Groups can be bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states {group types}.
Bands have 15 to 80 people, have kinship relations, are nomads, act by consensus, have no laws, and own land communally.
Tribes have hundreds of people, are kinship clans, live in villages, act by consensus, have few leaders, have no laws, and own land communally.
Chiefdoms have thousands of people, have different social classes, live in one or more villages, have top-down hereditary offices, have no laws, can pay tribute to others, hold land feudally, and have luxuries.
States have more than 50,000 people, live in villages and cities, have top-down bureaucracies, have laws, collect taxes, have private land, and have luxuries.
Groups {community, group} can depend on geographic area. Individuals typically feel that they belong, share interests, and define themselves in terms of community. Important events for people typically happen in communities.
Groups can be about family and marriage relationships {kinship}|.
Groups can be public {public} or private. Public groups affect all society members.
Groups {formal group} can try to attain official written goals at minimal cost, through rationality and discipline. Formal groups have subgroups to perform functions. People have one work type. Administration coordinates and makes policy. Bureaucracies have power and authority hierarchies and delegate functions from higher levels to lower levels. Rules and regulations govern roles, work, and pay.
Formal groups {institution} can be structural community parts. Formal group is institution if it is highly formal, is stable, is long term, includes cultural values, and has social composition {base group}. Social groupings make institutions such as family, club, library, museum, town hall, and market. They make classes, cultures, unions, parties, communities, and nations. They can depend on race, gender, or language. They can be about activity or shared feeling.
Groups can depend on satisfaction and security gained from interactions and relations {primary relation} between two people {primary group}|. For people in primary groups, nothing is more important. Primary groups feature non-verbal communication between members. Primary groups are family and cliques.
Children know people of same age and status {peer group}|. After family, next socialization influence is child's playgroup. Peer groups teach obedience to abstract rules, test adult limits, and transmit adult values. For peer-group socialization, people {other-directed person} have social skills, are sensitive to others, control others through anxiety, have pragmatic politics, and have consumption economies.
After peer group, next socialization influence is adolescent group {clique}|. Cliques teach getting along with others, cooperating, being sociable, and conforming.
Secondary groups {secondary group} are geographical communities, cultural communities, associations, movements, and mobs.
Ideological, unified, active, and idealistic groups {social movement} work for goals or ideas, which originate from injustice or inequality.
Unstructured social situations {collective behavior}| involve crowds, riots, protests, revolutions, revivals, fads, rumors, public opinion, social movements, panics, bank runs, crazes, esprit de corps, parties, and ceremonies. People share common mood or emotional state, such as cause, hostility, self-sacrifice, or danger. Collective behavior is emotional, is personal, has shifting loyalties, is power-oriented, and relates to broader-society conflicts and changes. Unstructured social situations feature high stimulation, high suggestibility, low discipline, and anonymity, which encourage unconventional behavior. Collective behavior allows individual decisions that old values do not control.
Groups can emphasize personal growth and communication {encounter group}, as in Carl Rogers's client-centered therapy.
Groups {sensitivity group} can organize to produce change by promoting interpersonal awareness.
Devotional or charitable societies {sodality} are for lay people.
Groups {training group} (T-group) can address issues of organization leadership, authority, and change dynamics.
6-Sociology-Sociological Group
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Date Modified: 2022.0225