Key Sociological Concepts and Theoretical Perspectives

Foundational Figures and Concepts in Sociology

Auguste Comte is recognized as the father of sociology. The term sociological imagination was coined by the American sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1959 to describe the type of insight offered by the discipline of sociology.

The Milgram Experiment and Obedience

In the Milgram experiment, an experimenter instructed people to administer increasingly painful electric shocks to a subject; two-thirds of participants fell into the category of obedient subjects.

Durkheim on Suicide and Social Cohesion

Émile Durkheim argued that suicide is caused by social factors, not just individual psychological ones. Anomie suicide occurs when a person experiences a sense of disconnection from society and a feeling of not belonging that results from weakened social cohesion.

Cultural and Social Capital

Examples of cultural capital include knowledge, skills, and education. Examples of social capital include:

• A neighborhood building a community garden together using shared tools.
• A next-door neighbor coming over to help you dig your car out of the snow.
• People dropping change into a donation jar at the checkout counter.

Research Ethics and Social Groups

Value neutrality is the duty of sociologists to strive to be impartial and overcome their biases as they conduct their research; Max Weber created this concept. The term ethnocentrism was coined by Ludwig Gumplowicz and employed by William G. Sumner. The distinction between ingroups and outgroups was also made by William G. Sumner.

Primary Sociological Perspectives

• Functionalist perspective: Emphasizes the way parts of a society are structured to maintain its stability.
• Conflict perspective: Assumes social behavior is best understood in terms of conflict or tension between competing groups.
• Interactionist perspective: Generalizes about everyday forms of social interaction to explain society as a whole.

Social Issues, Deviance, and Inequality

The Death Penalty and Punishment

The death penalty is an execution and a significant form of punishment for deviance from social norms and criminal behavior. The debate over the death penalty focuses on its appropriateness as a form of punishment and its value in deterring crime, alongside a movement away from the death penalty based on doubts about whether executions can be carried out humanely.

Gender and the Matrix of Domination

Gender roles socially construct behavior so as to create or exaggerate male/female differences. The matrix of domination refers to the convergence of social forces that contribute to the subordinate status of poor, non-white women; this concept was developed by Patricia Hill Collins.

Historical Context: Jim Crow Laws

Jim Crow laws were state and local laws passed from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 to the mid-1950s, by which white Southerners reasserted their dominance by denying Black people social, economic, and civil rights, such as the right to vote.