Anthony Giddens • Sociology 5th Edition

Student Resources

Glossary

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

M

Macrosociology
The study of large-scale groups, organizations or social systems.
Male breadwinner
Until recently in many industrialized societies, the traditional role of the man in providing for the family through employment outside the home. The ‘male breadwinner model’ has declined in significance with changes in family patterns and the steady growth in the numbers of women entering the labour market.
Male inexpressiveness
The difficulties men have in expressing, or talking about, their feelings to others.
Malthusianism
The idea, first advanced by Thomas Malthus two centuries ago, that population growth tends to outstrip the resources available to support it. Malthus argued that people must limit their frequency of sexual intercourse in order to avoid excessive population growth and a future of misery and starvation.
Managerial capitalism
Capitalistic enterprises administered by managerial executives rather than by owners. Manifest functions The functions of a type of social activity that are known to and intended by the individuals involved in the activity.
Manufactured risk
Dangers that are created by the impact of human knowledge and technology upon the natural world. Examples of manufactured risk include global warming and genetically modified foods.
Market-oriented theories
Theories about economic development that assume that the best possible economic consequences will result if individuals are free to make their own economic decisions, uninhibited by governmental constraint.
Marriage
A socially approved sexual relationship between two individuals. Marriage almost always involves two persons of opposite sexes, but in some cultures types of homosexual marriage are tolerated. Marriage normally forms the basis of a family of procreation – that is, it is expected that the married couple will produce and bring up children. Many societies permit polygamy, in which an individual may have several spouses at the same time.
Mass customization
The large-scale production of items designed for particular customers through the use of new technologies.
Mass media
Forms of communication, such as newspapers, magazines, radio and television, designed to reach mass audiences.
Mass production
The production of long runs of goods using machine power. Mass production was one outcome of the Industrial Revolution.
Master status
The status or statuses that generally take priority over other indicators of social standing and determine a person’s overall position in society.
Materialist conception of history
The view developed by Marx according to which ‘material’ or economic factors have a prime role in determining historical change.
Maternal deprivation
The absence of a stable and affectionate relationship between a child and its mother early in life. John Bowlby argued that maternal deprivation can lead to mental illness or deviant behaviour later in life.
Matrilineal
Relating to, based on, or tracing ancestral descent through the maternal line.
Matrilocal
Of family systems in which the husband is expected to live near the wife’s parents.
Mean
A statistical measure of central tendency, or average, based on dividing a total by the number of individual cases.
Means of production
The means whereby the production of material goods is carried on in a society, including not just technology but the social relations between producers.
Means-tested benefits
Welfare services that are available only to citizens who meet certain criteria based not only on need but on levels of income and savings.
Measures of central tendency
These are ways of calculating averages, the three most common being the mean, the median and the mode.
Media imperialism
A version of imperialism enabled by communications technology, claimed by some to have produced a cultural empire in which media content originating in the industrialized countries is imposed on less developed nations which lack the resources to maintain their cultural independence.
Media regulation
The use of legal means to control media ownership and the content of media communications.
Median
The number that falls halfway in a range of numbers – a way of calculating central tendency that is sometimes more useful than calculating a mean.
Medical gaze
In modern medicine, the detached and value-free approach taken by medical specialists in viewing and treating a sick patient.
Megacities
A term favoured by Manuel Castells to describe large, intensely concentrated urban spaces that serve as connection points for the global economy. It is projected that by 2015, there will be thirty-six ‘megacities’ with populations of more than eight million residents.
Megalopolis
The ‘city of all cities’, a term coined in ancient Greece to refer to a city-state that was planned to be the envy of all civilizations, but used in modern times to refer to very large – or overlarge – conurbations.
Melting pot
The idea that ethnic differences can be combined to create new patterns of behaviour drawing on diverse cultural sources.
Meritocracy
A system in which social positions are filled on the basis of individual merit and achievement, rather than ascribed criteria such as inherited wealth, sex or social background.
Metanarratives
Broad, overarching theories or beliefs about the operation of society and the nature of social change. Marxism and functionalism are examples of metanarratives that have been employed by sociologists to explain how the world works. Postmodernists reject such ‘grand theories’, arguing that it is impossible to identify any fundamental truths underpinning human society.
Microsociology
The study of human behaviour in contexts of face-to-face interaction.
Middle class
A broad spectrum of people working in many different occupations, from employees in the service industry to school teachers to medical professionals. Because of the expansion of professional, managerial and administrative occupations in advanced societies, the middle class may encompass the majority of the population in countries like Britain.
Minority group
A group of people in a minority in a given society who, because of their distinct physical or cultural characteristics, find themselves in situations of inequality within that society. Such groups include ethnic minorities.
Mode of production
Within Marxism, the constitutive characteristic of a society based on the socio-economic system predominant within it – for example, capitalism, feudalism or socialism.
Mode
The number that appears most often in a given set of data. This can sometimes be a helpful way of portraying central tendency.
Modernization theory
A version of marketoriented development theory that argues that low-income societies develop economically only if they give up their traditional ways and adopt modern economic institutions, technologies, and cultural values that emphasize savings and productive investment.
Monarchies
Those political systems headed by a single person whose power is passed down through their family across generations.
Monogamy
A form of marriage in which each married partner is allowed only one spouse at any given time.
Monopoly
A situation in which a single firm dominates in a given industry.
Monotheism
Belief in one, single God.
Moral panic
A term popularized by Stanley Cohen to describe a media-inspired overreaction to a certain group or type of behaviour that is taken as symptomatic of general social disorder. Moral panics often arise around events that are in fact relatively trivial in terms of the nature of the act and the number of people involved.
Mortality
The number of deaths in a population.
Multiculturalism
Ethnic groups exist separately and share equally in economic and political life.
Multimedia
The combination of what used to be different media requiring different technologies (for instance, visuals and sound) on a single medium, such as a CD-ROM, which can be played on a computer.

