STRUCTURAL THEORY

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STRUCTURAL THEORY

• KVISTO/CHRISTOPHER PRENDERGAST Why do African
  Americans Pay More For New Cars?
• LEMERT/TALCOTT PARSON Sex Roles in the
  American Kinship System
• ROBERT MERTON Manifest and Latent Functions
• TALCOTT PARSON Action Systems and Social
  Systems
• CLAUDE LEVI STRAUSS The Structural Study of
  Myth

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Christopher PrendergastPart 1

• Why Do African Americans Pay More for New Cars?
• A Structural Explanation

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Structural Explanation in Sociology

• Type of casual explanation that is specifically
  designed to account for patterns of human action
  and choices

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Patterns Operate Within A Social System

• Its process is a way relationships, practices,
  and beliefs operate to structure the choices and
  actions of individuals

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Buy - Seller SOCIAL SYSTEM

• Seller social system which the network of
  dealerships in metropolitan area. Relationships
  between dealer and manufacturer
• Buyer differentiate buyers by social networks,
  community and class position
• Note African American buyers sometimes will get
  better deals than most whites

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Concepts Related to this Theory

• Social Capital
• Cultural Capital
• Status Characteristics
• Typification
• Power Dependency and Power Balancing Operation

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Most Important Concept

• Power/Dependency
• Robert Emerson (1962) famous essay
• - Power Dependence Relations
• Emersons concept is relational one partys
  power in a relationship is equal to the other
  partys dependence on rewards or resources
  derived from the relationship
• Relationships are power imbalanced, party with
  greater power seek a higher level of reward from
  the other

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Cultural Capital

• Quality and quantity of information that actors
  can deploy in social interaction

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Status Characteristics

• Attributes commonly associated with age,
  physical, attractiveness, class, race and gender

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Social Capital

• Pool of favors and obligations in ones social
  network

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Typification

• Degree of knowledge that people have different
  domains of experience

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Background Information

• Why do African Americans in Chicago Metropolitan
  area pay hundreds of dollars more for new cars?
• - it deals with race

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Background Information Continued

• Why?
• - Chicago Metropolitan is highly segregated

• Chicago
• - 45 Whites
• - 39 Blacks
• Suburbs
• - 87 Whites
• - 6.7 Blacks

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Chicago

• Chicago concentrates on south and west downtown
• 91 black population moved so they can all live
  in an integrated neighborhood

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Hyper Segregation

• Extreme isolation and concentration of African
  Americans in Metropolitan areas like Chicago

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Christopher PrendergastPart 2

• Why Do African Americans Pay More for New Cars?
• A Structural Explanation

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CAR PRICE MYSTERY

• A . A research in Chicago was done in response
  to reports received that African Americans pay
  more for cars than whites do.
• The study
• 1. Testers white females, white males, black
• females, black males, all attractive, same age
  and professionals.
• 2. Where sent out to different dealers with the
  same script in bargaining.
• Outcome
• After 180 deals and 90 showrooms, the African
  American testers wound up agreeing to markups two
  and three time times higher than the white
  testers.

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WHY IS THIS HAPPENING

• Possibilities
• A. Protecting the color line. Biased against
  blacks.
• B. Black stereotypes amongst the auto sales
  network

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END RESULTS

• Prejudice is somewhat unlikely
• Car dealerships are integrated
• Regardless of the price markup the sale is still
  made
• It would be risky to the dealership to loose so
  much money if a sale were not made
• Chicago suburbs, were these studies were done are
  among the most highly segregated, yet the higher
  markups were not concentrated in the suburbs

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END RESULTS CONT

• B. Stereotypes
• 1. Stereotypes eventually are displaced due to
  practical needs
• 2. What about African American Testers who were
  buying cars from African American salespeople.
• 3. It was the same for female buyers and sellers
• Final bids 400 to 1000 higher for black
  testers than white. The research in the end was
  useless all the study confirmed is something that
  has always been known, that poor minority
  residents living in segregated areas pay more
  for everything.

