Society:

Anderson (1983) described society as” imagined communities”. Things that exist only in mind. They are
constructed by geographical boundaries, government and common language, customs & traditions.

The social construction of Reality:

Societies are mental constructions, therefore their reality id socially constructed. We need to
understand culture for this which consists of two parts; Material (objects) and Non-material culture
(knowledge and beliefs).

Merton (1957) suggested that objects have two functions. Manifest function (basic function) and latent
(status symbol)

Socialization:

The process beginning during childhood by which individuals acquire the values, habits, and attitudes of
a society. It is a continuing process whereby an individual acquires a personal identity and learns the
norms, values, behavior, and social skills appropriate to their social position.

Basic Materials of Culture:

Roles: Building blocks of culture. Expected patterns of behavior associated with a position we hold like a
parent, teacher, and student.

Values: These are the common expectations. It expresses a belief about how something should be. A
teacher should teach a student.

Norms: they are specific rules showing how people should act in a particular situation. Example
“Apologizing when one makes a mistake”.

Anomie: Merton (1957) used this term to define “a situation in which people are unable to predict the
behavior of others because the system of norms and values is not being followed.”
Belief: Deep rooted ideas that shape our values.

Nature Versus Nurture:

Definition of Nature Versus Nurture (noun) A debate between the influence of genetics (nature) and
social environments (nurture) on the development of individual or group and which one is more
dominant.
Feral children:

A feral child is a young individual who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age,
with little or no experience of human care, social behavior, or language. Such children lack the basics of
primary and secondary socialization. Example: “Genie” Wiley was a feral child who suffered horrific
abuse and neglect by her father, who isolated her in a dark room for 13 years.

The I and Me:

George Herbert Mead (1934) gave the theory of I and me. "Me" refers to the socialized component of
the individual and "I" refers to the engaged element, according to Mead. Essentially, this differentiation
was founded on the notion that "me" represents the Self as an object of consciousness, whereas "I"
represents the Self as a subject of consciousness.

The Presentation of Self; Looking glass Self:

The term looking-glass self was created by American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley in 1902, and
introduced into his work Human Nature and the Social Order. It is described as our reflection of how we
think we appear to others. Cooley takes into account three steps when using "the looking glass self".
Step one is how one imagines one looks to other people. Step two is how one imagines the judgment of
others based on how one thinks they view them. Step three is how one thinks of how the person views
them based on their previous judgments.

Agencies of socialisation

Primary socialization: Agencies are Family and Peers

Secondary socialization: Agencies of secondary socialization include schools , religious organisations and
the media.

Parsons (1959) argued that school plays a particularly significant role in secondary socialization for two
reasons:

 It emancipates the child from primary attachment to their family.

 It allows children to internalize a level of societies’ values and norms that is a a step higher than
those learnt within families.

Mass media: The media are slightly unusual secondary agencies because our relationship with it is
impersonal; we are unlikely to meet those doing the socialization.

Religion: whether or not we see ourselves as ‘religious’ , religion plays a significant role in the general
socialization process in many societies , particularly in relation to ceremonial functions , such as
marriages and funerals .
Social control, conformity and resistance

The role of structure and agency in shaping the relationship between the individual and society ,
including an awareness of the differences between structuralist and interactionist views.

The two main theories in sociology, functionalist theory and Marxist theory, provide different
interpretations of how order and control are created and maintained.

Both perspectives are structuralist (or macro sociological); they argue that how societies are organized
at the level of families, governments and economies (the institutional or system level), determines how
individuals view their world and behave within it (structural determinism).

Structuralist: a form of sociology, such as functionalism and Marxism, that focuses on analyzing society
in terms of its institutional relationships and their effects on individual beliefs and behaviours.

Determinism: the claim that human behaviour is shaped that refers to three related perspectives

Structuralist theories originated in the work of Durkheim and Marx

From a structuralist perspective, social action is the product of deep, underlying forces in society that
reach beyond the level of individual consciousness and control.

The way in which capitalist production of goods and services is organised, with the workers separated
from ownership of land and factories, can be seen as an invisible system that controls the way in which
all other aspects of a society operate.

By contrast, the functionalist perspective sees the structure of society more in terms of the institutional
arrangements required to ensure the smooth running of society.

For structuralist, the established social order represents a powerful force that the individual has little or
no freedom to oppose. For structuralist, therefore, sociology should be the study of the effects of the
structure of society on social life. In other words, sociologists should adopt a macro or large – scale view.

Consensus structuralism

Functionalism is a consensus structuralist approach.

This involves the idea that the various parts of a society ( family , education , work and so on ) work in
harmony. Each part is dependent on the others. Just as the different parts of the body.

Parsons (1937 ) argued that every society system consists of four ‘ functional sub – systems ’ – political ,
economic , cultural and family. Each of these sub – systems performs a different but related function
that addresses certain ‘problems’ faced by every society.
Parsons (1959a ) explained how individuals fit into the overall structure of society on the basis of
functional prerequisites – things that must happen if society is to function properly. For Parsons ,
institutions do this by developing ways to solve ‘ four problems of their existence. We can show this
using the example of education.

1. Goal maintenance: institutions must provide people with goals to achieve, such as academic
qualifications.
2. Adaptation: to achieve institutional goals, people need a cooperative environment, such as
classroom and teachers, within which people can work.
3. Integration: people must be motivated to achieve ( educational ) goals , and one way to do this
is to encourage a sense of ‘ belonging. A school, for example, makes people feel they ‘belong’ to
the institution and that they have things in common with other students and teachers.
4. Latency: conflicts within an institution must be managed and rules created to encourage
desirable behavior and punish rule – breaking ( deviance ).

Conflict Structuralism:

Societies may appear stable, but are based on conflicts of interest between groups. Marxism sees this in
economic terms with different social classes fighting against each other.

Marxism:

The workplace is a key area of conflict because of its organizational structure. In capitalist society, the
means of economic production is owned by one class (ruling class). The majority own nothing and so are
forced to sell their labor power. It is part of what Marxist call the forces of Production.

Althusser (1972) gave the idea of “Repressive State Apparatus”, way of getting people to conform by
force. The Repressive State Apparatus consists of the army, the police, the judiciary, and the prison
system. It operates primarily by means of mental and physical coercion and violence (latent and actual).

Ownership and control of insitutions such as media also allow the ruling class to influence how others
see the world. Althusser called these insitutions as “Idelogical state apparatuses”.

Interactionism:

Interactionism is micro-sociological perspective that argues meaning to be produced through the

interactions of individuals. The social interaction is a face-to-face process consisting of actions,
reactions, and mutual adaptation between two or more individuals, with the goal of communicating
with others.

Interactionist argue that to explain human behavior we need to study people’s interaction at the micro
level. Schutz (1962) argues “Subjective meanings give rise to an apparently objective social world”.
Structuration:

Giddens (1984) developed a perspective called structuration, which outlined the importance of both
structure and action in considering the relationship between society and the individual.