Ch 4 Social Structure and Social Interaction

Levels of sociological analysis

Macrosociology investigates large-scale social forces and the effects they have on the entire society and the groups within them.

i. Used by functionalist and conflict approaches.

Microsociology places emphasis on social interaction, or on what people do when they come together.

i. Symbolic interactionism applies microsociological approach.

Each offers distinctive perspective, and together they provide a better understanding of social life.

Macrosociological perspective: Social structure

These elements comprise social structure.

Social structure: patterned relationships between people that persist over time.
1. Behaviors and attitudes are determined by our location in the social structure.

i. Personal feelings and desires tend to be overridden by social structure. An individual’s behavior and attitudes are determined by social location.

ii. Culture, social class, social status, roles, groups and institutions – components of social structure.

Culture: a group’s language, education, beliefs, values, behaviors, gestures and material culture.

i. Determines what kinds of people we will become.

Social class: based on income, education and occupational prestige.

i. Defined as large numbers of people who have similar amounts of income and education, and who work at jobs that are roughly comparable in prestige.

Social status: positions that an individual occupies:

i. Status: a position one occupies in society.

ii. Status set: all the statuses or positions an individual occupies.

1. Ascribed status: either inherited at birth or received involuntarily later in life e.g. felon.

2. Achieved status: earned, accomplished or involving some effort on the part of the individual.

3. Master status: one that come to override all other statuses.

4. Status inconsistency: contradiction or mismatch of statuses (Martha Stewart)

iii. Status symbols: signs that identify a status.

Roles: behaviors, obligations and privileges attached to a status.

i. One occupies a status, but performs a role.

ii. Roles are essential components of culture because they lay out what is expected of people, and as individuals perform their roles, those roles mesh together to form society.

A group consists of people who regularly and consciously interact with one another and typically share similar values, norms and expectations.

Social institutions: standard ways of meeting society’s needs.

i. Social institutions are sociologically significant because they set limits and provide guidelines for our behavior.

ii. Family, religion, law, politics, economics, education, science, medicine and the military are all social institutions.

iii. In industrialized countries, social institutions tend to be more formal; less formal in ‘simpler’ societies.

A society consists of people who share culture and territory; this constitutes the largest and most complex group.

i. Hunting/gathering bands were first society; egalitarian in organization; nomadic

ii. Pastoral/horticultural resulting from the domestication of animals. Pastoral – animal husbandry, horticultural – crop cultivation. (1^st)

1. Surpluses allowed larger populations to develop; division of labor; trade; creation of items of value within the society, creating a basis for inequality.

iii. Agriculture, the invention of plow and later agricultural technologies, wheel, writing and numbers allowed the transformation of pastoral/horticultural societies into agricultural societies. (2^nd)

1. This supported the emergence of cities; groups begin to be distinguished by amounts of possessions (i.e. stratification systems begin to appear)

2. Not only do stratification systems begin to appear, but these begin to be translated into privilege and passed on through inheritance systems. Also determines the distribution of power in society.

iv. Industrial revolution (3^rd) began 1765 with first steam engine was used in machinery. This led to a massive transformation of society in terms of both production and social relations; increased inequality,

1. Pattern of growing inequality reversed somewhat as benefits to workers increased – better housing, wages. Technological development improved productivity, eventually eliminating child labor, thereby extending childhood, etc.

v. The post-industrial society (currently) based on information technologies (4^th information revolution)

1. Impact on labor force, social organizations, etc. Results include changes in culture, globalization, shift in social classes, and racial and ethnic groups, shift to service economy, less production. manufacturing, etc.

2. Emergence of what is called bioeconomics, an economic system based on the application of genetics.

i. Sociological explanations:

a. Functionalist perspective based on Durkheim and Toennies.

i. Durkheim focused on the types of relationships in pre- and post-industrialization societies.

1. Mechanical solidarity based in collective consciousness from shared and repeated social experiences.

2. Organic solidarity collective conscience based on the interdependence arising from the division of labor in society. Social cohesion is the degree to which members of the society feel united by shared values and other bonds.

ii. Ferdinand Toennies answer lies in the types of society.

