What's in Intro Sociology: All 21 Units, in Order

Introduction to Sociology is usually the first course where you are asked to look at ordinary life, a family dinner, a classroom, a job, as the product of social forces rather than individual choice. It is a wide course. It moves from theory and research methods through culture and socialization, then spends a long middle section on inequality, and ends with a tour of the major social institutions.

Encodr's free Introduction to Sociology course follows the 21 chapters of OpenStax Introduction to Sociology 3e in book order: 21 units, 79 chapters and 1,254 study cards, drawn from 22 sources. Each chapter opens with a short notes card. Here is what each unit covers, in the order the course teaches it.

Foundations: theory and method (units 1-2)

Unit 1, An Introduction to Sociology (4 chapters, 61 cards). What sociology is, the difference between micro-level analysis (small groups, face-to-face interaction) and macro-level analysis (large groups, broad trends), and C. Wright Mills's sociological imagination: seeing how a private decision connects to history and social structure. Then the founders. Comte and positivism, Martineau, Marx and class struggle, Spencer, Durkheim and social facts, Weber and verstehen, Du Bois, Addams, Cooley and Mead. The unit closes with the three paradigms the rest of the course keeps returning to: structural functionalism, conflict theory and symbolic interactionism. Those three get their own explainer in functionalism, conflict theory and symbolic interactionism compared.

Unit 2, Sociological Research (4 chapters, 78 cards). The scientific method applied to society: hypotheses, independent and dependent variables, reliability versus validity, operational definitions. Then the methods themselves, surveys, field research and participant observation, ethnography, case studies, experiments, and secondary data and content analysis, followed by research ethics: informed consent, value neutrality, the ASA code of ethics, and the cases that shaped the rules, including Tuskegee, Henrietta Lacks, Milgram and the Stanford prison study.

This is the most "applied" part of the course. Exams describe a study and ask what method it used or what went wrong with it.

The individual and society (units 3-7)

Unit 3, Culture (4 chapters, 74 cards). Material and nonmaterial culture, cultural universals, ethnocentrism versus cultural relativism, values, beliefs and norms (formal and informal, mores and folkways), sanctions, symbols and language, subcultures and countercultures, Bourdieu's cultural capital, diffusion and culture lag.

Unit 4, Society and Social Interaction (3 chapters, 57 cards). Types of societies from hunter-gatherer to information society, the classical theorists' views of society (Durkheim's mechanical and organic solidarity and anomie, Marx's base and superstructure, Weber's rationalization and iron cage), and the social construction of reality: the Thomas theorem, status and role, role strain and role conflict, and Goffman's dramaturgy.

Unit 5, Socialization (4 chapters, 59 cards). Nature versus nurture, theories of self-development (Cooley, Mead's preparatory, play and game stages, Freud, Erikson, Piaget, Kohlberg and Gilligan's critique), agents of socialization from family to mass media, the hidden curriculum, and resocialization in total institutions.

Unit 6, Groups and Organizations (3 chapters, 56 cards). Primary and secondary groups, in-groups and out-groups, dyads and triads, leadership styles, conformity (Asch and Milgram), the bystander effect, and formal organizations: Weber's bureaucracy, Michels's iron law of oligarchy and Ritzer's McDonaldization.

Unit 7, Deviance, Crime and Social Control (5 chapters, 86 cards, the largest unit). What deviance is, sanctions and social control, then the theories: Durkheim and Merton's strain theory with its five responses, social disorganization, conflict theory, labeling theory (primary and secondary deviance, master status), Sutherland's differential association, Hirschi's control theory and Sykes and Matza's neutralization techniques. It ends with crime measurement (UCR versus NCVS) and the US criminal justice system.

A lot of this half overlaps with a psychology course. Socialization, conformity and the bystander effect also show up in what's in Intro Psychology, from the other side of the mind-versus-society line.

Inequality (units 8-12)

Unit 8, Media and Technology (4 chapters, 44 cards). The digital divide and knowledge gap, net neutrality, new media, planned obsolescence, media consolidation, McLuhan's global village, and the three perspectives applied to media.

Unit 9, Social Stratification in the US (4 chapters, 76 cards). Wealth versus income, caste and class systems, meritocracy as an ideal, the US class structure, intergenerational, intragenerational and structural mobility, absolute and relative poverty, and the Davis-Moore thesis with Tumin's critique.

