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Microsociology: Social Interaction
Microsociology: Social Interaction
Microsociology: Social Interaction
Social interaction – the process by which people act and react in relation to others
Small aspects of social life are important to consider – not just major institutions
Goffman focused on the way people interact each other, the settings, and the props
Importance
o Our everyday routines provide and illustrate the structure of our lives
o Interactions reveal the importance of human agency
o Interactions can tell us a lot about larger society
Dramaturgical perspective
o Demonstrates how we construct, maintain, and revise our identities in interaction with
others
o Look at all parts of human interaction
o “Performance” – all the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves
to influence in any way any of the other participants
o Performances are both conscious (intentional action) and unconscious (nonverbal
communication)
o Definitions
Line: a pattern of verbal and non-verbal acts by which a person expresses his
view of the situation and through this evaluation of the participant, especially
himself
Face: The positive social value a person effectively claims himself by the line
others assume he has taken during a particular contact
Being in wrong face: When info is brought forth in some way about a
person’s social worth which cannot be integrated even with the effort
into the line that is being sustained for the person
Being out of face: When a person participates in contact with others
without having ready a line of the kind of participants in such situations
are expected to take
Saving one’s face: the process by which the person sustains an
impression for other that he has not lost face
Face-Work
The Avoidance Process
o Avoid contact in which these threats are likely to occur
o Protective maneuvers such as respect, politeness, discretion
o Studied non-observance
The Corrective Process
o Challenge, offering, acceptance, and thanks
Rules of everyday life
o Front Stage: Social actor undertakes a role performance that is directed toward others
o Back Stage: When the actor steps out of the role
o “Expressive equipment”
Setting
Personal front (appearance and manner)
o Status – a social position that a person holds
Status set: all statuses a person holds at a given time
Ascribed status: received at birth or taken on involuntarily later in life
Achieved status: a social position a person taken on voluntarily that reflects
personal ability and effort
Master status: a status that has special importance for social identity, often
shaping a person’s entire life (race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical ability,
economic standing, religion, education)
o Role: behavior expected of somebody who holds a particular status
Role conflict: conflict among the roles connected to two or more statuses
(finding a work family balance)
Role strain: tension among roles connected to a single status
Role exit: process by which people disengage from important social roles
Ethnomethodology: study of how we make sense of interaction
o Harold Garfinkel
o Tested the idea of background expectancies
Socialization: Theories, Agents of Socialization
Socialization: the process whereby an innocent child becomes a self-aware knowledgeable
person, skilled in the ways of the culture into which he or she was born
o Develop human capacities
o Acquire a sense of self or social identity
o Learn the culture(s) of society in which they live
o Learn expectation for behavior, how to fulfill social roles
Social Reproduction – the processes through which societies produce continuity over time
Primary location for studying the significance of nature vs. nurture in human behavior
Mead
o Laid foundation for Symbolic Interactionism
o Primary socialization – the portion of socialization that takes pace with infant and you
children
o Development of the “self”
o 3 Stages
Preparatory stage (1-3yrs): children imitate behavior but don’t understand it
Play stage(3-4): more understanding of behavior but don’t carry out roles
consistently
Games stage: roles played assume consistency and purpose
o The Social Self
I vs Me (I is subject, me is object)
I – spontaneous, impulsive, initiating tendencies
Me – internalized attitudes of other through which one views oneself and one’s
actions
Cooley – “The Looking-Glass Self”
o We imagine our appearance or image in the eyes of the other
o Imagine some judgment of that image or appearance
o Experience some sort of self-feeling
Agents of socialization
o Family
o Peer group
o School
o Religious community
o Workplace
o Mass media
Socialization and identity
o Internalization of culture and construction of self
o Social identity (objective) vs self identity (subjective)
o Gender socialization – learning appropriate gendered behavior
Piagent: Stages of cognitive development
1. Sensorimotor(birth-2): exploring the environment
2. Preoperational (2-7): egocentric
3. Concrete operational (7-11 yrs): basic abstraction
4. Formal operational (11-15yrs): further abstraction and hypothetical reasoning
Sociological Theory
Theory is a statement of why specific facts are related
o Social theories don’t intend explain but to find out why
Early Theorists
o Comte
Coined “sociology”
Sociology can contribute to the welfare of humanity by using science to
understand, predict, and control human behavior
o Interpreting modern development
Durkheim
Organic Solidarity – social cohesion that results from various parts of a
society functioning as an integrated whole
