Social Structure and Demographics

Sociology Theories and Institutions

  • Sociology is the study of society, including how we create, interact within, and change society, and how we define what is normal and abnormal.
  • Sociologists focus on group behaviors and interactions, unlike psychologists who focus on individual behaviors.
  • Human society is diverse, comprising distinct cultures, subcultures, groups, and institutions, each with its own structure, patterns, and interests.
  • Sociologists study subjects at different levels:
    • Micro level: family groups and local communities
    • Meso level: organizations, institutions, and ethnic subcultures
    • Macro level: national and international systems

Theoretical Approaches

  • Theoretical approaches are models used to analyze and explain aspects of human social behavior.
  • Different models explain different aspects of sociology.
  • Examples:
    • Symbolic interactionism: studies human interaction and communication using language, writing, and other symbols.
    • Conflict theory: examines how groups with little power in society can rise up and create more equality.
  • Symbolic interactionism, social constructionism, and rational choice exchange theory focus on the micro and meso levels.
  • Conflict theory, structural functionalism, and feminist theory are more applicable at the macro level.

Symbolic Interactionism

  • Communication extends beyond spoken or written language, using body posture, facial expressions, and hand gestures.
  • Symbols include images (smiley face, traffic signs, corporate logos) and sacred emblems (cross, star of David).
  • Clothing can also communicate meaning.
  • A symbol is any object, image, sound, or action that carries meaning to humans, including physical objects, spoken words, grunts, body language, and hand gestures.
  • Symbolic interactionism, pioneered by George Herbert Mead, attempts to understand human action by studying the symbols we use to communicate.
  • Assumptions:
    • Humans act towards symbols based on their meanings.
    • The meanings symbols carry come from social interaction.
    • Humans interpret the meaning of symbols, influencing action.
  • Humans interpret stimuli before reacting, unlike lower animals that simply respond to stimuli.
  • Example: A dog bares its teeth as a sign of aggression, while humans can interpret the thumbs up gesture differently based on context.
  • The meaning of symbols depends on social, cultural understanding, and personal interpretation.
  • Different cultures have unique languages, slang, alphabets, number systems, and traffic signs.
  • Shared understanding of symbols is a micro or meso-level phenomenon.
  • Limitation: It overlooks macro-level structures like cultural norms or class interactions.

Social Constructionism

  • The agreed-upon meaning of symbols can change over time.
  • Example: The peace sign originally indicated support for nuclear disarmament but now signifies peace and freedom in general.
  • The meaning of a symbol comes from implicit social agreement.
  • A social construct is any idea created and accepted by people in a society.
  • Social constructionism studies society through its social constructs.
  • Abstract ideas like honor and justice are social constructs based on group agreement.
  • Physical objects like money are also social constructs; their value is derived from societal agreement.
  • Other examples of social constructs include work ethic, acceptable dress, and gender roles.
  • Social constructionism is useful for explaining micro and meso-level sociological phenomena.
  • Limitation: It cannot account for macro-level sociological phenomena because it depends on the society being studied.

Rational Choice Exchange Theory

  • Rational choice theory is a micro to meso-level approach focusing on individual decision-making.
  • Humans make rational choices to further their own self-interests, weighing costs and benefits to maximize perceived benefit.
  • Example: When purchasing a laptop, a person gathers information and ranks options based on cost, performance, and brand recognition.
  • It is influenced by economics, applying rational transactions to social interactions.
  • Views social interactions as transactions considering benefits and harms.
  • Outcomes in interactions are associated with social rewards (accolades, honor, prestige, approval) and punishments (embarrassment, humiliation, sanctions, stigmatization).
  • Individuals consider rewards and punishments of each social action and choose the option with the greatest social benefit.
  • People evaluate whether there is a reciprocity imbalance in social relationships.
  • Referred to as social exchange theory or exchange theory due to viewing relationships as exchanges of social value.
  • Acceptable for explaining some micro and meso-level sociological phenomena, but cannot easily explain charitable, illogical, unselfish, or altruistic behavior.

Conflict Theory

  • Conflict theory is a macro theory that examines the conflicts between groups in society, originating from Karl Marx's writings.
  • He examined the influence of capitalism on 19th-century society.
  • Capitalism involves private ownership of the means of production (property, machinery, factories) by individuals and corporations rather than governments.
  • Private ownership leads to a wealthy capitalist bourgeoisie class controlling the means of production and a lower worker proletariat class performing manual labor.
  • The power disparity between these classes leads to conflict.
  • Marx believed the worker class would eventually overthrow the capitalist class and form a new classless society.
  • Modern conflict theory expands this idea to examine any conflict between powerful and powerless groups, where the powerful attempt to preserve their power by shaping society's structure.
  • The dominant group dictates laws, customs, and cultural norms.
  • Individuals in lower-status positions can organize into interest groups to enact change and equalize power through tools like protesting or voting, if they recognize this power differential.
  • The powerful desire to maintain the status quo, while the powerless seek change through disruption and revolution.
  • Useful for describing large-scale changes and other macro-level societal phenomena but not effective for explaining individual choices.
  • It focuses on social stress and disharmony, making it less effective at explaining social cohesion, cooperation, and altruism.

