Fridays Reading

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Fridays Reading
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Week 6 Chapter 5

• SOCIAL INTERACTION AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE

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Social Interaction and Structure

• Social Interaction
• Refers to the way people respond to one another.
• Social Structure
• The way in which a society is organized into
  predictable relationships.
• Studying the link between interaction and
  structure is central to sociology

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Social Structure

• Metaphor
• Structure House Structure and Piping
• Interaction How you decorate, and live in the
  house.
• the foundation of a house, the structure, creates
  what Allan Johnson calls the path of least
  resistance
• It sets the stage for who interacts with who and
  how.

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Elements of Social Structure

• Status
• --Status refers to any of the socially defined
  positions within a large group or society.
• --A person holds more than one status
  simultaneously.
• --Examples of statuses
• president daughter
• student neighbor

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Elements of Social Structure

• Ascribed and Achieved Status
• --Ascribed status is a status one is born with.
• --Achieved status is a status one earns.

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Elements of Social Structure
Ascribed Statuses
Source Schaefer 2004
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Elements of Social Structure
Source Schaefer 2004
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Elements of Social Structure

• Master Status
• a status that dominates others and determines a
  persons general position in society.
• Often Race and Gender
• Rock Hudson Homosexuality
• Sandra Day OConnor The first woman to serve as
  a Supreme Court justice.

• Source http//www.gale.com/free_resources/whm/bio
  /oconnor_s.htm

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Social Statuses have Social Roles

• Social Roles
• --sets of expectations for people who occupy a
  given status.
• Role Conflict
• --occurs when incompatible expectations arise
  from two or more social positions held by the
  same person.
• --the challenge of occupying two social positions
  simultaneously.

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• Social statuses are like a part in a play. Each
  part has a role to play.
• Can run into conflict if playing two
  parts/statuses
• i.e. you play both an angel that requires white
  makeup and a tree that requires green makeup.

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Social Roles

• Role Strain
• --describes the difficulties that result from the
  differing demands and expectations associated
  with the same social position.
• Role Exit
• --Role Exit describes the process of
  disengagement from a role that is central to
  ones self-identity and reestablishment of an
  identity in a new role.

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Source Kendall
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Source Kendall
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Source Kendall
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• Kindergarten Cop Role Conflict

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Role Exit I Quit! Im going to drive a truck.
Source Kendall
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• Reviewing social structure and the paths of least
  resistance they create further informs our
  thinking of nature vs. nurture.
• How much does social structure/situation matter?
  
• Does it trump our individual nature?

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Zimbardo 7.5 minutes

• Where do you see social structure?
• Did social structure override the selves of
  those involved in the experiment?
• What would you have done?
• What does this experiment say about
  re-socialization and prison as a Total
  Institution.

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• Total Institution Goffman
• Institutions such as prisons, the military,
  mental hospitals, and convents that regulate all
  aspects of a persons life under a single
  authority.
• Re-socialiazation is particularly effective in
  total institutuins.