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The concept of status can be broken down further into ascribed and achieved status. An ascribed status is one that is not chosen; it is beyond the individual’s control. It involves a position into which the individual is placed or to which he or she moves, regardless of what that person does or the nature of his or her capacities or accomplishments. In some cases, individuals are born into an ascribed status—for example, the status associated with race, ethnicity, social class, sex, or gender. In contrast, an achieved status is a position a person acquires based on accomplishment or the nature of the individual’s capacities. It may be based on merit or earned, or the person may choose it—for example, by seeking out and finding someone who will be a mate for life. Spouse, parent, and career as a “successful” entrepreneur are all achieved statuses. In addition, adults can achieve improvement in their social class or socioeconomic status (children’s social class is almost always ascribed).
Whether ascribed or achieved, a status can become a master status, or a position that is (or becomes) more important than any other status, both for the person in the position and for all others involved. A master status will become central to a person’s identity, roles, behaviors, and interactions. Primary examples of master statuses are those associated with race, disability, gender, and even sexuality.
The social roles connected with any statuses can be congruent; that is, the expectations attached to a given status can be consistent. Student status (achieved) may have role expectations of attending class and doing homework outside of class. But roles can also come into conflict—for example, going to class and keeping up with your social life. Role conflict can be defined as conflicting expectations associated with a given position or multiple positions (Merton 1957; Schmidt et al. 2014). A professor who is expected to excel at both teaching and research can be seen as having role conflict. Devoting a lot of time to research can mean that a professor is ill prepared to teach her classes. Or a professor may be torn between the expectations of being a teacher (preparing for class) and those of being a parent (playing with her children). A student may need to deal with the role conflict between being a student and studying and being a friend who spends the evening helping a close acquaintance deal with a personal problem.
Much research has been done on the role conflicts experienced by workers with domestic obligations. Each role interferes with the individual’s ability to satisfactorily meet the expectations associated with the other role (Moore 1995). Research has supported this idea. For example, women who work outside the home, who still tend to be responsible for the care of children and the home, experience higher levels of stress and poorer physical health than do working men (Gove and Hughes 1979; Pearlin 1989; Roehling, Hernandez Jarvis, and Swope 2005). The heavy burden of the female caretaking role inhibits women’s ability to fulfill their role as caretakers of themselves.
Another role-related problem is role overload, in which people are confronted with more expectations than they can possibly handle (Mathews, Winkel, and Wayne 2014). Students during final exams week are often confronted with role overload in trying to satisfy the expectations of several professors and courses. One study of the American “time crunch” and mental health suggests that feeling under time pressure is likely the active ingredient in role overload, which in turn affects people’s psychological well-being (Roxburgh 2004).
There is a tendency to see roles as fixed, unchanging, and constraining. However, people do have the ability to engage in role making. That is, they have the ability to modify their roles, at least to some degree (Turner 1978). Thus, the professor in the previous example might take her child to the office so that she can perform parent and teacher roles simultaneously. Researchers have noted that parents adopt a variety of strategies to reduce work–family conflict (Kelly et al. 2014; Minnotte and Minnotte 2018). Examples of such strategies include reducing work hours, turning down promotions, and negotiating trade-offs with one’s partner.
Micro-Level Social Structures
Through an accumulation of persistent patterns of interaction and social relationships, individuals contribute to the creation of social structures, which are enduring and regular social arrangements. Social structures include everything from the face-to-face interaction that is characteristic of the interaction order to networks, groups, organizations, societies, and the globe. This chapter focuses on micro-level social structures—interpersonal relationships, social networks, and groups. Chapter 5 covers larger-scale social structures.
Interpersonal Relationships
A good place to start a discussion of social structures is with another famous set of concepts created by Georg Simmel (1950) to describe the structures common to interpersonal relationships. A dyad is a two-person group, and a triad is a three-person group.
Dyads are the most basic of interpersonal relationships, but they often evolve into triads—as when a couple welcomes a new child. It would appear on the surface that the addition of one person to a dyad, creating a triad, would be of minimal importance sociologically. After all, how important can the addition of one person be? Simmel demonstrated that no further addition of members to a group, no matter how many that might be, is as important as the addition of a single person to a dyad. A good example is the dramatic change in the husband–wife relationship caused by the arrival of a first child. Another is the powerful impact of a new lover on an intimate dyadic relationship. In cases like these, social possibilities exist in the triad that do not exist in a dyad. For example, in a triad, two of the parties can form a coalition against the third: A wife and child can form a coalition against the husband. Or one member of the triad—say, the child—can take on the role of mediator or arbitrator in disputes involving the other members.
The most important point to be made about Simmel’s ideas on the triad is that it is the group structure that matters, not the people involved in the triad or the nature of their personalities. Different people with different personalities will make one triad different from another, but it is not the nature of the people or their personalities that make the triad itself possible.
Social Networks
Simmel’s work also informs the study of social networks (Erikson and Occhiuto 2017). The most basic social networks involve two or more individuals, but social networks also include groups, organizations, and societies; there can even be global social networks.
Network analysts are interested in how networks are organized and the implications of that organization for social life. They look at the nodes, or positions, occupied by individuals (and other entities) in a network, the linkages between nodes, and the importance of central nodes to other nodes in the network. Figure 4.1 shows a network with low centrality and one with high centrality. In the low-centrality network, one node appears in the center, but it is actually linked to only two other nodes. The central node in the high-centrality example is far more influential. Every other node is connected to it, and there is only one link that is independent of the central node. Those who occupy positions that are central in any network have access to a great many resources and therefore have a considerable ability to gain and to exercise power in a network.
Figure 4.1 Social Network Centrality
Source: Social Network Centrality is reprinted by permission of S Joshua Mendelsohn.
A key idea in network theory is the “strength of weak ties.”