How is Social Order maintained through Interaction?

How is Social Order maintained through Interaction? • Goffman and the Dramaturgical model • We are ‘actors’ playing our part in social scenes • Role and Person • A role is a relatively standardised social location (e.g. teacher, parent) defined by specific rights and obligations. We are expected and often required to conform to the rules of the role • Thus our behaviour is typically determined by what is expected of that position rather than by our own ‘unique’ individual characteristics, (even though we can still ‘do it our way’ )

Role Playing and Social Order • Role Performance: • The adequacy of our performance is judged by the ‘audience’ • This involves reference to rules, sometimes referred to as norms (standards), to which our action is expected to conform • Therefore our action is not ours alone but a joint achievement by ourselves and the audience • Therefore, the audience participate in our ‘performance’ - interaction

Stereotype • The rules that define the roles we play are general, i.e. they apply to anyone playing the role. • The expectations of our action are, therefore, general. • The characteristics of the role player form a stereotype; a generalised set of expectations and attributes that are applied more or less uniformly to members of a particular group. • Stereotypes may benefit or harm members of the group

Culture and Social Order • Our interaction therefore depends on the existence of shared meanings. • The totality of shared meanings is culture; The symbolic and learned non-biological aspects of human society • This is our shared way of life; we express it through the five main elements of culture: norms values and beliefs language symbols material objects

Socialisation • Culture is learnt though the process of socialisation. • Through socialisation the social norms and rules that define the roles we play become part of our personality.

Primary and Secondary Socialisation • Primary socialisation – family-based learning • Secondary socialisation – subsequent learning e.g. school • = • cultural reproduction. Conflict is likely to occur where primary socialisation and secondary socialisation expose the pupil to contradictory or incompatible rules, expectations, language norms etc.

Language and Learning • Basil BernsteinBritish, Bald, Dead • elaborated (formal) speech: typical of the middle class. Normal in the classroom • restricted (informal) speech: typical of the working class. Deviant in the classroom. • Working class students more likely to experience cultural alienation

Self-fulfilling prophecy • An expectation that when acted upon helps create the expected outcome. • If a child is defined by a teacher as a low achiever that child is likely to perform as a low achiever.

Socialisation and the Life Course • Socialisation is a continuous process • The life-course is the development of the person as a social identity through particular stages childhood, adolescence, mid-life, old age & death. • At each life course stage we are socialised into new roles and acquire new identities • Life course transition is the process through which the person moves from one socially constructed stage to the next

Life Course Rituals • Arnold Gennep (1873-1957) • French (or German or Dutch), Hair condition unknown; Dead • Rites de Passage Public ceremonies celebrating the transition of an individual or group to a new life course stage • Separation • Liminality • Reintegration

Anticipatory socialisation • Any process in which an individual endeavours to remodel his or her social behaviour in the expectation of gaining entry to and acceptability in a higher social status or class than that currently occupied

Roles and Social Complexity • Extensive division of labour typical of modern societies increases the range of available roles. • The set of roles performed by a person do not necessarily form a coherent whole (e.g. ‘mother’ and ‘employee’) • Role conflict occurs when a person finds he or she is playing two or more roles at one time that make incompatible demands (e.g. ‘pupil’ and ‘lad) or when a person (e.g. ‘teacher’) defines their role one way whilst those in related roles (e.g. ‘parent’) define it differently. • This implies that the content of roles is not fixed but negotiable

How is Social Order maintained through Interaction?