CH 4 Flashcards
Social interaction
- What people do when they come together
- micro
Social structure
- Typical patterns of a group
- guides our behavior
Ex. Relationships between women and men
Social class
Large numbers of people who have similar income and education and who work at jobs that are comparable in prestige
Status
Position that someone occupies; guides behavior
Ex. Daughter, student
Status set
All the statuses or positions that you occupy
Ascribed status
Involuntary, given at birth
Ex. Race, social class of parents
Achieved status
Voluntary, earned
Ex. Friend, student, lawyer, drop out
Status symbols
Signs that identify a status
Ex. Wedding rings
Master status
- cuts across your other statuses
Ex. Sex, age race, job, wealth, scars
Status inconsistency
Mismatch among statuses
Ex. 14 y/o college student
Roles
- Behaviors, obligations, privileges attached to a status
- set at birth
- certain amount of freedom
Ex. Girls vs boys - occupy a status; play a role
Ex. Status is student; role is study
Socialization
- cave into norms
- want to do what our roles indicate is appropriate
Group
- People who interact with one another and feel that the values they have in common are important
- feel obligation to affirm the group’s values
- yield to other the right to judge our behavior
Ex. Social class, status, role
Social institutions
- Standard or usual ways that a society meets its basic needs
- set the context for behavior and orientations to life
Ex. Family, religion, medicine, politics
Hunting and gathering societies
- few social divisions; little inequality
- men hunt, women gather or both do both
Pastoral and horticultural societies
- pastoral: pasturing animals, nomadic
- Horticulture: plants with hand tools, stayed in one place
- division of labor developed because not everyone needed to provide food
- trade
- social inequality: some had more goods than other lead to war
- slaves
Agricultural society
- plow
- cities and culture developed: philosophy, art
- wheel, writing
- dawn of civilization
- inequality is fundamental: elite had armed men, taxes on their subjects
Industrial Revolution
- steam engine
- cities
- worker struggle for better conditions
- pattern of growing inequality was reversed: abolition of slavery, greater rights for women
Postindustrial society
- information and services
- cars, technology, Internet
Biotech society
Applying and altering genetic structures to produce food, medicine, materials
Social integration
Members united by shared values and other social bonds
Mechanical solidarity
- Emile Durkheim
- people who perform similar tasks develop a shared consciousness
- tolerate little diversity in behavior
Ex. Farming community: everyone grows crops and shares similar views in life
Division of labor
- Disperses people into different interest groups where they develop different ideas about life
- depend on each for work not ideas
- organic solidarity
Organic solidarity
- Emile Durkheim
- interdependence
Ex. Students and teachers perform difference jobs but depend on each other
Gemeinschaft
- Ferdinand Tonnies
- intimate community: everyone knows everyone
- short term relationships
- individual accomplishments
- Society is called Gesellschaft: impersonal association: our lives do not center on others
—— most of our time is spent with strangers
Role conflicts
- Family, friendship, student, work roles clash
- what is expected of us in one status conflicts with a not her status
Role strain
- the same status contains incompatible roles
Ethnomethodology
- The study of how people use commonsense understandings to make sense of life
- Harold Harfinkel
- background assumptions