Individuals as
Status-Occupants
status-sets
role-sets
norm-clusters
Obligations and Responsibilities
Normative Expectations (Rules)
Social Status
Cognitive Attributes: Beliefs, Values,
Motivations and Attitudes
Interests
Power & Authority
Social Capital
Obligations and Responsibilities
What am I supposed to do?
Where do these come from?
How do they change over historical
time? – i.e., fathers and parenting.
Social Status
Individuals who occupy a given status
must take these into account.
The extent to which individuals who
occupy a given status live up to the
responsibilities and obligations that
are called for varies.
Obligations and Responsibilities
[What am I supposed to do?]
Normative Expectations (Rules)
[How am I supposed to do all this?]
Social Status
Normative Expectations (Rules)
How am I supposed to do all this?
Guidelines, rules for social conduct.
They indicate how one “ought” to act or
behave in social settings:
Social Status
Prescribed - Proscribed
Permitted - Preferred
Norms vary from one culture to another.
Norms vary from one sub-culture to another.
Norms vary over historical time.
Normative Expectations (Rules)
How am I supposed to do all this?
Do not confuse “norms” with actual
action or behavior.
Social Status
The extent to which people consider
norms legitimate varies.
The extent to which people comply with
norms varies.
Norms vary in their importance:
Folkways - norms for routine or casual interactions
Mores - norms derived from moral values
Taboos - norms that place behavior out of bounds
Laws - norms that are codified and are sanctioned
Obligations and Responsibilities
[What am I supposed to do?]
Normative Expectations (Rules)
[How am I supposed to do all this?]
Social Status
Cognitive Attributes: Beliefs, Values,
Motivations and Attitudes
Mutually reinforcing and reciprocal
Expectations.
Whether we recognize it or not, we
possess a vast storehouse of “social
knowledge” and, to varying degrees,
know what is expected of us & what
to expect of others.
S
T
A
B
I
L
I
T
Y
Obligations and Responsibilities
[What am I supposed to do?]
Normative Expectations (Rules)
[How am I supposed to do all this?]
Social Status
Cognitive Attributes: Beliefs, Values,
Motivations and Attitudes
Interests
[Conflict is built into society.]
S
T
A
B
I
L
I
T
Y
Interests
Conflict is built into society.
Social Status
Conflict is built into the very fabric of
society. It is as normal - and healthy - as
the air we breathe and usually occurs
in socially patterned ways.
By virtue of occupying different
Positions, people will have different sets of
LEGITIMATE interests, values and
attitudes.
Thus a great deal of conflict in society is structured: it is the
result of people - status-occupants – trying to live up to the
expectations placed upon them.
Interests
Conflict is built into society.
Social Status
If conflict is built into the very fabric of
society, how is it managed?
What are the patterns and functions of
conflict?
How are conflicts - whether legitimate or
not - resolved?
Obligations and Responsibilities
[What am I supposed to do?]
Normative Expectations (Rules)
[How am I supposed to do all this?]
Social Status
Cognitive Attributes: Beliefs, Values,
Motivations and Attitudes
Interests
[Conflict is built into society.]
Power & Authority
S
T
A
B
I
L
I
T
Y
Power & Authority
Power: the capacity to impose one’s will
over others, even against the resistance
of others; coercion.
Social Status
Authority: the capacity to have others
comply with your wishes - even if they
would prefer not to - because they
recognize the legitimacy of the request.
Power and authority are usually not individual attributes, they
are located in the positions people occupy; i.e., U.S. President.
The extent to which power and authority are exercised by
status-occupants varies; e.g., Eisenhower, Nixon, Kennedy.
Power & Authority
Power and authority are not equally
distributed in all social statuses:
Social Status
employer - employee
male - female
professor - student
dean - professor
wealthy - poor
white - non-white
As a result, we should expect to find different outcomes in
society; examples:
racial disparities in criminal sentencing
unequal pay for men and women
Obligations and Responsibilities
[What am I supposed to do?]
Normative Expectations (Rules)
[How am I supposed to do all this?]
Social Status
Cognitive Attributes: Beliefs, Values,
Motivations and Attitudes
Interests
[Conflict is built into society.]
