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• Section 10. Understanding Culture, Social Organization, and Leadership to Enhance Engagement

Chapter 27 Sections

• Section 1. Understanding Culture and Diversity in Building Communities
• Section 2. Building Relationships with People from Different Cultures
• Section 3. Healing from the Effects of Internalized Oppression
• Section 4. Strategies and Activities for Reducing Racial Prejudice and Racism
• Section 5. Learning to be an Ally for People from Diverse Groups and Backgrounds
• Section 6. Creating Opportunities for Members of Groups to Identify Their Similarities, Differences, and Assets
• Section 7. Building Culturally Competent Organizations
• Section 8. Multicultural Collaboration
• Section 9. Transforming Conflicts in Diverse Communities
• Section 11. Building Inclusive Communities

• Main Section

In order to work effectively in a culturally and ethnically diverse community, a community builder needs to first understand how each racial and ethnic group in that community is organized in order to support its members. It is not uncommon to hear a community leader, a funder, a political representative, or a service provider say, "We were not able to engage that group over there because they are not organized. They have no leaders. We need to organize them first." This statement is not always accurate; most groups have their own network of relationships and hierarchy of leaders that they tap into for mutual support. These networks or leaders may not be housed in a physical location or building that is obvious to people outside of the group. They may not even have a label or a title. There is an unspoken understanding in some groups about when and whom they should turn to among their members for advice, guidance, and blessing. Once a community builder understands the social organization of the group, it will become easier to identify the most appropriate leaders, help build bridges, and work across multiple groups in a diverse community.

What do we mean by "social organization?" Social organization refers to the network of relationships in a group and how they interconnect. This network of relationships helps members of a group stay connected to one another in order to maintain a sense of community within a group. The social organization of a group is influenced by culture and other factors.

Within the social organization of a group of people, there are leaders. Who are leaders? Leaders are individuals who have followers, a constituency, or simply a group of people whom they can influence. A community builder needs to know who the leaders are in a group in order to get support for his community building work.

In this section, you will learn more about the social organization and leadership of different cultural and ethnic groups. The material covered in this section focuses primarily on African Americans and immigrants for two reasons:

• Tensions tend to occur among groups that are competing for resources that are already limited and not always accessible to them; and
• Most of the struggles facing community builders and other individuals have been with recent immigrants whose culture, institutions, and traditions are still unfamiliar to mainstream groups.

As recent immigrant groups integrate into their new society, their social organization and leadership structures transform to become more similar to those of mainstream groups. This process could take decades and generations; all the more reason why it is important for community builders to understand the social organization and leadership structure of the new arrivals and to build on their values and strengths. While some traditional social structures may prevail, others may adapt to those of the mainstream culture.

Take a moment and think about the most recent group of newcomers to your community. Who are their leaders? Where do their members go to for help?

Think about the group you belong to. Who are the leaders? Whom do you go to for help? How is your group organized to communicate among its members?

Obviously there are too many groups in this world to include in this section. We will try to share information about as many groups as we can. While the section may not inform you about the social organization and leadership of groups other than the ones described here, we hope it will help you understand enough about the influence of culture on social organization and leadership to ask the right questions of any group.

How do culture and other factors affect the social organization of a community?

There are many definitions of culture. Culture typically refers to a set of symbols, rituals, values, and beliefs that make one group different from another. Culture is learned and shared with people who live or lived in the same social environment for a long time. Culture is captured in many, many ways -- in the way members of a group greet and interact with one another, in legends and children's stories, in the way food is prepared and used, in the way people pray, and so on. Since it is difficult and not always appropriate to change someone's culture, how do you then use culture as a positive force to aid community building?

In the Chinese community:

The Chinese community is the largest and the fastest growing group among Asian and Pacific Islander populations.

Keep in mind: The Chinese community forms a very heterogeneous group that includes people from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and other parts of South East Asia. There are many dialects spoken among Chinese people and not all Chinese persons can understand one another's dialects. Therefore, make sure you know which Chinese dialect requires translation if you have to provide translation services.

The Chinese culture places heavy emphasis on taking care of one's family. Chinese people believe that taking care of their families is a contribution to civic welfare, because healthy families lead to a healthy society. This belief is based on Confucian values, which emphasize filial piety, or a respect for family. The concept of filial piety is instilled in Chinese children from a very young age. In other words, familial relationships form the basis for Chinese social organization and behavior.

Chinese parents place a heavy emphasis on their children and their ability to become successful. Confucian values include reaching for perfection, and perfection can be achieved through education. This is why Chinese parents invest a lot of resources in making sure that their children excel academically.

How does this value affect the way Chinese communities are organized and participate in their communities?

In Chinese communities in America and other countries, it is common to find local associations or huiguan formed by members from the same province or village in China and Taiwan. These local associations provide capital to help their members start businesses. They also perform charitable and social functions and provide protection for their members. These associations play a key role in community building efforts, particularly in Chinatowns. They are formed because of the Chinese emphasis on the importance of family; in China, you consider the people from the same province or village as your extended family. Therefore, in order to engage any Chinese community in a community building effort, it will be useful to identify and involve the leaders of these associations. How do you find out about huiguans? Look in the Chinese newspapers (if you don't read Mandarin, ask someone who does); attend Chinese events and find out who sponsored them; walk around Chinatown (if there is one in your community or city) and look at the advertisements posted in grocery stores, restaurants, and shops.

Education also becomes an issue that can be used to mobilize the Chinese community. With the heavy emphasis on academic excellence, it is more likely that you can convince Chinese parents to show up for a meeting about the quality of their children's education than for a meeting about a recreational center for the community. This means that you should look for ways to link education to the issue that you are trying to address in your community building effort.

Recent Chinese immigrants fear very much that their children or the next generation will lose touch with their culture. Hence, they do whatever they can to teach their children how to speak and write Mandarin or other Chinese dialects. This desire has led to the creation of many Chinese schools in areas that have large populations of Chinese immigrants. Sometimes, these schools have their own buildings; at other times, they are conducted on the weekends in a public school. These schools can play a critical role in reaching out to the Chinese community.

In the African American community:

A group's history of oppression and survival also affects the way it is organized. The networks and organizations that form to protect the rights of their members influence the way in which members of the group organize for self-help. Enslaved Africans, who were "Christianized" by their European enslavers, used spiritual symbolism to preach freedom and to give their people hope and strength. As a result, in the African American culture, religious institutions, primarily Christian (e.g., the African Methodist Episcopal church), have functioned as mutual-aid societies, political forces, and education centers. While Christian churches are predominant among African Americans, the existence and leadership of the Nation of Islam and Muslim leaders in organizing the African American community should also be considered. Today, African American spiritual leaders are among the most influential leaders in African American communities. Therefore, in order to engage any African American community in a community building effort, it will be important to identify and involve that community's spiritual leaders.

How does this value affect the way African American communities are organized and participate in their communities?

In most African American and Black communities, it is common to find one or more churches that are the focal point for social, economic, and political activities. Spirituality, especially Christianity, provides an effective bridge among African Americans, Latinos, and European Americans.The Allied Communities of Tarrant (ACT) in Fort Worth, Texas, is an example of using spirituality to organize a coalition among leaders from these three communities. African American Baptist ministers, European American Lutheran and Disciples of Christ ministers, as well as Latino and European American Catholic priests who were connected to one another through their spiritual interests decided to work across racial lines in order to improve the quality of life for their members. With the help of the Industrial Areas Foundations (IAF), they struggled to identify their commonalties, differences -- especially related to race -- power, and assets. Eventually, they established ACT and took on the issue of school reform, starting with the African American community. African American church leaders came together to develop initiatives within their own churches to empower and support parents to participate in the effort.

In the Central American community:

Many Central Americans fled the poverty and oppression in their countries to seek a more secure and better life in a new place. As one person settled in the new location and saved enough money, he or she would help family members to migrate. Because of the informal and extended family networks that are part of the Central American culture, natural support systems develop to assist new arrivals.

Aside from culture, what other factors affect the social organization of Central Americans?

The close proximity of Central America to the United States (compared to other continents) plays a role in the social organization of Central Americans. Regional associations that are typically named after a town, a city, or a region in Central America emerge in the immigrants' new geographic setting to provide support in cultural identification, security, and maintenance of connection with their families and friends who remained behind in Central America. These associations are usually affiliated with religious groups, soccer clubs, political parties, revolutionary movements, or social service organizations in Central America. Because of this form of social organization, the Salvadoran community in the United States has been able to raise a large amount of funds to assist earthquake and hurricane victims in their homeland.

How can you build on these forms of social organization to engage the Central American community?

Soccer ("football") is a favorite activity among Central Americans. It is not unusual to see adults and children from Central American countries playing soccer in public parks and school compounds. Central American countries are very proud of their national soccer teams. It's similar to the way American football or baseball is valued in the United States, but it is more than just a game for immigrants. Soccer becomes an avenue for meeting other people from the same country or region and forming a social support network. If you are a community builder who is trying to bring various Central American groups together, try using soccer as the common ground!

The Catholic Church is also a key institution that holds members of the Central American communities together. Even in Central America, the church has played a leading role in political advocacy and organizing. In the immigrants' new country, the church continues to play this role, in addition to providing services and social support, and maintaining a line of communication between the immigrants and their families and friends in Central America. Build on the strength and influence of the church to bring credibility to your community building effort and to reach out to Central American communities.

In the Caribbean community:

Migration patterns can provide important information about a group of people. Typically, most immigrants come because they already have a relative or a friend that lives in the United States. They move in with the relatives or friends who also help them find their first job. In the Caribbean culture, there is a tradition of helping the new arrivals through rotating credit associations or saving clubs, otherwise known as susus. According to this tradition, a group of people pools their money and then loans it to someone who needs it. The borrower pays back the loan over a period of time and commits to stay in the susu until the payment is complete.

How can you build on these forms of social organization to engage the Caribbean community?

If your community building effort focuses on economic development, then it is important for you to identify the person who manages the susu. You could ask a Caribbean business or a mutual aid society for Caribbean immigrants for the contact person.

What do all these organizations and institutions have in common?

They support the social organization of a community. Depending on the community's culture and the context that the community has to survive in and adapt to, they all serve different functions.

How do culture and other factors affect the leadership of a community?

The information above showed that culture and other factors (social, economic, historical, and political) have an effect on the way a community organizes itself for self-help and support. The same can be said about leadership. There are different levels and types of leaders that support the social organization of a community. Sometimes, we make the mistake of assuming that there is only one leader in a community or that a leader has to look a certain way. Just as we respect and value the cultural diversity of communities, we have to respect and value the diversity of leadership.

What qualities do you think a leader should have?

In every ethnic or cultural group there are different individuals who are regarded as leaders by members of the group. Every leader has a place and a role in his or her community. Leaders can be categorized by type (e.g., political, religious, social), by issue (e.g., health, education, economic development), by rank (e.g., president, vice president), by place (e.g., neighborhood block, county, city, state, country), by age (e.g., elderly, youth), and so on.

Let's use the same communities described before. In Chinese communities, the leader is typically the head of the family. If family refers to a grandfather, father, mother, sons and daughters, and grandchildren, then the leader is the grandfather. If family refers to the congregation of a church, the leader is the pastor. If family refers to a clan, the leader is the President of the clan's association (or hui guan ).

In African American communities, the leader is typically a spiritual leader. A leader can also be someone who is successful in overcoming the barriers of institutionalized racism and provide opportunities for other African Americans to be treated equally by others in the mainstream society (e.g., a business person, an educator, or an elected official).

In Central American communities, the leader is also typically a spiritual leader. It can also be the coach of a soccer team or the president of an association that links a city in Central America with one in another country.

What do all these leaders have in common?

They provide guidance, they have influence over others, others respect them, they respond to the needs of others, and they put the welfare of others above their own. Every leader serves a specific function within the social organization of a community; however, the same type of leader in one community does not necessarily have the same role in another community. For example, a spiritual leader in a Chinese community is not regarded as a political leader, as he might be in the African American community.

What did you learn from the above information and examples?

How can you, the community builder, learn about the social organization of other ethnic and cultural groups?

• Go into the process with an open mind.
• Don't assume that the same leader, organization, or institution serves the same function across groups.
• Keep in mind that the social organization and leadership of a group is influenced by its culture, history, reasons for migration, geographic proximity to its homeland, economic success, intra-group tensions, and the way it fits into the political and social context of its new and surrounding society.
• Look for the formal and informal networks.
• Interview members of a group and ask where and whom they go to for help or when they have a problem.

Keep in mind : Among different groups, the church has different functions. For example, Korean and Chinese churches do not have strong political functions compared to Latino or African American churches. Korean churches serve their members socially by providing a structure and process for fellowship and sense of belonging, maintenance of ethnic identity and native traditions, social services, and social status. Korean pastors consider their churches as sanctuaries for their members and do not wish to burden them with messages related to political or economic issues. Instead, they focus on providing counseling and educational services to Korean families as well as clerical and lay positions for church members. Korean immigrants hold these positions in high regard.

What are examples of social networks and ethnic organizations that a community builder can use to learn about the social organization of a group, to identify and engage its leaders?

The section before emphasized the importance of learning about the social organization and leadership of various groups in a community so that you can tap into the appropriate resources and assets of each group. You understand that different organizations, institutions, and leaders play different roles in each group. Where do you start? How do you go about getting that knowledge?

Identify natural gathering points and traditions related to social gatherings . Tapping into natural gathering points and traditions related to social gatherings are excellent ways to identify and engage the local leaders and build community relationships. For example, in the Filipino community, tea time is a common practice due to historical European influence. Therefore, "tea meetings" in restaurants are useful for attracting community members to discuss issues and to ask how to involve them in community building efforts. Ethnic grocery stores also play a major role in distributing information to large numbers of people. These stores frequently have bulletin boards where notices are posted about all kinds of activities in that community. In addition, cultural celebrations draw large crowds and provide an effective avenue for outreach. Attend these gatherings. Find out who sponsored and organized them. Talk to the people who attend them. Ask them how they found out about the gatherings. Ask them who you should contact if you wanted more information about the gatherings.

Build on the informal networks of women . One way to engage a racial, ethnic, or cultural group is to tap into the informal networks of women. Go to places where women tend to go, such as the grocery store, the school their children attend, and the hair salon. Ask the parent coordinator at the school if you could speak to some of the mothers. It is likely that you will be able to identify one or more women who are respected by their peers and to whom everyone tells their problems.

Mujeres Unidas y Activas, a women's organization was born when a project that brought together women from various cultures showed that the women experienced similar concerns (e.g., public health issues related to their housing conditions, domestic abuse, concern for their children's education). After the project was completed, the women felt the need to continue to meet informally for mutual support. The network eventually became an organization that is involved in addressing issues that concern women.

Gain entry and credibility through traditional leadership structures . The approach is applicable to any group with a traditional leadership structure serving as a gatekeeper to its members. If you already understand the traditional leadership structure, use it to get support for what you are doing.

Keep in mind: Engaging the traditional leadership structures in some communities may perpetuate class, gender, or other differences. For example, the traditional leadership structure in Middle Eastern communities tends to be patriarchal. By choosing to engage the male leaders as a way to involve the larger community, you may be reinforcing that culture's treatment of women. Community builders must always be aware of the extent to which they might encounter and be required to address cultural traditions that reinforce inequities. At the same time, you have to be aware that by bypassing or trying to expand the traditional power structure, you may be sacrificing credibility with the community or, at the very least, losing some of the most powerful community leaders. If you think there's a need to change some aspects of the culture in a community that is not your own, it makes much more sense to work through members of that community, rather than challenging the leaders directly. Over time, you may be able to convince them, but you have to approach them in a way that doesn't rob them of dignity or belittle customs that have been taken for granted for generations.

Identify and work with the "bridge generation." Young people are the ideal bridge in most communities, especially in immigrant communities, because they are raised in traditional ways but schooled in the ways of the dominant culture. Young people typically accompany their parents to the clinic, school, faith institution, and many other places. Sometimes, they translate for their non-English speaking parents. Therefore, they are likely to know where their parents go for help and who organizes the events in their community.