Division of labor as a basis for social cohesion and organic solidarity
Social facts (the aspects of social life that shape our actions) should be
studies as things
Social constraint – conditional influence on our behavior by society
Theory of suicide – both psychological and social process
o Social integration (varies inversely to degree of integration)
o Social regulation (number of rules guiding your daily life)
o Types
Egoistic – too little integration
Anomic – loss of integration
Drugs=loss of integration
Altruistic – imposed by a society for social purposes
Marx
Society is divided based on class differences caused by econ. Inequalities
of capitalism
o Bourgeois and Proletariats
Weber
Rationalization of social and economic life
Importance of cultural ideas and values on social change
Modern Theoretical Approaches
o Structural-Functional
Social events can be best understood in terms of the function they perform
Importance of moral consequences in maintaining order and stability in society
(norm)
Manifest/latent functions
Critique:
Ignores inequalities that cause tension and conflict
Conservative: focus on stability over conflict
o Social-Conflict
Society is an arena of inequality that generates conflict and change
Social pattern advantages some categories of people and at the same time
harms others
Gender and race conflict approaches
Critiques
Largely ignores shared values and interdepence of members
Cannot claim scientific objectivity (support political agendas)
o Symbolic Interaction
Micro-level – focus on interaction in specific situations
Society is a product of everyday interactions
Sociological Research Method
Principles of scientific investigation
1. Objectivity
2. Replication
3. Precision
4. Reliability (stability and consistency of measurement)
Participant error
Participant bias – Hawthorne effect
Observer error
Observer bias
5. Validity – are we measuring what we think we are measuring
Internal validity – demonstrated causality
External validity – generalizability
The Research Cycle
1. Formulate Question
Topic selection
Concepts (social behavior, attitude, role) and indicator (observable)
Deductive (select theory and test if applicable)
Inductive approach (start with general idea and develop ideas as data collection
proceeds)
2. Review Existing literature
3. Select method/approach
Quant. Vs qual
Depth vs breadth
Data collection methods
How well-formulated the theory is before observation
The level of social interaction in question
Type of info needed
Resources available for research
Ease of access
4. Collect Data
Surveys
Participant observation
In-depth interviews
Focus groups
Experiments
Content analysis
5. Analyze data
Pattern recognition and difference between groups
6. Report results
Research Ethics
1. Consent
Active/passive
Informed/implied
2. Anonymity/confidentiality of subjects
3. Protection of vulnerable categories of subjects
Culture
Values, norms, and material goods characteristic of a given group
Society: systems of relationship between people
Non-Material Culture
o Values: standards by which groups define what proper and not
o Key values of US culture (Williams)
Equal opportunity
Achievement and success
Material comfort
Activity and work
Practicality and efficiency
Progress
Science
Democracy and free enterprise
Freedom
Racism and superiority
o Global perspective
Low income countries have cultures that value survival
High income have cultures that value individualism and self-expression
o Norms: rules of conduct
Folkways – norms with weak sanctions
Mores – norms with strong sanctions (core values)
Taboos – norms so strong that their violation may cause physical revulsion
Material Culture
o Physical objects used within a culture
Shared symbol systems
o Symbol: anything carrying a particular meaning recognized by people who share a
culture
o Cultural change
Invention
Discovery
Diffusion
o Cultural Universals
Language
Forms of emotional expression
Rules that guide child rearing
Institution of marriage
Incest prohibition
Standards of beauty
o Multiculturalism
Assimilation: taking on the culture of the dominant group
Ethnocentrism: the practice of judging another culture by the standards of one’s
own culture
Social Reproduction
Focuses on the existence of social inequality, especially the social mechanisms through which it
is sustained
Habitus: the deeply ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions that we are socialized to have
Cultural capital: skills and symbolic elements individuals acquire through being part of a
particular social class that can be translated into different forms of value as they move through
various institutions
Cultural Logic of Child Rearing Varies by Class
o Concerted Cultivation:
Organized activities and highly scheduled
Adults seen as having a duty to entertain
Extensive adult labor in promotion of children’s organized leisure
Ubiquitous in middle-class families
Practice of concerted cultivation results in
Sense of entitlement
Training for the rules of the game and how to make them work in their
favor
o Natural Growth
Few organized activities
Long stretches of leisure time
Child-initiated play
Played with cousins and neighbors
Unlimited TV watching
Clear boundaries between adults and children
Practice of natural growth results in
Sense of constraint
Cultural logic of childrearing is out of sync with the standards of
institutions
Knowledge of institutions is key
Hidden injuries of class
o Ability as the badge of the individual
o Self-responsibility for personal position
o Blame themselves
Individuals of different social locations are socialized differently