Outline Of Sociology

Outline Of Sociology

1. Define social interaction and identify its components.
  * Social interaction – the process by which people act and react in relation to others.
  * In every society, people build their everyday lives using the idea of status, a social position that a person holds. In everyday use, the word status generally means “prestige,” as when we say that a college president have more “status” then a newly hired assistant professor.
  * Status is part of our social identity and helps define our relationship to others. As Georg Simmel, one of the founders of sociology, once pointed out, before we can deal with anyone, we need to know who the person is.
  * Each of us holds many statuses at once.   Status Set, refers to all the statuses a person holds at a given time.
  * Status sets change over the life course.
  * Over a lifetime, people gain and lose dozens of statuses.
  2. Distinguish between ascribed and achieved status and describe master status.
  * An Ascribed status is a social position a person receives at birth or takes on involuntarily later in life. Examples of ascribed statuses include being a daughter, a Cuban, a teenager, or a widower. Ascribed statuses ate matter about which we have little or no choice.
  * By contrast, an achieved status refers to a social position a person takes on voluntarily that reflects personal ability and effort. Achieved statuses in the United States include honors student, Olympic athlete, nurse, software writer, and thief.
  * Most statuses involve a combination of ascription and achievement. That is, people’s ascribed statuses influence the statuses they achieve.
  * Some statuses matter more than others. A master status is a status that has special importance for social identity, often shaping a person’s entire life. For most people, a job is a master status because it reveals a great deal about social background, education, and income.
  * As another example, the fact that all societies...