1. Gemeinschaft: life is intimate, everyone knows everyone else; intimate, sharing a sense of togetherness.

2. Gesellschaft: a society dominated by impersonal relationships, individual accomplishments, self-interest.

b. Microsociological perspective: emphasis based on face-to-face social interaction or what people do when they are in the presence of others.

i. Personal space – how close persons may come to others. Edward Hall on US

1. intimate distance – lovemaking, wrestling, comforting, protecting

2. personal distance – 18ins to 4 feet – friends, acquaintances, ordinary conversations

3. social distance 4-12 feet – impersonal or formal relationships

4. beyond 12 feet very formal relationships, separating persons of unequal status (in context)

ii. Dramaturgy: using analogy of drama (a play) to analyze how we present ourselves in every day life.

a. Goffmann: people learn to perform through socialization.

b. Impression management is the person’s efforts to manage the impressions that others receive of him.

c. Front stage is the public arena where interaction takes place. Back stage is where people rest from their performances, discuss their presentations, plan future presentations.

d. Role performance: the particular emphasis or interpretation that an individual gives a role, or a person’s style.

i. Role conflict: when the expectations of one role are incompatible with those of another role i.e. conflict between roles.

ii. Role strain: when the expectations of a single role are incompatible.

e. Teamwork: when two or more players work together to make sure a performance happens as planned.

i. When the performance does not go as planned, we engage in face-saving behavior. E.g. ignoring a person’s actions, using tact and studied non-observance.

iii. Ethnomethodlogy: discovering the basic rules concerning our views of the world and how people ought to act.

a. Ethnomethodologists try to uncover these basic rules by breaking them deliberately.

b. Harold Garfinkel.

iv. Social construction of reality: what people define as real because of their background assumptions and life experiences.

a. Thomas theorem: If people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.

b. Symbolic Interactionists believe that people define their own reality and then live within those definitions.

c. Social interactions over the internet new area or interest among sociologists. How computer mediated interactions are likely to impact social relationships.

v. Sociologists need both levels of analysis to understand social structure, social interactions and social life.

Ch 5 Social Groups and Formal Organizations

I Social Groups

a. Groups are the essence of life in society. Groups: members have something in common and they believe that what they have in common makes a difference.

i. Aggregate: individuals temporarily sharing the same physical space but not sharing any sense of belonging.

ii. Category: people who share similar characteristics but do not interact with each other or consider each other’s interests.

b. Primary groups: groups characterized by cooperative, intimate, long-term, f2f relationships.

i. Group becomes part of one’s personality, and shapes the individual’s views of life.

ii. Essential to an individual’s psychological well-being since humans have an intense need for associations that provide feelings self self-esteem.

c. Secondary groups: larger, more anonymous, more formal, more impersonal than primary groups. Based on some interest or activity.

i. Members likely to interact on the basis of specific roles, e.g. student, manager, etc.

ii. Tend to break down into primary groups e.g. cliques. These serve to buffer the individual and the needs of the secondary group.

iii. Voluntary organizations: secondary groups consisting of volunteers organized on the basis of some mutual interest.

iv. Within such are core groups which are firmly committed to the group’s goals and organization’s maintenance. Robert Michael’s iron law of oligarchy – tendency of this inner core to dominate the organization by becoming a small self-perpetuating elite. Within a diverse society, persons who do not represent the appearance, values or background of the leadership may be excluded from leadership.

d. In-groups: those to which individuals feel loyalty; out-groups: those to wrds they feel antagonism.

i. Significant due to fact that in-groups provide a sense of identity or belonging, can give rise to feelings of superiority, and through the command of loyalty, exercise control over members. Antagonisms with out-groups help reinforce loyalty among members.

ii. Merton: double standard can exist when in-group sees its own behaviors as virtuous and the same behavior in out-groups as vices. In pluralistic society comes to justify discrimination and acts of intolerance or exclusion against the out-group.

e. Reference groups: groups sued as standards to evaluate ourselves, regardless of whether we actually belong to those groups.

i. Influence behavior be leading people to behave in ways to meet the reference groups’ expectations; anticipatory socialization.

ii. Having reference groups that conflict with each others can lead to internal conflict.

f. Social networks: people linked by various social ties. Cliques are a type. Social networks link us to the wider society.

i. Milgram’s experiments demonstrated that individuals in fact have a small number of links with others. It is the interconnectivity of those links that connect us to the larger society.

ii. Social networks tend to perpetuate inequality – whom you know more important that what you know. Old boy network.

