Steven E. Barkan wrote in Sociology: Comprehensive Edition (v.1.0), the foremost areas of social structure is positions, roles we have in our community, community systems, groups and associations. Barkan also states that how others perceive us is critical in identifying self .Cooley (1964) quoted in Social Identity (Dalile),coined the phrase ‘looking glass self ‘”where the self grows out of one, s image through other peoples eyes”. Durkheim (1858-1917) as quoted in Plummer (2010) believed society was above any individual and was a combined entity. As society takes on its own existence people are compelled into certain behaviours as a result, much like the behaviour of a group. According to Plummer, ‘social’ is the collaboration between humans and the analysis of this interaction is the core of sociology.
Everyone in the world has a distinct and personal perception of what is in their world and how they relate to it. Many people in society see themselves as being very separate to everything else and ones perception of things, acts, events and circumstances gives them a unique view and opinion of such things. Society tends to band together due to having like minded opinions and views as to how one should act and how one should interact in a given society, those who break the norms are considered different. Society has formed stereotypes to describe how a group of people chooses to live their lives in many different specific ways. People judge other people due to their dress, their skin color, the way they talk, their hair style or the music they listen to and gather these individuals into a view called a stereotype.
Deviance is a social issue that has plagued all societies from the beginning of time and the sociologists’ attempts to comprehend why individuals take part in deviant behavior is still undergo. However, one theory’s explanation of deviant behavior can put things in perspective: Differential Association Theory. Through this theory is becomes obvious that the phrase “people, places, and things” has relevance. Disregarding any possible biological or personality influences Differential Association Theory explains that we learn from our encounters with others. Also, the mass media plays a significant role in shaping our opinions and what we accept as normal or deviant behavior.
Atticus also demonstrates that discriminating against blacks is immoral to his kids. First of all," he said, "if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view […] until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." (85-87) Atticus makes the connection of blacks in this time and tries to get his kids to understand the injustice that was existant at the time. This showed that not only did Atticus care about the grief it would bring him, but he cared about the knowledge that his kids were absorbing throughout this time.
However it’s when others choose an identity for an individual or a group because of their circumstances that we get negative value identity or in equal identity. As people we all have an identity, the most simple of which is personal identity, this is your individual knowledge of who you are, but there are many more identities to consider. We construct our identities by what we do, where we go, people we interact with. A social identity is both an individual-a specific person and group identity referring to others whether different and the same. Identities relate to each and every person; however a lot of social identities are characterised by inequality.
Subculture Paper At birth people are inevitably born into a society. Many societies are distinct and contain differences and similarities. One thing that everyone has in common, despite the type of society one lives in, is that every single person belongs to a subculture. Subculture can be defined as a specific group that has similar distinguishing patterns of goals, beliefs, and behavior; they create their own identity and their own structure within a society. Every one needs a subculture to help them feel a sense of belonging and unity, allowing them to feel as though they are not alone.
Social stratification is the universal tendency of societies to organize people in a hierarchy of levels or “strata” on a variety of characteristics such as power, wealth, social status, education level, prestige of one’s occupation, social standing (Petev, 2013). Social class is what separates the two groups of boys in the picture I have chosen to illustrate how social class shapes society. The picture shows a little bit of how different people of different social classes are from each other. People of different social classes separate themselves from each other because they are on different levels in terms of educational attainment, occupational prestige, and wealth. There is a clear relationship between social class and educational attainment.
Why do people label and group other people? We label and group other people in order to give them a distinct identity in the society we are in. I believe we label them or mentally sort them into a certain group so that we know how to act around them. It's something most people do automatically to simplify their social interactions. Labeling and grouping other people usually only becomes a problem when we label and group someone incorrectly in a negative manner, which is what most of us associate stereotypes with.
In these theories, things have meanings only on what we designate them to mean, without definitions they wouldn’t exist. Both race and gender are social constructs that in this modern world often work interchangeably through the social realm. Society and the social realm are under constant negotiation and change. While often forgotten race and gender are social constructs and not biological aspects of humans. Different racial groups experience reality in separate, unique ways.
There are two theoretical dimensions explored within the conducted study, the Social Impact Theory (SIT) explains the two as, “The dilution effect (where an individual feels submerged in the group) and the immediacy gap (where an individual feels isolated from the group)” (Chidambaram & Tung, 2005). The social impact theory is a key component to understanding social loafing in technology-supported groups. The social impact theory (Latané, 1981) claims that all forms of social influence, whatever the specific social process, will be proportional to a multiplicative function of the strength, immediacy, and number of people who are the sources of influence, and inversely proportional to the strength, immediacy, and number of people being influenced. The two principles of the theory, dilution effect and immediacy gap, help support the conclusions as well as the understanding of the study’s results. Kidwell and Bennett (1993) explains that the motivational forces behind social loafing is based on the long time argument that the greater the sources and targets of social impact within a group, the less contributions individual members make towards group effort.