School of Business Administration
IU – VNU HCMC
BA116IU
Introduction to Sociology
Semester 1, 2011-2012
Instructor:
Dr. Truong Thi Kim Chuyen
USSH – VNU HCMC
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Chapter 5
SOCIAL INTERACTION AND
SOCIAL STRUCTURE
Chapter Outline
•Social Interaction and Reality
•Elements of Social Structure
•Social Structure in Global Perspective
•Social Policy and Social Structure: The AIDS Crisis
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McGraw-Hill 2006
Social Interaction and Reality
 Our response to someone’s behavior is
based on meaning we attach to his or her
actions
 Reality is shaped by our perceptions,
evaluations, and definitions
 Social reality literally constructed from
social interactions (Berger and Luckman
1996)
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Social Interaction and Reality
 Defining and Reconstructing
Reality
– The ability to define social reality reflects a
group’s power within society
• Members of subordinate groups challenge
traditional definitions and begin to perceive and
experience reality in a new way
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Social Interaction and Reality
 Defining and Reconstructing
Reality
– Negotiated Order
• Negotiation: attempt to reach agreement with
others concerning the same objective.
– People reshape reality by negotiating changes in
patterns of social interaction
• Negotiated order: social structure that derives its
existence from the social interactions through
which people define and redefine its character
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Elements of Social Structure
 Statuses
– Status
• Refers to any of the socially defined positions
within a large group or society.
A person holds more
than one status
simultaneously.
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Elements of Social Structure
 Statuses
– Ascribed and Achieved
Status
• Ascribed Status: status
one is born with
• Achieved Status: status
one earns
Societies deal with
inconsistencies by
agreeing that
– Master Status
certain statuses
• Status that dominates others and
are more important
determines person’s general position than others.
in society
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Elements of Social Structure
 Figure 5.1:
Social Statuses
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Elements of Social Structure
 Social Roles
– Sets of expectations for people who occupy a
given status
• Significant component of social structure
– Role Conflict
Occurs when incompatible
expectations arise from two
or more social positions held
by the same person.
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Elements of Social Structure
 Social Roles
– Role Strain
• Difficulties that arise when the same social position
imposes conflicting demands and expectations
– Role Exit
• Process of disengagement from a role that is
central to one’s identity in order to establish a new
role and identity
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Elements of Social Structure
 Groups
– Any number of people
with similar norms,
values, and
expectations who
interact with each
other on a regular
basis.
Every society
composed of many
groups in which daily
social interaction
takes place
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Elements of Social Structure
 Social Networks and Technology
– Social network: series of social relationships
that links person directly to others, and
indirectly links them to still more people
– Networking: involvement in social network;
valuable skill when job-hunting
• We can now maintain social networks
electronically with advances in technology
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Elements of Social Structure
 Social Institutions
– Organized patterns of beliefs and behavior
centered on basic social needs
• Provide insight into structure of society
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Elements of Social Structure
 Functionalist View
– Five major tasks (functional
prerequisites) a society or major group
must accomplish
• Preserving order
• Replacing personnel
• Providing and
• Teaching new recruits maintaining a sense of
purpose
• Producing and
distributing goods and
services
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Elements of Social Structure
 Conflict View
– Major institutions help maintain
privileges of most powerful individuals
and groups within society
– Social institutions have inherently
conservative nature
– Social institutions operate in gendered
and racist environments
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Elements of Social Structure
 Interactionist View
– Social institutions affect our everyday
behavior
– Social behavior conditioned by roles and
statuses
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Social Structure in Global Perspective
 Durkheim’s Mechanical and
Organic Solidarity
– Mechanical solidarity: refers to collective
consciousness that emphasizes group
solidarity, implying that all individuals perform
the same tasks
– Organic solidarity: refers to collective
consciousness that hinges on need a
society’s members have for one another
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Social Structure in Global Perspective
 Tönnie’s Gemeinschaft and
Gesellschaft
– Gemeinschaft (guh-MINE-shoft): small
community in which people have similar
backgrounds and life experiences
– Gesellschaft (guh-ZELL-shoft): large
community in which people are strangers and
feel little in common with other community
residents
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Social Structure in Global Perspective
Continued…
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Social Structure in Global Perspective
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Social Structure in Global Perspective
 Lenski’s Sociocultural Evolution
Approach
– Views human societies
as undergoing change
according to a
dominant pattern,
known as
sociocultural
evolution.
“Process of change
and development in
human societies
resulting from growth
in their stores of
cultural information”
(Lenski et al.
