7: Social Interaction

Discuss Chapter 4: Social Interaction in Everyday Life

What is a "status"?  In sociology, this means a social position someone holds.

            A position means a location relative, and relevant, to others within a social structure.  The location comes with certain roles and responsibilities that others can reasonably expect, and these expectations define their relationship.

            We can have many statuses with different "others", and they form a SET that helps define our identity and personality.  The statuses in our set can change over time.

            ASCRIBED status is something we have no easy way to change.  Black, white, male, female, widow, prisoner, child, cancer patient, etc.  They are socially constructed as relevant/important.

        

            ACHIEVED status is something that reflects our actions.  Sociologist, president, honor student, wife, husband, athlete, juvenile delinquent.  These can be affected by ASCRIBED.

            A MASTER status has special importance for one's identity, and it is a status that bleeds over into other status categories.  Gender, certain kinds of jobs, celebrity status, disabilities.

            ROLES are linked to statuses, and they are the specific social and behavioral expectations that come with having that status.  Many statuses have SETS of many roles.  It is something you DO, not something you ARE, but they are linked. (See graphic on p.91)

            ROLE STRAIN is when the roles of a single status contradict each other, for example, professors are expected to be friendly and cordial with students, and yet we are also expected to be  strict with students.  So while I may act like your friend in conversations, I may have to give you a bad grade or be strict about attendance requirements.

             ROLE CONFLICT is when your statuses have contradictory roles.  For example, let's say a woman owns a business, and gives her son a job there.  Now her "mother" role is to be kind, nurturing, forgiving... but her "boss" role is to be strict and give orders.  How should she act if her son shows up for work late?

  

            Sometimes conflicts become so great that a person is forced to leave one status.  (like a college student / alcoholic)  The process for disengaging can be complicated because our statuses can be deeply embedded in our identity.  This is ROLE EXIT.

             This can lead to alienation / anomie.  Becoming an "ex" typically starts with doubting one's ability to perform a role satisfactorily.  One begins spending mental effort imagining other situations, and if they reach a certain tipping point, they shift. 

            But people carry over a self-image shaped by their previous roles into their "ex" lives, like the shadow or ghost of an old status.  The transition also affects their relationships with specific people who's expectations are no longer valid (resulting in anomic confusion).  They may have to work hard to reconfigure or rebuild these relationships in new ways...

            SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION.

            We present ourselves in a form, kind of like a theatrical role, that we think is suitable to the relationships we seek to create or maintain.  This is a bit like with "anticipatory socialization."  So the reality of our "selves" is not fixed, but is constantly shifting as we reevaluate ourselves and others – our free will, shaped by what we think we want, shapes our presentation.

            Does this mean we are not "real" in an objective sense?  That there is no "me" in here because I am socially constructed?  Well, again, think about a house.  We wouldn't say it's not really a house just because it was constructed by a social group (even though it is objectively just a pile of wood, metal, glass, and stone).  The THOMAS THEORUM  (p.93) says that a situation that is defined as real can have consequences that are most surely real, and this "hardens" and validates the reality of the situation.

            We collaboratively create the meaning of our reality: FLIRTING is a good example of how we socially construct the situation, where ambiguity is an intentional feature...

             

DISCUSS meaning of words, 
e.g. "homophobe" 
connotations of "unemployed" vs. "between jobs," 
Different words denotation (dictionary) and connotation (implied/evoked)

    

            
 ALSO see OK CUPUD BLOG & content analysis

                                    http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/page/4/

       

            This leads us to the DRAMATURGICAL perspective, which is a type of micro-level analysis that treats interaction as theater.  A status is like a part, and a role is like a script.  Analysis is then literally "de-scribing" meanings that are "in-scribed" in the scripted expectations of a part.

            BREACHING EXPERIMENTS can teach us what the boundaries are, and what they mean to people, and the functions they serve. (See "Ethnomethodology" on p. 93)The meaning we see can depend on our class, culture, etc.   You will be doing this as an assignment, with a partner or on you own, in a couple weeks.

            GENDER AND PERFORMANCE

Powerful people are more free to act... as a breaching experiment, try putting your feet up on a desk around people who think they are your superior, see if they react.
Body deployment.

            Women learn to craft their performances more carefully than men, and tend to defer to men more often than vice versa.

            Use of space, territory

                        DISCUSS: what techniques do people in public places use to claim more personal space? (airports, bus stops, cafe's, etc.)
(subway behavior study)

            Touching as a subtle ritual of dominance

                        embarrassment – discomfort over a spoiled performance of an idealized role

                        tact – when an audience overlooks a flaw to keep an actor going, or somehow acts to help the performer recover.   In other words, you understand the ideal role the performer is TRYING to convey, even if they fail.

EMOTIONS

All humans have the same basic emotions, and act them out the same way. This is a PATTERN, so we look for a FUNCTION.   BUT the situations that TRIGGER them are culturally variable.  Also RULES for the display of emotions are culturally variable.

reddit discussion on whether laughter is biologically innate, or socially conditioned.

Jennifer Keys' study (p.98) of emotional scripts/feeling rules that govern how women feel about ending a pregnancy...                

  
Arlie Hochschild's emotional management at work, requires flight attendants to use "deep management" of own emotions, this is LABOR in the Marxist sense, which leads to alienation!

           
HUMOR - The collision of 2 versions of reality

Function – safety valve for pressure/embarrassment ?