Sociology is the scientific study of human social relationships, groups, and societies. Its central task is to ask what the dimensions of the social world are, how they influence our behavior, and how we in turn shape and change them.

Sociology adheres to the principle of social embeddedness, the idea that economic, political, and other forms of human behavior are fundamentally shaped by social relationships. Sociologists seek to study through scientific means the social worlds that human beings consciously create.

The sociological imagination is the ability to grasp the relationship between our individual lives and the larger social forces that help to shape them. It helps us see the connection between our private lives and public issues.

Critical thinking is the ability to evaluate claims about truth by using reason and evidence. Often we accept things as true because they are familiar, seem to mesh with our own experiences, and sound right. Critical thinking instead asks us to recognize poor arguments, reject statements not supported by evidence, and even question our own assumptions.

Sociology’s roots can be traced to the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, industrialization and the birth of modern capitalism, and the urbanization of populations. Sociology emerged in part as a tool to enable people to understand dramatic changes taking place in modern societies.

Sociology generally traces its classical roots to Auguste Comte, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx. Early work in sociology reflected the concerns of the men who founded the discipline.

In the United States, scholars at the University of Chicago focused on reforming social problems stemming from industrialization and urbanization. Women and people of color worked on the margins of the discipline because of persistent discrimination.

Sociologists base their study of the social world on different theoretical perspectives that shape theory and guide research, often resulting in different conclusions. The major sociological paradigms are structural functionalism, the social conflict paradigm, and symbolic interactionism.

Major themes in sociology include the distribution of power and growing inequality, globalization and its accompanying social changes, the growth of social diversity, and the way advances in technology have changed communication, commerce, and communities.

The early founders believed that scientific knowledge could lead to shared social progress. Some modern sociologists question whether such shared scientific understanding is indeed possible.

Unlike commonsense beliefs, sociological understanding puts our biases, assumptions, and conclusions to the test.

As a science, sociology combines logically constructed theory and systematic observation in order to explain human social relations.

Inductive reasoning generalizes from specific observations; deductive reasoning consists of logically deducing the empirical implications of a particular theory or set of ideas.

A good theory is logically consistent, testable, and valid. The principle of falsification holds that if theories are to be scientific, they must be formulated in such a way that they can be disproved if wrong.

Sociological concepts must be operationally defined to yield measurable or observable variables. Often, sociologists operationally define variables so they can measure these in quantifiable values and assess validity and reliability, to eliminate bias in their research.

Quantitative analysis permits us to measure correlations between the variables and identify causal relationships. Researchers must be careful not to infer causation from correlation.

Qualitative analysis is often better suited than quantitative research to producing a deep understanding of how the people being studied view the social world. On the other hand, it is sometimes difficult to measure the reliability and validity of qualitative research.

Sociologists seek objectivity when conducting their research. One way to help ensure objectivity is through the replication of research.

Research strategies are carefully thought-out plans that guide the gathering of information about the social world. They also suggest the choice of appropriate research methods.

Research methods in sociology include survey research (which often relies on random sampling), fieldwork (including participant observation and detached observation), experiments, working with existing information, and participatory research.

Sociological research typically follows seven steps: framing the research question, reviewing the existing knowledge, selecting appropriate methods, weighing the ethical implications of the research, collecting data, analyzing data, and sharing the results.

To be ethical, researchers must be sure their research protects the privacy of subjects and does not cause them unwarranted stress. Scientific societies throughout the world have adopted codes of ethics to safeguard against the misuse and abuse of human subjects.

Culture consists of the beliefs, norms, behaviors, and products common to members of a particular social group. Language is an important component of cultures. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis points to language’s role in structuring perceptions and actions. Culture is a key topic of sociological study because as human beings we have the capacity to develop it through the creation of artifacts such as songs, foods, values, and more. Culture also influences our social development: We are products of our cultural beliefs, behaviors, and biases.

Sociologists and others who study culture generally distinguish between material and nonmaterial culture. Material culture encompasses physical artifacts—the objects created, embraced, and consumed by a given society. Nonmaterial culture is generally abstract and includes culturally accepted ideas about living and behaving. The two are intertwined, because nonmaterial culture often gives particular meanings to the objects of material culture.

