Introduction to Sociology

Review for Exam Two

The exam is multiple choice, maybe some matching.

The exam is worth 50 points.

This exam is comprehensive. Incorporate into this review the Review for Exam One. 

What is a bureaucracy? What is a hierarchy of authority? What is the division of labor? What is impersonality? Know the four principles of rationalization. What is scientific management or Taylorism? What is Fordism? What is the tragedy of the commons? What is a social dilemma? What is the free-rider problem? What are externalities?  What is planned obsolescence? What is the connection between corporate bureaucracy and fascism?  According to Weber's rationalization thesis, what is distinctive to Western society and increasingly dominating the world? Why, according to Max Weber, is capitalism different from previous societal systems? What is the name Weber gives to his claim that people in Western societies have become imprisoned by rational systems of their own creation? What is the phrase Weber’s use to argue that with rationalization there is a tendency for rational systems to behave unreasonably? What are some examples? How are depersonalization and disenchantment related to rationalization? What role does the Protestant Ethic play in all this? In his McDonaldization of Society argument, George Ritzer acknowledges that efficiency may increase convenience for customers. What are some of the other consequences?

What is the standard legal definition of crime? What are the sociological definitions of crime covered in class? How do sociological definitions differ from the legal one? How do sociologists justify defining crime independently of the criminal law? What does the classical or utilitarian school of crime and punishment say about the causes of crime? Who was Cesare Beccaria? Jeremy Bentham? What was the effect of this work? What did they recommend to control crime? What is deterrence? What is the legacy of the classical school of crime and punishment? Durkheim theorizes that changes in punishment reflect changes in the relationship of the moral order and moral sentiments to the social totality and the division of labor. What were the main points of his argument? What is mechanical and organic solidarity? What is mala in se and mala prohibita? What are the elements and propositions in Shaw and McKay’s theory? What is social disorganization? What is concentric zone theory? What is the main conclusion? What are the assumptions of strain (anomie) theory? What are the features of Merton’s anomie theory? Know the typology and be prepared to explain it. What role does the American Dream play in causing crime?  What are the basic assumptions of Hirschi’s control theory? What are the elements of a strong social bond?  What does Sutherland argue about the sources of crime? What does learning crime include? What is labeling theory? Who are chief proponents of this view? What are they concerned to show? What are key concepts and core assumptions? Who are Tannenbaum, Lemert, and Becker? What did they argue? What is a moral entrepreneur? What is a moral panic? What is the medicalization of deviance? What is the problem with medicalization? What does Gabor Maté arguing about the destruction of childhood?

What do we mean when we say something is socially constructed? How is the social construction of reality created, changed, and maintained? What is an incorrigible proposition? Are perceptions of truth and reality static? What is identity? What is socialization? What are the agents of socialization? What is anticipatory socialization? What is culture? What us a subculture? What is ethnocentrism? Cultural relativism? What are norms? What is a more? A folkway? What are sanctions?

In his early work, what does Adam Smith theorize was the force that gave us our moral sensibility?  How important was this force for reproducing human society? What is William James’ perspective on the self? What are the different selves? What is Charles Horton Cooley’s metaphor for the social process? What are the three points in his understanding of self? Who is John Dewey and how did he conceptualize pragmatism? What are other ideas of Dewey’s? What is “deliberation”? Who is Erving Goffman? What is a total institution? What is impression management? What is stigma? What are the types? What is a spoiled identity? What is social psychology from Mead’s perspective? Does Mead put individual self prior to social process? What does Mead mean when he says that the self “is an object to itself”? What is self-consciousness? How central is interaction to this process? What are the stages in the development of the self and what are their characteristics. What is the “I”? What is the “me”? What is “society”? Is communication exclusively a human thing? If not, what is the basic difference between human communication and most non-human communication? How do we understand the mind? What does Sam Richards’ argue about the importance of empathy and the sociological imagination? What is Steven Pinker’s argument concerning the use of language in negotiating the three basic types of relationships? What is Rifkin’s argument concerning the empathic civilization? What are the types of empathic relations in history?

Who is Jonathan Turner and how does he differentiate between science, ideology, and other forms of knowledge? Who is Sandra Harding and what is “strong objectivity”? What is her argument concerning the neutrality and the depoliticization of science? What is epistemological relativism versus sociological relativism? According to Diesing, the internalist view of social science argues that social science is an autonomous institution with its own values of objectivity and neutrality. From this point of view, political influences come from outside the institution. How is this different from the externalist view? What is the institutional power and position view? Technocratic science is that type of science that Diesing claims benefits corporations, the state, and the military. What is the other type of science Diesing identifies? What would it take to make this possible?

Many social theorists posit that these developments are inherent in a capitalist system, whether its form is liberal or state capitalist. This view is reflected in the scholars associated with the Frankfurt School discussed in class, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Franz Neumann. One view emphasized in class is that of Erich Fromm, who distinguished between negative and positive freedom, describing the causes of and nature of the “escape from freedom” that plagues liberal societies, manifesting itself in authoritarianism and fascism. Be sure to know Fromm’s argument.