Sociology Exam Review (Chapter 5-6)
Sociologists who argued that there is no substitute for face to face interaction, they further argued that humans have a need for personal interaction, or "compulsion of proximity"
Deidre Boden and Harvey Molotch
German sociologist who studied and theorized about the impact of small groups on people's behavior
Georg Simmel
Fosters the creation of new relationships, often without the emotional and social baggage or constraints that go along with face to face encounters. In the absence of the usual physical and social cues (skin color or residential area) people can get together electronically on the basis of shared interests. Factors such as social position, wealth, race, ethnicity, gender, and physical disability are less likely to cloud their social interaction
internet
Up to one and a half feet, and is reserved for very few social contacts (those involved in relationships, parents, spouses, etc) (Edward T. Hall)
intimate distance
A term coined by Weber's student Robert Michels meaning that large organizations tend toward centralization of power, making democracy difficult
iron law of oligarchy
(Goffman) Seemingly involuntary exclamations individuals make when they are taken by surprise
response cries
The expected behavior of people occupying particular social positions. The idea of a social role originally comes from the theater, referring to the parts that actors play in stage production. In every society, individuals play a number of social roles
roles
Every human being possesses a self that is fragile and vulnerable to embarrassment, or even humiliation, at every turn. People are intensely attuned to what others think of them and how others view them. Seeking approval, individuals want to "save face"
save face
Consists of keeping files, records, ad case histories about people's work lives
second type of surveillance
Groups that are large and impersonal and seldom involve intense emotional ties, enduring relationships, powerful commitments, or a feeling of unity. We rarely feel like ourselves in this group, instead we are often playing a role (businesses, schools, work groups, athletic clubs, etc)
secondary groups
A collection of people who happen to be together in a particular place but do not significantly interact or identify with one another
social aggregate
People who share a common characteristic (such as gender or occupation) but do not necessarily interact or identify with one another
social category
From four to twelve feet, is the zone usually maintained in formal settings such as interviews (Edward T. Hall)
social distance
Collection of people who regularly interact with one another on the basis of shared expectations concerning behavior and who share a sense of common identity (people who belong to the same BLANK identify with one another, expect one another to conform to certain ways of thinking and acting, and recognize the boundaries that separate them from another group)
social group
The process by which we act and react to those around us
social interaction
The social identity an individual has in a given group or society. These may be general in nature (those associated with gender roles) or more specific (occupational positions)
social position
The social honor or prestige that a particular group is accorded by other members of a society, this may be positive or negative (normally display distinct styles of life - patterns of behavior that the members of a group follow)
status
The supervising of the activities of some individuals or groups by others in order to ensure compliant behavior
surveillance
The means by which organizations regularize activities across time and space
time tables
When and where events occur
time-space
All aspects of life are conducted in the same place
total instituitions
(three people) Tend to be more stable than dyads because the presence of the third person relieves some of the pressure on the other two members. One person can temporarily withdraw attention from the relationship without necessarily threatening it. If two of the members are having a disagreement the third member can play the role of mediator
triad
Interaction occurring among people present in a particular setting but not engaged in direct face to face communication
unfocused interaction
The ability to think, act, and make choices independently
agency
May form between members of a triad enabling them to gang up on the third and thereby destabilize the group. These are likely to form when no member is clearly dominant and when all three members are competing for the same thing
alliances
In each of an individuals roles, they act somewhat differently, and try to keep what they do in each role distinct from one another. Frequently, these selves are consistent with one another, but sometimes they are not which creates conflict among themselves and others
audience segregation
Areas apart from the front region performance, as specified by Goffman, in which individuals are able to relax and behave informally
back region
A type of organization marked by a clear hierarchy of authority and the existence of written rules of procedure and staffed by full time salaried officials
bureaucracy
The process whereby individuals in the same physical setting glance at each other and quickly look away to indicate awareness but not intrusiveness (when this occurs among passing strangers, an individual implies to another that they have no reason to suspect their intentions or be hostile towards them)
civil inattention
Interaction between individuals engaged in a common activity or in direct conversation with one another
focused interaction
A group that is rationally designed to achieve its objectives often by means of explicit rules regulations and procedures
formal organization
Relations that exist in groups and organizations as laid down by the norms, or rules, of the official system of authority
formal relations
Settings of a social activity in which people seek to put on a definite "performance" for others
front region
The deliberate subversion of the tacit rules of conversation (a part of a self reinforcing system of mutual suspicion and incivility, leaves victims unable to articulate what has happened) A less powerful person is subverting normal interaction to undermine the taken for granted control of someone in a superordinate position
interactional vandalism
Concluded that traditional bureaucratic structures could stifle innovation and creativity in cutting edge industries
Burns and Stalker
Termed such groups "primary" because he believed that they were the basic form of association, exerting a long lasting influence on the development of our social selves. He argued that we belong to primary groups because membership is fulfilling, unlike secondary groups where we join in order to achieve something
