preview

Macro Levels Of Social Structures

Decent Essays

Social structures are a mostly invisible system that shapes human activity in a way that is noticeable and predictable. These structures are shaped by social facts, which collectively impose ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving on an individual outside of consciousness. Social facts limit choice and opportunity, but allow social structures to be broken down into three broad groups, called micro-levels, meso-levels, and macro-levels. In micro-levels, social structures shape our identity, behavior and thoughts; meso-levels reveal how social structures such as corporations, neighborhoods, or schools shape us. Macro levels show how social structures shape the institutions and their guidelines as a whole. Human agency is the capacity of individuals …show more content…

People create a stigma of opinion, as to what they believe and how I am going against that opinion, and are very keen on making it known. While I am being deviant, I am also expressing my human agency. There are stigmas of the body, which come along with having a red pixie haircut and tattoos, that typically involve assumptions of manliness, being unfeminine, or too out there. Stigmas related to behavior come with dating a black man. While this behavior is seen as less deviant elsewhere, the south and my older relatives still strongly view interracial dating and marriage as deviant. With this behavior, I have heard many negative disapproving informal sanctions. However being in the Bible belt, the third category of stigmas that an audience has defined as racial, religious, or national vary in severity. Racially, being in a white family with black foster children is quite puzzling to many people; many blacks view raising black children in a white home as wrong and completely deviant in their eyes. Religiously being in the south, stigmas toward any religion other than Christianity are strong, but I have also experienced the stigma of Christians being hypocrites. Nationally, I have seen my Puerto Rican best friend been told to “go back to Mexico” while that is just a stigma that all Hispanics are

Get Access