Introduction to Sociology SOC-101

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Introduction to Sociology SOC-101

• Unit 5 Social Structure and Social Interaction

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Levels of Sociological Analysis

• Macrosociology
• This is the analysis of social life that focuses
  on the broad features of society
• This includes social class and how groups related
  to one another
• Used by conflict theorists and functionalists
• Goal is to examine the large-scale social forces
  that influence people
• Microsociology
• This is the analysis of social life that focuses
  on social interaction
• What people do when they come together
• Used by symbolic interactionists
• Both analyses need to be used to get a full
  perspective of what is being studied

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Macrosociological Perspective

• In order to understand human behavior, we must
  examine the social structure
• Social Structure
• This is the framework that surrounds us
• Consists of the relationships of people and
  groups to one another
• It guides our behavior
• People learn certain attitudes and behaviors
  because of their location in the social structure

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Components of Social Structure

• The components of social structure include
• Culture
• Social Class
• Social Status
• Roles
• Groups
• Social Institutions

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Components of Social Structure

• Culture
• This refers to a groups language, beliefs,
  values, behaviors, gestures and material objects
• This is the broadest framework that determines
  who we become
• Social Class
• A group of people who rank close to each other in
  income, education, and power
• This influences not only our behaviors but
  attitudes and ideas

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Components of Social Structure

• Status
• A recognized social position that an individual
  occupies
• Different from prestige, where someone who
  holds a high position has high status
• We hold multiple statuses at once
• Each status adds to our social identity, defines
  our relationships to one another, and guides our
  behavior

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Components of Social Structure

• Status Set
• All the statuses a person holds at a particular
  time
• For example, at one time a person can be a
  sister, daughter, student, and friend
• Status sets can change over the course of ones
  life
• We gain and lose many statuses over the course of
  our lifetimes

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Components of Social Structure

• Ascribed Status
• This is a social position that a person receives
  at birth or assumes involuntarily later in life
• Race, ethnicity, gender, daughter, teenager
• Achieved Status
• This is a social position that a person assumes
  voluntarily and reflects personal ability and
  choice
• Honors student, spouse, parent, teacher

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Components of Social Structure

• Master Status
• This is a position that carries exceptional
  importance for identity and often shapes a
  persons entire life
• Cuts across all other statuses you hold
• For most people occupation is a master status
  because it says a lot about your social
  background, education, and income
• Master status can be a negative if it is tied in
  with a disease, disability, or even gender in
  some societies

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Components of Social Structure

• Status Inconsistency
• When a persons statuses are mismatched or
  contradict one another
• 10-year-old college student or 25-year-old with
  Alzheimer's
• Status Symbol
• Item used to identify a status
• Wedding rings, uniforms, luxury car
• Can also be negative like the scarlet letter in
  Hawthornes book

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Components of Social Structure

• Role
• The behaviors, obligations and privileges
  expected of someone who holds a particular status
• Individuals hold a status and perform a role
• Roles lay out what is expected of people
• Group
• People who regularly interact with one another
• They usually share similar values, norms, and
  expectations
• To belong to a group we have to yield the right
  to make certain decisions about our behavior to
  others in the group

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Social Institutions

• Social Institution
• The organized, usual, or stand ways by which
  society meets its basic needs
• Examples include family, education, law,
  military, and mass media
• In industrialized societies, the social
  institutions are more formal, while in tribal
  societies they are more informal

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Society and Its Transformations

• Society
• A group of people who share a culture and a
  territory
• In order to understand society, we need to
  examine its transformation over time
• Hunting and Gathering Society
• A group that depends on hunting and gathering for
  its survival
• Consisted of small, nomadic groups that moved as
  they depleted an areas vegetation or pursued
  migratory animals
• Had an egalitarian society since no one owned
  anything and no one became wealthier than anybody
  else
• There were no rulers as the group as a whole made
  decisions

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Pastoral and Horticultural Societies