Unit 10, Global Inequality (3 chapters, 59 cards). Measuring inequality between nations (the Human Development Index, the Gini coefficient, World Bank income tiers), Wallerstein's core, semi-periphery and periphery, extreme and relative poverty, modern slavery, and modernization theory versus dependency theory.

Unit 11, Race and Ethnicity (6 chapters, 77 cards, the most chapters). Race as socially constructed, minority groups defined by power rather than size, stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination and systemic racism, intersectionality, intergroup relations from pluralism to genocide, de jure versus de facto segregation, and the histories of Native American, African American, Asian American, White and Hispanic American groups.

Unit 12, Gender, Sex and Sexuality (4 chapters, 75 cards). Sex, gender, gender identity and sexual orientation as separate concepts, gender socialization, sexism and the glass ceiling, the theoretical perspectives on gender including "doing gender", and the sociology of sexuality.

Social institutions (units 13-19)

Unit 13, Aging and the Elderly (4 chapters, 44 cards). Cohorts, the dependency ratio, primary and secondary aging, hospice, ageism and elder abuse, and the theories of aging (disengagement, activity, continuity and others).

Unit 14, Marriage and Family (3 chapters, 53 cards). Definitions of marriage and family, kinship and residence patterns, Murdock's four universal family functions, family variations, and intimate partner violence and child abuse.

Unit 15, Religion (3 chapters, 42 cards). Durkheim's sacred and profane, Weber's Protestant work ethic, Marx on religion and inequality, ecclesia, denomination, sect and cult, secularization and the religious "nones".

Unit 16, Education (3 chapters, 56 cards). Manifest and latent functions of schooling, the hidden curriculum, tracking, cultural capital, the self-fulfilling prophecy, the Coleman Report, and federal education laws such as No Child Left Behind and IDEA.

Unit 17, Government and Politics (4 chapters, 39 cards, the smallest unit). Weber's three types of authority, forms of government, voting rights in the US, and Mills's power elite. If this unit is the part you liked, what's in American Government covers the same institutions as a full political science course.

Unit 18, Work and the Economy (3 chapters, 41 cards). Economic sectors, capitalism, socialism and mixed economies, globalization and multinational corporations, outsourcing, polarization of jobs, and underemployment. Economics students will recognize the vocabulary from what's in Principles of Macroeconomics, which treats the same topics with models instead of theories of power.

Unit 19, Health and Medicine (5 chapters, 59 cards). The social construction of health, medicalization, global health patterns, disparities in US health by race, class and gender, health systems compared (socialized versus universal), and Parsons's sick role.

Social change (units 20-21)

Unit 20, Population, Urbanization and the Environment (3 chapters, 59 cards). Demography's three pillars (fertility, mortality and migration), Malthus, the demographic transition, suburbs and gentrification, the tragedy of the commons and environmental racism.

Unit 21, Social Movements and Social Change (3 chapters, 59 cards). Collective behavior and crowd types, emergent norm and value-added theory, types of social movements, resource mobilization, framing, and the drivers of social change, ending with Ogburn's cultural lag.

What's heavy and what's light

Sociology has very little math. The few numbers you meet are rates per 1,000 people in demography and the 0-to-1 scale of the Gini coefficient. The weight is elsewhere:

• Names. Almost every unit attaches ideas to theorists, and exams ask which theorist said what. Unit 1, unit 4 and unit 7 carry the most names.
• Close pairs. Manifest versus latent, primary versus secondary deviance, ascribed versus achieved status, absolute versus relative poverty. A lot of questions turn on one of these distinctions.
• Applying the three perspectives. Twelve of the 21 units have a "theoretical perspectives" chapter, so the same three lenses come back again and again.

How to study for Intro Sociology has a method for each of those. Because the course leans on vocabulary rather than problem sets, the general advice in studying outside STEM: what actually transfers applies well, and a 21-unit course rewards steady spaced review over a last-week push, as what spaced repetition actually does explains.

To see how many days 1,254 cards take at your pace, plug your numbers into the flashcard deck time estimator.

The cards are text only, and statistics that go out of date are either dated or replaced with the stable concept behind them. If you are planning a whole gen-ed year, the free college gen-ed course flashcards post lists every course in the series. You can start the full Intro Sociology flashcards free.