N

Nanotechnology
The science and technology of building electronic circuits and devices with, according to a broad definition, dimensions of less than 100 nanometres (one nanometre is one-billionth of a metre).
Nationalism
A set of beliefs and symbols expressing identification with a given national community.
Nations without states
Instances in which the members of a nation lack political sovereignty over the area they claim as their own.
Nation-state
A particular type of state, characteristic of the modern world, in which a government has sovereign power within a defined territorial area, and the mass of the population are citizens who know themselves to be part of a single nation. Nation-states are closely associated with the rise of nationalism, although nationalist loyalties do not always conform to the boundaries of specific states that exist today. Nation-states developed as part of an emerging nation-state system, originating in Europe, but in current times spanning the whole globe.
Neo-liberalism
The economic belief that free market forces, achieved by minimizing government restrictions on business, provide the only route to economic growth.
Neo-local
Neo-local residence involves the creation of a new household each time a child marries or when she or he reaches adulthood and becomes economically active.
Network
A set of informal and formal social ties that links people to each other.
New Age movement
A general term to describe the diverse spectrum of beliefs and practices oriented on inner spirituality. Paganism, Eastern mysticism, shamanism, alternative forms of healing, and astrology are all examples of ‘New Age’ activities.
New criminology
A branch of criminological thought, prominent in Britain in the 1970s, that regarded deviance as deliberately chosen and often political in nature. The ‘new criminologists’ argued that crime and deviance could only be understood in the context of power and inequality within society.
New Labour
The reforms introduced by Tony Blair when he assumed leadership of the British Labour Party, and by means of which he sought to move the party in new directions, particularly in the early days by a successful campaign to abolish Clause 4, which committed the party to a policy of widespread public ownership of industry.
New migration
A term referring to changes in patterns of migration in Europe in the years following 1989. The ‘new migration’ has been influenced by the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the prolonged ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia, and the process of European integration, altering the dynamics between traditional ‘countries of origin’ and ‘countries of destination’.
New racism
Racist outlooks, also referred to as cultural racism, that are predicated on cultural or religious differences, rather than biological ones.
New religious movements
The broad range of religious and spiritual groups, cults and sects that have emerged alongside mainstream religions. NRMs range from spiritual and self-help groups within the New Age movement to exclusive sects such as the Hare Krishnas.
New social movements
A set of social movements that have arisen in Western societies since the 1960s in response to the changing risks facing human societies. NSMs such as feminism, environmentalism, the anti-nuclear movement, protests against genetically modified food, and ‘anti-globalization’ demonstrations differ from earlier social movements in that they are single-issue campaigns oriented tonon-material ends and draw support from across class lines.
Newly industrialized countries
Third World economies which over the past two or three decades have begun to develop a strong industrial base, such as Brazil and Singapore.
Non-verbal communication
Communication between individuals based on facial expression or bodily gesture, rather than on the use of language.
Norms
Rules of behaviour which reflect or embody a culture’s values, either prescribing a given type of behaviour, or forbidding it. Norms are always backed by sanctions of one kind or another, varying from informal disapproval to physical punishment or execution.
Nuclear family
A family group consisting of mother, father (or one of these) anddependent children.

