# > Sociology [[Category]] Updated: 06-30-2021-Wed ## Tasks - [ ] ## Definitions ### Society From MIT *Basic Concepts of Sociology Explained*: > "[Society is] *humanly created organization or system of interrelationships that connects individuals in a common culture. All the products of human interaction, the experience of living with others around us. Humans create their interactions, and once created the products of those interactions have the ability or power to act back upon humans to determine or constrain action. Often, we experience society (humanly created organization) as something apart from the individuals and interactions that create it.*" ### Components of Society - products of human interaction #### Culture - Language - a system of verbal symbols through which humans communicate ideas, feelings, experiences. - Values - preferences; ideas people share about what is good, bad, desirable, undesirable. - Norms - concepts and behaviors that constitute the normal. Behavioral rules or standards for social interaction. They establish expectations that shape social interaction #### Social Organization - Status - Socially defined niches, positions (student, professor, administrator). - Roles - A cluster of expected behaviors associated to status; how a person in that status is expected to think, feel, as well as expectations about how they should be treated by others. - Groups - Two or more people regularly interacting on the basis of shared expectations of others’ behavior; interrelated statuses and roles. - Institutions - Patterns of activity reproduced across time and space. Practices that are regularly and continuously repeated. #### Social Structure Structure refers to the pattern within culture and organization through which social action takes place; arrangements of roles, organizations, institutions, and cultural symbols that are stable over time, often unnoticed, and a changing almost invisibly. #### Agency > "the realized capacity of people to act upon their world and not only to know about or give personal or intersubjective significance to it. .. the power of people to act purposively and reflectively, in more or less complex relationships with one another, to reiterate and remake the world in which they live, in circumstances where they may consider different courses of action possible and desirable, though not necessarily from the same point of view." Consider #### Identity combines the intimate or personal world with the collective space of cultural forms and social relations. Imaginings, consciousness, reflections of self produced, improvised from cultural materials and social transactions. #### Inequality - Social Stratification - the division of people socio-economically into layers or strata. (class, wealth, property, access to goods and cultural products) - Race - A group that is socially defined on the bases of physical criteria. - Ethnicity - cultural practices and outlooks of a given community of people that set them apart from others. ### Sub fields listed in Wikipedia Culture Criminality, deviance, law and punishment Communications and information technology Economic sociology Education Environment Family, gender, and sexuality Health, illness, and the body Knowledge and science Leisure Peace, war, and conflict Political sociology Population and demography Public sociology Race and ethnic relations Religion Social change and development Social networks Social psychology Stratification, poverty and inequality Urban and rural sociology ### Other sub field ideas - Race, Nationality, and Ethnicity - Mass Media - Sociology of Food - Diets - Youth Cultures - Gender and Sexuality - Social Movements - Cults, Clans, and Communities - Class Conflict and Inequalities - Spirituality, Superstition, and Legends - Consumerism - The Family ## Categories [[⏶ Racism]] ## Related [[About Me]] ## References [*Basic Concepts of Sociology Explained*. MIT](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/anthropology/21a-245j-power-interpersonal-organizational-and-global-dimensions-fall-2005/study-materials/basic_conc.pdf) - Also in Kindle library [*What are the main concepts of Sociology?* Reference.com, 2020](https://www.reference.com/world-view/main-concepts-sociology-3ee1eaa55b3419ab)