Social Structure and Social Relations
Core concepts
Social structure is the patterned arrangement of groups and the relations between them. Know the main social communities: class, stratum, estate, caste, nation, professional and demographic groups. Understand social stratification (inequality in income, power, prestige, education) and social mobility (vertical/horizontal, individual/group, channels or 'social lifts' such as education, marriage, career).
Know social norms and social control (formal and informal, external and internal), deviance (including positive deviance such as heroism), and conflict as a form of interaction. Understand family types: nuclear/extended, patriarchal/partner, and functions of the family.
Traps
A frequent trap is treating all inequality as class inequality - estates and castes are legally or religiously fixed, classes are open. Another is calling all deviance criminal; deviance is any departure from norms, crime is legal violation. Watch the mobility direction: a teacher becoming a director is vertical upward; moving to a same-level job in another city is horizontal. Also distinguish social group (interacting, shared identity) from social aggregate (people in one place, e.g. a crowd).
Worked example
A worker's son becomes a university professor. Which type of mobility? Rule of thumb: compare the starting and ending stratum. A change in stratum level = vertical (upward here); a change of position without a change of level = horizontal; a change of a whole group's position = group mobility. The example is individual vertical upward mobility.
Rule of thumb
Ask two questions: did the level change (vertical or horizontal)? and did one person or a whole group move (individual or group)?