Structural Functionalism

  • Structural functionalism is in some ways the inverse of conflict theory.
  • Emile Durkheim, its founder, was interested in how large societies survive over long time periods and was concerned with social cohesion and stability.
  • Durkheim compared society to an organism, where each group has a role to play in the overall health and operation of society.
  • Each social group's role is its function, the contribution made by that group to the system.
  • Different groups work together in an unconscious, almost automatic way toward maintenance of equilibrium.
  • Functions can be manifest (intended consequences) or latent (unintended but beneficial consequences).
  • Example: Annual meetings of medical societies have the manifest function of educating physicians and the latent function of creating interpersonal bonds.
  • Dysfunctions are negative consequences of the existence of an institution, organization, or interaction.
  • Because it focuses on social cohesion and equilibrium, it is not well suited for explaining social change.
  • It does not explain how individuals interact within a group.

Feminist Theory

  • Feminist theory critiques the institutional power structures that disadvantage women in society.
  • It is an offshoot of conflict theory, describing society as inherently patriarchal, with men seeking to preserve their power over women through societal privilege and institutional discrimination.
  • Some theorists argue that the study of sociology has been historically dominated by a male perspective.
  • Gender stratification and inequality typically lessens in developed countries as a result of feminist activism, but imbalances of power still exist.
  • The term glass ceiling refers to processes that limit the progress of women in the highest job positions because of invisible social barriers to promotion.
  • The glass escalator is when invisible social forces push men up to higher positions, especially in traditionally female occupations.

Social Institutions

  • Social institutions are well-established social structures that dictate certain patterns of behavior and relationships and are accepted as a fundamental part of culture.
  • They regulate the behavior of individuals in core areas of society.
  • Family is a social institution that encourages learning of acceptable behavior, socialization, and bonding.
  • Institutions exist at the meso level of sociological analysis.
  • The idea of government stays basically the same even though term limits mean that the presidency and legislature experience complete turnover of personnel every eight years at a maximum.
  • The exact nature of each institution differs from culture to culture, although each institution performs a similar role regardless of culture.
  • Often institutions are dependent upon and support one another, though competition over resources can bring institutions into conflict.

Family

  • The definition of family differs greatly from culture to culture.
  • For some, the term means those people to whom I maintain close ties and who are related to me by blood. For others, family is simply the people who live in my house.
  • Even terms for different family members such as sister, father, cousin, and so on are not conserved across time and culture.
  • Different patterns of kinship may be reflected by these terms.
  • It is common in Hawaiian culture to refer to all family members as cousins.
  • Different patterns of kinship between societies have barren on responsibility for child rearing, familial loyalty, and even the boundaries of what is considered incest.
  • Regardless of the definition, family is the most basic of institutions.
  • It is the institution most closely tied to the individual and helps to meet many of our most basic needs, especially when we are young, providing food, shelter, emotional and physical security, and intimacy.
  • Additionally, many life rituals and rites of passage such as marriage, funerals, and graduations occur in the context of family.
  • Sociologists studying family relationships may examine the stages of coupling, courtship, co cohabitation, engagement, and marriage.
  • Parenting is a complex topic that involves socialization of children, varied definitions of the role of father, mother, and child in single parenting, same sex parenting, adoption, and foster parenting.
  • Not all families are composed of a mother, a father, and children.
  • Alternative forms exist including single parent families, families that cohabitate with other family members beyond the nuclear family such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, godparents, and surrogate kin, and families with marital disunions divorce.
  • Divorce rates in The United States rose significantly in the second half of the twentieth century, but have started to drop over the last two decades.
  • While the family can be a source of joy and support, it can also be a source of violence.
  • Spousal abuse, domestic violence, is seen across all social classes and genders and can include not only physical violence but sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and financial abuse.
  • Domestic violence is the number one cause of injury to American women and is most common in families with drug abuse, especially alcoholism.
  • Victims of domestic violence may find it challenging to leave the abusive relationship for a variety of reasons including lack of a safe haven to escape to, financial restrictions, and psychological disorders.
  • Elder abuse is also seen across all socioeconomic classes and most commonly manifests as neglect of an older relative, although physical, psychological, and financial abuse may occur as well.
  • The caretaker of the individual is most commonly the source of abuse.
  • Finally, child abuse also most commonly manifests as neglect, although physical, sexual, and psychological abuse are also common.
  • During medical school, you will be trained to recognize certain signs suggestive of nonaccidental trauma, such as a broken femur in a child who is too young to have begun walking or burn marks on the buttocks from placing the child in scalding water.
  • As a physician, you will be considered a mandated reporter, which means that you are legally required to report suspected cases of elder or child abuse.
  • Domestic abuse does not fall under mandated reporting laws, but counseling and information about shelters for victims of intimate partner violence should be provided.