Ask national organizations that serve and advocate on behalf of different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups for assistance.

National organizations with special concerns have become powerful forces in linking immigrants to mainstream American institutions. Examples include the American Physicians of Indian Origin, Japanese American Citizens League, National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Education Fund, Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the National Asian Pacific Center on Aging. These organizations play a more extensive role than faith-based institutions, community centers, or cultural programs do in bridging immigrant traditions with mainstream American institutions and values. As a community builder, you might want to engage these organizations if your community building effort is focused on advocacy for a specific issue.

Take advantage of programs that serve large numbers of immigrants . English as a Second or Other Language classes (ESOL) and citizenship workshops often attract large numbers of immigrants, particularly recent newcomers, and provide another way to reach them. Many of these programs are conducted on weekends and evenings.Even though their primary intent is to teach new immigrants how to function biculturally, they can also become social support systems. If you want to talk to or engage large numbers of people, try the ESOL classes and citizenship workshops.

Take advantage of ethnic neighborhoods . In places like Chinatown, Koreatown, and Little India, there are many businesses and organizations that serve the needs of the residents. Go to these neighborhoods, walk through them, and look for community centers, mutual aid organizations, and other businesses that advertise programs or attract larger numbers of people.

How else can you find out more about a community?

• Find an informant from that community and utilize his or her contacts to guide you toward other community members and leaders.
• Spend time at places that are frequented by members of the target group and talk to people there.
• Scan the neighborhood and/or ethnic newspaper for articles about major events and activities in a community and the organizations that sponsor them.
• Contact the editor of the newspaper to ask his/her opinion about who the leaders are in a community.
• Go to the ethnic grocery or convenience stores to review the announcements about events and other activities and the organizations that sponsor them.
• Look in the phone directory or search the Internet for a list of organizations that support a communinty.

Keep in mind: Relationship building and trust building are fundamental parts of the work, especially in cultures that may be less familiar to you and/or those that have experienced racism and other forms of oppression. Getting to know people and gaining their trust takes time, patience, and flexibility.

What are the challenges that you should be aware of and how can the challenges be overcome?

You must remember NOT to make any promises to the leader about anything until you have had the opportunity to speak to as many individuals as possible and determined the most appropriate leader to involve in the effort. Also, don't get drawn into the discussions about the merits or weaknesses of other leaders. Don't share information about what other leaders might or might not have said already. Just listen.

You have to consider several factors before you begin to engage any of the leaders in the community. How were previous community building efforts, if any, initiated in the past? Who initiated them? Was the effort effective? If not, what happened? This knowledge would help you understand the attitudes toward you and the community building you are involved in. You might also want to consider establishing an advisory group made up of leaders from different groups to help announce and plan the effort

Don't be afraid to acknowledge your ignorance. Display humility, respect the influence of each leader, and ask to be educated. You might consider starting off the conversation with a statement such as, "I know very little about your culture, but I understand that it is important to learn about it so that the community building effort I'm involved in can build on your cultural strengths and will not make assumptions about your group's needs. I really appreciate the time you are taking to talk to me and I look forward to learning from you."

• When working in a diverse community that is made up of two or more racial, ethnic, or cultural groups, it is unlikely that any one community builder will have all the linguistic skills and cultural knowledge needed to relate to all the groups. At the same time, you, the community builder may be a member of one of the groups. You must be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of working with a group of people that share your culture (e.g., a Chinese community builder working in a Chinese community). You have the advantage of already knowing the culture and the language. A disadvantage is that the informant may expect you to play favoritism because you "owe" your community.

A team made up of community builders from different racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds would allow for the ability to relate to a wide range of experiences, to speak multiple languages, and to empathize with the variety of challenges that community leaders face. It would also help to avoid some of the expectations and misperceptions about whom you represent and who would benefit from your effort. Furthermore, working in diverse community building teams set an example for the leaders of a group and across groups.

Maintain a neutral perspective and don't get drawn into discussions about other leaders. Reach out to as many types of leaders as possible. Explain that you are just in the information gathering stage; however, make note of the tensions so that you can be prepared to facilitate any potential conflicts in the future if those leaders happen to participate more extensively in the community building effort.

You could identify outside resources and expertise to help them or you could serve as a coach to the local group. This process itself can be a useful community building strategy.

Online Resources

Brown University Training Materials :  Cultural Competence and Community Studies: Concepts and Practices for Cultural Competence . The Northeast Education Partnership provides online access to PowerPoint training slides on topics in research ethics and cultural competence in environmental research. These have been created for professionals/students in environmental sciences, health, and policy; and community-based research.

Chapter 8: Respect for Diversity in the "Introduction to Community Psychology" explains cultural humility as an approach to diversity, the dimensions of diversity, the complexity of identity, and important cultural considerations.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Nonprofit Organizations by Sean Thomas-Breitfeld and Frances Kunreuther, from the International Encyclopedia of Civil Society.

Study, Discussion and Action on Issues of Race, Racism and Inclusion  - a partial list of resources utilized and prepared by Yusef Mgeni.

Print Resources

Casinitz, P. (1992). Caribbean New York. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Cordoba, C. (1995). Organizing with Central-American immigrants in the United States . In F.Rivera & J.Erlich (Eds.), Community organizing in a diverse society (pp. 177-196). Needham Heights, MA: Simon & Schuster.

Feagin, J. & Feagin, C. (1999). Racial and ethnic relations . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Simon & Schuster.

Hamilton, N. & Chinchilla, N.S. (2001). Seeking Community In A Global City . Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Hofstede, G. (1997). Culture and organizations . New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Karpathakis, A. (1999). Home society politics and immigrant political incorporations: The case of Greek immigrants in New York City . International Migration Review, 31 (4), pp. 55-78.

Lee, K. (2002). Lessons learned about civic participation among immigrants (draft). Report to the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region, Washington, DC.

Lee, P. (1995). Organizing in the Chinese-American community: Issues, strategies, and alternatives . In F.Rivera & J.Erlich (Eds.), Community organizing in a diverse society (pp. 113-142). Needham Heights, MA: Simon & Schuster.

Leonard, K. (1997). The South Asian Americans. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Min, P.G. (2000). The structure and social functions of Korean immigrant churches in the United States. In Zhou, M., & Gatewood, J. (eds.). Contemporary Asian American: A Multidisplinary Reader. New York: New York University Press.

Perkins, J. (Ed.). (1995). Restoring at-risk communities . Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

Warren, M. (2001). Dry bones ratting. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Chapter 6. Groups and Organizations

Learning objectives.

6.1. Types of Groups

• Understand primary and secondary groups as two key sociological groups
• Recognize in-groups and out-groups as subtypes of primary and secondary groups
• Define reference groups

6.2. Groups and Networks

• Determine the distinction between groups, social networks, and formal organizations
• Analyze the dynamics of dyads, triads, and larger social networks
• Distinguish between different styles of leadership
• Explain how conformity is impacted by groups
• Understand why groups and networks are more than the sum of their parts

6.3. Formal Organizations

• Understand the different types of formal organizations
• Categorize the characteristics of bureaucracies
• Analyze the opposing tendencies of bureaucracy toward efficiency and inefficiency
• Identify the concepts of the McDonaldization of society and the McJob as aspects of the process of rationalization

Introduction to Groups and Organizations

The punk band NOFX is playing outside in Los Angeles. The music is loud, the crowd pumped up and excited. But neither the lyrics nor the people in the audience are quite what you might expect. Mixed in with the punks and young rebel students are members of local unions, from well-dressed teachers to more grizzled labour leaders. The lyrics are not published anywhere but are available on YouTube: “We’re here to represent/The 99 percent/Occupy, occupy, occupy.” The song: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice If Every Movement Had a Theme Song” (Cabrel 2011).

At an Occupy camp in New York, roughly three dozen members of the Facilitation Working Group, a part of the General Assembly, take a steady stream of visitors with requests at their unofficial headquarters. One person wants a grant for $1,500 to make herbal medications available to those staying at the park. Another wants to present Native American peace principles derived from the Iroquois Confederacy. Yet another has a spreadsheet that he wants used as an evaluation tool for the facilitators. A group of women press for more inclusive language to be used in the “Declaration of the Occupation” document so that racial and women’s concerns are recognized as central to the movement.

In Victoria, B.C., a tent community springs up in Centennial Square outside city hall, just like tent cities in other parts of the country. Through the “horizontal decision-making process” of daily general assemblies, the community decides to change its name from Occupy Victoria to the  People’s Assembly of Victoria because of the negative colonial connotations of the word “occupy” for aboriginal members of the group. As the tent cities of the Occupy movement begin to be dismantled, forcibly in some cases, a separate movement, Idle No More, emerges to advocate for aboriginal justice.

Numerous groups make up the Occupy movement, yet there is no central movement leader. What makes a group something more than just a collection of people? How are leadership functions and styles established in a group dynamic?

Most people have a sense of what it means to be part of some kind of a group, whether it is a social movement, sports team, school club, or family. Groups connect us to others through commonalities of geography, interests, race, religion, and activities. But for the groups of people protesting from New York City to Victoria, B.C., and in the hundreds of cities in between, their connection within the Occupy Wall Street movement is harder to define. What unites these people? Are homeless people truly aligned with law school students? Do aboriginal people genuinely feel for the environmental protests against pipelines and fish farming?

Groups are prevalent in our social lives and provide a significant way to understand and define ourselves—both through groups we feel a connection to and those we do not. Groups also play an important role in society. As enduring social units, they help foster shared value systems and are key to the structure of society as we know it. There are four pri mary sociological perspectives for studying groups: functionalist, critical, feminist, and symbolic interactionist. We can look at the Occupy movement through the lenses of these methods to better understand the roles and challenges that groups offer.

The functionalist perspective is a big-picture, macro-level view that looks at how different aspects of society are intertwined. This perspective is based on the idea that society is a well-balanced system with all parts necessary to the whole. It studies the functions these parts play in the reproduction of the whole. In the case of the Occupy movement, a functionalist might look at what macro-level needs the movement serves. Structural functionalism recognizes that there are tensions or conflicts between different structural elements of the system. The huge inequalities generated by the economic system might function positively as part of the incentive needed for people to commit themselves to risky economic ventures, but they conflict with the normative structure of the political decision-making system based on equality and democratic principles. The Occupy movement forces both haves and have-nots to pay attention to the imbalances between the economic and political systems. Occupy emerges as an expression of the disjunction between these two systems and functions as a means of initiating a resolution of the issues.

The critical perspective is another macroanalytical view, one that focuses on the genesis and growth of inequality. A critical theorist studying the Occupy movement might look at how business interests have manipulated the system to reduce financial regulations and corporate taxes over the last 30 years. In particular, they would be interested in how these led to the financial crisis of 2008 and the increasing inequality we see today. The slogan, “We are the 99%,” emblematic of the Occupy movement, refers to the massive redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the upper class. Even when the mismanagement of the corporate elite (i.e., the “1%”) had threatened the stability of people’s livelihoods and the entire global economy in the financial meltdown of 2008, and even when their corporations and financial institutions were receiving bailouts from the American and Canadian governments, their personal income, bonuses, and overall share of social wealth increased.

Feminist analysis of the Occupy movement would be interested in the connection  between contemporary capitalism and patriarchy. Why are women the poorest of the poor? They would also be interested in the type of organizational models used by the Occupy movement to understand and address the resulting issues of power structure  and economic injustice. The consciousness-raising techniques and non-hierarchical decision-making processes developed by feminists in the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, incorporated into the daily political activities of the Occupy movement in order to extend the critique of corporate greed and financial institutions to largely invisible issues of privilege and daily, personal struggle. Occupy Montreal adopted the concept of stepping back or “progressive stack” in their meetings. Men and other dominant movement figures were encouraged to step back from monopolizing the conversation so that a diversity of opinions and experiences could be heard.  “We are not here to reproduce the same monopolization of voice and power as the ‘1%,’ we are here to diversify spaces for radical inclusion” (Boler 2012).

A fourth perspective is the symbolic interactionist perspective. This method of analyzing groups takes a micro-level view. Instead of studying the big picture, these researchers look at the day-to-day interactions of groups. Studying these details, the interactionist looks at issues like leadership style, communicative interactions, and group dynamics. In the case of the Occupy movement, interactionists might ask, “How does a non-hierarchical organization work?”; “How is the social order of a diverse group maintained when there are no formal regulations in place?”; “What are the implicit or tacit rules such groups rely on?”; “How do members come to share a common set of meanings concerning what the movement is about?”

At one point during the occupation of Wall Street, speakers like Slovenian social critic and philosopher Slavoj Zizek were obliged to abandon the use of microphones and amplification to comply with noise bylaws. They gave their speeches one line at a time and the people within earshot repeated the lines so that those further away could hear. The symbolic interactionist would be interested in examining how this communicational format, despite its cumbersome nature, could come to be an expression of group solidarity.

6.1. Types of Groups

Most of us feel comfortable using the word “group” without giving it much thought. But what does it mean to be part of a group? The concept of a group is central to much of how we think about society and human interaction. As Georg Simmel (1858–1915) put it, “[s]ociety exists where a number of individuals enter into interaction” (1908). Society exists in groups. For Simmel, society did not exist otherwise. What fascinated him was the way in which people mutually attune to one another to create relatively enduring forms. In a group, individuals behave differently than they would if they were alone. They conform, they resist, they forge alliances, they cooperate, they betray, they organize, they defer gratification, they show respect, they expect obedience, they share, they manipulate, etc. Being in a group changes their behaviour and their abilities. This is one of the founding insights of sociology: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The group has properties over and above the properties of its individual members. It has a reality sui generis , of its own kind. But how exactly does the whole come to be greater?

Defining a Group

How can we hone the meaning of the term group more precisely for sociological purposes? The term is an amorphous one and can refer to a wide variety of gatherings, from just two people (think about a “group project” in school when you partner with another student), a club, a regular gathering of friends, or people who work together or share a hobby. In short, the term refers to 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. Of course, every time people gather, they do not necessarily form a group. An audience assembled to watch a street performer is a one-time random gathering. Conservative-minded people who come together to vote in an election are not a group because the members do not necessarily interact with one another with some frequency. People who exist in the same place at the same time, but who do not interact or share a sense of identity—such as a bunch of people standing in line at Starbucks—are considered an  aggregate , or a crowd. People who share similar characteristics but are not otherwise tied to one another in any way are considered a category .

An example of a category would be Millennials, the term given to all children born from approximately 1980 to 2000. Why are Millennials a category and not a group? Because while some of them may share a sense of identity, they do not, as a whole, interact frequently with each other.

Interestingly, people within an aggregate or category can become a group. During disasters, people in a neighbourhood (an aggregate) who did not know each other might become friendly and depend on each other at the local shelter. After the disaster ends and the people go back to simply living near each other, the feeling of cohesiveness may last since they have all shared an experience. They might remain a group, practising emergency readiness, coordinating supplies for next time, or taking turns caring for neighbours who need extra help. Similarly, there may be many groups within a single category. Consider teachers, for example. Within this category, groups may exist like teachers’ unions, teachers who coach, or staff members who are involved with the school board.

Types of Groups

Sociologist Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929) suggested that groups can broadly be divided into two categories: primary groups and secondary groups (Cooley 1909). According to Cooley, primary groups play the most critical role in our lives. The primary group is usually fairly small and is made up of individuals who generally engage face-to-face in long-term, emotional ways. This group serves emotional needs: expressive functions rather than pragmatic ones. The primary group is usually made up of significant others—those individuals who have the most impact on our socialization. The best example of a primary group is the family.

Secondary groups are often larger and impersonal. They may also be task focused and time limited. These groups serve an instrumental function rather than an expressive one, meaning that their role is more goal or task oriented than emotional. A classroom or office can be an example of a secondary group. Neither primary nor secondary groups are bound by strict definitions or set limits. In fact, people can move from one group to another. A graduate seminar, for example, can start as a secondary group focused on the class at hand, but as the students work together throughout their program, they may find common interests and strong ties that transform them into a primary group.

