Sociology: Terms and Concepts

This PDF handout from MIT Open Courseware provides short definitions and examples.

From the Latin communitas, a unified body of individuals, the term ‘community’ is one of the most important words in the modern and contemporary political, philosophical and sociological lexicon. A community is any large or small group of people sharing a common history, language, set of values or goals (CULTURE).

In anthropology, the integrated system of socially acquired values, beliefs, and rules of conduct which delimit the range of accepted behaviors in any given society. Cultural differences distinguish societies from one another.

A historical means of social classification and differentiation that attempts to essentialize political and cultural differences by linking physical traits (i.e. skin, blood, genes) and social practices (i.e. religion, violence, passion) to innate, immutable characteristics (see essentialism).

At a socio-political level, a society is an extended group of individuals residing within a bounded geographic area, subject to common political authority and law, has mutual institutions, and shares a distinctive culture. At a broader level, a society is any social grouping that comes together, or is lumped together, on the basis of some shared characteristic or interest.

The most commonly understood form of assimilation is that of cultural assimilation.

From The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology
Treated generically, this term refers to behavior that is carried out by some sort of collective rather than by an individual.

From The Social Science Jargon-Buster
The alteration, adaptation, modification or transformation of social structures, social institutions, socio-cultural characteristics, social relations or socio-political ideology.

Individuals united by a common purpose who act collectively to promote or resist political or social change.

Conflict theory in sociology emphasizes struggles over resources and the formation of groups and social cleavages that may lead to organized conflict.

Behaviour or action that is punishable by criminal law. A crime is a public, as opposed to a moral, wrong; it is an offence committed against (and hence punishable by) the state or the community at large. Many crimes are immoral, but not all actions considered immoral are illegal.

In its most restricted form [ethnicity] refers to a group’s shared biological origins; in its broader definition it more closely resembles the concept of nationality.

The notion of gender can be understood to be referring to the cultural assumptions and practices that govern the social construction of men, women and their social relations.

A political system through which a body of people is administered and regulated.

Set of ideas, beliefs, and opinions about the nature of people and society, providing a framework for a theory about how people should live, as well as how society is or should be organized. A nation's ideology is usually reflected in the political system it creates.

In everyday language, class refers to social groupings based on similar occupational conditions that have the same access to economic, social, and political resources.

Social inequality is used to describe the varying levels of group and individual access to resources and power in a given society.

Or public charity, organized provision of educational, cultural, medical, and financial assistance to the needy....