ABSTRACT
The sociological theory of ambivalence is directed to quite other problems. The sociological theory deals with the processes through which social structures generate the circumstances in which ambivalence is embedded in particular statuses and status-sets together with their associated social roles. The core-case of sociological ambivalence puts contradictory demands upon the occupants of a status in a particular social relation. Sociography also classifies social roles but in categories drawn from everyday life rather than from the more abstract formulations of sociological theory. Sociographic accounts are of course an indispensable phase in the movement toward the sociological analysis of social roles. The analysis of sociological ambivalence proceeds from the premise that the structure of social roles consists of arrangements of norms and counter-norms which have evolved to provide the flexibility of normatively acceptable behavior required to deal with changing states of a social relation.
