Identity and Social Structure (7&8) Flashcards
Culture
- describes broad, soceity-wide social structure (beliefs, values, practices and rituals) OR (art/ entertainment)
- sociologists bring culture down to the level of the individuals by looking at the ROLES we play and how we act
Stanford Prison Experiment (Philip Zimbardo)
- divided a group of undergraduates into prisoners and guards and placed them in a simulated prison
- wanted to know why ordinary people have been able to take part in something as horrific as the Nazi genocides
Situationism
•our actions are mostly taken in response to specified external situation (actions determined by the social situation that we find ourselves in)
- ie: SPE- the ‘scary’ guard acted like a normal person in interviews, other guards responded to ‘bad’ guard and changed their behaviour to imitate him or to avoid confronting him, zimbardo forgot he was a psychologist
• suggests that personality isn’t fixed, people will behave very differently in a variety of different external situations
Role (and role-taking vs. role making)
• Role: the socially- define character that you perform in everyday situations
•Role-taking: act of adopting specific role in a situation (eg- being a good friend)
• Role-making: our ability to interpret/ “make” a role in a way that changes or adapts it
- in social situations, we all act according to certain roles
Social Script
• set of rule and expectations that specify how people in two different roles should interact
• scripts are acquired as we grow up, we know instinctively what’s expected of us
-ie: students in SPE felt there was a ‘right’ way to behave whr guards EXPECTED prisoners to follow orders and became genuinely angry when they didn’t
• when people interact, there may be rules that dictate how their roles should act (eg: doctor and patient)
• tells us how we ought to behave, what we expect in specific social situations (people may be angry is scripts aren’t followed)
Dramaturgical Method (and staging vs. impression management) (Erving Goffman)
- Dramaturgical Method: interprets social interactions as though people are acting out specific roles
- Staging: society defines diff ‘stages’ or ‘settings’ for our roles (and we can analyse how ppl prepare for these roles)
- Impression Management: how we try to affect others’ views of us by acting in certain ways
Identity and Role Set
- Identity: your overall picture of the way all your roles fit together
- Role set: the collection of roles that any individual plays- we all juggle a number of roles in our daily lives and try to build something coherent out of them (eg: being a student, daughter, cashier)
Role Strain vs. Role Conflict
- Role strain: difficulties in fulfilling the demands of a single, intense role (eg: feeling like you’re a bad parent)
- Role conflict: juggling the contradictory demands of multiple roles (eg: combining a job with parenthood), where the demands of one of our roles lead us to neglect the others
4 ways of dealing with conflicts
master status, compartmentalization, role distance and role exit
1) Master status: single most important role to identity given priority over rest (eg: choosing to work late instead of going to child’s party)
2) Compartmentalization: separate roles completely so they can’t come in to conflict
3) Role distance: showing disdain for role you have to play (eg: child pushing away parents when friends are around)
4) Role exit: often painful process when we’re obliged to give up a role (eg: quitting a beloved career to care for family)
Status (and Ascribed status vs Achieved status)
•Status: rank or prestige of your role relative to others in society
• Ascribed status: status is bc of things you can’t change (eg: gender, ethnicity)
• Achieved status: possible (in theory) to change your social rank by your own actions (eg: job, wealth)
- perception of your status in society affects how you act (lower status groups often go along w status order)
Looking-glass self (Charles Horton Cooley)
• the way we view selves as others see us- we see ourselves in the mirror of their opinion
• your self-worth and aspirations come from how others treat or see you
(eg: is they treat you badly you have no reason to believe you deserve anything other than being treated badly)
- we therefore try to live up to others’ expectations of us and our actions are conditioned by the need to get esteem of others
Panopticon (Michel Foucault)
*means “total sight”
• building or (more generally) society in which it’s constantly possible for those in charge to see what we’re all doing (eg: surveillance)
- we are aware of being watched so we change our behaviour accordingly; we are properly ‘individuals’ because surveillance ‘picks us out’ from the crowd and makes us self aware
Governmentality (Foucault)
• general social control over every single aspect of our lives down to the tiny movement of the body
• we are formed as individuals because power forces us to behave in certain ways (trained to live our lives according to the ways a power measures us)
- constantly fearing being watched, monitored etc.. we try to meet the standards of these observers
Social Relation
• formalized, fixed set of rules that dictate the way people in diff. roles interact
(allows people to predict how others will respond to them)
- ie: a grandparent has a specific relationship to a grandchild; a doctor does not have a specific relationship to a politician
What is the result of groups?