Norms are the common rules of a culture that govern people’s actions. Folkways are fairly weak norms, the violation of which is tolerable. Mores are strongly held norms; violating them is subject to social or legal sanction. Taboos are the most closely held mores; violating them is socially unthinkable. Laws codify some, though not all, of society’s norms.

Beliefs are particular ideas that people accept as true, though they need not be objectively true. Beliefs can be based on faith, superstition, science, tradition, or experience.

Values are the general, abstract standards of a society and define basic, often idealized principles. We identify national values, community values, institutional values, and individual values. Values may be a source of cohesion or conflict.

Ideal culture represents the norms and values that people of a society profess to embrace. Real culture represents the real practices of people in that society.

Ethnocentrism is the habit of judging other cultures by the standards of our own.

Sociologists entreat us to embrace cultural relativism, a perspective that allows us to understand the practices of another society in terms of that society’s own norms and values rather than our own.

Multiple cultures may exist and thrive within any country or community. Some of these are subcultures, which exist together with the dominant culture but differ in some important respects from it.

High culture is an exclusive culture often limited in its accessibility and audience. High culture is widely associated with the upper class, which both defines and embraces its content. Popular culture represents entertainment, culinary, and athletic tastes that are broadly shared. As “mass culture,” popular culture is more fully associated with the middle and working classes.

Rape culture is a social culture that provides an environment conducive to rape. Some sociologists argue that we can best understand the high number of rapes and attempted rapes in the United States by considering both individual circumstances and the larger social context, which contains messages that marginalize and normalize the problem of sexual assault.

Global culture—some would say U.S. culture—has spread across the world in the form of Hollywood films, fast-food restaurants, and popular music heard in virtually every country.

Socialization is a lifelong, active process by which people learn the cultures of their society and construct a sense of who they are.

What we often think of as “human nature” is in fact learned through socialization. Sociologists argue that human behavior is not determined biologically, though biology plays some role, but develops primarily through social interaction.

Although some theories emphasize the early years, sociologists generally argue that socialization takes place throughout the life course. The theories of Sigmund Freud and Jean Piaget emphasize the early years, while those of George Herbert Mead (although his role-taking theory focused on the earlier stages of the life course), Lawrence Kohlberg, and Judith Harris give more consideration to the whole life course. According to Mead, children acquire a sense of self through symbolic interaction, including the role-taking that eventually enables the adult to take the standpoint of society as a whole.

Kohlberg built on Piaget’s ideas to argue that a person’s sense of morality develops through different stages, from that in which people strictly seek personal gain or avoid punishment to the stage in which they base moral decisions on abstract principles.

The immediate family provides the earliest and typically foremost source of socialization, but school, work, peers, mass media, and the Internet all play a significant role.

Socialization may differ by social class. Middle-class families place a somewhat greater emphasis on creativity and independence, while working-class families often stress obedience to authority. These differences, in turn, reflect the corresponding workplace differences associated with social class.

In total institutions, such as prisons, the military, and hospitals, individuals are isolated so that society can achieve administrative control of their lives. By enforcing rules that govern all aspects of daily life, from dress to schedules to interaction with other people, total institutions can open the way to resocialization, which is the breaking down of the person’s sense of self and rebuilding of the personality.

According to Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical approach, we are all actors concerned with the presentation of ourselves in social interaction. People perform their social roles on the “front stage,” while they are able to avoid performing on the “back stage.”

Ethnomethodology is a method of analysis that examines the body of commonsense knowledge and procedures by which ordinary members of a society make sense of their social circumstances and interaction.

Conversation analysis, which builds on ethnomethodology, studies the way participants in social interaction recognize and produce coherent action.

The importance of social groups in our lives is one of the salient features of the modern world. Social groups are collections of people who share a sense of common identity and regularly interact with one another based on shared expectations. There are many conceptual ways to distinguish social groups sociologically in order to better understand them.

Among the most important characteristics of a group is whether or not it serves as a reference group—that is, a group that provides standards by which we judge ourselves in terms of how we think we appear to others, what sociologist Charles Horton Cooley termed the “–.”

Group size is another variable that is an important factor in group dynamics. Although their intensity may diminish, larger groups tend to be more stable than smaller groups of two (dyads) or three (triads) people. While even small groups can develop a formal group structure, larger groups develop a formal structure.

