SOCI 101 Study Guide - Final Guide: Charismatic Authority, Modernization Theory, International Inequality
19 May 2018
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SOCI 101 Spring 2018 Final Exam Review
Topics from pre-midterm:
Definitions:
• Meritocracy → is a social system in which people get opportunities and succeed based
primarily on their talent(Merit) and effort; leadership by the talented (i.e., those people
with merit: skills, education, talent)
• Structural/individualistic explanations of behavior & life outcomes
o Structural explanations focus on the impact of social forces upon our private lives
o Individualistic explanations focus on people’s personal qualities in order to
explain their behavior & life outcomes
• “Collective Effervescence” → the experiences of “group excitement” when an
individual forgets self and becomes immersed in group affiliation
• Relative vs. Absolute Poverty/Deprivation
o Relative poverty (inequality) → poverty defined according to the living standards
of the majority in any given society or defined relative to a reference group
o Absolute Poverty → being below the minimal requirements necessary to sustain a
healthy existence
• Social change by cohort effects vs. changes in individual attitudes
o Changes in individual attitudes/behaviors: if enough people change their attitudes
about an issue (such as gay marriage) during their lifetimes, then society’s views
on the issue might change
o Changes through “generational/cohort effects”: if the members of a younger
generation have a different attitude about an issue than older generations,
society’s views on the issue will likely change as older generations die off
Topics from post-midterm:
Definitions:
• Demography→ the study of populations
• Planned Obsolescence → when a company plans for a product to be obsolete [outdated]
from the time it’s created
• Gentrification → the changes that arise when middle/upper-middle class (usually white)
people move into neighborhoods that were traditionally composed of lower/working-
class and/or predominately non-white people
• Eugenics → the study or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human
species or a human population, especially by such means as discouraging reproduction
• Intersectionality → the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding
to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics
• Social Capital → refers to the degree to which people in a society are connected;
difficult to measure
• “Identity Politics” → generally refers to efforts to gain justice for members of
historically oppressed groups, such as women, racial/ethnic minorities, gays/lesbians, etc.
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• “Anomie” → lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group; a
situation in which traditional social norms have been undermined and not replaced by
new ones
• Populism → “populist” – a member or adherent of a political party seeking to represent
the interests of ordinary people
Global inequality:
• Globalization → increased economic, political, and social interconnectedness of the
world
• Theories of global inequality (modernization & dependency theories)
o Modernization theory → suggests that low-income societies develop
economically only if they give up their traditional ways & adopt modern
economic institutions, technologies, & cultural values that emphasize savings and
productive investment
o Stages of Modernization Theory → 1. Traditional stage 2. Takeoff to
economic growth 3. Drive to technological maturity 4. High mass
consumption
o Dependency Theories → Marxist theories that argue that the poverty of low-
income countries stems directly from their exploitation by wealthy countries and
the multinational corporations that are based in wealthy countries (more structural
than modernization theory)
o Ex: poor countries can still develop economically but only in ways shaped
by their reliance on the wealthier countries
• What is the “resource curse?”
o Countries that have lots of natural resources actually seem to experience slower
economic growth
o The real basis of these conflicts is economic (competition for resources)
Weber’s concepts of power vs. authority;
• 3 types of authority – NOT mutually exclusive
1. Legal/Rational → based upon one’s position in an organizational hierarchy or
upon one’s legally-defined abilities; Ex: priest, judge, teacher/principal, president
2. Traditional → based upon tradition or upon one’s historical connections
(including family ties) to past leaders; Ex: monarchs, president, familial business
leaders, pope
3. Charismatic → based upon the exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplary
character of an individual person; Ex: MLK Jr., Gandhi, Malcolm X, Oprah
• “crisis of succession”
o When a charismatic authority figure dies, the people who want to succeed that
authority figure often point to their own historical ties or legal/bureaucratic
position to argue for their own legitimacy
o Also known as the “routinization of charisma,” Civil Rights movement after the
deaths of MLK Jr. & Malcolm X
Climate change:
• Why is it a controversy?
o Costly regulations that would require expensive operational upgrades have been a
source of great anxiety to much of the business community
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o Such regulations would be disastrous for the economy
o There is a lot of finger-pointing among countries, especially when the issue arises
of who “gets” to pollute; as countries industrialize & develop, they tend to
produce more pollution
• The catch-22 of climate change for developing nations
o Poor countries’ economic development will contribute to climate change, but they
are already its greatest victims
Media & technology:
• Homogenization of mainstream media
o Suggest that different news outlets all tell the same stories, using the same
sources, resulting in the same message, presented with only slight variations
o The mainstream news and entertainment you enjoy are increasingly homogenized
• Fragmentation of newer media platforms
o With so many choices, people increasingly “customize” their news experience,
minimizing “chance encounters” with information with which they disagree
• Concentrated media ownership
o In 1983, a mere 50 corporations owned the bulk of mass-media outlets
o Those 50 corporations have morphed into only six conglomerates (large
companies consisting of many seemingly unrelated businesses); these
conglomerates control most of the U.S. mass-media vehicles
• Digital divide → the uneven access to technology along race, class, and geographic lines
• Knowledge gap → an increasing gap in information for those who have less access to
technology. Students in well-funded schools receive more exposure to technology than
students in poorly funded schools.
• Functionalist → The media has a lot of socializing influence when compared to other
agents of socialization, which include any social institution that passes along norms,
values, and beliefs (such as peers, family, & religious institutions)
• Conflict → Express concern that this limits the independence of media outlets. For
example, if GE owns NBC, is NBC News able to air a story that reflects poorly on GE?
• Symbolic interactionist perspectives on media/technology
o Focus on social construction of reality, an ongoing process in which people
subjectively create & understand reality… media create and spread symbols that
become the basis for our shared understanding of society; Ex: Social Media and
the Front/back stage (Goffman)
Sex & gender:
• How are sex and gender socially constructed?
o Social Construction of Sex → the 2-category (M/F) system is a social
construction that does not reflect the variety of human sexual diversity; sex should
be viewed as a spectrum, not as a duality
o Social Construction of Gender → the identification of females with traits such as
care-taking, emotionality, etc. is socially constructed by forces such as the media,
parents, and other agents of socialization
• What is the difference between sex & gender?
o Sex → biological maleness/femaleness
o Gender → psychological, social, and cultural aspects of maleness & femaleness,
like masculinity and femininity
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Document Summary
Sociological research: be familiar with the 3 research methods covered in class, including 1 strengths and. Ex: education: online courses, drive thru window: predictability no surprises. Facebook/amazon algorithms: calculability quantity, not quality. Ex: big mac, fantasy sports, facebook, standardized testing: substitution of nonhuman tech red-light & speeding cameras; self-checkout in grocery stores; online dating; ordering tablets at restaurants, control control over uncertainties and over other people. A person may desire the socially acceptable goal of financial success, but lack a socially acceptable way to reach that goal: ends = goals; means = methods use to achieve ends; the main end goal in the. Arlie hochschild book (strangers in their own land): how do media (especially tv) serve as an agent of socialization to the people. Hochschild interviews: the media is see as an anxiety producer; it tells people what to feel afraid, angry, and anxious about.
