Social Change and the Polity Test - 2

The correct answer is it believes in the worship of God.

Key PointsChristian belief system

• Belief in God the Father, Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit.
• The death, descent into hell, resurrection and ascension of Christ.
• The holiness of the Church and the communion of saints.
• To Weber, Christianity was a salvation religion that claims people can be “saved” when they convert to certain beliefs and moral codes.
  • In Christianity, the idea of “sin” and its atonement by God's grace plays a fundamental role.
  • Unlike the Eastern religions' passive approach, salvation religions like Christianity are active, demanding continuous struggles against sin and the negative aspects of society.

The correct answer is ridicule and fines.

Key PointsDeviance and Control

• Sociologists also classify sanctions as formal or informal.
• Although shoplifting, a form of social deviance, may be illegal, there are no laws dictating the proper way to scratch your nose.
• That doesn’t mean picking your nose in public won’t be punished; instead, you will encounter informal sanctions. Informal sanctions emerge in face-to-face social interactions.
  • For example, wearing flip-flops to an opera or swearing loudly in church may draw disapproving looks or even verbal reprimands, whereas behavior that is seen as positive—such as helping an old man carry grocery bags across the street—may receive positive informal reactions, such as a smile or pat on the back.
• Formal sanctions, on the other hand, are ways to officially recognize and enforce norm violations.
  • If a student violates her college’s code of conduct, for example, she might be expelled.
  • Someone who speaks inappropriately to the boss could be fired. Someone who commits a crime may be arrested or imprisoned.
  • On the positive side, a soldier who saves a life may receive an official commendation.

The correct answer is some norms are so difficult that common member cannot understand them.

Key Points

• Formal deviance can be described as a crime, which violates laws in a society.
• Informal deviance are minor violations that break unwritten rules of social life.
• Norms that have great moral significance are mores and sometimes it becomes members to understand it because morality differs from person to person. Hence option 1) is correct.
• Under informal deviance, a more opposes societal taboos.
• Labeling theorist Howard Becker identified four different forms of deviant behavior labels, which are as follows:
  • ​"Falsely accusing" an individual - others perceive the individual to be obtaining obedient or deviant behaviors.
  • "Pure deviance", others perceive the individual as participating in deviant and rule-breaking behavior.
  • "Conforming", others perceive the individual to be participating in the social norms that are distributed within societies.
  • "Secret deviance" which is when the individual is not perceived as deviant or participating in any rule-breaking behaviors.
• Three broad sociological classes exist that describe deviant behavior, namely, structural functionalism, symbolic interaction and conflict theory.

The correct answer is All of the above.

Key PointsSocial Deviant

• Social deviance, broadly defined, applies to any behavior, belief, or appearance that violates prevailing social norms.
• Norms are social standards concerning what members of a group expect and believe is acceptable conduct in a given situation.
• The power of norms to govern individual behavior derives from the perception that others endorse and will enforce the normative standards.
• When an individual's or a minority group's behavior, belief, or appearance deviates from normative standards, the individual or the group members risk becoming the targets of social disapproval and other forms of punishment.
• Hence,  Galileo, Christ, and Socrates were a social deviants.

The correct answer is Deviation is relative and not absolute.

Key Points

Deviance is Relative

• Deviance is relative means that there is no absolute way of defining a deviant act.
• Deviance can be defined in relation to a particular standard and no standards are fixed or absolute.
• As such deviance varies from time to time and place to place.
• In a particular society, an act that is considered deviant today may be detained as normal in the future.
• Social deviance should not be confused with statistical rarity.
• People whose behavior or characteristics are found only in a minority of the population are statistically unusual but that does not necessarily make them socially deviant.
• Most people who escape discovery of their deviant behavior are not stigmatized as deviants and generally do not even regard themselves as deviant at all.
• No act is inherently deviant. It becomes deviant only when it is socially defined as such and definitions vary greatly from time to time, place to place, and group to group.
• Deviance can be defined in relation to a particular standard and no standards are fixed or absolute.
• Deviance is both a threat and protection to social stability. On the one hand society can operate efficiently only if there is order and predictability in social life. Deviant behavior threatens social order.
• Deviant behavior is one way of adapting culture to social change. No society can remain static forever.

The correct answer is Durkheim.

Key PointsDurkheim

• Durkheim was the first professor of sociology and hence, known as the founder of sociology as a formal discipline.
• Society for him was a social fact that existed as a moral community over and above the individual.
• Social ties that bound people in groups are crucial to the existence of society as these exert pressure on individuals to conform to the norms and expectations of groups.
• Durkheim’s vision of sociology was characterized by two defining features:
  • The subject matter of sociology is social facts
  • Sociology can be defined as an empirical discipline as the social facts can be empirically
• Social facts are the level of complex collective life where social phenomena/social facts can emerge like in the social institutions of religion or the family.
• Social facts are social values like friendship or patriotism that exist in the larger society.
• Individuals functions according to these social facts.
• Sociology can be termed as an empirical discipline as the subject matter of sociology that is social facts are observable and can be empirically tested and verified.
• As individuals follow social facts, their behavior becomes regulated and patterned. The social facts are external to individuals however these constrain human behavior. Hence, social facts are indirectly observable through the behavioral patterns of individuals who are part of society.
• According to Durkheim, modern society can be characterized by the following features:
  • Individuals with similar goals come together voluntarily and form associations or groups.
  • Individuals might belong to various such groups and thus have many different identities.

