**2. Levels and processes**

The conceptual tools fall into two main classes. The first group are perspectives which allow us to understand the 'architecture' of social structures: how they are built. The following perspectives covered are orientated towards social processes. Having set up the structure, as it were, we can then set the structure to work, to mobilise it into operation and to see how it maintains itself but also changes. Separating out these two perspectives is arbitrary but useful to guide thinking. There are two important contexts which bear on social structures. Social life takes place over time and it is inevitably spatial, and these should be elements in any analysis from each of the perspectives already covered, and since this contextual approach is sometimes forgotten, its importance needs to be emphasised even though since these aspects are integral they are not sign-posted by giving them separate attention.

As well as conceptualising social structures complementary concepts are needed to cover how people feel about the way they are inserted in social structures, and this aspect is handled through discussions of the concepts of social identity and of life-course.

This chapter refers only in passing to the bio-social and ecological-social settings within which social life is lived and concerning which social structural analyses take place. Any 'population' of people is based on the physical/environmental territory within which it lives (including extensions obtained by import and export) and is also embodied within a particular biological set of bodies which have various marked characteristics (e.g. gender, age, maybe 'beauty', 'health', strength etc.) and in turn an underlying genetic structure. It is assumed that social structures will be built on and will actively 'draw on' and be limited by various of these conditions, but these issues are not further addressed in this chapter.

Analysing Social Structures 19

enveloping that they refuse to recognise the existence of any social units at a 'higher' level that encompass situations and those social integrationists who do emphasise the socially constructed nature of any larger social entity. Situations are embedded in flows and sequences which are partly designed (as in the day to day scheduling of many activities) and partly (and occasionally totally) unplanned and replete with exigencies, which those

Socially-constructed scenes (such as buildings, stages, streets, rooms) are the physical backdrop for situations and can shape these, but they also have a social life of their own since they may be occupied in turn by various groupings which place their own meanings

For many sociologists, the main building-block of social structure is the status-role. The usefulness of this concept is that it links both upwards to more comprehensive social structures (which can be seen as composed of combinations of status-roles), and also downwards to the nitty-gritty of the practise of everyday life (since people often relate their

Role analysis is built on the everyday point that we create our own identity and also relate with others in terms of key social characteristics such as our (and their) age and gender, as well as many other more societally-relevant (and also the more fluid situationally-specific) roles.

The concept is borrowed from the theatre, where of course it refers to the characters in the cast which are played by actors. This metaphor is especially stressed by those focusing on the 'playing of roles': i.e. the performance of roles. What is more interesting, I think, is that other aspects of the theatrical metaphor are not stressed. The whole structural context that is indicated by looking beyond the playing of the actor's lines to consider the relevance of the playwright, the plot, and the relationships amongst the characters that the cast conjures up,

There is a central tension within the concept between the 'status-position' aspect of the concept, and the enactment 'role' aspect: between a position in a social structure, and the behaviour and attitudes of a person occupying that social position. Clearly, these are interrelated aspects, and sometimes they are said to be 'two sides of the same coin'. However, the two aspects are differentially seized on by different approaches to the study of social roles: sometimes labelled the structural and the interactional views of roles. (One difficulty with the term 'status' is that its more normal English usage implies a definite hierarchical aspect. In this sociological usage, it does not have this meaning, but this can be confused. Statuses of course can differ in their 'status', since hierarchical ranking is often an

A status is a position in a framework of statuses to which are assigned behavioural standards, tasks, and resources. The term has both denotations and connotations: statuses have both relatively up-front 'formal requirements' as well as a tail of less-defined 'informal requirements'. For example, teachers are not only expected to carry out the technical tasks of classroom teaching, but also may have further expectations placed on them of how they

involved must react to.

**3.3 Roles/Social categories** 

is not attended to.

attribute of a status.)

and behaviours on how the setting gets used.

behaviour to the status-role position they hold).

should conduct themselves in the community at large.

The study of people's lives is not exhausted by social structural analyses. Such analyses merely endeavour to understand what is involved with people's experiences, activities and longer term fates as these are caught up within social structures, but which remain unique to each individual within them.
