ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the significance of social expectations, key part of the web of society, and consider what role they can play in terms of applied sociology. Social expectations are powerful and also unavoidable. Managing them is a highly skilled undertaking, illustrating how much skill is involved in everyday social life, the skills that can be taken for granted by an atomistic approach. Applied sociologists can play a part in helping to develop those skills where needed, can help to address problems where social expectations are breached, and where social rules of interaction are infringed. The chapter illustrates an important "branch" of sociology, namely symbolic interactionism, a theoretical approach that focuses specifically on how people interact with one another in a context of shared and emerging meanings. It discusses the related approach of role theory before moving on to consider some example of how social expectations operate in relation to gender and age.