O

Occupation
Any form of paid employment in which an individual works in a regular way.
Occupational gender segregation
The way that men and women are concentrated in different types of jobs, based on prevailing understandings of what is appropriate ‘male’ and ‘female’ work.
Oligopoly
The domination of a small number of firms in a given industry.
Oral history
Interviews with people about events they witnessed or experienced earlier in their lives.
Organic solidarity
According to Emile Durkheim, the social cohesion that results from the various parts of a society functioning as an integrated whole.
Organization
A large group of individuals, involving a definite set of authority relations. Many types of organization exist in industrial societies, influencing most aspects of our lives. While not all organizations are bureaucratic in a formal sense, there are quite close links between the development of organizations and bureaucratic tendencies.

P

Participant observation
A method of research widely used in sociology and anthropology, in which the researcher takes part in the activities of a group or community being studied.
Participatory democracy
A system of democracy in which all members of a group or community participate collectively in the taking of major decisions.
Party
A group of individuals who work together because they have common backgrounds, aims or interests. According to Weber, party is one of the factors, alongside class and status, that shape patterns of social stratification.
Pastoral societies
Societies whose subsistence derives from the rearing of domesticated animals; there is often a need to migrate between different areas according to seasonal changes or to seek fresh grazing.
Pathologies
Literally, the scientific study of the nature of diseases, their causes, processes, development and consequences.
Patriarchy
The dominance of men over women. All known societies are patriarchal, although there are variations in the degree and nature of the power men exercise, as compared with women. One of the prime objectives of women’s movements in modern societies is to combat existing patriarchal institutions.
Patrilineal
Relating to, based on, or tracing ancestral descent through the paternal line.
Patrilocal
Of family systems in which the wife is expected to live near the husband’s parents.
Pauperization
Literally, to make a pauper of, or impoverish. Marx used the term to describe the process by which the working class grows increasingly impoverished in relation to the capitalist class.
Peer group
A friendship group composed of individuals of similar age and social status.
Peripheral countries
Countries that have a marginal role in the world economy and are thus dependent on the core-producing societies for their trading relationships.
Personal space
The physical space individuals maintain between themselves and others; it may vary between intimate distance for close relationships, social distance for formal encounters and public distance when confronted by an audience.
Personality stabilization
According to functionalists, the family plays a crucial role in assisting its adult members emotionally. Marriage between adult men and women is the arrangement through which adult personalities are supported and kept healthy.
Pilot studies
Trial runs in survey research.
Plastic sexuality
Sexuality freed from the needs of reproduction and moulded by the individual.
Political party
An organization established with the aim of achieving governmental power by electoral means and using that power to pursue a specific programme.
Politics
The means by which power is employed and contested to influence the nature and content of governmental activities. The sphere of the ‘political’ includes the activities of those in government, but also the actions and competing interests of many other groups and individuals.
Polyandry
A form of marriage in which a woman may simultaneously have two or more husbands.
Polycentric transnationals
Transnational corporations whose administrative structure is global but whose corporate practices are adapted according to local circumstances.
Polygamy
A form of marriage in which a person may have two or more spouses simultaneously.
Polygyny
A form of marriage in which a man may have more than one wife at the same time.
Polytheism
Belief in two or more gods.
Population
In the context of social research, the people who are the focus of a study or survey.
Portfolio worker
A worker who possesses a diversity of skills or qualifications and is therefore able to move easily from job to job.
Positivism
