A Look Ahead

1. A Look Ahead • What determines a person’s status in society? • How do our social roles affect our social interactions? • What is the place of the family, religion, and government in our social structure? • How can we better understand and manage large organizations?

2. Review of Social Interaction and Reality • Reality is shaped by perceptions, evaluations, and definitions • Nature of social interaction and what constitutes reality varies across cultures • Ability to define social reality reflects group’s power within a society • Important aspect of the process of social change involves redefining or reconstructing social reality

3. Elements of Social Structure: Statuses • Status: • any of the full range of socially defined positions within a large group or society • Person can hold more than one at same time

4. How do people obtain statuses? • Ascribed Status • status one is born with • Ex: race, caste, religion • Achieved Status • Status one earns • Ex: Education, prestige

5. Do some statuses matter more? • MasterStatus • Status that dominates other statuses and determines a person’s general position in society • These can be positive or negative • Race and gender can function as master statuses • family name

6. Source: Developed by author.

7. Social Roles • What Are Social Roles? • Socialrole: set of expectations for people who occupy a given status • RoleConflict • When incompatible expectations arise from two or more social positions held by same person • Rolestrain • Difficulties that arise when same social position imposes conflicting demands and expectations

8. Social Roles • RoleExit • Process of disengagement from a role that is central to one’s identity to establish a new role • Ex: Retirement

9. Role exit • Ebaugh’s four stages: • Doubt • Search for alternatives • Action or departure stage • Creation of a new identity

10. Social Institutions • Socialinstitution: organized pattern of beliefs and behavior centered on basic social needs • Major Social institutions include • Family • Education • Religion • Economy • Government

11. Functions of Social Institutions • The major functions of social institutions include: • Simplify social behavior for the individual person • Provide ready-made forms of social relations and social roles for individuals. • Act as agencies of coordination and stability • Control behavior.

12. Social Institutions • Functionalist Perspective • Five major tasks: • Replacing personnel • Teaching new recruits • Producing and distributing goods and services • Preserving order • Providing and maintaining a sense of purpose

13. Social Institutions • Conflict Perspective • Major institutions help maintain privileges of most powerful individuals and groups within society • Social institutions such as education have inherently conservative natures. • Social institutions operate in gendered and racist environments.

14. Social Institutions • Interactionist Perspective • Social institutions affect everyday behavior • Social behavior conditioned by roles and statuses we accept

15. Table 5-2: Sociological Perspectives on Social Institutions

16. Understanding Organizations • Formal organizations and bureaucracies • Characteristics of a bureaucracy • Bureaucracy and organizational culture

17. Formal Organizations and Bureaucracies • Formal organization: group designed for special purpose and structured for maximum efficiency • In our society, formal organizations fulfill enormous variety of personal and societal needs • Ascribed statuses can influence how we see ourselves within formal organizations

18. Characteristics of a Bureaucracy • Bureaucracy: component of formal organization that uses rules and hierarchical ranking to achieve efficiency • Ideal type: a construct or model for evaluating specific cases (Weber) • Weber emphasized basic similarity of structure and process found in dissimilar enterprises of religion, government, education, and business

19. Characteristics of a Bureaucracy • Characteristics of Weber’s ideal bureaucracy: • Division of labor • Hierarchy of authority • Written rules and regulations • Impersonality • Employment based on technical qualifications

20. Characteristics of a Bureaucracy • With a division of labor, specialized experts perform specific tasks • Fragmentation of work can remove connection workers have to overall objective of the bureaucracy • Alienation: condition of estrangement or dissociation from the surrounding society • Trained incapacity: workers become so specialized that they develop blind spots and fail to notice obvious problems

21. Characteristics of a Bureaucracy • A hierarchy of authority means each position is under supervision • Written rules and regulations ensure uniform performance of every task • Provide continuity • Goal displacement: when rules and regulations overshadow larger goals of organization and become dysfunctional

22. Characteristics of a Bureaucracy • Impersonality a key characteristic • Bureaucratic norms dictate that officials perform duties without personal consideration to people as individuals

23. Characteristics of a Bureaucracy • Employment based on technical qualifications: ideally, performance measured against specific standards • Peter principle: every employee within a hierarchy tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence (Peter and Hull 1969) • Bureaucracy pervades modern life; through McDonaldization, it has reached new heights

24. Characteristics of a Bureaucracy • Bureaucratization as a Process • Bureaucratization: process by which group, organization, or social movement becomes increasingly bureaucratic • Can take place within small group settings • Oligarchy: Rule by a Few • Iron law of oligarchy: even a democratic organization eventually develops into a bureaucracy ruled by a few

