Consensus

Question 1

Consensus

Answer 1

Consensus theorists believe society works by everyone working towards a shared goal and society functions on the premise of there being shared agreement on norms and values etc.

Question 2

Functionalists as Structuralists

Answer 2

Functionalists are consensus but are also structural, meaning there is a social structure that shapes individual behaviour through the process of socialisation. Or in other words that power is exerted throughout.

Question 3

Beliefs

Answer 3

Functionalists also believe that a successful society has a stable social structure, in which different institutions perform unique functions that contribute to the maintenance of the whole.

In the same way that the different organs of the body perform different functions to keep a human being healthy.

In a successful or ‘healthy’ society, for example, social life is organised so that the family socialises the young and meets emotional needs, school teaches us broader life skills, the workplace is where we contribute the economy. This is called the Organismic or organic analogy and is used by Spencer and Parsons.

Question 4

Society Shaping the Individual

Answer 4

This point is pretty self explanatory. It’s basically saying that humans have a level of autonomy but this I highly restrained by the social construct or “social facts” of society.

Social facts- ‘ways of acting, thinking and feeling which are external to the individual and endowed with a power of coercion, by reason of which they control him’.

Question 5

What are classed as social facts?

Answer 5

Beliefs, moral codes, and basic norms and values which are passed from one generation to the next and shared by individuals who make up a society.

From this point of view it is not the consciousness of the individual that directs human behaviour but common beliefs and sentiments which shape his or her consciousness.

Question 6

Social solidarity, socialisation and anomie

Answer 6

Durkheim believes when people have too much freedom it causes individuals to suffer from uncertainty, fear, lack of morality and confusion about their place in the world or their ‘ontology’.

This process is what Durkheim refers to as anomie.

Question 7

Can we prevent anomie?

Answer 7

One way to prevent Anomie is (According to Durkheim) creating a social solidarity.

It makes individuals feel as if they are part of something bigger and teaching them the standards of acceptable behaviour.

At one level this is achieved through the family, but for Durkheim, feeling a sense of belonging to a wider society was also important.

Traditionally this was achieved through religion, but Durkheim was concerned that religion was fading, and that modern societies faced a ‘crisis of anomie’.

Question 8

Socialisation

Answer 8

Social solidarity is taught through socialisation, there are many agents of socialisation.

Schools, family, the media.

Socialisation is essentially the process of learning the appropriate behaviour for your society, including norms ( things that are considered normal) and values ( things that are held close to our cultures) etc.

Question 9

Talcott Parsons

Answer 9

The second key scholar needed for functionalism at this level is Parsons and, he is crucial and expands on one of functionalists key principles…. The Organismic or Organic analogy (orignially created by Spencer).

This in essence means society is like an organism or the human body, where is key social institution e.g. family, education, the CJS and the media all act as an organ when one fails society is at risk of shutting down.

Question 10

Parsons prerequisites

Answer 10

Parsons essentially believes just as human have certain prerequisites to live so does society for example, humans have a respiratory system and society has a trade system.

Question 11

Value Consensus

Answer 11

There are two key social institutions that are responsible for this and we study them both these are families and education.

Question 12

Social Action Theory

Answer 12

Social action theory is very much like structuralism in so far as it is an umbrella term, which covers a vast array of differing theories.

However it differs as they believe instead of society shaping individuals, individuals have autonomy and navigate the social world without complete regulation and can make changes from the bottom up.

Question 13

Individuals are active

Answer 13

Individuals are active, complicated and react to the social structures around them in multiple ways.

People don’t just passively respond to social norms and institutions and go along with them, rather, we examine them and decide whether to accept or reject certain norms and values.

Question 14

Sociologists should aim for empathetic understanding

Answer 14

Durkheim argues we should be completely unbiased and scientific in our studying society. However our social action theorists disagree and argue we should be empathetic and even biased when doing our research.

Something that is key to focus on is the lack of social fact but instead individual realities, these realities then give meaning to human action.

For example According to Interactionists, there isn’t simply one correct interpretation of human action – someone’s decision to wear a mini-skirt can’t be reduced to the influence of the patriarchal media making that woman think she needs to wear a particular item to impress men (like Radical Feminists might argue), there are lots of possible reasons.

Question 15

Social Action Theory criticises Structuralism

Answer 15

Most people learn what norms are appropriate and ‘act them out’ when they are in particular social roles (at school, at work, with parents etc), returning to their more complex ‘true selves’ when by themselves or with their friends and family.

Question 16

Complexity

Answer 16

Now obviously this creates a vast amount of problems for researchers as instead of there just being multiple social facts to study, there are thousands upon thousands of interpretations of meanings which are in depth and justified.

All of these interpretations should be considered when studying social life and to do without implementing bias is not only impossible but potentially unfavourable. They use research methods that are Qualitative (words and meaning) although this gains more in depth data it is messy and complex.

’Verstehen’

Question 17

We need to understand people’s understanding of their own identities

Answer 17

Interactionists argue that we can’t understand individuals without understanding how they see themselves (their identity).

A considerable amount of our time in modern society is devoted to constructing and expressing ‘my’ identity, which involves communicating something about myself to others through the use of shared symbols (symbolic action).

Unraveling the complexities of how people construct their identities is one of the main things symbolic interactionists contributed to modern sociology.

The main man that looked at this was Erving Goffman in his classic text The presentation of the Self in everyday life.

Question 18

Labelling theory

Answer 18

Existing power-structures that constrain people, and that these power structures are kept going by people in power labelling themselves as superior and people not-like them as inferior.

Power inequalities are maintained by the powerless accepting their inferior labels.
Becker 1960’s argued that agents of social control often work in narrow stereotypes and label people like them as being ‘good’ and people not like them as being ‘bad’.

Question 19

Ideal pupil

Answer 19

He argued, for example, that white middle class teachers had an idea of the ‘ideal pupil’ as being middle class, well spoken, quite, respectful of authority, polite and well dressed, and often gave these middle class children positive labels, irrespective of their intelligence. Similarly, working class or underclass children, who tended to be scruffier and more energetic than middle class children, were seen as inferior.

Question 20

Research done on labelling theory

Answer 20

Rosenthal and Jacobson, this could result in a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy which is the process where an individual accepts the label given to them and acts accordingly. If middle class children are labelled positively and working class children negatively we end up with a social pattern: Middle class children do better than working class children.

According to labelling theory this structural trend emerges not because of structural disadvantages working class children face as a result of their background, but because they are labelled negatively by middle class teachers. Thus the social structure emerges out of social interaction.