SOCIAL
STRUCTURE
AND
INTERACTION
Unit Two: Sociology Ms. Oase
Experientials
Gesture Game
Break into teams of four
Create a list of gestures in the time
allotment
Perform list of gestures
Mark off any gesture another team
has from your list
Last team with an unused gesture wins!
Gesture Game Debrief
1. How difficult was it to create a list of
gestures?
2. Why do gestures have different
meanings?
3. How does cultural background
and/or the region of the country
affect gestures?
Language
Current Event Class Debate
Read the news article The Unites States
titled “Lino Lakes:
Groups form to fight should pass a law
city’s English-only rule” that designates
Write a reaction to the English as the
article on the next
blank page in your official language
notebook of the nation.
Debate
The Unites States should
pass a law that
designates English as the
official language of the
nation.
Signs
Break into teams of
four
Label as many of the
signs on the worksheet
as possible
Team to label the
most signs correctly in
the time allotment
wins!
Signs
1. Airports 16. Down Escalator
2. Arrivals 17. Up Escalator
3. Departures 18. Farm Machinery
4. Baggage 19. First Aid
5. Bar 20. Round About
6. Bicycles 21. Ground Transportation
7. Bus 22. Handicapped
8. Car Rental 23. Heliport
9. Cattle Crossing 24. Hill
10.Baggage Claim 25. Recycle
11.Coffee Shop 26. Information
12.Customs 27. Women
13.Currency exchange 28. Mail
14.Do Not Enter 29. Men
15.Elevator
Signs
30. Men At Work 45. School Crossing
31. No Bicycles 46. Shops
32. Slippery 47. Slippery
33. No Left Turn 48. Smoking
34. No Parking 49. Fire Extinguisher
35. No Right Turn 50. Stairs Down
36. No Smoking 51. Stairs Up
37. No Trucks 52. Stop Sign
38. No U-Turns 53. Taxi
39. Parking 54. Telephone
40. Pedestrian Crossing 55. Yield
41. Radiation 56. Water
42. Rail
43. Restaurant
44. School
Signs
Individual Task
Create a key at the
top of your page
One color =
industrialized
countries
Second color =
agrarian communities
Highlight accordingly
Group Activities
Break into teams of four
In the time allotment, discuss the topic bellow
Write your finding on the board
Prepare for a class discussion
Topics
Best Song Ever
Best Item of Food Ever
Best Color Ever
Group Activities
1. Who was the leader in the group?
Why?
2. How was the leader selected?
3. What were the qualities of
leadership that qualified this person?
4. Was there a better leader available?
Group Activities
Break into your “Big Mama” teams
Using only the supplies provided,
create a free-standing tower within
the time allotment
Team to build the tallest tower
wins!
Group Activities
1. Who was the leader in the group?
Why?
2. How was the leader selected?
3. What were the qualities of
leadership that qualified this person?
4. Was there a better leader available?
Leadership
Authoritarian
• Assigns tasks, makes the major decisions, pays little
attention to the concerns of the followers, and
praises/criticizes group members
Democratic
• Encourages group discussion and input, works to
build group consensus, and tries to explain why
members are being rewarded or punished
Laissez-Faire
• Highly nondirective, letting group members make
their own decisions without mush help or input
Leadership
Groupthink
Instrumental LeadersExpressive Leaders
The tendency of highly cohesive
Emphasizes Focuses on
groups to make poor decisions
the collective
because the members are
completion well-being
unwilling to threaten the groups
of tasks solidarity
Leadership
Individual Task
Complete the
Leadership
Think Sheet
Prepare for a
class discussion
BUILDING BLOCKS OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE
Social Interaction
Social Structure
The network of
interrelated statuses
Social
and roles that guides
Statuses Roles Structure
human interaction.
