• Formal organizations are large, secondary groups that are organized to achieve their

goals efficiently.
• Rationalization
Formal organizations are the product of rationalization of society which means the
acceptance of rules, efficiency, and practical results as the right way to approach human
affaires.
• As a result of rationality, formal organizations, secondary groups designed to achieve
explicit objectives, have become central feature of contemporary society.
• Social relations in formal organizations are impersonal, formal, and planned.
• Types of formal organization :

1. Utilitarian Organizations
2. Normative Organizations
3. Coercive Organizations
• Just about everyone who works for income is member of utilitarian organization,
which pays its members to perform the jobs for which they were hired.
• People join normative organizations not for income but to pursue goals they
consider morally worthwhile.
• Coercive Organization:
These organizations have involuntary membership.
Members are physically and socially separated from ‘outsiders’ or ‘civil society’.
• Bureaucracy:
It is an organizational model rationally designed to perform complex tasks
efficiently.
• Characteristic of Ideal bureaucracy:
Broadly there are six characteristics.

1. Specialization:
Theree is a division of labor in the bureaucracy and each member has a
specific task to fulfill.
2. Hierarchy of Offices
Bureaucracies arrange the personnel in a vertical ranking. Authority ranking.
Usually with fewer people in higher positions, the structure takes the form
of a bureaucratic “pyramid”.

3. Written rules and regulations.

Rationally enacted rules and regulations control not only
the organization’s own functioning but also its larger environment. In
general, the longer a
bureaucracy exists and the larger it grows, the more written rules it has.

4. Technical competence.
 A bureaucratic organization expects its officials and staff to
have the technical competence to carry out their duties, and regularly
monitors worker
performance. Evaluation is based on performance and not on favoritism.

5. Impersonality
. Rules take precedence over personal whims. Members of a bureaucracy
owe allegiance to the office, not to a particular person. The impersonality
ensures that the
clients as well as workers are all treated uniformly. Each worker in
bureaucracy becomes a
small cog in a large machine. Each worker is a replaceable unit, for many
others are
available to fulfill each particular function. From this detached approach
stems the notion
of the “faceless bureaucrat”.

6. Formal, written communication.

Heart of bureaucracy is not people but paperwork.
Rather than casual, verbal communication, bureaucracy relies on formal,
written memos
and reports. Over time, this correspondence accumulates into vast files.
• Problems of bureaucracy
Bureaucracy can dehumanize and manipulate individuals.
Bureaucracy poses threat to personal privacy and political democracy.
• Bureaucratic Alienation
Efficiency vs. potential to dehumanize the people.
The environment gives rise to alienation where human being is reduced to a part of
big bureaucratic machinery.
• Bureaucratic Inefficiency and Ritualism
• Preoccupation with rules and regulations.
• Ritualism stifles individual’s creativity.
• The resultant corruption.
• Bureaucratic Inertia
The tendency of the bureaucratic organizations to perpetuate themselves.
Lesson # 9 :

• Culture is the patterns of behavior and the products of patterns of behavior.

