Sociology does not aim to replace our incorrect information with unquestionable true information.
It
helps us to question and criticize the facts that are accepted true without questioning
Society is not the totality of people; it is the totality of the mutual relationships among a community
of people who share a specific territory, a specific culture and common social institutions.
In the most general level, societies before the 18th century are called “traditional societies”. In the
Western world, the majority of the traditional societies transformed through Enlightenment,
Scientific and Political Revolutions and the Industrial Revolution, and a new society emerged. This
new type of society is called “the industrial society” or “the modern society”.
Types of society :Hunting and Gathering Societies: Agrarian Societies: Traditional States: Industrial
(Modern) Societies:
Most of the pastoral and agrarian societies are now part of larger states and they are losing their
traditional identities.
Post-Industrial Societies: The service sector, including communication, health, banking and insurance
had a larger proportion in industry than before.
Social structure is the perpetual, continuous and organized relations among the groups and social
institutions that consist the society.
Social institution: Social institution refers to arrangements involving large numbers of people whose
behaviors are guided by norms and roles.
Social facts consist of ways of acting, thinking, and feeling, which are external to the individual, and
endowed with a power of coercion. They are the creation of human activities but they are not
intended.
A social group is an organized group, of which the members have mutual interaction, reciprocal
relations, common goals, similar behaviors, a sense of unity and follow the group norms.
If a status is determined at the birth of the individual, it is an ascribed status. In addition to ascribed
statuses, individuals may acquire other statuses in their life time with the exercise of their abilitres,
skills, knowledge or luck. These are called the achieved statuses.
Norm: Norms are the rules resultant of values; they are binding expectations of behaviors. In other
words, norms are the visible and invisible rules of conduct.
Sanctions function to guarantee the norms to be followed.
Internal social control is the social control that we impose on ourselves. For example, while going to
school, you wear some nice clothes. Although there is not a law against wearing pajamas at school,
no one wears pajama, because people internalize the norm of dressing clothes outside the home.
With the major changes that the French Revolution and Industrial Revolution caused, new questions
arose about the structure and future of the society. The rise of sociology is based on the attempts to
answer the questions with scientific methods.
A discipline is a sub category of a science. The science of sociology is a discipline of social sciences.
Interdisciplinarity refers to combining or involving more than one academic discipline into one
scientific activity.
According to Wilhelm Dilthey, social sciences should use an understanding method instead of the
explanation method in physical sciences.
Which of the following sociologists argued that gradual intellectual development of human mind
plays a great role on social order and progress? A. Comte
Which of the following sociologist argued that the distinctive subject matter of sociology should be
the study of social facts? B. Durkheim
Which of the following thinkers is considered to be one of the representatives of the conflict
approach? C. Gramsci
Which of the following sociologists claimed that social relations of production, have critical roles in
understanding historical development? D. Karl Marx
Which of the following sociologists argued that social transformation follows an evolutionary path
from simple homogenous societies to mixed heterogeneous societies? A. Spencer
According to Marx which of the followings is not a component of the superstructure? B. economy
According to Durkheim, anomie refers to which of the following? C. normlessness
According to Weber, what kind of methodological tool should sociologist use in sociological analysis?
E. ideal type
According to feminism, which of the following is the most important and oldest form of inequality? A.
gender
The approach that is primarily concerned with methods used by community members in building
their social worlds is called Ethnomethodology
Parsons defines the four basic requirements that must be met in order for a social system to survive
as adaptation (A), goal attainment (G), integration (I), and latency (L), or pattern maintenance.
The concept of imputative status refers to a social position of a person gained without effort,
achieved by birth, and generally remains constant
