Glossary

This chapter introduces a number of technical terms that sociology uses to describe social institutions precisely, and it is worth holding them together in one place. Several concern citizenship and the state: citizen, sovereignty, legitimacy, and the contrast between a state society and a stateless society. Others concern the economy and work, especially the division of labour and the growth of service industries as distinct from goods-producing ones, along with the broader idea of social mobility -- movement between one status or occupation and another. A further cluster concerns family and marriage: the rules of endogamy and exogamy, and the different numerical forms marriage can take -- monogamy, polygamy, and within polygamy, polygyny and polyandry. Finally, two terms describe how sociology understands inequality and enquiry more generally: gender, as the social expectations attached to each sex, and ideology, as the shared belie …