Course Themes Week 2 Sociology has a distinctive way of understanding human experience Week 3 This distinctive understanding is based on the claim that.

Course Themes

Week 2 Sociology has a distinctive way of understanding human experience

Week 3 This distinctive understanding is based on the claim that there exists patterns of social organisation and interaction, the social structure, that affect our behaviour

Week 4 This social structure does not involve humans alone but also animals. Further it is based upon our biological structure

Week 5 How does the social structure organise and direct our biological structure?

Week 6 Why might the social structure be seen as fragile and, despite this, why are our social relationships relatively stable

Social Order and Social Change

Last week: noted the social processes that bring order to the potentially disruptive effects of emotion.

This indicates the significance to Sociology of the problem of order; how to explain the persistence of social order the stable pattern of expectations and social structure that exist in any society; the maintenance of those patterns (Jary D & Jary J Collins Dictionary of Sociology)

Self & Society

• This week:

• How do problems of social order in modern society affect interaction and the construction of self identity

Fragility of social order in modern society:

1. Occupational complexity

Division of Labour Task specialisationLeads to the relative

absence of shared experiences

Encourages the emergence of divergent and opposed interests

Creates problems of coordinating a widening range of activities

Encourages awareness of the differences among people rather than the similiarities

Consequence: Alienation (Marx)

• An individual’s feeling of estrangement from a situation, group or culture

• Collin’s Dictionary of Sociology

• Loss of meaning or sense of purpose due, typically, to the exercise of coercion over one’s activities

Fragility of social order in modern society:

1. Occupational complexity

2. High levels of social and geographical mobility

Social Mobility The movement of individuals

between different positions in the hierarchy of social stratification as measured by status, wealth prestige etc.

Social mobility may involve movement up (upward mobility) or down (downward mobility).

It both presumes an unequal distribution of social ‘goods’ but also enables more equal access to those goods.

Social Mobility and Everyday Life

It typically transforms the identity of those with whom we interact

It creates opportunities for self re-definition

Consequence: Anomie (Durkheim)

• a condition of society or of personal relationships in which there exists little consensus, a lack of certainty on values and goals and a loss of effectiveness in the normative and moral framework which regulates collective and individual life

• Jary & Jary Collins Dictionary of Sociology

Fragility of social order in modern society:

1. Occupational complexity

2. High levels of social and geographical mobility

3. Urbanisation

Urbanisation

Growth of large centres of population

Replaces the typical face to face interaction of villages and small towns with short term superficial encounters.

Consequence: Isolation (Me)

We live in a society of strangers. We typically interact with others of whom we know little (and vice versa)

Interaction with strangers becomes normal and yet (perceived as) potentially dangerous

The problem of trust in the absence of personal information

Fragility of social order in modern society::

1. Occupational complexity

2. High levels of social and geographical mobility

3. Urbanisation

4. Impermanent and impersonal social relationships

Consequence: Anonymity

Interaction is typically with anonymous others

We ourselves become anonymous.

We typically present ourselves to dominant institutions (health, education, welfare agencies) as ‘cases’ not persons

The development of a fragmented identity

Multiphrenia• The splitting of the individual into a

multiplicity of self-investments. (competing parts)

• You see singularity but reality comes in multiples

• We risk being overwhelmed by a multiplicity of disconnected relationships and identities. Our self-identity becomes socially saturated

• K. Gergen The saturated self

Fragility of social order in modern society:

1. Occupational complexity

2. High levels of social and geographical mobility

3. Urbanisation

4. Impermanent and impersonal social relationships

5. Growth of individualism

Individualism

A set of beliefs and actions that stress the importance of the individual over groups.

These emphasise the autonomy of the individual human being in social action and affairs.

Individualism emphasises the differences among persons e.g. fashion

Fragility of social order in modern society:

1. Occupational complexity

2. High levels of social and geographical mobility

3. Urbanisation

4. Impermanent and impersonal social relationships

5. Growth of individualism

6. Normality of change

The Normality of Change

• Social change has been a central topic of research for Sociology from its origins in the 19th century.

The taken for granted expectation of progress

Impermanence of what were formerly stable aspects of everyday life e.g. family, work, residence

Fragility of social order in modern society:

1. Occupational complexity

2. High levels of social and geographical mobility

3. Urbanisation

4. Impermanent and impersonal social relationships

5. Growth of individualism

6. Normality of change

• These are interconnected processes