A dynamic, contested process where race emerges from socio-political conflicts and interests linked to human bodies, balancing its arbitrariness with social
reality (Omi and Winant).
Is a system of dominance where one racial group exerts overwhelming political, economic and cultural power, normalizing their superiority and legitimizing
the exploitation of other groups.
The extension of racial meanings to groups or
practices not previously seen as racial, such as linking slavery to skin color during European colonization.
Racism is a system of power and inequality in which racial categories are used or to assign superiority and inferiority, resulting in discrimination, exclusion and
unequal access to resources and opportunities.
The systematic, methodical investigation of social life aimed at producing knowledge about society. In sociology, research encompasses both quantitative methods (surveys, statistical analysis, experiments) rooted in positivist epistemology and qualitative methods (ethnography, interviews, textual analysis) rooted in interpretivist and constructionist epistemologies. Modern sociological research is
defined by attention to how social reality is broken down into data, collected, analysed, and framed to produce knowledge, with growing recognition that the researcher's own social position shapes the inquiry.
(Contini, 2024).
Refers to the physical separation of different social groups into different neighbourhoods, usually based on race, class, ethnicity resulting in unequal living
conditions and unequal life chances.
Industrial activities such as mining or oil drilling that remove natural resources from the earth and often
transform landscapes and ecosystems (Peša, 2022).
Refers to the limited availability of natural, material, and social assets (such as food, land, income, time, and prestige) that are necessary for maintaining life or a desired quality of life (Institute of Development
Studies).
Refers to the process of selecting a manageable subset (a "sample") of individuals from a larger population to participate in a study (Bhattacherjee, 2012, Wagner, Kawulich, & Garner, 2012).
Refers to the specialization of tasks, where work is broken down into specific roles rather than performed entirely by one individual, driving economic productivity and social solidarity (University Oxford,
2026).
It is associated with the work of Max Weber and described as when a subject engages in a particular choice of action because of the meaning it holds for them (Steward & Zaaiman, 2014)’.
Refers to the intentional, collective effort to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change by reforming or challenging existing institutions, behaviours, and power structures
(Atlantis Press, 2026).
Social stratification of individuals based on wealth,
income, occupation, and access to power; in Marx, defined by relationship to the means of production.
Social facts are ideas, feelings, and ways of behaving that possess the remarkable property of existing outside the consciousness of the individual.Social facts are external (exists outside us), coercive (influences our behavior), diffuse (is all around us) and we often are not conscious of it (Ferrante, et al.,
2016).
Refers to a person's sense of who they are based on
their membership in social groups, such as race, gender, class, religion, nationality and/or occupation.
Established and organized systems of social behavior with a particular and recognized purpose (Family, religion and the economy are all examples of social institutions). (Anderson & Taylor, 2020). A set of organized beliefs and rules that establishes how a society will attempt to meet its basic social needs (Kendall, 2011).