Learning Objectives
- Understand Simmel’s argument “there is no such thing as society as such.”
- Distinguish the forms and contents of social interactions.
- Situate sociological structures within three levels of analysis: micro, meso, and macro.
- Analyze the operation of a group as more than the sum of its parts.
- Understand primary and secondary groups as two key sociological groups.
- Recognize in-groups, out-groups, and reference groups as subtypes of primary and secondary groups.
- Distinguish between different styles of leadership.
- Explain how conformity is impacted by group membership.
- Distinguish between groups, social networks, and formal organizations.
- Analyze the dynamics of dyads, triads, and larger social networks.
- Categorize the different types of formal organizations.
- Define 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.
- Apply the sociological study of groups and bureaucracies to analyze the social conditions of the Holocaust.
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).
The slogan, “We are the 99%,” emblematic of the Occupy movement that flourished in North America in 2011 and 2012, refers to the redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the upper class (the “one percenters”). Even during the severe economic crisis after 2008, the personal income, bonuses, and overall share of social wealth of the elite 1% increased. Occupiers observed that the very people responsible for the crisis and the massive loss of wealth in the economy were paying themselves bonuses for a job well done, even while they were receiving billions of dollars in bailouts from the government. This would seem to be a grievance worthy of a movement, but simply having a grievance does not explain the ways in which movements take form as groups.
In Victoria, B.C., a tent community sprang 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 decided 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. Occupy Montreal adopted the concept of stepping back or “progres