SOC 302 1st Edition Lecture 16Outline of Last Lecture I. Social InstitutionsII. OrganizationsOutline of Current LectureI. Bureaucracy II.Reality of social constructionsa.Realistic (weak version)b.Unrealistic (strong version)Current LectureBureaucracy emerged about 100 years ago, characterized by clear levels of authority, divisions of labor, written rules, written communications and records, and impersonality, or the idea that the position is what matters. Max Weber coined the term and predicted that bureaucracies would come to dominate social life in a process called the rationalization of society. We can’t function in a productive society like ours without it. However, it stifles humanity in some ways. Bureaucracy does several things. It brings efficiency but heightens rule dependency. It standardizes things but diminished interest in unique experience. For example, chain restaurants may have a standardized recipe for their fettuccine alfredo, but it’s less interesting to not try different things at different restaurants. It fosters alienation from our product but contributes to resistance by the formation of primary groups. We don’t make our own clothes or grow our own food anymore. The net effect of bureaucracy is homogeneity of organizational structures in an institutional environment. Despite their sticking power, institutions remain social constructions, artifacts of a particular time, culture, and society. They are produced by collective human choice, though not directly by individual intention. There is no single reality to social encounters.The social construction of reality says that if people define situations as real, then they are real in their consequences. For example, for people who get nervous travelling on airplanes, even though there is no high risk, the threat of airplanes is real because they believe it is. Behavior often hinges on our socialized subjective interpretations of situations, not on objective“reality.” This is not to suggest that reality is only socially constructed. So, form our primary These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.groups, we learn specific ways of looking at life. This idea is very popular and resonates with thesociological imagination. Its ironic form of analysis is attractive. “Assumption upending” lends itself to good storytelling. However, it has become a ubiquitous “framing” device for sociologicalanalyses. All human knowledge is mediated and usually influenced by particular and contingent sociocultural factors (such as material interests, group structures, tech development) such that what people believe to be real is shaped not only by objective reality but also by their sociocultural contexts. Furthermore, there is a dimension of reality that humans socially construct.There is also unrealistic social construction, which says that [reality itself is a human social construction and is sustained as “real” through ongoing social interactions. Therefore, ourknowledge about reality is culturally relative, since no human has access to reality “as it really is.”] However, this is a step too far, according to Smith. Foucault says that the individual person is merely a fabricated reality. Fuchs says that a person is a variable construct, not an origin of social things. Because knowledge is language bound, truth is arbitrary. However, if this strong version of social constructionism is true, then we shouldn’t take it seriously because by its own standard, we shouldn’t believe it. This is why Smith claims that strong constructionism has little persuasive leverage because it would imply that our moral commitments come from only personal preference, arbitrary choice, and the power to enforce and impose. Realistic social construction, which is a weaker social constructionist claim, contends thathumanity has a particular, essential, and natural constitution. An objective reality exists independently of our consciousness of