2004:366)
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Social Structure in Global Perspective
 Lenski’s Sociocultural Evolution
Approach
– Society’s level of technology critical to way it
is organized
Technology: “Cultural information about how
to use the material resources of the
environment to satisfy human needs and
desires” (Nolan and Lenski 2004:366)
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Social Structure in Global Perspective
 Lenski’s Sociocultural Evolution
Approach
– Preindustrial Societies
• Hunting-and-Gathering Society: people rely on
whatever foods and fibers are readily available
Composed of small, widely dispersed groups
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Social Structure in Global Perspective
 Lenski’s Sociocultural Evolution
Approach
– Horticultural Societies
• People plant seeds and crops
• Less nomadic
– Agrarian Societies: primarily engaged in
production of food.
Use technological innovations like the plow for
dramatic increases in food production
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Social Structure in Global Perspective
 Lenski’s Sociocultural Evolution
Approach
– Industrial Societies
• Depend on mechanization to
produce their goods and
services
– Rely on inventions and energy
sources
– Change the function of the family
as a self-sufficient unit.
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Social Structure in Global Perspective
 Lenski’s Sociocultural Evolution
Approach
– Postindustrial and Postmodern
Societies
• Postindustrial Society: economic system is
engaged primarily in the processing and control of
information
• Postmodern Society: technologically
sophisticated society preoccupied with consumer
goods and media images
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Continued...
Social Structure in Global Perspective
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Social Policy and Social Structure
 The AIDS Crisis
– The Issue
• While there are encouraging new therapies
developed to treat AIDS, there is currently no way
to eradicate AIDS by medical means.
• How can people be protected and whose
responsibility is it?
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Social Policy and Social Structure
 The AIDS Crisis
– The Setting
• AIDS is on the increase, with an estimated 40 million people
infected and over 3 million dying annually.
Not evenly distributed
Developing nations of
sub-Saharan Africa
face greatest
challenge
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Social Policy and Social Structure
 The AIDS Crisis
– Sociological Insights
• A dramatic crisis like AIDS epidemic likely to bring
about certain transformations in a society’s social
structure
• Functionalist perspective: If established social
institutions cannot meet a crucial need, new social
networks are likely to emerge to fill that function
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Social Policy and Social Structure
 The AIDS Crisis
– Sociological Insights
• Conflict Perspective: Policymakers slow to respond to the
AIDS crisis because those in high-risk groups—gays and IV
drug users—were comparatively powerless.
• Interactionists widely forecast AIDS would lead to a more
conservative sexual climate
Also concerned about impact of AIDS treatment on
daily lives of those stricken with disease.
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Social Policy and Social Structure
 The AIDS Crisis
– Policy Initiatives
• AIDS has struck all societies, but
not all nations can respond in the
same manner
• High cost of drug treatment
generated intensive worldwide
pressure on major pharmaceutical
companies to lower prices
Cultural practices
may prevent people
from dealing with
AIDS epidemic
realistically
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Social Policy and Social Structure
 Figure 5.2: People Living with HIV/AIDS, 2003
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SUMMARY
• Social interaction refers to the ways in
which people respond to one another.
Social structure refers to the way in which
society is organized into predictable
relationships. This chapter examines the
basic elements of social structure:
statuses, social roles groups, networks,
and institutions.
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1. People shape their social reality based on
what they learn through their social
interaction. Social change comes from
redefining or reconstructing social reality.
Sometimes change results from
negotiation.
2. An ascribed status is generally assigned to
a person at birth, whereas an achieved
status is attained largely through one’s
own effort.
3. In the US, ascribed statuses, such as race
and gender, can function as master
statuses that have an important impact on
one’s potential to achieve a desired
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professional and social status.
4.With each distinctive status – whether ascribed
or achieved – come particular social roles, the
set of expectations for people who occupy that
status.
5.Much of our patterned behavior takes place
within groups and is influenced by the norms
and sanctions established by groups. Groups
serve as links to social networks and their vast
resources.
6.The mass media, the government, the economy,
the family, and the healthy care system are all
examples of social institutions.
7.One way to understand social institutions is to
ask how they fulfill essential functions, such as
replacing personnel, training new recruits , and
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preserving order.
8. Conflict theorists argue that social institutions
help to maintain the privileges of the powerful
while contributing to the powerlessness of
others.
9. Integrationist theorists emphasize the idea
that our social behavior is conditioned by the
roles and statuses we accept, the groups to
which we belong, and the institutions within
which we function.
10. Emili Durkheim thought that social structure
depends on the division of labor in a society.
According to Durkheim’s theory, societies with
minimal division of labor have a collective
consciousness called mechanical solidarity,
those with greater division of labor show an
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interdependence called organic solidarity.
11. Ferdinad Tonnies distinguished the closeknit community of Gemeinschaft from the
impersonal mass society known as
Gesellschaft.
12. Gerhard Lenski thinks that a society’s social
structure changes as its culture and
technology become more sophisticated, a
process he calls sociocultural evolution.
13. The AIDS crisis has changed our society’s
social structure, prompting the creation of
new networks to care for the ill and educate
the healthy. Policy makers were slow to
respond to the crisis at first because the
high-risk groups the disease affected were
relatively powerless.
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