Unit 4 Social interaction

Social interaction is the process of people orienting themselves to others and acting in response to each other's behaviour. People interact with others in order to accomplish some goal; their behaviour in such interactions is always directed toward specific other people. For example, the job seeker and the job interviewer engage in social interaction in order to fulfil two goals: the job seeker wants employment and the job interviewer wants to fill a vacancy. Their behaviour is governed by a widely shared set of social expectations about what is " supposed" to go on in a job interview (for example, the job seeker should be on time) and by the specific participants in this interaction (for example, the interviewer was not impressed by this jobseeker's fidgety behaviour).

Social interaction is not merely a matter of individual choice; rather, it is guided by defined expectations and meanings. These social expectations and meanings are organized in terms of statuses and roles. A status is a position in a social structure (such as jobseeker or interviewer) that determines where an individual " fits" in the social order. A role is a set of behaviours, attitudes, obligations, and privileges expected of anyone who occupies a particular status (for example, the jobseeker is expected to provide a clean and updated resume, and the interviewer is expected to be able to judge the applicant's capabilities for the vacant job).

Social interaction is connected to the structure of society through the interrelationship of different statuses and roles. " Job interviewer" is one of thousands of statuses in the typical large corporation; the behaviour expected of people who occupy this social status is determined by the overall goals and strategies of the business itself. These goals and strategies are shaped in turn by the political and economic structure of the society as a whole. Thus an isolated interaction between job seeker and interviewer is linked through the interconnection of statuses and roles to the organization of society itself. This example illustrates the two levels of sociological analysis: the micro level of analysis focuses on small details of face-to-face interaction (such as a particular job interview), while the macro level focuses on large-scale aspects of the organization of society (such as the international market conditions that created a need for the corporation to hire more workers).

The study of social interaction can assume an action perspective or a structural perspective. The action perspective examines how people construct their own social worlds, how they define social situations, and how they act accordingly. The structural perspective examines the relatively stable social patterns that are imposed on us and that shape the way we define social situations.

2. How do processes of defining the situation affect social interaction?

The meaning of a particular event or episode is provided by those people who participate in it. People at a funeral act in a somber and respectful manner because they have defined this behaviour as appropriate for that occasion; their behaviour and demeanour would be different had they defined the situation as a wedding. Social interaction always occurs in some setting, but the meaning of that setting needs to be defined by participants. A bar may be a place to satisfy thirst, to drown one's sorrows, or to " pick up" a new friend. People who interact in bars define the situation in one of these ways and act according to the shared definition of the situation. The W.L Thomas theorem suggests that these definitions of the situation have significant consequences for behaviour patterns and for the ability of participants to accomplish their objectives.

Sociologists who adopt an action perspective are especially attuned to processes of defining the situation. In their view, participants in social interactions are constantly defining and redefining the situation as they collectively pursue their goals. Many social situations are ambiguous: participants must negotiate the meaning of circumstances before they can decide on proper or fruitful courses of action; they mold and fit their behaviours to each other.

Sociologists who adopt a structural perspective ask completely different questions about social interaction. They would be more likely, for example, to examine the frequency of social interaction between two racially different groups or the relationship between residential proximity and incidence of social interaction. There is little interest in how participants define the situation; that job is left to the sociologist. The action and the structural perspectives are complementary: each enables a different interpretation of the relationship between interaction and the structure of society.

3. What are the various types of statuses and roles?

A status is a position in the structure of society. Butcher, baker, and candlestick maker are all social statuses, and so are friends, Romans, and countrymen. Each of these positions determines where a person fits in the structure of a society. Obviously, people occupy many statuses: one can be both Roman and baker, or both friend and butcher.

Ascribed statuses are assigned to people without any effort on their part, and they typically consist of the characteristics with which we are born: age, sex, and race. Although these ascribed statuses usually last for life, their meaning can change: the status of wife today differs greatly from the status of wife as recently as the 1950s. By contrast, achieved statuses are acquired through personal accomplishments: level of educational attainment, income, occupation, and criminal record are achieved statuses. The acquisition of achieved statuses is shaped by one's opportunity struc­ture—that is, by the organisation of opportunities available to those in different parts of society. A baby boy born to the Rockefeller family has a good chance of achieving the status of investment broker; the odds of such an achievement for a black girl born in a ghetto are minuscule. The acquisition of statuses is shaped in part by the statuses that the individual already has, and some statuses are especially important. A master status is one that largely determines a person's social identity. Being the Prince of Wales is more important than any of Prince Charles's other statuses in determining his other social positions. One's master status, however, is not always the same as one's salient status: the salient status is that which dominates in a particular social situation. For example, when Prince Charles plays with his children at Buckingham Palace, the salient status is probably father rather than Prince of Wales.

Every social status carries a socially prescribed set of expected behaviours, attitudes, obligations, and privileges--in short, a social role. People occupy statuses but they play roles. A status is a position in the social structure, while a role is how we think and act in that status. We learn what is expected of us in a social status through processes of socialisation. Expected behaviour in a role is not " cast in stone": to some extent, people playing a role are free to act within a sometimes wide latitude of acceptable behaviour. The degree and the kind of role im­provisation—how much variability is allowed to those playing a certain role—vary from case to case. Generally speaking, the longer people have played a role, the more they feel free to " improvise" by departing from strictly defined behavioural expectations. Greater improvisation is also likely when the performance of a role is not observed by others. Finally, improvisation is likely to increase when the enactment of a role generates strong emotions among those involved. The idea of improvisation suggests the compatibility of action and structural perspectives: people are sometimes free to depart from behaviour expected of a role (the action perspective), but other people always impose limits on the extent of permissible role improvisation (the structural perspective).

Social roles exist in relation to each other: an individual occupies a number of social statuses, and for any one of those statuses, he or she plays a number of roles. The status of college professor includes, among others, the following social roles: teaching students, conducting and publishing research, serving the community, and giving advice on government policy (if asked). Each of these is a role relationship: for example, the role of teacher is defined in terms of its relation­ship to the role of student. This cluster of different roles associated with a single social status is called a role set. Role strain occurs when a person has difficulty meeting the obligations of a certain role or role set, usually because of a lack of resources (time, money, skills).

Sometimes roles within a role set make inconsistent or competing demands on the individual— a situation known as role conflict. For example, teachers in small classes are expected to get to know students individually, but a teacher is also expected to evaluate students not as individuals but only in terms of their performance on assignments. Role conflict is the clash between two competing roles.