Introduction to Sociology

Yanıt Açıklaması: According to sociological approach, religion should primarily be taken a social rather than theological or psychological phenomenon. Sociology focuses on the social consequences and correlates of religion but no sociological explanations suggest the truth or falsity of any religious belief. When sociologists study religion, they do so as unbiased scientists and not as believers (or disbelievers) in any particular faith. This stance has a number of implications: Sociologists are not concerned with whether religious beliefs are true or false. The sociological perspective regards religions as socially constructed by human beings.

Yanıt Açıklaması: Marx noted that not only religious ideas, but also all cultural ideas are a reflection of the material production system and thus serve the interests of the dominant class.

Yanıt Açıklaması: A recent change in family life patterns in Western societies is that more and more unmarried couples are having children. The answer is C.

Yanıt Açıklaması: Marxist view of religion is criticised because it is based on a reductionist argument where religion is merely the reflection of societal forces. The answer is A.

Yanıt Açıklaması: Cultural Lag belongs to William Ogburn (1886-1959). Ogburn wanted to draw attention to the incompatibility that arises in the process of change in the reciprocal relationship of the material and spiritual culture in a social system. According to him, there forms a gap when the changes in material culture are followed with a certain delay by spiritual culture. It is also an example of cultural lag when people who did not own mobile phones until recently talk on the phone in a way that annoys people in their surroundings after receiving a mobile phone. The above example can be considered as cultural lag. The correct option is A.

Yanıt Açıklaması: According to Berger and Luckmann, religion is socially constructed as a means of responding to life's uncertainties and disruptions.

Yanıt Açıklaması: If Murdock’s definition of family is accepted, there is no family in Nayar society because husbands and wives do not maintain a sexually approved adult relationship, and they do not live together or cooperate economically. In this case, either Murdock defined family too narrowly or the family is not universal.

Yanıt Açıklaması: The norms are cultural rules, which arise with the reward and punishment system and affect the individuals’ behaviours. All cultures, subcultures and groups have distinctive and specific norms that direct correct behaviours. The acts and laws, rules about clothing, games and sports, etc. all reflect social norms. The rules are required for a society. There will be chaos in a society, where norms do not exist. The norm is a system of rules with sanctions. The correct answer is B.

Yanıt Açıklaması: Endogamy is the practice of marrying only within a specific ethnic, social or religious group and rejecting people out of this group

Yanıt Açıklaması: Values: The values serve an important function in terms of determining which attitudes and behaviors are right or wrong, fair or unfair. - Everything in the life of a society is perceived according to values. Values are the principles such as freedom and equality that define the ideal principles of what is desired and right in a society or group. Values might create conflict in the same way that they provide behavioral rules. -Values are the cultural determinants of behaviors and they define the behaviors expected from members of a culture and which behaviors are to be avoided. The differences in values are reflected as differences in behaviors. -The acts and laws, rules about clothing, games and sports, etc. all reflect social norms.

Yanıt Açıklaması: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism -religion responds to the basic human need to understand the purpose of life. In doing so, religion must give meaning to the social world within which life occurs.

Yanıt Açıklaması: Secondary Deviance: The cases in whichan individual accepts the label and starts to consider himself/herself as a deviant. It is the answer given by individuals or groups to social reaction. Some kinds of behaviors face a social response and the label causes a continuation of the deviant behavior by holding a central place in the identity of the individual. Someone may be more likely to deviate as a result of being identified as drunk or alcoholic and excluded from the group, and in these cases they need friendship with people who shut their eyes to these cases.

Yanıt Açıklaması: The natural law approach which was widely accepted in the First Age was almost forgotten in the Middle Age under the influence of Christianity and the search for a “natural law” outside the “dogma” was not welcomed. In the 16th century, the natural law was interpreted by Jean Bodin (1530-1596) as a means of legitimizing the absolute monarchy.

Yanıt Açıklaması: The countries with the highest religious diversity are mostly in the Asian-Pacific.

Yanıt Açıklaması: A and E are organized crimes, while B and C can be cybercrimes. However, white-collar crimes are committed by individuals belonging to wealthy segments of society, such as tax evasion, illegal sales, securities and real estate frauds and embezzlement. The answer is D.

Yanıt Açıklaması: This approach focuses on the social unity and integrative functions of culture. The answer is B.

Yanıt Açıklaması: The concept of sociological imagination is proposed by American sociologist C. Wright Mills to define the awareness of relationship between personal, private experience and wider society. Sociological imagination means to comprehend the history, the biography, and their relationship in the society.

Yanıt Açıklaması: Deviance is closely related to the social structure and culture from which it emerges as a social phenomenon. The social bases of deviance could be listed as follows: Deviance varies depending on cultural norms. No thought or behavior is deviant by itself, but they become deviant in terms of their relation to certain norms. People become deviant because the others qualify them as such. The definition of norms and violations of rules by societies involves social power.

Yanıt Açıklaması: Value: The thoughts or principles that are thought to be true and necessary by the majority of its members in order to sustain the existence of a society or a social group. Values are the criteria that tell us what is right, what is wrong, what is wanted and what is not wanted in determining our behavior within society. Values contain norms, but they are more general and abstract than norms. For example, hospitality is an important asset or value of Turkish society. However, there is no absolute consensus on all values in today’s ethnically and culturally differentiated class societies.

Yanıt Açıklaması: In its earliest formulations by Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Marx, Comte, and Spencer, there is little doubt that secularization involved a linear and unstoppable decline of religion to the point of its disappearance. August Comte, pioneering French sociologist as a founder of discipline of sociology, suggests that human history passed through three stages, namely, theological, metaphysical and positive stage.