• Pastoralism
• This is the domestication of animals
• Horticulture
• This is the cultivation of plants using hand
  tools
• First Social Revolution
• With a dependable source of food, labor became
  specialized and with that people were able to
  accumulate material possessions
• Creation of an elite, ruling class

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Agricultural Societies

• Agricultural Societies
• Agriculture
• Large-scale cultivation using plows harnessed to
  animals or more powerful energy sources
• Growth of permanent settlements with populations
  growing into the millions
• Members of this society become even more
  specialized and money is invented as a form of
  common exchange

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Agricultural Societies

• Second Social Revolution
• Social inequality became a fundamental feature of
  social life
• Most people worked as serfs or slaves
• The elites were free to study philosophy, art,
  and literature
• The elites also created armies to hold their
  power
• Men began to gain pronounced power and privilege
  over women

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Industrial Societies

• Industrial Societies
• Industry
• The production of goods using advanced sources of
  energy (like steam) to drive large machinery
• Before 1765, most had depended upon human or
  animal to provide power
• With the development of the steam engine,
  production became much more efficient

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Industrial Societies

• Third Social Revolution
• Industrialization brought even greater surplus
  and even greater social inequality
• Those who first used the new technology created
  massive amounts of wealth
• People moved off their farms into the cities to
  work in factories
• Over time, the social equalities diminished as
  workers gained rights, slavery was abolished, and
  there was the creation of a more representative
  form of government

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Postindustrial (Information) Societies

• Postindustrial Society
• It is based on information, services, and the
  latest technology rather than on raw materials
  and manufacturing
• Basic component is information
• Fourth Social Revolution
• Based on the microchip, the information
  revolution is transforming society

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Social Integration

• Social Integration
• This is the degree to which members of a society
  are united by shared values and other social
  bonds
• With the way society has evolved and its many
  conflicting groups, how does society still hold
  itself together?
• Sociologists have found that as societies change,
  so do peoples orientations to life

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Mechanical/Organic Solidarity

• Emile Durkheim (1893)
• Believed that as society changes, the
  relationships amongst its members also change
• Mechanical Solidarity
• People have much in common through similar work,
  education, religion, and lifestyle
• This was found in more traditional and small
  scale societies

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Mechanical/Organic Solidarity

• As societies get larger, labor becomes more
  specialized
• People become more dependent on one another for
  the work they contribute to the whole
• Organic Solidarity
• The interdependence that results from the
  division of labor where people depend on others
  to fulfill their jobs
• This is found in more modern and industrial
  societies

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Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

• Ferdinand Tönnies also analyzed the evolution of
  two types of human association in 1887
• Gemeinschaft (Intimate Community)
• A type of society in which life is intimate, and
  where everyone in the community knows everyone
  else
• Found in traditional and small scale societies
• An example of this is Amish society

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Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

• Over time, society changed and the relationships
  among people became more impersonal
• Gesellschaft (Impersonal Association)
• A type of society that is dominated by impersonal
  relationships, individual accomplishments, and
  self-interest
• This is more modern day, industrial society

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Microsociological Perspective

• While macrosociologists look at the overall
  features of society, microsociologists looks that
  the interpersonal, face-to-face interactions
• Stereotypes
• Assumptions of what people are like, whether true
  or false
• First impressions of a person can be shaped and
  affected by their sex, race, ethnicity, age and
  clothing
• This can also affect how you act towards that
  person

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Personal Space

• Personal Space
• This refers to the surrounding area over which a
  person makes some claim to privacy
• The definition of personal space varies from
  culture to culture
• In the U.S., most people prefer to stand several
  feet apart when talking
• In the Middle East, they stand much closer
• Edward Hall (1969)
• An anthropologist who observed that North
  Americans use four different distance zones
  when it comes to personal space

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Personal Space

• Four levels of personal space
• Intimate Distance (gt 18 inches from our bodies)
  