• Man made part of the environment.
Culture includes the values, beliefs, behavior, language, norms, and material objects that
constitute a people’s way of life.
• Non-humans guided by instincts.
Biological programming.
 Humans guided by culture.
Social programming
• Specific Features of Culture:
• Universality
* Variability
* Learned
* Shared
* Transmitted
* Changing
• Culture: Shared way of life.
• Nation: A political entity within designated
borders.
• Society: The organized interaction of people in a nation or within some other boundary.
Lesson # 10
• Values are culturally defined standards of desirability – what ought to be.
• Beliefs are specific statements that people hold to be true.
• Examples of Values
• Equal opportunity, Achievement and success, Material comfort, Activity and work,
Science, Freedom, Physical fitness, Health, Punctuality, Wealth, Education,
Competition, Merit, Honesty, Dignity of labor, Patriotism, Justice, Democracy,
Environmental protection, Charity, Development.
• Values: inconsistency and conflict.
• Norms
Rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its members.
Shared expectations.
• Proscriptive: Mandating what we should not do.
• Prescriptive: What we should do.
• Mores (More-ays) are society’s standards of proper moral conduct. Notions of
right/wrong.
• Folkways are customs for routine, casual interaction. Proper dress, greetings.
• Ideal culture: Social patterns mandated by cultural values and norms. Ideal values
and norms.
• Real Culture: Actual social patterns that only approximate cultural expectations.
• Statistical norms Ideal culture:
• Social patterns mandated by cultural values and norms. Ideal values and norms.
• Intangible: Non material aspects.
• Tangible: Material aspects.
New information technology.
• Cultural Diversity :
Acceptable forms of behavior vary widely from culture to culture.
Lesson #11
• High Culture: Cultural patterns of the elite.
• Popular Culture: Cultural patterns that are widespread.
• Culture of Poverty: Cultural patterns shared by the poor.
• Sub Culture
Cluster of patterns that set apart some segments of society’s population.
• Multiculturalism
Recognizing cultural diversity and promoting the equality of all cultural traditions.
• Counterculture
Subculture which is in active opposition to the dominant culture.
• Cultural change
The alteration of culture over time.
• Cultural Lag
• Cultural elements change at different rates.
• The different rate of change in the two integrated elements of culture can result in
one element lagging behind the other. “William Ogburn”
May disrupt the system.
• Invention: the process of creating new cultural elements.
• Discovery: finding something that already exists.
• Diffusion: The spread of cultural traits from one society to another.
• Ethnocentrism
The practice of judging another culture by the standard of one’s own culture
Considering one’s own culture as superior
• Xeno Centrism
Considering other’s culture as superior to one’s own.
• Cultural Relativism
Considering other’s culture as superior to one’s own.
• We are globally connected through:
The global economy.
Global communication.
Global migration.
• Culture as constraint: We are prisoners of culture.
• Culture as freedom: gives the opportunity to make and remake the world.
• Contribution of heredity:
Physical and psychological characteristics can be transmitted through heredity
May be taken as potential.
• Nurture
• Opportunities to be provided for the development of potentials.
• Society provides the opportunities.
Without such opportunities the potential is lost.
• Cases of Isolates
• Anna - discovered at age 5.
• Isabelle – discovered at age 6.
• Genie – discovered at age 13
• Provision of learning situations
• Group provides learning situations
• Group provides guidance.
Group controls the behavior.
• Socialize acts
 • Imitation
• Experimentation
• Adjustment
• Physical characteristics determined by nature.
Nurture provides social interpretations.
• Socialization
The lifelong learning experience by which individuals develop human potential
and learn patterns of their culture.
Lesson #13
Divided self into 3 parts:
• Id : Represents the human being’s basic drives which are unconscious and
demand immediate satisfaction.
Un-socialized desires and impulses, rooted in biology.
• Ego
Person’s conscious efforts to balance innate pleasure-seeking drives with the
demands of society
• Super Ego
Operation of culture within individual. Ideals and values internalized which
form the conscience.
• For Freud there is ongoing conflict between id and superego.

People through their culture control the id. This is repressive.

• George Herbert Mead:
The Social Self
Self, a dimension of personality composed of an individual’s self awareness
• A looking glass self
Our perception of how we look to others.
* Our perception in their judgment of how we look.
* Our feelings about these judgments.

Self-feelings, self concept, self image.

• Self a product of experience.
Series of steps:
• Self develops over time and only through experience.
Interaction with society provides the experience.
• Social experience is the exchange of symbols.

Language as a means to experience.

• To understand intention, one must understand the
situation from another person’s point of view.

Internalize the attitudes of others. “Generalized

other” No conflict.
Lesson #14
• Agents Of socialization
They are the people and groups that influence our self- concept, emotions,
attitudes, and behavior.
• The Family

• Family has major impact.

