individuals as status-occupants status-sets role-sets norm-clusters
TRANSCRIPT
Individuals asStatus-Occupants
status-sets
role-setsnorm-clusters
Social Status
Obligations and Responsibilities
Normative Expectations (Rules)
Cognitive Attributes: Beliefs, Values,Motivations and Attitudes
Interests
Social Capital
Power & Authority
Social Status
Obligations and ResponsibilitiesWhat am I supposed to do?
Where do these come from?
How do they change over historicaltime? – i.e., fathers and parenting.
Individuals who occupy a given statusmust take these into account.
The extent to which individuals whooccupy a given status live up to theresponsibilities and obligations thatare called for varies.
Social Status
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:
Prescribed - ProscribedPermitted - Preferred
Norms vary from one culture to another.
Norms vary from one sub-culture to another.Norms vary over historical time.
Social Status
Normative Expectations (Rules)How am I supposed to do all this?
Do not confuse “norms” with actual action or behavior.
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 interactionsMores - norms derived from moral valuesTaboos - norms that place behavior out of boundsLaws - norms that are codified and are sanctioned
Social Status
Obligations and Responsibilities[What am I supposed to do?]
Normative Expectations (Rules)[How am I supposed to do all this?]
Cognitive Attributes: Beliefs, Values,Motivations and Attitudes
STABILITY
Whether we recognize it or not, we possess a vast storehouse of “socialknowledge” and, to varying degrees, know what is expected of us & what to expect of others.
Mutually reinforcing and reciprocalExpectations.
Social Status
Obligations and Responsibilities[What am I supposed to do?]
Normative Expectations (Rules)[How am I supposed to do all this?]
Cognitive Attributes: Beliefs, Values,Motivations and Attitudes
Interests[Conflict is built into society.]
STABILITY
Social Status
InterestsConflict is built into society.
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 andattitudes.
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.
Social Status
InterestsConflict is built into society.
If conflict is built into the very fabric of society, how is it managed?
How are conflicts - whether legitimate or not - resolved?
What are the patterns and functions ofconflict?
Social Status
Obligations and Responsibilities[What am I supposed to do?]
Normative Expectations (Rules)[How am I supposed to do all this?]
Cognitive Attributes: Beliefs, Values,Motivations and Attitudes
Interests[Conflict is built into society.]
STABILITY
Power & Authority
Social Status
Power & Authority
Power: the capacity to impose one’s willover others, even against the resistance of others; coercion.
Authority: the capacity to have others comply with your wishes - even if theywould prefer not to - because theyrecognize 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.
Social Status
Power & Authority
Power and authority are not equally distributed in all social statuses:
employer - employee male - female professor - studentdean - 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
Social Status
Obligations and Responsibilities[What am I supposed to do?]
Normative Expectations (Rules)[How am I supposed to do all this?]
Cognitive Attributes: Beliefs, Values,Motivations and Attitudes
Interests[Conflict is built into society.]
Social Capital[Access to Opportunities and Resources][Inequality is built into society]
STABILITY
Power & Authority
Social Status
Social CapitalAccess to Opportunities and Resources
Inequality is built into society
“Central or Controlling Statuses”
Different statuses provide occupantsdifferent degrees of access to resources and opportunities - some more, some less. Examples:
the double standard the opportunity structure the glass ceiling
Social Status
Obligations and Responsibilities[What am I supposed to do?]
Normative Expectations (Rules)[How am I supposed to do all this?]
Cognitive Attributes: Beliefs, Values,Motivations and Attitudes
Interests[Conflict is built into society.]
Social Capital[Access to Opportunities and Resources][Inequality is built into society]
STABILITY
Power & Authority
Status-sets
Age:54
HusbandFatherRace:
“White”Professor Friend
Status-sets“identities”
ExecutiveDirector
Since individuals occupy multiple statuses, which specific statusbecomes activated at any given time? How is this “sociallynegotiated” by partners in interactions? How are discrepantactivations resolved?
Status-Activation & “Salient Statuses”
Age:54
HusbandFatherRace:
“White”Professor Friend
Status-sets“identities”
ExecutiveDirector
Since individuals occupy multiple statuses they are subject tocross-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 thathas special importance for social identity, oftenshaping a person’s entire life.
Dominant Status: that status within an individual’s status-set thatis given priority when the behavioral expectationsassociated with two or more statuses come into conflict.
Salient Status: that status within an individual’s status-set thatis elicited in a particular situation.
Age52
HusbandFatherRace:
“White”Professor Friend
Status-conflict; Status-strain
ExecutiveDirector
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
Professor
Students Colleagues DeansSupport
StaffCommunity
Role-set corresponding to the status of “Professor”
(each with a variable “person-set)
Role-conflict orRole-strain
Status-conflict orStatus-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 & Contradictionscontinued
• Conflict or disjunction between culturally prescribed aspirations and socially structured avenues for realizing these aspirations (the opportunity structure).
• Contradiction or conflict between cross-cultural 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 OFMODES OF CULTURAL CULTURAL INSTITUTIONALIZED INSTITUTIONALIZED ADAPTATION GOALS MEANSADAPTATION GOALS MEANS
1. Conformity1. Conformity + ++ +
2. Innovation 2. Innovation ++ --
3. Ritualism 3. Ritualism - +- +
4. Retreatism4. Retreatism - -- -
5. Rebellion5. Rebellion +/- +/- +/- +/-
Merton’s Typology of Individual Adaptation explanation of deviant behavior
Modes of Adaptation
Institutionalized Means
Cultural Goals
Conformity + + Innovation - + Ritualism + - Retreatism - - Rebellion -/+ -/+