soc of everyday life

Individual-Society Connection

• • Mental life

  • thinking patterns, perceptions, emotions

    • Observe

    • reactions/feedback

      • Boys encouraged in school

• • Intersubjectively shared

  • Society, durkheim suicide, social cohesion

  • Gendered toys

• • Meaning

• • Social interactions <->social processes

Study of regular experiences in our daily lives

• • Actions, interactions, self-concept, self-presentation, meanings, emotions, thinking

Interpretive and Interactionist perspectives in sociology

• Focus on social interactions and meaning

  • Assume math isn’t for you, no encouragement

  • • Culture – framework that gives shape to our actions, interactions, thoughts, emotions

    • Small groups, influence

  • • Social processes at the level of the individual

culture

• framework that gives shape to our actions, interactions, thoughts, emotions

  • small groups, influence

Social foundation of self

• Taken-for-granted cultural knowledge

• Norms, rules, frames

• Patterns of behavior

• Social Order

norm

rules that govern behavior

values

things we hold dear

frame

• meaning around, perspective to understand whats inside

  • Classroom, when smt start or ends, govern behavior

• Taken-for-granted cultural knowledge

• Natural, obvious, logical

• Take shoes off

• Not all cultural knowledge is norm

• Social Order

• Maintained, penalty

• Script make everyday life easy

• Hard to recompose, don’t go outside

• • Organismic metaphor

Individual-Society Connection

• functionalism

• • Brain, Important

• • Collectivity

  • Collective consciousness

• Individual and collective consciousness

• Cohesion, solidarity, 

• Regulations, laws, ideas shared

solidarity

mechanical and organic

Mechanical solidarity

Before division of labor, share, more collective consciousness, things in common

Organic solidarity

• After division of labor, with specialization

  • Interdependence,

religion

symbolic system that attaches individuals to the collective

• • Natural, supernatural, social orders

• Beliefs and rites

totenism

• Most basic form of religion

• Symbol of collective

sacred and profane

• Sacred: realm of extraordinary and transcendent

• Profane: realm of everyday life

  • different genera, types

  • Time and space

  • Subjective distinction

sacred

• realm of extraordinary and transcendent

profane

realm of everyday life

society

individuals connected by interaction

Dyad

•  Simplest sociological formation

  • Lowest number for social interaction

  • • Unique characteristic: needs all members

    • •  this affects how individuals feel about the dyad

    • •  endangered and irreplaceable

      • Jealousy, special

• • Sociological/formal nature

  • • Identity of the form not affected by individualities

  • • The forms may exist between two individuals/groups

Characteristics of the dyad:

triviality and intimacy

triviality

•  Dyads are susceptible to triviality (re. frequency)

• • Value of dyad determined by rarity

intimacy

•  The relationship remains within personal interdependence

  • Bond, show up

• • The internal side of the relationship felt to be essential

triad

Each unit in the triad operates as an intermediary

• The indirect relation may strengthen or disturb the relationship

• Disturbance of reciprocity

• Intimacy – re. jealousy

*​​Looking-glass self

 the imagination of our appearance to the other

• the imagination of their judgment of that appearance

• Not for sure

• some sort of self-feeling

• Actions, 

• Mind and self develop thru social interaction, thru others

• How others see you

American Pragmatism (Dewey, James, Peirce)

Behaviorism

• Mind in social interactions and conduct, internalize

• Approach to all experience in terms of conduct

 *Language (communication)

• Objective phenomenon of interaction

• • Internalized in an individual’s mind, but remains social

• • A way of arousing in the individual the attitudes and roles of other

• *Mind – significant symbols

• The presence in behavior of significant symbols

• Internalization of social process of communication from which meaning emerges

• • Objective social process of communication  Mind

• • Mind is social

  • •  the self arises in the social process

  • •  the self is social in form (vs in content)

    • Other in us, dialogue

Meaning

• Objective, it exists in the field of experience

  • Think it’s subjective and interpreted

  • Meaning to action, behavior

• • Results from something objective in the social act -> the mutual adjustment of actions (behavior and response)

3 meaning constructing matrix components

• Gesture of a person: put hand out

• • Gesture of the second person: put hand out

• • Subsequent phases of the social act: shake hand

Self

• Develops as result of people’s relations to others, and social experience generally

  • Attitudes shared, internalized

• • Object to itself (vs body)

