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Social structure & social interaction
Understanding Society (101551)
Western Sydney University
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Social structure & social interaction - cp
Social structure
Levels of sociological analysis
Macro sociology and micro sociology
Macrosociology : focuses on broad features of society - such as social class and relationships of groups to one another
- Used by conflict and functionalist theorists
Microosociology: the focus is on social interaction - what people do when they come together
- Primarily used by symbolic interactionists
The macrosociological perspective : social structure
The sociological significance of social structure
Social structure : typical patterns of a group - e. its usual relationships between men and women or students and teacher
Sociological significance is that it guides our behaviour
Social structure tends to override personal feelings and desires - I may be going through a breakup or have been awarded 1mil dollars but when I walk into class I have a formal stubborn manner
People learn their behaviours and attitudes because of their location in the social structure (whether they are privileged, deprived or in between) and they act accordingly
Major components of social structure - culture, social class, social status, roles, groups and social institutions
Culture
a groups language, beliefs, values, behaviours and gestures
Includes the material objects a group uses
Broadest framework that determines what kind of people we become - if we are brought up in a Chinese culture, we will grow up to be like most Chinese people, outside we will look and act like them and inside we will think and feel like them
Social class
Weber: a large group of people who rank close to one another in wealth
Marx: one of two groups: capitalists, who own the means of production, or workers, who sell their labour
Based on income, education and occupational prestige
We are influenced by our location in the social class structure
Social status
The position that someone occupies in society or in a social group
Position may carry a lot of prestige such as judge or astronaut or a little amount as in the case of grocery store worker or waitress
The status may be looked down up - homeless , ex-con or thief
Status set : all the statuses or positions that you occupy - you may be a daughter, a worker, a date and a student, you occupy many positions at the same time
Status set changes as your particular status changes - go from uni to marrying someone to having kids
Ascribed status : involuntary. You do not ask for it nor can you choose it. You inherit some ascribed status at birth such as race, sex, social class of your parents
Voluntary status : voluntary. These you earn or accomplish. As a result of your efforts or lack of effort. It can either be positive or negative , both university vice-chancellor and bank robber are achieved statuses
Status symbols : signs that identify a status. e wedding ring, guns and badges for police , ‘clerical collars’ for Roman Catholic priests
Master status : a status that cuts across the other statuses that an individual occupies. Some are ascribed eg sex, race/ethnicity. Whatever you do people will always see you as this person. Some are achieved. You may become a billionaire and thats how people will see you as a very rich man.
Status inconsistency : ranking high on some dimensions of social class and low on others; also called status discrepancy. e 14yo uni student or a 60yo married woman dating a 19-year old first year uni student. Upsets our expectations. How do you act when you see a 14yo at uni what do you do?
Social statuses come with built in norms (expectations) that guide our behaviour
Comparing functionalist and conflict perspectives on social institutions
Functionalist perspective
Social institutions perform a vital function for human survival and that no society is without them
Social institutions as working together to meet universal human needs
A group may be too small to have people who specialise in education, but it will have its own ways of teaching skills to young, too small for a military but still a mechanism of self-defence.
To survive, every society must meet its basic needs (functional requisites) - that is the purpose of social institutions
Functionalists identity 5 functional requisites that society must fulfil to survive
- Replacing members
If it doesn’t replace its members the society cannot exist
Because reproduction is fundamental all groups have developed some version of the family
The family gives a newcomer a sense of belonging by providing a ‘lineage’, an account of how he or she is related to others
Family functions to control peoples sex drive and to maintain orderly reproduction
- Socialising new members
Human groups develop devices to ensure that its newcomers learn the groups basic expectations
The family is the primary ‘bearer of culture’ - essential to this process, other social institutions such as religion and education also help meet this basic need
- Producing and distributing goods and services
Must distribute and produce basic resources - food, clothing, shelter, education
Every society establishes an economic institution, a means of producing & distributing
- Preserving order
Societies fact 2 threats of disorder: internal, the potential for chaos, and external, the possibility of attack.
To defend against external conquest, they develop a means of defence - a form of military
To protect against internal threat, they develop a system of policing themselves
- Providing a sense of purpose
To convince people to sacrifice personal gains, societies instil a sense of purpose
Primarily through religion - attempts to answer questions about ultimate meaning
All of societies institutions are involved in meeting this functional requisite; the family provides one set of answer, the school another and so on
Conflict perspective
Regard social institutions as having a single primary purpose - to preserve the social order. This means safeguarding the wealthy and powerful in their positions of privilege
Agree that social institutions were designed originally to meet basic survival needs, they do not view social institutions as working harmoniously for the common good
Powerful groups control society’s institutions, manipulating them in order to maintain their own privileged positions of wealth and power
Member of the elite greatly influence politicians
Gender is an element of social structure, not simply a characteristic of individuals
What holds society together?
