alienation
The condition in which an individual is isolated from his or her society, work, sense of self and/or common humanity.
Marx argued that factory workers experience alienation because they have no control over what they make or how they make it.
anomie
A situation of uncertain norms and regulations in which society no longer has the support of a firm collective consciousness.
One of the outcomes of the transition is social anomie.
anthropocene
The geological epoch defined by the impact of human activitieson the global ecosystem.
Some have described the postnatural period that we are currently living in as the Anthropocene.
bourgeoisie
The owners of the means of production in a society.
It was during this time that power moved from the hands of the aristocracy and “old money” to the new class of rising bourgeoisie who were able to amass fortunes in their lifetimes.
class consciousness
Awareness of one’s class position and interests.
Marx proposed that the workers’ false consciousness would eventually be replaced with class consciousness.
collective conscience
The communal beliefs, morals, and attitudes of a society.
Essentially there was no distinction between the individual conscience and the collective conscience.
dialectic of culture
The way in which the creation of culture is both constrained by limits given by the environment and a means to go beyond these natural limits.
To understand this dynamic, it is important to attend to the dialectic of culture.
disenchantment of the world
The replacement of magical thinking by technological rationality and calculation.
Weber’s perspective on modern society emphasizes the development of a rationalized worldview, which he referred to as the disenchantment of the world.
ethos
A way of life or a way of conducting oneself in life.
The key work here is Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905/1958) in which he lays out the characteristics of the modern ethos of work.
false consciousness
When a person’s beliefs and ideology are in conflict with his or her best interests.
In response to this problem, Marx developed the concept of false consciousness.
feudal societies
Agricultural societies that operate on a strict hierarchical system of power based around land ownership, protection and mutual obligations.
In Europe, the 9th century gave rise to feudal societies.
horticultural societies
Societies based around the cultivation of plants.
Horticultural societies formed in areas where rainfall and other conditions provided fertile soils to grow stable crops with simple hand tools.
hunter-gatherer societies
Societies that depend on hunting wild animals and gathering uncultivated plants for survival.
Of the various types of preindustrial societies, Hunter-gatherer societies demonstrate the strongest dependence on the environment.
industrial societies
Societies characterized by a reliance on mechanized labour to create material goods.
On the other hand, societies with rudimentary technology make relatively little impact on their environment, while industrial societies transform it radically.
information societies
Societies based on the production of nonmaterial goods and services.
Information societies, sometimes known as postindustrial or digital societies, are a recent development.
iron cage
A situation in which an individual is trapped by the rational and efficient processes of social institutions.
Weber calls this conundrum of modernity the iron cage.
law of three stages
The three stages of evolution that societies develop through: theological, metaphysical, and positive.
His best known sociological theory was the law of three stages, which held that all human societies and all forms of human knowledge evolve through three distinct stages from primitive to advanced.
mechanical solidarity
Social solidarity or cohesion through a shared collective consciousness with harsh punishment for deviation from the norms.
Society was held together on the basis of mechanical solidarity: a minimal division of labour and a shared collective consciousness with harsh punishment for deviation from the norms.
metaphysical stage
A stage of social evolution in which people explain events in terms of abstract or speculative ideas.
In the metaphysical stage, humans explain causes in terms of abstract, “speculative” ideas like nature, natural rights, social contracts, or “self-evident” truths.
neolithic revolution
The economic transition to sedentary, agriculture based societies beginning approximately 10,200 years.
The new horticultural technology created more stability and dependability, produced more material goods and provided the basis for the first revolution in human survival: the neolithic revolution.
organic solidarity
Social solidarity or cohesion through a complex division of labour, mutual interdependence and restitutive law.
While the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity is, in the long run, advantageous for a society, Durkheim noted that it creates periods of chaos and “normlessness.”
pastoral societies
Societies based around the domestication of animals.
Pastoral societies rely on the domestication of animals as a resource for survival.
proletariat
The wage labourers in capitalist society.
However, the rise of the bourgeoisie and the development of capitalism also brought into existence the class of “free” wage labourers, or the proletariat.
Protestant work ethic
The duty to work hard in one’s calling.
For Weber, the Protestant work ethic was at the core of the modern ethos.
rationalization
The general tendency in modern society for all institutions and most areas of life to be transformed by the application of rationality and efficiency.
Key to the answer to his questions was the concept of rationalization.
social class
A group defined by a distinct relationship to the means of production.
A social class can be defined as a group that has a distinct relationship to the means of production.
social integration
How strongly a person is connected to his or her social group.
Collective consciousness was increasingly weak in individuals and the ties of social integration that bound them to others were increasingly few.
social structure
General patterns of social behaviour and organization that persist through time.
For the sociologist, this is a lesson in how the type of society one lives in — its scale and social structure — impacts one’s experience of the world at a very fundamental perceptual level.
theological stage
A stage of social evolution in which people explain events with respect to the will of God or gods.
In the theological stage, humans explain causes in terms of the will of anthropocentric gods (the gods cause things to happen).
These terms were extracted from Introduction to Sociology – 2nd Canadian Edition by William Little, eCampusOntario (originally published by BCcampus, 2016) which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Based on Introduction to Sociology by OpenStax (© 2013 Rice University), licensed under CC BY 3.0.