Social structure is expressed through social interaction

• * stable pattern of relationships

• * in place before we come along

• * creates boundaries -- defines which groups are insiders / outsiders

• Serves some better than others… • social marginality and stigma

Socialization and Social interaction reinforce social structure

• * e.g., established patterns of relationships between men & women

• * e.g., teachers and students, parents and children

Social Status

• recognized social position with privileges and obligations

• Includes wealth power and prestige but more to it than that.

Master status

• (establishes social identity) •

• overriding ingredient in determining a person’s general social position

(e.g., millionaire, white, black, old, young)

• Achieved (earned) e.g., lawyer, motherversus

• Ascribed (born with) race, gender

Status Sets (all positions occupied at a given time)

Status Symbols

• (material indicators of status)

Status Symbols say more about us than we realize…. Help define self

Bumper stickers as status symbols?

Badges – another symbol about our “self”

Roles:

• obligations and privileges attached to

our statuses

We learn through socialization

how we ought to play our roles

• Expectations (society’s demands) may sometimes sharply contrast with our……

• Performance (how we actually play out our roles)

Role ambiguity

An unclear sense of what and how to perform

Examples??

• Role conflict • (incompatible role demands of two or more statuses)

e.g. Professor – teaching or research

• Role Embracement • (foster the impression

that our core social identity is attached

to this status)

• versus • Role Distancing

• (foster impression that we are not attached to the role)

• Statuses and Roles are social structure in action

We Occupy a Status and Perform a Role

The everyday components of Social Structure – Micro- perspective

• Social interaction • what we do in the presence of others has

somewhat of an order to it.

• e.g., Goffman’s “civil inattention”• Interaction order – ways that we maintain

and reinforce social structure

Dramaturgy:

Life is like a drama• Front stage

• "it will be convenient to label as 'front' that part of the individual's performance which regularly functions in a general and

fixed fashion to define the situation for those who observe the performance"

(Goffman, 1959, p.32)

• Back stage

• “Where we let down our defenses and relax our roles “

Oops…. A little back stage behavior.

• Ethnomethodology - H. Garfinkel

• the study of the taken-for-granted assumptions that guide behaviors.

e.g., burping at the table, letting a door fly shut behind you, wearing shoes on the wrong feet

To understand the underlying structure…….

• break a rule…

Stand backwards in the elevator, barter for the price of a candy bar, when someone asks,

“how are you?” respond with a

very long reply

• breaching experiments reveal the subconscious social world• Breaching experiment• Sociology Experiment

• And what do we learn from these?

• Our definitions of situations are very much determined by our frame of reference (e.g., race, gender, social class, ethnicity – our social location or status)

• But - those with power may have the ability to establish definitions of reality. Gatekeepers and moral entrepreneurs

• Impression management - our efforts to present ourselves in a favorable way

• face-saving -- fixing a poor performance or ignoring it.

• Team performance -- two or more people work to present a particular impression

impression management

• is especially important if the person has a devalued status or fears being devalued -- e.g., being elderly, homeless, physical handicap, an x-convict, AIDs patient, registered sex offender

• We learn from the micro perspective that we are not totally free from the rules that regulate social interaction.

• Nonverbal communication

• facial expressions, body positions,

• Personal space • How does status

impact these?

American Office

Japanese Office

•Eye contact Eye contact

• Invading Your Personal Space

• Sociology experiment

• Another fun one for you to check out• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeNGSZK01Hs&feature=related

Touch, Emotions, Culture, and Gender

• Who is more likely to touch who and why?