Mechanical and organic solidarity
Emile Durkheim founded the key to social integration - the degree to which members of a group or society feel united by shared values and other social bonds; also known as social cohesion - in what he called ‘mechanical solidarity’
Mechanical solidarity: Durkheim’s term for the unity (a shared consciousness) that people feel as a result of performing the same or similar tasks
As societies get larger, their division of labour becomes more specialised.
The division of labour makes people depend on one another more, for the work of each person contributes to the wellbeing of the whole group
Organic solidarity : Durkheim’s term for the interdependence that results from the division of labour; people depending on other to fulfil their jobs
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
Ferdinand Tonnies
Gemeinschaft : a type of society in which life is intimate; a community in which everyone knows everyone else and people share a sense of togetherness
Gesselschaft : a type of society that is dominated by impersonal relationships, individual accomplishments and self-interest
Dramaturgy: The presentation of self in everyday life
Erving Goffman developed dramaturgy (or dramaturgical analysis)
An approach in which social life is analysed in terms of drama or the stage
Social life is like a drama or stage play: birth ushers us onto the stage of everyday life and our socialisation consists of learning to perform on that stage
We have ideas of how we want others to think of us and we use our roles in everyday life to communicate those ideas
Impression management : peoples efforts to control the impressions that others receive of them
Stages
Everyday life involves playing our assigned roles
front stages on which to perform them - where performances are given
Back stages : where people rest from their performances, discuss their presentations and plan future performances - e when you close the bathroom or bedroom door for privacy you are entering a back stage
Role performance, conflict and strain
The ways in which someone performs a role, showing a particular ‘style’ or ‘personality’
ordinarily, our statuses are sufficiently separated that we find minimal conflict between them
Role conflict : conflicts that someone feels between roles because the expectations attached to one role are incompatible with the expectations of another role
We usually manage to avoid role conflicts by segregating our statuses
Role strain : conflict that someone feels within a role - same status contains incompatible roles - e you are exceptionally prepared for an assessment In class, the tutor asks a difficult question and you know it but no one else does, if you raise your hand you don’t want to make the other students look but you are unsure whether to answer or not you will experience role strain
Difference between role conflict and role strain is that role conflict is conflict between roles, while role strain is conflict within a role
Sign-vehicles
Term used by Goffman to refer to how people use social setting, appearance and manner to communicate information about the self
3 types of sign-vehicles:
- The social setting: the place where the action unfolds. Where the curtain goes up on your performance , where you find yourself on stage and delivering lines. It is wherever you interact with others
Our appearance: how we look when we play our roles. Includes props e makeup hairstyles and clothing to communicate messages about ourselves. Props and other aspects of appearance give us cues that help us navigate everyday life: by letting us know what to expect from others, props tell us how we should react. Some people use costing to say they’re a university student
Our manner: the attitudes we show as we play our roles. We use manner to communicate information about our feelings and moods.
Teamwork
the collaboration of two or more people to manage impressions jointly
Face-saving behaviour: techniques used to salvage a performance that is going sour. e you hear your teachers stomach growl whilst giving a announcement but the class and her ignore it, giving the impression no-one heard a thing - a face-saving technique called studied nonobservance
Becoming the roles we play
Although roles might be uncomfortable at first, after we get used to them we tend to become the roles we play
Roles become incorporated into the self-concept, especially roles for which we prepare long and hard and that become part of our everyday lives
When leaving a role such as a nun, a police officer doctor etc, the persons identity may feel threatened, people struggle with “who am I now, now that I am not a nun anymore?”
Ethnomethodology: Uncovering background assumptions
Harold Garfinkel founded ethnomethodology
The study of how people use background assumptions/common-sense to make sense out of life , the taken for granted ideas about the world that underlie our behaviour
Background assumptions : your ideas about the way life is and the way things ought to work - deeply embedded into our consciousness that we are seldom aware of them and most of us fulfil them unquestioningly
Most assumptions/rules of social life are unstated. We learn them as we learn our culture and we violate them only with risks.
Social structure & social interaction
Course: Understanding Society (101551)
University: Western Sydney University
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