Charles Horton Cooley
Worked extensively on nonverbal communication and distinguished the four zones of personal space
Edward T. Hall
Sociologist who wondered what types of behavioral cues and signs make up the vocabulary of public interaction. He concluded that race, gender, age, clothing, and companions people have help identify them
Elijah Anderson
Sociologist who sees social life as played out by actors on stage, or on many stages, because how we act depends on the roles we play at a given time. In addition, he saw social life as a precarious balancing act
Erving Goffman
Developed a vivid metaphor to express his view of the transformations in industrialized societies. He argues that we are witnessing the "Mcdonaldization" of society, or, "The process by which the principles of the fast food restaurants are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society and the rest of the world." Uses four guiding principles (efficiency, calculability, uniformity, and control through automation) to show that our society is becoming ever more rationalized. Also argues that society as a whole is moving toward this highly standardizing and regulated model
George Ritzer
1. Our day to day routines give structure and form what we do, we can learn a great deal about ourselves as social beings and social life 2. The study of everyday life reveals how humans can act creatively to shape reality (which is created through human interactions), the way we shape reality is widely based on our backgrounds, interests, and motivations 3. Studying social interaction in everyday life sheds light on larger social systems and institutions, all social systems depend on patterns of social interaction we engage in daily
Goffman's study on forms of social interaction in everyday life
Created the field of ethnomethodology and coined the term microsociology to describe a field of study that focused on individual interaction and communication within small groups (contrasted prior sociological research beliefs)
Harold Garfinkel
Found that telecommuters actually spend more time on paid work when working at home than their counterparts do when working in the office
Hartig, Johansson, and Kylin
Studied the roles associated with a woman's visit to a gynecologist (described the roles each character played throughout the scene)
Henslin and Biggs
Studied six children born deaf an blind to see how far their facial expressions were the same as those of sighted and hearing individuals
Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt
Coined the term bureaucracy from the combination of the word bureau (meaning both an office and a writing table) and cracy (derived from the Greek verb meaning"to rule"). From the beginning, he used the concept disparagingly and spoke of developing power of officials as "an illness called bureaumania
Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay
Sociologist who coined the term the "digital street" and studied a cohort of teenagers in Harlem and found that boy and girls changed the experience of public space by using social media to buffer interaction (boys acted more visible and acted more dominant toward girls on the sidewalk, whereas girls gained visibility and control online)
Jeffrey Lane
Sociologists who argued that formal rules and procedures are usually quite distant from the practices an organization's members actually adopt. Formal rules in their view are often "myths" that people profess to follow but actually don't
John Meyer and Brian Rowan
Sociologist who analyzed data from more than 126,000 online dating site users and found that the greatest interest in those of their same ethnic background (he found the strongest tendency to initiate contact within one's race among East and South Asians and Indians, and weakest among whites)
Kevin Lewis
Argues that the "network enterprise" is the organization best suited to a global, informational economy. By this he means that it is increasingly impossible for organizations to survive if they are not part of a network
Manuel Castells
Sociologist who demonstrated that there can be enormous strength in "weak ties," particularly among higher socioeconomic groups. He showed that upper level professional managerial employees are likely to hear about new jobs through connections such as distant relatives or remote acquaintances. Such weak ties can be beneficial because relatives or acquaintances tend to have very different sets of connections (not the same for lower socioeconomic groups)
Mark Granovetter
(effects of social influences) Conducted research to test the effects of the influence of social networks on musical choices. They created an artificial music website called, Music Lab, and asked the participants to rank songs they hadn't listened to before. Those in the experimental group were able to see how others ranked music, whereas the control group was unable. Therefore, the most popular songs were more popular than those in the control group
Matthew Salganik, Peter Dodds, and Duncan Watts:
Believed the expansion of bureaucracy is inevitable in modern societies because bureaucratic authority is the only way of coping with the administrative requirements of large scale social systems. However, he also believed that bureaucracy exhibits a number of major failings that have important implications for modern social life
Max Weber
Developed the first systematic interpretation of the rise of modern organizations. He argued that organizations are ways of coordinating the activities of human beings or the goods they produce in a stable way across space and time. Also emphasized that the development of organizations depends on the control of information and the necessity of writing. Saw organizations as strongly hierarchical
Max Weber
George Ritzer developed a vivid metaphor to express his view of the transformations in industrialized societies. He argues that we are witnessing the "blank" of society - "The process by which the principles of the fast food restaurants are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society and the rest of the world." Ritzer uses four guiding principles (efficiency, calculability, uniformity, and control through automation) to show that our society is becoming ever more rationalized. Ritzer argues that society as a whole is moving toward this highly standardizing and regulated model
Mcdonaldization of society
Sociologist who showed that the architecture of an organization id directly involved with its social makeup and system of authority. By studying the physical characteristics of an organization, we can shed new light on the problems Weber analyzed
Micheal Foucault