Peter Marsden (1987) refers to one’s group of close social contacts as a core discussion group . These are individuals with whom you can discuss important personal matters or with whom you choose to spend your free time. Christakis and Fowler (2009) found that the average North American had four close personal contacts. However, 12 percent of their sample had no close personal contacts of this sort, while 5 percent had more than eight close personal contacts. Half of the people listed in the core discussion group were characterized as friends, as might be expected, but the other half included family members, spouses, children, colleagues, and professional consultants of various sorts. Marsden’s original research from the 1980s showed that the size of the core discussion group decreases as one ages, there was no difference in size between men and women, and those with a post-secondary degree had core discussion groups almost twice the size of those who had not completed high school.

Making Connections: Careers in Sociology

Best friends she’s never met.

Writer Allison Levy worked alone. While she liked the freedom and flexibility of working from home, she sometimes missed having a community of coworkers, both for the practical purpose of brainstorming and the more social “water cooler” aspect. Levy did what many do in the internet age: she found a group of other writers online through a web forum. Over time, a group of approximately 20 writers, who all wrote for a similar audience, broke off from the larger forum and started a private invitation-only forum. While writers in general represent all genders, ages, and interests, it ended up being a collection of 20- and 30-something women who comprised the new forum—they all wrote fiction for children and young adults.

At first, the writers’ forum was clearly a secondary group united by the members’ professions and work situations. As Levy explained, “On the internet, you can be present or absent as often as you want. No one is expecting you to show up.” It was a useful place to research information about different publishers and who had recently sold what, and to track industry trends. But as time passed, Levy found it served a different purpose. Since the group shared other characteristics beyond their writing (such as age and gender), the online conversation naturally turned to matters such as childrearing, aging parents, health, and exercise. Levy found it was a sympathetic place to talk about any number of subjects, not just writing. Further, when people didn’t post for several days, others expressed concern, asking whether anyone had heard from the missing writers. It reached a point where most members would tell the group if they were travelling or needed to be offline for a while.

The group continued to share. One member on the site who was going through a difficult family illness wrote, “I don’t know where I’d be without you women. It is so great to have a place to vent that I know isn’t hurting anyone.” Others shared similar sentiments.

So is this a primary group? Most of these people have never met each other. They live in Hawaii, Australia, Minnesota, and across the world. They may never meet. Levy wrote recently to the group, saying, “Most of my ‘real-life’ friends and even my husband don’t really get the writing thing. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Despite the distance and the lack of physical contact, the group clearly fills an expressive need.

In-Groups and Out-Groups

One of the ways that groups can be powerful is through inclusion, and its inverse, exclusion. In-groups and out-groups are subcategories of primary and secondary groups that help identify this dynamic. Primary groups consist of both in-groups and out-groups, as do secondary groups. The feeling that one belongs in an elite or select group is a heady one, while the feeling of not being allowed in, or of being in competition with a group, can be motivating in a different way. Sociologist William Sumner (1840–1910) developed the concepts of in-group and out-group to explain this phenomenon (Sumner 1906). In short, an in-group is the group that an individual feels he or she belongs to, and believes it to be an integral part of who he or she is. An out-group, conversely, is a group someone doesn’t belong to; often there may be a feeling of disdain or competition in relation to an out-group. Sports teams, unions, and secret societies are examples of in-groups and out-groups; people may belong to, or be an outsider to, any of these.

While these affiliations can be neutral or even positive, such as the case of a team-sport competition, the concept of in-groups and out-groups can also explain some negative human behaviour, such as white supremacist movements like the Ku Klux Klan, or the bullying of gay or lesbian students. By defining others as “not like us” and inferior, in-groups can end up practicing ethnocentrism, racism, sexism, ageism, and heterosexism—manners of judging others negatively based on their culture, race, sex, age, or sexuality. Often, in-groups can form within a secondary group. For instance, a workplace can have cliques of people, from senior executives who play golf together, to engineers who write code together, to young singles who socialize after hours. While these in-groups might show favouritism and affinity for other in-group members, the overall organization may be unable or unwilling to acknowledge it. Therefore, it pays to be wary of the politics of in-groups, since members may exclude others as a form of gaining status within the group.

Making Connections: the Big Pictures

Bullying and cyberbullying: how technology has changed the game.

Most of us know that the old rhyme “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is inaccurate. Words can hurt, and never is that more apparent than in instances of bullying. Bullying has always existed, often reaching extreme levels of cruelty in children and young adults. People at these stages of life are especially vulnerable to others’ opinions of them, and they’re deeply invested in their peer groups. Today, technology has ushered in a new era of this dynamic. Cyberbullying is the use of interactive media by one person to torment another, and it is on the rise. Cyberbullying can mean sending threatening texts, harassing someone in a public forum (such as Facebook), hacking someone’s account and pretending to be him or her, posting embarrassing images online, and so on. A study by the Cyberbullying Research Center found that 20 percent of middle-school students admitted to “seriously thinking about committing suicide” as a result of online bullying (Hinduja and Patchin 2010). Whereas bullying face-to-face requires willingness to interact with your victim, cyberbullying allows bullies to harass others from the privacy of their homes without witnessing the damage firsthand. This form of bullying is particularly dangerous because it’s widely accessible and therefore easier to accomplish.

Cyberbullying, and bullying in general, made international headlines in 2012 when a 15-year-old girl, Amanda Todd, in Port Coquitlam, B.C., committed suicide after years of bullying by her peers and internet sexual exploitation. A month before her suicide, she posted a YouTube video in which she recounted her story. It began in grade 7 when she had been lured to reveal her breasts in a webcam photo. A year later, when she refused to give an anonymous male “a show,” the picture was circulated to her friends, family, and contacts on Facebook. Statistics Canada  report that 7 percent of internet users aged 18 and over have been cyberbullied, most commonly (73 percent) by receiving threatening or aggressive emails or text messages. Nine percent of adults who had a child at home aged 8 to 17 reported that at least one of their children had been cyberbullied. Two percent reported that their child had been lured or sexually solicited online (Perreault, 2011).

In the aftermath of Amanda Todd’s death, most provinces enacted strict guidelines and codes of conduct obliging schools to respond to cyberbullying and encouraging students to come forward to report victimization.  In 2013, the federal government proposed Bill C-13—the  Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act–which would make it illegal to share an intimate image of a person without that person’s consent. (Critics however note that the anti-cyberbullying provision in the bill is only a minor measure among many others that expand police powers to surveil all internet activity.) Will these measures change the behaviour of would-be cyberbullies? That remains to be seen. But hopefully communities can work to protect victims before they feel they must resort to extreme measures.

Reference Groups

A reference group is a group that people compare themselves to—it provides a standard of measurement. In Canadian society, peer groups are common reference groups. Children, teens, and adults pay attention to what their peers wear, what music they like, what they do with their free time—and they compare themselves to what they see. Most people have more than one reference group, so a middle-school boy might look not only at his classmates but also at his older brother’s friends and see a different set of norms. And he might observe the antics of his favourite athletes for yet another set of behaviours.

Some other examples of reference groups can be one’s church, synagogue, or mosque; one’s cultural centre, workplace, or family gathering; and even one’s parents. Often, reference groups convey competing messages. For instance, on television and in movies, young adults often have wonderful apartments, cars, and lively social lives despite not holding a job. In music videos, young women might dance and sing in a sexually aggressive way that suggests experience beyond their years. At all ages, we use reference groups to help guide our behaviour and show us social norms. So how important is it to surround yourself with positive reference groups? You may never meet or know a reference group, but it still impacts and influences how you act. Identifying reference groups can help you understand the source of the social identities you aspire to or want to distance yourself from.

Making Connections: Sociology in the Real World

University: a world of in-groups, out-groups, and reference groups.

For a student entering university, the sociological study of groups takes on an immediate and practical meaning. After all, when we arrive someplace new, most of us look around to see how well we fit in or stand out in the ways we want. This is a natural response to a reference group, and on a large campus, there can be many competing groups. Say you are a strong athlete who wants to play intramural sports, but your favourite musicians are a local punk band. You may find yourself engaged with two very different reference groups.

These reference groups can also become your in-groups or out-groups. For instance, different groups on campus might solicit you to join. Are there student-union-sponsored clubs at your school? Is there a club day when the student clubs set up tables and displays? The spelunking club, the Aikido club, the square dance club, the Conservative Party club, the Green Party club, the chess club, the jazz club, the kayak club, the tightrope walkers club, the peace and disarmament club, the French club, the young women in business club—enumerable clubs will try to convince students to join them. While most clubs are pretty casual, along with a shared interest comes many subtle cues about what sorts of people will fit in and what sorts will not. While most campus groups refrain from insulting competing groups, there is a definite sense of an in-group versus an out-group. “Them?” a member might say, “They’re all right, but they are pretty geeky.” Or, “Only really straight people join that group.” This immediate categorization into in-groups and out-groups means that students must choose carefully, since whatever group they associate with will not just define their friends—it may also define types of people with whom they will not associate.

6.2. Groups and Networks

Dyads, triads, and social networks.

A small group is typically one where the collection of people is small enough that all members of the group know each other and share simultaneous interaction, such as a nuclear family, a dyad, or a triad. Georg Simmel wrote extensively about the difference between a  dyad , or two-member group, and a  triad , a three-member group (Simmel 1902 (1950)). No matter what the content of the groups is—business, friendship, family, teamwork, etc.—the dynamic or formal qualities of the groups differ simply by virtue of the number of individuals involved. In a dyad, if one person withdraws, the group can no longer exist. Examples include a divorce, which effectively ends the “group” of the married couple, or two best friends never speaking again. Neither of the two members can hide what he or she has done behind the group, nor hold the group responsible for what he or she has failed to do.

In a triad, however, the dynamic is quite different. If one person withdraws, the group lives on. A triad has a different set of relationships. If there are three in the group, two-against-one dynamics can develop and the potential exists for a majority opinion on any issue. At the same time, the relationships in a triad cannot be as close as in a dyad because a third person always intrudes. Where a group of two is both closer and more unstable than a group of three, because it rests on the immediate, ongoing reciprocity of the two members, a group of three is able to attain a sense of super-personal life, independent of the members.

The difference between a dyad and a triad is an example of network analysis. A social network  is a collection of people tied together by a specific configuration of connections. They can be characterized by the number of people involved, as in the dyad and triad, but also in terms of their structures (who is connected to whom) and functions (what flows across ties). The particular configurations of the connections determine how networks are able to do more things and different things than individuals acting on their own could. Networks have this effect, regardless of the content of the connections or persons involved.

For example, if one person phones 50 people one after the other to see who could come out to play ball hockey on Wednesday night, it would take a long time to work through the phone list. The structure of the network would be one in which the telephone caller has an individual connection with each of the 50 players, but the players themselves do not necessarily have any connections with each other. There is only one node in the network. On the other hand, if the telephone caller phones five key (or nodal) individuals, who would then call five individuals, and so on, then the telephone calling would be accomplished much more quickly. A telephone tree like this has a different network structure than the single telephone caller model does and can therefore accomplish the task much more efficiently and quickly. Of course the responsibility is also shared so there are more opportunities for the communication network to break down.

Network analysis is interesting because much of social life can be understood as operating outside of either formal organizations or traditional group structures. Social media like Twitter or Facebook connect people through networks. One’s posts are seen by friends, but also by friends of friends. The revolution in Tunisia in 2010–2011 was aided by social media networks, which were able to disseminate an accurate, or alternate, account of the events as they unfolded, even while the official media characterized the unrest as vandalism and terrorism (Zuckerman 2011). On the other hand, military counterinsurgency strategies trace cell phone connections to model the networks of insurgents in asymmetrical or guerilla warfare. Increased network densities indicate the ability of insurgents to mount coordinated attacks (Department of the Army 2006). The amorphous nature of global capital and the formation of a global capitalist class consciousness can also be analyzed by mapping interlocking directorates; namely, the way institutionalized social networks are established between banks and corporations in different parts of the world through shared board members (Carroll 2010).

Christakis and Fowler (2009) argue that social networks are influential in a wide range of social aspects of life including political opinions, weight gain, and happiness. They develop Stanley Milgram’s claim that there is only six degrees of separation between any two individuals on Earth by adding that in a network, it can be demonstrated that there are also three degrees of influence. That is, one is not only influenced by one’s immediate friends and social contacts, but by their friends, and their friends’ friends.  For example, an individual’s chance of becoming obese increases 57 percent if a friend becomes obese; it increases by 20 percent if it is a friend’s friend who becomes obese; and it increases 10 percent if it is a friend’s friend’s friend who becomes obese. Beyond the third degree of separation, there is no measurable influence.

Large Groups

It is difficult to define exactly when a small group becomes a large group. One step might be when there are too many people to join in a simultaneous discussion. Another might be when a group joins with other groups as part of a movement that unites them. These larger groups may share a geographic space, such as Occupy Montreal or the People’s Assembly of Victoria, or they might be spread out around the globe. The larger the group, the more attention it can garner, and the more pressure members can put toward whatever goal they wish to achieve. At the same time, the larger the group becomes, the more the risk grows for division and lack of cohesion.

Group Leadership

Often, larger groups require some kind of leadership. In small, primary groups, leadership tends to be informal. After all, most families don’t take a vote on who will rule the group, nor do most groups of friends. This is not to say that de facto leaders don’t emerge, but formal leadership is rare. In secondary groups, leadership is usually more overt. There are often clearly outlined roles and responsibilities, with a chain of command to follow. Some secondary groups, like the army, have highly structured and clearly understood chains of command, and many lives depend on those. After all, how well could soldiers function in a battle if they had no idea whom to listen to or if different people were calling out orders? Other secondary groups, like a workplace or a classroom, also have formal leaders, but the styles and functions of leadership can vary significantly.

Leadership function refers to the main focus or goal of the leader. An instrumental leader is one who is goal oriented and largely concerned with accomplishing set tasks. An army general or a Fortune 500 CEO would be an instrumental leader. In contrast, expressive leaders are more concerned with promoting emotional strength and health, and ensuring that people feel supported. Social and religious leaders—rabbis, priests, imams, and directors of youth homes and social service programs—are often perceived as expressive leaders. There is a longstanding stereotype that men are more instrumental leaders and women are more expressive leaders. Although gender roles have changed, even today many women and men who exhibit the opposite-gender manner can be seen as deviants and can encounter resistance. Former U.S. Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton provides an example of how society reacts to a high-profile woman who is an instrumental leader. Despite the stereotype, Boatwright and Forrest (2000) have found that both men and women prefer leaders who use a combination of expressive and instrumental leadership.

In addition to these leadership functions, there are three different leadership styles . Democratic leaders encourage group participation in all decision making. These leaders work hard to build consensus before choosing a course of action and moving forward. This type of leader is particularly common, for example, in a club where the members vote on which activities or projects to pursue. These leaders can be well liked, but there is often a challenge that the work will proceed slowly since consensus building is time-consuming. A further risk is that group members might pick sides and entrench themselves into opposing factions rather than reaching a solution. In contrast, a laissez-faire leader (French for “leave it alone”) is hands-off, allowing group members to self-manage and make their own decisions. An example of this kind of leader might be an art teacher who opens the art cupboard, leaves materials on the shelves, and tells students to help themselves and make some art. While this style can work well with highly motivated and mature participants who have clear goals and guidelines, it risks group dissolution and a lack of progress. As the name suggests, authoritarian leaders issue orders and assigns tasks. These leaders are clear instrumental leaders with a strong focus on meeting goals. Often, entrepreneurs fall into this mould, like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Not surprisingly, this type of leader risks alienating the workers. There are times, however, when this style of leadership can be required. In different circumstances, each of these leadership styles can be effective and successful. Consider what leadership style you prefer. Why? Do you like the same style in different areas of your life, such as a classroom, a workplace, and a sports team?

