Every bit of society is dependent on the
other. Every bit interacts with the
other parts of society making it thrive and advance, making groups and holding
a structure vital for the society to maintain itself.
All societies are built by a similar
structure. This social structure is composed by statuses and roles.
A status is a socially defines position in a group or society. Each status has
a set of roles which are the behaviors expected from that individual. When one
plays a certain role, they have to interact with other people. There are five
different types of social interactions which are seen regularly. When people
interact to give or receive a reward for their actions it is called exchange.
With this comes the idea of reciprocity which is when you do something
for someone, that person owes you. Another form of social interaction id competition
which occurs when two or more people or groups oppose each other to obtain
a goal only one can achieve. Then we have conflict which puts more
emphasis on defeating an opponent other than achieving a goal. This is the deliberate
attempt to control someone by force, oppose them or harm them. Then on the
other side we have cooperation which occurs when two or more people or
groups work together to achieve a common goal. Finally there is accommodation
which is the state of balance between cooperation and conflict.
Competition
Specific types of interactions lead to
the forming of different groups or societies. There have been three main types
of societies throughout human history one being the preindustrial society. This
type of societies’ main concern is food production which can be produced by
human or animal labor. After this there are industrial societies which
shift its priorities from food production to the production on manufactured goods.
With this comes urbanization or the concentration of population in
cities. Finally in a post industrial society the economy is mostly involved in
providing services. Within societies there are certain groups individuals are
in. The main ones would be the primary and secondary groups. People
who belong in a primary group together are family or groups of friends. Examples
of people in the secondary group would be co workers. Other groups are reference
groups, these are any group whom the individual identifies and adopts their
attitudes. Then there are the common in and out groups. An in group is
any group an individual belongs to. An out group is a group which the
individual doesn’t belong to. The internet has given rise to a new type of
group called E-communities where individuals interact with each other
through their computers. We all interact with more than one group. All of the
groups we interact with combined are called our social network. An
interesting experiment by Stanly Milgram leads to what is known as six
degrees of separation. The experiment ended with the idea that anyone in
the world is separated by six connections at the most.
The term formal organization is
to describe a large, complex secondary group that has been established to achieve
different goals. Most formal organizations are structured in what is known as a
bureaucracy. A bureaucracy is a ranked authority structure that operates
to specific rules and procedures. A very good example of a formal organization
is corporate life in Japan. Many Japanese businesses have a very strict formal
structure. There are more rules of etiquette and new employees must go to
training sessions to learn these rules. A example is that a group of employees
must have the same short haircut since having long hair is disrespectful for
their clients. Bureaucracies or formal organizations breed what is known as the
Peter Principle which states that, “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise
to his own level of incompetence.” meaning that people are often promoted to a
job that they are not qualified to do.
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Japanese business etiquette
Society lives off interaction. Without interaction
we wouldn’t have groups, or structures that create society. We interact with
the world in many different ways and to survive in modern society it is crucial
to know how to interact with other people.
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