1. How do we organize daily life?
Social Structure
How do we organize daily life?

2. In the United States…
We have a rigid class system which is based on income and wealth.
Income is the amount of money an individual or household makes.
Wealth is an abundance of assets (possessions and money).
Do you think that what class you are born into effects your life chances and opportunities? [Trump Clip]

3. Social Organization Groups – A collection of people who…
1. Share some attribute(s)
2. Identify with one another
Interact with one another on a regular basis As opposed to…
Crowd – A temporary gathering of people in a public place
Aggregate – A collection of people who share a physical location but do not have lasting social relationships

4. Types of Groups:
Primary Group: The people who are most important to our sense of self.
Members’ relationships are typically characterized by face-to-face interaction, high levels of cooperation, and intense feelings of belonging.

5. Types of Groups cont’d
Secondary Groups – Larger and less intimate than primary groups.
Members’ relationships are usually organized around a specific goal and are often temporary.

6. In-groups and Out-groups
In-group – a group that one identifies with and feels loyalty toward
Out-group – any group an individual feels opposition, rivalry, or hostility toward
Reference Groups – a group that provides a standard of comparison against which we evaluate ourselves. (Remember Cooley’s looking- glass self?) [Mean girls clip]

7. How do we form social ties?
Social ties – Connections between individuals
Social Networks – All of the individuals and groups you are formally connected to
We form social ties through the use of social networks!
We as individuals are NODES on the NETWORK (Castells, 2000).

8. Consequences of YOUR social network:
Women who have more men in their social network are more likely to hear about good job leads (Torres, 2002).
Individuals who more contact to their extended family tend to have better access to job opportunities (Granovetter, 1973).
Individuals with less exposure to differing types of people tend to discriminate more often against those types of people (Markowitz, 1991).

9. Consequences of YOUR social network cont’d
Individuals who have had four or more sexual partners in the last year tend to have sex with others with similar sexual patterns and are at a high risk of STDs. ^If you have a less active sexual pattern you are KEPT OUT of this core group of people who acquire and transmit STDs and are much less likely to acquire one at all.

10. Anomie – A breakdown of group cohesion
Does how much control your parents/guardians have over you ever annoy you?
For example, have you ever wanted to just go on a road trip with friends but they demanded that you stay home? Get a job to pay for it yourself? Focus on your school work?
Do you ever think you might just be HAPPIER if you could do whatever you wanted to do all of the time?

11. Actually… You wouldn’t
Did you know that norms and other types of limits on your personal freedom might actually be INCREASING your happiness?
Emile Durkheim’s concept of anomie explains this. Social control placed on us from our group tends to increase social cohesion – it makes us feel connected and increases levels of happiness of decreases feelings of depression and suicidal tendencies (Durkheim).
However, extreme cases of social control INCREASE depression and DECREASE cohesion.

12. Groupthink – Think like the group OR ELSE
In extreme cases of high solidarity and high conformity group think can occur.
Examples: German Soldiers during the Holocaust, American public after Pearl Harbor, Bush Administration after 9/11, Jim Jones (mass cult suicide)