Women Leaders and the Glass Ceiling

Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party, was voted best parliamentarian of the year in 2012 and hardest working parliamentarian in 2013. She stands out among the party leaders as both the only female and the only leader focused on changing leadership style. Among her proposals for changing leadership are reducing centralization and hierarchical control of party leaders, allowing MPs to vote freely, decreasing narrow political partisanship, engaging in cross-partisan collaboration, and restoring respect and decorum to House of Commons debates. The focus on a collaborative, non-conflictual approach to politics is a component of her expressive leadership style, typically associated with female leadership qualities.

However, as a female leader Elizabeth May is obliged to walk a tight line that does not generally apply to male politicians. According to some political analysts, women candidates face a paradox: they must be as tough as their male opponents on issues such as foreign or economic policy or risk appearing weak (Weeks 2011). However, the stereotypical expectation of women as expressive leaders is still prevalent. Consider that Hillary Clinton’s popularity surged in her 2008 campaign for the U.S. Democratic presidential nomination after she cried on the campaign trail. It was enough for the New York Times to publish an editorial, “Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?” (Dowd 2008). Harsh, but her approval ratings soared afterwards. In fact, many compared it to how politically likable she was in the aftermath of President Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scandal.

In the case of Elizabeth May, many pundits believed that she won the 2008 election leaders debate by being firm in her criticism of government policy and being both intelligent and clear in her statements. (Notably, she was prevented from participating in the 2011 election leaders’ debate, perhaps for the same reasons.) She was able to articulate the rationale behind a national carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gases, whereas then Liberal leader Stéphane Dion seemed to struggle to explain his “Green Shift” policy.  “We tax the pollution, and we take the taxes off families,” she said (Foot 2008). The idea of winning debates and defeating opponents in a hostile environment is regarded as a masculine virtue. At the same time, May is subject to criticisms that have to do with her femininity, in a way that male politicians are not subject to similar criticisms about their masculinity. Media tycoon Conrad Black called her “a frumpy, noisy, ill-favoured, half-deranged windbag” to which, May quipped, “He’s right on one point: I certainly am frumpy. I don’t have anything like Barbara Amiel’s [Black’s well-known journalist wife] sense of style. But on the whole, I figure being attacked by Conrad Black is in its own way an accolade in this country” (Allemang 2009).

Despite the cleverness of May’s retort, the pitfalls of her situation as a female leader reflect broader issues women confront in assuming leadership roles. Whereas women have been closing the gap with men in terms of workforce participation and educational attainment over the last decades, their average income  has remained at approximately 70 percent of men’s and their representation in leadership roles (legislators, senior officials, and managers) has remained at 50 percent of men’s (i.e., men are twice as likely as women to attain leadership roles in these professions than women). In terms of the representation of women in Parliament, cabinet, and political leadership, the figures are much lower at 15 percent (despite the fact that several provinces have had women as premiers) (McInturff 2013).

One concept for describing the situation facing women’s access to leadership positions is  the glass ceiling . Whereas most of the explicit barriers to women’s achievement have been removed through legislative action, norms of gender equality, and affirmative action policies, women often get stuck at the level of middle management. There is a glass ceiling or invisible barrier that prevents them from achieving positions of leadership (Tannen 1994).  This is also reflected in gender inequality in income over time. Early in their careers men’s and women’s incomes are more or less equal but at mid-career, the gap increases significantly (McInturff 2013).

Tannen argues that this barrier exists in part because of the different work styles of men and women, in particular conversational-style differences. Whereas men are very aggressive in their conversational style and their self-promotion, women are typically consensus builders who seek to avoid appearing bossy and arrogant. As a linguistic strategy of office politics, it is common for men to say “I” and claim personal credit in situations where women would be more likely to use “we” and emphasize teamwork. As it is men who are often in the positions to make promotion decisions, they interpret women’s style of communication “as showing indecisiveness, inability to assume authority, and even incompetence” (Tannen 1994).

Because of qualities of women’s expressive leadership, which in many cases is more effective, their skills, merits, and achievements go unrecognized. In terms of political leadership, as one political analyst said bluntly, “women don’t succeed in politics—or other professions—unless they act like men. The standard for running for national office remains distinctly male” (Weeks 2011).

We all like to fit in to some degree. Likewise, when we want to stand out, we want to choose how we stand out and for what reasons. For example, a woman who loves cutting-edge fashion and wants to dress in thought-provoking new styles likely wants to be noticed within a framework of high fashion. She would not want people to think she was too poor to find proper clothes.  Conformity is the extent to which an individual complies with group norms or expectations. As you might recall, we use reference groups to assess and understand how we should act, dress, and behave. Not surprisingly, young people are particularly aware of who conforms and who does not. A high school boy whose mother makes him wear ironed button-down shirts might protest that he will look stupid—that everyone else wears T-shirts. Another high school boy might like wearing those shirts as a way of standing out. Recall Georg Simmel’s analysis of the contradictory dynamics of fashion: it represents both the need to conform and the need to stand out. How much do you enjoy being noticed? Do you consciously prefer to conform to group norms so as not to be singled out? Are there people in your class or peer group who immediately come to mind when you think about those who do, and do not, want to conform?

A number of famous experiments in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s tested the propensity of individuals to conform to authority. We have already examined the Stanford Prison experiment in Chapter 2. Within days of beginning the simulated prison experiment the random sample of university students proved themselves capable of conforming to the roles of prison guards and prisoners to an extreme degree, even though the conditions were highly artificial (Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo 1973).

Stanley Milgram conducted experiments in the 1960s on how structures of authority rendered individuals obedient (Milgram 1963). This was shortly after the Adolf Eichmann war crime trial in which Eichmann claimed that he was just a bureaucrat following orders when he helped to organize the Holocaust. Milgram had experimental subjects administer what they were led to believe were electric shocks to a subject when the subject gave a wrong answer to a question. Each time a wrong answer was given, the experimental subject was told to increase the intensity of the shock. The experiment was supposed to be testing the relationship between punishment and learning, but the subject receiving the shocks was an actor. As the experimental subjects increased the amount of voltage, the actor began to show distress, eventually begging to be released. When the subjects became reluctant to administer more shocks, Milgram (wearing a white lab coat to underline his authority as a scientist) assured them that the actor would be fine and that the results of the experiment would be compromised if the subject did not continue. Seventy-one percent of the experimental subjects were willing to continue administering shocks even beyond 285 volts even though the actor was clearly in pain and the voltage dial was labelled with warnings like “Danger: Severe shock.”

Making Connections: Sociological Research

Conforming to expectations.

Psychologist Solomon Asch (1907–1996) conducted experiments that illustrated how great the pressure to conform is, specifically within a small group (1956).  In 1951, he sat a small group of eight people around a table. Only one of the people sitting there was the true experimental subject; the rest were actors or associates of the experimenter. However, the subject was led to believe that the others were all, like him, people brought in for an experiment in visual judgments. The group was shown two cards, the first card with a single vertical line, and the second card with three vertical lines differing in length. The experimenter polled the group, asking each participant one at a time which line on the second card matched up with the line on the first card.

However, this was not really a test of visual judgment. Rather, it was Asch’s study on the pressures of conformity. He was curious to see what the effect of multiple wrong answers would be on the subject, who presumably was able to tell which lines matched. In order to test this, Asch had each planted respondent answer in a specific way. The subject was seated in such a way that he had to hear almost everyone else’s answers before it was his turn. Sometimes the non-subject members would unanimously choose an answer that was clearly wrong.

So what was the conclusion? Asch found that 37 out of 50 test subjects responded with an “obviously erroneous” answer at least once. When faced by a unanimous wrong answer from the rest of the group, the subject conformed to a mean of four of the staged answers. Asch revised the study and repeated it, wherein the subject still heard the staged wrong answers, but was allowed to write down his answer rather than speak it aloud. In this version, the number of examples of conformity—giving an incorrect answer so as not to contradict the group—fell by two-thirds. He also found that group size had an impact on how much pressure the subject felt to conform.

The results showed that speaking up when only one other person gave an erroneous answer was far more common than when five or six people defended the incorrect position. Finally, Asch discovered that people were far more likely to give the correct answer in the face of near-unanimous consent if they had a single ally. If even one person in the group also dissented, the subject conformed only a quarter as often. Clearly, it was easier to be a minority of two than a minority of one.

Asch concluded that there are two main causes for conformity: people want to be liked by the group or they believe the group is better informed than they are. He found his study results disturbing. To him, they revealed that intelligent, well-educated people would, with very little coaxing, go along with an untruth. He believed this result highlighted real problems with the education system and values in our society (Asch 1956).

What would you do in Asch’s experiment? Would you speak up? What would help you speak up and what would discourage you?

6.3. Formal Organizations

A complaint of modern life is that society is dominated by large and impersonal secondary organizations. From schools to businesses to health care to government, these organizations are referred to as formal organizations . A formal organization is a large secondary group deliberately organized to achieve its goals efficiently. Typically, formal organizations are highly bureaucratized. The term bureaucracy refers to what Max Weber termed “an ideal type” of formal organization (1922). In its sociological usage, “ideal” does not mean “best”; it refers to a general model that describes a collection of characteristics, or a type that could describe most examples of the item under discussion. For example, if your professor were to tell the class to picture a car in their minds, most students will picture a car that shares a set of characteristics: four wheels, a windshield, and so on. Everyone’s car will be somewhat different, however. Some might picture a two-door sports car while others might picture an SUV. It is possible for a car to have three wheels instead of four. However, the general idea of the car that everyone shares is the ideal type. Bureaucracies are similar. While each bureaucracy has its own idiosyncratic features, the way each is deliberately organized to achieve its goals efficiently shares a certain consistency. We will discuss bureaucracies as an ideal type of organization.

Types of Formal Organizations

Sociologist Amitai Etzioni (1975) posited that formal organizations fall into three categories.  Normative organizations , also called  voluntary organizations , are based on shared interests. As the name suggests, joining them is voluntary and typically done because people find membership rewarding in an intangible way. Compliance to the group is maintained through moral control. The Audubon Society or a ski club are examples of normative organizations.  Coercive organizations are groups that one must be coerced, or pushed, to join. These may include prison, the military, or a rehabilitation centre. Compliance is maintained through force and coercion. Goffman (1961) states that most coercive organizations are  total institutions . A total institution is one in which inmates live a controlled life apart from the rest of society and in which total resocialization takes place. The third type are  utilitarian organizations , which, as the name suggests, are joined because of the need for a specific material reward. High school or a workplace would fall into this category—one joined in pursuit of a diploma, the other in order to make money. Compliance is maintained through remuneration and rewards.

Table 6.1. Etzioni’s Three Types of Formal Organizations (Source: Etzioni 1975)

Bureaucracies

Bureaucracies are an ideal type of formal organization. Pioneer sociologist Max Weber (1922) popularly characterized a bureaucracy as having a hierarchy of authority, a clear division of labour, explicit rules, and impersonality. Bureaucracies were the basic structure of rational efficient organization, yet people often complain about bureaucracies, declaring them slow, rule-bound, difficult to navigate, and unfriendly. Let us take a look at terms that define  bureaucracy as an ideal type of formal organization to understand what they mean.

Hierarchy of authority refers to the aspect of bureaucracy that places one individual or office in charge of another, who in turn must answer to her own superiors. For example, if you are an employee at Walmart, your shift manager assigns you tasks. Your shift manager answers to the store manager, who must answer to the regional manager, and so on in a chain of command up to the CEO who must answer to the board members, who in turn answer to the stockholders. There is a clear chain of authority that enables the organization to make and comply with decisions.

A clear division of labour refers to the fact that within a bureaucracy, each individual has a specialized task to perform. For example, psychology professors teach psychology, but they do not attempt to provide students with financial aid forms. In this case, it is a clear and commonsensical division. But what about in a restaurant where food is backed up in the kitchen and a hostess is standing nearby texting on her phone? Her job is to seat customers, not to deliver food. Is this a smart division of labour?

The existence of explicit rules refers to the way in which rules are outlined, written down, and standardized. There is a continuous organization of official functions bound by rules. For example, at your college or university, student guidelines are contained within the student handbook. As technology changes and campuses encounter new concerns like cyberbullying, identity theft, and other issues, organizations are scrambling to ensure their explicit rules cover these emerging topics.

Bureaucracies are also characterized by impersonality , which takes personal feelings out of professional situations. Each office or position exists independently of its  incumbent, and clients and workers receive equal treatment. This characteristic grew, to some extent, out of a desire to eliminate the potential for nepotism, backroom deals, and other types of “irrational” favouritism, simultaneously protecting customers and others served by the organization. Impersonality is an attempt by large formal organizations to protect their members. However, the result is often that personal experience is disregarded. For example, you may be late for work because your car broke down, but the manager at Pizza Hut doesn’t care why you are late, only that you are late.

Finally, bureaucracies are, in theory at least, meritocracies , meaning that hiring and promotion are based on proven and documented skills, rather than on nepotism or random choice. In order to get into graduate school, you need to have an impressive transcript. In order to become a lawyer and represent clients, you must graduate from law school and pass the provincial bar exam. Of course, there is a popular image of bureaucracies that they reward conformity and sycophancy rather than skill or merit. How well do you think established meritocracies identify talent? Wealthy families hire tutors, interview coaches, test-prep services, and consultants to help their children get into the best schools. This starts as early as kindergarten in New York City, where competition for the most highly regarded schools is especially fierce. Are these schools, many of which have copious scholarship funds that are intended to make the school more democratic, really offering all applicants a fair shake?

There are several positive aspects of bureaucracies. They are intended to improve efficiency, ensure equal opportunities, and increase efficiency. And there are times when rigid hierarchies are needed. However, there is a clear component of irrationality within the rational organization of bureaucracies. Firstly, bureaucracies create conditions of bureaucratic alienation in which workers cannot find meaning in the repetitive, standardized nature of the tasks they are obliged to perform. As Max Weber put it, the “individual bureaucrat cannot squirm out of the apparatus in which he is harnessed… He is only a single cog in an ever‐moving mechanism which prescribes to him an essentially fixed route of march” (1922). Secondly, bureaucracies can lead to bureaucratic inefficiency and ritualism (red tape). They can focus on rules and regulations to the point of undermining the organization’s goals and purpose. Thirdly, bureaucracies have a tendency toward inertia. You may have heard the expression “trying to turn a tanker around mid-ocean,” which refers to the difficulties of changing direction with something large and set in its ways. Inertia means bureaucracies focus on perpetuating themselves rather than effectively accomplishing or re-evaluating the tasks they were designed to achieve. Finally, as Robert Michels (1911) suggested, bureaucracies are characterized by the iron law of oligarchy in which the organization is ruled by a few elites. The organization serves to promote the self-interest of oligarchs and insulate them from the needs of the public or clients.

Remember that many of our bureaucracies grew large at the same time that our school model was developed—during the Industrial Revolution. Young workers were trained and organizations were built for mass production, assembly-line work, and factory jobs. In these scenarios, a clear chain of command was critical. Now, in the information age, this kind of rigid training and adherence to protocol can actually decrease both productivity and efficiency. Today’s workplace requires a faster pace, more problem solving, and a flexible approach to work. Too much adherence to explicit rules and a division of labour can leave an organization behind. Unfortunately, once established, bureaucracies can take on a life of their own. As Max Weber said, “Once it is established, bureaucracy is among those social structures which are the hardest to destroy” (1922).

The McDonaldization of Society

The McDonaldization of society (Ritzer 1994) refers to the increasing presence of the fast-food business model in common social institutions. This business model includes efficiency (the division of labour), predictability, calculability, and control (monitoring). For example, in your average chain grocery store, people at the cash register check out customers while stockers keep the shelves full of goods, and deli workers slice meats and cheese to order (efficiency). Whenever you enter a store within that grocery chain, you receive the same type of goods, see the same store organization, and find the same brands at the same prices (predictability). You will find that goods are sold by the kilogram, so that you can weigh your fruit and vegetable purchases rather than simply guessing at the price for that bag of onions, while the employees use a time card to calculate their hours and receive overtime pay (calculability). Finally, you will notice that all store employees are wearing a uniform (and usually a name tag) so that they can be easily identified. There are security cameras to monitor the store, and some parts of the store, such as the stockroom, are generally considered off-limits to customers (control).

