| The structured inequality characterized by groups of people with differential access to the rewards of society because of their relative position in the social hierarchy | |
| Advocated by functionalist Talcott Parsons, involves the building of a theory of society based on aspects of the real world and the organization of these concepts to form a conception of society as a stable system of interrelated parts | |
| Proceeds from concrete observations from which general conclusions are inferred through a process of reasoning | |
| The abstract terms that human beings create for the purposes of defining, describing, explaining, clarifying, ordering, organizing, and communicating what they do and how they live, including languages, ideas, belief systems, rules, customs, and political systems |