Social Interaction
refers to the ways in which people respond to one another, whether face-to-face or over the phone or on the Internet.
For example, the relationship between prison guards and prisoners.
Social Structure
refers to the way a society is organized into predictable relationships.
For example, the U.S.-run Abu Gharib military facility.
Elements of Social Structure
Sociologists use the term status to refer to any of the full range of socially defined positions within a large group or society.
Sociologically, status does not refer to prestige.
Any position, whether deemed good or bad, positive or negative, is a status.
A person can hold a number of statuses at the same time.
Ascribed Status
assigned to a person by society without regard for the person's unique talents or characteristics, generally at birth.
Conflict theorists are especially interested in ascribed statuses, since it may confer privileges.
We can do little to change an ascribed status, but we can attempt to change the traditional constraints associated with it.
An ascribe status does not necessarily have the same social meaning in every society.
Achieved status
attained by a person largely through his or her own efforts.
For example, being a computer programmer, student, social worker, lawyer, professor, and pianist.
However, our ascribed status plays major role in our achieved status.
Master Status
dominates other statuses and thereby determines a person's general position within the society.
Each person holds many different and sometimes conflicting statuses; some may connote higher social position and some, lower position.
For example, Arthur Ashe, who died of AIDS in 1993, had a remarkable career as a tennis player, but his status as an athlete with AIDS outweighs his other statuses.
Social Role
a set of expectations for people who occupy a given social position or status.
Each distinctive social status, whether ascribed or achieved, comes with particular role expectations.
Role Conflict
occurs when opposing expectations arise from two or more social positions held by the same person.
For example, a woman who had just been promoted to supervisory position at her job.
She is likely to experience conflict between her social and occupational roles.
How is she expected to relate to her longtime friends and co-workers?
Role Strain
a term used to describe the difficulty that arises when the same social position imposes conflicting demands and expectations.
People who belong to minority culture may experience role strain while working in the mainstream.
For example, Navajo Nation officers practice an alternative form of justice known as peace making.
Another example involves the parent who wishes to be both his child's authority figure as well as his friend.
Role Exit
the process of disengagement from a role that is central to one's self-identity in order to establish a new role and identity.
It takes preparation and adjustment to exit social roles and to assume new roles, e.g., retirees, divorced men and women, and ex-convicts.
Four stages of role exit
Doubt
Search for Alternatives
Action stage or departure
Creation of a new identity
Groups
any number of people with similar norms, values, and expectations who regularly and consciously interact with one another on a regular basis.
For example, members of women basketball team, a church, or a symphony orchestra.
Groups play an important part in a society's structure.
Primary Group
refers to a small group characterized by intimate, face-to-face association and cooperation.
For example, members of a street gang, members of a family living in the same household or group of "sisters" in a college sorority.
Secondary Group
refers to a formal, impersonal group in which there is little social intimacy.
Secondary groups often emerge in the workplace among those who share special understanding about their occupation.
Some social clubs may become so large and impersonal that they no longer function as primary group.
Social Network
a series of social relationships that links a person directly to others, and through them indirectly to still more people.
Social network can center on virtually any activity, from sharing job information to exchanging news and gossips.
Networking
refers to involvement in social networks. It is especially valuable in finding employment.
With advances in technology, we can now maintain social networks electronically; we don't need face-to-face contact.
Formal organizations
a group designed for a special purpose and structured for maximum efficiency.
The formal organization involves specialty of goals, and degree of efficiency, structured to facilitate the management of large-scale operations.
In our society, formal organizations fulfill an enormous variety of personal and societal needs, shaping the lives of everyone of us.
Bureaucracies
a component of formal organization that uses rules and ranking to achieve efficiency.
For example, endless lines and forms, complex languages, and frustrating encounter with red tape.
Max Weber developed an ideal type of bureaucracy that would reflect the most characteristic aspects of all human organizations.
Division of Labor
Specialized experts perform specialized tasks.
For example, in college bureaucracy, the administrator does not do the job of a registrar, the counselor does not see to the maintenance of buildings.
By working at a specific task, people are more likely to become highly skilled and carry out a job with maximum efficiency.
Hierarchy of authority
Bureaucracies
follow the principle of hierarchy; that is, each position is under the supervision of a higher authority.
For example, a president heads a college bureaucracy; he or she selects members of the administration, who in turn hire their own staff.
Written Rules and Regulations
Through written rules and regulations, bureaucracies generally offer employees clear standards for an adequate (exceptional) performance.
Employment based on technical qualifications
Within the ideal bureaucracy, hiring is based on technical qualifications rather than favoritism
Oligarchy: Rule by a few
Organizations look to leaders for direction and thereby reinforce the process of rule by a few.
Durkheim's mechanical solidarity
exists in societies with a minimal division of labor. A collective consciousness develops that emphasizes group solidarity.
all individuals perform the same tasks.
There is little concern for individual needs, because group is the dominating force of the society.
Durkheim's organic solidarity
exists in societies with a complex division of labor.
Dependence on others becomes essential for group survival.
It emphasizes mutual interdependence among groups and institutions—in much the same way as organs of the body are interdependent.
Tonnies' Gemeinschaft
community is typical of rural life. Social interactions are intimate and familiar.
There is a strong feeling of community; persons are not driven by self-interest but by the needs of the whole.
Tonnies' Gesellschaft
an ideal type characteristic of modern life.
Most people are strangers and have little or no relationship with one another