While McDonaldization has resulted in improved profits and an increased availability of various goods and services to more people worldwide, it has also reduced the variety of goods available in the marketplace while rendering available products uniform, generic, and bland. Think of the difference between a mass-produced shoe and one made by a local cobbler, between a chicken from a family-owned farm versus a corporate grower, or a cup of coffee from the local roaster instead of one from a coffee-shop chain. Ritzer also notes that the rational systems, as efficient as they are, are irrational in that they become more important than the people working within them, or the clients being served by them. “Most specifically, irrationality means that rational systems are unreasonable systems. By that I mean that they deny the basic humanity, the human reason, of the people who work within or are served by them.” (Ritzer 1994)

Secrets of the McJob

We often talk about bureaucracies disparagingly, and no organizations have taken more heat than fast-food restaurants. The book and movie Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schossler (2001) paints an ugly picture of what goes in, what goes on, and what comes out of fast-food chains. From their environmental impact to their role in the U.S. obesity epidemic, fast-food chains are connected to numerous societal ills. Furthermore, working at a fast-food restaurant is often disparaged, and even referred to dismissively, as a McJob rather than a real job.

But business school professor Jerry Newman (2007) went undercover and worked behind the counter at seven fast-food restaurants to discover what really goes on there. His book, My Secret Life on the McJob, documents his experience. Newman found, unlike Schossler, that these restaurants have much good alongside the bad. Specifically, he asserted that the employees were honest and hard-working, the management was often impressive, and the jobs required a lot more skill and effort than most people imagined. In the book, Newman cites a pharmaceutical executive who states that a fast-food service job on an applicant’s résumé is a plus because it indicates the employee is reliable and can handle pressure.

So what do you think? Are these McJobs and the organizations that offer them still serving a role in the economy and people’s careers? Or are they dead-end jobs that typify all that is negative about large bureaucracies? Have you ever worked in one? Would you?

aggregate   a collection of people who exist in the same place at the same time, but who don’t interact or share a sense of identity

authoritarian leader   a leader who issues orders and assigns tasks

bureaucracy   a formal organization characterized by a hierarchy of authority, a clear division of labour, explicit rules, and impersonality

category people who share similar characteristics but who are not connected in any way

clear division of labour the structuring of work in a bureaucracy such that each individual has a specialized task to perform

coercive organization organization that people do not voluntarily join, such as prison or a mental hospital

conformity the extent to which an individual complies with group or societal norms

core discussion group the group of close personal contacts with whom one confides on personal matters and with whom one chooses to spend free time

democratic leader  a leader who encourages group participation and consensus-building before acting

dyad a two-member group

explicit rules the types of rules in a bureaucracy; rules that are outlined, recorded, and standardized

expressive function a group function that serves an emotional need

expressive leader a leader who is concerned with process and with ensuring everyone’s emotional well-being

formal organizations large, impersonal organizations

glass ceiling an invisible barrier that prevents women from achieving positions of leadership

group refers to 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

hierarchy of authority a clear chain of command found in a bureaucracy

impersonality the absence of personal feelings from a professional situation

in-group a group a person belongs to and feels is an integral part of his or her identity

instrumental function orientation toward a task or goal

instrumental leader a leader who is goal oriented with a primary focus on accomplishing tasks

iron law of oligarchy  the theory that an organization is ruled by a few elites rather than through collaboration

laissez-faire leader a hands-off leader who allows members of the group to make their own decisions

leadership function the main focus or goal of a leader

leadership style the style a leader uses to achieve goals or elicit action from group members

McDonaldization the increasing presence of the fast-food business model in common social institutions

meritocracy a bureaucracy where membership and advancement are based on merit as shown through proven and documented skills

normative or voluntary organizations organizations that people join to pursue shared interests or because they provide intangible rewards

out-group a group that an individual is not a member of and may compete with

primary groups small, informal groups of people who are closest to us

reference groups  groups to which an individual compares herself or himself

secondary groups larger and more impersonal groups that are task focused and time limited

social network a collection of people tied together by a specific configuration of connections

total institution an organization in which participants live a controlled life and in which total resocialization occurs

triad a three-member group

utilitarian organization an organization that people join to fill a specific material need

Section Summary

6.1. Types of Groups Groups largely define how we think of ourselves. There are two main types of groups: primary and secondary. As the names suggest, the primary group is the long-term, complex one. People use groups as standards of comparison to define themselves—as both who they are and who they are not. Sometimes groups can be used to exclude people or as a tool that strengthens prejudice.

6.2. Groups and Networks The size and dynamic of a group greatly affects how members act. Primary groups rarely have formal leaders, although there can be informal leadership. Groups generally are considered large when there are too many members for a simultaneous discussion. Social networks are  collections of people tied together by a specific configuration of connections. The structure and function of the connections determine what the network is capable of and how it influences its members.

In secondary groups, there are two types of leadership functions, with expressive leaders focused on emotional health and wellness, and instrumental leaders more focused on results. Further, there are different leadership styles: democratic leaders, authoritarian leaders, and laissez-faire leaders.

Within a group, conformity is the extent to which people want to go along with the norm. A number of experiments have illustrated how strong the drive to conform can be. It is worth considering real-life examples of how conformity and obedience can lead people to ethically and morally suspect acts.

6.3. Formal Organizations Large organizations fall into three main categories: normative/voluntary, coercive, and utilitarian. We live in a time of contradiction: while the pace of change and technology are requiring people to be more nimble and less bureaucratic in their thinking, large bureaucracies like hospitals, schools, and governments are more hampered than ever by their organizational format. At the same time, the past few decades have seen the development of a trend to bureaucratize and conventionalize local institutions. Increasingly, Main Streets across the country resemble each other; instead of a Bob’s Coffee Shop and Jane’s Hair Salon there is a Dunkin Donuts and a Supercuts. This trend has been referred to as the McDonaldization of society.

Section Quiz

6.1. Types of Groups 1. What does a functionalist consider when studying a phenomenon like the Occupy Wall Street movement?

• The minute functions that every person at the protests plays in the whole
• The internal conflicts that play out within such a diverse and leaderless group
• How the movement contributes to the stability of society by offering the discontented a safe, controlled outlet for dissension
• The factions and divisions that form within the movement

2. What is the largest difference between the functionalist, conflict, and, interactionist perspectives?

• The first two consider long-term repercussions of the group or situation, while the last one focuses on the present.
• The first two are the more common sociological perspectives, while the last one is a newer sociological model.
• The first two focus on hierarchical roles within an organization, while the last one takes a more holistic view.
• The first two address large-scale issues facing groups, while the last one examines more detailed aspects.

3. What role do secondary groups play in society?

• They are transactional, task based, and short term, filling practical needs.
• They provide a social network that allows people to compare themselves to others.
• The members give and receive emotional support.
• They allow individuals to challenge their beliefs and prejudices.

4. When a high school student gets teased by her basketball team for receiving an academic award, she is dealing with competing ______________.

• Primary groups
• Reference groups
• Secondary groups

5. Which of the following is NOT an example of an in-group?

• The Ku Klux Klan
• A university club
• A synagogue
• A high school

6. What is a group whose values, norms, and beliefs come to serve as a standard for one’s own behaviour?

• Secondary group
• Formal organization
• Reference group
• Primary group

7. A parent who is worrying over her teenager’s dangerous and self-destructive behaviour and low self-esteem may wish to look at her child’s ______________.

• All of the above

6.2. Group Size and Structure 8. Two people who have just had a baby have turned from a _______ to a _________.

• Primary group; secondary group
• Dyad; triad
• Couple; family
• De facto group; nuclear family

9. Who is more likely to be an expressive leader?

• The sales manager of a fast-growing cosmetics company
• A high school teacher at a youth correctional facility
• The director of a summer camp for chronically ill children
• A manager at a fast-food restaurant

10. Which of the following is NOT an appropriate group for democratic leadership?

• A fire station
• A college classroom
• A high school prom committee
• A homeless shelter

11. In Asch’s study on conformity, what contributed to the ability of subjects to resist conforming?

• A very small group of witnesses
• The presence of an ally
• The ability to keep one’s answer private

12. Which type of group leadership has a communication pattern that flows from the top down?

• Authoritarian
• Laissez-faire

6.3. Formal Organizations 13. Which is NOT an example of a normative organization?

• A book club
• A church youth group
• A People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) protest group
• A study hall

14. Which of these is an example of a total institution?

• High school
• Political party

15. Why do people join utilitarian organizations?

• Because they feel an affinity with others there
• Because they receive a tangible benefit from joining
• Because they have no choice
• Because they feel pressured to do so

16. Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of bureaucracies?

• Coercion to join
• Hierarchy of authority
• Explicit rules
• Division of labour

17. What are some of the intended positive aspects of bureaucracies?

• Increased productivity
• Increased efficiency
• Equal treatment for all

18. What is an advantage of the McDonaldization of society?

• There is more variety of goods.
• There is less theft.
• There is more worldwide availability of goods.
• There is more opportunity for businesses.

19. What is a disadvantage of the McDonaldization of society?

• There is less variety of goods.
• There is an increased need for employees with postgraduate degrees.
• There is less competition so prices are higher.
• There are fewer jobs so unemployment increases.

Short Answer

• How has technology changed your primary groups and secondary groups? Do you have more (and separate) primary groups due to online connectivity? Do you believe that someone, like Levy, can have a true primary group made up of people she has never met? Why or why not?
• Compare and contrast two different political groups or organizations, such as the Occupy and Tea Party movements (in the United States) or one of the Arab Spring uprisings. How do the groups differ in terms of leadership, membership, and activities? How do the group’s goals influence participants? Are any of them in-groups (and have they created out-groups)? Explain your answer.
• The concept of hate crimes has been linked to in-groups and out-groups. Can you think of an example where people have been excluded or tormented due to this kind of group dynamic?

6.2. Group Size and Structure

• Think of a scenario where an authoritarian leadership style would be beneficial. Explain. What are the reasons it would work well? What are the risks?
• Describe a time you were led by a leader using, in your opinion, a leadership style that didn’t suit the situation. When and where was it? What could she or he have done better?
• Imagine you are in Asch’s study. Would you find it difficult to give the correct answer in that scenario? Why or why not? How would you change the study now to improve it?
• What kind of leader do you tend to be? Do you embrace different leadership styles and functions as the situation changes? Give an example of a time you were in a position of leadership. What function and style did you express?
• What do you think about the spotlight on fast-food restaurants? Do you think they contribute to society’s ills? Do you believe they provide a needed service? Have you ever worked in a fast-food restaurant? What did you learn?
• Do you consider today’s large companies like General Motors, Amazon, or Facebook to be bureaucracies? Why or why not? Which of the main characteristics of bureaucracies do you see in them? Which are absent?
• Where do you prefer to shop, eat out, or grab a cup of coffee? Large chains like Walmart or smaller retailers? Starbucks or a local restaurant? What do you base your decisions on? Does this section change how you think about these choices? Why or why not?

Further Research

6.1. Types of Groups For more information about cyberbullying causes and statistics, check out this website: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Cyberbullying

6.2. Group Size and Structure What is your leadership style? The website http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Leadership offers a quiz to help you find out.

Explore other experiments on conformity at http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Stanford-Prison .

6.3. Formal Organizations As mentioned above, the concept of McDonaldization is a growing one. The following link discusses this phenomenon further: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/McDonaldization .

6. Introduction to Groups and Organizations Boler, Megan. 2012. “Occupy feminism: Start of a fourth wave?” Rabble.c a. May 29. Retrieved February 25, 2014, from http://rabble.ca/news/2012/05/occupy-feminism-start-fourth-wave

Cabrel, Javier. 2011. “NOFX – Occupy LA.” LAWeekly.com , November 28. Retrieved February 10, 2012 ( http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/2011/11/nofx_-_occupy_la_-_11-28-2011.php ).

6.1. Types of Groups Christakis, N., & J. Fowler. 2009. Connected: The surprising power of our social networks and how they change our lives New York: Little Brown and Co.

Cooley, Charles Horton.1963 [1909]. Social Organizations: A Study of the Larger Mind . New York: Shocken.

Cyberbullying Research Center. Retrieved November 30, 2011 ( http://www.cyberbullying.us ).

Hinduja, Sameer and Justin W. Patchin.2010. “Bullying, Cyberbullying, and Suicide.” Archives of Suicide Research 14(3): 206–221.

Marsden, Peter. 1987. “Core discussion networks of Americans.” American Sociological Review . 52:122-131.

New York Times . 2011. “Times Topics: Occupy Wall Street.”Retrieved February 10, 2012 ( http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/o/occupy_wall_street/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=occupy wall street&st=cse ).

Occupy Wall Street. Retrieved November 27, 2011. ( http://occupywallst.org/about/ ).

Perreault, Samuel. 2011. Self-reported Internet victimization in Canada, 2009 . September 15. Juristat. Statistics Canada catalogue no. 85-002-X. Retrieved September 20, 2014, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2011001/article/11530-eng.pdf

Simmel, Georg. 1971 [1908]. “The problem of sociology.” Pp. 23–27 in D. Levine (Ed.), Georg Simmel: On Individuality and Social Forms.   Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Sumner, William. 1959 [1906]. Folkways. New York: Dover.

6.2. Groups and Networks Allemang, John. 2009.  “Elizabeth May is not only Losing Confidence – she agrees with Conrad Black.” The Globe and Mail. Toronto. April 18: F.3.

Asch, Solomon. 1956. “Studies of Independence and Conformity: A Minority of One Against a Unanimous Majority.” Psychological Monographs 70(9, Whole No. 416).

Boatwright, K.J. and L. Forrest. 2000. “Leadership Preferences: The Influence of Gender and Needs for Connection on Workers’ Ideal Preferences for Leadership Behaviors.” The Journal of Leadership Studies 7(2): 18–34.

Carroll, William. 2010. The Making of a Transnational Capitalist Class: Corporate Power in the 21st Century . London: Zed Books.

Christakis, Nicholas and James Fowler. 2009. Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives . NY: Little, Brown and Company

Department of the Army. 2006. Counterinsurgency . Marine Corps Warfighting Publication No. 3-33.5. Retrieved February 28, 2014, from http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24.pdf

Dowd, Maureen. 2008. “Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?” New York Times , January 9. Retrieved February 10, 2012 ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/opinion/08dowd.html?pagewanted=all ).

Foot, Richard. 2008 “May changes debate rules.” Edmonton Journal October 13: A.3.

Haney, C., W.C. Banks, and P.G. Zimbardo. 1973. “Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison.” International Journal of Criminology and Penology . 1, 69–97.

McInturff, Kate. 2013. Closing Canada’s Gender Gap: Year 2240 Here We Come! Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives . Ottawa. Retrieved February 28, 2014, from http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National Office/2013/04/Closing_Canadas_Gender_Gap_0.pdf

Milgram, Stanley. 1963. “Behavioral Study of Obedience.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67: 371–378.

Simmel, Georg. 1950. The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Glencoe , IL: The Free Press.

Tannen, Deborah. 1994. You Just Don’t Understand . NY: William Morrow and Co.

Weeks, Linton. 2011. “The Feminine Effect on Politics.” National Public Radio (NPR) , June 9. Retrieved February 10, 2012 ( http://www.npr.org/2011/06/09/137056376/the-feminine-effect-on-presidential-politics ).

Zuckerman, Ethan. 2011. “The First Twitter Revolution?” Foreign Policy . January 14. Retrieved February 28, 2014, from http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/14/the_first_twitter_revolution

6.3. Formal Organizations Etzioni, Amitai. 1975. A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations: On Power, Involvement, and Their Correlates . New York: Free Press.

Goffman, Erving. 1961. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates . Chicago, IL: Aldine.

Michels, Robert. 1949 [1911]. Political Parties. Glencoe , IL: Free Press.

Newman, Jerry. 2007. My Secret Life on the McJob . New York: McGraw-Hill.

Ritzer, George. 1994. The McDonaldization of Society. Thousand Oaks , CA: Pine Forge.

