ANT320H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Social Forces
Document Summary
Social structure: social forces that enable and constrain individual and group action: what about individual freedom/agency, structures are enabling. Provide regular patterns that we can all count on in our daily lives: structures are constraining. But they do make some choices/behaviors easier or more difficult: two parts of social structure. Roles and hierarchies: role: position within society that comes with a specific set of expectations about how to behave and be treated. Ascribed roles: given to you at birth. Achieved roles: roles you are not born with. Student, mother, doctor: hierarchies: relationships between individuals or groups that are unequal and provide one person/group with more status or power than another. Every single time we go along with it and play our role. Norms and institutions: norms: unwritten rules of society. Tell us what is and is not appropriate to do in any situation. Rules are written and talked about, norms are unwritten and usually do not need to be explained.