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BARGAINING POWER, CAPITAL, AND DEPENDANCY

• In the study done women (regardless of race)
  pay more for cars because they know less about
  car models and features, the frauds and bluffs of
  bargaining.
• This is also implied of African American men and
  women. In the early 60s, only 30 of the black
  social network in Chicago owned vehicles making
  them less experienced in buying and more gullible
  when it comes to negotiating. Now over 60 own
  vehicles and are left to deal with bias of car
  dealerships.

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• Residential segregation, median economic
  standing, small but growing upper middle class
  and being car less affects African Americans
  bargaining and buying power. Not being a
  previous car owner means fewer opportunities for
  car comparison and less experience in
  negotiating. These are all structural conditions
  that make it difficult for a African American to
  bargain and get a good deal.
• Even if a young successful African American from
  a affluent neighborhood with a high socioeconomic
  standing were to enter the dealers he would be
  seen as inexperienced buyer with money and an
  easy target.

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CONTEXTS OF A DEALERS DEPENDENCY

• 50 years ago dealers were able to markup cars
  20 - 25 to make a profit. Now it is more
  difficult there is much more competition, there
  are credit unions who offer wholesale prices to
  the consumer and more people are becoming better
  negotiators and are able to talk dealers into
  only 300 to 500 markups on the vehicle of their
  choice.

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• After the 1970s competition from Europe and
  Japan came in leaving dealers with excessive
  production and unsold inventory. In order to
  compete dealerships had to to borrow at high
  interest rates, keep more inventory, and relocate
  to better and bigger locations.
• They were forced to deal. Some were still unable
  to stay in business others had to go into the
  used-car operations.
• The reality of it is car dealers usually only
  profit 10 off of each sale. This is why they
  rely on the inexperienced, car less, ready to
  spend consumer.

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Christopher PrendergastPart 3

• Why Do African Americans Pay More for New Cars?
• A Structural Explanation

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BUYER DEPENDENCY

• They can lower their dependence by
• 1) Obtaining multiple bids
• 2) By joining the Consumer Federation or a credit
  union
• 3) By finding a purchase pal more knowledgeable
  than yourself

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Dealer Dependency

• They can lower their dependence on consumers and
  manufacturers by
• Adopting the right power balancing strategies

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The Social Structure of dealer dependency

• It is a heuristic model of 5 types of dealers
• 1) Traditional franchise operation
• Family owned
• 2) Traditional franchise operation
• Own niche of loyal buyers
• 3) Dual franchise operation
• Domestic and imports
• 4) Dual franchise operation
• Sales team concept
• 5) Megadealer

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Bargaining

• 3 phases
• 1) Sellers initial offer
• 2) Buyer counter offer
• 3) Price negotiation and sellers final offer

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Think It Over

• Why do sales persons race and gender have no
  effect on markups?
• What determines these price markups?

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Sex Roles in the American Kinship System

• Talcott Parsons

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TALCOTT PARSONS

• When strong ties have been formed situational
  pressures force modification and impose strains
  on the individuals.

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TALCOTT PARSONS

• Effective kinship unit is normally small conjugal
  family. The childs emotional attachments to kin
  are confined to a few persons.

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TALCOTT PARSONS

• Childs relations outside the family are only to
  a small extent. A play group is a large extent
  to find his own level in competition with
  others.

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TALCOTT PARSONS

• Youth culture is a pleasure seeker. A simple
  matter of apprenticeship in adult values and
  responsibilities.

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TALCOTT PARSONS

• Our society was characterized by striking
  assimilation of the roles of the sexes to each
  other.

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TALCOTT PARSONS

• American society manifests a high level of
  emancipation of women, which involves relative
  assimilation to masculine roles in accessibility
  to occupational opportunity.

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TALCOTT PARSONS

• Sex role assimilation in our society are
  conspicuously combined with elements of
  segregation which are even more striking in other
  societies.

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TALCOTT PARSONS

• Among the occupational statues of a family, that
  of the father and husband are most important.
  Husband is known as the breadwinner and the
  wife is known as the housekeeper.

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TALCOTT PARSONS

• Minor children do not work and when they do, it
  is already a major step in the process of
  emancipation from the family

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TALCOTT PARSONS

• Historically, Western culture, has strong
  tendency to define the feminine role as one of
  dependency.