II Bureaucracies

Weber noted the emergence of bureaucracies. Organizational form which promotes efficiency and results. (story of the railroads in US history as example of bureaucracy)

i. essential characteristics of bureaucracies are:

a. Hierarchy of offices with assignments flowing downwards and accountability flowing upwards.

b. Division of labor

c. Written rules

d. Written communications and records

e. Impersonality

Once bureaucracies come into existence they tend to perpetuate themselves by replacing old goals with new ones.
Weber thought that bureaucracies would dominate social life because of they are a powerful form of social organization. Rationalization of society. Alienation.
Downside of bureaucracies.
1. Rules can become so cumbersome that they cannot be carried out efficiently.
2. Alienation – feeling of powerlessness and normlessness when workers are engaged in repetitive tasks in order to achieve efficiency. Alienation for product of their labor.
3. To resist alienation, workers form primary groups. (ref to study of how such primary groups determined output, etc, set norms for work group)

III Working for the Corporation

Rosabeth Moss Kantor’s organizational research shows that corporate elite maintains hidden vales – to keep itself in power and to provide inside access to those who are like themselves (white, male)
1. Workers who fit in are given advancement opportunities. Those judged to be outsiders have fewer chances for advancement, think less of themselves, perform more poorly, and work below their potential. (Thomas theorem at work)
2. Women and minorities do not match the hidden values and might be treated differently. May experience showcasing – visible but powerless positions, which is then used to show relatively less competence. Slow-tracking.
Japanese model elliptical in shape. Team approach to hirings – cross training. Lifetime commitment and security
1. Decision making is a lengthy process and shared among team members.
2. Shifting towards US model. US companies also borrowing some elements of primary group relations to ‘humanize’ corporations.

IV Group dynamics

Defined as the study of how individuals affect groups and how groups affect individuals
Size of group significant for dynamics.
1. Georg Simmel noted significance, looking at dyads, triads. Fragile groups as bonds are unstable due to intensity. As more members are added, stability increases as intensity decreases. Groups develop more formal structures to accomplish goals.
Group size also influences behaviors.
1. As the group grows in size, members feel a diffusion of responsibility
2. Also loses sense of intimacy
3. Also, tends to sub-dive into smaller groups.
Leader – someone who influences the behavior of others. Types of leaders defined by HOW they do so.
1. Instrumental leaders are task-oriented, keeping the group moving towards accomplishing tasks.
2. Expressive leaders are less likely to be recognized as leaders, but serve to maintain group unity, improving morale.
3. Leadership styles three types

i. Authoritarian – give orders, little explanation for praise or criticism.

ii. Democratic – try to gain consensus, suggest alternatives if necessary, give facts as the basis for evaluations

iii. Laissez-faire – passive, giving the group total freedom to act.

iv. The Lippitt-white research demonstrates how the different types impacted behaviors of subjects

1. authoritarian- aggressive, apathetic

2. democratic – more persona;, friendly

3. laissez-faire – asked more questions, made fewer decisions, lacked achievement.

Different situations require different leadership styles.
1. People seen as strongly representing group’s values may be asked to lead in a crisis.
2. Physionomic features sometimes interpreted as signaling leadership – tallness, good-looking
Asch experiments (lines) demonstrate how groups influence actions by bringing pressure to choose a response that might conflict with one’s instinctive choices or what one sees as right.
Janis, Milgram and group think demonstrates this in the context of policy decisions – Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Pearl Harbor. Kissinger later admission of setting aside objections to go with the group.
1. Risky shift.

Ch 6 Deviance and Social Control

I. What is deviance?

A. Sociologists use the term deviance to refer to a violation of norms.

1. According to Howard S. Becker, it is not the act itself, but rather how society reacts to it that makes an action deviant.

2. Deviance is a relative concept, since different groups have different norms, what is deviant to some is not deviant to others.

3. Crime is the violation of rules that have been written into law.

4. Sociologists use the term deviance nonjudgementally to refer to any act to which people respond negatively. To sociologists, all people are deviant because everyone violates rules from time to time.

5. Erving Goffmann used the term stigma to refer to attributes that discredit one’s claim to a “normal” identity; a stigma (e.g. physical deformities, skin color) defines a person’s master status, superseding all other statuses the person occupies.

B. Norms allow social order - a group’s customary social arrangements – because they lay out the basic guidelines for how we play our roles and how we interact with others.

1. Deviance is often seen as threatening because it violates a group’s customary social arrangements and undermines the predictability that is the foundation of social life.

