Elementary Forms of Social Relations: Status, Power and Reference Groups PDF
Preview Elementary Forms of Social Relations: Status, Power and Reference Groups
Elementary Forms of Social Relations Elementary Forms of Social Relations introduces the reader to social life as a per- petual quest by individuals to gain attention, respect and regard (status) accom- panied by an effort to marshal defensive and offensive means (power) to overcome the reluctance of others to grant status. This work is based on empirical evidence from many research settings showing that status and power are the main relational modes and that to understand our own and others’ social behavior, we need to understand how status and power operate in relational conduct. The status- power and reference group approach is applied to enumerate the relatively few ways in which social interaction can occur. Chapters compare the analytic value of the concept of the self with the value of reference groups that create the self. Threads of investigation include: considering the fallacy of aban- doning reference groups as sources of cultural information in favor of approaches derived from cognitive neuroscience; examining a multi- person conversation from a status- power-and- reference-group stance as against a view of the same conversation based on principles of Conversation Analysis; and asserting the universality of personal status- power interests even among national leaders to name a few. By applying the author’s main theory to a range of specific cases, the author reaffirms the importance of the social to our understanding of a variety of phenomena, including the self, cultural transmission, the conduct of leaders and economic activity. This book provides readers with transparent instances of the theory in action and thus will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in theory and social interaction. Theodore D. Kemper is Professor of Sociology (Ret.) at St. John’s University, NY, USA. Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/series/RSSPT 109 Deconstructing Happiness Critical sociology and the good life Jordan McKenzie 110 Novels and the Sociology of the Contemporary Arpad Szakolczai 111 Liberty, Toleration and Equality John Locke, Jonas Proast and the Letters Concerning Toleration John William Tate 112 Jürgen Habermas and the European Economic Crisis Cosmopolitanism reconsidered Edited by Gaspare M. Genna, Thomas O. Haakenson, and Ian W. Wilson 113 Genealogies of Emotions, Intimacies, and Desire Theories of changes in emotional regimes from medieval society to late modernity Ann Brooks 114 Modernity and Crisis in the Thought of Michel Foucault The totality of reason Matan Oram 115 Crisis and Critique On the fragile foundations of social life Rodrigo Cordero 116 China in Early Enlightenment Political Thought Simon Kow 117 Elementary Forms of Social Relations Status, power and reference groups Theodore D. Kemper Elementary Forms of Social Relations Status, power and reference groups Theodore D. Kemper First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Theodore D. Kemper The right of Theodore D. Kemper to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Kemper, Theodore D., 1926– author. Title: Elementary forms of social relations : status, power and reference groups / Theodore D. Kemper. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016012581| ISBN 9781138696518 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315524375 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Social interaction. | Social status. | Social stratification. | Social structure. Classification: LCC HM1111 .K46 2017 | DDC 302–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016012581 ISBN: 978-1-138-69651-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-52437-5 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear Contents List of tables vi Preface vii Acknowledgments x 1 Elementary forms: status, power and reference groups 1 2 The minimum complexity of social relations 24 3 G. H. Mead had gotten it half-r ight 37 4 After the dialogical self, what? 51 5 The marriage of cognitive neuroscience and sociology: a dissenting view 58 6 A Nobel? Well, yes! But where’s the social? 73 7 Status, power and Conversational Analysis 91 8 Leaders and social relations 102 9 Some applications of status-p ower and reference group theory 115 10 Concluding theoretical considerations 129 Appendix: a status-p ower glossary 147 References 165 Index 179 Tables 2.1 Interactional outcomes 25 2.2 Sequences of interaction outcome recognition 35 9.1 Status-power interaction and emotions 119 9.2 Three models of the actor 122 Preface Some years ago, I set out with a colleague to write a textbook on Social Psychol- ogy. Ludicrously, we bogged down in chapter one. What had seemed straight- forward before putting pen to paper actually wasn’t. Our main problem was that we wanted to be systematic, but we failed to find a satisfactory system on which to base the book. One key to our trouble was that I couldn’t accept what a very famous social psychologist at the University of Wisconsin had once told me when I asked him for a definition of Social Psychology. His answer: “Social Psychology is whatever social psychologists do.” Too facile for me. Then I recollected something from my graduate training. One of the readings in a course in Small Group Analysis was Launor F. Carter’s (1954) “Evaluating the Performance of Individuals as Members of