1. Social Structure and Social Interaction
Chapter 4
Social Structure and Social Interaction

2. Chapter Outline Intertwining Forces: Structure and Social Interaction
Social Structures
Societal Evolution and Decay
Social Interaction and Everyday Life
Where This Leaves Us

3. Intertwining Forces: Social Structure and Social Interaction
If, for example, we are interested in racial inequality in our society, we must consider both broad structures and everyday social interactions:
Social Structure Forces:
◦ There aren’t enough good-paying jobs in
nonwhite communities.
Social Interaction Forces:
◦ Racial inequality is reinforced when police
officers assume nonwhites are more likely
to be criminals.

4. Intertwining Forces: Social Structure and Social Interaction
 Social Structures
Recurrent patterns of relationships.
Social patterns are both constraining and enabling.
Social structures can be found at all levels in society.
Reinforced by formal rules and/or custom.
Three concepts: status, role, institution

5. Intertwining Forces: Social Structure and Social Interaction
Status:
A person’s position in a group.
◦ Achieved statuses are optional; statuses a person can obtain in a lifetime.
◦ Ascribed statuses are fixed by birth and inheritance; unalterable in a lifetime.
Status set refers to the combination of all statuses held by an individual

6. Map 4.1: Mixed-Race People in the United States
About 2% of U.S. residents—and 4% of U.S. children—belong to two or more races. The number of mixed-race people per 1,000 people varies enormously from state to state. The map does not reflect people who are part Hispanic because Hispanics are not considered a race by U.S. Census (Humes, Jones, Ramirez 2011)

7. Race as a Status
For most of the 20th century, the U.S. census asked Americas to identify themselves as either white, African American, Native American, Asian, or other.
The nearly universal concern about race alerts us to the importance of racial status in our lives.
Racial status affects life chances on nearly every measure: resources, rewards, and opportunities.
The addition of the mixed-race category to the census suggests that racial statuses—and our ideas about them—do change.

8. Intertwining Forces: Social Structure and Social Interaction
Roles:
Sets of norms specifying the rights and obligations associated with status. 
Role strain occurs when incompatible role demands develop within a single status.
Role conflict occurs when incompatible role demands develop because of multiple statuses.

9. Intertwining Forces: Social Structure and Social Interaction
Social Institutions
An enduring and complex social structure that meets basic human needs.
Primary features:
◦ Endures for generations
◦ Includes complex set of values, norms, statuses, and roles

10. Basic Social Institutions:
Intertwining Forces: Social Structure and Social Interaction
Basic Social Institutions:
Family – to care for dependents and raise children
Economy – to produce and distribute goods
Government – to provide community coordination, services, and defense
Education – to teach generations
Religion – to supply answers about the unknown or unknowable

11. Religion as a social institution
Religion is one of the basic social institutions. Although doctrines and rituals vary enormously, all cultures and societies include a structured pattern of behavior and belief that provides individuals with explanations for events and experiences that are beyond their own personal control.

12. Intertwining Forces: Social Structure and Social Interaction
Institutional Interdependence
Each institution affects the others and is
affected by them.
Interdependence reinforces norms and
values; adds to social stability.
Because each institution affects and is affected by the others, a change in one tends to lead to change in the others.

13. Intertwining Forces: Social Structure and Social Interaction
Institutions as Agents of Stability or Inequality
Two major theoretical frameworks used to study social structures:
1) structural functionalism
2) conflict theory

14. Intertwining Forces: Social Structure and Social Interaction
Institutions as Agents of Stability or Inequality
Structural-Functional Theory:
Social institutions allow social life to run smoothly in stable and predictable ways.
Sanctified by tradition, social institutions are experienced as morally right.
Social institutions provide satisfaction and security.

15. Intertwining Forces: Social Structure and Social Interaction
Institutions as Agents of Stability or Inequality
Conflict Theory of Institutions:
Asks who benefits from existing institutions; institutions support the interests of those in power
Stability and order may be at the expense of oppression and the inequality of socially defined ‘minorities’.
Tradition obscures inequalities; institutions stifle social change and help maintain inequality.

