Interaction, Emotions, and Social Status

Social Construct

Meta approach to describe how unnatural things in our lives exist.
Symbolic Interactionism
Peter Berger and Thomas Lockmann
As a concept, it maps out the concept that most of our live is unatural, the outcome of a complex set of social processes.
Suggests that apparently natural features of life were in actuallity created by us, humans.

Example: gender is a ______.

Social interaction

Involves communication among people, acting and reacting to one another. By any means, face-to-face or online.
Implicitly structured around: statuses, roles, norms, organizations, and power relations.

Arlie Russell Hochschild

Coined the therms of:
'Emotion management'
'Emotional labour'
Sociological (and feminist) understanding of emotions.
Feminist theorist

Sociology of Emotions

- NOT universal
- NOT constant
- Have histories
- Deeply related to stautses, roles, and norms
- Guide our decisions
- Generate change
- Vital for face-to-face interactions, social structures, and culture

Feeling rules

For example, grief has specific _______.
- Different forms in different social conditions
- Vary historically
- NOT universal

Feminist theory and emotions

Gender

Emotion management

Obeying feeling rules according to cultural scripts and norms.
There are sets of expectations that people conform to when _____ their _____.

Emotional Labour

Emotion management that people do as part of their job and for which they are paid.
Social roles and status influence the expectations to perform and how. Example: gender socialization.
Regulated _______ = alienation and exhaustion

Symbolic Interactionists on Social Interaction

Look at social interaction as NON competitive, NOR selfish.
Point out that people do what they do, because they are interested in being fair and just. Solely based on negotiating the different statuses, roles, and norms we follow.

Civil Inattention

Means of accomodating the overwhelming majority of people with whom we have some contact during routinaty day-to-day activities.
Ignoring each other but not out of hatred or anger, but out of our shared idea that within the URBAN CONTEXT, we mostly wish to remain unabothered.
Coined by Goffman

Goffman's Dramaturgy

Study of social interaction as atheatrical performance, as a play in which we want to look our best.

Goffman's Impression Management

An individual's efforst to create specific impressions in the minds of others.
Performances: info about ourselves that we share with others.
- There is NO self, just the ensamble of roles we play -
Process of becoming motivated to manage one's impressions, understanding the discrepancy between desired and current image.

Role distancing

The attempt to creatively distance ourselves from roles we don't want to play. Part of Impression management.

Front Stage

Segment of our lives where we are doing impression management. What we do in public, when we know others are aware of us.

Back stage

Segment of our lives where we are planning and strategizing how we will act on the front stage. What we do in private, when we believe others are unaware of us.

Social media and Impression management

Enhances our ability to engage in impression management. We have always done it. As a result, we have become more critical of techniques of impression management, due to our desire for authenticity.

Symbolic Capital

Meta category that describes "one's legitimacy and reputation" through the succesful use of other categories of capital: economic, cultural, and social.
= Status

Status seeking

Strategizing relevant content production for imagined audiences.

Authenticity

Masking one's identity to achieve the ideal balance in which one achieves best self in a seemingly natural way.
Consistency between inside and outside.
Opposed to "like-hunting"

Status affordances

Thechnical mechanism that signal greater social status.
Example: likes and followers

The digitally mediated self

Fleeting digital self vs. archived self (Snapchat vs. Instagram)

Conflict theories of Interaction

Social stautuses are ranked in terms of their access to valuable resources, which in turn are used to maintain the power they bring.

Communication is strategic

= we tend to or attempt to map out our communications 44

Conversation analysis

Coined by Charles Derber
Typical conversation is a covert competition for attention.
People seeking to gain the most, while paying the least.
Little pieces of information that we drop in conversation to call the attention of audience.

Cultural Scripts and Conflict theory

Indicative of power.
Familiar lines in our culture that have a very specific menaing, which aid people in making it impossible to argue against them.
Serve to
Example: "I'm not racist, I have black friends"

Status Cues

Visual indicators of other people's social position.