Formal structures include some people in leadership roles—that is, those group members who are able to influence the behavior of the other members of a group. The most common form of leadership is transactional—that is, routine leadership concerned with getting the job done. Less common is transformational leadership, which is concerned with changing the very nature of the group itself.

Leadership roles imply that the role occupant is accorded some power, the ability to mobilize resources and get things done despite resistance. Power derives from two principal sources: the personality of the leader (personal power) and the position that the leader occupies (positional power). Max Weber highlighted the importance of charisma as a source of leadership as well as leadership deriving from traditional authority (a queen inherits a throne, for example).

In general people are highly susceptible to group pressure. Many people will conform to group norms or obey orders from an authority figure, even when there are potentially negative consequences for others, or even themselves.

Important aspects of groups are the networks that are formed between groups and people in them. Networks constitute a broad source of relationships, direct and indirect, including connections that may be extremely important in business and politics. Women, people of color, and lower-income people typically have less access to the most influential economic and political networks than do upper-class White males in U.S. society.

As a consequence of access to powerful social networks, there is an unequal division of social capital in society. Social capital refers to the knowledge and connections that enable people to cooperate with one another for mutual benefit and extend their influence. Some social scientists have argued that social capital has declined in the United States during the last quarter-century—a process they worry indicates a decline in Americans’ commitment to civic engagement.

Formal organizations are organizations that are rationally designed to achieve their objectives by means of rules, regulations, and procedures. They may be utilitarian, coercive, or normative, depending on the reasons for joining. One of the most common types of formal organizations in modern society is the bureaucracy. Bureaucracies are characterized by written rules and regulations, specialized offices, a hierarchical structure, impersonality in record keeping, and a professional administrative staff.

The iron law of oligarchy holds that large-scale organizations tend to concentrate power in the hands of a few people. As a result, even supposedly democratic organizations, when they become large, tend to become undemocratic.

A number of organizational alternatives to bureaucracies exist. These include collectives, which emphasize cooperation, consensus, and humanistic relations. Networked organizations, which increase flexibility by reducing hierarchy, are like collectives in organization.

Two important forms of global organization are international governmental organizations (IGOs) and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs). Both play an increasingly important role in the world today, and IGOs—particularly the United Nations—may become key organizational actors as the pace of globalization increases.

Notions of what constitutes deviance vary considerably and are relative to the norms and values of particular cultures as well as the labels applied by certain groups or individuals to specific behaviors, actions, practices, or conditions. Even crimes, which are particular forms of especially serious deviance, differ from place to place and over time, and they depend on social and political processes.

The fact that the United States is a pluralistic society makes it difficult to establish universally accepted notions of deviance.

Most sociologists do not believe there is a direct causal link between biology and deviance. Whatever the role of biology, deviant behaviors are culturally defined and socially learned.

Functionalist theorists explain deviance in terms of the functions it performs for society. Émile Durkheim argued that some degree of deviance serves to reaffirm society’s normative boundaries. Robert K. Merton argued that deviance reflects structural strain between the culturally defined goals of a society and the means society provides for achieving those goals. Opportunity theory emphasizes access to deviance as a major source of deviance. Control theories focus on the presence of interpersonal bonds as a means of keeping deviance in check.

Conflict theories explain deviance in terms of the conflict between different groups, classes, or subcultures in society. Class-dominant theories of deviance emphasize how wealthy and powerful groups are able to define as deviant any behavior that runs counter to their interests. Structural contradiction theory argues that conflicts are inherent in social structure; it sees the sorts of structural strains identified by Merton as being built into society itself. Feminist perspectives on deviance remind us that, until relatively recently, research on deviance was almost exclusively conducted on males. Recent feminist theories have argued that many women labeled as deviant are themselves victims of deviant behavior, such as “delinquent” girls who are, in fact, runaways escaping sexual and physical abuse.

Symbolic interactionist theorists argue that deviance, like all forms of human behavior, results from the ways in which we come to see ourselves through the eyes of others. One version of symbolic interactionism is labeling theory, which argues that deviance results mainly from the labels others attach to our behavior.

Although crime is often depicted as concentrated among poor racial minorities, crimes are committed by people from all walks of life. White-collar crime and state crime are two examples of crime committed by people in positions of wealth and power. They exact enormous financial and personal costs from society.

