Social Dynamics: Structure, Roles, and Norms

Fundamentals of Social Structure

Social structure refers to the relatively stable relationships or actions that occur between various parties. These include territory, population, status, roles, groups, social classes, and organizations.

Defining Social Roles and Status

Social role: A role is the set of behaviors and attitudes expected of a person according to their status and their social situation. This is determined by the socialization process. A person can have more than one social role (e.g., father and professor), but these roles change in each situation. Roles are not acquired solely as a result of experience. There are two types of roles:

• Role assigned: This is given from the outside.
• Role assumed: These roles are adopted voluntarily.

Social status: Status is the position that everyone takes when interacting socially with other persons. Each member of a group occupies a certain position and can occupy different statuses, provided they are compatible.

Categories of Social Status

• Affiliated Status: A position imposed on an individual without their collaboration or control.
• Transferred Status: A status where the voluntary element plays no role.
• Acquired Status: A position that depends on the individual's own effort.

Social Deviation and Behavioral Factors

Social positions and evaluations are influenced by two main factors:

• Objective factors: These are the mechanisms of power.
• Subjective factors: How people evaluate a particular position.

Social deviation occurs when a transgression is identified as such and is therefore sanctioned.

• Positive deviation: This involves approximating the ideal patterns of behavior.
• Negative deviation: This consists of acts that deviate from what is considered normal.

Values and Social Norms

Values: These are basic guidelines, general principles, beliefs, and preferences that influence human behavior and the system of social norms.

Standards (Norms): Using the socialization process, one learns and internalizes patterns of behavior. Guidelines serve as models, and when these rules become models to follow, they become rules of conduct.

Criteria for Social Rules

First Criterion: Customs and Uses

• Customs: Basic rules of society that carry penalties for breaches.
• Uses: Forms of behavior appropriate for a given situation; these are voluntary.

Second Criterion: Formalization

• Formalized rules: These are standards of behavior that have been consciously made as a result of rational deliberation.
• Non-formalized rules: Unwritten rules that are accepted unconsciously.

Morality and the Legal System

Morality is a kind of human behavior that arises from real life to the extent that the standards are accepted by the community. The law is the system of rules which fixes a particular organization of social relationships and tends to avoid violations.