Role Theory and Relationships

Role Theory and the Culture-Behavior Dualism

Most contemporary social science rests on a dualism that separates meanings from actions or culture from behavior. Cultural meanings are what we think, whereas behavioral actions are what we do. Together the interweaving of observable actions (behavior) and unobservable interpretive “sense-making” (culture) produce the miracle of coordination within human relationships.

The concepts of status and role in Linton's formulation are best seen as mobilizing the two sides of this culture-behavior dualism (some analysts use the hyphenated term status-role as a stretch toward unification). A status is a unit of culture, whereas a role is a corresponding unit of behavior that gives expression to the status. It is useful to think of a status as both a job title and a job description. The job title is simply the name of the social position—citizen, friend, lover, Democrat, female, lesbian, mother, gardener, jogger, professor, shopper, moviegoer, and so on. The job description

is the unique set of social definitions that distinguish one position from another. These definitions establish the norms and expectations (e.g., rights and duties) that will guide any person who enters that particular position.

In this formulation role (sometimes termed role performance) is not the status holder's expected behavior, but his or her actual behavior in the position. The actual behavior may or may not conform to the expectations contained in the job description—this is always an empirical question. For instance, people do not expect someone called a friend to speak ill of them to other people, but in their actual behavior, friends sometimes betray one another. They may then be held accountable for violating the “job description” of a friend, even to the point of getting “fired” from the job.

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