Schlosser, Eric. 2001. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

United States Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook , 2010–2011 Edition. Retrieved February 10, 2012 ( http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos162.htm ).

Weber, Max. 1946 [1922]. “Bureaucracy.” Pp. 196-244 in HH Gerth and CW Mills (ed.s) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology . NY: Oxford University Press.

Weber, Max. 1968 [1922]. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology . New York: Bedminster.

Solutions to Section Quiz

1.C  | 2. D  |  3. A  |  4.C  |  5.D  |  6. C  |  7. D  |  8. B  |  9. C  |  10. A  |  11. D  |  12. A  |  13. D  |  14. A  |  15. B  |  16. A  |  17. D  |  18. C  |  19. A

Image Attributions

Figure 6.1  Occupy Victoria (vii) by r.a. paterson ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/bcpaterson/6248358546/ ) used undr CC BY SA 2.0 ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ )

Figure 6.2.  OccupyWallStNYC by Daniel Latorre  ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/27035950@N00/6227096006/in/photolist-auguGf-afyaTi-7Lo4AY-bCfY2w-berYbr-2UuXHy-2NUZaXHayley ) used under CC BY 2.0 license ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 )

Figure 6.4.  Hayley Wickenheiser celebrates her first CIS goal with her teammates by Canada Hky  ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HayleyWickenheiserCgyGoal.jpg ) used under CC BY SA 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en )

Figure 6.8.  Elizabeth May on CBC Radio One by Tavis Ford  ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/18844496@N00/2636098278/in/photolist-51WGbj-51WFWb-6D9cQ5-51SxhB-52hu1p-52hthv-6ARSUr-6AQwwv-6ARQcr-6AUG5w-7h4N4z-7h8L7b-7h4MTg-7h4MXn-cgfWxd-7h8L1S-7ydn2Y-51WFzJ-4ZVGu8-51SrLR-51WFhC-jMr2NF-4wL16h-9HpMJ8-6Kya7i-6Ky5cV-6KCcFj-4wFS8v-dtR2AQ-9uRbK7-8mLSmJ-hNYDXb-78NtMk-esMbwk-esQAYh-esMgi8-esMcN8-esRCZh-esRHtJ-esQP4u-esQBg1-esRF2w-esN5r4-esN7gi-esMDwV-esMVGi-esNrjD-esQKPA-esQEWw-esQE5w-esMZkn ) used under CC BY 2.0 license ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ )

Figure 6.10. (a) Brownie and Cub compare badges by Girl Guides of Canada ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/54154001@N07/8488348265/in/photolist-dW61da-8tEAJ-bn4UBa-6tCvpF-dWdEfq-56iY6X-5L1NGX-dWbBuG-dW61eP-dW61hR-8inELS-8inDuu-dPi7vS-8SFGEu-4mMjN-5B9NeA ) used under CC BY 2.0 license ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ )

Introduction to Sociology - 1st Canadian Edition Copyright © 2014 by William Little and Ron McGivern is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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25 Social Organization Examples

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Social organization refers to the arrangement of individuals and the patterns of relationships among them within a society (Matsueda, 2006; Ritzer, 2015). At its core, social organization studies how a society or group structures its relationships to meet the needs of its members.

Social organization is a concept that applies to all types of social units, from communities and companies to societies. It aims to maintain stability, predictability, and productivity in social systems. For instance, in a workforce , there exist relationships between managers (who direct work) and employees (who perform tasks) which establish an organized structure for productivity.

This term is widely used in sociology, anthropology, and criminology to study how societies structure themselves, how they change over time, and the flow-on effects of this.

Social Organization Examples

1. Nuclear Families: Nuclear families are typically composed of parents and their children. This organization forms the basic unit and backbone of many societies. Some other families have other family structures , such as multigenerational households, which are also a form of social organization.

2. Extended Families: Extended families include aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins, beyond the basic family unit. They provide a wider network for support, resource sharing, and socialization. For example, adult siblings may take a role in raising one another’s children or sharing childcare duties.

3. Clans: Clans refer to groups of related families with a common ancestor. They often work together for common goals and protection. These were strong, for example, in Celtic regions of Britain and Ireland.

4. Tribes: Tribes are social organizations consisting of numerous families, clans, or other groups, usually under a recognized chief. They represent a larger collective identity based on common culture and ancestry.

5. Castes: Castes are social classes in certain cultures, where membership is hereditary. The caste system largely determines a person’s social status, occupation, and marriage prospects.

6. Social Classes: Social classes are divisions within society based on economic and social status. They shape opportunities and lifestyle choices for individuals. The organization of societies into class structures is often seen as a form of social inequality, especially when it leads to marginalization and exclusion.

7. Religious Congregations: Religious congregations are groups of people who gather for worship or religious instructions. They create a sense of community and spiritual belonging. For example, the vast network of Mormon churches allows a member to travel interstate and still have a religious network to draw upon wherever they are.

8. Youth Gangs: Youth gangs are informal groups of adolescents or young adults with a defined leadership and internal organization. They can offer identity, companionship, and protection, albeit often related to criminal activities.

9. Professional Associations: Professional associations are organizations of people who share the same profession. They offer networking opportunities , professional development, and advocacy.

10. Labor Unions: Labor unions are organized associations of workers formed to protect and further their rights and interests. They provide worker representation and promote fair labor practices.

11. Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs): NGOs are private sector organizations that operate to serve public causes. They often fill gaps left by governmental services and advocate for social issues.

12. Sports Teams: Sports teams are groups organized, usually by their skill level, to compete together against other teams. They promote teamwork, physical fitness, and competition.

13. Military Units: Military units are groups of armed forces with specific roles and hierarchies in defense operations. They maintain national security and sovereignty.

14. Corporations: Corporations are large business organizations that are separate legal entities from their owners. They drive economic activity, innovation, and provide employment.

15. Cooperative societies: Cooperative societies are business organizations owned and operated by the people who use their services. They promote economic cooperation and mutual benefit.

See Also: Cooperation Examples

16. Peer Groups: Peer groups consist of people who share similar interests and status, usually of similar age. They influence socialization and identity formation, especially during adolescence. They often form subcultures based on tastes and hobbies, such as the goths and the gamers.

17. Academic Institutions: Academic institutions provide structured education and research opportunities. They foster intellectual development, skill acquisition, and societal progress (Turkkahraman, 2015).

18. Fraternities and Sororities: Fraternities and sororities are social organizations for undergraduate students, typically single-sex. They offer social, academic, leadership, and service opportunities for their members.

19. Political Parties: Political parties are organized groups of people who share similar political views and strive to influence public policy. They structure political debate and represent citizen interests.

20. Hunter-Gatherer Bands: Hunter-gatherer bands are small, mobile, and fluid social groups who subsist on hunting wild animals and gathering wild plants. They represent one of the earliest forms of human social organization.

21. Intentional Communities: Intentional communities are groups of people who have chosen to live together with a common purpose, often embracing alternative lifestyles . They represent choices for communal living, shared resources, and often promote sustainable practices.

22. Online Communities: Online communities are groups of people who interact through the internet, based on shared interests or goals. They provide platforms for communication, sharing, and support that transcend physical boundaries.

23. Social Clubs: Social clubs are groups that gather regularly for social, recreational or professional interaction. They provide networking, recreation, and companionship opportunities.

24. Mutual Aid Societies: Mutual aid societies are voluntary associations formed to support and protect the interests of members. In these societies, members typically pool resources to provide assistance during times of need.

25. Civic Organizations: Civic organizations are nonprofit groups that seek to improve communities and promote the public good. They serve local community needs, encourage civic participation, and often form a vital link between individuals and government institutions.

Key Social Organization Theory Concepts

The study of social organization is often classified under the broad banner of ‘social organization theory’.

This is a key concern of many influential sociologists, including Emile Durkheim, Robert Merton, and even Karl Marx.

Critical concepts emergent out of social organization include: social hierarchy, social status, social roles, and social institutions .

• Social Hierarchy : All social organizations form hierarchies over time, which are demonstrations of what the societies value or see as the nodes of power (Kerbo, 2012). While some societies are more hierarchical than others, we can see it from the strongest dictatorship to bureaucratic organizations and even among primates.
• Social Status : This describes the position you occupy within a group hierarchy. For example, in capitalist societies, social status is often determined by your wealth (Bourdieu, 1979; Fiske, 2010).
• Social Roles : Social roles refer to the behaviors and attitudes expected from an individual occupying a certain status. In a classroom, for example, a teacher is expected to impart knowledge while the student learns.
• Social Institutions : Emile Durkheim, the founder of sociology, spent a lot of time focusing on social institutions. Durkheim argued that societies established institutions within a society, such as schools, police, and governments, are established to maintain norms, structure, and social order within the broader social organization (Durkheim, 1915; Miller, 2010). Even within specific organizations, such as workplaces, we may find institutions such as the HR department and the IT department.
• Social change : A key concern of sociologists is how societies change over time – with conflict theorists seeing change occurring through rapid transformation while functionalists see it as occurring through gradual change (Little, McGivern, & Kerins, 2016). Social change often occurs following points of friction where adaptation is necessary, such as whenever there is a social, economic or technological change in society.

See Related: Conflict Theory vs Functionalism

Norms within Social Organizations

Members of a group or society share common group norms and values that hold the organization together.

According to Durkheim, societies thrive when individuals have a common understanding and consensus about rules, roles and expectations. At the societal level, this is reflected in the establishment of social norms and taboos .

But at the smaller organizational level, we still see organizational norms. For example, if everyone on a team values punctuality, that commitment to a shared value helps to ensure smooth interactions and productivity.

Social organization is not a static phenomenon but a dynamic and evolving system that forms the basis of social interaction in any society. By understanding its components, and how they relate to one another, you can gain better insights into the complex fabric of human social life.

Bourdieu, P. (1979).  Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste.  London: Routledge. 

Durkheim, E. (1915).  The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: A Study in Religious Sociology.  New York: Macmillan.

Fiske, S. (2010) Interpersonal Stratification: Status, Power, and Subordination. (pp. 941–982). In Fiske, S., Gilbert, D. & Lindzey, G. (eds.)  Handbook of  Social Psychology . Los Angeles: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Kerbo, H. (2012).  Social Stratification and Inequality: Class Conflict in the United States . New York: McGraw-Hill Education.

Little, W., McGivern, R., & Kerins, N. (2016).  Introduction to sociology-2nd Canadian edition . BC Campus.

Matsueda, R. L. (2006). Differential social organization, collective action, and crime.  Crime, law and social change ,  46 , 3-33. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-006-9045-1

Miller, S. (2010).  The Moral Foundations of Social Institutions – A Philosophical Study , Cambridge University Press.

Ritzer, G. (2015). Essentials of sociology . New York: Sage Publications.

Turkkahraman, M. (2015). Education, teaching and school as a social organization.  Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences ,  186 , 381-387. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.04.044

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social structure , in sociology , the distinctive, stable arrangement of institutions whereby human beings in a society interact and live together. Social structure is often treated together with the concept of social change , which deals with the forces that change the social structure and the organization of society.

Although it is generally agreed that the term social structure refers to regularities in social life, its application is inconsistent. For example, the term is sometimes wrongly applied when other concepts such as custom, tradition, role , or norm would be more accurate.

Studies of social structure attempt to explain such matters as integration and trends in inequality. In the study of these phenomena, sociologists analyze organizations, social categories (such as age groups), or rates (such as of crime or birth). This approach, sometimes called formal sociology, does not refer directly to individual behaviour or interpersonal interaction. Therefore, the study of social structure is not considered a behavioral science; at this level, the analysis is too abstract. It is a step removed from the consideration of concrete human behaviour , even though the phenomena studied in social structure result from humans responding to each other and to their environments . Those who study social structure do, however, follow an empirical (observational) approach to research, methodology , and epistemology.

Social structure is sometimes defined simply as patterned social relations—those regular and repetitive aspects of the interactions between the members of a given social entity. Even on this descriptive level, the concept is highly abstract: it selects only certain elements from ongoing social activities. The larger the social entity considered, the more abstract the concept tends to be. For this reason, the social structure of a small group is generally more closely related to the daily activities of its individual members than is the social structure of a larger society. In the study of larger social groups, the problem of selection is acute: much depends on what is included as components of the social structure. Various theories offer different solutions to this problem of determining the primary characteristics of a social group .

Before these different theoretical views can be discussed, however, some remarks must be made on the general aspects of the social structure of any society. Social life is structured along the dimensions of time and space. Specific social activities take place at specific times, and time is divided into periods that are connected with the rhythms of social life—the routines of the day, the month, and the year. Specific social activities are also organized at specific places; particular places, for instance, are designated for such activities as working, worshiping, eating, and sleeping. Territorial boundaries delineate these places and are defined by rules of property that determine the use and possession of scarce goods. Additionally, in any society there is a more or less regular division of labour . Yet another universal structural characteristic of human societies is the regulation of violence . All violence is a potentially disruptive force; at the same time, it is a means of coercion and coordination of activities. Human beings have formed political units, such as nations, within which the use of violence is strictly regulated and which, at the same time, are organized for the use of violence against outside groups.

Furthermore, in any society there are arrangements within the structure for sexual reproduction and the care and education of the young. These arrangements take the form partly of kinship and marriage relations. Finally, systems of symbolic communication , particularly language, structure the interactions between the members of any society.

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5.1 Social Structure: The Building Blocks of Social Life

Learning objectives.

• Describe the difference between a status and a role.
• Understand the difference between an ascribed status, an achieved status, and a master status.
• List the major social institutions.

Social life is composed of many levels of building blocks, from the very micro to the very macro. These building blocks combine to form the social structure . As Chapter 1 “Sociology and the Sociological Perspective” explained, social structure refers to the social patterns through which a society is organized and can be horizontal or vertical. To recall, horizontal social structure refers to the social relationships and the social and physical characteristics of communities to which individuals belong, while vertical social structure , more commonly called social inequality , refers to ways in which a society or group ranks people in a hierarchy. This chapter’s discussion of social structure focuses primarily on horizontal social structure, while Chapter 8 “Social Stratification” through Chapter 12 “Aging and the Elderly” , as well as much material in other chapters, examine dimensions of social inequality. The (horizontal) social structure comprises several components, to which we now turn, starting with the most micro and ending with the most macro. Our discussion of social interaction in the second half of this chapter incorporates several of these components.

Status has many meanings in the dictionary and also within sociology, but for now we will define it as the position that someone occupies in society. This position is often a job title, but many other types of positions exist: student, parent, sibling, relative, friend, and so forth. It should be clear that status as used in this way conveys nothing about the prestige of the position, to use a common synonym for status. A physician’s job is a status with much prestige, but a shoeshiner’s job is a status with no prestige.

Any one individual often occupies several different statuses at the same time, and someone can simultaneously be a banker, Girl Scout troop leader, mother, school board member, volunteer at a homeless shelter, and spouse. This someone would be very busy! We call all the positions an individual occupies that person’s status set (see Figure 5.1 “Example of a Status Set” ).

Figure 5.1 Example of a Status Set

Sociologists usually speak of three types of statuses. The first type is ascribed status , which is the status that someone is born with and has no control over. There are relatively few ascribed statuses; the most common ones are our biological sex, race, parents’ social class and religious affiliation, and biological relationships (child, grandchild, sibling, and so forth).

Status refers to the position an individual occupies. Used in this way, a person’s status is not related to the prestige of that status. The jobs of physician and shoeshiner are both statuses, even though one of these jobs is much more prestigious than the other job.

Public Domain Images – CC0 public domain.

The second kind of status is called achieved status , which, as the name implies, is a status you achieve, at some point after birth, sometimes through your own efforts and sometimes because good or bad luck befalls you. The status of student is an achieved status, as is the status of restaurant server or romantic partner, to cite just two of the many achieved statuses that exist.

Two things about achieved statuses should be kept in mind. First, our ascribed statuses, and in particular our sex, race and ethnicity, and social class, often affect our ability to acquire and maintain many achieved statuses (such as college graduate). Second, achieved statuses can be viewed positively or negatively. Our society usually views achieved statuses such as physician, professor, or college student positively, but it certainly views achieved statuses such as burglar, prostitute, and pimp negatively.

