Micro theory of roles (2/12)

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Micro theory of roles (2/12)

• Complete Murray
• Micro-theory roles and nets
• The power of roles

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Quiz scores
TO BE UPDATED
F D C B A
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Criticisms of Murray

• Even if his argument comes to correct
  conclusions, it is clearly flawed
• Technically, the data do not establish what they
  purport to establish.
• Conceptually, the variables are not valid
  measures of government and no government
• The general method ignores reciprocal and
  functional relations of programs and problems.

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Some technical Problems with Murrays analysis

• 1 What range of speed is involved? The lowered
  speed limit was not designed to reduce
  fatalities, and no one thought it would do so.
• 2 What highways? The lower speed limits were
  only on the interstates. Most fatalities are
  local. Murrays data is not confined to
  interstates.
• 3. Better cars, better highways, and inspections
  (which Murray thinks lowered fatalities) are
  almost certainly the result of the kinds of
  policies he opposes. Pintos were profitable.

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A general issue of validity

• The notion that speed limits are the main role or
  function of government is extraordinarily narrow.
• The improvement of roads and of safety, which
  Murray believes drove the progressive decline of
  fatalities per mile was a function of government
  programs.
• The provision of infrastructure is a public good
  even toll highways require government.

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A more general issue of method

• Murray confines his analysis to 2 variables with
  no feedbacks
• assuming that limits affect fatalities, but
  fatalities cannot affect limits.
• This is analogous to a classic fallacy
• That fire engines do not decrease fire damage.
• Looking at functional feedbacks avoids the
  fallacy.
• i.e.
• To know whether the association of programs to
  policies should be positive or negative would be
  to estimate the size of the arrows.

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Social Problems
Social Policies
Social Problems
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The fire engine fallacy

• Suppose one were to decide on whether to have a
  public fire company by seeing whether there was
  greater or lesser damage when there were more
  fire engines.
• But when there are more fire engines, there is
  more damage.
• Fire engines do not cause damage, but they
  respond to functional need larger fires.
• If policies are effective, but not totally
  effective, they will be positively associated
  with problems.

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A General issue of Libertarianism

• Many of the proposals of Libertarians, like
  Murray, are an attempt to go back to the kind of
  social structure of the 19th c.
• There was little government and lots of mutual
  aid (e.g. bucket brigades for fires.)
• One cannot go back to little house on the prairie
• But the Great San Francisco Fire shows the
  dysfunctionality of relying on private fire
  companies and bucket brigades in a modern city.

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Micro- and macro-structures

• Micro-structure is often defined as the analysis
  of face-to face interactions
• and thus the immediate social constraints on
  individual choices.
• The two main approaches are in terms of roles and
  in terms of networks.
• Both roles and networks require an analysis of
  social structures to be understood.
• E.g. cashing a check or a jury trial

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Two main approaches to micro-structure

• Roles Look at social structure as a set of
  jobs with functional requirements and
  normative expectations.
• Bennys gang, KOS, can also be analyzed as a set
  of normatively governed roles.
• Network Look at social structure as a set of
  connections of different kinds between namable
  individuals.
• Networks are key to how blood feuds start and to
  how blood feuds can stop.

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Roles expectations and functions as
self-maintaining

• If the particular person in a role dies or fails
  to fulfill the role, then they will be replaced.
• The role is independent of the person.
• Eg. A job
• But the person living in poverty may be a social
  slot as well,
• either because the no. of persons gt the no. of
  jobs
• or because more than ½ of hungry families have a
  full time worker.

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The role structure Student
Other examples a job, a jury trial, KOS, a
church.
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Networks as self-reinforcing

• Often the people you hang around with
• Bring you into contact with those
• Who reinforce the ideas and behaviors
• That lead to your hanging with them.
• Birds of a feather, flock together.
• But if you flock with those birds, you will
  develop those feathers.
• E.g. Alcoholics Anonymous to maintain sobriety,
  you have to change people, places and things.

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The network of Sociology professor

• Any network is as unique as a fingerprint

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Micro-structures of Roles

• A social structure can be analyzed as a set of
  statuses each of which has a pattern of
  appropriate behavior (role). 115-9.
• Appropriatemeans that some kind of sanctioning
  control will be exerted for inappropriate
  behavior .
• Roles are in sets, so that the other roles in a
  given set often exert pressures to behave
  appropriately.
• The society as a role structure was the basis of
  a functional, normative conception of the social
  system.
• The roles and statuses exist independently of the
  person occupying them, as a job in a company
  may exist even if it is vacant.

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Example a jury trial and the development of the
law

• Someone called to jury duty may occupy the status
  of juror at the same time they occupy many
  other statuses (male, student)
• Role strain occurs when the expectations of
  different members of a set are inconsistent.
• Role conflict occurs when the statuses occupied
  by an individual push him/her in different
  directions.
• Functionalists analyze social structure as a
  normatively integrated set of roles,
• Governed by norms and values.

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Debated norms

• Often there is considerable debate about what are
  the real norms that operate.
• A jury trial operates under norms of equality
  before the law, that is blind to class or race.
• Colin Ferguson and Bernard Goetz both shot a
  number of people and both used the defense of a
  fear-and-rage. Ferguson was found guilty, and
  Goetz acquitted. Why?
• What are the roles and strains operating on the
  development of race relations in the US?

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Roles institutional racism

• If you worked at Auschwitz, would you incinerate
  Jews? Probably, and if not you would be
  replaced.
• Was there anyplace in Nazi Germany that you would
  work that was not part of the system of
  incinerating Jews? No. Germany was
  institutionally racist in 1935.
• The concept of institutional racism is that often
  the ordinary operation of businesses, farms,
  schools, courts, etc. can lead to discriminatory,
  racist behavior that is motivated by ordinary
  profit, self-interest, etc.

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The Power of roles

• Stanley Milgrams Obedience test
• Will ordinary Americans, today, administer
  apparently lethal shock to an innocent person
  because they are told to do so?
• Germans were just following orders?
• How powerful is this?
• Milgrams presumption was that Germans would and
  Americans would not.
• His finding was that Americans would.

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The Players

• The experimentor Milgram himself, in a white
  lab-coat
• The learner ostensibly one of the subjects,
  chosen at random actually a trained actor.
• The teacher the true subject a college
  student or person from the community who is
  taking part in an experiment on learning

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The procedure

• The learner (who has said he has a heart
  condition) is strapped into an electric chair in
  another room, connected by sound.
• The teacher is instructed to continue increasing
  levels of shock past Danger Extremely high
  shock and 500 Volts.
• Prompts only The experiment requires that you
  continue. You must continue.

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The findings

• After the learner not only is screaming, but
  falls dead silent, most teachers are very
  uncomfortable.
• Would you continue administering shock? Or would
  you refuse?
• Most subjects continued, even under variations
  designed to increase resistance.

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A key issue for the relation of norms to nets

• When there are several subjects reacting to a
  single authority, the dynamic becomes very
  complex.
• The actions and ideas of the other subjects can
  enormously increase or they can undermine the
  authority of the experimentor.
• Actual authority is often an unstable dynamic