25. Bureaucracy and Organizational Culture • Classical theory or scientific management approach: workers motivated almost entirely by economic rewards • Human relations approach: role of people, communication, and participation within a bureaucracy emphasized

26. Table 5-3: Characteristics of a Bureaucracy

27. Social Structure in Global Perspective • Modern societies are complex • Durkheim’s mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity • Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft • Lenski’s sociocultural evolution approach

28. Durkheim’s Mechanical and Organic Solidarity • Division of Labor ([1893] 1933) • Mechanical solidarity: collective consciousness that emphasizes group solidarity, implying all individuals perform the same tasks • Organic solidarity: collective consciousness resting on the need society’s members have for one another

29. Tönnies’s Gemeinschaftand Gesellschaft • Gemeinschaft (guh-MINE-shoft): small community in which people have similar backgrounds and life experiences • Gesellschaft (guh-ZELL-shoft): large community in which people are strangers and feel little in common with other community residents

30. Table 5-4: Comparison of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

31. Lenski’s Sociocultural Evolution Approach • Human societies undergo process of change characterized by dominant pattern known as sociocultural evolution • Level of technology critical • Technology: “cultural information about the ways in which the material resources of the environment may be used to satisfy human needs and desires” (Nolan and Lenski 2009:357)

32. Lenski’s Sociocultural Evolution Approach • Preindustrial Societies • Hunting-and-gathering society: people rely on whatever foods and fibers are readily available • Horticultural societies: people plant seeds and crops • Agrarian societies: people are primarily engaged in production of food; more specialized than horticultural society

33. Lenski’s Sociocultural Evolution Approach • Industrial Societies • Societies that depend on mechanization to produce its goods and services • People depend on mechanization to produce goods and services • People rely on inventions and energy sources • People move away from family as a self-sufficient production unit

34. Lenski’s Sociocultural Evolution Approach • Postindustrial and Postmodern Societies • Postindustrial society: economic system engaged primarily in processing and controlling information • Postmodern society: technologically sophisticated society preoccupied with consumer goods and media images

35. Table 5-5: Stages of Sociocultural Evolution

36. Social Policy and Organizations: The State of the Unions Worldwide • Looking at the Issue • Labor unions consist of organized workers who share either the same skill or the same employer • Labor union practices were historically discriminatory, but today some actually ensure equal pay for minorities • Labor union power varies greatly from country to country

37. Figure 5-2: Labor Union Membership Worldwide Sources: New Unionism Network 2011; Trottman and Maher 2013; Visser 2006:45.

38. Social Policy and Organizations: The State of the Unions Worldwide • Reasons for ongoing decline in labor union membership: • Changes in the type of industry • Growth in part-time jobs • The legal system • Globalization • Employer offensives

39. Social Policy and Organizations: The State of the Unions Worldwide • Applying Sociology • Marxists and functionalists view union development as logical response to organizational growth • Sociologists have linked decline in union membership to widening gap between hourly workers’ wages and managerial and executive compensation

40. Social Policy and Organizations: The State of the Unions Worldwide • Initiating Policy • U.S. is unique among industrial democracies in allowing employers to oppose union development • European labor unions play a major role in politics • Unions are a global force, but form and function vary from country to country

41. Research Today 5-1: Disability as a Master Status • Does your campus present barriers to disabled students? If so, what kinds of barriers—physical, attitudinal, or both? Describe some of them. • Why do you think nondisabled people see disability as the most important characteristic of a disabled person? What can be done to help people see beyond the wheelchair and the Seeing Eye dog?

42. Research Today 5-2: Social Networks and Obesity • Have you ever tried to lose weight, and if so, did your cluster of friends and family help or hinder you? In your experience, do people who are overweight tend to cluster in separate groups from those of normal weight? • Besides public health campaigns, what applications can you think of for research on social networking?

43. Sociology in the Global Community 5-3: McDonald’s and the Worldwide Bureaucratization of Society • What features of fast-food restaurants do you appreciate? Do you have any complaints about them? • Analyze life at your college using Weber’s model of bureaucracy. What elements of McDonaldization do you see? Do you wish life were less McDonaldized?

44. Sociology in the Global Community 5-4: Disney World: A Postmodern Theme Park • In just the last 24 hours, what evidence of hyperconsumerism have you witnessed? • How often do you find yourself moving seamlessly across time or space, in one way or another?

45. Taking Sociology to Work Sarah Levy, Owner, S. Levy Foods • Have you ever thought of starting your own business? If so, what do you think the key to your success might be? • Would business have been a more practical major for Sarah? Why or why not?