ACHIEVED STATUS
A position attained through individual effort or merit.
ASCRIBED STATUS
An inherited position, one that is not attained through any individual effort or merit.
CONFLICT
A hostile struggle engaged in by two or more persons for an object or value that each prizes.
CULTURAL CHANGE
Change in values and beliefs, which may be brought about by scientific discoveries, technological inventions, new achievements in the arts or shifts in religious doctrine.
CULTURAL RELATIVITY
An attitude by which each culture is analyzed on its own terms in the context of its own societal setting.
CULTURAL UNIVERSALS
Similarities common to all cultures.
CULTURE
The life-style of people in a society. Culture is both the product of social interaction and a guide for further social interaction. It is the totality of all that is learned and shared by members of a society through their interaction.
DIFFUSION
A process of cultural change in which cultural traits are spread from one society to another and from one group within a society to another.
ETHNOCENTRISM
The attitude by which one assumes that ones own culture is right and that cultural patterns different from it are wrong. Belief in the superiority of ones own group.
FORMAL ORGANIZATIONS
Associations of people in which most of the activities of contemporary societies are handled. Large-scale, highly organized groups, with a formal structure, a body of officers, the expectation of permanence and a hierarchical organization of authority.
GROUP
A number of people who engage in symbolic interaction. The members of a group are mutually aware of and influence one another; they recognize their membership in the group and are in turn recognized by the group as members; they recognize the roles, duties, obligations and privileges that result from group membership; and they agree to an extent about the norms, values and goals they share.
INSTITUTIONS
Patterns of behavior that have clustered around central human functions. Members of society are expected to follow these patterns to simplify their lives.
POWER
A category of stratification. The ability of one individual or segment of the population to control the actions of others with or without the latters consent.
Power underlies authority.
PRIMARY GROUP
A relatively small group of people who live physically near one another and who interact intensely. Primary groups tend to be stable and of relatively long duration. Interaction is informal and spontaneous; members deal with one another on an individual, personal and total basis.
ROLE
The carrying out of a status. A way of behaving that benefits a status and is transmittable and, to a great extent, predictable.
SOCIAL CHANGE
Change in the patterns of social interaction in which a substantial number of societys members assume new statuses and play new roles.
SOCIAL CLASS
A category of stratification. An aggregate of persons in a society who stand in a similar position with respect to some form of power, privilege or prestige.
SOCIALIZATION
The learning process by which a biological organism becomes a human being, acquires a personality with self and identity and absorbs the culture of ones society.
SOCIAL MOBILITY
An individuals ability to change ones social class membership by moving up or down the ladder of the stratification system. Upward or downward mobility is called vertical, whereas mobility that results in a change of status without a consequent change of class is called horizontal.
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
The network of patterned human behavior that both guides and is the product of interaction. Sometimes it is considered the real, as opposed to the ideal, way people behave. It is not necessarily a stable set of rules but a dynamic process in which stable and predictable patterns are continually redefined and changed to fit the changing conditions of the environment.
SOCIAL PROCESSES
Key patterns of interaction common to all human societies.
SOCIAL STATUS
A category of stratification. The individuals ranked position within the social system, the rank determined by the role the individual performs.
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION OR RANKING
A process existing in all but the most simple societies, whereby members rank one another and themselves hierarchically with respect to the amount of desirable goods and services they possess.
SOCIAL STRUCTURE
The shared, patterned and recurrent expectations of behavior that guide members of social systems in their relationships with one another.
SOCIAL SYSTEM
A conceptualized model of social relationships in which each part is interdependent and interconnected to other parts and to the whole. The elements of this system are the individual group members relating to one another as well as groups relating to other groups.
SOCIETY
A largest social group analyzed by sociologists. A fairly large group of individuals who interact with one another on a regular, continuous basis and according to patterns of behavior on which all more or less agree.
SOCIOLOGY
The discipline that studies human groups and the interaction within and among them.
STATUS
A position in a social group. Statuses are ranked and rated according to their importance in a social group.
SUBCULTURE
A group that has distinctive features setting it apart from the wider culture of the society but still retaining the latters general values.