The correct answer is "If the process of socialization fails the individuals becomes more deviant."

Key Points Deviance 

• The word deviance connotes odd or unacceptable behavior, but in the sociological sense of the word, Deviance is simply any violation of society’s norms. If the process of socialization fails the individuals become more deviant. Hence, statement 1 is correct. 
• Deviance can range from something minor, such as a traffic violation, to something major, such as murder.
• Each society defines what is deviant and what is not, and definitions of deviance differ widely between societies.
  • For example, some societies have much more stringent rules regarding gender roles than we have in the United States, and still, other societies’ rules governing gender roles are less stringent than ours.
• A person does not need to act in a deviant manner in order to be considered deviant. Sometimes people are considered deviant because of a trait or a characteristic they possess.
• Sociologist Erving Goffman used the term Stigma to identify deviant characteristics. These include violations of the norms of physical ability or appearance.
  • For example, people who are confined to wheelchairs or who have IQs over 140 are deviant because they do not represent the usual behaviors or characteristics of most people.
• Social Control
  • Punishing people for deviant behavior reminds people what is expected of them and what will happen if they do not conform to society’s norms.
  • Every society has methods of Social Control, or means of encouraging conformity to norms.
  • These methods of social control include positive sanctions and negative sanctions.
  • A Positive Sanction is a socially constructed expression of approval.
  • A Negative Sanction is a socially constructed expression of disapproval.
• According to sociologist William Graham Sumner, deviance is a violation of established contextual, cultural, or social norms, whether folkways, mores, or codified law (1906). 
• Folkways are norms based on everyday cultural customs concerning practical matters like how to hold a fork, what type of clothes are appropriate for different situations, or how to greet someone politely.
• Mores are more serious moral injunctions or taboos that are broadly recognized in a society, like the incest taboo.
• Codified laws are norms that are specified in explicit codes and enforced by government bodies.
• A crime is therefore an act of deviance that breaks not only a norm, but a law.
• Deviance can be as minor as picking one’s nose in public or as major as committing murder.

The correct answer is "all the above."

Key PointsTheory "Me" of G.H. Mead

• The ‘Me’ part according to him was learned behaviour, a ‘social self’ developed by absorbing the attitudes of ‘the generalized other.
• The ‘me’ consists of the attitudes of others that the child adopts and makes his own.
• Thus, when a parent says things like ‘good child’ or ‘good behavior’ and ‘bad child’ or ‘bad behavior’, such communications from ‘significant others (parents, siblings, playmates, teachers, relatives) become increasingly patterned or organized into that part of the self that Mead calls the ‘me’. 
• In other words, the ‘me’ is the adoption of the ‘generalized other’, which according to Mead is the ‘social self.  
• Individuals develop self-consciousness by coming to see themselves as others see them. Hence, statement 1 is correct.
• It is the passive and conforming part of the individual. Hence, statement 2 is correct.
• For Freud, this is the outcome of Oedipal phase, while for ‘me’, it is the result of a developed capacity for self-awareness. 
• The ‘me’ involves conscious responsibility. 
• It brings coherence to the social order. Hence, statement 3 is correct.
• It is through the ‘me’ that society dominates the individual in the form of social control—the domination of the expression of the ‘me’ over the expression ‘I’.

The correct answer is It is blind and seeks immediate release of tension.

Key Points

• 'In Freud's work, the ambition to draw a relationship between psychoanalysis and sociology shows early on.
• This is evidenced by the papers "Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices" (1907b) and "'Civilized' Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness" (1908d).
• In his book Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), Sigmund Freud took a similar approach, claiming that "crowd psychology, and with it all social psychology, is parasitic on individual psychology."
• Civilization and Its Discontents, published in 1930, was his most comprehensive sociological treatise, in which he "anchored his analysis of social and political life in a very much his own idea of human nature."
• Freud believed that dreams were essentially a form of wish fulfillment. Hence option 2) is correct.
• By taking unconscious thoughts, feelings, and desires and transforming them into less threatening forms, people are able to reduce the ego's anxiety
• The primary assumption of Freudian theory is that the unconscious mind governs behavior to a greater degree than people suspect.
• Indeed, the goal of psychoanalysis is to make the unconscious conscious.

The correct answer is Erving.

Key PointsErving

• Like Shakespeare, sociologist Erving views society as a theatre stage.
• Sociologist Erving Goffman developed the concept of Dramaturgy, the idea that life is like a never-ending play in which people are actors.
• Goffman believed that when we are born, we are thrust onto a stage called everyday life and that our socialization consists of learning how to play our assigned roles from other people.
• We enact our roles in the company of others, who are in turn enacting their roles in interaction with us.
• He believed that whatever we do, we are playing out some role on the stage of life.
• Goffman distinguished between front stages and backstages.
• During our everyday life, we spend most of our lives on the front stage, where we get to deliver our lines and perform.
  • A wedding is a front stage.
  • A classroom lectern is the front stage.
  • A dinner table can be the front stage.
  • Almost any place where we act in front of others is a front stage.
• Sometimes we are allowed to retreat to the backstages of life. In these private areas, we don’t have to act. We can be our real selves. We can also practice and prepare for our return to the front stage.