• Matter of survival.
• Provision of learning situations.
• Begin the lifelong process of defining ourselves. Who we are? [male/female,
family status]
Socialization by social class.
• The School
• Manifest functions: formal schooling.
• Latent functions: Hidden curriculum – inculcating values of patriotism,
democracy, justice, honesty.
Learning national and universal values.
• The Peer Group
• A social group whose members have interests, social position, and age
in common.
• Provides an escape from adult supervision. Group identity.
Peer groups are compelling.
• The Mass Media
• Impersonal communication directed to large audiences.
• Provides entertainment + socialization [shape the self].
• Concerns of people about the contents of portrayal.
Has become more powerful
• The Religion
• Impersonal communication directed to large audiences.
• Provides entertainment + socialization [shape the self].
• Concerns of people about the contents of portrayal.
Has become more powerful
Lesson # 15
• Life course is a biological process
• Life course as five distinct stages: childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, the
middle years, and old age.
• Significance Of Life Course
• Life course is a social construction.
• Stages present transitions that require learning new and unlearning familiar
routines.
• Each stage is affected by other factors like one’s social location.
• Life experiences vary due to when, in history of society, he was born.
• Childhood-first 12 years
• Time for learning and play.
• Situation in developed and developing countries vary.
• Issue of child labor.
• Concept of childhood rooted in culture.
 • “Hurried childhood” syndrome.
• Adolescence-About 13 to 19 years
• Physiological changes to puberty.
• Socially constructed.
• Establishing some independence and learning specialized skills.
• Emotional and social turmoil. Intergenerational conflict.
Develop youth culture.
• Young Adulthood – ages 20-39 Personalities formed
• Manage responsibilities personally
• Adjustment with spouse an issue.
• Bring up children in their own way
Many conflicting priorities.
• Middle years – ages 40-60
• Assess actual achievement.
• Children grown up.
• Health concerns. Physical decline
Has there been a self-fulfillment.
• Old Age – about mid 60s
• Societies attach different meanings old age.
• Old people assumed to have amassed wisdom.
• Old are conservative unimportant, obsolete.

• Social Control
A group’s formal and informal means of enforcing its norms.
• Social Order
A group’s usual and customary social arrangements, on which members depend and on
which they base their lives.
• Deviance
• is the recognized violation of cultural norms.
• It is not the act itself, but the reaction to the act, that makes it
deviant.
Social construction of deviance
• The concept of deviance can be applied both to individual acts and to the
activity of groups.
Deviant group behavior may result in deviant sub-culture.
• Crime
• The violation of norms that are written into laws.
Cultural relativity of crime: Honor killing, homosexuality, polygamy, cousin
marriages.

• Deviance and crime are not synonymous – may overlap.

Deviance is much broader than crime.
Crime applies only to that act which breaks the law.
• Deviants
• People who violate the norms and rules.
• People react to their behavior negatively.
 • Stigma
• Blemishes” that discredit a person’s claim to a ‘normal’
identity.
• Violation of norms of ability (mazoor, facial birth mark,
obesity).
• Also involuntary membership in groups (relatives of
criminals/victims of AIDS
• Juvenile Delinquency It refers to the violation of legal
standards by the young.
Young is a relative concept.
• Labeling (bad name)
• Some people tagged with a negative social label that radically changes a
person’s self –concept and social identity. Operates as master status.
• People in power impose the labels. Person gets isolated.
Labeling a child as delinquent.
• Primary and Secondary Deviants
• Actions that provoke only slight reaction from others and have little
effect on a person’s self-concept is primary deviance. An initial act of
stealing may be ignored.
When other people notice deviance and make something of it. Label him. Repeatedly violates.
• Sociological Perspective
• All behavior deviance or conformity is shaped by society. Thus:
• * Society lays the foundation of deviance.

• Cultural Relativity (3 basic Principles)

1. Behavior must be viewed from the framework of the relevant culture.

2. What is deviant to one group may not be deviant to others.
• 3. Principle 2 holds within a society as well as across cultures.

• Rule breaking involve social power.

• Deviance is functional

It contributes to the functioning of the society in four ways.

