#Throwback70's

Throwback Vintage! 

I was ubber' excited when I saw that MrP is bringing back the 70's fashion. Few months back I did a blog post about the raving 70's fashion & how fashionistas incorporate vintage in today's fashion. I love my MrP , they are my go to when it comes to the latest fashion trends ! They never disappoint.

What I like about the 70's fashion is that you its chilled. 

So if you love the 70's fashion , head to your nearest MrP & get these looks : 

Hello August

 

 

 

 



Shout out to all my ladies who celebrate their birthday in August with me. We proud "Winter Babies" .

For interest sake, the word 'August' also means celebrated, acclaimed and respected.

 

The month of August in South Africa is labelled as Women's month. Its our way of celebrating some of the countries remarkable women. Women like Nadine Gordimer (Novelist), Sophia Williams- De Bruyn (Women Rights Activist)  , Proff. Helen Rees (one of South Africa's top female scientists) and Thuli Madonsela (Public Protector) are just some of the remarkable women .

 

There's also a remarkable women that I will salute this month...my mother. Yesterday we commemorated her death. It has been 9years and yet it still feels like yesterday that we enjoyed our first and last proper holiday in Durban. I was sad, tears was flowing and flash backs haunted me but what I remember the most was her radiant smile, golden heart and wise words.

 

So what am I saying ?

Treasure your mother yes, but also treasure the remarkable women who's in the frontlines , fighting on behalf of us, women.

 

We salute the Mothers of our Nation.

 

Ubuntu " I am, because you are"

ARE GROUPS A REALITY?

W.I Thomas(1928) proposed the Thomas theorem which maintains that an individual's understanding of a social situation, even if incorrect, will determine how he or she will act in a situation "if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences". this notion has to be the premise i shall depart in answering the question of if groups are real. this ofcourse puts me in an interactionist school of thought which is the viewpoint i adopted in addressing most of the concepts in the articles below. "Group dynamics describes both a subject matter and a scientific field of study.When Kurt Lewin (1951) described the way groups and individuals act and react to changing circumstances, he named these processes group dynamics" Forsyth, 2009. Lewin however used the term to describe a scientific discipline devoted to the study of these dynamics.Later Dorwin Cartwright and Alvin Zander(1968) supplied a formal definition, calling it a “field of inquiry dedicated to advancing knowledge about the nature of groups, the laws of their development, and their interrelations with individuals, other groups, and larger institutions”. this field of scientific inquiry can't exist if groups are not real. the purpose of all subsequent entries on this blog will be to convince you that groups are real by looking at some working definitions of groups, groups structure and also some group related concepts which researchers identified doing group studies. the entries are not structured in a particular manner because there is no real guiding structure for posting them and i also want to buttress on the points i was trying to make in the article about diversity. the outcome of these entries should be for the reader to be able to understand what groups mean and also see the relevance of group studies in addressing social issues in society. hope you have a pleasant time reading the articles.

UNDERSTANDING GROUPS STRUCTURE: INTER-MEMBER RELATIONS

A phrase given by Forsyth (2009) which you will come across in a lot of the other articles i wrote on understanding groups structure and their dynamics is that the best part of groups to study if you want to learn more about their dynamics is its structure. the structure of a group is defined by Forsyth as the complex of norms, roles and inter-member relations in a group. Inter-member relations is an essential part of a group's structure in other to have a better understanding of the group.

Social network Analysis: this is a mapping like process for understanding inter-member group relation. Works and studies done in this area date back to Moreno's early work on sociometry where a sociogram is used to describe the connections among group members. Social network analysis although more sophisticated, still starts with the question of who is connected to who?. Theorist here identified groups to be centralized and decentralized.
   some key terms to note in social network analysis:

• out degree; the sending ties a member gives
• in degree; receiving ties a member gets
• betweeness; the degree to which group members position in a network is located along the path or between other members in the network
• closeness; the inverse of distance, how close one member is to another.

