It is important to remember that social structures such as money, time, work, family, class and education will affect an individual’s ability to exercise agency and could constrain their free choice. Marx argues that society is controlled by the social
Susan Mckinley Compare and contrast the views of Goffman and Foucault on how social order is produced. The many theories of social order are fundamental in social science research. This essay will explore the creation of social order and why it is important. It will examine the similarities and differences between the perspectives of Erving Goffman and Michael Foucault on how social order is produced whilst reflecting on how these perspectives relate to studies of social disorder. As a human, each one of us is an individual being with feelings, thoughts and experiences, living within our own physical body, but we are also social beings who need contact, support and interaction.
316) · Foucault - that social order is produced through the power of knowledge and discourse (that which is talked about), which are the products of historical processes (Silva, E, pg. 319) Buchanan’s and Monderman’s views on ordering public space will be used to further illustrate Goffman’s focus on the way people negotiate interactions with each other, his interactional order and Foucault’s emphasis on authoritative knowledge and application of order by authorities or experts. The two propositions are similar in that both are concerned with the wider questions of understanding how society is produced and reproduced and specifically how social order is made and remade. Goffman and Foucault both sought to make the often invisible social order visible albeit through differing mechanisms, Goffman through metaphor and Foucault through historical analysis. Similar claims were made around the ways of understanding singular issues in interaction, although Foucault focuses on the power of historical precedent and powerful discourse on shaping the individuals and society while Goffman focuses on individuals shaping society through their interactions, rituals and habits.
Many people debate about the usefulness of micro sociology to our understanding of sociology. Micro sociology focuses on the nature of everyday human social interactions on a small sale and is based on interpretative analysis. This is the bottom up approach which places emphasis on an individual and their views of society using qualitative research such as questionnaires and interviews. They believe people have free will and choice and our actions are not controlled by society. Methods of micro sociology include symbolic interactionism, phenomenology and ethnomethodology.
It’s like saying that a tree is valuable without the valuer. Even when there is no one around to give value to the tree it’ll always be valuable. That’s the argument used to “prove” that the Last Man’s actions are NOT morally permissible. If something is IV2 then it is also IV3 because IV2 is an object having properties based on its non-relational properties which also lets it fit in with being IV3. But it only fits in with weak IV3 because weak IV3 would still require that someone finds the relation between the secondary properties and evaluative properties.
According to Coon (1997) the position results in a social role whereas certain behavior is expected with these given position. An important part of a group is its norms. The norms act as conduct guidelines for members. During interaction group members have a direct impact on one another’s behavior. Social influence includes a variation in ideas, beliefs, attitudes, or behavior as a result of interacting (Fiske, 2010).
These big ideas can be categorized under social thinking, social influence, or social relations. The idea that we construct our social reality falls under social thinking, it describes the natural human urge to explain behavior, by attempting to attribute it to a cause, in order to make it seem orderly, predictable, and controllable (Myers, 2010). According to social psychology our social intuitions are powerful and sometimes perilous, suggesting that the human ability to understand something immediately, molds or influences behavior because it also shapes fears, attitudes, impressions, and relationships (Myers, 2010). It is also believed that social influences shape behavior as does behavior shape social influences. Myers (2010) provides an example as to how behavior is shaped by social influences making humans social creatures, “We speak and think in words we learned from others (Social psychology, p. 7).
He studied the characteristics of societies and how they affect the relationships or social bonds between individuals. However, he became concerned about the shift from the traditional society to the modern society and its effects on the society, social order and the individual. He begins by explaining the characteristic of a social fact. A social fact “is a way of acting, whether fixed or not that is able to cast an external constraint on an individual and it exists outside the individual” (Edles and Applerouth 2010 87) Durkheim defines society which is a social fact as “an ideal phenomenon with its own distinctive consciousness over and above its material location in space and time. It is a consciousness that is emergent from but irreducible to the individual consciousness which comprise it”.
It appears that mechanistic Interactionism has to do with isolated behavior patterns as being explained through the interaction of situation, traits, and the interaction between situation and traits. If that were not hard enough to conceptualize, next is reciprocal Interactionism. This theory of Interactionism seems much closer to reality. Indeed in reality traits, situation, and behavior all impact each other in an endless, reciprocal manner. This theory seeks to quantify a complex set of behavior patterns, such as the interaction between personality and job preference.
In this article an attempt is made to define the theory focusing on the structure of society as it has originally been equated to the human body. In the human body the individual organs each perform a function, together these functions make a system and the systems function as the body. The interdependence of the structures within society is alluded to with particular emphasis on the consensus that should exist for the establishment and maintenance of equilibrium in society. The equilibrium will be achieved through evolutionary change which implies a gradual and non confrontational process. An account is given of the application of the theory and how the various structures within society functions for the good and benefit of the whole as well as a reflection on the relevance of the theory in modern society.