• Deviance affirms cultural
values and norms
• Deviance clarifies moral
boundaries and affirms
norms
• Deviance promotes social unity
• Deviance promotes social
change
Lesson #17
Why do people violate norms?
 • Biological Explanation
• Looking for answers within individuals.
Focus on genetic predispositions toward deviance and crime.
• Three Biological Theories
Body type (squarish, muscular)

C.Lombroso An Italian physician.

Compared 400 prisoners with 400 army soldiers (1876).
Criminals had distinctive physical features.
Theory flawed
The XYY theory. Extra Y in males.
An extra Y chromosome in males leads to crime. But:
Most criminals have the normal XY combination.
Most men with XYY combination are not criminals.
How about women?

Low intelligence theory.

Low intelligence leads to crime.
Some criminals are very intelligent, and most people of low intelligence do not commit crimes.
• Psychological explanations
• Abnormalities within the individual –Personality disorders.
• Psychopaths – withdrawn, emotionless, and impulsive.
Are all psychopath traits inevitably criminal
• Sociological explanation
• Look for factors outside individual.
• Deviance is relative.
• Variation in social influence.
• External influences like socialization, subculture, social class
Lesson #19
• Two control systems:
• Inner control system, superego. conscience.
• 2. Outer control system. Family, friends, subculture.
• Hirschi's Control Theory
• Social control lies in anticipating the consequences of one’s act.
• Linked conformity to four types of social control:
• Attachment.
• Commitment
• Involvement
▪ Belief
Strain Theory -- ( Merton)
How social values produce crime
• Acceptance of cultural goals.
• Access to institutionalized means.
 • Acceptance of goals but the non-availability of means to achieve creates strain.
Strain leads to the feeling of anomie – normlessness.
Labeling (Becker)
• Deviant behavior is that which people so label. Labeling – stigmatization.
• Labeling itself is means to amplification.
Influences one’s sense of self-identity. Accepts the label.
• Blue collar crimes: Failure of lower class kids. Find illegitimate opportunities for
meeting their needs – robbery, burglary. Much publicized. Own subculture.
(Cloward and Ohlin)
White-collar crime (Sutherland)
Crimes committed by people of hi social class. Less visibility.
Conflict Theory
• Deviance is deliberately chosen in response to social inequalities.
• Counterculture groups engage in distinctly political acts. Kidnapping, mugging,
terrorism.
Crime -- a disguised form of protest against inequality – social justice, power, politics.
Lesson # 20
• Partial reporting and partial recording
• Majority of petty crimes never reported.
• For violent crimes, victims choose not to contact police.
• Crimes actually recorded.
• Police force expanded.
• Crime rates not reduced.
• No reduction in fear of crime.
Little improvement in police image.
• Social distribution of crime
• Gender
• Age
• Social class
Ethnicity
• Gender and Crime
• Crimes highly concentrated among men.
• Higher ratio of men to women in prison.
Contrast between the types of crime men and women commit.
• Age and Crime
• Crime rates rise sharply during adolescence and peak in late teens.
• * Street crimes are associated with young working class males.
• Social Class and Crime
• Impression: More criminality in lower class.
Many wealthy and powerful people commit crimes. Affluent criminals.
• White Collar Crimes
• Crimes committed by persons of high social status and
respectability in the course of their occupation (Sutherland).
Distribution of W. C. crime hard to measure
 • Cost of W. C. crimes is much higher than those by lower class.
In USA in 1986, amount of money involved in W. C. crime was 40
times higher than in ordinary crimes.
• Corporate Crime
Offenses committed by large corporations.
These can be:
• Administrative,
• Environmental,
• Financial,
• Labor,
• Manufacturing, and
Unfair trading practices
• Organized Crime
• The form of business that appears to be legal but
actually illegal.
• Smuggling, gambling, large-scale theft and protection
rackets. Mafia.
Transnational networks.
• Ethnicity And Crime
• Both race and ethnicity are correlated to crime
rates i.e.
• People of color are overly criminalized.
• Different ethnic backgrounds are related to
crime rates.