Sociology 1

Midterm #1

Social Construction of Reality (SCR) [Berger &

theory that humans create their own understanding of reality through their ongoing interactions and communications with others

Social Construction of Reality 4 stages

1. Classification: sorting individuals, objects, or actions into shared social roles, categories, or symbols so that interactions become predictable

2. Language: creating terms, names, and communication to describe and discuss those classifications

3. Institutionalization: embedding and habituating a conception, behavior, or rule within an organization or society so it becomes widely practiced, accepted, and routine

4. Reification: aka “Thingfication”- treating an abstract social creation as if it were a concrete, objective, physical reality where people forget it was constructed and view it as inevitable

Thomas Theorem

If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences, which means that our beahvior can be determined by our subjective construction of reality rather than by objective reality

example: covid toilet paper crisis

Soial Constructivist Perspective

It challenges essentialist assumptions that differences are just natural, it also forces us to ask whether we’re seeing inheret differences or outcomes of social constructions

Sociological Imagination (Wright Mills)

the ability to evaluate some part of your life of others lives and recognize how social forces (visible or not) play a role in how it came to be the way it is, seeing the link between micro and macro

Micro VS Macro

• Micro: (personal troubles) focus on the biography of one individual and their immediate relations; problems confined to the indivudals’s inner life

  • social interactions

• Macro: (public issues) problems that lie beyond one’s personal control, proven by patterned experiences and life outcomes among groups occupying similar social positions across history and society

  • social structure

example for both: unemployment for one individual VS 15million ppl

Danger for misidentifying a societal problem as an individual one

Our solutions are doomed to fail. Individual-level solutions CANT fix macro- level problems

Looking- Glass Self (Charles Cooley)

process where we develop our self- concept not in isolation but through social interactions where others act as “mirrors” reflecting our character back to us

3 Steps of the Looking-Glass Self

1. Imagine how we appear to those around us (clothes, gestures, and words)

2. Interpret others’ reactions and conclusions about how they are judging our appearance (rely on verbal/ non-verbal cues)

3. Internalize and develop a self- concept based on the first two steps, crystalizing repeated “self- feelings” into a stable sense of who we are

Pros and Cons of using AI for Looking-Glass Self (Lund Pedersen reading)

• Pros: lack of emotions, reduced ambiguity in imagining/ interpreting, and reflections based on more than one interaction

• Cons: lack of emotions, not human, and old information that may not account for your current state

Online/ Digital Interactions Shift the Looking- Glass Self steps

1. imagine: harder and more inaccurate with an enlarged online audience

2. interpret: shifts from corporeal copresence to telecopresence, replacing traditional verbal/ non-verbal cues with quantified metrics like comments, thumbs-ups, and hearts

3. internalize: can push people toward “selling” an online persona, risking an identity crisis or moving away from their authentic self

Dramaturgy (Erving Goffman)

A perspective stating that “all the world’s a stage,” social life is a play, socialization leads to a learned script, and the point of interaction is to maintain a successful performance

props: objects performers use to manage impression : glasses to look smart

Impression Management

influencing others’ perceptions by controlling the information they receive through sign vehicles, props, settings, and non-verbal communication

• back stage and front stage

Front stage VS Back tage

• Front Stage: where the performance happens and intentional presentation to the audience occurs

• Backstage: where the performance is dropped (relax) and the performance is prepared/ away from the audience

Face VS Face- Work

• Face: the positive social value claimed during a social interaction

• Face-Work: actions engaged in to make one’s behavior consistent with that face image and avoid embarrassment

  • student performing attentiveness

Social Structure

boundaries that people confront as they make decisions, it limits the choices of some while enabling others, operating through rules (formal and informal) and resources (money, education, race, gender, etc)

• rules: formal (laws, dress codes) and informal (handshakes vs kisses)

• resources: things we have or acquire (money, education) as well as characteristics (race, gender, religion, age)

5 Key Components/ Building blocks of Social Structure

1. social status

2. social roles

3. social groups

4. social networks

5. social institutions

Social Status

A person's or groups socially determined position within a larger group or society, together, statuses place individuals in social hierarchies (ranking systems) that shape the rules you encounter and the resources made available or denied to you

-subcatgeories: ascribed & achieved status - together they place indiivudals into social hierarchies or ranking systems that shape your rules and resources

Ascribed status VS Achieved status

• Ascribed status: assigned to individuals by society without regard for effort, often assigned at birth (race, ethnicity, sex, age)

• Achieved status: status that results from choices individuals make and often requires effort (occupation, education level, marital status)

structural issues caused by social status

Social Roles

a set of expectations about the behavior and attitudes of people who occupy a particular social status (parent, teacher, student)

-issue that can be caused: Role Conflict

Role Conflict

inconsitency between two or more of the roles we fill, which is evidence of structure because it results from competing structural rules we feel compelled to follow

Social Groups

two or more people with similar values and expectations who interact regularly and are guided by group norms

Social Networks

a series of social relationships linking a person directly to others and indirectly to even more (ex: insta followers)

Social Institutions

enduring practices and rules (formal and informal) that organize a central domain of social life (mass media, government, economy, family, healthcare, education) to maintain the status quo

Glass Escalator (Christine Williams)

from the reading: the phenomenon where men (white straight males) experience faster career advancement and invidible pressures pushing them up into prestigious better paying positions when working in female- dominated professions

-it challenges the assumption that any token group in a work setting will automatically expereince neg dicrimination (like a glass ceiling stopping them from going up the escaltor or being pushed out)