  

  an example of applying social network analysis in studying a group

Network dynamics: status network is a stable pattern of variations in authority and power. the informal(actual) status structure does not always match the groups formal(mandatory) structure.
Attraction network: this is the stable patterns of liking-disliking(they tend to be more reciprocal). so for example if person one likes person three, it is very likely that person three will like person one too. this can also have negative effects if the flipside is considered. Heider's balance theory explains how these likes and dislikes are balanced. its basic fundamental assumption is that reciprocal relationships are balanced relationships and if we are in a social network where there is an odd number of negative relationships, that group will be imbalanced and the members must strive to correct that.
Communication network: formal and informal paths that define who speaks to whom most frequently. they differ however in degree on centralization.

Robert Freed Bales developed an observation and coding system which he called the systematic multiple level observation of groups(SYMLOG). It is a theoretical analysis of group structure and group observation system that assumes group activities to be classified along three dimensions; dominance versus submissiveness, friendliness versus unfriendliness and acceptance versus non-acceptance of authority. he further explained that groups are more effective when these three aspects align.

• Dominance or submissiveness:  is a group member active in group activities? outgoing? talkative or passie? quite or introverted? all these questions are addressed here.
• Friendliness or Unfriendliness: is this member warm, open and positive or irritable and negative? (friendliness is positive, unfriendliness is negative)>
• Acceptance or non-acceptance of task oriented authority: is this member analytic and task-oriented or emotional, non-traditional and in some cases resentful? (acceptance represents a forward movement while non acceptance leads to backward movement).

having considered inter-member relations in groups and some theories proposed by researchers in their studies of groups. we shall now consider other aspects of a groups structure and some concepts relating to group studies as we try to answer the question of if a group is a reality or some abstract concept that doesn't have meaning. find out in the other articles below.

UNDERSTANDING GROUPS STRUCTURE: NORMS

"The survivors of the crash needed to coordinate their actions if they were to stay alive. With food, water, and shelter severely limited, they were forced to interact with and rely on each other continually, and any errant action on the part of one person would disturb and even endanger several
other people. So members soon began to follow a shared set of rules that defined how the group would sleep at night, what types of duties each healthy individual was expected to perform, and how food and water were to be apportioned"
                                                                                                                           (Forsyth, 2009:145)


      Forsyth (2009) once commented that if you had to pick one parts of groups to study, you can learn the most by studying its structure which he explained to be the complex of roles, norms and inter-member relations that organizes a group. In the articles 'Understanding groups structure; unpacking roles 1&2' the concept of roles in relation to groups was relatively unpacked. In this article the part of a groups structure i shall be considering that Forsyth identified is Norms; these are consensual and often implicit standards that describe what behaviours should and should not be performed in a given context. they basically:

• entail group standards
• provide direction and motivation
• organize social interaction. they make others responses predictable

 it should be noted however that norms are not only consensual but they emerge over time from the interaction of  among members in a group. it should also be noted that the reason i keep saying norms are consensual is because i am of the opinion that norms are social standards which are accepted by a substantial part of the group. some norms that can be identified in society are folkways(ubiquitous social standards) and Mores(slightly enforced moral rues).
    Sherif's(1936) autokinetic effect studies confirmed that norms emerge, gradually, as group members’ behaviors, judgments, and beliefs align over time. the studies showed the effect of group members views in individuals norms. A dot of light was the only illumination in a dark room and some participants where asked to calculate how far they felt the light moved, all the participants gave different calculations, however over time as the studies where carried out again in groups there eventually became a convergence. this is where the norms emerge and they are what new members adopt in joining a group and remain regardless of if the original individual responsible for its inception has left the group.

Social tuning is the term that refers to the convergence of opinion.

Pluralistic ignorance: some researchers have noted that the reason for increase in alcohol consumption is as a result of pluralistic ignorance which simply means conformity to a nonexistent norm because of misconception. for example students always misjudge how much alcohol other individuals consume and so they conform to a norm that doesn't actually exist.

      When individuals internalizes(the process of making something your own) a norm, theorist identified that the experience discomfort when they realise they are acting contrary to a norm especially an injunctive(right or wrong) one.

       In conclusion to understanding how norms shapes group structure, it can be seen how studies carried out on groups by researchers and theorist has helped us understand this concept in relation to its function in groups.

