Social Structures Reading Response

Question 1

Achieved status is attained on a basis of merit and denotes the position that one earns, choses, or is reflective of their individual efforts, abilities, or skills. For example, being a criminal lawyer or a financial market pundit is a status linked to one’s achievement. In contrast, an ascribed status goes beyond the control of an individual. One cannot earn it through effort but rather one is born with or lacks control over. For example, race, ethnicity, age, sex, or nationality. An ascribed status might impact an achieved status in different ways. For example, the racial background of a person may inhibit their employment status or the ability to better themselves. In this case, the ascribed status of the individual is an impediment to their success in the job market. It limits them to become better or to rise higher.

Question 2

According to Mead, the self is developed in a 3-stage role-taking structure. The stages are inclusive of the preparatory phase, the play phase, and the game phase. The first stage lasts about the first two years of one’s life where a child mimics their environment. In the next four years, the child enters the play stage where they engage in pretend play and not adhering to organized rules. In the game stage, a child understands and adheres to the rules of the game as they begin to comprehend the perspectives of other people and the viewpoints of a social group. in these processes, the mind provides individual importation for social processes. Mead terms the process as the “I and me” where ‘me” is representative of the social self while “I” responds to the “me”. The impulses of the individual are in the “I” and it is also the subject and “me” is the object. The processes are then able to inform human agency and determine how the self relates to the society.

Human agency can be termed as the capacity for decision making by humans and the ability to impose said choices on others (Halasz & Kaufman, 2008). Agency includes the actions and thoughts that people take to express individual power. For example, the Black Lives Movement has expressed individual power and how it creates a structure. Social structure is the interconnected and complex set of relationships, social forces, elements, and institutions that work in tandem to influence the life courses of people as well as their experiences, choices, and behavior. Agency contrasts social structure because it represents the autonomy of people to think for themselves and make choices or actions in a manner that shapes their life trajectories and experiences. Therefore, agency can take both collective or individual forms. Although social structure shapes people and groups, the former is also shaped by people and groups. Since society is a social creation, maintenance of order demands that there be cooperation between individuals and social structures.

Question 3

Drawing from Max Weber, George Ritzer defined McDonaldization as the mass production of culture as a result of similar cultural products available everywhere. Conventionally, corporates tend to acclimate to the local culture (Wynn, n.d.). However, McDonaldization is a trend towards the opposite where firms impose their own values and drive out local cultures. McDonaldization is, therefore, a form of cultural imperialism because it is an imposition by an economically dominant business of various elements of the American food culture onto other non-dominant communities.

McDonaldization may have led to an increased availability of products or services to more markets in the world as well as improved profits (Wynn, n.d.). However, it has also reduced the variety rendering what is there as bland, uniform, and generic. Culturally, a common culture is being achieved as similar products and their development, music, literature, knowledge ad fashion are dominating the world.

References

Halasz, J. R., & Kaufman, P. (2008). Sociology as pedagogy: How ideas from the discipline can

inform teaching and learning. Teaching Sociology, 36(4), 301-317.

Wynn, J. R., (n.d.). Culture: What is culture?