1. Essentials of Sociology Fifth Edition
Chapter Four
Social Structure
& Social Interaction
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2. The Macrosociological Perspective : Social Structure
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3. The Macrosociological Perspective
Social structure refers to the typical patterns of a group.
Social structure guides our behavior.
Social location, or a person’s location in the social structure, creates the variances.
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Culture
Culture is the broadest framework that determines what kind of people we become.
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Social Class
Social class—large numbers of people who have similar amounts of income, education, and prestige.
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Social Status
Status—the position that an individual occupies.
Ascribed Status is involuntary
Achieved Status is earned
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Roles
Roles—the behaviors, obligations, and privileges attached to a status.
The difference between a role and a status:
You occupy a status.
You play a role.
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8. Groups and Institutions
A group—consists of people who regularly and consciously interact with one another.
Social institutions— the means that each society develops to meet its basic needs.
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Societies
Society- people who share a culture and a territory.
Your life would vary in each society
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The Microsociological Perspective : Social Interaction in Everyday Life
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Personal Space
Distance zones
Intimate
Personal
Social
Public
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Role Performance
Everyday life brings with it many roles.
Role conflict—what is expected of us in one role is incompatible with what is expected of us in another role.
Role strain—when the same role presents inherent conflict.
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Ethnomethodology
Ethnomethodology—the study of how people use commonsense understandings to get through everyday life.
Ethnomethodologists explore background assumptions.
Background assumptions—your ideas about the way life is and the way things ought to work.
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14. The Social Construction of Reality
Thomas Theorem— “If people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”
Our behavior does not depend on the objective existence of something, but on the subjective.
The social construction of reality—society and life experiences define what is real.
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15. The Need For Both Macrosociology & Microsociology
Our understanding of behavior would be incomplete without one or the other.
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Chambliss Study
Two groups of high school boys studied by sociologist William Chambliss. Both groups attended Hanibal High School.
8 middle-class boys who came from “good” families (Saints)
6 lower-class boys who were seen as headed down a dead-end road (Roughnecks)
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