In regard to sociology, the view that the study of the social world should be conducted according to the principles of natural science. A positivist approach to sociology holds that objective knowledge can be produced through careful observation, comparison and experimentation.
Post-Fordism
A general term used to describe the transition from mass industrial production, characterized by Fordist methods, to more flexible forms of production favouring innovation and aimed at meeting market demands for customized products.
Post-industrial society
A notion advocated by those who believe that processes of social change are taking us beyond the industrialized order. A post-industrial society is based on the production of information rather than material goods. According to post-industrialists, we are currently experiencing a series of social changes as profound as those that initiated the industrial era some two hundred years ago.
Postmodern feminism
Postmodern feminism draws on the general features of postmodernism in rejecting the idea of single explanations or philosophies. Feminist postmodernism involves, amongst other things, opposition to essentialism (the belief that differences between men and women are innate rather than socially/experientially constructed), and a belief in more plural kinds of knowledge.
Postmodernism
The belief that society is no longer governed by history or progress. Postmodern society is highly pluralistic and diverse, with no ‘grand narrative’ guiding its development.
Poverty line
An official measure used by governments to define those living below this income level as living in poverty. Many states have an established poverty line, although Britain does not.
Power
The ability of individuals, or the members of a group, to achieve aims or further the interests they hold. Power is a pervasive aspect of all human relationships. Many conflicts in society are struggles over power, because how much power an individual or group is able to achieve governs how far they are able to realize their own wishes at the expense of the wishes of others.
Precautionary principle
The presumption that, where there is sufficient doubt about the possible risks of new departures, it is better to maintain existing practices than to change them.
Prejudice
The holding of preconceived ideas about an individual or group, ideas that are resistant to change even in the face of new information. Prejudice may be either positive or negative.
Pre-operational stage
A stage of cognitive development, in Piaget’s theory, in which the child has advanced sufficiently to master basic modes of logical thought.
Primary deviance
In the sociology of deviance, an initial act of crime or deviance. According to Edwin Lemert, acts at the level of primary deviance remain marginal to an individual’s selfidentity. A process usually occurs by which the deviant act is normalized.
Primary socialization
The process by which children learn the cultural norms of the society into which they are born. Primary socialization occurs largely in the family.
Procreative technology
Techniques of influencing the human reproductive process.
Profane
That which belongs to the mundane, everyday world.
Proletariat
To Marx, the working class under capitalism.
Prophets
Religious leaders who mobilize followers through their interpretation of sacred texts.
Prostitution
The sale of sexual favours.
Psychopathic
A specific personality type. Such individuals lack the moral sense and concern for others that most normal people have.Public sphere An idea associated with the German sociologist Jürgen Habermas. The public sphere is the arena of public debate and discussion in modern societies.
Pure relationship
A relationship of sexual and emotional equality.
Push and pull factors
In the early study of global migration, these were the internal and external forces believed to influence patterns of migration. ‘Push factors’ refer to dynamics within the country of origin, such as unemployment, war, famine or political persecution. ‘Pull factors’ describe features of destination countries, such as a buoyant labour market, lower population density and a high standard of living.

Q

Quality circle (QC)
Types of industrialized group production, where workers use their expertise to actively participate in decision-making.
Queer theory
Queer theory argues that sociology and other disciplines are prejudiced towards heterosexuals, and that non-heterosexual voices must be brought to the fore in order to challenge the heterosexual assumptions that underlie much contemporary thinking.

