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SACRED. Something set apart from the everyday world which inspires attitudes of awe or reverence among believers.
SAMPLING. Taking a small representative part of a population for purposes of drawing inferences from the analysis of the sample characteristics to the population as a whole.
SANCTION. A reward for conformity or a punishment for nonconformity that reinforces socially approved forms of behavior.
SCAPEGOATING. Blaming, punishing, or stigmatizing a relatively powerless individual or group for wrongs that were not of their doing.
SCHIZOPHRENIA. A serious mental disturbance in which an individual typically has delusions or hallucinations and a distorted sense of reality.
SCIENCE. The application of systematic methods of observation and careful logical analysis; the term also refers to the body of knowledge produced by the use of the scientific method.
SECOND WORLD. Formerly communist industrial societies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
SECONDARY GROUP. A group of individuals who do not know each other on a personal level interacting in pursuit of a goal.
SECONDARY GROUP STRUCTURE. A term used in socio-cultural materialism to refer to structural groups in which members tend to interact without any emotional commitment to one another. These organizations are coordinated through bureaucracies. They perform many functions such as regulating production, reproduction, socialization, education, and enforcing social discipline. Examples include governments, parties, military, corporations, educational institutions, media, service and welfare organizations, and professional and labor organizations .
SECONDARY DEVIANCE. The deviant role behavior that a person adopts as a result of being labeled as deviant.
SECONDARY LABOR MARKET. Refers to the economic position of individuals engaged in occupations that provide insecure jobs, poor benefits and conditions of work.
SECULARIZATION. A process of decline in the social influence of religion.
SELF or SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. The individual's awareness of being a distinct social identity, a person separate from others. Human beings are not born with self-consciousness, but acquire an awareness of self as a result of early socialization.
SEMI-PERIPHERY COUNTRIES. Countries that are in the initial stages of industrialism which provide labor and raw materials to the core countries.
SERIAL MONOGAMY. The process of contracting several marriages in succession-- marriage, divorce, and remarriage.
SEX. The biological categories of females and males.
SEX ROLE. The gender specific role behavior that a person learns as a member of a particular society.
SEX STRATIFICATION. The ranking and differential reward system of the sexes.
SEXISM. Beliefs which hold one sex superior to the other thereby justifying sexual inequalities.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT. The making of persistent unwanted sexual advances by one individual towards another.
SICK ROLE. Patterns of behavior expected of one who is sick--this role often exempts the person from their normal role obligations.
SOCIAL CHANGE. Alteration in social structures or culture over time.
SOCIAL DARWINISM. An early and now largely discredited view of social evolution emphasizing the importance of "survival of the fittest" or struggle between individuals, groups, or societies as the motor of development. Social Darwinism became widely popular and was often used to justify existing inequalities.
SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION. A structural condition of society caused by rapid change in social institutions, norms, and values.
SOCIAL EVOLUTION. Theories of social change which generally hold that human societies move from simple to complex forms of organization.
SOCIAL FORCES. The term refers to the fact that society and social organizations exert an influence on individual human behavior.
SOCIAL GROUPS. Two or more individuals who interact in systematic ways with one another and share a high degree of common identity. Groups may range in size from dyads to large-scale societies.
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Major structural entitities in socio-cultural systems that address a basic need of the system. Institutions involve fixed modes of behavior backed by strong norms and sanctions that tend to be followed by most members of a society.
SOCIAL MOBILITY. Movement between different social positions within a stratification system
SOCIAL MOVEMENT. A large grouping of people who are organized to bring about, or to block, a change in the socio-cultural system.
SOCIAL REPRODUCTION. The processes which perpetuate characteristics of social structure over periods of time .
SOCIAL ROLE. The expected patterned behavior of an individual occupying a particular status position.
SOCIALISM. An economic system in which the means of production and distribution of goods and services are publically owned.
SOCIALIZATION. The lifelong processes through which humans develop an awareness of social norms and values, and achieve a distinct sense of self.
SOCIETY. A society is a group of people who live in a particular territory, are subject to a common system of political authority, and share a common culture.
SOCIOBIOLOGY. An approach which attempts to explain the social behavior of humans in terms of biological principles.
SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION. A term used by C. Wright Mills that refers to the application of imaginative thought to the asking and answering of sociological questions.
SOCIOLOGY. The study of human behavior and societies, giving particular emphasis to the industrialized world.
SOLID WASTE. Refers to the accumulation of noxious substances.
SPLIT LABOR MARKET. A situation in which one group of laborers (usually defined by race, sex, or ethnicity) is routinely paid less than other groups.
STANDING ARMY. A full-time professional army.
STATE. Government institutions ruling over a given territory, whose authority is backed by law and the ability to use force.
STATE SOCIETY. A society which possesses a formal apparatus of government.
STATELESS SOCIETY. A society which lacks formal institutions of government.
STATUS. A social position within a society. The term can also refer to the social honor or prestige which a particular individual or group is accorded by other members of a society.
STATUS OFFENCES. Acts that are illegal for juveniles but not for adults (such as running away from home or engaging in sexual activities).
STEP-FAMILIES (BLENDED FAMILIES). Families in which at least one partner has children from a previous marriage living in the home.
STEREOTYPE. A rigid and inflexible image of the characteristics a group. Stereotypes attribute these characteristics to all individuals belonging to that group .
STIGMA. A symbol (or a negative social label) of disgrace that affects a person's social identity.
STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE (STAR WARS). A program that aims to protect the U.S. from nuclear attack by developing the capabilities to shoot down enemy missiles.
STRATIFICATION. The existence of structured inequalities in life chances between groups in society.
STRIKE. A temporary work stoppage by a group of employees.
STRUCTURAL UNEMPLOYMENT. Unemployed workers whose skills and training have become "obsolete" and who have little chance of ever finding employment at comparable paying jobs.
STRUCTURE. Sociological term to refer to all human institutions, groups and organizations.
SUBCULTURE. A group within the broader society that has values, norms and lifestyle distinct from those of the majority.
SUBURBANIZATION. The development of areas of housing outside the political boundaries of cities.
SUPERSTRUCTURE. A general term used in socio-cultural materialism to refer to the symbolic universe--the shared meanings, ideas, beliefs, values, and ideologies that people give to the physical and social world. The superstructure, of course, can be divided into cultural and mental components.
SURPLUS VALUE. Marx's concept for the value of an individual's labor power (calculated by the amount of value the labor contributes to the product minus the amount of money paid to the worker by the capitalist). The conventional name for this difference is profit--thus the whole capitalist system is based on "expropriating" surplus value (or stealing labor) from workers.
SURVEILLANCE. Monitoring the activities of others in order to ensure compliant behavior. Modern techniques of surveillance include not only video cameras and microphones but also a whole range of computer surveillance as well.
SURVEY. A questionnaire or interview.
SYMBOL. One item used to meaningfully represent another--as in the case of a flag which symbolizes a nation.
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM. A theoretical approach in sociology which focuses on social reality as constructed through the daily interaction of individuals and places strong emphasis on the role of symbols (gestures, signs, and language) as core elements of this interaction.
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The kingdom of the heavens and the earth belongs to Allah. He indeed is able to do all things. -Quran, Al-Imran, Surah 3:189
Somayya
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