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Social Structure
Status, Roles, Groups, and Networks
Social Structure and Status
• social structure - the underlying patterns of relationships in a
group
• status - a position a person occupies within a social structure
(mother, son, student, doctor, musician, athlete)
• ascribed status - a position that's neither earned nor chosen
but assigned (gender, age)
• achieved status - a position that's earned or chosen
(occupations, decision to be a spouse or a parent)
• status set - all of the statuses that a person occupies at any
particular time
• master status - a position that strongly influences most other
aspects of a person's life - can be achieved or ascribed
(occupation, age, gender, race, ethnicity)
Ascribed and Achieved Status
• An ascribed status is one that is beyond an individual's control.
It is not earned, but rather something people are either born
with or had no control over. Examples of ascribed status include
sex and race. Children usually have more ascribed statuses than
adults since they do not usually have a choice in most matters.
A family's social status or socioeconomic status, for instance,
would be an achieved status for adults, but an ascribed status
for children. Homelessness might also be another example. For
adults, homelessness usually comes by way of achieving, or
rather not achieving, something. For children, however,
homelessness is not something they have any control over. They
become as such by default of their parents' actions.
Ascribed and Achieved Status
• An achieved status is one that is
acquired on the basis of merit; it is a
position that is earned or chosen and
reflects a person's skills, abilities, and
efforts. Being a professional athlete,
for example, is an achieved status, as
is being a lawyer, college professor, or
criminal.
Ascribed and Achieved Status
• The line between achieved status and ascribed status is not
always black and white. There are many statuses that can be
considered a mixture of achievement and ascription. Take
Paris Hilton, for example, who has an achieved status of being
an actress. Many might argue that she would never have
achieved the status of actress if she had not come from a
wealthy family, an ascribed status of hers.
Take a moment to reflect on your own statuses. What are all of your statuses,
and which are ascribed and which are achieved?
Ascribed Status
Achieved Status
Master Status
Status Symbols
• Status Symbols material items we use as signs to
display our status.
• These symbols can be positive or negative
• announce our status and smooth our interactions in
everyday life
• A contradiction in status is called status
inconsistency
• Status has built in norms that guide our behaviorstatus inconsistency upsets these expectations
• Status Anxiety - the desire of people in many
modern societies to "climb the social ladder" and
the anxieties that result from a focus on how one is
perceived by others.
Social Structure and Roles
• role - an expected behavior associated with a particular status (status:
doctor - roles: schedule appointments, diagnose illnesses, prescribe
treatments)
• right - a behavior that individuals can expect from others (patient has the
right to expect the doctor to reach an appropriate diagnosis)
• obligation - a behavior that individuals are expected to perform toward
others (doctor must diagnose patient's illness)
• role performance - the actual behavior of an individual in a role
• social interaction - the process of influencing each other as people relate
• role conflict - performance of a role in one status interferes with the
performance of a role in another status (teenagers may have difficulty
balancing study and work demands)
• role strain - roles of single status are inconsistent or conflicting (high
school student may wish to perform well academically, join a campus
club, play a sport, socialize on weekends)
Culture and Social Structures
• members of a group:
•
•
•
•
1. are in regular contact with one another
2. share some ways of thinking, feeling and behaving
3. take one another's behavior into account
4. have one or more interests or goals in common
• social category - people who share a social characteristic (e.g., citizens
of the U.S.)
• social aggregate - people temporarily at the same place at the same
time (e.g., witnesses of a disaster)
• primary group - people who are emotionally close, know each other
well, seek one another's company
• primary relationships - interactions that are intimate, caring, personal
and fulfilling primary groups
• secondary group - people who share only part of their lives while
focusing on a goal or task
• secondary relationships - impersonal interactions involving limited
parts of personalities
Other Groups and Networks
• reference groups - groups used for self-evaluation and the
formation of attitudes, values, beliefs and norms
• in-groups - exclusive groups demanding intense loyalty
• out-groups - groups targeted by an in-group for opposition,
antagonism or competition
• social network - web of social relationships that join a person
to other people and groups
Types of Social Interaction
• cooperation - interaction in which individuals or groups combine
their efforts to reach a goal
• conflict - interaction aimed at defeating an opponent - positive
effects: 1. promotion of cooperation and unity within opposing
groups (Revolutionary War brought colonists together) 2. attention
drawn to social inequalities (civil rights movement) social exchange voluntary action performed in the expectation of getting a reward in
return ("I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine.") - cooperation ->
"How can we reach our goal?" - social exchange -> "What's in it for
me?" coercion - individuals or groups are forced to behave in a
particular way (e.g., enforced curfew) - done through physical force
or social pressure conformity - behavior that matches group
expectations groupthink - self-deceptive thinking that's based on
conformity to group beliefs and created by group pressure to
conform
Formal Organizations
• groups deliberately created to achieve one or more long-term
goals (high schools, govt. agencies) bureaucracy - formal
organization based on rationality and efficiency - major
characteristics of bureaucracies: 1. a division of labor based on
the principle of specialization 2. a hierarchy of authority 3. a
system of rules and procedures 4. written records of work and
activities 5. promotion on the basis of merit and qualifications
power - ability to control the behavior of others authority legitimate or social approved use of power rationalization mind-set emphasizing knowledge, reason, and planning
informal organization - group within a formal organization
that's guided by norms, rituals, sentiments that aren't
apparent in the formal organization iron law of oligarchy theory that power increasingly becomes concentrated in the
hands of a few members of any organization