The third type of status is called a master status . This is a status that is so important that it overrides other statuses you may hold. In terms of people’s reactions, master statuses can be either positive or negative for an individual depending on the particular master status they hold. Barack Obama now holds the positive master status of president of the United States: his status as president overrides all the other statuses he holds (husband, father, and so forth), and millions of Americans respect him, whether or not they voted for him or now favor his policies, because of this status. Many other positive master statuses exist in the political and entertainment worlds and in other spheres of life.

Some master statuses have negative consequences. To recall the medical student and nursing home news story that began this chapter, a physical disability often becomes such a master status. If you are bound to a wheelchair, for example, this fact becomes more important than the other statuses you have and may prompt people to perceive and interact with you negatively. In particular, they perceive you more in terms of your master status (someone bound to a wheelchair) than as the “person beneath” the master status, to cite Matt’s words. For similar reasons, gender, race, and sexual orientation may also be considered master statuses, as these statuses often subject women, people of color, and gays and lesbians, respectively, to discrimination and other problems, no matter what other statuses they may have.

Whatever status we occupy, certain objects signify any particular status. These objects are called status symbols . In popular terms, status symbol usually means something like a Rolls-Royce or BMW that shows off someone’s wealth or success, and many status symbols of this type exist. But sociologists use the term more generally than that. For example, the wheelchair that Matt the medical student rode for 12 days was a status symbol that signified his master status of someone with a (feigned) disability. If someone is pushing a stroller, the stroller is a status symbol that signifies that the person pushing it is a parent or caretaker of a young child.

Whatever its type, every status is accompanied by a role , which is the behavior expected of someone—and in fact everyone —with a certain status. You and most other people reading this book are students. Despite all the other differences among you, you have at least this one status in common. As such, there is a role expected of you as a student (at least by your professors); this role includes coming to class regularly, doing all the reading assigned from this textbook, and studying the best you can for exams. Roles for given statuses existed long before we were born, and they will continue long after we are no longer alive. A major dimension of socialization is learning the roles our society has and then behaving in the way a particular role demands.

Roles help us interact because we are familiar with the behavior associated with roles. Because shoppers and cashiers know what to expect of each other, their social interaction is possible.

David Tan – Cashier – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Because roles are the behavior expected of people in various statuses, they help us interact because we are familiar with the roles in the first place, a point to which the second half of this chapter returns. Suppose you are shopping in a department store. Your status is a shopper, and the role expected of you as a shopper—and of all shoppers—involves looking quietly at various items in the store, taking the ones you want to purchase to a checkout line, and paying for them. The person who takes your money is occupying another status in the store that we often call a cashier. The role expected of that cashier—and of all cashiers not only in that store but in every other store—is to accept your payment in a businesslike way and put your items in a bag. Because shoppers and cashiers all have these mutual expectations, their social interaction is possible.

Social Networks

Modern life seems increasingly characterized by social networks. A social network is the totality of relationships that link us to other people and groups and through them to still other people and groups. As Facebook and other social media show so clearly, social networks can be incredibly extensive. Social networks can be so large, of course, that an individual in a network may know little or nothing of another individual in the network (e.g., a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend). But these “friends of friends” can sometimes be an important source of practical advice and other kinds of help. They can “open doors” in the job market, they can introduce you to a potential romantic partner, they can pass through some tickets to the next big basketball game. As a key building block of social structure, social networks receive a fuller discussion in Chapter 6 “Groups and Organizations” .

Groups and Organizations

Groups and organizations are the next component of social structure. Because Chapter 6 “Groups and Organizations” discusses groups and organizations extensively, here we will simply define them and say one or two things about them.

A social group (hereafter just group ) consists of two or more people who regularly interact on the basis of mutual expectations and who share a common identity. To paraphrase John Donne, the 17th-century English poet, no one is an island; almost all people are members of many groups, including families, groups of friends, and groups of coworkers in a workplace. Sociology is sometimes called the study of group life, and it is difficult to imagine a modern society without many types of groups and a small, traditional society without at least some groups.

In terms of size, emotional bonding, and other characteristics, many types of groups exist, as Chapter 6 “Groups and Organizations” explains. But one of the most important types is the formal organization (also just organization ), which is a large group that follows explicit rules and procedures to achieve specific goals and tasks. For better and for worse, organizations are an essential feature of modern societies. Our banks, our hospitals, our schools, and so many other examples are all organizations, even if they differ from one another in many respects. In terms of their goals and other characteristics, several types of organizations exist, as Chapter 6 “Groups and Organizations” will again discuss.

Social Institutions

Yet another component of social structure is the social institution , or patterns of beliefs and behavior that help a society meet its basic needs. Modern society is filled with many social institutions that all help society meet its needs and achieve other goals and thus have a profound impact not only on the society as a whole but also on virtually every individual in a society. Examples of social institutions include the family, the economy, the polity (government), education, religion, and medicine. Chapter 13 “Work and the Economy” through Chapter 18 “Health and Medicine” examine each of these social institutions separately.

As those chapters will show, these social institutions all help the United States meet its basic needs, but they also have failings that prevent the United States from meeting all its needs. A particular problem is social inequality, to recall the vertical dimension of social structure, as our social institutions often fail many people because of their social class, race, ethnicity, gender, or all four. These chapters will also indicate that American society could better fulfill its needs if it followed certain practices and policies of other democracies that often help their societies “work” better than our own.

The largest component of social structure is, of course, society itself. Chapter 1 “Sociology and the Sociological Perspective” defined society as a group of people who live within a defined territory and who share a culture. Societies certainly differ in many ways; some are larger in population and some are smaller, some are modern and some are less modern. Since the origins of sociology during the 19th century, sociologists have tried to understand how and why modern, industrial society developed. Part of this understanding involves determining the differences between industrial societies and traditional ones.

One of the key differences between traditional and industrial societies is the emphasis placed on the community versus the emphasis placed on the individual. In traditional societies, community feeling and group commitment are usually the cornerstones of social life. In contrast, industrial society is more individualistic and impersonal. Whereas the people in traditional societies have close daily ties, those in industrial societies have many relationships in which one person barely knows the other person. Commitment to the group and community become less important in industrial societies, and individualism becomes more important.

Sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1887/1963) long ago characterized these key characteristics of traditional and industrial societies with the German words Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft . Gemeinschaft means human community, and Tönnies said that a sense of community characterizes traditional societies, where family, kin, and community ties are quite strong. As societies grew and industrialized and as people moved to cities, Tönnies said, social ties weakened and became more impersonal. Tönnies called this situation Gesellschaft and found it dismaying. Chapter 5 “Social Structure and Social Interaction” , Section 5.2 “The Development of Modern Society” discusses the development of societies in more detail.

Key Takeaways

• The major components of social structure are statuses, roles, social networks, groups and organizations, social institutions, and society.
• Specific types of statuses include the ascribed status, achieved status, and master status. Depending on the type of master status, an individual may be viewed positively or negatively because of a master status.

For Your Review

• Take a moment and list every status that you now occupy. Next to each status, indicate whether it is an ascribed status, achieved status, or master status.
• Take a moment and list every group to which you belong. Write a brief essay in which you comment on which of the groups are more meaningful to you and which are less meaningful to you.

Tönnies, F. (1963). Community and society . New York, NY: Harper and Row. (Original work published 1887).

Sociology Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

• Corpus ID: 141656686

Social Organization and Social Process: Essays in Honor of Anselm Strauss

• A. Strauss , D. Maines
• Published 31 December 1991

194 Citations

The mangle of practice: agency and emergence in the sociology of science, established sentiments, alternative agendas, and politics of concretization, institutions and work, the work sites of an american interactionist: anselm l. strauss, 1917–1996, looking for the bigger picture. analyzing governmentality in mosaic mode.

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Essays on Social Organisation and Values

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In this volume Professor Firth has brought together and commented upon a number of his papers on anthropological subjects published over the last thirty years. All these essays relate in different ways to his continuing interest in the study of social process, especially in the significance within a social context of individual choice and decision. Although some specialist studies are included, e.g. the group of papers dealing with the Polynesian island of Tikopia, the main themes of the book are broad ones and there are important general essays on such topics as social change; social structure and organization; modern society in relation to scientific and technological progress; and the study of values, mysticism, and religion by anthropologists. There is also a hitherto unpublished chapter on anthropology as a developing science.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part i | 170  pages, social organization, chapter | 4  pages, introductory notes, chapter chapter i | 23  pages, comment on 'dynamic theory' in social anthropology 1 (1962), chapter chapter ii | 29  pages, social organization and social change (1954), chapter chapter iii | 29  pages, some principles of social organization (1955), chapter chapter iv | 35  pages, marriage and the classificatory system of relationship (1930), chapter chapter v | 22  pages, authority and public opinion in tikopia (1949), chapter chapter vi | 26  pages, succession to chieftainship in tikopia (1960), part ii | 136  pages, meanings and values, chapter | 10  pages, chapter chapter vii | 8  pages, structural and moral changes produced in modern society by scientific and technological advance (1948), chapter chapter viii | 15  pages, social changes in the western pacific (1953), chapter chapter ix | 19  pages, the study of values by social anthropologists (1953), chapter chapter x | 32  pages, problem and assumption in an anthropological study of religion (1959), chapter chapter xi | 37  pages, religious belief and personal adjustment (1948), chapter chapter xii | 13  pages, an anthropological view of mysticism (1950).

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• How to structure an essay: Templates and tips

How to Structure an Essay | Tips & Templates

Published on September 18, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

The basic structure of an essay always consists of an introduction , a body , and a conclusion . But for many students, the most difficult part of structuring an essay is deciding how to organize information within the body.

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Table of contents

The basics of essay structure, chronological structure, compare-and-contrast structure, problems-methods-solutions structure, signposting to clarify your structure, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about essay structure.

There are two main things to keep in mind when working on your essay structure: making sure to include the right information in each part, and deciding how you’ll organize the information within the body.

Parts of an essay

The three parts that make up all essays are described in the table below.

Order of information

You’ll also have to consider how to present information within the body. There are a few general principles that can guide you here.

The first is that your argument should move from the simplest claim to the most complex . The body of a good argumentative essay often begins with simple and widely accepted claims, and then moves towards more complex and contentious ones.

For example, you might begin by describing a generally accepted philosophical concept, and then apply it to a new topic. The grounding in the general concept will allow the reader to understand your unique application of it.

The second principle is that background information should appear towards the beginning of your essay . General background is presented in the introduction. If you have additional background to present, this information will usually come at the start of the body.

The third principle is that everything in your essay should be relevant to the thesis . Ask yourself whether each piece of information advances your argument or provides necessary background. And make sure that the text clearly expresses each piece of information’s relevance.

The sections below present several organizational templates for essays: the chronological approach, the compare-and-contrast approach, and the problems-methods-solutions approach.

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The chronological approach (sometimes called the cause-and-effect approach) is probably the simplest way to structure an essay. It just means discussing events in the order in which they occurred, discussing how they are related (i.e. the cause and effect involved) as you go.

A chronological approach can be useful when your essay is about a series of events. Don’t rule out other approaches, though—even when the chronological approach is the obvious one, you might be able to bring out more with a different structure.

Explore the tabs below to see a general template and a specific example outline from an essay on the invention of the printing press.

• Thesis statement
• Discussion of event/period
• Consequences
• Importance of topic
• Strong closing statement
• Claim that the printing press marks the end of the Middle Ages
• Background on the low levels of literacy before the printing press
• Thesis statement: The invention of the printing press increased circulation of information in Europe, paving the way for the Reformation
• High levels of illiteracy in medieval Europe
• Literacy and thus knowledge and education were mainly the domain of religious and political elites
• Consequence: this discouraged political and religious change
• Invention of the printing press in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg
• Implications of the new technology for book production
• Consequence: Rapid spread of the technology and the printing of the Gutenberg Bible
• Trend for translating the Bible into vernacular languages during the years following the printing press’s invention
• Luther’s own translation of the Bible during the Reformation
• Consequence: The large-scale effects the Reformation would have on religion and politics
• Summarize the history described
• Stress the significance of the printing press to the events of this period

Essays with two or more main subjects are often structured around comparing and contrasting . For example, a literary analysis essay might compare two different texts, and an argumentative essay might compare the strengths of different arguments.

There are two main ways of structuring a compare-and-contrast essay: the alternating method, and the block method.

Alternating

In the alternating method, each paragraph compares your subjects in terms of a specific point of comparison. These points of comparison are therefore what defines each paragraph.

The tabs below show a general template for this structure, and a specific example for an essay comparing and contrasting distance learning with traditional classroom learning.

• Synthesis of arguments
• Topical relevance of distance learning in lockdown
• Increasing prevalence of distance learning over the last decade
• Thesis statement: While distance learning has certain advantages, it introduces multiple new accessibility issues that must be addressed for it to be as effective as classroom learning
• Classroom learning: Ease of identifying difficulties and privately discussing them
• Distance learning: Difficulty of noticing and unobtrusively helping
• Classroom learning: Difficulties accessing the classroom (disability, distance travelled from home)
• Distance learning: Difficulties with online work (lack of tech literacy, unreliable connection, distractions)
• Classroom learning: Tends to encourage personal engagement among students and with teacher, more relaxed social environment
• Distance learning: Greater ability to reach out to teacher privately
• Sum up, emphasize that distance learning introduces more difficulties than it solves
• Stress the importance of addressing issues with distance learning as it becomes increasingly common
• Distance learning may prove to be the future, but it still has a long way to go

In the block method, each subject is covered all in one go, potentially across multiple paragraphs. For example, you might write two paragraphs about your first subject and then two about your second subject, making comparisons back to the first.

The tabs again show a general template, followed by another essay on distance learning, this time with the body structured in blocks.

• Point 1 (compare)
• Point 2 (compare)
• Point 3 (compare)
• Point 4 (compare)
• Advantages: Flexibility, accessibility
• Disadvantages: Discomfort, challenges for those with poor internet or tech literacy
• Advantages: Potential for teacher to discuss issues with a student in a separate private call
• Disadvantages: Difficulty of identifying struggling students and aiding them unobtrusively, lack of personal interaction among students
• Advantages: More accessible to those with low tech literacy, equality of all sharing one learning environment
• Disadvantages: Students must live close enough to attend, commutes may vary, classrooms not always accessible for disabled students
• Advantages: Ease of picking up on signs a student is struggling, more personal interaction among students
• Disadvantages: May be harder for students to approach teacher privately in person to raise issues

An essay that concerns a specific problem (practical or theoretical) may be structured according to the problems-methods-solutions approach.

This is just what it sounds like: You define the problem, characterize a method or theory that may solve it, and finally analyze the problem, using this method or theory to arrive at a solution. If the problem is theoretical, the solution might be the analysis you present in the essay itself; otherwise, you might just present a proposed solution.

The tabs below show a template for this structure and an example outline for an essay about the problem of fake news.

• Introduce the problem
• Provide background
• Describe your approach to solving it
• Define the problem precisely
• Describe why it’s important
• Indicate previous approaches to the problem
• Present your new approach, and why it’s better
• Apply the new method or theory to the problem
• Indicate the solution you arrive at by doing so
• Assess (potential or actual) effectiveness of solution
• Describe the implications
• Problem: The growth of “fake news” online
• Prevalence of polarized/conspiracy-focused news sources online
• Thesis statement: Rather than attempting to stamp out online fake news through social media moderation, an effective approach to combating it must work with educational institutions to improve media literacy
• Definition: Deliberate disinformation designed to spread virally online
• Popularization of the term, growth of the phenomenon
• Previous approaches: Labeling and moderation on social media platforms
• Critique: This approach feeds conspiracies; the real solution is to improve media literacy so users can better identify fake news
• Greater emphasis should be placed on media literacy education in schools
• This allows people to assess news sources independently, rather than just being told which ones to trust
• This is a long-term solution but could be highly effective
• It would require significant organization and investment, but would equip people to judge news sources more effectively
• Rather than trying to contain the spread of fake news, we must teach the next generation not to fall for it

Signposting means guiding the reader through your essay with language that describes or hints at the structure of what follows.  It can help you clarify your structure for yourself as well as helping your reader follow your ideas.