UNDERSTANDING GROUPS STRUCTURE; ROLES UNPACKED 2

Roles have been defined in the article 'understanding groups structure; roles unpacked' as the types of behaviour expected of individuals who occupy positions in a group. I ended that article by stating that roles can also be the source of group conflict and personal stress. in this article we shall look at how roles can bring about these stress by looking at the interventionist concept of role stress(to understand more about the reason why i have adopted this school of thought and the meaning of micro sociology, check out the article "communication; a micro-sociological outlook on the concept).
 so what then is role stress? Forsyth (2009) identified some concepts to understand the reason for roles stress:

•  Role ambiguity: unclear expectations about the behaviours to be performed by an individual occupying a particular position within the group due to lack of clarity in the role itself, lack of consensus within the group regarding the behaviours associated with the role, or simple just the role taker's uncertainty regarding the type of behaviour expected by others("so now am a member of the greatest Chelsea supporters club, would it be weird to wear a Red jersey to the forum" a clear example of an individual;s uncertainty of the expected behaviour to perform in a group).
• Role conflict: a state of tension, distress or uncertainty caused by inconsistent or discordant expectations associated with ones roles in a group. it could either be intra-role conflict(a form of role conflict that occurs when the behaviours that make up a single role are incongruous, this so often results in inconsistent expectations on the part of the person who occupies the role and other members of the group) or inter-role conflict (a form of role conflict that occurs when individuals occupy multiple roles within a group and the expectations and behaviours associated with one of their roles are not consistent with the expectations and behaviours associated with another of their roles, for example your role in your family might sometimes conflict with your roles at work or school).
• Role fit: this is the degree of congruence between the demands of a specific role and the attitudes, values, skills and other characteristics of an individual who occupies the role.

this is just an interactionist approach to addresing roles, am sure the functionalist, conflict theorist and other theorist of different world views will unpack the concept in a different manner. however these concepts are key in understanding the issue of roles stress in individuals who are members of groups.

UNDERSTANDING GROUPS STRUCTURE; ROLES UNPACKED

Forsyth (2009) commented that if you had to choose one aspect of groups to study, you would probably learn the most by studying its structure.think about it! watching a group of individuals do something, perhaps a committee deliberating on trivial issues, a work crew at a construction site, a gaggle of school children streaming in the school's premises, you get a sense that these groups are structured in some way, that something unseen is holding them together. in some situations this bond might be loose in other cases they bind tightly. some proper understanding of these groups structure will help researchers and students in the social science and other fields know more about group actions both past, present and possibly future. In the article 'What a group means and what makes a group different than just a collection of strangers' i briefly touched on the structure of groups which Forsyth (2009) explained to be the complex of roles, norms and inter-member relations which organizes a group. In this article, i will try and unpack roles and consider some theorist definitions of the concept in relation to groups.
  Forsyth (2009) defined roles as the types of behaviours expected of individuals who occupy particular position within the group(consider how actors in a play have to take on roles and have to act out in the specified manner of the roles taken). he further commented that roles are independent of individuals(people pass through a group from entry to exit all the time but the roles pertaining to a position always remains e.g leader/follower roles in a group). Roles are flexible and to an extent structure interaction, create patterns of action and define responsibilities. having understood what roles now, we shall look at roles in a group concepts by considering some concepts identified by theorist in their studies of roles in groups.

Role Differentiation: this is an increase in the number of roles of an individual in a group, accompanied by a decrease in the scope of those roles as each one becomes more narrowly defined and specialized.
 Benne and Sheats (1948) identified task roles(performance oriented and initiating structure), relationship roles (strength of bond among members) and individualistic roles. they argued that these roles serve basic functions in a group. This is a functionalist view on roles though, other paradigms address the concept from a different angle.
 The interactionist role theorist propose that group members share a basic sense of the requirements of the roles that are common in most group settings. So individuals work out the details of their roles and their demands as they interact with one another;

• role sending: through communication you let people know what the role they adapted are.
• role taking: this is when you recognize other peoples role requirements, it is a perspective taking process, involving the individual stepping into a role.
• role enactment: this is the stage where the individual adopts the requirements of a role.

Roles Socialization: this is the process by which newcomers learn their roles in a group and by so doing become more committed to the group.

Role Transition: this involves the process by which a member of a group moves from a new member to a full member.

The concept of roles in a group context can sometimes lead to personal and group conflict. in the article "Understanding groups structure: roles unpacked 2", role stress and further role related concepts are addressed.