Small Groups.” Basing his conclusions on empirical studies by different investigators in different settings, Carter proposed that there were only three fundamental dimensions of social interaction or relation- ship. As I came to appreciate, this was a massively important statement. Abandon- ing the textbook, I began to explore the implications of Carter’s finding. To accentuate the sociological relevance of Carter’s three dimensions, I renamed them status, power and technical activity (these are discussed in Chapter 1). Adopting a trope from Durkheim ([1912] 1915), I believe that the relational dimensions of status and power along with reference groups (also dis- cussed in Chapter 1) are “elementary forms,” central to the depiction and ana- lysis of social relations. (Technical activity is not relational in the same way as status and power and hence has a subsidiary place in the analysis of relation- ships.) Using a modified version of Carter’s conclusions, I soon had some results about emotions and social relationships (see Kemper 1978) that persuaded me I was working one of the richest veins of the mother lode. From the despair of being unable to write a text book, I passed into the euphoria of someone who had struck theoretical gold. In time, however, I began to wonder about my good fortune. If I was so smart, how was it that other social scientists did not see what I saw in Carter’s work? How come they too weren’t thinking further the implications of Carter’s model of what transpires in social relationships—what people want and claim from others, what they work for with others, what they contest others for, what they live for and what they sometimes kill and die for? viii Preface Ultimately, I realized that those social scientists not working out the implica- tions of Carter’s findings were acting quite normally according to my own status- power and reference group theory. In a nutshell, they were being com- mendably loyal to those reference groups—their teachers and mentors—that had taught them how to do Science. Had the social scientists I wondered about attended my graduate program and followed the particular path I took through it, they too would have encountered Carter’s work and, perhaps, as I was, be impressed by it as an important heuristic template for the understanding of social behavior. By following the path set out by their teachers and mentors they were merely enacting the expected status- power and reference groups terms of their relationship with them. In just the same way that I was being steadfast in my relationship with my teachers and mentors. It was as simple (and as complicated) as that. I have pursued the implications of Carter’s proposal in many articles and three longer works (Kemper 1978, 1990, 2011). Here I take up a very strong version of the status- power and reference group explanation of human behavior, to a degree sufficient to court the allegation of “sociologism.” Let me consider this possible charge. Twin studies examine “personality” and find that monozygotic twins have more similar personalities than do dizygotic twins and are even more different from non- twin siblings (Bouchard et al. 1990). But society is very broad and has both prescribed and optional requirements. Regardless of biology, everyone in the United States must drive on the right. I doubt that there are biological dispo- sitions to drive on the left, but it would not matter if there were, since everyone must still drive on the right. Similarly, for other mandated actions, the over- whelming pattern is for all people to act mainly within the framework required, regardless of the strain on individual biology. The important point here for social determinism is that biological impulses that conflict with social rules are for the most part tightly controlled. Either the biologically-o therwise individual complies and suffers for it or does not comply and suffers in another way, or mobilizes others to change the social dictate. In the latter case, biology has been absorbed into social allowance for variability. To take an old case, society is now totally indifferent to left- handedness. Social tolerance or acceptance is for the most part as good as explicit social approval and thus can operate as strongly as actual social demand to determine behavior. What is also telling for social determinism is that when there is a change in social latitude about some previously condemned biologically- engendered behavior, the change comes through invoking a new social standard. For example, gay marriage in the United States was sanctioned under the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th amendment to the Constitution. Society thus provides biology an opportunity to undermine society’s own rules. And once a biological variation is accepted by society, it has virtually the same stand- ing as if it were prescribed. If my stance here attributes too much about behavior to social causes, in extenuation I plead that it has many times been said that one must do too much to know how much is enough. Preface ix I wish to thank Edgar Mills, Jr., David Schmitt, Alejandro Portes and David Kirp for their helpful comments and suggestions. They are entirely blameless for any errors of commission or omission herein. I dedicate this book to William, Amanda and Jason Streiter. They are of the generation that will work out the kinks of what this volume proposes.
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