In
social psychology
Social psychology is the methodical study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Although studying many of the same substantive topics as its counterpart in the field ...
, a social event is precisely defined as a
social interaction
A social relation is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more conspecifics within and/or between groups. The group can be a language or ...
episode characterized by a singular, continuous goal or purpose.
[p.189]
/ref>
This conceptualization views a social event as an atomic unit of social interaction. For example, if a father and a child are coloring, and the father's initial goal is to give son some attention, but shifts to teaching the child the father could start teaching the child to color within the lines. This continuous episode would be considered is split in two distinct social events during to the change in purpose, in accordance with the goal of the activity. [
Conversely, in abroader usage the term "social event" can encompass any gathering of people for any reason event, activity, or gathering of a group of people for any purpose. The word "event" can refer to any action, and describes a wide variety of activities.]football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...
match event, it is not its defining characteristic.[p. 21]
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A social event may happen within another social event,[p. 139]
/ref> which can be described in sociological research by the term "recontextualization
Recontextualisation is a process that extracts text, signs or meaning from its original context (decontextualisation) and reuses it in another context. Since the meaning of texts, signs and content is dependent on its context, recontextualisation ...
".[Theo Van Leeuwen,]
Discourse as the Recontextualization of Social Practice
; a chapter in: ''Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Analysis'', 2008, online ,
print
In entertainment
Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and Interest (emotion), interest of an audience or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but it is more likely to be one of the activities or events that have deve ...
, the field of planning and executing social events is called event planning or event management.
Explanations
There are a wide variety of explanations of why social events exist. Psychologist Robert E. Lana has summarized several of these:
Social events also tend to fall into distinct patterns, For example, as Nathan Rousseau points out:
See also
* Social activity (disambiguation)
References
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