1. SOC 208
SOCIOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
SEEING AND THINKING
SOCIOLOGICALLY
PhD Fatma Altınbas Sarıgül
2. • How individuals structure society
• Social Influence: The impact of other people in
our everyday lives
• Societal Influence: The Effect of Social
Structure on our Everyday Lives
• Three Perspectives on Social Order
VIDEO: Rwanda Genocide, BBC documentary
3. Sociological Claims
• Individual behavior is largely shaped by social
forces and situational contingencies.
• The circumstances of large scale ethnic hatred
and war have the power to transform well-
educated, ‘nice’ people into cruel butchers.
• Examples to that: Rwanda,Nazi Holocaust,
Bosnia, Burma, Kosovo, Congo, Darfur, etc.
4. How Individuals Structure Society
• Society: A population living in the same
geographic area who share a culture and a
common identity and whose members are
subject to the same political authority.
• Societies may consist of people with the same
ethnic heritage or of hundreds of different
groups who speak a multitude of languages.
• Societies may be structurally different:
industrial or agricultural – religious or secular
5. How Individuals Structure Society
• Is history really fixed and unchangeable?
Society is an objective fact that coerces, even
creates us. At the same time, we constantly
create, maintain, reaffirm and transform
society.
Hence, society is part and parcel of individual-
level human interaction.
6. Social Influence
We live in a world with other people.
Other people affect our thoughts, likes and
dislikes.
Contact with people is essential to a person’s
social development.
We act and react to things and people in our
environment as a result of the meaning we
attach to them.
7. Societal Influence
• Statuses, roles, groups, organizations and
institutions are the building blocks of society.
• Culture is the mortar that holds these blocks
together.
Ascribed status Groups
Achieved status Primary Groups
Role strain Secondary Groups
Role conflict Organizations
8. Social Institutions
• Building blocs that organize society.
• Key social institutions:
Family
Education
Economy
Politics and Law
Religion
Health care
Military
Mass media
9. Culture
• Culture as a society’s personality.
• General rules that human society live under
together.
• 2 keys aspects of culture- values and norms.
Value: a standard of judgment by which people
decide on desirable goals and outcomes. They
justify the social rules that determine how we
ought to behave.
Norms: culturally defined rules of conduct. How
people should pursue values.
10. Globalization
• The effects of globalization on social structure
is undisputable.
• The speed and scope of human interactions
increased rapidly after the invention of
internet.
• All of us are simultaneously member of our
own society and citizens of a world
community.
11. The Structural- Functionalist Perspective
on Social Order (Parson&Smelser)
• A society is a complex system composed of
various parts, much like a living organism.
• Social institutions are key factors; they allows
societies to attain their goals, adapt to a
changing environment, reduce tension, and
recruit individuals into statuses and roles.
• If an aspect of social life does not contribute
to society’s survival (dysfunctional), it will
eventually disappear.
12. The Conflict Perspective
on Social Order (Marx)
• They are likely to see society not in terms of
stability and acceptance but in terms of conflict
and struggle.
• Social order arises not from the societal pursuit of
harmony but from dominance and coercion.
• Marx argued that all human societies are
structured around the production of goods that
people need to survive.
• The individuals or groups who control the means
of production have the power to create and
maintain social organizations.
13. Symbolic Interactionism
on Social Order (Weber)
• It attemptes to understand society and social
structure through an examination of the
microlevel interactions of people as individuals,
pairs or groups.
• These forms of interaction take place within a
world of symbolic communication.
• A symbol is something used to represent or stand
for something else.
• Society is socially constructed from the symbolic
interactions that occur each day between
individuals.
