Department of British StudiesFaculty of world Studies

University of TehranProfessor Arab-Ahmadi

sociology Social interaction and

Everyday Life

By: Azam Hashemi

Why study daily life? Three reasons

1.Day to day routines give structure and form to what we do; we can learn a great deal about ourselves as

social beings

2. To see how humans can act creatively to shape reality In other words, reality is not fixed or static; it is

created through human interactions

3.To shed light on larger social systems and institutions. All large-scale social systems, in fact,

depend on the patterns of social interaction that we engage in daily

nonverbalcommunication such as facial expressionsand bodily gestures

our actions across space and time

use language to communicate to

others

Social interaction and Everyday Life

is complimented through:

FACIAL EXPRESSIONS, GESTURES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE BODY

Facial expressions, gestures and movements of the body The human face, in contrast with other species is naked and very flexible, able to contort into a wide variety of postures. the development of the human face is closely linked to the evolutionary 'survival value' of effective communication

The non-verbal impressions that we convey often inadvertently indicate that what we say is not quite what we mean. Blushing is perhaps the most obvious example of how physical indicators can contradict our stated meanings.

Facial Action Coding System (FACS): describes movements of the facial muscles that give rise to particular expressions.

Charles Darwin, the originator of evolutionary theory, claimed that basic modes of emotional expression are the same in all human beings.

individual Anthony Giddens however believes: individual and cultural factors

influence what exact form facial movements take (example : nodding to mean “NO”.)

civil inattention: is not the same as ignoring another person. Each individual indicates recognition of the other person's presence, but avoids any gesture that might be taken as too intrusive

Civil inattention is one among other mechanisms that give city life, with its bustling crowds and fleeting, impersonal contacts, the character it has.

NonverbalCommunication

There are reasons to believe that there is a gender dimension to everyday social interaction. Both verbal and nonverbal communication may be perceived and expressed differently by men and women.

Understandings of gender and gender roles are related broadly to issues of power and status in society.

the political philosopher Iris Marion Young’ example : half hearted movements such as throwing a ball( 'Throwing Like a Girl’) are not biologically determined, but are the product of discourses and practices which encourage girls and young women to experience their bodies as 'objects for others' from an early age.

male-dominated societies produce a majority of women who are physically handicapped. In contrast, men learn to experience their bodies as active and forceful 'objects for themselves',

evident even in standard interactions in daily life (. A man who stares at a woman can be seen as acting in a 'natural' or 'innocent' way; or Men tend to sit in more relaxed ways than women.)

Gender and the body

Micro-level studies of non-verbal forms of communication provide subtle cues, which

demonstrate men's power over women in wider society (Young 1990).

 Butler ,Sigmund Freud and Nancy Chodorow argued - in different ways - that people learngender roles and gendered behavior in interaction with significant other people, such as key family members, from a very early age,( arguing that there are no biologically determined Identities, but Gender identities are established precisely Through their continuous performance.

Conclusion:

Three central parts to identities:

1. they are partly individual or personal 2. they are partly collective or social3. and they are always 'embodied'.

A good example of the close linkage between social identity and embodiment is how disabled people, for example, can be stigmatized on the basis of readily observable physical impairments.

Identities are made, not given.

Primary identity formed in early life and including gender, Race, ethnicity and perhaps also disability

Secondary identity associated with social roles and achieved statuses such as occupational roles and social status positions

Multilayered Identities

Sociologists refer to the group of statuses that you occupy as a status set-An ascribed status is one that you are 'assigned based on biological factors such as race, sex or age.- An achieved status is one that is earned through an individual's own effort

Ethno-methodology : is the study of the ethno -methods' - the folk, or lay,

methods -people use to make sense of what others do, and particularly of what they say.

Social Context: Often we can only make sense of what is said in conversation if we know the social context.

Shared understandings: complicated, shared knowledge brought into play by those

speaking. Interactional vandalism: describes cases in which a subordinate person breaks

the tacit rules of everyday interaction that are of value to the more powerful

The social rules ofInteraction

The end