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The power to perform a mental or physical task—either before or after training. Social psychologists usually distinguish ability from aptitude, the natural capacity to acquire or learn a body of knowledge as measured in an aptitude test. Sociologists would probably distinguish ability and ...

Ruler of Fārs Province, wife of Mongol prince Tash-Möngke bin Hülegü Khan. A daughter of the Salghurid dynasty whose grandfather,

The state of ritual purity (ṭahārah) that is an essential condition for the fulfillment of many religious practices

A term originally associated with a call for the abolition of slavery on the grounds of its inhumanity (see, for example, the arguments of ...

The legal status of abortion in the United States has undergone dramatic shifts, while its practice has been consistent. Throughout

In the medical sense, abortion is the termination of pregnancy before the fetus is viable and is capable of survival

The deliberate termination of a human pregnancy. In many countries women may request such a termination within a specific period of time, often within 12 weeks to a maximum of 28 weeks, from conception. However, it is still not legal in all countries. If it is not legal, women may seek so-called backstreet abortions. These may not be medically supervised and may endanger their lives. They may also travel to another country to have the abortion, an option available only to those free to travel and with the resources to do so. ...

The phrase refers to women’s right to demand an abortion if they so wish rather than, for example, needing to have permission from their husband or their father. One of the ...

A strong and centralized form of state typical of societies in the process of transition from *feudalism to *...

A term coined by C. Wright Mills in The Sociological Imagination (1959) to refer to the work of those sociologists who equate a strong and rigid ...

One of two models, the other being the *pressure and release model (PAR model), that have been developed by

An event with a negative, unwanted outcome. The meaning of the term has developed over the last centuries from the

A social-psychological process of acquiring, modifying, and adapting from a parent culture to a host culture. This process occurs over time and includes adjusting to the customs, values, behaviours, style, and other aspects of the host culture. In relation to gangs, failure to properly acculturate to the culture of the United States is a criminogenic ...

The process whereby the norms, practices, and values of a given cultural context are adopted by those who are, or are seeking to become, part of that context. A term used in anthropology and sociology, it is useful for explaining how people are inaugurated into and maintained within a culture in their ...

A term used to describe the political system of societies without centralized state authority—such as, for example, traditional African lineage political systems (see ...

The successful accomplishment or performance of a socially defined task or goal. Talcott *Parsons (in Social Theory and Modern Society...

Defined as the need to perform well or the striving for success, and evidenced by persistence and effort in the face of difficulties, achievement motivation is regarded as a central human motivation. Psychologist ...

The Caribbean’s first major consequential exposure to European explorers came in the latter part of the 15th century as part of the so-called discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus, who triggered the region’s modern history of exploitation, genocide, slavery, and colonialism. Historical records show that prior to colonial conquest by Europeans, there were many indigenous cultures that stretched along the Caribbean, from the Tainos in the northern Caribbean to the Caribs in the south. These societies had their own sociopolitical, economic, and cultural systems that evolved over generations. With the genocide of these indigenous populations through hard labor—forced by the colonizing Europeans—as well as death through European diseases, enslaved Africans became the source of cheap labor in the region. Indentured servitude further brought peoples from Asia and Europe. The result is a significant and permanent adjustment to the region’s racial makeup; the people are mostly of African descent, though there are Asians, people of mixed races, as well as traces of the White European plantation owner class among Caribbean peoples. Caribbean food, culture, official languages, and Creole dialects are also functions of these colonial encounters. Political systems in the Caribbean are not uniquely drawn from indigenous societies, either; they are versions of systems of the colonizer nations from which they eventually gained independence. Additionally, Caribbean economic systems are largely representative of the dominant Western democratic capitalist models, notwithstanding the socialist experiments of the late 1970s. In light of all these historical influences, there are now only limited traces of Caribbean indigenous societies in the region....

A term generally associated with the name of French sociologist Alain Touraine, and not to be confused with the ‘action frame of reference’ (...

A type of research in which the researcher is also a change agent. It is often used in local communities or by consultants working in companies, as part of the change process itself. The research subjects are invited to participate at various stages of a relatively fast-moving sequence of research-action-research-action. There is an iterative process of investigating a problem, using ...