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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