R

Race
A set of social relationships which allow individuals and groups to be located, and various attributes or competencies assigned, on the basis of biologically grounded features.
Racialization
The process by which understandings of race are used to classify individuals or groups of people. Racial distinctions are more than ways of describing human differences: they are important factors in the reproduction of patterns of power and inequality.
Racism
The attributing of characteristics of superiority or inferiority to a population sharing certain physically inherited characteristics. Racism is one specific form of prejudice, focusing on physical variations between people. Racist attitudes became entrenched during the period of colonial expansion by the West, but seem also to rest on mechanisms of prejudice and discrimination found in very many contexts of human societies.
Radical feminism
Form of feminist theory that believes that gender inequality is the result of male domination in all aspects of social and economic life.
Random sampling
A sampling method in which a sample is chosen so that every member of the population has the same probability of being included.
Rationalization
A concept used by Weber to refer to the process by which modes of precise calculation and organization, involving abstract rules and procedures, increasingly come to dominate the social world.
Recidivism
Reoffending by individuals previously found guilty of a crime.
Reconstituted family
A family in which at least one of the adults has children from a previous union, either living in the home or nearby. Reconstituted families are also known as ‘step-families’.
Reflexivity
This describes the connections between knowledge and social life. The knowledge we gain about society can affect the way in which we act in it. For instance, reading a survey about the high level of support for a political party might lead an individual to express support for that party too.
Regionalization
Divisions of time and space which may be used to ‘zone’activities at a very local, domestic level; or the larger division of social and economic life into regional settings or zones at a scale either above or below that of the nation-state.
Reincarnation
Rebirth of the soul in another body or form. This belief is most often associated with Hindus and Buddhists.
Relative poverty
Poverty defined by reference to the overall standard of living in any given society.
Religion
A set of beliefs adhered to by the members of a community, involving symbols regarded with a sense of awe or wonder, together with ritual practices in which members of the community engage. Religions do not universally involve a belief in supernatural entities. Although distinctions between religion and magic are difficult to draw, it is often held that magic is primarily practised by individuals rather than being the focus of community ritual.
Religious economy
A theoretical framework within the sociology of religion, which argues that religions can be fruitfully understood as organizations in competition with one another for followers.
Representative democracy
A political system in which decisions affecting a community are taken, not by its members as a whole, but by people they have elected for this purpose.
Representative sample
A sample from a larger population that is statistically typical of that population.
Research methods
The diverse methods of investigation used to gather empirical (factual) material. Numerous different research methods exist in sociology, but perhaps the most commonly used are fieldwork (or participant observation) and survey methods. For many purposes it is useful to combine two or more methods within a single research project.
Resistant femininity
A term associated with R. W. Connell’s writings on the gender hierarchy in society. Women embodying resistant femininity reject the conventional norms of femininity in society (‘emphasized femininity’) and adopt liberated lifestyles and identities. Feminism and lesbianism, for example, are forms of resistant femininity that are not subordinated to the dominant role of hegemonic masculinity.
Resource allocation
How different social and material resources are shared out between and employed by social groups or other elements of society.
Response cries
These seemingly involuntary exclamations individuals make when, for example, being taken by surprise, dropping something inadvertently or expressing pleasure may be part of our controlled management of the details of social life, studied by ethnomethodologists and conversation analysts.
Restorative justice
A branch of criminal justice which rejects punitive measures in favour of community-based sentences that attempt to raise awareness among offenders of the effects of their actions.
Restricted code
A mode of speech that rests on strongly developed cultural understandings, so that many ideas do not need to be – and are not – put into words.
Revolution
A process of political change, involving the mobilizing of a mass social movement, which by the use ofviolence successfully overthrows an existing regime and forms a new government. A revolution is distinguished from a coup d’état because it involves a mass movement and the occurrence of major change in the political system as a whole. A coup d’état refers to the seizure of power through the use of arms by individuals who then replace the existing political leaders, but without otherwise radically transforming the governmental system. Revolutions can also be distinguished from rebellions, which involve challenges to the existing political authorities, but again aim at the replacement of personnel rather than the transformation of the political structure as such.
Right realism
In criminology, right realism grew out of control theory and political conservatism. It links the perceived escalation of crime and delinquency to a decline in individual responsibility and moral degeneracy. To right realists, crime and deviance are an individual pathology – a set of destructive lawless behaviours actively chosen and perpetrated by individual selfishness, a lack of self-control and morality. Right realists are dismissive of the ‘theoretical’ approaches to the study of crime.
Risk society
A notion associated with the German sociologist Ulrich Beck. Beck argues that industrial society has created many new dangers of risks unknown in previous ages. The risks associated with global warming are one example.
Rituals
Formalized modes of behaviour in which the members of a group or community regularly engage. Religion represents one of the main contexts in which rituals are practised, but the scope of ritual behaviour extends well beyond this particular sphere. Most groups have ritual practices of some kind or another.
Romantic love
As distinct from passionate love, the idea of romantic love emerged in the eighteenth century, and involves the idea that marriage is based on mutual attraction, rather than on economic reasons. It is a prelude to, but is also in tension with, the idea of a pure relationship.