for the classical theory of formal organizations. (80) |
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| Scientific method | A systematic, organized series of steps that ensures maximum objectivity and consistency in researching a problem. (18) |
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| Secondary analysis | A variety of research techniques that make use of publicly accessible information and data. (27) |
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| Secondary group | A formal, impersonal group in which there is little social intimacy or mutual understanding. (69) |
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| Second shift | The double burden-work outside the home followed by child care and housework-that many women face and few men share equitably. (174) |
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| Self | According to George Herbert Mead, the sum total of people's conscious perceptions of their own identity as distinct from others. (50) |
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| Serial monogamy | A form of marriage in which a person can have several spouses in his or her lifetime but only one spouse at a time. (184) |
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| Sexism | The ideology that one sex is superior to the other. (168) |
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| Sexual harassment | Behavior that occurs when work benefits are made contingent on sexual favors. (169) |
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| Sick role | Societal expectations about the attitudes and behavior of a person viewed as being ill. (225) |
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| Significant other | A term used by George Herbert Mead to refer to those individuals who are most important in the development of the self, such as parents, friends, and teachers. (53) |
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| Slavery | A system of enforced servitude in which people are legally owned by others and in which enslaved status is transferred from parents to children. (110) |
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| Social change | Significant alteration over time in behavior patterns and culture. (244) |
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| Social control | Techniques and strategies for preventing deviant behavior in any society. (87) |
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| Social epidemiology | The study of the distribution of disease, impairment, and general health status across a population. (230) |
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| Social inequality | A condition in which members of a society have different amounts of wealth, prestige, or power. (109) |
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| Social institution | An organized pattern of beliefs and behavior centered on basic social needs. (72) |
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| Social interaction | The ways in which people respond to one another. (64) |
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| Socialism | An economic system under which the means of production and distribution are collectively owned. (203) |
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| Socialization | The process in which people learn the attitudes, values, and actions appropriate for members of a particular culture. (34) |
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| Social mobility | Movement of individuals or groups from one position of a society's stratification system to another. (127) |
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| Social movement | Organized collective activities to bring about or resist fundamental change in an existing group or society. (245) |
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| Social network | A series of social relationships that links a person directly to others, and through them indirectly to still more people. (71) |
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| Social role | A set of expectations for people who occupy a given social position or status. (67) |
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| Social science | The study of various aspects of human society. (4) |
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| Social structure | The way in which a society is organized into predictable relationships. (64) |
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| Societal-reaction approach | Another name for labeling theory. (98) |
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| Society | A fairly large number of people who live in the same territory, are relatively independent of people outside it, and participate in a common culture. (34) |
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| Sociobiology | The systematic study of the biological bases of social behavior. (49) |
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| Sociocultural evolution | The process of change and development in human societies that results from the interplay of cultural and social continuity, innovation, and selection. (73) |
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| Sociological imagination | An awareness of the relationship between an individual and the wider society. (3) |
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| Sociology | The systematic study of social behavior and human groups. (2) |
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| Status | A term used by sociologists to refer to any of the full range of socially defined positions within a large group or society. (65) |
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| Status group | A term used by Max Weber to refer to people who have the same prestige or lifestyle, independent of their class positions. (114) |
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| Stereotype | Unreliable generalization about all members of a group that does not recognize individual differences within the group. (142) |
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| Stigma | The labels society uses to devalue members of certain social groups. (92) |
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| Stratification | A structured ranking of entire groups of people that perpetuates unequal economic rewards and power in a society. (109) |
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| Subculture | A segment of society that shares a distinctive pattern of mores, folkways, and values that differs from the pattern of the larger society. (44) |
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| Survey | A study, generally in the form of interviews or questionnaires, that provides sociologists and other researchers with information concerning how people think and act. (24) |
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| Symbolic ethnicity | An emphasis on such concerns as ethnic food or political issues rather than on deeper ties to one's ethnic heritage. (146) |
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| Symbol | Gesture, object, or language that forms the basis of human communication. (51) |
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| Technology | Information about how to use the material resources of the environment to satisfy human needs and desires. (37, 73, 256) |
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| Telecommuter | An employee of a business firm or government agency who works full-time or part-time at home rather than in an outside office and who is linked to supervisor and colleagues through computer terminals, phone lines, and fax machines. (82, 257) |
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| Theory | In sociology, a set of statements that seeks to explain problems, actions, or behavior. (7) |
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| Total fertility rate (TFR) | The average number of children born alive to a woman, assuming that she conforms to current fertility rates. (216) |
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| Total institution | A term coined by Erving Goffman to refer to institutions that regulate all aspects of a person's life under a single authority, such as prisons, the military, mental hospitals, and convents. (55) |
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| Traditional authority | Legitimate power conferred by custom and accepted practice. (197) |
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| Trained incapacity | The tendency of workers in a bureaucracy to become so specialized that they develop blind spots and fail to notice obvious problems. (78) |
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| Unilinear evolutionary theory | A theory of social change that holds that all societies pass through the same successive stages of evolution and inevitably reach the same end. (250) |
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| Urban ecology | An area of study that focuses on the interrelationships between people and their environment. (221) |
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| Urbanism | A term used by Wirth to describe distinctive patterns of social behavior evident among city residents. (220) |
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| Validity | The degree to which a scale or measure truly reflects the phenomenon under study. (22) |
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| Value | Collective conception of what is considered good, desirable, and proper-or bad, undesirable, and improper-in a culture. (42) |
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| Variable | A measurable trait or characteristic that is subject to change under different conditions. (20) |
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| Verstehen | The German word for "understanding" or "insight"; used by Max Weber to stress the need for sociologists to take into account people's emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes. (10) |
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| Vertical mobility | The movement of a person from one social position to another of a different rank. (127) |
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| Vested interests | Veblen's term for those people or groups who will suffer in the event of social change and who have a stake in maintaining the status quo. (254) |
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| Victimization survey | Questioning ordinary people, not police officers, to determine whether they have been victims of crime. (105) |
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| Victimless crime | The willing exchange among adults of widely desired, but illegal, goods and services. (103) |
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| Vital statistics | Records of births, deaths, marriages, and divorces gathered through a registration system maintained by governmental units. (215) |
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| Voluntary association | An organization established on the basis of common interest, whose members volunteer or even pay to participate. (81) |
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| Wealth | An inclusive term encompassing all a person's material assets, including land and other types of property. (109) |
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| White-collar crime | Crime committed by affluent individuals or corporations in the course of their daily business activities. (102) |
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| World systems analysis | Immanuel Wallerstein's view of the global economic system as divided between certain industrialized nations that control wealth and developing countries that are controlled and exploited. (131, 223) |