Module 13: Structure

I. Social Structure: A Metaphor

A. What do you think of, what images come to mind, when you hear the word "structure"?

1. Buildings?

2. The solar system?

3. Marilyn Frye’s birdcage:

a. If you look closely at only one wire in a cage, you cannot see the other wires.

b. You might then wonder why the bird does not fly away.

c. Only when you step back and see the whole cage instead of a single wire do you get why the bird does not escape.

d. The bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but all of which by their relations to each other are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon.

e. This is why oppressive structures can be hard to see and recognize: one can study individual elements of an oppressive structure without seeing or being able to understand that one is looking at a cage and there are people there who are caged.

II Introduction to Social Structure
A. Definition: the organized social relationships that connect people to one another and to systems as well as connecting entire systems to one another; what gives social life its familiar and predictable shape; patterns and regularities in social life; the way things are organized and interrelated; the concept of social structure expresses the constraints that lie in a given form of social organization

1. How social relationships are organized at all levels of social life

2. Kinds of distribution of valued resources and rewards in social systems

REVIEW…
B. Status: a position in a system’s structure; what connects us to social systems

1. ascribed status: a position you have by virtue of the circumstances of your birth (eg gender, race, age)

2. achieved status: a position you have by virtue of your personal efforts (eg educational status, occupation, marital status)

3. situational status: only exists in a specific situation while we’re doing it

4. Some important things about statuses
a. Inherently relational because they don’t even exist except in relation to other statuses
b. Difference between statuses and the people who occupy them; statuses exist independently of being occupied by particular people at any given time
c. If we want to know how people will behave we’re often better off knowing the statuses they occupy than their personal characteristics or intentions

C. Role: the social expectations attached to particular statuses or positions; a collection of beliefs, values, attitudes and norms attached to a given status that apply to whoever occupies a related status; the paths of least resistance for a given status
1. Every role has a number of partners, each with their own set of expectations for the behavior of the person in the position (eg. teacher/student vs. teacher/principal)
2. People can choose how they are going to play these roles and to what extent they will embrace them, play them tongue in cheek, or play them cynically

D. Features of social structure

1. Organizing: Give order to some set of social things

2. Durable and enduring, at least for a time

3. Often hard to see in the normal course of social life

a. There are differences among societies

b. They become visible when they fail

c. We can see the effects of social structures

d. Social structures can become visible to their victims

4. Constraining: they set limits on our ideas, behavior and feelings

a. Example from Johnson: lesbian partners, straight couple, straight couple with kids

III. Making sense of social structure

A. Why the metaphors are helpful: the structures provide shape and guidance and organization, but there is still room for expression and flourish. The structure doesn’t indicate how things are fleshed out. Like Johnson’s insight that we are all participating in systems larger than ourselves but we have a choice about how to participate

 

No posting for today! Just try and absorb the idea of structure through reading Forest and The Trees.

 

Film Response

Rent "Crash" or "Osama." How does structure affect the behavior and feelings of the characters? Are the main characters in a birdcage? How so? Explain using the material from Forest. Discuss any additional course concepts from the reading that applies to your film.