Soc 1100-6 Groups and Organisation PDF

6. Groups and Organization Example of “Tea Party” (name from the famous so-called Tea Party in Boston Harbor in 1773; angry American colonists threw thousands of pounds of tea into Boston Harbor ); values and beliefs; anti-tax, anti-big government, pro-gun, and generally politically conserv...

6. Groups and Organization Example of “Tea Party” (name from the famous so-called Tea Party in Boston Harbor in 1773; angry American colonists threw thousands of pounds of tea into Boston Harbor ); values and beliefs; anti-tax, anti-big government, pro-gun, and generally politically conservative. “Some of 15 Non-Negotiable Core Beliefs.” Illegal aliens are here illegally. Pro-domestic employment is indispensable. A strong military is essential. Gun ownership is sacred. Reducing personal income taxes is a must. Reducing business income taxes is mandatory. Political office must be available to average citizens. English as our core language is required. Traditional family values are encouraged. Tea Party Group: a significant way to understand and define ourselves (connection and no connection); fostering shared value systems. Functionalist (macro-level view): different aspects of society intertwined; society: a well-balanced system, all parts necessary to the whole; the roles these parts play. -> Tea Party: serving the needs of the macro-level; the party forcing people to pay attention to the economy. Conflict: (macroanalytical view): genesis and growth of inequality. The business interests manipulating the system, leading to the gross inequality we see today; the massive redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the upper class -> Tea Party representing the burden of inequality. Symbolic Interaction (interactionist perspective), (micro-level view, day-to-day interactions of groups): -> Tea Party’s group dynamics in New York and in Atlanta; de facto leaders in different cities… Types of Groups Ex: “a group of kids all saw the dog”, “250 students in a lecture hall”, “four siblings playing in the garden”. Defining a Group / Sociological purposes? A “group project” in school, a club, a regular gathering of friends, or people who work together or share a hobby. Any collection of at least two people who interact with some frequency and who share a sense that their identity is somehow aligned with the group. Not a political rally, a bunch of people standing in line at a coffee (an aggregate, or a crowd) or people who share similar characteristics but are not tied (category; they do not, as a whole, interact frequently with each other). But possibility of becoming group - people in a neighborhood during a disaster: the feeling of cohesiveness, sharing an experience. Or groups within a single category: ex: teachers’ unions, Charles Horton Cooley: Primary groups: the most critical role in our lives, small, individuals face-to-face in long-term emotional ways. -> emotional needs: expressive functions rather than pragmatic ones; “significant others”, impact on our socialization; the family. Secondary groups: larger and impersonal; goal or task- focused and time-limited; instrumental function rather than an expressive one; a classroom or office No strict definitions/limits; expressive functions within a digital group. In-group: individual feels she belongs to, an integral part of who she is. Out-group: someone doesn’t belong to; disdain or competition. Sports teams, unions -> in-groups and out-groups; belong to, or be an outsider to; inclusion or exclusion. Primary / secondary groups: both in-groups and out-groups. Negative human behavior (ex. Ku Klux Klan, the bullying of gay or lesbian students); others “not like us” and inferior, practicing ethnocentrism, racism, sexism, ageism, and heterosexism—manners of judging others negatively based on their culture, race, sex, age, or sexuality. Case: Bullying and Cyberbullying: How Technology Has Changed the Game Words can hurt… instances of bullying; extreme levels of cruelty in children and young adults. Today, technology; a new era of “cyberbullying”; sending threatening texts, harassing someone in a public forum (such as Facebook), hacking; posting embarrassing images online… 1 in every 3 students report being bullied by their school peers. 20 percent of middle school students: “seriously thinking about committing suicide” as a result of online bullying. Cyberbullying: harassing others from the privacy of their homes without witnessing the damage firsthand. -> widely accessible and therefore easier to accomplish. Legislation, protecting the victims? Reference Groups A group that people compare themselves to— providing a standard of measurement. More than one reference group; ex. classmates and older brother’s friends different set of norms. Cultural center, workplace, family gathering, parents; conveying competing messages. Reference groups not always recognizable, but they still influence the way we act. Identifying the reference groups -> understanding the source of the social identities. Georg Simmel (1858-1918) – formal sociology Content: (ex.) marriage, war, education.. Form: common processes (ex.) of conflict; Interactive webs of the people Study of: money, gender, cities, “strangers”… Group size: form over content; numbers matter. Modernity, impersonal ties, distances; a new consciousness. Today: mobiles, smart phones, facebook, twitter etc. Group Size and Structure The dyad: a social group with 2 members (love affairs, marriages, closest friendship etc.); intense, most meaningful social bonds but instability (one member collapses, the group collapses). The triad: 3 members: more stable Beyond 3 members: the loss of even several members does not threaten the group’s existence. Less personal attachment (personal pleasure), more formal rules and regulations (task satisfaction). The larger groups; in a geographic space, a fraternity or sorority on the same campus, or around the globe. The larger the group becomes, the more the risk grows for division and lack of cohesion Group Leadership In primary groups, leadership -> informal. Larger groups; clearly outlined roles and responsibilities; the military, structured and clearly understood chains of command; workplace or a classroom, different functions and styles of leadership. 