microsociology

• • Family 
  • It is the earliest and the most universal of all social institutions. It is also the most natural, simplest and permanent form of social organization
• • Community
  • Is defined as the total organisation of social life within a limited area
• • Association
  • Group organized for the pursuit of an interest or group of interests in common
• • Population 
  • Complete set group of individuals, whether that group comprises a nation or a group of people with a common characteristic
• • Aggregation 
  • The collecting of units or parts into a mass or whole; a group, body, or mass composed of many distinct parts
• • Network
  • Group of interdependent actors and the relationships between them
• • Societies
  • Group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory. 
• • Classes
  • is a group of people of similar status, commonly sharing comparable levels of power and wealth.
• • A group refers to any number of people who share some social relation
• Charles Cooley coined the term “primary group” meaning that this is the first group one is introduced to and is the most influential on our learning of ideas, beliefs, and ideals.
• Dictionary 

  • Elementary, fundamental, or first in order or in importance
• Sociology 

  • a plurality of persons who interact with one another in a given context more than they interact with anyone else.
• Social group 

  • Size of the group
  • Composition (Nature)
  • Form 
  • Duration
• Primary group 

  • Small number of participants
  • Homogeneous and congenial
  • Intimate interaction
  • Considerable length of time
• • “A hole in my exposition” is the missing link between the acquisition of human nature by an individual and the organized nature of group life”
• The Temporal Priority in Experience

  • More cogent and responsible than all others in attributing the quality of being primary to a group
  • Socialization and the Emergence of Personality
• Intimate Association and Interaction 

  • The nature of interaction inevitably reflects the nature of the group
  • We ness primary relations 
• The Feeling of a Psychological Unity or the Fusion of Individualisties in a common whole

  • Subjective factors, namely, the feelings, images, and ideas
  • Face-to-face association and cooperation 
• The Dissemination of the Primary Ideals

  • Loyalty, truth, service, kindness, etc., as primary ideals, are rooted in the congenial family
  • Primary ideas
• Primary relations

  • Feelings + images + ideas
  • Organization of Experience “We ness”
• Primary Ideals

  • Loyalty + truth+ service+ kindness 
  • Rooted in social organization
• • Behovioral sociology 
  • Relationship between the effects of an actor’s behavior on the environment and its impact on the actor’s later behavior
• • Operant conditioning
  • Learning process by which “behavior is modified by its consequences”
• Rewarding (Rewards/Reinforces)

  • Same behavior is likely to be emitted in the future in similar situations
• Painful (Costs/Punishments)

  • Less likely to occur in the future
• Exchange Theory of George Homans

  • Envisages social behavior as an exchange of activity, tangible or intangible, and more or less rewarding or costly, between at least two persons”
• Homans’s concern was humans. According to Homans, Skinner’s pigeons are not engaged in a true exchange relationship with the psychologist. Because there is no reciprocity,
• The Success Proposition

  • For all actions taken by persons, the more often a particular action of a person is rewarded, the more likely the person is to perform that action
• The Value Proposition

  • The more valuable to a person is the result of his action, the more likely he is to perform the action.
• The Stimulus Proposition

  • All this is affected by the individual’s alertness or attentiveness to stimuli.
• The Deprivation-Satiation Proposition

  • The greater the profit a person receives as a result of his action, the more likely he is to perform the action”
• • Homans relates the rationality proposition to the success, stimulus, and value propositions. The rationality proposition tells us that whether people will perform an action depends on their perceptions of the probability of success.
• Rational Choice Theory

  • Derived from neoclassical economics (as well as utilitarianism and game theory; Levi et al., 1990; Lindenberg, 2001; Simpson, 2007). Based on a variety of different models, Debra Friedman and Michael Hechter (1988) have put together what they describe as a “skeletal” model of this theory.
• Scarcity of resources

  • For those with lots of resources, the achievement of ends may be relatively easy. However, for those with few, if any, resources, the attainment of ends may be difficult or impossible.
• Social institutions 

  • Institutional constraints provide both positive and negative sanctions that serve to encourage certain actions and discourage others.
• Friedman and Hechter enumerate two other ideas that they see as basic to rational choice theory.
• Aggregation Mechanism 

  • The separate individual actions are combined to produce the social outcome” (D. Friedman and Hechter, 1988:203).
• Importance of Information

  • Perfect, or at least sufficient, information to make purposive choices / quantity or quality of available information
• When a person’s action does not receive the reward he expected or receives the punishment he did not expect, he will be angry; he becomes more likely to perform aggressive behavior.
• When a person’s action receives the reward he expected, especially a greater reward than he expected, or does not receive the punishment he expected, he will be pleased; he becomes more likely to perform approving behavior