Norms, Values, Community, Associations, Institutions, Status and Role, Socialization, Culture, Social structure and Social system

A judge is expected to be impartial. A student is expected to attend class. A parent is expected to support a child. None of this is written into a single statute for every case, yet everyone recognises the expectation instantly — because it is a role, attached to a status, backed by a norm, learned through socialisation. This topic is the cluster of terms that makes precise something you already understand intuitively, and precision is exactly what an exam rewards.

In two minutes

This cluster of concepts — norms, values, status, role, socialisation, culture, social structure and social system — describes how individual behaviour is patterned, expected and reproduced across generations within a society.

The rest of this chapter

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