optional · CSS study notes
📖 Glossary
A compact glossary of terms that recur across this dashboard but don't have their own dedicated page. For a term with a full page (anomie, alienation, cultural lag, etc.), see that topic's page instead — this list covers the smaller supporting vocabulary.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Folkways | Casual, everyday customs with mild social consequence if broken (e.g. table manners) |
| Mores | Norms with strong moral significance, often codified into law (e.g. prohibitions on theft) |
| Taboos | Norms so strongly held that violation provokes extreme social revulsion (e.g. incest prohibitions) |
| Endogamy | Marriage within one's own social group (caste, tribe, religion) |
| Exogamy | Marriage outside one's own social group |
| Patrilineal / Matrilineal | Descent traced through the father's / mother's line |
| Patriarchy | A social system in which men hold primary authority/power |
| Ascribed status | Social position assigned at birth (caste, gender, family) — not earned |
| Achieved status | Social position gained through one's own effort/choices (education, occupation) |
| Role | The expected behaviour attached to a given social status |
| Social sanction | A reward (positive) or punishment (negative) that enforces a norm |
| Ethnography | In-depth, immersive qualitative research through extended presence in a social setting |
| Verstehen | Weber's term for interpretive understanding of the subjective meaning behind social action |
| Positivism | The view that valid knowledge comes only from empirical, observable evidence and scientific method |
| Reliability | Whether a research method produces consistent results if repeated |
| Validity | Whether a research method actually measures what it claims to measure |
| Total institution | A closed setting (prison, military, asylum) that controls nearly all aspects of members' lives, often used for re-socialization |
| Social mobility | Movement of individuals/groups between positions in a social hierarchy |
| Biradari | A kinship/clan-based social network common in Pakistani/South Asian society, often central to marriage and political alliance |
| Jirga/Panchayat | Traditional informal community dispute-resolution councils |
| Zamindar/Wadera/Khan | Regional terms for large landowners within Pakistan's feudal agrarian structure |
| Haris | Tenant farmers working land owned by a feudal landlord, often in dependent/exploitative arrangements |
| Katchi abadi | An informal, often unplanned urban settlement/slum |
| Remittances | Money sent home by overseas workers/migrants — a major component of Pakistan's foreign-exchange inflows |
| Brain drain | Emigration of highly skilled/educated individuals from a country |
| Demographic dividend | The economic growth potential from a large working-age population, if matched with adequate education/employment |
Revision checklist
- Define every term in this glossary in one sentence, cold, without looking
- Flag any Pakistan-specific term (biradari, jirga, zamindar, haris, katchi abadi) — these are easy, high-value MCQ/short-answer material examiners like to test