• • Reflexive— subject and object

  • Reflect, see from outside as object from other

• • Conscious —object to itself

  • • Self-consciousness (vs consciousness): reason becomes impersonal, objective, non-affective

    • Internalize others’ attitude
      
      

Becomes an object to itself (like others)

• Result of taking the attitudes of others towards oneself in the group

• Through communication – significant symbols

• Shape interactions, internalized

• Self is a social structure

• • Arises in social experience, from social conduct

• *Conversation of Gestures

Beginning of communication

• Conversation of gestures with oneself as well as with others

• Thought process = conversation of gestures

• Internalized conversation of gestures can only exist by taking attitudes of others

•* Development of Self: stages

Unity and structure of complete self reflects the unity and structure of social process

• Self arises as an object out of the following social conditions

• • Play: assumes one role at a time: play doll with mom

• • Game: taking the role of the “generalized other”: ball game

  • • Generalized other: organized community/social group

    • Different roles

    • Sense structure of self

    • • has control over individual conduct

      • Internalize dialogue

      • Reflect social processes

• Self is fully developed when it organizes attitudes common to the group—anticipate

• Self = structure of attitudes (vs group of habits)

• Conscious attitudes—habitualized, Subconscious of habits

play

• assumes one role at a time: play doll with mom

game

• taking the role of the “generalized other”: ball game

• generalized other

• organized community/social group

  • Different roles

  • Sense structure of self

  • • has control over individual conduct

    • Internalize dialogue

    • Reflect social processes

Self-Consciousness

 Awareness of group of attitudes we arouse in others– taking the attitudes of others

• Ability to call out in ourselves a set of responses that belong in the group

• No sharp distinction between self and others

• •  both come into existence through interaction

• •  behavior reflects general behavior pattern of the group

• Provides the structure of the self (cognitive, not emotional)

Self: I and *Me

I: principle of action and impulse

• Me: organized set of attitudes of others

• Self: social process between the two distinguishable phases – I and Me

• Dialogue between

• Change, creativity

i

principle of action and impulse

• Identity,

me

organized set of attitudes of others

• Generalized and internalized

• Experience, internal

• Nature

• habitual

Symbolic interactionism

Social structure explain behavior, bypass meaning

•** 3 premises—blumer symbolic interactionism

• People act towards things on the basis of meanings that things have for them

  • Dislike prof

• • meaning of those things derives from interactions people have with others

• • These things are handled in, and modified through, an interpretive process done by the person in their interaction with the things they encounter

social interaction

forms human conduct

• Taking into account what others are doing in interaction

• Interaction

• • Non-symbolic (conversation of gestures)

  • • Response without interpreting the action

• • Symbolic

  • • Response involves interpreting the action

    • Wink

non-symbolic interaction

• (conversation of gestures)

  • • Response without interpreting the action

symbolic interaction

• Response involves interpreting the action

  • Wink

meaning of gesture

• • (Mead’s triadic nature of meaning)

• • what the person to whom the gesture is directed is to do

• • what the person making the gesture plans to do

• • the joint action that is to arise by the articulation of both people’s acts

  • •  symbolic interaction requires people taking each other’s Roles

    • Bumping into other on purpose or not

  • Interaction and individual action formed in and through ongoing process

Self

 Having a self: interacting with oneself, like social interaction (re. Mead)

• Self-interaction: making indications to oneself

• Human being is social

• • Member of a social species, responding to others, incorporating organization of the group (other perspectives)

  • Learn acceptable behavior thru observation, norms

• • Engaging in social interaction with oneself (SI)

  • Like with others

  • Generalized other, mead

behavior

Action

• • Guided by motives, goals, attitudes, roles (other perspectives)

• • Arises from process of self-indication (SI)

fine and tavory, 3 premises of symbolic interactionism in 21st century

• • People act upon meanings while participating in distinctive communities that, in turn, depend on shared meanings

• • Meanings depend on continuing and self-reflexive interaction, as such interaction refracts actors’ pasts, present, and anticipated futures

• • Situations are linked in patterned ways. change or further ossify as participants recognize patterning and structures that support these meanings

• *Symbolic interaction today, fine and tavory

Action-based sociology needs to attend to:

• Individuals

• Meanings

• Relations

• Local conditions

• Institutions

affordances

• attributes or qualities of object that indicate how it can and should be used

  • • Place: interactions with nonhumans, materiality

  • • Time: socially shared and structured

*Situational webs

Situations (SI)