Deviance and criminal deviance are both controlled socially through the use of informal social controls, such as socialization, and formal social controls, such as arrests and imprisonment.

Criminal deviance is controlled formally, and in modern societies including the United States this most often means incapacitating criminals by imprisoning them. Among industrialized nations, the United States currently has the highest proportion of its population in prison, giving rise to a large and powerful crime control industry.

Although there is a public perception that crime is increasing, crime has steadily decreased over the 35 years the government has been collecting systematic data on it. Violent crimes are the most heavily publicized, but the most common are property crimes and victimless crimes.

A disproportionate number of people of color are arrested and incarcerated in the United States. In addition, the “war on drugs” is focused on urban areas where poor people of color are concentrated.

Class societies are more open than caste societies. In caste societies, a person’s position in the hierarchy is determined by ascribed characteristics such as race or birth status. In class societies, position is determined by what someone achieves, and mobility is looked upon favorably. However, caste-like barriers to mobility still exist in class societies.

Class refers to a person’s economic role in society, associated with differences in income, wealth, and the type of work that he or she does. Class position strongly influences an individual’s life chances—the opportunities and obstacles one encounters in areas such as education, social life, and work. Important components of class position are occupation, income, and wealth.

We can measure inequality in the United States by looking at disparities in income, wealth, health, and access to credit and goods. All these indicators show that inequality in the United States is substantial and growing.

Since the early 1970s, the gap has grown between the rich and the poor, and between the rich and everyone else. Some of the gap is attributable to the transformation of the U.S. economy from industrial to postindustrial, which has helped the best educated and hurt the least educated.

Poverty is a significant problem in the United States: Over 15% of the population was officially poor in 2012. The formula used to measure poverty gives us a sense of the problem, but it has limitations of which we should be aware.

Researchers distinguish between household (or individual) poverty and neighborhood poverty. Studies suggest that living in a poor neighborhood amplifies the effects of poverty and also poses challenges, including limited mobility, to non-poor residents.

Functionalist theorists argue that inequality exists and persists because it is positively functional for society. Inequality is necessary to motivate the best people to assume the most important occupational positions.

Conflict theorists argue that the privileged classes benefit from inequality and that inequality inhibits the discovery of talented people rather than fostering it. Conflict theory suggests that classes, with differential access to power and resources, are in conflict. The interests of the well-off are most likely to be realized.

Global inequality can be described in terms of disparities in income, wealth, health, education, and access to safe, hygienic sanitation, among others. Global gaps between high income, middle income, and low income countries remain substantial even as some countries are effectively addressing problems like malnutrition.

While global inequalities remain substantial, the gap in access to mobile technology is closing as nearly 6 of the world’s 7 billion people now have access to a working mobile phone. 

Modernization theorists posit that global underdevelopment exists in states that cling to traditional cultures and fail to build modern state and market institutions. Dependency theorists and world systems theorists highlight external variables that point out how high-income states benefit from the economic marginality of low-income states.

Sociologists describe and analyze the phenomenon of a global elite, a transglobal class of professionals who exercise considerable economic and political power that is not limited by national borders. The global power elite, while not entirely new, is a phenomenon of modernity, brought into growing significance by technological innovation and globalization.

Sklair theorizes a transnational capitalist class that is composed of elites with economic, political, and cultural ideological influence and argues that it organizes the global order in a manner that realizes its own interests and contributes to the expansion and legitimation of a global consumerist ideology. Bauman looks at development of population categories defined by their relationship to space, in particular their mobility or lack of mobility.

Race is not a biological category but a social construct. Its societal significance derives from the fact that people in a particular culture believe, falsely, that there are biologically distinguishable races and then act on the basis of this belief. The perceived differences are often distorted and lead to prejudice and discrimination.

Many societies include different ethnic groups whose history, culture, and practices differ from one another.

Minority groups, typically because of their race or ethnicity, may experience prejudice and discrimination. Different types of minority/dominant group relations include expulsion, assimilation, segregation, and cultural pluralism.

Prejudice usually relies on stereotyping and scapegoating. During difficult economic times prejudice may increase, as people seek someone to blame for their predicament.

