Sociology- Chapter 4&5 Summary and Review

Sociologists use macrosociological and mircrosociological levels of analyasis.

The term social structure refers to the social encelope that surrounds us and establishes limits on our behavior. Social structure consists of culture, social class, social statuses, roles, groups, and social institutions. Our location in the social structure underlies our perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors. Culture lays the broadest framework, while socail class divides people according to income, education, and occurpational prestige. Each of us recieves ascribed statuses at birth; we later add achieved statuses. Our statuses guide us orientatins to life. These are futher influenced by the groups by which we belong, and our experiences with social institutions. These components of society work together to help maintain social order.

Social institutions are the standard ways that a society devolops to meet its basic needs. Industrial and postindustrial societies have ten social institution- the family, religion, education, economy, medicine, politics, law, science, the militar, and the mass media. From the functionalist perspective, social institutions meet universal group needs, or fuctional requisites. Conflict theorists stress how society's eliets use social instutions to maintain their privileged positions.

According to Emile Durkheim, in agricultural societies people are untied by mechanical solidarity (having similar views and feelings). With industrialization comes organic solidarity (people depend on one another to do their more specialized jobs). Ferdinand Tonnies pointed out that the informal meens of contron in Gemeinschaft (small, intimate) societes are replace by formal mecanisims in Gesellschaft (larger, more impersonal) societies.

In contrst to functionalists and comflict theorists, who as macrosociologists focus on the \"big picture\", symbolic interactionsits tend to be microsociologists who focus on face-to-face social interaction. Symbolic interactionists analyze how people define theit worlds, and how their definintions influence their behavior.

Stereotypes are assumptions of what people are like. When we first meet people, we classify them according to our perceptions of their visible characteristics. Our ideas about these characteristics guide our reactions to them. Our behavior can influence them to behave in ways that reinforce our stereotypes.

In examining how people use physical space, symbolic interactionsts stress that we surrond ourselves with a \"personal bubble\" that we carefully protect. People from different cultures use \"personal bubbles\" of carying sizes, so the answer to the question is no. Americans typically use four different \"distance zones\": intimate, personal, social, and public.

Body language is using our bodies to give messages. Whe do this through facial expression, posture, smiling, and eye contact. Interpreting unintended body language is becoming a tool in the fight against terrorism.

Evering Goffman developed dramaturgy, in which everyday life is analyzed in terms of the stage. At the core of this analysis is the impression management, our attempts to control the impressions we make on others. For this we use the sign-cehicles of setting, appearance, and manner. Our role performances on the fronst stages of life often call for teamwork and face-saving behavior. They sometimes are hampered by role conflict or role strain.

Ethnometodology is the study of how people make sense of everyday life. Ethomethodologists try to uncover background assumptions, the basic ideas about the way life is that guide or behavior.

The phrase social construction of reality refers to how we construct our views of the world, which, underline our actions.

Because microsociology and macrosociolgy focus on different aspects of the human experience, each is necessary for us to understand social life.

-Study on occupational status --upper level want to maintain status --others just wanna do better --not likely to move up more than one step

Sociologists use many definitons of groups, but, in general, a group consists of people who interact with one another and who thinks of themselves as belonging together. Societies are the largest and most complex group sociologists study.

On their way to postindustrial society, humans passed throught four types of societies. Each emerged from a social revolution, which brought the pasturing of animals and cultivation on plants, transformed hunting and gathering societies into pastoral and horticultural societies. The invention of the plow ushered in the agricultural society, while Industrial Revolution, brought about by machines powered by fuels, led to industrial society. The computer chip ushered in a new type of socitye called postindustrial (or information) society. Another new type of society, the biotech sociey, may be emerging.

Hunting and gathering societies had little social inequality, but as societies changed social inequality grew. The root of the trasition to social inequality was the accumulation of a food surplus, made possible throught the domestication revolution. THis surplus stimultated the division of labor, trade, the accumulation of material goods, the subordination of females by males, the emergance of leaders ,and the develpoment of the state. Social inequality increases with each type of new society. A reversal of this trend occured int he latter part of the industrial society.

Sociologists divide groups into primary groups, secondary groups, in-groups, out-groups, reference groups, and networks. The cooperative, intamate, long-term, face-to-face relationships provided by primary groups are fundamental to our sense of self. Secondary groups are larger, relatively temporary, and mor anonymous, formal and impersonal than primary groups. In-groups provide members with a foster indentity by showing in-group members what they are not. Reference groups are groups whose standards we refer to as we evaluate ourselves. Social networks consist of social ties that link people together.

The term group dynamics refer to how individuals affect groups and how groups influence individuals, In a small group, everyone can interact directly with everyone else. As a group grows larger, intimacy decreases but the grou's stablility increases. A dyad, consistion of two people, is the most unstable of human groups, but it provides the most intimate relationships. The addition of a third person, forming a triad, fundamentally alters relationships. Triads are unstable, as coalitions (the alignment of some members of a group agains others) tend to form.

A leader is someone who influences others. Instumental leaders try to keep a group moving toward its goals, even though this causes friction and they lose popularity. Expressive leaders focus on creating harmony and raising group morale. Both types are essential to the functioning of groups.

Authoritarian leaders give orders, democratic leaders try to lead by consensus, and laissez-faire leaders are highly permissive. An authoritarian style appears to more effective in emergency situations, a democratic style works best for most cases, and a laissez-faire style is usually ineffective.

The Asch experiment was cited to illustrate the influence of peer pressure, the Milgram experiment to show the power of authority. Both experiments demonstrate how easily we can succumb to groupthink, a kind of collective tunnel vision. Preventing groupthink requires the free circulation of diverse and opposing ideas.

Simple societies have evolved to more complex societies.