16. Societal Evolution and Decay
When changes in access to resources or social arrangements increase economy surpluses, physical environment, technology, and institutions are often able to expand (Diamond 1997).
Four revolutions in production:
Hunting, Fishing, and Gathering Societies
Horticultural Societies
Agricultural Societies
Industrial societies

17. Hunting, Fishing, and Gathering Societies
Societal Evolution and Decay
Hunting, Fishing, and Gathering Societies
Those societies in which most food must be obtained by killing wild animals or finding edible plants.
Division of labor based on age and sex.
Societies are too small to develop class distinction.
Individuals are homogenous (alike) having the same everyday experiences.

18. Hunting, Fishing, and Gathering Societies
Societal Evolution and Decay
Hunting, Fishing, and Gathering Societies
In these societies, like that of the Kung Bushmen, tasks tend to be divided along gender lines and by age.
Individuals accumulate few personal possessions because there is little surplus and possessions would be difficult to move.

19. Horticultural Societies
Societal Evolution and Decay
Horticultural Societies
Characterized by small-scale, simple farming, without plows or large beasts of burden.
Began when people began to cultivate crops (first agricultural revolution).
Small surpluses developed, leading to economic hierarchies.
Allowed some in the society to live off of surplus produced by others. More leisure time to pursue art, writing, and warfare.
Status hierarchy began to develop.

20. Agricultural Societies
Societal Evolution and Decay
 Agricultural Societies
Began 5,000 to 6,000 years ago (second agricultural revolution); based on growing food using plows and animals
Surpluses greater with technological advance
Economic activity became more diversified; focus on warfare and territorial expansion.
Complex class system developed.
Kings, priests, merchants, soldiers, and peasants were among the new social classes.

21. Societal Evolution and Decay
Industrial societies
Characterized by mass production of non-agricultural goods.
Arose only a few hundred years ago in Western Europe.
Animal and human labor was replaced by complex energy technologies.
A new class order reflected a highly specialized division of labor and capital accumulation.

22. Societal Evolution and Decay
Industrial societies
The shift to industrial societies occurred in tandem with a shift from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft.
Gemeinshaft – refers to societies in which most people share close personal bonds.
Gesellschaft – refers to societies in which people are tied primarily by impersonal, practical bonds.

23. Postindustrial societies
Societal Evolution and Decay
Postindustrial societies
Focus on producing either information or
services.
Industrial jobs shift to developing nations.
Postindustrial labor includes researcher,
doctor, IT specialist, maid, Wal-Mart greeter.
Income disparity becomes polarized.
Profound changes in communication leads
to change in social institutions.

24. Societal Evolution and Decay
Postindustrial societies
Postindustrialized societies focus on producing either information or services. The rapid growth in call centers in the United States and elsewhere is an example of this impact.

25. Case Study: When Institutions Die
When old institutions disappear before new ones can evolve, societies and people in them are traumatized.
A Broken Society:
Grassy Narrows – a community of 520 Ojibwa people in Northwestern Ontario, Canada. In 1976, the Canadian government sent Anastasia Shkilnyk to advise the band on issues of mercury poisoning in lakes and rivers.
She found Grassy Narrows to be a destroyed community. Drunken 6-year-olds roamed winter streets in -40° F temperatures; parents were binge drinkers. Death rates were very high among young and old alike.

26. Case Study: When Institutions Die Ojibwa Society before 1963:
Contact with whites for about two centuries.
Retained traditional way of life of a hunting and gathering society.
Community relations and social activity centered on the family and kinship ties.
Treaty of 1873 defined borders of their reservation, which was used as a summer encampment following food the rest of the year.

27. Case Study: When Institutions Die
The Change:
1963 – Canadian government moved them from the old reserve to a government-built modern community.
Random assignment of homes destroyed kinship relations; hunting traditions changed as mothers remained home and children went to school; fishing ceased due to contamination.
The result was a collapse of institutions that depended on their traditional ways.

28. Case Study: When Institutions Die The Future of the Ojibwa:
1985 – legal settlement of $16.7M compensation for government policies and mercury pollution.
Environmental pollution remains; clear cutting of lands further degrade hunting/fishing habitat.
Healing and recovery of band – local industry, new skills, Ojibwa schools teaching of culture & language to young, political organization.
Rebuilding old /creating new social institutions.

