Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T08:51:29.762Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - Status, Power, and Social Order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2015

By
Theodore D. Kemper
Edited by
Edward J. Lawler ,
Shane R. Thye  and
Jeongkoo Yoon
Theodore D. Kemper
Affiliation:
St. John's University USA
Edward J. Lawler
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Shane R. Thye
Affiliation:
University of South Carolina
Jeongkoo Yoon
Affiliation:
EWHA Women's University, Seoul
Get access

Summary

Abstract

Thomas Hobbes and Talcott Parsons have set the terms of the debate over the question of social order in society, but their view of order/disorder, even though each differs from the other, is both incomplete and problematic. A different approach is to see order/disorder as resulting from patterns of technical activity, social relations and reference group influences. Central here is a theory of social relations, based on the behavioral dimensions of status and power. Derivations from status-power theory include a theory of emotions, some of which (pride, shame, guilt, fear, sadness and contempt) tend to favor social order while others (mainly anger and sadness/depression) tend toward disorder. Reference groups also mainly dispose to sustaining order but, when contravening the role-expectations of interaction partners, also instigate disorder. Ironically, the highest levels of social order, as defined in status-power relational terms, are found to have the seeds of disorder contained within them.

We must wonder whether Thomas Hobbes ([1651] 1968), when he was postulating his state of nature with its war of all against all, knew he was erecting a straw figure. How can there be a war of all-against-all when individuals are necessarily raised in families, where parents necessarily nurture their children and children not only fear their parents but also love them? If there is any possible reality to Hobbes's grim picture, it would be strain and conflict between families. Yet, even here the picture is awry, since families are ordinarily members of larger groups and, even if only out of utilitarian self-interest, form coalitions and recruit allies from them. Within such collectivities, there must be some coordination and cooperation (Hechter and Horne 2003; Collins 2004) – that is, order – otherwise, even though enlarged, such groups would be feckless. In sum, Hobbes's depiction of the state of nature is a sociological fiction. What is not a fiction is that all individuals are sometimes in conflict with and fail to cooperate with some other individuals. This is disorder. But it cannot be that as Hobbes supposed all individuals are in conflict with all other individuals at the same time.

We must wonder too whether Talcott Parsons (1937, 1951), when he was solving the “Hobbesian problem of order” by postulating collectivities in which members shared values, knew that he too was erecting a straw figure. Family harmony or coordination and cooperation do not inevitably depend on common values.

Type
Chapter
Information
Order on the Edge of Chaos
Social Psychology and the Problem of Social Order
 , pp. 208 - 226
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexander, Jeffrey. 1984. “Three Models of Culture and Society Relations: Toward an Analysis of Watergate.” Sociological Theory 2: 290–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alexander, Jeffrey 2011. Performance and Power. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Barbalet, Jack. 1998. Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure: A Macrosociological Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baudelaire, Charles. [1947] 2006. Intimate Journals. Translated by Isherwood, Christopher. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Carter, Launor F. 1954. “Evaluating the Performance of Individual Members of Small Groups.” Personnel Psychology 7: 477–84.Google Scholar
Cleve, Felix M. 1969. The Giants of Pre-Socratic Greek Philosophy: An Attempt to Reconstruct their Thought, Vol. 2. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Dov, Nisbett, Richard E., Bowdle, Brian F., and Schwarz, Norbert. 1996. “Insult, Aggression and the Southern Culture of Honor: An ‘Experimental Ethnography’.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70: 945–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Randall. 1975. Conflict Sociology: Toward and Explanatory Science. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Collins, Randall 1998. The Sociology of Philosophies. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Collins, Randall 2004. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durkheim, Emile. [1893] 1964. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Emile [1895] 1982. The Rules of Sociological Method. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Emile [1912] 1965. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Emerson, Richard. 1962. “Power-Dependence Relations.” American Sociological Review 27: 31–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frijda, Nico. 2007. The Laws of Emotion. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. [1937] 1959. “Analysis Terminable and Interminable.” Pp. 316–67 in Collected Papers, Vol. V, edited by Jones, Ernest and translated by Riviere, Joan. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. [1956] 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Hamblin, Robert, and Smith, Carol R.. 1966. “Values, Status and Professors.” Sociometry 29: 183–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hechter, Michael, and Horne, Christine. 2003. Theories of Social Order: A Reader. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Heise, David R. 1979. Understanding Events: Affect and the Construction of Social Action. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hertenstein, Matthew. 2010. “Tactile Stimulation”. Pp. 1469–1471 in Goldstein, Sam and Naglieri, Jack A. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Child Behavior and Development. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Hertenstein, Matthew, Holmes, Rachel, McCullough, Margaret, and Keltner, Dacher. 2009. “The Communication of Emotion Via Touch.” Emotion 9: 566–73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hobbes, Thomas. [1651] 1968. Leviathan. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Hofstadter, Richard. 1955. The Age of Reform. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Hyman, Herbert. 1942. “The Psychology of Status.”Archives of Psychology 269: 1–94.Google Scholar
Isen, Alice M., and Levin, Paula F.. 1972. “Effect of Feeling Good on Helping: Cookies and Kindness.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 21: 384–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kahneman, Daniel. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Giroux and Strauss.Google Scholar
Kanner, Allan D., Coyne, James C., Schaefer, Catherine, and Lazarus, Richard S.. 1981. “Correlation of Two Modes of Stress Measurement: Daily Hassles and Uplifts versus Major Life Events.” Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 4: 1–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kemper, Theodore D. 1968. “Reference Groups, Socialization and Achievement.”American Sociological Review 33: 31–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kemper, Theodore D. 1978. A Social Interactional Theory of Emotions. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Kemper, Theodore D. 1992. “Freedom and Justice: The Macro-Modes of Social Relations.” World Futures 35: 141–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kemper, Theodore D. 2006. “Power and Status and the Power-Status Theory of Emotions.” Pp. 87–113 in The Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions, edited by Stets, Jan E. and Turner, Jonathan H.. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Kemper, Theodore D. 2011. Status, Power and Ritual Interaction: A Relational Reading of Durkheim, Goffman and Collins. Farnam, UK: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Kemper, Theodore D. and Collins, Randall. 1990. “Dimensions of Microinteraction.” American Journal of Sociology 96: 32–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas F. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mead, George H. 1934. Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Merton, Robert K. 1957. Social Theory and Social Structure, Revised and Enlarged Edition. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
New York Times. 2014. “Democrats Try Wooing One Who Got Away: White Men.” March 3, p. A1.
Orum, Anthony, and Dale, John G.. 2009. Political Sociology: Power and Participation in the Modern World. 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Osgood, Charles E., Suci, George J., and Tannenbaum, Percy H.. 1957. The Measurement of Meaning. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Parsons, Talcott. 1937. The Structure of Social Action. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Parsons, Talcott 1951. The Social System. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Spitz, Rene A. 1945. “Hospitalism – An Inquiry into the Genesis of Psychiatric Conditions in Early Childhood.” Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 1: 53–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weber, Max. [1904–1905] 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Charles Scribner.Google Scholar
Weber, Max [1922] 1946. “Class, Status and Party.” Pp. 180–96 in Weber, Max, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated by Gerth, H. and Mills, C. W.. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max [1922] 1947. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Translated by Henderson, A. M. and Parsons, Talcott. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
White, Geoffrey M. 1980. “Conceptual Universals in Interpersonal Language.” American Anthropologist 82: 759–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. 1982. Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×