Quiz #3 - Module 5&6 Flashcards
Status
- Recognized social position that an individual occupies
- contributes to social identity
- imposes responsibilities and expectations
- defines a person’s relationships with others
Status Set
- collection of statuses achieved over a lifetime
- statuses change as we age
Achieved Status
a status you entered at some stage of your life; you weren’t born into it
ex/ academic standings, professional position
Ascribed Status
a status one is born into or enters involuntarily
ex/ son, teenager, cancer survivor
Social Mobilty
- determines the degree to which your status is achieved or ascribed
- extent to which people’s social and economic statuses can change
Master status
- Everett C Hughes
- dominated all of and individual’s statuses in most social contexts
- plays the largest role in the formation of the individuals social identity
Status Hierarchy
- statuses can be ranked based on prestige and power
- for categories like gender, race, age, class, etc there always seems to be one that is favoured
status consistency
is the condition a person experiences when all of their statuses fall in the same range in the social hierarchy
* E.g., male, white, of British heritage, rich, heterosexual, and able-
bodied
status inconsistency
the result of marginalization
* Process by which groups are assigned into categories that set them at or beyond the margins of dominant society.
* occurs when a person holds social statuses that are ranked differently and do not align
* E.g., Indigenous cabinet minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, Olivia Chow
Social Roles
- set of behaviours and attitudes associated with a particular status
- roles attached to a status will differ among cultures
- status may be associated with multiple roles
Role Set
- Robert Merton
- refers to all the roles that are attached to a particular status
- E.g., professors play the role of teachers, colleagues, employees, etc
Role strain
develops when there is a conflict between roles within the role set of a particular status
* E.g., a student catching a classmate cheating
Role conflict
Role conflict occurs when a person is forced to reconcile incompatible expectations generated from two or more statuses they hold
* E.g., conflicting demands of being a mother and a student
Role Exit
- process of disengaging from a role that has been central to one’s identity and attempting to establish a new role
- According to Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh it involves shifting ones master status
Pecking order
- applies to small group settings
- term coined by Thorlief Schjelderup-Ebbe
- establishes the rankings of people in a group
People associated with small groups
- George Simmel (1858–1918)
- One of the first sociologists to study daily, one-on-one interactions of individuals
- Charles Cooley (1864–1929)
- Identity formation through the looking-glass self
- Frederic M. Thrasher (1892–1962)
- Studied gangs as small clusters of intense interaction separated from the larger world
- William I. Thomas (1963-1947)
- Coined the concept definition of the situation
- Individuals define situations based on their subjective experiences and respond accordingly
- We must study these definitions to understand individual action
- Interpretations and definitions produce reality, a process also known as Thomas theorem
- “Situations we define as real become real in their consequences”
Interaction Process Analysis
- Robert F. Bales (1916–2004)
- developed a system of interactions in small groups called interaction process analysis
- identifies patterns of behaviour
Social organization
- social and cultural principles around which people and things are structured, ordered, and categorized
Ex/ cultures, institutions are socially organized around principles such as egalitarianism or hierarchy
Organizational structure
is comprised of the principles that are upheld by shared cultural beliefs and maintained through a network of social relations
* Organizations are based on understandings and knowledge of the world, which are shaped by their cosmology
* An account of the origin and ruling principles of the universe
The study of Organizations
Max Webber
- Started with Max Webbers work on bureaucracy
- 1980s: shift from the examination of social institutions to that of business corporations in search of effective and efficient management practices
- This brought about a surge in studies in the fields of
organizational theory and organizational behaviour
Organizational ritual
- form of social action where a group’s values and identity are publicly demonstrated
Organizational Structure and Gender
- different for females and males
- feminist coalitions include issues such as the internal distribution of power
- 3 models of feminist organizations
1. formal social movement organizations
2. small groups or collectives
3. service provider organizations
Bureaucracy
- arose 5,000 years ago with the formation of states and writing systems
- According to Max Webber, bureaucracy is marked by formal rationalization and its 4 elements
1. Efficiency
2. Quantification
3. Predictability
4. Control
Substantive vs formal rationalization
- Substantive rationalization focuses on values and ethics
- Formal rationalization leads to disenchantment and alienation
The Evolution of Formal Rationalization
- The development of formal rationality began during