2. Human groups develop a system of social control, formal and informal means of enforcing the norms.

C. Society’s disapproval of deviance takes the form of negative sanctions and ranges from frowns and gossip to imprisonment and capital punishment, although most negative sanctions are informal. Positive sanctions are used to reward people for conforming to norms.

D. The sociological explanations of deviance differ from biological and psychological ones.

1. Psychologists and sociobiologists explain deviance by looking within individuals; sociologists look outside the individual.

2. Biological explanations focus on genetic predisposition – factors such as intelligence, the ‘XYY’ theory (an extra Y chromosome in men leads to crime), or body type (squarish, muscular people are more likely to commit street crimes).

3. Psychological explanations focus on personality disorders (e.g. bad toilet training, suffocating mothers). Yet these do not necessarily result in the presence or absence of specific forms of deviance in a person.

4. Sociological explanations search outside the individual; social influences – such as socialization, subcultural group memberships, or social class (people’s relative standing in terms of education, occupation, income and wealth) – account for why people break norms.

II. The Symbolic Interaction Perspective

A. Edwin Sutherland used the term differential association to suggest that we learn to deviate from or conform to society’s norms, mostly from the people with whom we associate.

1. The key to differential association is the learning of ideas and attitudes that are favorable to following the law or favorable to breaking it. Because we learn both from the various people with whom we associate, the result is an imbalance; we conform or deviate depending on which set of messages is stronger.

2. Studies have demonstrated that families do teach their members to violate the norms of society; families that are involved in crime tend to set their children on a lawbreaking path.

3. The neighborhood is also likely to be influential; sociologists have found that delinquents tend to come from neighborhoods in which their peers are involved in crime.

4. Symbolic interactionists stress that we are not mere pawns but help tp produce our orientation to life; our choice of associates helps to shape our sense of self.

B. According to Walter Reckless, who developed control theory, everyone is propelled towards deviance, but two control systems work against these motivations to deviate.

1. Inner controls are one’s capacity to withstand temptations towards deviance; they include internalized morality, integrity, fear of punishment, and desire to be good. Outer controls involve groups (e.g. family, friends, the police) that influence a person to stay away from crime.

2. Sociologist Travis Hirschi noted that strong bonds t society lead to more effective inner controls; bonds are based on attachments, commitments, involvements, and beliefs.

3. The likelihood that we will deviate from social norms is related to the strength of our control systems; if the systems are strong, we are less likely to deviate than if they are weak.

C. Labeling theory is the view that the labels people are given affect their own and others’ perceptions of them, thus channeling their behavior either into deviance or into conformity.

1. Most people resist being labeled as deviant, even when engaging in deviant behavior. There are five different techniques of neutralizations:

1. denial of responsibility (“I didn’t do it”)

2. denial of injury (“Who really got hurt?”)

3. denial of a victim (“She deserved it”)

4. condemnation of the condemners (“Who are you to talk?”)

5. appeal to higher loyalty (“I had to help my friends”)

2. Some people invite a deviant label (e.g. motorcycle gangs might pride themselves on getting to trouble, laughing at death, etc.)

3. William J. Chambliss study of lawbreaking activities among two groups – the Saints (boys from respectable middle-class families) and the Roughnecks – (boys from working-class families who hang out on the streets) – provides an illustration of labeling theory. There are social class differences in terms of not only the visibility of the lawbreaking behavior, but also the styles of interactions with those in authority. These influenced the ways in which the teachers and the police saw the boys and treated them. The study showed how labels open and close doors of opportunity for the individuals involved.

III. The Functionalist Perspective

A. Emile Durkheim stated that deviance is functional, for it contributes to social order.

1. Deviance clarifies moral boundaries (a group’s ideas about how people should act and think) and affirms norms.

2. Deviance promotes social unity.

3. Deviance promotes social change (if boundary violations gain enough support, they become new, acceptable behavior).

B. Robert Merton developed strain theory to analyze what happens when people are socialized to desire a cultural goal but are denied the institutionalized (i.e. legitimate) means to reach it.

