Linking Social Structure and Interpersonal Behavior: A Theoretical Perspective on Cultural Schemas and Social Relations

To explain how interpersonal behavior in relational contexts usually reproduces but sometimes modifies macro structural patterns, I outline a conceptual framework within which to understand existing theories and evidence and to develop new ones. Actors create and enact structure by means of several types of shared cultural schemas (“ordering schemas”) that represent or imply relations between specific or abstract actors. “Modular” ordering...