Table Of ContentElementary Forms of Social Relations
Elementary Forms of Social Relations introduces the reader to social life as a per-
petual quest by individuals to gain attention, respect and regard (status) accom-
panied by an effort to marshal defensive and offensive means (power) to overcome
the reluctance of others to grant status. This work is based on empirical evidence
from many research settings showing that status and power are the main relational
modes and that to understand our own and others’ social behavior, we need to
understand how status and power operate in relational conduct.
The status- power and reference group approach is applied to enumerate the
relatively few ways in which social interaction can occur. Chapters compare the
analytic value of the concept of the self with the value of reference groups that
create the self. Threads of investigation include: considering the fallacy of aban-
doning reference groups as sources of cultural information in favor of approaches
derived from cognitive neuroscience; examining a multi- person conversation
from a status- power-and- reference-group stance as against a view of the same
conversation based on principles of Conversation Analysis; and asserting the
universality of personal status- power interests even among national leaders to
name a few. By applying the author’s main theory to a range of specific cases,
the author reaffirms the importance of the social to our understanding of a
variety of phenomena, including the self, cultural transmission, the conduct of
leaders and economic activity.
This book provides readers with transparent instances of the theory in action
and thus will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in theory
and social interaction.
Theodore D. Kemper is Professor of Sociology (Ret.) at St. John’s University,
NY, USA.
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112 Jürgen Habermas and the European Economic Crisis
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113 Genealogies of Emotions, Intimacies, and Desire
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114 Modernity and Crisis in the Thought of Michel Foucault
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117 Elementary Forms of Social Relations
Status, power and reference groups
Theodore D. Kemper
Elementary Forms of Social
Relations
Status, power and reference groups
Theodore D. Kemper
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Theodore D. Kemper
The right of Theodore D. Kemper to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Kemper, Theodore D., 1926– author.
Title: Elementary forms of social relations : status, power and reference
groups / Theodore D. Kemper.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016012581| ISBN 9781138696518 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315524375 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Social interaction. | Social status. | Social stratification. |
Social structure.
Classification: LCC HM1111 .K46 2017 | DDC 302–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016012581
ISBN: 978-1-138-69651-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-52437-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Contents
List of tables vi
Preface vii
Acknowledgments x
1 Elementary forms: status, power and reference groups 1
2 The minimum complexity of social relations 24
3 G. H. Mead had gotten it half-r ight 37
4 After the dialogical self, what? 51
5 The marriage of cognitive neuroscience and sociology: a
dissenting view 58
6 A Nobel? Well, yes! But where’s the social? 73
7 Status, power and Conversational Analysis 91
8 Leaders and social relations 102
9 Some applications of status-p ower and reference group
theory 115
10 Concluding theoretical considerations 129
Appendix: a status-p ower glossary 147
References 165
Index 179
Tables
2.1 Interactional outcomes 25
2.2 Sequences of interaction outcome recognition 35
9.1 Status-power interaction and emotions 119
9.2 Three models of the actor 122
Preface
Some years ago, I set out with a colleague to write a textbook on Social Psychol-
ogy. Ludicrously, we bogged down in chapter one. What had seemed straight-
forward before putting pen to paper actually wasn’t. Our main problem was that
we wanted to be systematic, but we failed to find a satisfactory system on which
to base the book. One key to our trouble was that I couldn’t accept what a very
famous social psychologist at the University of Wisconsin had once told me
when I asked him for a definition of Social Psychology. His answer: “Social
Psychology is whatever social psychologists do.” Too facile for me.
Then I recollected something from my graduate training. One of the readings in
a course in Small Group Analysis was Launor F. Carter’s (1954) “Evaluating the
Performance of Individuals as Members of Small Groups.” Basing his conclusions
on empirical studies by different investigators in different settings, Carter proposed
that there were only three fundamental dimensions of social interaction or relation-
ship. As I came to appreciate, this was a massively important statement. Abandon-
ing the textbook, I began to explore the implications of Carter’s finding.