• Reserved for comforting, protecting, hugging,
  intimate touching, and lovemaking.
• Personal Distance (18 inches to 4 feet)
• Reserved for friends and acquaintances and
  ordinary conversations
• Social Distance (4 to 12 feet)
• For impersonal or formal relationships
• For example, we use this zone for such things as
  job interviews
• Public Distance (lt12 feet)
• Reserved for more formal relationships
• For example, it is used to separate dignitaries
  and public speakers from the general public

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Dramaturgy

• Dramaturgy Erving Goffman (1922-1982)
• Analyzed social life in terms of drama or the
  stage
• Socialization consists of learning how to perform
  on the stage of life
• Performances
• Everyday life includes things like dress
  (costume), objects carried along (props), and
  tone of voice and gestures (manner)
• Impression Management
• Peoples efforts to control the impressions that
  others receive of them
• Front Stage This is where we give our lines
  to an audience
• Back Stage Behind the scenes where there is
  no audience
• This is where we can relax and let our hair
  down

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Dramaturgy

• Roles play a vital aspect in dramaturgy
• Role Performance
• The ways in which someone performs a role within
  the limits that role provides
• Being the ideal daughter, or the good worker
• Role Conflict
• The conflict someone feels between roles because
  the expectations attached to one role are
  incompatible with the expectation of another role
• Do you study, go to your friends party, or help
  your parents out with chores?
• Role Strain
• Conflicts that someone feels within a role
• A friendly boss still needs to keep his distance
  to evaluate his workers properly

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Dramaturgy

• Team Work
• The collaboration of two or more people to manage
  impressions jointly.
• Face-Saving Behavior
• Techniques used to salvage a performance going
  sour
• Tact
• Helping someone save face when members of the
  audience help a performer recover from an
  embarrassment

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• Role Strain and Role Conflict

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Ethnomethodology

• Ethnomethodology Harold Garfinkel (1967)
• This is the study of the way people make sense of
  their everyday surroundings using commonsense
• Background Assumptions
• These are deeply embedded common understandings
  of how the world operates and how people are
  supposed to act
• In order to discover our background assumptions
  we must break the rules
• This is the only way to see how people construct
  their reality
• Examples include bargaining for items in a
  supermarket, the teacher playing the student for
  a class, talk to people an inch away from their
  face
• By breaking the rules, people will become
  agitated, surprised, and possibly angry

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Social Construction of Reality

• Social Construction of Reality
• The use of background assumptions and life
  experiences to define what is real
• Thomas Theorem William and Dorothy Thomas
  (1928)
• If men define situations as real, they are real
  in their consequences
• We behave according to the way we perceive the
  world
• It is not the reality of something that impresses
  itself on us, but society impresses the reality
  of something on us

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Saints and Roughnecks

• In 1978, William Chambliss published his study on
  the Saints and the Roughnecks
• Examined two different delinquent groups in a
  towns high school
• The Saints were boys from good middle-class
  families and were expected to go somewhere
• The Roughnecks were boys from lower-class
  families and perceived to have no futures

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Saints and Roughnecks

• The boys in both these groups skipped school, got
  drunk, did a lot of fighting, and committed
  numerous acts of vandalism
• The Saints actually were more delinquent since
  they skipped school more often and committed more
  acts of vandalism
• After high school, seven of the eight Saints
  graduated college and went on to well paying jobs
• Three of them received advanced degrees
• With the Roughnecks, only four finished high
  school
• Two did well in sports, went to college on
  scholarships, and became high school coaches
• Two who did not graduate wound up in prison for
  separate murders

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Saints and Roughnecks

• Using macrosociology, we can see
• How social class can either open or close doors
  for us
• How people learn different goals in different
  groups
• Using microsociology, we can see
• How the Saints used their reputation to their
  advantage and how it negatively affected the
  Roughnecks
• How the Saints used the fact that they had cars
  and were able to use them to commit crimes in
  other communities (thus keeping their good
  reputation in their own community
• How the Roughnecks, by not having cars, were
  focused in a small area and visible to their own
  community

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Macro- and Micro-Sociology

• We need to study both macro- and micro-sociology
  to get a complete understanding of social life as
  they both give us different aspects