Sociologists who found that having fat friends can make you fat. Their study, titled "The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years" showed that obesity was "contagious." They found that if one person became obese, then people closely connected to him or her had a gretaer chance of becoming obese. (the chance of becoming obese increased by 57%) However, a mere neighbors weight change has no effect on one's body weight
Nicholas Christakis (Harvard) and James Fowler (University of California)
Developed the FACS system and studied an isolated New Guinean population to support the view that the facial expression of emotion and its interpretation are innate in human beings
Paul Ekman and W. V. Friesen
Sociologist who studied informal relations in a government agency that investigated possible income tax violations
Peter Blau
Max Weber's student who invented the phrase "who says organization says oligarchy," he called this concept the Iron Law of Oligarchy. According to him, the flow of power toward the top is inevitable of an increasingly bureaucratized world
Robert Michels
Sociologist who studied group conformity by conducting an experiment where subjects were asked to decide which one of the three lines presented was different in length, in a group setting. His experiments showed that many people are willing to discount their own perceptions rather than rebuke group consensus
Solomon Asch
Argues that as business firms and other organizations come to be networks, they go through a process of decentralization by which power and responsibility are devolved downward throughout the organization, rather than remaining concentrated at the top
Stanley Davis
Sociologist who worked to shed light on what happened in Nazi Germany during WWII. He tested how far a person would go when ordered by a scientist to give another person increasingly powerful electric shocks
Stanley Milgram
Peoples need to interact with others in their presence
compulsion of proximity
Fundamental part of being human by continually demonstrating to others our competence in the routines of daily life
controlled alertness
One of the main ways in which our daily lives are maintained in a stable and coherent manner. We feel most comfortable when the tacit conventions of small talk are adhered to; when they are breached, we can feel threatened, confused, and insecure
conversation
(a methodology) The empirical study of conversations, examines details of naturally occurring conversations to reveal the organizational principles of talk and its roles in the production and reproduction of social order
conversation analysis
Supervision of the work of subordinates by superiors
direct surveillance
1. One way communication 2. Exploitation of power 3. Wastage of time, efforts, and money 4. Delay in business making deals 5. Hinders innovation and creativity
disadvantages of bureaucracy
- Employees lose the human side of work (no face to face interactions) - Employees experience isolation, distraction, and conflicting demands of work and home responsibilities
disadvantages of remote workers
(two people) Involve bot intimacy and conflict are more likely to be simultaneously intense and unstable. To survive they require full attention and cooperation of both parties. If one person withdraws it vanishes
dyad
A meeting between two or more people in a situation of face to face interaction (these need "openings" which indicate that civil inattention is being discarded)
encounter
The study of how people make sense of what others say and do in the course of day to day social interaction (concerned with the folk or lay methods by which people sustain meaningful interchanges with one another)
ethnomethodology
1. There is a clear cut hierarchy of authority 2. Written rules govern the conduct of officials at all levels of the organization 3. Officials work full time and are salaried 4. There is a separation between the tasks of an official within the organization and his/her outside life 5. No members of the organization own the materials with which they operate
ideal type of bureaucracy
Preparing for the presentation of one's social role, or carefully and selectively portraying gan image of yourself to the outside world
impression management
Groups towards which one feels particular loyalty and respect - the groups to which "we" belong
in groups
Relations that exist in groups or organizations developed on the basis of personal connections developed on the basis that depart from formally recognized modes of procedure
informal relations
Forms of technology based on information processing and requiring microelectronic circuitry
information and communication technology
Decrease in intensity and increase in stability and exclusivity - have less intense interactions, simply because a larger number of potential smaller group relationships exist as outlets for individuals who are not getting along with other group members - tend to be more stable than smaller ones because they can survive the withdrawal of some members - tend to be more exclusive because it is easier for members to limit social relationships to the group itself and to avoid relationships with nonmembers
larger groups
Set of formal and informal social ties that link people to each other
network
The exchange of information and meaning through facial expression, gestures, and body movements (often expands or alters on what is said with words)
nonverbal communication
Ruled by a small minority within an organization or society Information and Communication Technology: Forms of technology based on information processing and requiring microelectronic circuitry
oligarchy
A large group of individuals with a definite set of authority relations. Many types of these exist in industrialized societies influencing most aspects of our lives (similar to bureaucracies)
organization
Groups toward which one feels antagonism and contempt - "those people"
out groups
From one and a half to four feet, is the normal spacing for an encounter with friends and close acquaintances (some intimacy of contact is permitted, but tends to be strictly limited, Edward T. Hall)
personal distance
Groups that are characterized by intense emotional ties, face to face interaction, intimacy, and a strong enduring sense of commitment (members of these groups often experience unity and a merging of the self with the group into one personal "we")
primary groups
Beyond twelve feet, preserved by those who are performing to an audience (Edward T. Hall)
public distance
Introduced by Robert K. Merton a group that provides a standard for judging one's attitude or behaviors (can include family peers classmates and coworkers)
reference group
The division of social life into different areas of settings or zones Areas apart from the front region performance, as specified by Goffman, in which individuals are able to relax and behave informally
regionalization
