Page 159 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

136 Communication and Evolution of Society

father role—a status in the male system of the hunting band with
a status in the female and child system, and thus (1) integrate
functions of social labor with functions of nurture of the young,
and, moreover, (2) coordinate functions of male hunting with
those of female gathering.
3. We can speak of the reproduction of bwman life, with
homo sapiens, only when the economy of the hunt is supple-
mented by a familial social structure. This process lasted several
million years; it represented an important replacement of the
animal status system, which among the anthropoid apes was al-
ready based on symbolically mediated interaction (in Mead’s
sense) by a system of social norms that presupposed language.
The rank order of the primates was one-dimensional; every indi-
vidual could occupy one and only one—that is, in all functional
domains the same—status. Only when the same individual could
unify various status positions and different individuals could
occupy the same status was a socially regulated exchange be-
tween functionally specified subsystems possible. The animal
Status system was based on the status occupant’s capacity to
threaten, that is, on power as an attribute of personality. By
contrast, social role systems are based on the intersubjective rec-
ognition of normed expectations of behavior and not on respect
for the possibilities of sanction situationally available to a role
occupant because of peculiarities of his personality structure. This
change means a moralization of motives for action. Social roles
can conditionally link two different behavioral expectations in
such a way that a system of reciprocal motivation is formed. Alter
can count on ego fulfilling his (alter’s) expectations because ego
is counting on alter fulfilling his (ego’s) expectations. Through
social roles social influence on the motives of the other can be
made independent of accidental, situational contexts, and motive
formation can be brought into the symbolic world of interaction.
For this to occur, however, three conditions must be met:
a. Social roles presuppose not only that participants in interaction
can assume the perspective of other participants (which is already the
case in symbolically mediated interaction), but that they can also ex-
change the perspective of the participant for that of the observer. Par-
ticipants must be able to adopt, in regard to themselves and others, the