29. A Sociological Response:
Case Study: When Institutions Die
A Sociological Response:
Native Americans have suffered cultural erosion and disappearance of social institutions. Drug and alcohol addiction is high.
Structure functional – focus on the destruction of social institutions and disharmony between remaining institutions and white society.
Conflict theory – focus on white power stripping systematically and violently Native American means of economic survival.

30. Social Interaction and Everyday Life
Focuses on the social processes that structure our experience in ordinary face-to-face situations.
Social structure explains the broad outlines of why we do what we do, but it doesn’t deal with specific concrete situations.
Sociology of everyday life does.
Example: Two people playing the role of physician will do so differently, and the same individual will play the role differently with different patients and in different circumstances.

31. Social Interaction and Everyday Life
Managing Everyday Life
At the beginning of any encounter, a person must resolve two issues:
◦ What is going on here?
◦ What are the identities of the actors?
All action depends on the answers to these questions.
In answering the first question, we form frames. In answering the second, we engage in identity negotiation.

32. Social Interaction and Everyday Life
Managing Everyday Life
Frames:
A frame is an answer to the question “what is going on here?” It is a definition of the situation.
Identity Negotiation:
Identities will depend somewhat on the frame.
Identity is negotiated by trying to get others to play the roles we have assigned them.
Negotiation is based on power relations.

33. Social Interaction and Everyday Life
Dramaturgy
A version of symbolic interaction developed by Erving Goffman, that views social institutions as scenes manipulated by the actors to convey the desired impression to the audience.

34. Impression Management
Social Interaction and Everyday Life
Impression Management
Actions and statements made to control how others view us.
Consists of two general strategies:
◦ avoiding blame
◦ gaining credit

35. Impression Management
Social Interaction and Everyday Life
Impression Management
Avoiding Blame:
Accounts are explanations of unexpected or untoward behavior: excuses and justifications.
◦ Excuses – one admits that an act is wrong
or inappropriate; claims one couldn’t help it.
◦ Justifications – explains the reasons one
had for choosing to break the rule; often an
appeal to an alternate rule.
Disclaimer – verbal device used in advance to ward off negative reactions to one’s conduct.

36. Social Interaction and Everyday Life
Impression Management
Gaining Credit:
To maintain self-esteem, we need to get credit for anything good we do.
One way to gain credit is to link ourselves with situations or individuals with high status.
Claiming credit requires considerable tact. Bragging can worsen rather than improve one’s reputation.

37. Case Study: Impression Management and Homeless Teens
Like everyone else, homeless youths try to manage others’ impressions of them.
This young man may well have found that owning a cute puppy encourages others to view him as less threatening and as more deserving of aid.

38. Where This Leaves Us…
Since the 1960s, scholars have increasingly tended to view social behavior as more negotiable.
Analysis of social structure revolves around three concepts: 1) status, 2) role, and 3) institution.
Development of complex social institutions hinges on society’s ability to produce economic surplus.
Sociology of everyday life analyzes human behaviors in concrete encounters.

39. Quick Quiz

40. A position in the social structure that a person can obtain during a lifetime is a(n):
ascribed status.
achieved status.
identity.
distribution of power.

41. Answer: B
A position in the social structure that a person can obtain during a lifetime is a(n) achieved status.

42. The set of rights and obligations associated with a status is called a(n):
status network.
status set.
institution.
role.

43. Answer: D
The set of rights and obligations associated with a status is called a role.

44. Margaret is a university professor and is required to teach courses and conduct research. She is contacted by an agency that wants to meet with her about a research project, but the administrators at the agency can only meet at the time that she teaches one of her courses. Margaret is trying to decide what to do. She is experiencing role:
conflict.
exit.
distancing.
strain.

45. Answer: D Margaret is trying to decide what to do…hold her class or meet about a research project. Both are required of her in her role of university professor. She is experiencing role strain because of competing demands within one role.

46. Which of the following is a general strategy used in impression management?
admitting failure
role clarification
avoiding blame
role identification

47. Answer: C Avoiding blame is a general strategy used in impression management.