The civil rights struggles beginning over 60 years ago led to passage of civil rights and affirmative action legislation that has reduced, but not eliminated, the effects of prejudice and discrimination against minorities.

Although discrimination is against the law in the United States, it is still widely practiced. Institutionalized discrimination in particular results in the unequal treatment of minorities in employment, housing, education, and other areas.

The United States is a multiethnic, multiracial society. Minority groups—including American Indians, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans—make up over 30% of the population. The U.S. Census Bureau has projected that this figure will rise to nearly 50% in the next 40 years.

Historically, the vast majority of immigrants to the United States have come from Europe, but in recent years the pattern has changed, with most coming from Latin America and Asia.

With a few exceptions, minority groups are disadvantaged in the United States relative to the majority White population in terms of income, the number living in poverty, and the quality of education and health, as well as political voice. Though the disadvantages of dark skin are recognized, the privileges of white skin have not been widely acknowledged.

Genocide is the mass and systematic destruction of a people or a nation. The 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide obligates signatories to act against genocide.

Gender roles refer to the attitudes and behaviors considered appropriately “masculine” or “feminine” in a particular culture. In understanding such roles, sociologists use the term sex to refer to biological differences between males and females, and gender to refer to differences that are socially learned.

Children begin to learn culturally appropriate masculine and feminine gender identities as soon as they are born, and these roles are reinforced and renegotiated throughout life.

Gender roles are learned through social interaction with others. Early family influences, peer pressure, the mass media, and the hidden curriculum in schools are especially important sources of gender socialization.

Gender stratification is found in virtually all known societies, largely because, until the advent of modern industrial production, the requirements of childbearing and nursing constrained women to roles less likely to provide major sources of food. In modern societies, technological changes have removed such barriers to full equality, although stratification continues to persist.

Women do more housework than men in all industrial societies, even when they hold paid employment outside the home.

Women typically hold lower-paying occupations than men and are paid less than men for similar jobs. They have made gains but are still less likely to be promoted in most positions than their male peers.

Sexual harassment continues to be a problem. Schools are sites of harassment that can target young people based on gender or sexual orientation.

Liberal feminism argues that women’s inequality is primarily the result of imperfect institutions. Socialist feminism argues that women’s inequality results from the combination of capitalistic economic relations and male domination. Radical feminism focuses on patriarchy as the source of domination. Finally, multicultural feminism emphasizes ending inequality for all women, regardless of race, class, nationality, age, sexual orientation, or other characteristics. Third wave feminism is a nascent movement highlighting women’s agency.

Globally, being born female is still a risk. Women are disadvantaged in access to power, health care, and safety. At the same time, women are taking the initiative in many developing areas to improve their own lives and those of their communities and families.

The meaning of family is socially constructed within a particular culture, and in the United States, as in other modern societies, the meaning and practices of family life have been changing.

Marriage, found in some form in all societies, varies from the most common form—monogamy—to many variations like polygamy, in which a person has multiple spouses simultaneously.

The functionalist perspective on the family highlights its functionality in terms of social stability and order, emphasizing such activities as sex role allocation and child socialization.

The feminist perspectives are more conflict-oriented, highlighting the sexual division of labor in society and its stratifying effects. Feminist perspectives also examine the different experiences of men and women in marriage and the way social expectations and roles affect those experiences. The psychodynamic feminist perspective takes a sociopsychological perspective, emphasizing the impact of early mothering on the later assumption of gender roles.

In modern society, the composition of the family and the roles within it are shifting. The age at first marriage has risen across the board, and marriage has declined, particularly among the less educated, and nonmarital births account for over 40% of all births. Divorce has leveled off but remains at a high level. Same-sex marriage has growing public support, though legislation at the state and federal level legalizing it—and divorce—lags behind changes in public attitudes.

Socioeconomic class status affects child-rearing practices and family formation patterns. Lower rates of marriage and high rates of nonmarital births are present among the poor and working class. Middle class family life is often structured around the needs of children.

The family may be a site of both nurturing and caring, and a site of violence such as spousal and child abuse, which we observe at high rates, and elder abuse.

In the United States, the effects of globalization include changes in household income and employment opportunities. Women from developing countries often leave home and children to work for families in the developing world.