2 different leadership functions: Instrumental leader: goal-oriented, concerned with tasks. Expressive leaders: promoting emotional strength and health; social and religious leaders—rabbis, priests, imams, directors of youth homes… Longstanding stereotype: “men are more instrumental leaders, and women are more expressive leaders”. 3 different leadership styles: Democratic leaders; encourage group participation in all decision making. Laissez-faire leader (French for “leave it alone”); hands-off, allowing group members to self-manage and make their own decisions. Authoritarian leaders; issue orders and assigns tasks; clear instrumental leaders, strong focus on meeting goals; risk of Match the line of the first card with those of the second Group conformity The extent to which an individual complies with group norms or expectations (using “reference groups”; how to act, to dress, and to behave (boys and girls protesting their mothers!). Asch’s experiment Solomon Asch (1951) conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform. Subjects were asked to match the line of the first card with those of the second. The answer was obvious. But… Crowds in action – in Beyoğlu against non-Muslims, in Kayseri against refugees… in London, in Berlin… in… About one third of the participants of the experiment conformed with the clearly incorrect majority. Why did the participants conform so readily? Without really believing their conforming answers, they (majority) had gone along with the group for fear of being ridiculed or thought "peculiar". A few of them said that they really did believe the group's answers were correct. People conform for two main reasons: -they want to fit in with the group (normative influence) -and because they believe the group is better informed than they are (informational influence). Milgram Experiment (1961) E: the experimenter T: the teacher, the subject of the experiment, giving painful electric shocks to a learner (L) (actor and confederate). For each wrong answer, the learner receives electric shocks (in reality not). Separated from the subject, a tape recorder integrated with the electro-shock generator, which played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level. 2/3 of subjects willing to perform acts that directly conflicted with their consciences when directed by a person of authority. Zimbardo’s research: the Stanford experiment (1971) Normal students simulating prison conditions: guards and inmates. Guards so abusive (violent physically, verbally and mentally) to the inmates. Zimbardo horrified; experiment stopped. All the findings force a question: Would I really do that? Could I betray my own eyes, my judgment, even my humanity, just to complete some experiment, or just to obey to the ideologies, hatred etc. imposed by the state, society, community? Non-conformity Formal Organizations Large and impersonal secondary organizations (schools, businesses, healthcare, government -> highly bureaucratized. A bureaucracy is an “ideal type” (not the “best”) of formal organization; a collection of characteristics, or a type that could describe most examples of the item under discussion. (ex. a car: four wheels, a windshield…) Types of Formal Organizations Normative organizations (voluntary); shared interests (clubs, Rotary, NGOs). Coercive organizations; coerced, or pushed, to join (a prison or a rehabilitation center). Total institutions (Erving Goffman); inmates or military soldiers; a controlled lifestyle, total resocialization. Utilitarian organizations; the need for a specific material reward (high school, workplace; pursuit of a diploma, to make money). Etzioni’s Table of Formal Organizations Weber and bureaucracy An organisational model rationally designed to perform complex tasks efficiently. An “ideal-type” of bureaucracy: -Specialisation -Hierarchy of offices -Rules and regulations -Technical competence -Impersonality -Formal, written communication  But also informal side of bureaucracy; problems; alienation, inertia, ritualism, oligarchy. Also “Bureaucracy’s darkest hour: killing 11 million people in the Nazi genocide”… Zygmunt Bauman: “we live in a type of society that made the Holocaust possible” The modern world facilitated (still facilitates?) the mass exterminations. The McDonaldization of Society A process by which the principles of the fast-food industry come to be applied to more and more features of social life. Products: uniform, generic, and bland. Social science and the problem of evil Modern societies can dehumanise and impersonalise personal relations in such a terrible ways that ordinary, everyday folk can routinely slaughter their fellow citizens. Mass murder become banal. Good people become bad people. “It is disgusting!” (recalling “taste classifies…) Mary Douglas: “purity and danger” The symbolic use of biological body and its “soiling” productions (sweat, excrement, pee, slime, sperm…) as reference to the construction of “us” (pure) and “others” (dirty) to be “cleaned”. Symbolic making of the identity: -> our pure / their dirty blood “The dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements… Dirt… appears a residual category, rejected form the normal scheme of classification.” Douglas, Purity and Danger, 1966) The existence of “dirt”  a zeal to classify more and more.