Social structure
Introduction
Social structure is a system of social relations. Social structure does not concern itself with people as individuals forming the society or their social organizations, neither does it study who are the people/organisation forming it, or what is the ultimate goal of their relations. Social structure deals rather with the very structure of their relations: how are they organized in a patterns of relationships. The key to understanding social structure in a society is understanding its social institutions and their intertwining combinations. Social structure is the institutional framework that makes for order in daily, weekly, and yearly interaction between people. It is social institutions that promote the necessary order to make social structure possible.
Social structure can be divided into micro-structure and macro-structure. Micro-structure is the pattern of relations between most basic elements of social life, that cannot be further divided and have no social structure of their own ( i.e. pattern of relations between individuals in a group composed of individuals - where individuals have no social structure ). Macro-structure is thus a kind of “second level” structure, a pattern of relations between objects that have their own structure ( e.g. a political social structure between political parties, as political parties have their own social structure).
Some believe that social structure is naturally developed. It may be caused by larger system needs, such as the need for labor, management, professional and military classes, or by conflicts between groups, such as competition among political parties or among elites and masses. Others believe that this structuring is not a result of natural processes, but that it is socially constructed. It may be created by the power of elites who seek to retain their power, or by economic systems that place emphasis upon competition or cooperation.
In any case, social system is the parent system of those lower systems. This is related to the notion of "social stratification," which refers to the idea that society is separated into different strata, according to social distinctions such as a race, class and gender. Social treatment of persons within various social structures can be understood as related to their placement within the various social strata.
Elements of Social Structure: Culture Forms, Hierarchy of Values and Norms
Social structure, as mentioned above, alleges that society is grouped into structures with different functions, meanings or purposes. In a broader sense, known as social system, can be viewed as a ( social ) structure composed of the economic system, law system, political system, cultural system - some sort of shared reality: language, norms and values, etc. Structure arises out of the face-to-face interactions of people who are operating from, both, a shared sense of reality - culture and socialization - as well as an individual and group oriented strata which are open to particular definitions and interpretations.
Among the several elements of social and cultural structures, two are of great importance: The first consists of culturally defined goals, purposes and interests, held out as legitimate objectives for all or for diversely located members of society. They are simply the things “worth striving for.” Although some, not all, of these cultural goals are directly related to the biological drives of man, they are not determined by them. The second element of the cultural structure defines, regulates and controls the acceptable modes of reaching out for these goals. Every social group invariably “squares” its cultural objectives with regulations, rooted in the mores or institutions, of allowable procedures for moving toward these objectives. So, norms - or normative structure, as patterns of relations in given structure (organization) between norms and modes of operations of people of varying social positions - became the rallying cry of any society .
Generally, no society lacks norms governing conduct. But societies do differ in the degree to which the folkways, mores and institutional controls are effectively integrated with the goals which stand high in the hierarchy of cultural values. The problem is that these regulatory norms are not necessarily identical with technical or efficiency norms. Many procedures which from the standpoint of the individuals would be most efficient in securing desired values - the exercise of force, fraud, power - are ruled out of the institutional area of permitted conduct. The pattern of relations between goals and desires of people of varying social positions is called interest structure. In most cases, high rates of departure from institutional requirements are seen as the result of culturally induced, deep motivations which cannot be satisfied among those social strata with limited access to opportunity. The culture and the social structure operate at cross-purposes. In this context, the sole significant question becomes: Which of the available procedures is most efficient in netting the culturally approved value? The technically most effective procedure, whether culturally legitimate or not, becomes typically preferred to institutionally prescribed conduct especially in a societal culture where there is heavy emphasis on wealth as a basic symbol of success without a corresponding emphasis upon the legitimate means to achieve it.
The pressure of such a social order is upon outdoing one's competitors. So long as the sentiments supporting this competitive system are distributed throughout the entire range of activities and are not confined to the final result of success, the choice of means will remain largely within the realm of social control. When, however, the cultural emphasis shifts from the satisfaction deriving from competition itself to almost exclusive concern with the outcome, the resultant stress makes for the breakdown of the regulatory structure, the society becomes unstable and develops what a sociologist Durkheim calls "anomie" ( or normlessness ).
Conclusion
Social structure is the way in which society is organized into predictable relationships, patterns of social interaction ( the way in which people respond to each other ). These patterns are to some extent independent of the particular individual, they exert a force which shapes behavior and identity of the society. Culture forms the foundation of social structure and the society uses norms as the modes of operations among the society’s elements. Sometimes, however, the shortcuts using institutionally inhibited conducts to achieve the culturally approved values ( e.g. wealth ) brings the necessary strain in, both, social and regulatory structures.
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