Groups and Social Structure



Social structure
     Organization - prediction
 Patterned relationships that reflect the underlying values and culture of the society

Individual - individualism

Group - more than one person

     Aggregate - place

     Category - a shared attribute

     Group - common identity

Status - defined or recognized position within the group - ranking

Role - set of expected behaviors and attitudes associated with the position,  a relationship with others: doctor - nurse - patient - therapist

Role performance actual behaviors as a result of the position the individual holds.

Role strain - inability to meet successfully all the expectations assigned to a particular role

Role conflict - clashing role expectations
 

Membership groups - regularity of meeting, develop as sense of group identity

Reference groups - group values, norms, beliefs and behaviors become the basis for one’s own daily life, identity

Primary / Secondary Groups

 Primary - important in the socialization of the individual and in the maintenance of the groups’ identity/culture (family)

 Secondary - more formalized, created and organized for specific purposed, role players, can be interchangeable (football team)

Ideal types - logical constructs that present the features of some phenomenon.  A conceptualization of the real world.

Size  - Dyad, Triad

Formal Organizations - large deliberately planned, established membership and procedures, rules for carrying out objectives.

    Normative - voluntary organizations ? charitable, community service,
 Goals are socially or morally worthwhile

    Coercive - force people to join and remove them from normal contact.
 Total institutions (prisons, military)

    Utilitarian - members seek some tangible benefit from their participation. (employment, universities

    Bureaucratic - maximizing human efficiency when dealing with large numbers of people, logical, orderly structuring of human behavior, develop patterned formalized procedures.

Max Weber -

Bureaucratic Ritualism - following the rules replaces task accomplishment or goal meeting.

Informal Organization - set of relationships that develops outside of the formal organization, may be based on jobs to be done, or people who regularly come into contact with each and meet informally.
 

Society - self-perpetuating groups of people who occupy a given territory and interact with one another on the basis of a shared culture.

     Mechanical solidarity - cohesiveness based on common values and beliefs of members

     Organic solidarity - cohesiveness based on interdependency and interlocking of functionally differentiated social statuses

     Gemeinschaft - communal relations based on long-standing customs, kinship, friendship (traditional societies)

     Gesellschaft - association secondary group relations (industrial societies) life is more rational, efficient, alienating.

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