ABSTRACT
In Chapter 8 I argued that social structures are best conceived as structures-of ‘social worlds’, as defined in interactionist sociology. In addition to the shared interests of their members, I argued, social worlds comprise social networks, conventions and a distribution of key resources which are mobilized and exchanged in interaction and which lend worlds a structure. In this chapter I elaborate upon this position by way of a more detailed examination of networks, conventions and resources. The aims of the chapter are threefold. First, I aim to pin down the meaning of networks, conventions and resources more precisely than in the previous chapter, to explore the place of each in the constitution of the other, and to discuss further why I believe that the combination of these elements, in the context of social worlds, merits the label ‘social structure’. Second, I aim to make my case more concretely, and with examples. I argued in the previous chapter that the concept of social worlds allows us to draw our debate to a more concrete level. Here I hope to demonstrate that. To that end I draw upon some of my own empirical work on both the world of a local gym and the world of UK punk and post-punk music in Manchester and London in the latter part of the 1970s.
