Part 1

Society is a dialect between human production of meaning and the impact of the product back on the human

Three Stages of the Social Construction of Reality

Stage 1: Externalization:

-Human beings unlike other species are born unfinished into the world. The process of being finished is known as socialization.

-Humans enter a world already made for him and he spends the rest of his life negotiating the world. The process of socialization is about this ongoing relationship to the world.

-“More precisely, he produces himself in the world.” So that he is both acted upon and acting in the world.

Stage 2: Objectivation:

-In the production of human-making, the humanly produced world becomes something “out there.”

-Once formed, it is not reabsorbed into human consciousness, but rather remains external to the human.

-For example, language, once established to make sense of the world, remains external with its own sense of logic and available to all who encounter it.

-Society confronts man as an external, subjectively opaque and coercive facticity.

Stage 3: Internalization:

-The re-appropriation of the external world back again into the structures of subjective consciousness.

-In this last stage, man becomes a product of society.

-Structures of this world come to determine the subjective structures of consciousness itself.

-This completes the dialectic self and society.

-Meaning systems exists so that people can make sense of the world.

Question: Come up with an example that you can apply each part of the theory (e.g. learning about gender or race, living in another country, the political or religious structure of a society, etc.). In your application, make it clear that you understand each part of the theory (externalization, objectivation and internalization).

Part 2

Erving Goffman: Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959)

Goffman was a student of George Herbert Mead

Goffman was concerned with what people do: the Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

-grounded what his theory in the empirical world to get what it “is” like

-the everyday life is about the moment, the unbracketed interaction with others

1. ImpressionManagement:

• The things we do to manage our impressions we make on others, especially to reduce tension.
• The way people communicate is to pretend not to notice. Give off symbols and meaning without being direct. We are always consciously trying to make ourselves look good and maximize returns, to impress others, to reap the benefits of the interaction.
• He found that people try to present themselves in an idealized image of themselves, in the best possible light, while concealing things that are not ideal.
• Depending on their desired impression they interact closely or distantly from others

1. Role Distance:

• Often people tend to try to separate themselves from the negative roles they are in.
• If a role is demeaning you distance yourself.
• This behavior is not your natural state, rather you show your awareness that what is happening is odd, and do so by taking the position of the other.
• This is a self-conscious act.

1. Stigma:

• Gap between what people ought to be and what they are actually like.
• Discredited stigma: Obvious to the audience.
• Discreditable stigma: what is not obvious.
• We will attempt to change/alter or pass in order to relieve forms of stigma
• Related back to symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology (micro/macro)
• Social reality created through interaction, the study of and the theorizing of everyday interactions.
• These are often behaviors and assumptions that are taken for granted.
• One way we know they are taken for granted is just by breaking social rules, we can recognize the importance of said rules.
• Everday”ness” is intuited and helps us understand not only the social interconnections on a micro level, but also on a comparative and macro-level.

Question: Come up with an example of impression management, role distance, and stigma. How would someone resolve interactionally either your example of role distance or stigma?

Part 3

Question: Observe and describe one type of normative behavior. Be specific in what you see and connect your observations to what you read for this week about culture (p. 39-48, 8th Edition)(attached files) Why is this a good example?

(at least ONE page, double spaced, essay format with paragraphs and complete sentences)

Please answer each part separately!

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