Society, Social Structure, and
Interaction
Chapter Five
Outline
 Social Structure: The Macrolevel
Perspective
 Components of Social Structure
 Stability and Change in Societies
 Social Interaction: The Microlevel
Perspective
 Future Changes in Society, Social Structure,
and Interaction
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Social Structure:
The Macrolevel Perspective
 Social structure defined: the stable pattern
of social relationships that exist within a
particular group or society (p.133)
 Elements:
– Provides the framework within which we interact
with others
– Is essential because it creates order and
predictability
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Social Structure:
The Macrolevel Perspective
 Elements:
– Important for a sense of identity
– Gives us the ability to interpret the social
situations we encounter
– May limit our options (from conflict theorists)
– Creates boundaries that define which persons
or groups will be insiders or outsiders
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Social Structure:
The Macrolevel Perspective
 Elements:
– Special terms:
 Social Marginality: the state of being part insider
and part outsider in the social structure (p. 134)
 Stigma: is any physical or social attribute or sign that
so devalues a person’s social identity that it
disqualifies that person from full social experience
(p. 134)
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Copyright © 2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada
Components of Social Structure




Status
Roles
Groups
Social Institutions
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Status
 Defined: is a socially defined position in a
group or society characterized by certain
expectations, rights, and duties (p. 135)
 Statuses exist independently of the specific
people occupying them
 Status does not mean “high” position. It
refers to all levels of people
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Status
 Special Terms:
– Status set: is made up of all the statuses that a
person occupies at a given time (p. 136). A
person may be all of the the following: female, a
mother, a daughter, a physician, and a spouse.
– Ascribed Status: is a social position conferred
at birth or received involuntarily later in life
(p.136). Example: gender and ethnicity.
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Status
 Special Terms:
– Achieved Status: is a social position a person
assumes voluntarily as a result of personal
choice, merit, or direct effort (p. 137). Examples:
being married, being a parent, being a graduate
of school, college, or a university
– Master Status: is the most important status a
person occupies. It dominates all of the other
statuses (p. 137) See example of Beverley
McLachlin.
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Copyright © 2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada
Status
 Special Terms:
– Status symbols: are the material signs that
inform others of a person’s specific status
(p.138). Examples: wedding rings, owning a
luxury car, uniforms
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Roles
 Defined: a set of behavioural expectations
associated with a given status (p. 138)
 Other terms:
– Role expectation: a group’s or society’s
definition of the way a specific role ought to be
played (p. 138)
– Role performance: how a person actually plays
the role (p. 138)
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Roles
 Other terms:
– Role conflict: occurs when incompatible role
demands are placed on a person by two or
more statuses held at the same time (p. 139).
Example: a woman being a physician, a mother,
and a spouse.
– Role strain: when incompatible demands are
built into a single status that a person occupies
(p. 139). Women are more likely than men to be
in an occupation with low prestige and low pay.
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Copyright © 2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada
Copyright © 2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada
Roles
 Other terms:
– Role distancing: occurs when people consciously
foster the impression of a lack of commitment or
attachment to a particular role and go through the
motions of role performance (p. 140). Example: Being a
biological father but not being an active father in a
child’s life
– Role Exit: occurs when people disengage from social
roles that have been central to their self-identity (p.
141). Example: A Roman Catholic priest leaving the
priesthood
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Groups
 Defined: a social group consists of two or
more people who interact frequently and
share a common identity and feeling of
interdependence (p. 141)
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Two Types of Groups
Primary
Secondary
Small, less
specialized
group in
which
members
engage in
face-face,
emotionbased
interactions
over a long
time
Larger, more
specialized group
in which
members
engage in more
impersonal,
goal-oriented
relationships for
a limited period
of time
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Groups
 Other terms:
– Social network: a series of social relationships
that link an individual to others (p. 142)
– Formal organization: highly structured group
formed for the purpose of completing certain
tasks or achieving specific goals (p. 142)
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Copyright © 2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada
Social Institutions
 Function: to provide for basic needs of
people (e.g., the need for the socialization of
children is provided by the family and the
educational institution)
 Defined: a set of organized beliefs and
rules that establish how a society will
attempt to meet its basic social needs
(p. 143)
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Functional Theorists
 Needs
1. Replacing members
2. Teaching new
members
3. Producing,
distributing, and
consuming goods
 Institutions
1. The family
2. The family and
education
3. The economy
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Functional Theorists
 Needs
4. Preserving order
5. Providing and
maintaining a sense of
purpose for life
 Institutions
4. The State or the
government
5. Religion and other
cultural institutions
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Social Institutions
 Conflict theorists: Argue that many
institutions do not fulfill these functions well
– Some families abuse children
– States tend to support the wealthy but not the
marginalized
– Religion often controls people rather than giving
them meaning and freedom
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Stability and Change in Societies
 Sociology emerged out of reflections by
Comte, Marx, Durkheim, and Weber over
the changes in the Western societies from
traditional (the Medieval society) to modern
societies.
