Social Psychology of Social Order: An Introduction

Abstract

A person dropped into downtown Manhattan in the middle of the day for the first time would face an unpredictable, disorderly world: fast-walking people dodging around one another on sidewalks; pedestrians and cars contesting for street access at every corner; bicyclists running red lights; trucks double parking and blocking access to and from sidewalks; rampant herdlike jaywalking; horns honking; cabbies shouting; sirens of fire engines and ambulances blaring; and ever-present construction projects posing obstructions to most everybody. Yet, it would not take long for our visitor to sense a semblance of social order – in the form of repeated, predictable patterns of behavior. This patterned local world exists “on the edge of chaos,” with order and predictability eroding and re-emerging moment-to-moment and situation-to-situation (see also Lawler 2013). Very soon this immediate, local social order would reveal both resilience and dynamism. This is a fundamental insight of sociological theories of social psychology on the emergence and maintenance of social orders (e.g., Rawls 2004; Turner 2007; Burke and Stets 2009; Lawler, Thye, and Yoon 2009; Fine 2012; Ridgeway 2011). Sociological social psychologists (micro-sociologists) construe patterns of regularity as social constructions that people create and sustain under conditions of uncertainty, instability, or tension. The regularity, repetition, and predictability of everyday social lives are constitutive of social orders, at both macro and micro levels (see Collins 1981). However, without the “edge of chaos” or ever looming prospect of disorder, social order as such would draw little interest or have little meaning. Repetitive, predictable patterns of behavior are meaningful to people because of the contrast with disorder, real or hypothetical. Repetitive patterns that constitute order enable people with vastly different social backgrounds, conflicting cultural ideas or material interests, or diverse social affiliations to navigate close proximities, work around or take advantage of interdependencies, and produce joint goods of mutual value. To micro-sociologists, micro (local, immediate) orders are taken for granted; they are subtle, obdurate, pervasive, and often invisible features of social life (Maynard 2003; Fine 2012). People do not consciously observe or ponder social order unless it is somehow disrupted or threatened. By contrast, disorder and conflict are generally salient, discomfiting, and often stressful or threatening. There is a fundamental asymmetry in the ontological status of social order and social disorder.