• Relations between situations (Tavory)

• • Situations are organized through their connections with other situations

• • Situations connect in space and in time

  • • Actions develop from shared pasts, collective memories, and anticipated futures

  • • Situations and groups interconnect

• *Group commitment

Group

• • Arena of interaction

• • Arena of commitment

  • • Group commitment — group gains force — influence and Power

    • Belonging, conforming

• *Embeddedness

Actions are embedded within different levels of context

• Interactional orders / micro-communities

• Structure, types

• Organizations

• Institutions

• *Disruption

Emphasis on harmonious relations (SI)

• Disruptions / misalignment can create new ways of achieving consensus

• Misinterpretation, go wrong

• within the group

• with other group

Goffman (1922-1982)

Dramaturgical Approach

• • Life as a theater, front and back

• • Persona (latin): a mask worn by actors, perso

• Face-to-face interactions

• Impression management

• Not manipulate, what to project

  • Different clothes for different occasions 

Interaction routines are fragile

• • They require:

  • • tricky interpersonal skills, misunderstandings

  • • Information about others

    • • Re expectations about situation and roles

      • Subconscious, don’t think about fragility

      • Easy to navigate, belong, don’t break down

• People have to learn to perform their identities

• Projected to others, not sense of self

• People manage to project mutually understood definition of the situation and selves

• Expectations

• What will happen and roles, preestablished, projected identities

  • What to do in class

Dramatic Realization

 Impression management

• Highlight parts of ourselves that would otherwise go unnoticed

• Casual pjs, don’t see professional, can highlight with clothes

• Idealization

• People select representation of their identities and roles they know will be effective

  • •  reproduce cultural expectations or ideals

Impressions

Capacity to give impressions appears in two forms

• • Impressions given: intentional

• • Impressions given off: nonverbal, contextual, presumably unintentional

  • Really feel

  • Body language uncontrolled

impressions given

intentional

• Idealization

• Ideal types, clothes

• People select representation of their identities and roles they know will be effective

  • •  reproduce cultural expectations or ideals

Interaction routines are fragile

• tricky interpersonal skills, misunderstandings

• • Information about others

  • • Re expectations about situation and roles

    • Subconscious, don’t think about fragility

    • Easy to navigate, belong, don’t break down

impressions givnen off

• nonverbal, contextual, presumably unintentional

  • Really feel

  • Body language uncontrolled

Definition of the Situation

• • Most times, people don’t define situation, but agree to definition of situation

  • Agree with boss, abstract defining

• • People follow ‘scripts’ already established

• Division of labor in definition of the situation

• • People give rules re matters that are vital to them

  • Intimate relationship, bad experience, avoid

  • Hit annoying coworker with car

• • People avoid conflict re public definition of the situation

  • Tense,

  • Talk bad about boss behind back

Negotiating a Working Consensus

 People regularly negotiate working understandings of different situations

• Trust impressions given/given off or not

• • shared general understanding of setting/scene

• • Improvisation, different ways post car accident

• People must publicly agree to the definition of the situation and roles

interaction, 2 things

1. definition of situation

2. personal identity

• 1 Definition of the Situation

•  Public socially agreed upon definition of situation will guide interaction

• • Public agreement works as a contract

  • Accountable, or what you give isn’t real, fragile situation

2 Personal Identity

• • Rights and obligations

  • Prof know things, fun friend, contract

• • **Projecting a definition of the situation

  • • moral character -re expectations and roles

Interaction Rituals

Enactments of ceremony that reinforce cultural symbols and expectations

• Can become routinized

Embarrassment

• Events may contradict, discredit, or cast doubt on projected definition of situation

• • Interaction may break down — embarrassment

  • Think it’s date but no, no consensus, different definitions

• Breakdown in projected identity

• 2 identities, not segregated

• Unfulfilled expectations

• Property of the social system

• Tact: preventive and protective practices to avoid embarrassment

tact

preventive and protective practices to avoid embarrassment

• Skill, feel comfortable, they’ll save you, 

• affect everyone in social system, not just immediate

Self – prism

• • In emotions

• Bounce off

• Turn into others

• Feel then action

• Shame – prism

• Impotent, can’t respond

• • Metamorphosis

  • Change to other emotion, escape

Fear, chaos, essential/holistic, humbling

fear

hide, can’t run

chaos

scramble to hide, vulnerable

essential/hollistic

many affected, ppl around

humbling

small