Education

  • Education as an institution aims to provide a population with a set of skills that will be useful to them or to society.
  • In many societies, education is formal.
  • In other words, it takes place in a setting designated for educational purposes using a prescribed curriculum.
  • The function of formal education is to teach skills, facts, and mental processes, but the system also has a social latent function providing opportunities for peer socialization and reinforcing social stratification, both within individual schools and through comparisons between schools.
  • Education, therefore, includes not only the information and cognitive skills students learn, but also the hidden curriculum of transmitted social norms, attitudes, and beliefs to students.
  • Sociological investigations into education may focus on the ethics, morals, practices, political influence, finances, and values of an education system.
  • Sociologists also explore educational trends including grade inflation and deflation, adult education, online education, and accessibility of education.
  • Performance in the education system depends not only on a student's intrinsic abilities but also on the education system itself.
  • Teacher expectancy refers to the idea that teachers tend to get what they expect from students.
  • Thus, a teacher who places high demands on students but who also believes that her students can rise to the challenge will more often see students succeed than a teacher who places the same demands but doubts that the students can achieve them.
  • Education is susceptible to inequalities across socioeconomic class.
  • Lower socioeconomic status is associated with decreased accessibility to and quality of education.
  • This is not an easy trend to reverse.
  • Low funding, deprioritization of education, and poor historical performance can make it challenging for a failing school district to acquire resources and improve education to its students.
  • Institutions are intentionally or unintentionally connected, and there is a well known persistent association between education and medicine.
  • Health disparities between more educated and less educated individuals are significant, and lack of education may be a hurdle to accessing or trusting health care providers.

Religion

  • As an institution, religion is a pattern of social activities organized around a set of beliefs practices that seek to address the meaning of existence.
  • Religiosity refers to how religious one considers him or herself to be and includes strength of religious beliefs, engagement in religious practices, and attitudes about religion itself.
  • Approximately 75% of the population identifies with one of the five major religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism.
  • Because the membership of each of these religions is so large, they are divided into multiple denominations or sects that may share certain beliefs and practices, but not others.
  • A denomination is simply a part of a church, a term which can refer both to a large universal religious group and to the building in which the congregation of such a group meets.
  • Orthodox and Reform are examples of Jewish denominations, and the Sunni and Shia are examples of Islamic denominations.
  • Denominations often coexist but can come into conflict when their religious beliefs promote opposing values.
  • Whereas the word sect was historically a pejorative term, it now refers more properly to a religious group that has chosen to break off from the parent religion.
  • The Amish would be considered a sect of Christianity.
  • In rare cases, a religious sect may take on extreme or deviant philosophies and transform into a cult.
  • As the twenty first century continues, religious groups, many of which have existed in more or less the same form for thousands of years, grapple with finding a place in contemporary society.
  • For many religious groups, this is reflected by a shift toward modernization within the religion and relaxing historical practices.
  • For others, there is a shift away from religion as society secularizes or moves from, worlds dominated by religion toward rationality and scientific thinking.
  • For other groups, maintenance of strict adherence to religious code or fundamentalism predominates.
  • While spirituality and religion are not equivalent terms, they are often linked to each other because they both seek to understand the meaning of existence and to identify what is sacred.
  • Spirituality and religion may play a role in a patient's understanding of disease, may impact healthcare decisions, and can be an essential component of the parent's coping mechanisms.

