Exchange+in+Society

__Society as a series of exchanges:__ This week we are going to take the symbolic interactionist perspective to new heights! Peter Blau is going to help us to understand the importance of reciprocity in our relationships and our society. But before we get to that, we had a bit of a problem last week and it feels as though the class has lost its sense of community. With two weeks left I am hoping that we can end on a strong front … but more importantly, I am hoping that we can end with each of you feeling confident about the material that will be covered in your final exam. In order to facilitate this I am going to ask that you all attend class on Wednesday. Although I won’t be there, I’ll ask a student to take roll. You’ll work in groups on an assignment I will place at the bottom of the wiki and I expect to see the results of your efforts (with your names attached) on the discussion page by Wednesday evening. Hopefully getting together face to face will help you to iron out the details of the theory. I’d also like for everyone to log onto the wiki on Friday at 10AM for our class discussion. Alex, Michael and Tom will be summarizing the essay and they will have their questions posted by 6AM Friday morning. Then, we can all log on from 10-11 on Friday and discuss together. Hopefully this will be more effective and efficient than having to log on multiple times throughout the day. John, Casey and Michael will be summarizing the chapter for us this week. Perhaps John can summarize Blau, Casey can summarize Cook, and Michael can summarize Collins? For the latter two, be sure to connect Cook and Collins to Blau’s ideas…

__Back to this exchange idea:__ Blau is interested in the relationship between the larger social structure and individual actions or behaviors. Specifically, he thought that opportunities for exchange influence peoples choices and decisions. As a consequence, he explored the things that impact people’s opportunities for exchange. He argues that social exchanges result in diffuse social obligations that are based on trust and reciprocity. Unlike an economic exchange, which is based on contracts or formal expectations for payment, social exchanges are diffuse. That means that when you make a social offer to someone (say, sending them an email or inviting them to dinner) you do not know exactly **when** or **how** they will repay you the effort. They may buy you coffee or send you a text tomorrow or in a week … the point is that although you have an expectation that they will repay your effort, that expectation is diffuse (unspecified). Because the expectation is diffuse, social exchanges involve trust … you trust the person will repay you at some point. So the idea here is that many of our social interactions are really social exchanges … our friendships are just a series of exchanges … even our families are a series of exchanges. Furthermore, when exchanges aren’t repaid the relationship may be broken or weakened.

__And now, without further ado, I will explain every relationship you have ever had:__ So, in society, we are engaged in a series of social exchanges that create bonds of friendship and power relations. Friendship relations are based on the expectation of equal exchanges … the expectation that within a relationship you give as much as you get. But full equality of exchanges is hard to maintain … often times someone develops a certain amount of power over another person. The graph on page 359 details how this happens. But let me put it in terms of my favorite topic … dating. Imagine that Monique is a hot number on campus and all the boys want to date her. In fact, Monique is so popular that whoever dates her will immediately gain a bunch of friends and be popular himself. Timothy is new on campus and desperate to make friends. He starts to flirt with Monique in an attempt to gain access to her network of friends. This increases Monique’s control over Timothy because she has **social exchange capital** (goods that he wants). Additionally, Timothy really only knows Monique. They were paired as lab partners and she is the only person who he has really spoken too. If she doesn’t date him, he doesn’t know any other girls to even ask out. This also gives Monique control over Timothy because he lacks **alternatives**. Despite these rather desperate circumstances, Timothy is ultimately and gentleman and would never use any kind of force to exert his will over Monique. This also gives Monique power because she does not have to worry about being physically manipulated … she can make a choice. Lastly, Timothy is really invested in making friends and this is the only way he knows how …date the most popular girl in school. This gives Monique lots of control because she alone can grant access to herself and Timothy is demonstrating a **consistent value hierarchy** where he has placed significant importance on dating Monique. So in this circumstance poor Timothy is totally at the will of Monique, who wields all of the social power in their relationship. So, once they start dating, Timothy will give into the implicit and explicit demands of Monique in order to maintain their relationship, even if that means wearing pink izod shirts, listening to Ke$ha, and participating in the springfest powerhour because its “hilarious” to go to class drunk. How can Timothy get his power back? He can alter his **value hierarchy** so that he no longer wants friends (and therefore no longer needs Monique). He could also join a social club or bible study to meet girls other than Monique and thus develop **alternatives** so that he can gain access to the same goods (friends) via a different path (say, that cute girl in his history class). I suppose he could even use physical force, but that would make the exchange no longer social (and illegal). Lastly, he could obtain some **social exchange capital** himself … that is, he could obtain a good or service that Monique wants (perhaps access to a car?) and then that would increase her dependency on him and make their relationship more equal. Blau argues that this social exchange dynamic can explain the majority of your relationships … think of your friends or romantic partners … or observe the relationships around you, you’ll see that these exchange dynamics underlie a great deal of our interactions (kinda creepy, if you think about it).

__Exchange networks among groups of people:__ Cook expands on this idea of exchange by looking at larger networks of people. Cook understood that the decisions you make impact the choices other people have. That is, if Monique starts to date Timothy that may directly impact Andre (who had also been wanting to date Monique). Andre may then decide to date Susan (since Monique isn’t available) leaving John without a date to the Spring formal. These are negative connections … where in order for an exchange to take place between two people, a third is left out of the deal. Cook argues that social networks tend towards balance or dissolution. That is, if one person in a network has a great deal of power (like the really mean girl in mean girls) then the weaker persons in the network will either form an alliance (as they did in that movie) or stop interacting with one another.

__Discussion on Wednesday:__ Split into groups of 3 or 4 and pick one of the following topics below to discuss: 1. In the early 1990s the Fellowship for Christian Athletes decided to market themselves to the cool, popular kids on campus with the expectation that the uncool, unpopular kids would follow. Using the principles of decentralization and balance, identify some things that the organization would need to keep in mind to be sure that the group did not dissolve 2. Think of a stable, intimate relationship … such as a marriage or a long term dating partner. Identify three ways that the relationship can become unbalanced (p. 358). Keeping the bullet points on page 360 in mind, how can the weaker partner re-establish equality in each of these situations? 3. Professors are given a certain amount of power in a classroom. What kind of process needs to occur for students to rise up, grasp the power they actually have over professors, and revolt (p. 361)? Imagine a scenario where this could happen on our campus for the betterment of the institution. 4. Blau argues that social exchanges are inherently different from economic exchanges. Explain his 4 reasons for this and use them to explain how the decision to engage in sexual relations between the members of a married couple is different from the decision to engage in sexual relations between an unmarried male and a prostitute.