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ASYMMETRICAL RELATION

• Has both exceedingly important positive
  functional significance and is at the same time
  an important source of strain in relation to the
  patterning of sex roles

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POSITIVE FUNCTIONAL SIDE

• High incidence of certain types of patterns is
  essential to our occupational system and to the
  institutional complex in such fields as property
  and exchange which more immediately surround the
  systems

• Requires scope for the valuation of personal
  achievement, for equality of opportunity, for
  mobility in response to technical requirements,
  for devotion to occupational goals and interests
  relatively unhampered by personal considerations

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POSITIVE FUNCTIONAL SIDE

• Requires a high incidence of technical
  competence, of rationality, of universalistic
  norms, and of functional specificity.

• Essential occupational structure requires a
  far-reaching structural segregation of
  occupational roles from the kinship roles of the
  same individuals (must be treated as individuals)

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PROCESS OF MUTUAL ACCOMODATIONS

• Between two fundamental aspects of our social
  structure

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PROCESS OF MUTUAL ACCOMODATION

• A) Our kinship system is of a structural type
  which interferes least with the functional needs
  of the occupational system exerting little
  pressure for the ascription of an individuals
  social status the conjugal unit can be mobile in
  status independently of the other kinship ties of
  its members

• By confining the number of status-giving
  occupational roles of the members of the
  effective conjugal unit to one, it eliminates any
  competition for status, especially as between
  husband and wife, which might be disruptive of
  the solidarity of marriage so long as the lines
  of achievement are segregated and not directly
  comparable, there is less opportunity for
  jealousy, a sense of inferiority to develop.

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PROCESS OF MUTUAL ACCOMODATION

• B) Small conjugal unit can also be strongly
  solidary unit prevalence of the pattern that
  normally only one of its members has an
  occupational role which is of determinate
  significance for the status of the family as a
  whole.

• Its aids in clarity of definition of the
  situation by making the status of the family in
  the community relatively definite and
  unequivocal there is much evidence that this
  relative definiteness of status is an important
  factor in psychological security.

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STRAINS IN RELATION TO THE PATTERNING OF SEX
ROLES

• Historically, in western culture, there has been
  a strong tendency to define the feminine role
  psychologically as one strongly marked by
  elements of dependency

• Parsons example rather recently the married
  woman was not sui juris, could not hold property,
  make contracts, or sue in her own right.

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STRAINS IN RELATION TO THE PATTERNING OF SEX
ROLES

• Two pressures tend to counteract this dependency
  and have played a part in the movement for
  feminine emancipation

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STRAINS IN RELATION TO THE PATTERNING OF SEX
ROLES

• The multilineal symmetry of the kinship system,
  which gives no basis of sex discrimination, and
  which in kinship terms favors equal rights and
  responsibilities for both parties to a marriage.
• Character of the marriage. Resting as is does
  primarily on affective attachment for the other
  person as a concrete human individual puts a
  premium on a certain kind of mutuality and
  equality. There is no clearly structured
  superordination-subordination pattern. Each is a
  fully responsible partner with a claim to a
  voice in decisions, to a certain human dignity,
  to be taken seriously.

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STRAINS IN RELATION TO THE PATTERNING OF SEX
ROLES

• Conspicuous tendency for the feminine role to
  emphasize broadly humanistic rather than
  technically specialized achievement values. The
  more humanistic cultural traditions and amenities
  of life are carried out by women.

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STRAINS IN RELATION TO THE PATTERNING OF SEX
ROLES

• Since these things are of high importance in the
  scale of values in our culture, and since by
  virtue of the system of occupational
  specialization even many highly superior men are
  greatly handicapped in respect to them.

• Parsons Example
• good taste in personal appearance, house
  furnishings, cultural things life literature and
  music

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STRAINS IN RELATION TO THE PATTERNING OF SEX
ROLES

• Parsons Example
• glamour girl pattern

• Use of specifically feminine devices as an
  instrument of compulsive search for power and
  exclusive attention, which are conspicuous.

