Social Interaction and Social Structure

Chapter 5: Sociology, Schaefer and Lamm, 1995-2012

Neal Shover and Burglars: Division of labor, status and roles, group structure, connections through fence to police etc., the GOOD BURGLAR.

Social Structure:

The way in which society is organized into predictable relationships, patterns of social interaction (the way in which people respond to each other). These patterns etc, are to some extent independent of the particular individual, they exert a force which shapes behavior and identity.

Social interaction and the Social Construction of Reality (see also: Social Construction and Why it Matters [transcript])

"The most general answer to this question is that social order is a human product. Or, more precisely, an ongoing human production. It is produced by man in the course of his ongoing externalization. Social order is not biologically given or derived from any biological data in its empirical manifestations. Social order, needless to add, is also not given in man's natural environment, though particular features of this may be factors in determining certain features of a social order (for example, its economic or technological arrangements). Social order is not part of the "nature of things," and it cannot be derived from the "laws of nature." Social order exists only as a product of human activity. No other ontological status may be ascribed to it without hopelessly obfuscating its empirical manifestations. Both in its genesis (social order is the result of past human activity) and its existence in any instant of time (social order exists only and insofar as human activity continues to produce it) it is a human product." (Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise on the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1966), p. 51)

Zimbardo's, "Stanford County Prison."


YouTube: https://youtu.be/sZwfNs1pqG0 (transcript) see also, the clip at http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=18557&title=Stanford_Prison_Experiment

"Reading" the evidence at the O.J. trial.

Seeing monsters versus "catching" a virus?

"Homeless" or Con-artist.

Malcom X/Muhammed Ali: redefining their own and African-Americans' place.

Language: People of Color versus Colored People.

Goffman on the social construction of the "self."

Defining "unemployment:" all without a job, or only those actively seeking work (initiated during Reagan's administration).

Broad social patterns, and social definitions shape the nature of the situations and lend themselves to particular images and feeling for the participants.  We act upon these images, meanings, feelings, and definitions.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Social Construction of Gender? Of Race? Of...well, just about anything.

Social Structure as a Negotiated Order

Culture forms the foundation of Social Structure:

Social Structure Exercise

STATUS:

Roles:

GROUPS

INSTITUTIONS Functionalism:

Interrelated and interdependent, resist change, integrated, promote stability. Focus: How they fulfill essential system requirements, Self-correcting

Conflict:

The outcome and functioning of institutional structures is not necessarily efficient nor desirable. Order is negotiated, but not all groups have equal footing. Organization of major institutions is built upon the interests and control of dominant groups. Preserve status quo, inhibit change by maintaining relationships of inequality. Schools, Politics, Economics. Source of Social Problems.

Interactionism:
  1. Bureaucracy's Other Face (Informal structures): "Banana Time," (scroll through the "Primary Groups" article to get to Roy's article in Primis: Workers engage in informal interactions to structure their work environment).
  2. Communication: formal vs informal-Kanter: aside by corporate executive becomes viewed as an order, nurses making decisions for doctors.
  3. Real and varied negotiations: Running the ADAPCP

The Changing Structure of Society

Lenski's Technological Determinism.

Hunting and Gathering Societies (1:3) (calories of energy expended:calories of food energy produced)

-----------------------------------------The Hoe

Horticultural Societies (1:15)

Social Surplus

Pastoral Societies

-----------------------------------------The Plow

Agricultural Societies (1:50) Power==> Land

-----------------------------------------The Machine/Factory

Industrial Societies (1:5000) Power==> Money

-----------------------------------------The Computer

Post-Industrial/Post-Modern Societies (?) Power==> Information

Explaining/understanding the shift from agricultural to industrial systems

Durkheim's Mechanical/Organic Solidarity:

Ferdinand Toennies: (see also)

Gemeinschaft

Gesellschaft

Rural Urban
Community Differentness
Interaction intimate Formal, task specific
Cooperation Self-interest
Openness Privacy
Informal control Formal control
Less tolerance of deviance Tolerance of deviance
Ascribed Status Achieved
Little change Rapid Change
Community

Today's Society: The Debate
Themes of Postmodernist Thought Everyday life expressions of these themes:
  1. Hi-Tech lifestyles (Social Side of the Internet. Pew Internet & American Life Project. January 18, 2011)
  2. Preoccupied with consumer goods and media images
  3. The Mass
  4. International, "demise of the nation-state"
  5. Irrationality of Rationality
  6. The impact of continual change (or this, local)
  7. McDonaldization (Organizational change)

ISSUE: Institutional change, image and status of LGBT-Other, interaction within the Gay subculture and between varieties of gender.

Groups

URL: http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/010/structur.html
Owner: Robert O. Keel rok@umsl.edu
References and Credits for this Page of Notes
Last Updated: Thursday, September 21, 2017 11:25 AM