Soc 154a Midterm
Description: sociology of family
Complete list of Terms and Definitions for Soc 154a Midterm
| Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
| individualism | a style of life in which individuals pursue their own interests and place great importance on developing a personally rewarding life |
| utilitarian individualism | a style of life that emphasizes self-reliance and personal achievement, especially in one's work life |
| expressive individualism | a style of life that emphasizes developing one's feelings and emotional satusfaction |
| monogamy | a marriage system in which people are allowed only one spouce |
| polygamy | a marriage system in which men or women (or both) are allowed to have more than one spouse at a time |
| externalities | benefits or costs that accrue to others when an individual or business produces something |
| negative externalities | the costs imposed on other individuals or business when an individual or business produces something of value to itself (ex: factories that release sulfur dioxide) |
| positive externalities | benefits received by others when an individual or business produces something, but for which the producer is not fully compensated (ex: corporation may pay for job training and the person may take a job somewhere else) |
| public goods | things that may be enjoyed by people who do not themselves produce them (almost impossible to stop people who don't produce them from enjoying them, smaller quantities than socially desirable) |
| free-rider problem | the tendency for people to obtain public goods by letting others do the work of producing them- metaphorically, the temptation to ride free on the backs of others |
| public family | one adult, or two adults who are related by marriage, partnership, or shared parenthood, who is/are taking care of dependents, and the dependents themselves |
| private family | two or more individuals who maintain an intimate relationship that they expect will last indefinitely- or, in case of parent and child, until the child reaches adulthood-and who usually live in the same household an dpool their incomes and household labor |
| boundary ambiguity | a state in which family members are uncertain about who is in or out of the family |
| created kinship | kinship ties that people have to construct activity |
| assigned kinship | kinship ties that people more or less automatically acquire when they are born or when they marry |
| social institution | set of roles and rules that define a social unit of importance to society. This term refers to parent, child, spouse, ex-spouse, stepfather, partner, and so forth. |
| hunter-gathers | people who wander through forest or over plains in small bands, hunting animals and gathering edible plants |
| lineage | a form of kinship group in which descent is traced through either the father's or the mother's line |
| patrilineage | a kinship group in which descent is through the father's line |
| martilineage | a kinship group in which descent is though the mother's line |
| conjungal family | a kinship group comprising husband, wife, and children |
| extended family | a kinship group comprising the conjugal family plus any other relatives present in the household, such as a grandparent or uncle |
| polygyny | a form of polygamy in which a man is allowed to have more than one wife |
| polyandry | a form of polygmay in which a woman is allowed to have more than one husband |
| life-course perspective | the study of changes in individuals' lives over time, and how those changes are related to historical events |
| early adulthood | period between mid-teens and about 30 when individuals finish their education, enter the labor force, and begin their own families |
| labor force | all people who are working for pay or who are looking for paid work |
| poverty line | a federally defined income limit defined as the cost of an "economy" diet for a family, multiplied by three |
| social class | an ordering of all persons in a society according to their degrees of economic resources, prestige, and privilege |
| life chances | the resources and opportunities that people have to provide themselves with material goods and favorable living conditions |
| status group | a group of people who share a common style of life and often identify with each other |
| ideal type | a hypothetical model that consists of the most significant characteristics, in extreme form, of a social phenomenon |
| upper-class family | families that have amassed wealth and privilege and that often have substantial prestige as well |
| middle-class family | families whose connection to the economy provides them with a secure, comfortable income and allows them to live well above subsistence level |
| working-class family | families whose income can reliably provide only for the minimum needs of what other people see as a decent life |
| lower-class families | families whose connection to the economy is so tenuous that they cannot reliably provide for a decent life |
| assortative marriage | the tendency of people to marry others similar to themselves |
| women-centered kinship | a kinship structure in which the strongest bonds of support and caregiving occur among a network of women, most of them relatives, who may live in more than one household |
| racial-ethnic group | people who share a common identity and whose members think of themselves as distinct from others by virtue of ancestry, culture, and sometimes physical characteristics |
| trasnational families | families that maintain continual contract between members in the sending and receiving countries (like hispanic nannies) |
| assimilation | the process by which immigrant groups merge their culture and their behavior with that of the dominant group in the host country (ex: in the US implies learning English, sending children to public schools, and dispersing geographically) |
| immigrant enclave | a large, dense, single-etnic--group, almost self-sufficient community |
| intersectionality (of black women's experience) | the extent to which black women's lives are affected b overlapping sysems of class, racial, and gender-based disadvantage |
| mediating structures | midlevel social institutions and groupings, such as the church, the neighborhood, the civil organization, and the family |