The essay overview

In longer essays whose body is split into multiple named sections, the introduction often ends with an overview of the rest of the essay. This gives a brief description of the main idea or argument of each section.

The overview allows the reader to immediately understand what will be covered in the essay and in what order. Though it describes what  comes later in the text, it is generally written in the present tense . The following example is from a literary analysis essay on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

Transitions

Transition words and phrases are used throughout all good essays to link together different ideas. They help guide the reader through your text, and an essay that uses them effectively will be much easier to follow.

Various different relationships can be expressed by transition words, as shown in this example.

Because Hitler failed to respond to the British ultimatum, France and the UK declared war on Germany. Although it was an outcome the Allies had hoped to avoid, they were prepared to back up their ultimatum in order to combat the existential threat posed by the Third Reich.

Transition sentences may be included to transition between different paragraphs or sections of an essay. A good transition sentence moves the reader on to the next topic while indicating how it relates to the previous one.

… Distance learning, then, seems to improve accessibility in some ways while representing a step backwards in others.

However , considering the issue of personal interaction among students presents a different picture.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

College essays

• Choosing Essay Topic
• Write a College Essay
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• College Essay Format & Structure
• Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

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The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

An essay isn’t just a loose collection of facts and ideas. Instead, it should be centered on an overarching argument (summarized in your thesis statement ) that every part of the essay relates to.

The way you structure your essay is crucial to presenting your argument coherently. A well-structured essay helps your reader follow the logic of your ideas and understand your overall point.

Comparisons in essays are generally structured in one of two ways:

• The alternating method, where you compare your subjects side by side according to one specific aspect at a time.
• The block method, where you cover each subject separately in its entirety.

It’s also possible to combine both methods, for example by writing a full paragraph on each of your topics and then a final paragraph contrasting the two according to a specific metric.

You should try to follow your outline as you write your essay . However, if your ideas change or it becomes clear that your structure could be better, it’s okay to depart from your essay outline . Just make sure you know why you’re doing so.

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Caulfield, J. (2023, July 23). How to Structure an Essay | Tips & Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved August 29, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/essay-structure/

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Sociology Essay Topics for Students

This article is here to help with that by giving you a range of sociology essay topics that can get you started. Whether you’re interested in exploring social inequality, human behavior, or the impact of culture, there’s something here that will make writing process a little easier.

And if you’re still having trouble after checking out these topics, DoMyEssay is ready to help with any type of essay writing you need, so you don’t have to stress about it.

Writing a sociology essay can feel overwhelming, especially when you're trying to dig into complex social issues like poverty, gender, or social movements (you know, things that actually shape our everyday lives). A good sociology essay takes these big topics and breaks them down, helping to make sense of the world around us. 

How to Choose a Sociology Essay Topic?

Choosing a sociology essay topic doesn’t have to be complicated. The trick is to pick something that genuinely interests you and is manageable within the scope of your assignment. Here’s a simple guide to help you find the right sociology essay ideas.

• Go with What Interests You : Think about what catches your attention when it comes to society. Maybe you’re curious about how social media shapes the way we interact, or perhaps issues like poverty and inequality stand out to you. Choosing a sociology topic you’re actually interested in makes writing the essay a lot more enjoyable.
• Narrow It Down : Once you have a general area, try to focus on something more specific. For example, if gender issues are your thing, instead of covering gender inequality as a whole, you could look into the sociology topic of the gender pay gap in a particular industry or how media portrays gender roles. 
• Keep It Manageable : Make sure your sociology topic isn’t too broad or too narrow. A topic like “social inequality” could leave you with too much ground to cover. On the flip side, something too narrow, like “the effects of social media on one small town,” might not give you enough to work with. Aim for something in between, like “the impact of social media on teenage self-esteem,” which is specific but still offers plenty to explore. 
• Check Out Some Ideas : If you’re stuck, looking through some sociology essay ideas can help. You might find a topic that sparks your interest, like “how urbanization affects community ties” or “the role of education in social mobility.” 
• Make It Relevant : Lastly, pick a sociology topic that’s relevant to what’s happening today. Writing about something current, like the social impact of remote work, makes your essay more engaging and relatable.

Sociology Essay Topics about Poverty

• What challenges do people in rural areas face when trying to get healthcare while living in poverty?
• Essay on how living in a high-poverty neighborhood affects crime rates in cities.
• What role do government programs play in helping single mothers who are struggling with poverty?
• How does growing up in a poor family impact a child’s chances of doing well in school?
• Why do people in low-income communities often have trouble finding healthy food?
• What’s the connection between being homeless and living in poverty in big cities?
• How do students in inner-city schools get affected by a lack of resources due to poverty?
• How does the stigma of being poor affect people’s lives and opportunities?
• How do nonprofits help reduce poverty in developing countries?
• Relationship between poverty and substance abuse in struggling communities.
• How does income inequality affect healthcare and health outcomes?
• How do social support networks help people living in poverty in modern society?
• Essay on how cultural capital impacts a person’s chances of moving out of poverty
• Can universal basic income help reduce income inequality and poverty?
• How does income inequality influence child development from a sociological view?

Sociology Essay Topics about Human Behavior

• How do social media platforms influence human social behavior in contemporary society?
• Essay on what drives people to conform to group behavior, even when they disagree.
• How do cultural norms influence our behavior in different social settings?
• Why do people tend to follow the crowd in public situations?
• How does peer pressure impact decision-making among teenagers?
• What role does upbringing play in shaping a person’s behavior later in life?
• How do societal expectations affect the way we express emotions?
• What factors lead to aggressive behavior in stressful situations?
• How does living in a crowded city influence human behavior and mental health?
• What motivates acts of kindness in strangers?
• How do people’s behaviors change when they are in a position of authority?
• How does cultural diversity impact interpersonal relationships in modern society?
• How does mass media contribute to shaping public opinion and social behavior?
• Essay on how cultural values guide social behavior within different societies
• How do interpersonal relationships among college students reflect broader social behavior?

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Sociology Essay Topics about Gender Issues

• How do gender roles in childhood influence career choices later in life?
• Essay on challenges women face in male-dominated industries.
• How is masculinity portrayed in the media, and what impact does this have?
• What are the effects of the gender pay gap on family dynamics?
• How do gender stereotypes affect children’s self-esteem in school?
• What role does gender play in political representation around the world?
• How are non-binary and transgender individuals navigating traditional gender norms?
• What is the impact of feminism on modern gender roles?
• How do cultural differences shape views on gender equality?
• Challenges men face in expressing emotions due to societal expectations.
• How does gender affect access to healthcare services?
• How do contemporary movements challenge traditional gender norms from a sociological perspective?
• In what ways do traditional gender roles affect interpersonal relationships?
• How do cultural practices influence gender disparities in educational institutions?
• Essay on how media portrayal reinforces gender disparities in modern society

Sociology Topics about Social Movements

• How did the civil rights movement in the United States influence racial equality today?
• Essay on the key factors that lead to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
• How has social media transformed the way social movements gain momentum?
• Essay on the role women play in global environmental movements.
• How did the #MeToo movement change societal views on sexual harassment?
• What strategies have been most effective in the LGBTQ+ rights movement?
• How does the anti-globalization movement challenge corporate power?
• Essay on the long-term impacts of the labor movement on workers' rights.
• How did the Occupy Wall Street movement influence economic policy debates?
• What role do youth play in climate change activism?
• How have indigenous movements shaped policy changes regarding land rights?
• Factors that contribute to the success or failure of social movements.
• How does community dynamics influence the success of social movements?
• What role do social institutions play in supporting or opposing social movements?
• How do social movements address issues of environmental justice in different communities?

Sociology Essay Topics about Law and Order

• How does racial profiling by law enforcement impact community trust in urban areas?
• What are the social consequences of mandatory minimum sentencing laws?
• How does the criminal justice system handle cases involving mental illness?
• What role do private prisons play in the mass incarceration crisis in the United States?
• How effective are restorative justice programs in reducing recidivism rates?
• How does the “War on Drugs” policy influence incarceration rates among minority populations?
• What are the social implications of police militarization in American cities?
• How do socioeconomic factors influence the likelihood of receiving the death penalty?
• What impact does the school-to-prison pipeline have on marginalized youth?
• How does public perception of law enforcement vary between different social classes?
• What role do community policing strategies play in reducing crime in low-income neighborhoods?
• How does immigration law enforcement affect family structures in immigrant communities?
• What are the social effects of plea bargaining in the criminal justice system?
• How do anti-terrorism laws impact civil liberties in democratic societies?
• Long-term societal effects of criminal records on employment opportunities.

Sociology Essay Questions about Peace and War

• How do communities rebuild relationships between former enemies after a civil war?
• What specific challenges do women face when they participate in peace negotiations?
• How does hosting a large number of refugees affect a small town's economy and social structure?
• What social programs help former child soldiers adjust to life after conflict, and how effective are they?
• How do movies and TV shows about war influence public attitudes toward real-life military actions?
• What happens to local traditions and cultures when international peacekeepers are stationed in a region?
• How do veterans from different wars and conflicts experience returning to civilian life in their home countries?
• How does living under the threat of drone strikes change daily life for civilians in conflict zones?
• In what ways do modern military leaders use the concept of a “just war” to justify their strategies?
• What role do schools and education systems play in healing divisions in post-conflict societies?
• How do governments use media to create support for wars, and how does this affect national identity?
• How do small countries without nuclear weapons respond to the nuclear policies of larger powers?
• What challenges do societies face in remembering and commemorating wars while trying to build peace?
• How do grassroots peace movements successfully pressure governments to end military conflicts?
• Day-to-day effects of economic sanctions on families living in countries under these sanctions.

Sociology Essay Topics about Religion

• How do Christian teachings influence views on climate change among different denominations?
• What challenges do Muslim women face when balancing religious practices with Western workplace norms?
• How does the Hindu caste system affect social mobility in modern India?
• What role does religion play in the mental health of LGBTQ+ individuals within conservative communities?
• How do Jewish traditions around Sabbath observance affect work-life balance for families?
• How do interfaith couples navigate raising children with multiple religious backgrounds?
• What impact does Buddhism have on attitudes toward environmental conservation in Southeast Asia?
• How do religious rituals help immigrants maintain their cultural identity in a new country?
• What role does the Catholic Church play in shaping attitudes toward social justice in Latin America?
• How have Evangelical Christian movements influenced political elections in the United States?
• How does the practice of Ramadan shape social interactions in Muslim-majority countries?
• For this sociology topic, research the social implications of the rise of “nones” (people with no religious affiliation) in Western societies.
• How do religious organizations support refugees and migrants in times of crisis?
• How does the popularity of yoga in the West intersect with its religious roots in Hinduism?
• How do religious beliefs influence end-of-life decisions and practices in different cultures?

Sociology Topics about Education

• How does the pressure to get good grades affect high school students' mental health?
• How do kids from different economic backgrounds experience school differently?
• What happens to student opportunities when schools in cities get more funding than those in rural areas?
• How does having students from various cultures in a classroom change the way teachers teach?
• How do standardized tests shape what school is like for students from different backgrounds?
• How are schools handling the challenges and benefits of using more technology in the classroom?
• What changes when schools start including LGBTQ+ topics in their lessons?
• How does attending preschool or early childhood programs set kids up for success later in school?
• What role do after-school activities play in helping students make friends and do better in class?
• How do school choice options, like charter schools, change the way public schools operate?
• How do teachers' expectations affect how well students do, especially in schools that lack resources?
• What difference does it make when parents are really involved in their kids' education?
• How do the ways colleges pick students either level the playing field or keep social inequalities going?
• How is homeschooling changing the way we think about traditional schooling and socializing with peers?
• For this sociology topic, write about the results that come from teaching kids in more than one language, both academically and culturally.

Sociology Essay Topics about Unemployment

• What changes occur in mental health when someone is unemployed for a long time?
• How do high unemployment rates shape the social fabric of small towns?
• What role do unemployment benefits play in people's decisions about when to return to work?
• What obstacles do recent college graduates encounter when trying to find a job in a competitive market?
• How do family dynamics shift when a primary earner loses their job?
• How does having a lower education level relate to the chances of being unemployed?
• How are communities adjusting to job losses caused by automation and new technology?
• What are the different challenges faced by people in urban versus rural areas when looking for work?
• How does being unemployed affect someone's ability to move up the social ladder?
• What connection exists between unemployment and rising crime rates in struggling neighborhoods?
• How do different countries tackle unemployment, and what can we learn from their approaches?
• What specific hurdles do older workers face when trying to get back into the job market?
• How does being unemployed as a young person shape future career paths and opportunities?
• For this sociology topic, dive into the unique challenges minority communities face when dealing with unemployment.
• How does losing a job change the way people see themselves and their roles in society?

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Sociology Essay Topics about Family and Relationships

• How do parenting styles vary across different cultures, and what are the outcomes for children?
• What unique challenges do blended families face when trying to build strong bonds?
• How has the increase in single-parent households changed family life in recent years?
• What role does extended family play in raising children in different cultural settings?
• How do couples manage relationship difficulties when one partner has a demanding job?
• What are the social experiences of people who choose to remain child-free in a family-focused society?
• How do divorce rates in various countries reflect cultural attitudes toward marriage and commitment?
• How has technology, like texting and social media, reshaped communication within families?
• What are the different experiences of family life for same-sex couples compared to heterosexual couples?
• How do long-distance relationships challenge the way families stay connected?
• How do cultural expectations define the roles of husbands and wives in marriage and parenting?
• What challenges do immigrant families encounter when trying to keep their cultural identity while adapting to a new country?
• How does a family's economic situation shape its structure and daily life?
• For this sociology topic, explore what role grandparents take on in modern families, especially when it comes to helping with childcare.
• How does growing up in a multi-generational household shape a person’s view of family and relationships?

Sociology Essay Topics about Social Inequality

• How do children in wealthy and low-income neighborhoods experience different levels of access to education?
• Essay on the challenges communities face when housing segregation limits access to resources and opportunities.
• How do income differences shape the healthcare that people receive?
• In what ways does gender play a role in the wage differences seen across various industries?
• How do racial inequalities show up in everyday experiences within the criminal justice system?
• Essay on the obstacles people from minority backgrounds encounter when trying to advance in their careers.
• How does being a first-generation college student change the experience of accessing higher education?
• Essay on the social changes that occur in urban areas where the wealth gap is growing.
• How do people with disabilities navigate workplace challenges related to social inequality?
• Essay on the barriers marginalized communities face when trying to access healthcare.
• How do different countries tackle social inequality through government policies and social programs?
• How does social class shape the way people deal with and perceive climate change?
• Essay on the day-to-day challenges faced by low-income communities living in food deserts.
• How does unequal access to technology create challenges in education, especially for students in low-income areas?
• How does growing up in an unequal society shape a person’s mental health and chances for upward mobility?

Sociology Essay Questions about Culture

• How do cultural traditions shape the way families celebrate major life events?
• In what ways do immigrant communities maintain their cultural identity in a new country?
• How does popular culture influence the values and beliefs of younger generations?
• Essay on the role of the language in preserving cultural heritage.
• How do cultural differences impact communication styles in multicultural workplaces?
• Essay on the challenges of cultural assimilation for second-generation immigrants.
• How does globalization affect the preservation of local cultures?
• How do cultural norms around gender roles differ across societies, and how are they changing?
• Essay on the impact of the media on shaping cultural stereotypes.
• How do festivals and rituals contribute to a sense of community within a culture?
• In what ways do food traditions reflect cultural identity and history?
• How do cultural attitudes towards mental health differ around the world?
• How do art and music serve as expressions of cultural identity?
• Essay on the challenges indigenous cultures face in preserving their traditions in the modern world.
• How does consumer culture shape the way people express their social status and identity?