Government and Economy

  • Government and economy can be defined as systematic arrangements of political and capital relationships, activities, and social structures that affect, rule making representation of the individual society rights and privileges, division of labor, and production of goods and services.
  • Notably, political and economic institutions impact all other institutions to some extent.
  • That is, the government may sanction or define specific family structures, may finance and regulate education, may recognize some religion but not others, and may play a key role in funding and certifying health care and medicine.
  • The effects of the economy on institutions can also be viewed from the individual level.
  • For example, when the economy takes a downturn, large swath of the population may have trouble supporting their families in paying for health insurance.
  • Note that this institutional influence is bidirectional because of the economic downturn and changes in family education or health.
  • An individual may choose to vote a new political candidate into office or to support or oppose a particular piece of legislation.
  • A democracy allows every citizen a political voice, usually through electing representatives, to office, I. E. A representative democracy.
  • Monarchies include a royal ruler, a king or queen, although the ruler's powers may be significantly limited by the presence of a constitution, a parliamentary system, or some other legislative body.
  • A dictatorship is a system where a single person holds power and usually includes mechanisms to, quell threats to this power.
  • A theocracy is a system where power is held by religious leaders.
  • Many of these systems of leadership are based around charismatic authority, a leader with a compelling personality.
  • In comparative economics, the largest division is between capitalist and socialist economies.
  • Capitalist economies focus on free market trade and laissez faire policies, where success or failure in business is primarily driven by consumerism with as little intervention from central governing bodies as possible.
  • In capitalism, a private owner or corporation maintains profits from the success of the business.
  • Capitalist so capitalist societies encourage division of labor where specific components of a larger task, say developing, manufacturing, quality testing, and marketing goods, are separated and assigned to skilled and trained individuals.
  • This promotes specialization and efficiency.
  • Socialist economies, on the other hand, treats large industries as collective, shared businesses, and compassion oh, and compensation is provided based on the work contribution of each individual into the system.
  • Profit then is distributed equally to the workforce.

Healthcare and Medicine

  • The institutions of health of healthcare and medicine are aimed at maintaining or improving the health status of the individual, family, community, and society as a whole.
  • Healthcare is an ever changing field, but some of the key goals in American healthcare over the past few decades include increased access to care, decreased cost of health care, prevention of disease before it occurs, association of patients with a primary care physician or patient centered medical home, increased education for the public with public health outreach, decreased part neurolism, doctor knows best mentality, reduced economic conflicts of interest for physicians, life course approach to health, maintaining and considering a comprehensive view of the patient's history beyond the immediate presenting symptoms.
  • There has also been a shift in the role of the patient in the medical system.
  • In the mid twentieth century, sociologists believed that an ill patient takes on what was called the sick role.
  • These sociologists believed that an ill patient is not responsible for their illness and is exempt from normal social roles.
  • But on the other hand, these sociologists also believed that a patient had the obligation to want to become well and to seek out competent help.
  • While this paradigm still exists, patients are now expect expected to take more ownership of their health through diet, exercise, seeking help before it is needed, through annual primary care visits and screenings, and so on.
  • Modern sociologists also recognize that the notion that sick patients should feel an obligation to want to become better does not fit patients with chronic long term or permanent conditions.
  • Even our understanding of disease has shifted over time.
  • While some entities for, formerly defined as diseases are now considered a normal part of the human condition such as homosexuality and transgenderism, other entities have become medicalized, meaning that these entities are now defined and treated as medical conditions.
  • This shift can be seen in the addition of a number of diagnostic entities to the DSM-five, such as hoarding disorder and binge eating disorder.
  • The medical community also now recognizes that health is not only characterized by physiological wellness or disease, but also by a person's subjective experience of their health.
  • The phrase illness experience refers to the ways in which people, rather than doctors, define and adjust to changes in their health.
  • For example, people can experience disease without illness, as is the case for someone living a full and productive life with a manageable condition such as HIV.
  • People can also experience illness without disease such as when a person experiences somatic symptoms as a result of psychological stress.
  • Sociologists studying healthcare are often interested in social epidemiology.
  • Epidemiology is the study of health and its determinants within a society.
  • Social epidemiology is specifically the study of the effects of institutions, social structures, and relationships on health.
  • Social epidemiologists study the effects of racial and economic inequality or government safety, net legislation on health, and access to health care.
  • They might also be interested in how social conditions early in life affect health care outcomes later.
  • In addition, many sociologists investigate medical ethics.
  • In The United States, Physicians are expected to adhere to four key tenets of medical ethics.
  • Beneficiants.
  • The physician has a responsibility to act in the patient's best interest.
  • Nonmaleficence.
  • Do no harm.
  • The physician has a responsibility to avoid treatments or in, interventions in which the potential for harm outweighs the potential for benefit.
  • Respect for patient autonomy.
  • The physician has the responsibility to respect patients' decisions and choices about their own health care.
  • While there are exceptions to this rule, significant psychiatric illness, interfering with decision making, capacity, children, public health threats, patients who have the right to refuse life saving therapies.
  • Justice.
  • The physician has a responsibility to treat similar patients with similar care and to distribute health care resources fairly.