Types of Groups
Primary and secondary:
- your family
- your SOC 144 class
- your friends at work
Notes:
A group is two or more people who share social interaction; they identify with each other
and interact with each other.
According to this definition, can there be a "social" group in cyberspace?.
As modernization has proceeded into the 20th century, our lives have come to be dominated by
large scale organizations. Although the family remains our most important primary group, more
and more people spend less and less time in primary group settings. Peter Berger, among other
sociologists, has addressed this problem and termed the dislocation associated with life in
the late 20th century the homeless mind.
In groups can take on the essential functions performed by primary groups. This is important
given the growth in cults and other dysfunctional ingroups.