S
T
A
B
I
L
I
T
Y
Power & Authority
Social Capital
[Access to Opportunities and Resources]
[Inequality is built into society]
Social Capital
Access to Opportunities and Resources
Inequality is built into society
“Central or Controlling Statuses”
Social Status
Different statuses provide occupants
different degrees of access to resources
and opportunities - some more, some
less. Examples:
the double standard
the opportunity structure
the glass ceiling
Obligations and Responsibilities
[What am I supposed to do?]
Normative Expectations (Rules)
[How am I supposed to do all this?]
Social Status
Cognitive Attributes: Beliefs, Values,
Motivations and Attitudes
Interests
[Conflict is built into society.]
S
T
A
B
I
L
I
T
Y
Power & Authority
Social Capital
[Access to Opportunities and Resources]
[Inequality is built into society]
Status-sets
Status-sets
“identities”
Father
Husband
Age:
54
Race:
“White”
Professor
Executive
Director
Friend
Status-Activation & “Salient Statuses”
Since individuals occupy multiple statuses, which specific status
becomes activated at any given time? How is this “socially
negotiated” by partners in interactions? How are discrepant
activations resolved?
Status-sets
“identities”
Father
Husband
Age:
54
Race:
“White”
Professor
Executive
Director
Friend
Since individuals occupy multiple statuses they are subject to
cross-pressures: expectations to comply with contending
expectations of different statuses.
Status-consistency - to what extent are the beliefs, values
attitudes, interests and social standing
attached to different statuses in an
individual’s status-set consistent?
…and then how are the inevitable
inconsistencies that arise managed?
Status-sets
Master and Dominant Statuses
Master Status: that status within an individual’s status-set that
has special importance for social identity, often
shaping a person’s entire life.
Dominant Status: that status within an individual’s status-set that
is given priority when the behavioral expectations
associated with two or more statuses come into
conflict.
Salient Status: that status within an individual’s status-set that
is elicited in a particular situation.
Status-conflict; Status-strain
Father
Husband
Age
52
Race:
“White”
Professor
Executive
Director
Friend
Conflict: living up to the demands and obligations of one status
precludes fulfilling the demands and obligations of
another status.
Strain: fulfilling all of the various status demands and
obligations, but at less than peak effectiveness having to prioritize, make trade offs, cut corners.
Social Status and corresponding Role-Set
Role-set corresponding to the status of “Professor”
Professor
Students
Colleagues
Deans
Support
Community
Staff
(each with a variable “person-set)
Status-conflict or
Status-strain
Role-conflict or
Role-strain
Merton’s General Paradigm of
Sociological / Structural
Ambivalence:
Structurally created Strain
“opposing normative tendencies
in the social definition of a
role or status”
The Paradigm in General:
Most extended: incompatible normative
expectations of attitudes, beliefs, and
behavior assigned to a status or to a set of
statuses.
Most restricted: incompatible normative
expectations incorporated within a single
role of a single status.
Specific Conflicts & Contradictions
• Conflict among statuses within a status-set; a
pattern of conflict of interests or of values
within the status-set.
• Conflict between several roles associated
with a particular status.
• Contradictions among general cultural values
held by all members of society, i.e., not
specific to a particular status.
Specific Conflicts & Contradictions
continued
• Conflict or disjunction between culturally
prescribed aspirations and socially structured
avenues for realizing these aspirations (the
opportunity structure).
• Contradiction or conflict between crosscultural statuses.
• Contradiction or conflict between reference
group anchors or identifications.
Anomie –
Merton’s Reconceptualization
• Reconceptualizes Durkheim's concept of Anomie.
• Not an overall, or even localized breakdown in normative
structure.
• The cultural system and social structure of society is basically
intact, workable, functional.
• In fact, to a certain extent, Deviance represents the
functionality of the system.
• Statement: A disjuncture within the cultural system between
the Goals (values) which define our lives and the culturally
determined, institutionalized, legitimate Means for achieving
them.
Merton’s Typology of Individual Adaptation
explanation of deviant behavior
MODES OF
ADAPTATION
CULTURAL
GOALS
INSTITUTIONALIZED
MEANS
1. Conformity
+
+
2. Innovation
+
-
3. Ritualism
-
+
4. Retreatism
-
-
+/-
+/-
5. Rebellion
Merton’s Typology of Individual Adaptation
explanation of deviant behavior
Modes of
Adaptation
Conformity
Innovation
Ritualism
Retreatism
Rebellion
Institutionalized
Means
+
+
-/+
Cultural
Goals
+
+
-/+