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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.