Soc 200: Intro to Sociology Midterm Study Guide

Fall 2014
Midterm Exam is October 31
If you have come to class, taken good notes, and done all the reading you should do fine
on the midterm. I suggest forming study groups to gain extra perspectives on the
material. Listed below are concepts, terms, and people with which you should be
familiar. Many of these concepts have overlapping meanings. Try to understand where
concepts overlap and where they maintain difference. This study guide is not a blueprint
of the test, but I am not trying to surprise anybody either. The test will cover everything
weve done in class and in the reading up to and including Chapter 5. Please bring a
Scantron form to the exam.
The test will have a mixed format of multiple choice, short answer and short essay
questions.
Societal context
Sociological imagination
Private troubles/ public issue
Social act
Social structure
Social institutions
Social interaction
Sociological Theory
The Enlightenment/ Age of Reason
Emile Durkheim
Solidarity
Functionalism
Social facts
Social Constraint
Anomie
Karl Marx
Class analysis
Economic determinism
Economic inequality
Max Weber
Class-status-party
Macrosociology
Microsociology
Functionalism
Institutions arise to fit needs
Order & consensus
Strengths and weaknesses
Manifest & Latent functions
Conflict Theory

Power and coercion, social control

Interest groups
Strengths and weaknesses
Symbolic interactionism
Meaningful action, subjective
meanings
Social order is negotiated, created
Feminist theory
Scientific method, empiricism
Research problems
Research methods
Social World Model
-Macro
-Meso
-Micro
Culture, material & nonmaterial
Shared, learned, taken for granted,
Symbolic, Varies in time and place
Cultural relativism
Ethnocentrism
Cultural universals
Norms
-Mores
-Taboos
-Folkways
Sanctions
-formal & informal
-positive & negative

Beliefs, meaning system

Values
Dominant culture
Subculture
Counter-culture
Assimilation
Breaching
Socialization
Establishes self-concepts
Creates capacity for role-taking
Creates tendency to act appropriately
Makes people culture makers
Roles
Identity
Internalization, externalization
Social control
Reflexivity
Functionalism & socialization
Conflict theory & socialization
Symbolic interactionism & socialization
Cooley & the Looking glass self
Mead, taking the role of the other
I & Me as 2 part self (the social self)
Meads 4 stages of self development
Imitation
Play
Games
Generalized Other
Agents of socialization
Institutions & socialization
Identity
Gender socialization
Society
Social interaction
Social organization
Groups, groupness
Status, status set
Achieved and ascribed status
Master status
Unmarked status
Role, role set, role conflict, role strain
We hold status and play roles
Social Construction of Reality

Internalization, Externalization, &

Objectivation
Social Institutions
Functionalist perspective on Institutions
Societal needs met by institutions
Social structure
Collective consciousness
Collective activity
Ritual activity
Division of Labor
Mechanical Solidarity
Organic Solidarity