In Sociology, SOCIAL DISTANCE describes the distance between different groups in society, such as social class, race/ethnicity, gender or sexuality. Members of different groups mix less than members of the same group. It is the measure of nearness that an individual or group feels towards another individual or group in a social network or the level of trust one group has for another and the extent of perceived likeness of beliefs... to mask or not to mask, will it drive us deeper into social distancing?
Robert Ezra Park defined social distance as "an attempt to reduce to something like measurable terms the grade and degrees of understanding and intimacy which characterizes personal and social relations generally".
In the sociology, social distance includes:
- Effective social distance: One widespread view of social distance is effectivity. Social distance is associated with effective distance, i.e. how much sympathy the members of a group feel for another group.
- Normative social distance: A second approach views social distance as a normative
category. Normative social distance refers to the widely accepted and
often consciously expressed norms about who should be considered as an "insider" and who an "outsider/foreigner".
Such norms, in other words, specify the distinctions between "us" and
"them".
- Interactive social distance: Focuses on the frequency and
intensity of interactions between two groups, claiming that the more the
members of two groups interact, the closer they are socially - similar.
- Cultural and Habitual Distance: Focuses cultural and habitual which is proposed by Bourdieu (1990). This type of distance is influenced by the "capital" people possess.
Its quite interesting how all these definitions apply to today's crisis wherein social distancing is mandatory. We may feel that if we practice social distancing we will possess a capital in 'health'. Though we may and even are losing capital in normal social operations and interactive coexistence.
I don't hear much discussion about this... maybe its because there is another agenda at hand and those that speak out or make observations will be quieted or banned, or worse - ostracized; total social distance on all four counts of the above.
In our social imagination, we need sympathy, we need a normative, we need interactive connectivity (who am I and who am I not) and cultural/habitual capital. Why? So that we don't lose our social minds. Our social imagination (in every person everywhere on the globe) is at risk and no one is talking about it. Wonder why, don't you?
*Source ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_distance (couldn't find my book by Parks)