Education refers to the transmission of society’s norms, values, and knowledge base by means of direct instruction.

Mass education spread with industrialization and the need for widespread literacy. Today the need is not just for literacy but for specialized training as well. All industrial societies today, including the United States, have a system of public education that continues through the high school and frequently university levels. Such societies are sometimes termed credential societies, in that access to desirable jobs and social status depends on the possession of a certificate or diploma.

Functionalist theories of education emphasize the role of the school in serving the needs of society by socializing students and filling positions in the social order, while conflict theories emphasize its role in reproducing rather than reducing social inequality.

Symbolic interactionist theory, by focusing on the classroom itself, reveals how teachers’ perceptions of students—as well as students’ self-perceptions—are important in shaping the students’ performance.

Early literacy and later educational attainment are powerfully correlated. Access to books and early reading experiences are among the strongest predictors of basic literacy at an early age. Researchers measure multiple levels of literacy.

U.S. public schools are highly segregated by race and ethnicity. Before the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, segregation was legal. Since that time, schools have continued to show de facto segregation, because segregated residential patterns still exist, because many White parents decide to send their children to private schools, and because the courts have recently limited the scope of previous laws aimed at promoting full integration.

The issues of extending the school day and school year have long been on the educational agenda. The roots of today’s calendar help us to understand its evolution and to consider its differential effects on children from different socioeconomic classes.

Differences in school funding by race, ethnicity, and class reinforce existing patterns of social inequality. In general, the higher someone’s social class, the more likely he or she is to complete high school and college. On the other hand, low-income people are often trapped in a cycle of low educational attainment and poverty.

There is a strong demonstrable relationship between educational attainment, employment prospects, and income. There is also a correlation between the socioeconomic status of a family and the probability of its members’ further educational attainment.

Both the utility and the legality of college internships have become hotly debated. Internships may offer students substantial value in terms of experience, but critics say they also exploit students’ labor and skills.

U.S. college dropout rates are high, exceeding those of many other industrialized countries. Key reasons for dropping out include financial strain, lack of academic preparation, and difficulty balancing competing demands of school, work, and family.

The correlation between educational attainment and income and employment opportunities holds around the globe.

U.S. students are studying abroad more often and in more places than in the past. Interest in new destinations, including the Middle East, is opening the world to more young people.

Religion is a system of common beliefs and rituals centered on “sacred things” that unites believers and provides a sense of meaning and purpose. Religion may serve many functions in society, lending groups a common worldview, helping to ritualize or routinize behaviors or beliefs, and providing people with a sense of purpose.

Sociologists who study religion are interested in how religion helps to organize and structure societies and group behavior, along with the functions religion serves for producing and maintaining group solidarity (or, conversely, creates instability in certain circumstances), and how religion becomes a force in society and within the lives of individuals.

Classical theorists have differing interpretations of religion’s sociological function. Marx has emphasized the role of religion in pacifying the oppressed masses; Weber highlighted the role of Protestantism in the development of capitalism; Durkheim looked at the role of religion in reinforcing social solidarity.

The modern religious economy perspective emphasizes the role of competition between groups as religions seek followers and potential adherents seek affiliations.

Religions manifest themselves in more than just shared beliefs. They take the form of institutions. Types of religious organizations can be conceptually placed on a spectrum of conventionality in larger society. A church would be on the far end of conventionality, and a cult would fit on the opposite end of the spectrum.

New religious movements (NRMs) represent a break from existing religious organizations and a push toward new religious practices.

Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism are the three largest and most practiced religions on earth, but Judaism, Buddhism, and Confucianism are also influential.

Women have been historically marginalized in major world religions. Today some activists seek to introduce nonsexist language into scripture and services and to expand women’s roles and representation in religious beliefs and practices.

Youth and young adults in the United States today are less likely to claim a religious affiliation than older adults. At the same time, religious faith continues to exercise influence in U.S. life, including in politics.

Disestablishment refers to periods in which the political influence of religion is significantly challenged.

Civil religion refers to the elevation of a nation as an object of worship.

Globalization has provided challenges and opportunities to religions of the world. Religions may function to bring both peace and conflict at the global level.

The world today is politically divided into 195 nation-states. Most countries are made up of many different peoples, brought together through warfare, conquest, or boundaries drawn by colonial authorities without respect to preexisting ethnic or religious differences.

