Social interaction refers to the ways in which people respond to one another. Social structure refers to the way in which a society is organized into predictable relationships. This chapter examines the basic elements of social structure: statuses, social roles, groups, social networks, social institutions, and formal organizations.

1. People shape their social reality based on what they learn through their social interactions. Social change comes from redefining or reconstructing social reality.
2. An ascribed status is generally assigned to a person at birth, whereas an achieved status is attained largely through one's own effort. Some ascribed statuses, such as race and gender, can function as master statuses that affect one's potential to achieve a certain professional or social status.
3. With each distinctive status—whether ascribed or achieved—come particular social roles, the set of expectations for people who occupy that status.
4. Much of our social behavior takes place in groups. When we find ourselves identifying closely with a group, it is probably a primary group. A secondary group is more formal and impersonal.
5. People tend to see the world in terms of in-groups and out-groups, a perception often fostered by the very groups to which they belong.
6. Reference groups set and enforce standards of conduct and serve as a source of comparison for people's evaluations of themselves and others.
7. Interactionist researchers have noted that groups allow coalitions to form and serve as links to social networks and their vast resources.
8. Social institutions fulfill essential functions, such as replacing personnel, training new recruits, and preserving order. The mass media, the government, the economy, the family, and the health care system are all examples of social institutions.
9. Conflict theorists charge that social institutions help to maintain the privileges of the powerful while contributing to the powerlessness of others.
10. Interactionist theorists stress that our social behavior is conditioned by the roles and statuses we accept, the groups to which we belong, and the institutions within which we function.
11. Émile Durkheim thought that social structure depends on the division of labor in a society. According to Durkheim, societies with minimal division of labor have a collective consciousness called mechanical solidarity; those with greater division of labor show an interdependence called organic solidarity.
12. Ferdinand Tönnies distinguished the close-knit community of Gemeinschaft from the impersonal mass society known as Gesellschaft.
13. Gerhard Lenski thinks that a society's social structure changes as its culture and technology become more sophisticated, a process he calls sociocultural evolution.
14. As societies have become more complex, large formal organizations have become more powerful and pervasive.
15. Max Weber argued that in its ideal form, every bureaucracy has five basic characteristics: division of labor, hierarchical authority, written rules and regulations, impersonality, and employment based on technical qualifications. Carefully constructed bureaucratic policies can be undermined or redefined by an organization's informal structure, however.
16. Organizational restructuring and new technologies have transformed the workplace through innovations such as collective decision making and telecommuting. At the same time, major shifts in the economy have reduced the power of labor unions.