Status Set
All the statuses a person
Boy/Girl
holds at a given time
Ethnicity Student
Job Son/Daughter
YOU
Friend Teenager
Musician Athlete
Status
Ascribed Achieved
Gender Age
Family Skill
Heritage Relationship
Race
Status
Job
Status
Ascribed Achieved
Assigned Acquired on the
according to basis of some
standards that special skill,
are beyond knowledge, or
one’s control ability
Master Status
Plays the greatest role in shaping a
person’s life and determining his or her
social identity
It can be achieved or ascribed
It changes over the course of a lifetime
In the U.S. it tends to be achieved and
based off of one’s occupation
Roles
People hold a
Behaviors
status and
Rights Obligations Roles
perform a role
Role Set
Interact
with
attached to a single
students
A number of roles
Organize a Interact
classroom with
colleagues
status
Teacher
Discipline Research
information
Design
Lessons
Corresponding roles that
define the patterns of
interaction between related
statuses
Parent
Husband
Reciprocal Roles
Wife
Children
Coach
Teacher
Athlete
Student
Expectations vs. Performance
Role Expectations
• Socially determined
behaviors expected of a
person performing a role
Role Performance
• The actual behavior
Expectations vs. Performance
Role Expectations
• Doctors are supposed to
treat their patients with
skill and care
Role Performance
• Some doctors misdiagnose
and/or don’t treat their
patients with care
Role Conflict
Definition Example
When fulfilling the Being a good parent
expectations of one requires staying at
status makes it home with your kids
difficult to fulfill the but being a good
role expectations of employee requires
another status spending time at
work
Role Strain
Definition Example
When a person A boss may
experience this when
has difficulty trying to maintain the
meeting the role morale of workers
while also trying to
expectations of get them to work
a single status harder or longer
hours
Role Exit
Doubt The process of
• Frustration, burnout, or unhappiness with an
accustomed status or role associated with the
social position
disengagement from a role
Search For • Leave of absence may be taken by someone who is
unhappy with his or her job, or an unhappily married
Alternatives couple may separate for what they see as a temporary
that is central to one’s self-
situation
Action Stage
identity and establishment
or Departure
• Clear turning points where the person knows
that it is essential to take final action
of a new role and identity
Creation of a • Adoption of a new identity accompanies things
like leaving high school for college or moving to a
New Identity new state
Social Institutions
Provide physicalFamily Transmit
Statuses
and emotional Roles
Knowledge
support
Religion
A system Economy
Attempt
Major
of…
to…
Social
Institutions
Norms
Produce Goods
and Services
Education
Values
Maintain Social
Control
Politics
Review
Independently,
complete the
“Building
Blocks” wrksht
Prepare for a
class discussion
STRUCTURE OF GROUPS AND SOCIETIES
Groups Must have
2+ people
A set of two or
more people who
Must possess interact on the
some sense basis of shared Must have
of common expectations and interaction
identity who possess some
degree of
common identity
Must have
shared
expectations
Aggregate
Definition Example
A group of people People standing in a
gathered in the ticket line at the
same place at the movies
same time who lack People waiting to
organization or board a plane
lasting patterns of People at a sporting
interaction event
Social Category
Definition Example
A means of Students
classifying Women
people
Roman
according to a
shared trait or a Catholics
common status Sports Teams
How do groups differ?
Time
Some
groups
meet only Organization
once and
never
again
Formal Size
Dyad Triad Small Group
Others • 2 members • 3 members • Everyone is able
exist for • Each member has • The group takes to interact face-
many Informal direct control
over the group’s
on a life of its
own
to-face
• 15 people max
years existence
Primary Group
A small Bound by primary relationships
group of
Family is society’s most important
people
who primary group
interact First groups we experience in life
over a
relatively They are ends in themselves rather than
long as means to an ends
period of
time on a Members tend to view each other as
direct basis unique and irreplaceable
Secondary Group
A large
Involve weak emotional ties and little
and
personal knowledge of one another
impersonal Usually short-term
group Include more people than primary groups
whose Individuals can be replaced easily by
members anyone who can carry out the specific tasks
pursue a needed to achieve the group’s goals
specific
Time may transform a secondary to a
goal or
primary group
activity
Display goal orientation as opposed to
personal orientation
Groups
Review
Independent
Read the news
article provided
Complete the
“Prom Problem”
wrksht
Prepare for a
class discussion
TYPES OF SOCIETIES
Pre-Industrial Societies
Food production, which is
carried out through the use of
human and animal labor, is the
main economic activity