- our expectations and self-image often come from the groups we’re part of (we live up to subcultural norms)
- we learn what’s expected of us, how to dress, and what is ‘normal’ behaviour
- every individual has a specific role in a variety of groups (eg: family vs friends vs work)
Group (and its subcategories–> reference, primary and secondary)
- Group: a set of people who interact regularly with set forms and rules
- Reference group: we look to our groups to learn about normal social behaviour and values. They help NORMALIZE our behaviour bc we seek their approval and act like them (eg: teacher)
- Primary group: those closest to you that you interact on a personal basis; usually small groups with intimate interaction over long periods of time (eg:family)
- Secondary Group: a looser network of people you belong to (eg: work colleagues); usually larger groups with less personal contact and less enduring
Sociometry (Jacob Moreno)
mapping networks and connections btwn individuals, connecting up different nodes (ppl in a network) and identifying ppl who serve as major ‘stars’ in the network
• Sociometric star: the node or person with MOST CONNECTIONS to others for a particular criterion
Out-group/ In-group
*members of groups often feel a special bond w one another
• Out-group: belong to other groups (indirectly connected) (eg: albertans looking at someone from bc- still from Canada)
• In-Group: belong to same group (eg: albertans feel/ understand one-another)
Coalitions (‘ally’)
- may be formed in groups
* diff groups with shared interests work together temporarily for common good
Network and Weak ties
- Network: group of people outside our immediate group; linked to them personally but don’t share same group identity with them
- Weak ties: connected to the friends of people in other groups (useful for finding jobs)
Gemeinschaft (Ferdinand Tonnies)
small community characterized by tight social bonds between people who know and care about one another
• closer connections in old societies (everyone knew everyone)
Gesellschaft (Ferdinand Tonnies)
(rmbr be geSELLschaft= like sell like business)
individuals may feel more isolated/detached and not part of a group, more simply a node in a system
large, impersonal society of the modern world, where relations are cold and businesslike
• no real connection, businesslike relationships (eg: facebook)
Social Structure
configuration of institutions, social relations and shared binding factors that hold society together at a fundamental level
6 types of society (Gerhard Lenski)
- hunter-gather, horticultural (primitive agriculture), agrarian (farming on a bigger scale), industrial, post-industrial, post-modern)
- he suggests that social structure is based on technologies used to generate subsistence (each stage has new technology)
Group Dynamics
observable ways in which groups operate as a whole to preserve their unity
Robert Bales on group roles
- he noticed in each group (no matter which group) and set a certain task, at least three forms would be filled- task leader, emotional leader and joke
- group dynamics essentially demanded these roles be filled regardless of the interest of individuals
Social Forms (Georg Simmel)
• regular, objectively-observable types of group, whose interactions follow certain rules (regardless of whether people in the interaction are aware of it)
Different ‘social forms’ noticed by Simmel?
- ‘Stranger’- foreigner in the group that is half-familiar, half-unfamiliar person that may be treated as a confidante by group (not a threat but also not close enough)
- ‘Secret’ and ‘Secret Societies’- societies organized around keeping secret knowledge will tend to be esp suspicious of out-group and control lives of members extensively
Size of Group (Simmel)
- Dyad: group fo ONLY two people or units (might fall into an irreconcilable conflict which neither can win)
- Triad: group of three people of units (third person= ‘arbitrator’ so two of them can always ‘gang’ up to overrule)
Levi-Strauss on relationships of marriage
- involves husband, wife, son and uncle—> relationship btwn these people (husband to wife, uncle to child) is either warm (positive) or authoritative (negative)
- relation of uncle-nephew is to brother-sister as father-son is to husband-wife
- if U-N and B-S (brother-son)were the same (both pos) then F-S (father-son)and H-W would be same
Authoritative relation (Strauss)
- if U-S is good and B-W is good, then H-F is bad and F-S is bad
- if U-S is bad then H-W is bad but B-W is good and F-S is good
Social Institution
- organized set of beliefs, behaviour, roles, and rules that meet a function for rest of society (usually contains own subset or roles and positions)
- self-contained set of roles and rules, refer to people to one another within them (eg: family consists of parents, children etc that interact internally in a set way)
- institutions usually fulfill some broader social purpose–> eg: family help reproduce society, education helps prepare children for full membership of society
Rationalization Hypothesis (Weber)
- argument that social relations have been made progressively more formal, abstract, and law-governed, instead of traditional and personal (eg: bureaucracy)
- suggest that bureaucratic procedures become an ‘iron cage’ that individuals become trapped in the set of rules created for themselves and simply treated as abstract units
- distances people from one another
Social Identity
your awareness of being part of a larger group; the extent to which characteristics shared with others form part of your sense of self (sense of collectivity/ belonging)
• social identity often constructed AGAINST another group (ex: outsides, deviants from society)
Solidarity and its forms (Durkheim) - mechanical and organic
*force that binds society together
- Solidarity: how society holds its members together
- Mechanical Solidarity: people are held together by similarities; society enforces laws to keep us all the same (make everyone same!)
- Organic Solidarity: people are held together by differences; we specialize so we depend on each other (everyone is different!)
Labelling Theory (Howard Becker)
- dominant groups create arbitrary rules and restrictions and LABEL breach of rules as DEVIANT (not mainstream) in order to enforce control
- once labelled as ‘deviant’ people will often embrace their new status and increasingly identify with subculture