the Industrial Revolution (late 18th and early 19th
centuries) - Frederick W. Taylor (1856–1915) developed practice
of scientific management - Based on “time-and-motion” studies designed to discover
one best way of doing any given job - But, efficiency standards limit work processes to single set
of repetitive actions, undermining skill development
Mcdonaldization
- coined by George Ritzer
- process by which the rationalizing principles of fast food chains are coming to dominant other sectors of society
Deviance
- behaviour that strays from what is considered normal
- does not mean bad, criminal, perverted, or inferior
- changes with time, location, and culture
- definitions of deviance reflect power and ideas of those in charge
Overt characteristics of deviance
- actions or qualities taken as explicitly violating the cultural norm
covert characteristics of deviance
- the unstated qualities that might make a group targets for sanctions
- age, ethnic background, race, sexual orientation, etc
social constructionism
- certain elements of social life, such as deviance, are not natural and are created by the society or culture
Essentialism
argues that there is something natural, true, or universal and therefore objectively determined about deviant characteristics
Stigma (Goffman’s study)
- illustrates the interplay of essentialism and social constructionism
- stigma: human attribute that is seen to discredit an individual’s social identity
1. bodily stigma: physical deformities
2. Moral stigma: blemishes of individual character
3. Tribal stigma: transmitted through group association
The other/othering
- image constructed by the dominant culture to characterize subcultures
- can be depicted many ways, but is ultimately inferior
- once associated with otherness, deviant behavior is often subject to negative sanctions
- Edward Said’s orientalism discussion stated that the dominant West constructed the Middle East as other
Moral Panic
campaign designed to arouse concern over and issue or group
Moral Entrepreneur
- according to Becker, a person who tries to convince others of the need to take action around a social problem that they have defined
Racializing deviance
- linking ethnic groups (especially visible minorities) with certain forms of deviance
- ethnic background a covert characteristic of deviance
- treating groups differently because of that connection
- racialized minorities face constant pressure to assimilate to dominant culture
Deviance in gender
- patriarchal societies make being male a norm with being female is treated as other
- in patriarchal societies, images of woman are often constructed to contain misogyny
- patriarchal construct: social conditions that favor boys/men over girls
Deviance within Class
- poverty can be considered a covert characteristic of deviance
- the lower class is over-represented in the statistics on criminal convocations and admissions to prison
- the reason for this misrepresentation is the lack of social resources and limited ability for impression management
- schools to prison hypothesis: biased application of zero-tolerance policies in schools, constant surveillance and bias in the criminal justice system can result in higher incarceration rates
White-Collar Crime
- Edwin Sutherland
- a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his/her occupation
- Clinard and Quinney refined Sutherlands concept by distinguishing two types
1. occupation crimes - benefit the individual at the expense of other individuals who work for the company
2. corporate crimes - benefit the corporation and its executives at the expense of other companies and the general public
Deviance and Sexual Orientation
- homosexuality is sanctioned in various ways around the globe from social scrutiny to formal laws
- informal sanctions like what exist in Canada is referred to as the ideology of fag which influences individuals to behave according to gender expectations
Deviance and disability
- people with disabilities often suffer negative sanctions by society not being accommodating
Criminal Deviance
- not all deviant behavior is criminal
- criminology is the study of patterns in criminal behavior to learn more about how crime can be predicted, prevented and sanctioned
- three central theories of criminal deviance
1. strain theory
2. subculture theory
3. labelling theory
Strain theory
- Robert Merton explained why some individuals “choose” to be criminally deviant
- American dream: anyone has the opportunity to be successful regardless of their background or circumstances as long as they work hard
- strain is the disconnect between culturally defined goals and uneven distribution of means to achieve these goals
- those without the necessary resources to achieve culturally defined goals turn to criminal deviance
Subculture theory
- Albert Cohen challenged and refined some aspects of Merton’s work
- individuals from lower class backgrounds experience status frustration - the failure to succeed in middle-class institutions
- can become socialized into an oppositional subculture for delinquents
- delinquency is a learned behaviour
Labelling theory
- howard becker developed
- explains how subcultural values, beliefs, and practices become defined as deviant by mainstream society, and how labels become internalized by both majority and deviant group
- labels sometimes take on a master status, that dominates all others