Modern countries are characterized by governments that claim complete and final authority over their citizens; a system of law; and notions of citizenship that contain obligations as well as civil, social, and political rights.

State power is typical based on one of three kinds of legitimate authority: traditional authority, based on custom and habit; rational-legal authority, based on a belief in the law; and charismatic authority, based on the perceived inspirational qualities of a leader.

Functionalist theories of power argue that the role of the government is to neutrally mediate between competing interests; it argues that the influence of one group is usually offset by that of another group with an opposing view. Conflict theories of state power draw the opposite conclusion: that the state serves the interests of the most powerful economic and political groups in society. Different versions of social conflict theories emphasize the importance of a power elite, structural contradictions, and the relative autonomy of state power from the economic elites.

Governance in the modern world has taken a number of forms, including authoritarianism (including monarchies and dictatorships), totalitarianism, and democracy.

Democracy is one of the primary forms of governance in the world today, and most countries claim to be democratic in theory if not in practice. Most democratic countries practice representative democracy rather than direct democracy.

The U.S. political system is characterized by low voter turnouts. Turnout, however, varies on the basis of demographic variables like age and education.

In the United States, elected officials depend heavily on financial support to get elected and to remain in office. Fund-raising is a major part of politics, and individuals and organizations that contribute heavily do so in hopes of influencing politicians. Special interests use lobbyists to exercise influence in U.S. politics. Politicians still depend on their constituents’ vote to get elected, and so they must satisfy their voters as well as special interests. 

We can examine war from various sociological perspectives. The functionalist perspective asks about the manifest (obvious) and latent (hidden) functions of war and conflict in society. The conflict perspective asks who benefits from war and conflict, and who loses.

The Global War on Terror was initiated in 2001, after the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. The GWOT encompassed the diplomatic, military, and economic actions taken by the United States and its allies to fight terrorism. The term was replaced in 2009.

No single image of a terrorist threat is shared across communities and countries and cultures. Irishman Michael Collins is an example of someone regarded as a hero by some and a terrorist by others.

Terrorism is a calculated use of violence to coerce or to inspire fear. It is also “theater”—intended to send a powerful message to a distinct or a global audience.

The economy—the social institution that organizes the ways in which a society produces, distributes, and consumes goods and services—is one of the most important institutions in society.

Three major technological revolutions in human history have brought radically new forms of economic organization. The first led to agriculture, the second to modern industry, and the third to the postindustrial society that characterizes the modern United States.

Industrial society is characterized by automation, the modern factory, mass production, scientific management, and modern social classes. Postindustrial society is characterized by the use of computers, the increased importance of higher education for well-paying jobs, flexible forms of production, increased reliance on outsourcing, and the growth of the service economy.

Although postindustrial society holds the promise of prosperity for people who work with ideas and information, automation and globalization have also allowed for new forms of exploitation of the global workforce and job loss and declining wages for some workers in manufacturing and other sectors.

Capitalism and socialism are the two principal types of political-economic systems that emerged with industrial society. While both are committed to higher standards of living through economic growth, they differ on the desirability of private property ownership and the appropriate role of government. Both systems have theoretical and practical strengths and weaknesses.

Work consists of any human effort that adds something of value to goods and services that are available to others. Economists consider three broad categories of work: the formal economy, the informal or underground economy, and unpaid labor.

The informal economy is an important part of the U.S. economy even though it does not appear in official labor statistics. Although in industrial societies the informal economy tends to diminish in importance, in recent years this process has reversed itself.

In the modern economy, consumption replaces production as the most important economic process. The means of consumption, as defined by sociologist George Ritzer (1999), are “those things that make it possible for people to acquire goods and services and for the same people to be controlled and exploited as consumers” (p. 57). A mall offers consumers buying options, but it also is part of a system of consumer control, as consumers are seduced into buying what they do not need.

We acquire goods in part based on our consideration of reference groups. As consumption reference groups have changed in the past decades, U.S. consumers have increased spending and taken on a much larger debt load.

Economic globalization is the result of many factors: technological advances that greatly increased the speed of communication and transportation while lowering their costs; increased educational attainment in low- and middle-income countries; and the opening of many national economies to the world capitalist market. Globalization has had profound effects on the U.S. economy.