To accentuate the sociological relevance of Carter’s three dimensions, I
renamed them status, power and technical activity (these are discussed in
Chapter 1). Adopting a trope from Durkheim ([1912] 1915), I believe that the
relational dimensions of status and power along with reference groups (also dis-
cussed in Chapter 1) are “elementary forms,” central to the depiction and ana-
lysis of social relations. (Technical activity is not relational in the same way as
status and power and hence has a subsidiary place in the analysis of relation-
ships.) Using a modified version of Carter’s conclusions, I soon had some results
about emotions and social relationships (see Kemper 1978) that persuaded me I
was working one of the richest veins of the mother lode. From the despair of
being unable to write a text book, I passed into the euphoria of someone who
had struck theoretical gold.
In time, however, I began to wonder about my good fortune. If I was so smart,
how was it that other social scientists did not see what I saw in Carter’s work?
How come they too weren’t thinking further the implications of Carter’s model
of what transpires in social relationships—what people want and claim from
others, what they work for with others, what they contest others for, what they
live for and what they sometimes kill and die for?
viii Preface
Ultimately, I realized that those social scientists not working out the implica-
tions of Carter’s findings were acting quite normally according to my own
status- power and reference group theory. In a nutshell, they were being com-
mendably loyal to those reference groups—their teachers and mentors—that had
taught them how to do Science. Had the social scientists I wondered about
attended my graduate program and followed the particular path I took through it,
they too would have encountered Carter’s work and, perhaps, as I was, be
impressed by it as an important heuristic template for the understanding of social
behavior. By following the path set out by their teachers and mentors they were
merely enacting the expected status- power and reference groups terms of their
relationship with them. In just the same way that I was being steadfast in my
relationship with my teachers and mentors. It was as simple (and as complicated)
as that.
I have pursued the implications of Carter’s proposal in many articles and
three longer works (Kemper 1978, 1990, 2011). Here I take up a very strong
version of the status- power and reference group explanation of human behavior,
to a degree sufficient to court the allegation of “sociologism.” Let me consider
this possible charge.
Twin studies examine “personality” and find that monozygotic twins have
more similar personalities than do dizygotic twins and are even more different
from non- twin siblings (Bouchard et al. 1990). But society is very broad and has
both prescribed and optional requirements. Regardless of biology, everyone in
the United States must drive on the right. I doubt that there are biological dispo-
sitions to drive on the left, but it would not matter if there were, since everyone
must still drive on the right. Similarly, for other mandated actions, the over-
whelming pattern is for all people to act mainly within the framework required,
regardless of the strain on individual biology.
The important point here for social determinism is that biological impulses
that conflict with social rules are for the most part tightly controlled. Either the
biologically-o therwise individual complies and suffers for it or does not comply
and suffers in another way, or mobilizes others to change the social dictate. In
the latter case, biology has been absorbed into social allowance for variability.
To take an old case, society is now totally indifferent to left- handedness. Social
tolerance or acceptance is for the most part as good as explicit social approval
and thus can operate as strongly as actual social demand to determine behavior.
What is also telling for social determinism is that when there is a change in
social latitude about some previously condemned biologically- engendered
behavior, the change comes through invoking a new social standard. For
example, gay marriage in the United States was sanctioned under the due process
and equal protection clauses of the 14th amendment to the Constitution. Society
thus provides biology an opportunity to undermine society’s own rules. And
once a biological variation is accepted by society, it has virtually the same stand-
ing as if it were prescribed. If my stance here attributes too much about behavior
to social causes, in extenuation I plead that it has many times been said that one
must do too much to know how much is enough.
Preface ix
I wish to thank Edgar Mills, Jr., David Schmitt, Alejandro Portes and David
Kirp for their helpful comments and suggestions. They are entirely blameless for
any errors of commission or omission herein. I dedicate this book to William,
Amanda and Jason Streiter. They are of the generation that will work out the
kinks of what this volume proposes.