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Action Systems and Social Systems

• Talcott Parsons

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Action system

• Subsystems
• Social
• Cultural
• Personality
• Behavioral Organism

• Primary Function
• Integration
• Pattern Maintenance
• Goal Attainment
• Adaptation

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Systems of Reality

• There are two systems of reality which are
  environmental to action in general and not
  constituents of action in our analytical sense.
• Physical environment
• ultimate reality

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Analyzing interrelations

• Interpenetration
• internalization
• institutionalization
• The boundary between any pair of action systems
  involves a zone of structured components or
  patterns which must be treated theoretically as
  common to both systems, not simply allocated to
  one system or the other.

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• In order to communicate symbolically,
  individuals must have culturally organized common
  codes, such as those of language, which are also
  integrated into systems of their social
  interaction. In order to make information stored
  in the central nervous system utilizable for the
  personality, the behavioral organism must have
  mobilization and retrieval mechanisms which,
  through interpenetration, subserve motives
  organized at the personality level. pg 299

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• Structure of social systems analyzed in terms of
• values
• norms
• collectives
• roles.
• To be institutionalized in a stable fashion,
  collectivities and roles must be governed by
  specific insofar as they are implemented by
  particular collectivities and roles.

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Manifest and Latent Functions

• Robert K. Merton

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What are Manifest and Latent Functions?

• Manifest Function- objective consequences for a
  specified unit (person, subgroup, social system
  or cultural system) which contribute to its
  adjustment or were so intended.
• Latent Function- unintended or unrecognized
  consequences.

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Purpose of the Distinction

• Clarifies the analysis of irrational social
  patterns.
• Helps in interpreting social practices even
  though their manifest purpose is not achieved
• When this occurs, the practices are called
  superstitions, irrationalities.
• When group behavior does not achieve its apparent
  purpose, attribute its occurrence to ignorance,
  lack if intelligence.
• With latent function, a behavior may have a
  function or purpose although it is different from
  its intended purpose.

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Example of Hopi Ceremonial Rain Dance

• Although in some cases the rain dance may not
  bring rain it has other purposes that are not so
  obvious or visible.
• Its latent function is to reinforce group
  identity by assembling group members to engage in
  a common activity.
• It is a source of group unity.

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Other purpose of latent functions

• The distinctive intellectual contribution of a
  sociologist usually occurs when studying
  unintended consequences (latent functions) of
  social practices as well as in the study of
  anticipated consequences (manifest functions)
• Sociologists have made their individual and
  unique contributions when doing research when
  they have focused on studying latent functions.

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Sociological Knowledge

• The discovery of latent functions represents
  significant increase in sociological knowledge.
• Latent functions of a practice or belief are not
  common knowledge because they are unintended or
  unrecognized social and psychological
  consequences.
• Research about latent functions is a greater
  increase in knowledge than that about manifest
  functions because it is about things that we do
  not know.
• Latent functions show that social life is not as
  simple as it seems.

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The Structural Study of Myth

• Claude Levi-Strauss

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Claude Levi-Strauss

• Born in Belgium and grew up in Versailles
• Studied at the University of Paris
• 1932-1934 taught high school in France
• 1934-1939 taught Sociology at the University of
  Sao Paulo in Brazil
• Interest in reading and field trips led him in
  becoming an anthropologist
• He was in the US until 1947

• Les Structures elementaires de la parente first
  major book of structural anthropology, 1949
• Taught at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in
  France
• 1958 names to a chair of social anthropology at
  College de France
• Major books include Tristes Tropiques,
  Structural Anthropology, Mythologies

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The Structural Study of Myth, 1955

• The original manifesto for the cultural study of
  culture analyzed Oedipal myth without any
  reference to the unconscious
• Approach was more Durkheimian and Saussurian than
  Freudian

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The Structural Study of Myth

• cythonian being one who is taught to live
  beneath the surface of the earth (monsters)
• Autochthonous origin one from the soil or from
  beneath the earth
• Monsters autochthonous origin
• Oedipus myth slaying of monsters as denial of
  mans origins as a creature of the earth
• Oedipal story resolves natural human dilemma over
  how we can be born both of human and of primitive
  natural origins