The world’s population is growing at a rapid rate, having increased as much since 1950 as it did in the preceding 4 million years. Growth is highly uneven, with most taking place in developing countries. Other regions will lose population, including Eastern Europe (projected to face a 14% decline).

Annual population growth or decline in a country is the result of four factors: (1) the number of people born in the country during the year; (2) the number who die; (3) the number who immigrate into the country; and (4) the number who emigrate out. In the language of demographers, population changes are based on , mortality, and net .

The theory of the demographic transition proposes that many societies go through roughly the same stages of population growth: low growth resulting from high fertility and equally high mortality, a transitional stage of explosive growth resulting from high fertility and low mortality, and a final stage of slow or no growth resulting from low fertility and low mortality.

Advanced industrial states may be undergoing a second demographic transition, seen as changes in family patterns that affect population. For instance, in the world’s industrialized states divorce has increased, cohabitation has increased, marriage has declined, fertility has fallen, and nonmarital births as a proportion of all births have increased.

Thomas Malthus developed the theory of : the belief that, like compound interest, a constant rate of population growth produces a population that grows by an increasing amount with each passing year. Malthus claimed that while population grows exponentially, the food supply does not; the earth’s resources are finite. Others, such as economist Julian Simon, suggest that population growth increases humanity’s potential for uncovering talent and innovation.

Karl Marx was critical of Malthus and felt the central problem was not a mismatch between population size and resource availability, but rather inequitable distribution of resources between the wealthy and the disadvantaged.

Sociologist Louis Wirth (1938) saw the city as a large, densely populated, and permanent settlement that brought together heterogeneous populations. While cities of the past served primarily as centers of trade, in the 18th century industrial cities emerged as centers of manufacturing. By the 19th century industrialization was advancing hand in hand with .

Some of the most highly urbanized countries in the world today are those that only a century ago were almost entirely rural. As recently as 1950, only 18% of the inhabitants of developing countries lived in urban areas. In 2010, fully 44% did. By 2015, the proportion of the world’s people living in across the world will approach 50%.

With the emergence of postindustrial society, have appeared. These metropolitan areas are highly interconnected with one another and serve as centers of global political and economic decision making, finance, and culture. Examples include New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Singapore.

The combination of rapid population growth and modernization, in the form of industrialization and urbanization, takes a toll on the global environment and its resources. Both under- and overdevelopment threaten the environment.

The study of and population growth helps us gain a fuller understanding of the ways that micro-level events, such as childbearing decisions in a family, are linked to macro-level issues such as population growth or decline, threats of mortality, and challenges to the sustainability of resources and development.

Sociologists disagree about whether social change is gradual or abrupt, and about whether all societies are changing in roughly the same direction. The evolutionary, revolutionary, and are three approaches to these questions.

Some early sociologists viewed as a form of group contagion in which the veneer of civilization gave way to more instinctive, animal-like forms of behavior.

A more sociological approach, theory, examines the ways in which crowds and other forms of collective behavior develop their own rules and shared understandings.

The most comprehensive theory of collective behavior, value-added theory, attempts to take into account the necessary conditions for collective behavior at the individual, organizational, and even societal levels.

Social movements have been important historical vehicles for bringing about social change. They are usually achieved through (SMOs), which we study using the tools and understandings of organizational sociology.

We can classify social movements as depending on their vision of social change.

Resource mobilization theory argues that we can explain the success or failure of SMOs not by the degree of social strain that may explain their origins, but by their organizational ability to marshal the financial and personal resources they need.

In recent years sociologists have sought to explain how align their own beliefs and values with those of their potential constituents in the wider society. Frame alignment activities range from modifying the beliefs of the SMO to attempting to change the beliefs of the entire society.

Many social movements depend heavily on for their support. Micromobilization contexts are also important incubators of social movements.

Globalization has created an opportunity for the formation of global social movements, since many of the problems in the world today are global and require global solutions.

New social movements, organized around issues of personal identity and values, differ from earlier social movements because they focus on symbols and information as well as material issues; participation is frequently seen as an end in itself; they are organized as networks rather than bureaucratically; and they emphasize the interconnectedness of social groups and larger social entities.