SOCIAL INTERACTION AND PROCESSES

     INTRODUCTION

             While the macro-sociological approach stresses the broad features of society, the micro-sociological approach has a narrow focus placing emphasis on ‘face-to-face interaction’, on what people do when they are in one another presence. This unit therefore presents cooperation, adjustment and opposition as major social processes.

     Social Interaction

              Every person surrounds himself/herself with personal space which is protected. While friends, children, parents and so on, may be very physically close to us, we create sufficient gaps between us and “outsiders”. Four main distance space or zones are commonly used:

i. Intimate distance: This is a space very close to the individual’s body. The space is reserved for love-making, comforting, protecting, hugging and intimate touching.

ii. Personal distance: This zone extends from 18 inches to 4 feet. It is reserved for friends, and acquaintances and ordinary conversation.

iii .Social distance: It extends out from us about 4 to 12 feet. It marks impersonal or formal relationships. We use this zone for such things as job interviews.

Iv. Public distance: This zone, extending beyond 12 feet, marks even more formal relationships. It is used to separate dignitaries and public speakers from the general public. Sociologist, Ervin Goffman developed the concept of “dramaturgy”. By this, he meant that social life is like a drama or the stage. Birth ushers us onto the stage of everyday life, and our socialization consists of learning to perform on that stage. The self lies at the centre of our performances. We have definite ideas of how we want others to think of us, and we use our roles to communicate those ideas. Goffman calls these efforts to manage the impressions that others receive of us “impression management”.

The various groups that exist in societies are not static. They change and are modified. Interaction among members of a group and among groups is continually taking place. In sociological sense, “interaction” refers to behaviour or action that is symbolic – verbal and gestural. The behaviour is directed toward others, and the individual is aware of how others will probably respond. Interaction is reciprocal; each is aware of and responsive to the actions and reactions of others. Although interaction is not governed by rigid rules, it is not completely haphazard, either. There are enough pattern and repetitions for us to study and predict human behaviour in given situations. We and others in our society, follow these patterns to simplify our lives. In small, non technological, homogenous societies, most interaction is structured. In complex societies, however, we face situations for which we do not have established patterns of behaviour. Whether established long ago or fairly recently, a number of key patterns of interaction are present in all societies. These key patterns constitute “the microelements of social bonds, or the molecular cement of society”. One or more of these patterns, also called “social process” are at work any time interaction takes place.

        Major Social Processes

The following are few fundamental forms of interaction of individuals and groups.

        Opposition

This is divided into two types:

(a) Opposition in form of conflict: In the process individuals or groups deliberately and forcefully try to prevent each other from the realization of wishes, purposes and interests. The intensity of conflict varies from verbal opposition to another’s will to physical destruction. The most important types of contemporary conflict are class and racial conflict, and political and military conflict. These forms of conflict may be organized or unorganized. They use both intellectual and physical weapons and find their expressions in riots, revolutions and warfare.

(b) Opposition in form of Competition: This is a process in which individuals or group strives against each other for the use or ownership of limited goods, positions or rewards. Competition in contrast with conflict stops short of deliberate coercion. It is tempered by moral and often by legal norms.

Competition can be:

1. Absolute if only one of the contending parties can win. An example is the competition for governorship of a State.

2. Relative if the competitors expect only to obtain some degree of the desired value. An example of this is competition for wealth or prestige.

3. Pure or unrestricted: This does not involve a measure of cooperative effort such as adherence to culturally defined rules.

4. Limited or restricted if a measure of cooperative effort such as adherence to culturally defined rules are involved.

5. Personal if each rival is aware of the existence of his contenders.

6. Impersonal if each rival is not aware of the existence of his contenders. The competition of modern corporations for customers is largely impersonal.

Cooperation

          Cooperation is a process-situation in which individuals or groups work together to perform a task or to reach a commonly valued goal. Cooperation can be in any of the following forms.

(a) Primary Cooperation: This prevails in small (primary) groups such as families and ethnic groups where little room is left for the distinction between groups life and individual purposes.

(b) Secondary Cooperation: Secondary groups such as modern industrial organizations are mainly based on the bureaucratic, rational, formal, specialized processes of secondary cooperation. In this sense, the cooperating group members make only a clearly defined part of their lives available to common endeavours.

(c) Antagonistic Cooperation: This represents a precarious working relationship which is overshadowed by latent conflict. In this spirit, two hostile parties or nations with opposing goals may cooperate for a certain time to defeat a common enemy.

(d) Coerced Cooperation: This may be mentioned as a distorted semblance of cooperation in which some of the participants only go along to alleviate hardships or to escape punishment. Convicts or defeated people extend this type of cooperation to their overseers.

(e) Consensus: This process leads all group members or contending groups to conscious and rational’ agreements defining the nature and extent of cooperation. The achievement of consensus is very important in modern economic and political processes which are based on the conviction that a balance of power with its mutual limitations and restrictions is preferable to open conflict over contradictory goals.

Adjustment

This could exist as

 (a) Accommodation: This leads hostile individuals and groups to the reduction or elimination of conflict through reciprocal alterations of behaviour. Accommodation has been viewed as antagonistic cooperation and sociologists distinguished several forms of accommodation which include:

i. Coercion: This represents conflict resolution on the part of a victorious party whose will is imposed on the loser.

ii. Superordination-subordination: This promotes a form of adjustment based on the losers’ acceptance of a subordinate (lower) status in relation to the winning group which moves into a higher or superordinate position.

iii. Truce: This is a temporary agreement to cease active conflict for some period of time.

iv. Compromise: This is reached when opponents of about equal strength agree to mutual reductions in their demands and to reciprocal concessions.

v. Toleration: This occurs when neither victory nor compromise seem feasible or desirable. The opponents neither make concessions nor do they engage in open conflict. They simply coexist with the tacit understanding not to do anything about their differences.

vi. Arbitration: This is brought about by a third party whose resolution of the conflict is accepted by the contending parties. This form of accommodation is usually preceded by “mediation”(the efforts of the third party to bring the opponents together in a compromise) and “conciliation” (or lessening of opposition through mutual insight which may come about without the intervention of a third party.

(b) Assimilation: This process fuses initially dissimilar individuals and groups into a social and cultural unit based on shared attitudes, values and interests.

There are two basic forms of assimilation.

i. Assimilation of weaker individual or group: By this arrangement, the weaker or newly arrived individuals or groups are absorbed by an existing group. This is a two-way process. Individuals and groups usually do not disappear into the dominant group without leaving some imprint on the structure and functioning of the latter.

ii. Merger of different groups: Different groups merge into a new combination resulting from the blending of some original characteristics and the rejection of others.

CONCLUSION

         In this unit, social interaction involves more than one person in interaction. Such relationship involves symbolic actions that are in the form of verbal of gestural communication through social interaction the individuals involved are aware of how others will probably react to their sent or elicited massages. A number of key patterns of interaction which are found in all societies are forms of social bonds. One or more of these patterns are presented as social processes. It is demonstrated in this unit that there are enough patterns and repetition that make prediction of behaviour possible.

SUMMARY

           In this unit, details about social interaction were presented. Also the specifics of major social processes were discussed. Each of these major processes was broken types that could be found in it. The major social processes discussed included opposition, cooperation and adjustment. On the final analysis, social interaction is said to take place in all know human societies.