 Two authors expand these changes:
Durkheim and Tonnies (1855-1936)
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Stability and Change in
Societies
 Durkheim on the division of labour:
– To explain how societies hold together, he
created two terms: mechanical solidarity and
organic solidarity
– Mechanical solidarity: the social cohesion in
preindustrial societies, in which there is a
minimal division of labour and people feel united
by shared values and common social bonds
(p. 144)
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Stability and Change in
Societies
– Organic solidarity: the social cohesion in
industrial societies, in which people perform
very specialized tasks and feel united by their
mutual dependence (p. 144)
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Stability and Change in
Societies
– Ferdinand Tonnies (1855-1936) also used two
terms to describe differences between
preindustrial and industrial societies:
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
– Gemeinschaft (“commune” in German): is a
traditional society is which social relationships
are based on personal bonds of friendship,
kinship and on intergenerational stability
(p. 145)
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Stability and Change in
Societies
– Gesellschaft (“association” in German): is a
large, urban society in which social bonds are
based on impersonal and specialized
relationships, with little long-term commitment to
the group or consensus of values (p. 145)
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Copyright © 2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada
Social Interaction:
The Microlevel Perspective
 Focus: social interaction among individuals,
especially face-to-face encounters
 Social Interaction and Meaning
 The Social Construction of Reality
 Ethnomethdology
 Dramaturgical Analysis
 The Sociology of Emotions
 Nonverbal Communication
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Social Interaction and Meaning
 Focus: we give meaning to our social action
 Terms:
– Civil inattention: that we show awareness that
others are near us but we do not make them an
object of special attention (p. 147)
– Interaction order: interaction does have a
pattern which regulates the form and processes
but not the content
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Social Interaction and Meaning
 Terms:
– Attention deprivation: the marginalized people tend to
feel this way because of their rejection by members of
dominant classes
 Meanings vary and are conditioned by class,
gender, race, age, and ethnicity
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The Social Construction of
Reality
 Defined: the process by which our
perception of reality is shaped largely by the
subjective meaning that we give to an
experience (p.147)
 Theory: we act on the reality as we see it
and not necessarily as it is—the definition of
the situation
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The Social Construction of
Reality
 Special term: Self-fulfilling prophecy: a
false belief or prediction that produces
behaviour that makes the originally false
belief come true (p. 148)
 Example: If a person is told repeatedly that
he or she is not a good student, they might
eventually believe it to be true and stop
studying for tests and completing
assignments.
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The Social Construction of
Reality
 Further theme is that others tend to define
our own reality in their terms.
 Often, it is a dominant group that defines
this.
 Example: the media defining for the reader
what homelessness is like
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Copyright © 2004 by Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada
Ethnomethodology
 One may ask the question of how are we to
act in a specific situation?
 Garfinkel’s concept, ethnomethodology,
provides an answer.
 Defined: the study of the commonsense
knowledge that people use to understand
the situations in which they find themselves
(p.150)
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Ethnomethodology
 Theme: to examine existing patterns of
conventional behaviour in order to uncover
people’s background expectancies, that is,
their shared interpretation of objects and
events and their resulting actions
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Ethnomethodology
 Terms:
– Breaching experiments: One engages in
breaking rules of interaction. When this
happens, the interaction is broken
 Conditions: Again, gender, age, class, race,
and ethnicity condition these processes
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Dramaturgical Analysis
 Definition: the study of social interaction that
compares everyday life to a theatrical presentation
(p. 152)
 Elements:
– Others are considered to be the audience
– People acting are termed “actors”
– Impression management: people’s efforts to present
themselves to others in ways that are most favourable
to their own interests or image (p. 152)
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Dramaturgical Analysis
 Elements:
 Front stage action: our action in front of
others at work, in school, in the public
 Back stage action: our action away from
the public in the private sphere
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The Sociology of Emotions
 Are emotions just biological or are they
conditioned by rules?
 Scholars of the sociology of emotions
attempt to answer this
 Their claim is that feeling rules include how,
where, when, and with whom an emotion
should be expressed
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The Sociology of Emotions
 Terms:
– Emotional labour: the work that one does to
suppress or enhance the intensity, duration, or
direction of one’s emotions
 Conditions:
– Again, class, age, gender, race, and ethnicity
structure how we express emotions
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Nonverbal Communication
 Defined: the transfer of information between
persons without the use of speech (p. 155)
 Types:
– Intentional
– Unintentional
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Nonverbal Communication
 Functions of Nonverbal Communication:
– Supplements verbal communication
– Regulates social interaction
– Establishes power relations
 Deference: the symbolic means by which
subordinates give a response to those in power
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Nonverbal Communication
 Facial Expression, Eye Contact, and
Touching:
– Facial expressions reflect gender-based
patterns of dominance and subordination
– Women are more likely to sustain eye contact
during conversations
– No direct eye contact of subordinates to those
in power reflects rank between them
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Nonverbal Communication
 Facial Expression, Eye Contact, and
Touching:
– Touching: Wide variety of meanings
 Intimacy
 Friendship
 Sexual connotations
 Gender differences
 Who touches first may reflect rank
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Nonverbal Communication
 Personal Space
– Defined: the immediate area surrounding a
person that the person claims as private
(p. 156)
– Theme: when others invade our space, we may
retreat, stand our ground, or become angry
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Types of Personal Space
in North America
Intimate:
Personal:
Social
Public
Contact to
.5 metre
.5 metre to 1.2
metres
Over 3.6
metres
Spouses,
lovers,
and close
friends
Friends and
acquaintances
1.2 metres
to 3.6
metres
Purpose:
conversation
Formal
relationships
Job
interviews
and
business
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More
formal and
makes
interpersonal
speech
nearly
impossible
Future Changes in Society,
Social Structure, and Interaction
 As society changes, so does social structure
and social interaction
 Personal problems are linked to everybody’s
problem (private troubles are linked to public
issues [Mills] )
 In sum, the future of this country rests on
our collective ability to deal with major social
problems at both the micro- and the macrolevels of society
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