1. Merton used “anomie” (Durkheim’s term) to refer to the strain people experience when they are blocked in their attempts to achieve cultural goals. He identifies five reactions to cultural goals

a. conformity – using acceptable means to seek goals that society sets

b. Deviant innovations (Using illegitimate means to achieve them)

c. Ritualism – giving up on cultural goals, but clinging to the conventional rules of conduct.

d. Retreatism – rejecting cultural goals, dropping out

e. Rebellion – seeking to replace society’s goals

2. According to strain theory, deviants are products f their society. Some experience greater frustration in achieving cultural goals because of their location in society, making them more likely to deviate.

C. According to illegitimate opportunity theory, social classes have distinct styles of crime due to differential access to institutional means of achieving socially acceptable goals.

1. Many poor children in industrialized societies, who are socialized into wanting to own things, end up dropping out of school because of educational failure, thereby closing the door on many legitimate avenues to financial success.

2. Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin suggest that opportunities for remunerative crime are woven into the texture of life and may result when legitimate structures fail. In this way, the poor may be drawn into certain crimes in unequal numbers

3. Illegal income-producing activities, such as robbery, drug dealing, prostitution, pimping, gambling and other “hustles”, are functional for those who want to make money but whose access to legitimate activities are blocked.

4. Gangs offer disadvantaged youth an illegitimate opportunity structure. Research by Martin Sanchez Jankowski demonstrated that young men joined gangs because gangs provided them with access to steady money, recreation, anonymity in criminal activities, protection, and a way to help the neighborhood.

5. White-collar crime refers to crimes that people of respectable and high social status commit in the course of their occupations. Such crimes exist in greater numbers than is commonly perceived and can be very costly – totaling about $200 billion a year. They can involve physical harm and sometimes death (concealing information that silicone breast implants might leak, for example).

IV. The Conflict Perspective

A. Conflict theorists address the issue of why the legal system is inconsistent in terms of providing “justice for all”. This inequality is central to their analysis of crime and the criminal justice system – the police, courts, and prisons.

B. The criminal justice system is controlled by the wealthy and powerful – a power elite; this group determines the basic laws whose enforcement is essential to the preservation of its power.

C. According to conflict theory, the law is an instrument of repression, a tool designed to maintain the powerful in privileged positions and keep the powerless from rebelling and overthrowing the social order. When members of the working class get out of line, they are arrested, tried and imprisoned in the criminal justice system.

1. While the criminal justice system tends to overlook the harm done by the corporations, flagrant violations are prosecuted. The publicity that is given to white-collar criminals helps stabilize the system by providing evidence of fairness.

2. Usually, the powerful bypass the courts altogether, appearing instead before some agency whose members are people from the same wealthy background. Given this, it is not surprising that the usual sanction is a token fine.

3. Property crimes of the masses are handled by the courts; these crimes threaten not only the sanctity of private property, but also, ultimately, the positions of the powerful.

V. Reactions to Deviance

A. Imprisonment – a reflection of a “get-tough” orientation – is an increasingly popular reaction to crime.

1. There has been a tremendous growth in the U.S. prison population; it is estimated that more than two million people are currently incarcerated. About 95 percent are men, and about half are African American.

2. The recidivism rate (the proportion of persons who are rearrested) in the United States runs as high as 79 percent. When prisoners who committed crimes are released, 52 percent are back in prison within three years.

3. Research on the death penalty reveals that the death penalty is not administered evenly. Biases including differential treatment based on geographic location, gender, social class, and racial and ethnic biases

4. As opinions change or different groups gain access to power, definitions of deviance and laws also change. An example of a new type of crime is hate crime.

B. Medicalization of deviance is the view of deviance as a symptom of some underlying illness that needs to be treated by physicians.

1. 1. Thomas Szasz argues that mental illness is simply problem behaviors: Some forms of “mental” illnesses have organic causes (e.g. depression caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain), while others are responses to trouble with various coping devices.

2. Some sociologists find Szasz’s analysis refreshing because it indicates that social experiences, not some illness of the mind, underlie bizarre behaviors.

C. The experience of being homeless can cause mental illness. Because they are on the street and often have no place to wash themselves or their clothes, homeless people are stared at or ignored, resulting in withdrawal. Homelessness and mental illness can be reciprocal: Just as “mental illness” can cause homelessness, so the trials of being homeless, of living on the streets, can lead to unusual and unacceptable thinking and behavior

D. With deviance inevitable, one measure of a society is how it treats its deviants. The larger issues are how to protect people from deviant behaviors that are harmful to their welfare, to tolerate behaviors that are not, and to develop systems of fairer treatment for deviants.