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MYTHS

• Collective dreams
• Outcome of esthetic play
• Basis of ritual

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MYTHOLOGICAL FIGURES

• Personified figures
• Divinized heroes
• Fallen gods

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MYTHOLOGY

• Feelings common to the whole of mankind
• Example
• - love
• - hate
• - revenge

• Phenomena
• Example
• - astronomical
• - meteorological

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MYTH

• No logic
• No continuity
• Everything becomes possible
• Always refers to events alleged to have taken
  place long ago
• Myth is language to be known, myth has to be
  told it is part of human speech

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Page 312 (Lemert) Myth Sequence
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Page 313 (Lemert) OEDIPUS MYTH
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STRUCTURAL STUDY OF MYTH

• First Column overrating of blood relations
• Second Column underrating of blood relations
• Third Column monsters being slain denial of
  the autochthonous origin of man
• Fourth Column difficulties in walking straight
  and standing upright persistence of the
  autochthonous origin of man

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STRUCTURAL TIC-TAC-TOE

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Structural Tic-Tac-ToeSex Roles in the American
Kinship System

• Child relations inside the family are a small
  extent. A play group outside the family is?

• A. Small
• B. Large
• C. Too large to measure

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Structural Tic-Tac-ToeSex Roles in the American
Kinship System

• When children work it is a major step in the
  process of emancipation from the family.

• True
• False

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Structural Tic-Tac-ToeSex Roles in the American
Kinship System

• What culture has an element of rating and
  dating which serves as a pattern of adjustment?

• A. Adult
• B. Emancipation
• C. Occupational
• D. Youth

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Structural Tic-Tac-ToeSex Roles in the American
Kinship System

• Asymmetrical Relation has both exceedingly
  important positive functional significance and is
  at the same time an important source of strain in
  relation to the patterning of sex roles.

• True
• False

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Structural Tic-Tac-ToeAction Systems and Social
Systems

• In order to communicate symbolically,
  individuals must have culturally common ________?

• A. Zones
• B. Codes
• C. Norms

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Structural Tic-Tac-ToeAction Systems and Social
Systems

• In the distinctions among the four subsystems of
  action are drawn in terms of the four primary
  functions.

• True
• False

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Structural Tic-Tac-ToeManifest and Latent
Functions

• A. Bring Rain
• B. Has No Latent Function
• C. Reinforced Group Identity

• What is the latent function of the Hopi
  ceremonial rain dance?

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Structural Tic-Tac-ToeManifest and Latent
Functions

• The discovery of latent functions represents a
  significant increase of sociological knowledge.

• True
• False

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Structural Tic-Tac-ToeKvisto Part 1

• What percent of blacks move into an integrated
  neighborhood?

• A. 69
• B. 91
• C. 25

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Structural Tic-Tac-ToeKvisto Part 1

• Structural Explanation is a type of causal
  explanation that is specifically designed to
  account for patterns of human action and chaos.

• True
• False

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Structural Tic-Tac-ToeKvisto Part 2

• In the 1960s what percentage of black households
  in Chicago owned cars?

• A. 30
• B. 40
• C. 60

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Structural Tic-Tac-ToeKvisto Part 2

• Residential segregation, median economic standing
  and being car less are all structural conditions
  for low bargaining power?

• True
• False

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Structural Tic-Tac-ToeKvisto Part 3

• A. Race of the sales person
• B. Gender of the sales person
• C. Position of their dealership and the give and
  take of the bargaining process

• What determines car price markups?

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Structural Tic-Tac-ToeKvisto Part 3

• The sales persons race and gender has no effect
  on the markups.

• True
• False

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Structural Tic-Tac-ToeClaude Levi-Strauss

• A. Les Structures elementaires de la parente
• B. Tristes tropiques
• C. Structural Anthropology
• D. Mythologiques
• E. All of the above

• Levi Strauss wrote

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Structural Tic-Tac-ToeClaude Levi-Strauss

• A myth always refers to events alleged to have
  taken place long ago.

• True
• False