5.1 Demonstrate the impact social networks can have on the lives of individuals.

5.2 Provide examples of how verbal and nonverbal interaction guides our behavior.

5.3 Describe the needs primary and secondary groups meet for members of society and the overall society.

5.4 Show how the characteristics of bureaucracy apply to formal organizations.

5.5 Explain why networking with people from different cultures has become increasingly important.

Key Points:

• People in the modern world are connected through one acquaintance to another in a chain of links, referred to as networks, that can now span the globe.
• We interpret interpersonal interactions at the micro level through unspoken assumptions based on the social con­text, nonverbal communication, and the physical space between people.
• Many of our behaviors are shaped by the statuses (social positions) we hold and the roles (expectations associ­ated with a status) we play. However, our multiple-status occupancy can create role conflicts (between the roles of two statuses) and role strains (between the role expecta­tions of a single status).
• When the norms of behavior are unclear, we may experi­ence anomie (normlessness), and when anomie spreads in a society, suicide rates rise.
• Various types of groups affect our behavior—from primary and secondary groups to peer groups and reference groups.
• At the meso and macro levels, we find that formal organi­zations in the contemporary modern world have become bureaucratized. Bureaucratic organizations are ruled by rational calculation of the organization’s goals rather than by tradition or emotional ties, tend to expand, are gov­erned by impersonal formal rules, and stress efficiency and rational decision making.
• Bureaucracies often create particular issues that may make them inefficient or destructive, such as alienation, oligarchies, and goal displacement.
• In a global and diverse society, it makes sense to have a diverse workforce. Discrimination against minorities in promotion and hiring is irrational and dysfunctional for organizations.
• Some scholars think that this impersonal mode of orga­nizing social life—so common in the West for several centuries now—is a critical factor in anti-American and anti-Western resistance movements.

Summary:

Each of us has a network of people and groups that sur­round us. The scope of our networks has broadened with the increased complexity of societies and includes the global social world. Indeed, it is sometimes hard to rec­ognize how far our networks reach. Although some of our social experiences are informal (unstructured), we are also profoundly affected by another phenomenon of the past three centuries—highly structured bureaucracies. As a result of both, our experiences and personal lives are far more extensively linked to meso- and macro-level events and to people and places on the other side of the globe than were those of our parents. If we hope to understand our lives, we must understand this broad context. Although it may have been possible to live without global connections and bureaucratic systems several centuries ago, these networks are intricately woven into our lifestyles and our economic systems today. The question is whether we will control these networks or they will control us.