AERS 281 Report Chris Mantillas Ph D.

Student, Community Development

Interactions at the micro level influence patterns of conflict or stability at the societal or macro level. E.g. changes in family life are reflected in the increase in divorce rate. Interpersonal interaction is dictated by the values and norms of the culture. Interaction also grow out of personal desires and individual strengths and weaknesses.

Social interaction and its meaning for the individual are the complex products of social expectations, individual definitions, and personal adaptations. Two types of sociological analysis give different emphases to these aspects of interaction and meaning:

Emphasizes the ability of individuals to use symbols to present themselves to others and to interpret the action of others. It is based on three core assumptions:
1. Individuals act on the basis of the meanings that objects, events or people have for them, but they cannot take it for granted that others share the same understanding.

2. Meanings do not come fully developed from an object or person but arise in the process of social interaction. They grow out of the way in which other people act. 3. Meanings undergo interpretation and reinterpretation. People select, check suspend, regroup, and alter interpretations of previous social experiences in the context of current situation.

Definition of the Situation A definition of the situation interprets interaction and its context and gives it social meaning. When people share the same definition of the situation, they are creating social order. They know what to expect from one another and how to interact. Most of these definitions are learned without deliberate effort and are not given much thought. People create a world taken for granted (Schutz, 1962).

Labeling Theory 1. Deviance is socially defined. It is not a quality or an act that a person commits but behavior that people label as deviant. E.g. breaking curfew (juvenile delinquency) is a status offense since it is the juvenile status rather than the behavior itself that makes the offenses legal. 2. Agencies of social control assign deviant labels. Being labeled as criminal delinquent, or mentally ill depends as much on who is doing the labeling and who is being labeled as on the norms and values of the behavior in question. E.g. jokes and other T.V. portrayals help form societys conceptions of what it means to be crazy.

3. A deviant label stigmatizes the individual. Stigma is a label that refers to acts or traits perceived as highly negative that set the stigmatized person apart from the ordinary people. What may have been a temporary condition or a lapse is used to define a kind of person.

These are generalizations from specific acts or traits to judgments about an individuals character. A person who is convicted of a crime becomes a criminal; a person who goes through a short period of mental illness becomes a psychotic; and a status offender is labeled as juvenile delinquent.

4. Stigma may override a persons other qualities and create a deviant identity. It creates an identity that, in the end, may lead a person to accept deviance as a way of life. E.g. if first time psychiatric clients are labeled crazy, they may devalue themselves, fear rejection by others, and therefore engage in defenses that lead to strained interaction, isolation, and other negative consequences

Personal reactions may demoralize clients that they accept both the mentally ill label and the socially perceived roles associated with it. Labeling and stigma tend to perpetuate the behavior they are intended to eliminate.

Came from the Greek word ethnos, meaning tribe or race, studies the understandings that people take for granted in their everyday social interactions. Closely related to the sociological emphasis on understanding behavior through the definition of the situation. Ethnomethodologists contend that traditional symbolic interactionist, including labeling theorist, often overlook the commonsense procedures that individuals use in their relationships with others. They see the understandings that people gain in learning how to cope with the social world as the correct starting point for studies of social organization.

They try to learn from the everyday behavior of and information of other people. Some ethnomethodologist assert that to know something means to someone else, the reseracher must gain full awareness of the norms and beliefs governing an interaction. Thus, one must fully participate in the interaction being studied. Suggest that holding back in the name of objectivity prevents researchers from knowing their subjects and understanding their experiences. Full participation may include breaking conventional rules.

Breaking the Rules When people challenge unconsciously accepted definitions of a situation by behaving in unexpected ways, they reveal how much social life is taken for granted. E.g. a well known experiment conducted by a sociologist and his students wherein the students have to spend 15 minutes to an hour at home by being as polite to their parents as if they had just been introduced, addressing the in formal terms such as Mr. and Mrs. without explaining what they were up to.

Conversational Analysis Language is the essence of human interaction and the world is full of conversations that follow organizing principles even in the simplest verbal exchange. Conversations are orderly because people take turns, permit utterances to be completed, and pay attention to one another. Research in conversational analysis uses recordings of spontaneous, even trivial, face-to-face conversations; that is, conversations are not studied because the topic is intellectually or socially important.

Conversational Analysis Spontaneous exchanges reveal information of sociological significance. In a comparison of conversations between persons of the same gender and conversations between males and females, researchers studies how much the conversational patterns interrupted one another or overlapped their exchanges- that is, started to talk before the other person had finished talking. There was little difference in the amount of interruption and overlap between speakers of the same gender. On the other hand, when a male and a female were talking to one another, the male made almost all the interruptions and overlaps. Shows that male dominance in social situations extends to the simplest kind of conversational interaction.

Exchange theory stresses the human tendency to pursue profit and personal advantage. From this point of view, an individual seeks rewards from social interaction that exceeds personal costs. Much of social life can be viewed as a series of social exchanges. When people come together and interact, they give and receive. They may exchange not only tangible goods but also gestures, ideas, opinions, affections and hostilities.

Some social exchange is only temporary while some are permanent. E.g. temporary- assisting a stranded driver (in some cases not quite simple since e.g a good Samaritan may experience the same situation may hope to receive similar help in the future). E.g. permanent- one person may seek the respect of others by taking the role of the leader (there may be some members equally capable of leadership but prefer not to be burdened with its responsibilities and pressures, and may praise the leader to induce that person to continue to serve.

Types of rewards and obligations. Social exchanges involve more than material rewards. Social rewards include approval, prestige, respect (inc. self respect), social acceptance and obedience to ones wishes. In some cases, when people are not satisfied with economic compensation, social conflict breaks out.

The norm of reciprocity All societies develop shared expectations regarding mutual obligations in exchange relationships. This is termed norm of reciprocity.

Two interrelated requirements: 1. People should help those who have helped them. 2. People should not injure those who have helped them.
The norm is deeply accepted that people are distressed when they incur social debts they do not repay.

Differential Association The process by which people experience conflicting definitions about appropriate behavior. If people have more intimate, longer, more frequent and more intense association with cultural definitions favorable to criminal or deviant behavior than they do with unfavorable cultural definitions, they are more likely to learn and accept criminal behavior. According to this theory, learning deviant behavior is not a result of exposure to television, movies and other mass media, rather it occurs in close social relations.

Two themes central to Goffmans studies of everyday life:

1. The fate of the self in social interaction- that is how individuals are put at risk in their encounters with others and how they manage those risks. 2. The fate of the micro order, especially the devices that are used, often unconsciously, to maintain social life and interaction.

Ideas of the two themes. Social life as episode. A social gathering is a shifting entitycreated by arrivals and killed by departures. Interaction as theater. All the worlds a stage.Many establishments are divided into frontstage and backstage. The management of impressions. The individual as an actor in social encounters must be skilled in the art of impression management, controlling his or her image so as to create a favorable definition of the situation.

 Interpersonal

a major role in holding society together; through worship of a common totem, some preliterate people reaffirm their solidarity as a group. Religious rituals have become less important in modern secular societies, but many kinds of interpersonal rituals perform the same function. The foundation of social order lies in interpersonal rituals- hellos, goodbyes, courtesies, compliments, apologies and handshakes-that punctuate everyday interaction. The gestures which we sometimes call empty are perhaps the fullest things of all.

Rituals. Rituals and ceremony play