Robert Merton's Strain Theory

Robert Merton came up with concepts based off Emile Durkheim's work, that supposedly were meant to produce anomic conditions in society: culturally defined goals and socially approved means for obtaining them. What these concepts basically involve are whether you have succeeded in life, being wealthy, getting a degree, or whether you were unable to obtain such goals are proceeded to achieve the "American dream" in another unique or deviant way. Merton's variety of social adaptions are as followed:

• Conformity: Individuals obtain cultural goals and individualized means by obtaining society's social goals, such graduating from college, or getting a decent paying job. These individuals also have the resources to reach these goals without rebelling and exercising criminal actions.

• Innovation: Individuals achieve cultural goals but not by individualized means. These individuals know what they have to do to achieve in life and how to do it without breaking laws, but can't always achieve them. Those who cannot achieve such a simple goal as going to college, believe they are not smart enough or live in poverty. So to get what they need and want in life, they typically resort to criminal behavior such as stealing or selling drugs. 

• Ritualism: Ritualists are those individuals in life who are very much law-abiding citizens, but have given up and accepted that they will never live the "American Dream". These are the people that you usually see working a full time job that requires no degree and living in a house that's not ideal to most people, but it works. They live a less than average lifestyle, but do not exercise criminal behaviors. 

• Retreatism: Reatreatists are completely against both the goals and means of society. These are individuals who know they will never go anywhere in life and have completely given up hope. They often withdrawal themselves from society after acknowledging this. They resort to drugs because they know nothing else and drugs make them feel better about themselves for a little while. An example of retreatists could be people who are in and out of prison.

• Rebellion: Individuals who rebel are in completely different categories than the ones listed above. These are people who are all about doing their own thing and making their life meaningful in their own way. They rebel from social norms and goals create their own. 

Out of all these concepts, rebellious individuals are the ones that I find the most fascinating. They are either completely against the government or they just don't believe in living a "normal" life and doing anything they can to show how unique they are to the world. In some ways, I believe that more people should be like this. 

Parson's Pattern Variables

Talcott Parson came up with a set of concepts known as pattern variables that compared relationships in different cultures throughout the social system. The five pattern variables are as described as I saw it below:

• Affectivity-affective neutrality: Actors who are affective show emotion such as love, laughter, happiness, and anger. Actors who are affectively neutral are serious and hide their emotions from other people. i.e. based on culture, Americans tend to be more affective, and Asians tend to be more affectively neutral. Americans speak with dramatization, and Asians speak more monotone.

• Diffuseness-specificity: diffusion is basically expecting that your significant other is going to do ‘this’ or ‘that’ for you or act towards you in a certain way without any question. These are actors who have been dating for a long time, are married, or are considered hopeless romantics. Specificity is where you expect little out of the relationship and are perfectly content with that for the time being. An example of this could be actors who have just started dating or even actors who are friends with benefits.

• Universalism-particularism: Universalism is based more on a particular set of rules that is set by society or entrepreneurs. Particularism is focused more on the relationships they have with their family or friends and not just on the basic rules of society. The workers and corporate of Taco Bell don’t care that they are feeding you garbage, it is just a job to them; this is considered universalism. Owners and workers of vegan restaurants care about what people eat and care that they stay healthy, they are particular.

• Achievement-ascription: Actors who experience achievement know what it’s like to have worked really hard in their lifetime to be recognized for it. Actors with an ascribed status may get free rides for some things in their life and may not have to try as hard. An example could be a white, middle class American getting into UW-Madison and achieving their goal because they got a 3.8 GPA in high school and a 28 on the ACT. A middle class African American got accepted into the same school with a 3.0 GPA and a 21 on his ACT because of his ascribed characteristics.

• Collectivity-self orientation: When the actor does what he thinks is in his best interest, that’s self orientation, he puts himself before anyone else. Being collectively orientated is when the actor thinks about the other people’s best interests and not just his own. Someone who is self orientated in a relationship will do what he thinks is best for him alone and not his significant other. Someone who is collectively orientated in a relationship will decide his future while keeping his significant other in mind. 

Self, Me, & I

George Herbert Mead concentrated one of his theories on distinguishing the differences between the self, me, and I. And to do this, you have to somewhat be aware that you in fact are part of a greater society and have to be able to recognize the differences between yourself and others. What Mead says about the Self is that "the self has the characteristic that is an object to itself, and that characteristic distinguishes it from other objects and from the body...the bodily experiences are for us organized about a self." To me, this means that the body is more of the physiological characteristics, and that the self is more of just the mental part and what's going on in your brain. The self is all of your thoughts and what makes you function on a day to day basic. Mead is basically saying that your physiological body and mind are two separate things. Mead claims that the I "is the response of the individual to the attitude of the community as this appears in his own experience." So this is basically you're initial reactions and personalized thoughts that you have about the generalized other. It is the innate or instinct that we have as humans, but we don't always follow through with it and we do what we believe would be more socially acceptable instead of deviating. Mead states that the Me is "the adjustment to that organized world which is present in our own nature is on that represents the 'me' and is constantly there." In other words, the Me is your thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, and interactions towards others, and what the socially acceptable things may be. This may or may not be what Mead was getting at, but to me I see the "Me" and "I" as sort of Freud's theory of the ego and superego. The "I" would appear to be the ego, where really you feel like telling your boss off because he's a psychopath, but then the "Me", or superego, kind of tells you that that may not be the best idea because you don't really feel like losing your job today and living out on the streets because you can't afford to pay rent. Here is a short, kind of funny video distinguishing the differences between "Me" and "I" that gets the point across pretty well.