Social interaction is an element of sociology that involves a continuous flow of social actions between two or more people of groups who tend to change the way they act and react according to the partner they are interacting with. The interaction may either be regular, repeated, accidental, or regulated.
There are specific elements that social structures have in common. The first is values. Social structures ensure that the individuals occupying them share almost similar values that help integrate people into the system of interaction. The second is groups and institutions. Social structures come in the form of institutions of social groups. There are four major institutions and groups. They include economic institutions, family, religious institutions, and political institutions. These groups have been centered upon activities such as procreation, ruling, worship, and the attempt to gather food and wealth. The third is organizations. Human beings have, in modern times, deliberately formed organizations that help them pursue specific purposes. The fourth is collectives with examples including political parties, families, schools, and firms. The fifth is roles where individuals are bound together because of the roles they are supposed to fulfil. The fifth is normal happenings. In my everyday life, I come across a lot of the different elements of social structures. As a student with a family, the main structures I interact with include schools and families.
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Social institutions have six major functions. First, they are meant to enable reproduction to take place. The institutions reproduce traditions, goods, and humans among other items. Economic institutions produce goods and services, families produce human beings, and political institutions produce power and status. The second function is socialization. The norms of a society are transmitted to human beings and hence preserved through social institutions. Socialization begins immediately after birth and ends when one dies. Thirdly, social institutions give an individual a sense of purpose. All institutions are meant to fulfil their own special purposes. For instance, educational institutions provide education, hospitals provide healthcare, and churches instil values in individuals. The fourth is function is the preservation of social order. The society has norms which are expected to be imparted in every individual. These norms are to be passed from an individual to another through interaction. Social institutions enable interaction which allows for the norms to be passed. This is related to the fifth function which is the transmission of culture. If culture is not transmitted to individuals that are meant to share it, it dies. Social institutions allow people of the same culture to share the same cultural values and practices. Lastly, social institutions are meant to shape the personality of an individual. The concept of social institutions and their functions apply to me in a lot of different ways. For example, being a Christian, I regularly go to church to acquire values of Christianity. This also helps to shape my personality which is transmitted to me by fellow Christians.
Social control is the concept by which the behavior, appearance, and thoughts of an individual are regulated by social structures of the society. There are two main forms of social control. The first is informal social control which is the conformity to the values that the society considers idea. Enforcement of such control is done by families, authoritative figures, peers, and primary caregivers. The second form of social control is formal social control. An example of this is when an individual gets arrested and rehabilitated for a crime he committed. Formal social control is enforced by the government and its representatives. Some individuals tend to be deviant to these forms of social control. There are five social theories that attempt to explain social deviance. These theories include social strain typology, labeling theory, conflict theory, biological theories, and structural functionalism.
