Consensus, Conflict, Structural And Social Action Theories Sociologists/ Stats Flashcards
What is modernity linked to?
The development of sociology as a subject
What is modernity?
The period from mid 17th-mid 20th century during which there was growth of rational, scientific understanding and explanations of the world.
What did early figures such as Comte, Durkheim, Weber and Marx develop sociology as an attempt to do?
To apply scientific principles to understand the natural world.
What does social order mean?
Society is relatively stable and has some shared norms/values which let people live together and relate.
What are the two broad themes in sociological theory?
- Extent of consensus and conflict theory in society
- Problem of determinism and free will
What do Consensus theories assume?
Society is primarily harmonious, and social order is maintained through widespread agreement on important goals, values and norms.
How does conflict theory see society?
Sees society as primarily conflict ridden and unstable and emphasises social differences and conflicts between groups
What does Weber say the growth of conflicts in society are due to?
- Social classes pursuing economic interests.
- Status groups pursuing social honour prestige and respect.
- Parties concerned with exercising power, making decisions and influencing policies in the interests of their membership.
Structuralism definition
Concerned with the overall structure of society and the way social institutions limit individual behaviour.
What are 3 features of structural theories?
- Values and behaviour of individual is the result of social forces external to the individual acting upon them.
- sociology should be concerned with the study of the overall structure of society, the social institutions which make up this structure and the relationships between social institutions.
- Positivism is the main methodological approach using quantitative research methods as individual behaviour is seen as a response to measurable social forces outside individuals acting upon them to control their behaviour.
Two main varieties of structuralism:
- Functionalism - consensus structuralism
- Marxism - conflict structuralism
What did Durkheim see society changing from?
A simple structure with little division of labour and a collective conscience to a more complex one with specialised division of labour which weakens social solidarity.
Parsons
Functional Prerequisites
Basic needs or requirements that must be met if society is to survive.
What did Parsons say society had to resolve in order to survive in a healthy state of society?
GAIL model
The instrumental and expressive problem and satisfying functional prerequisites.
How did society establish and maintain social order according to Durkheim?
Through social institutions which socialise people into a value consensus or collective conscience.
Parsons - What is structural differentiation?
As societies evolve and new needs arise both for society and individuals, institutions become more specialised and functions they once performed are lost to new institutions.
Why does Merton criticise Parsons for indispensability?
Criticisms key assumptions of Parsons
Parsons sees everything in society functionally indispensable in its existing form however Merton sees this as an untested assumption pointing to functional alternative.
Merton
Manifest and latent functions
Manifest functions - intended and recognised consequences
Latent functions - Unintended or unrecognised consequences
What did Marx believe about the economy in society?
It was the driving force in society that determined the nature of social institutions.
What is the superstructure?
Societies and social institutions which Marx saw as primarily determined by the economic system.
What is the economic base?
underpinned and determined everything else in society.
Consists of the means of production and relations of production.
What is an example of the means of production?
Land factories, raw materials, technology and labour.
What is the relations of production?
Relations between those involved in productions such as shared/private ownership.
The relationship between owners and non-owners e.g. whether people are forced to work like slaves or paid.
What is materialism?
The view that humans are beings with material needs such as food and clothing and so therefore must work to meet them.
What did Marx argue that work is?
The sole source of wealth.
When did Marx see private ownership of the means of production emerging?
When society began to produce more than what was essential and so it became possible for one section of society not to work and to be supported by others.
What are the two social classes which society is divided into?
Owners and non-owners of the means of production.
What did Marx argue would emerge as the means of production developed?
New relations and society would evolve through revolutionary changes coming from conflicts between workers and non-owners.
What does Marx argue that workers produce?
More than what is needed to pay their wages to cover other production costs.
What does Marx call ‘surplus value’?
The extra workers produce.
What does it mean that employees are creating extra (surplus value)?
They are being exploited as they aren’t getting the full value of their work.
Who are the bourgeoisie capitalists?
Small wealthy class who own the means of production.
What do the proletariat live for?
Their labour or labour power to the bourgeoisie in exchange for a wage.
How do capitalists exploit the working class?
By making profits and keeping wages low instead of giving the workers full payment for the goods produced.
What did exploitation of the non-owners create?
Major differences in interest between the two classes leading to conflict.
What did Marx argue the owning class were?
The ruling class.
What does Marx believe the state were interested in?
Protecting the interests of the ruling class rather than protecting everyone.
What is dominant ideology?
The class that owns the means of production and controls the means of mental production.
Who did Marx believe the dominant ideology belonged to?
The owning class.
What did Marx believe major institutions in the superstructure of society reflected?
The dominant ideologies ideas and interests.
What did religion persuade people to do?
Accept their position in life by drugging them with the promise of eternal reward.
Who owns the mass media according to Marxists?
The ruling class which is why they only promote the ruling classes ideas.
What did Marx argue workers were?
brainwashed into accepting their position and failed to recognise they were being exploited and therefore didnt rebel - false consciousness.
What did Marx believe our true nature is based on?
Our capacity to create things to meet our needs.
What is alienation the result of?
Our loss of control over our labour and products
When did Marx think circumstances would change?
When workers would become aware of their exploitation which would lead to wealth and power becoming more concentrated in thr hands of the few.
What is class consciousness?
An awareness of workers real interests and their exploitation.
What was Marx concerned with changing?
The world through communist societies.
What is the main focus of social action on?
Individual behaviour in everyday social situations.
What are social action theories concerned with?
Discovering and understanding how interactions between individuals take place, how people interpret what they do, how people define identities and how reactions of others can affect their view of things and sense of identity.
Social action features
- social structures are socially constricted by individuals not separate or above them.
- Free will to do things/ form identities rather than being formed by external influences.
- Sociological research: micro approach, focused on indictable rather than the overall structure.
- Behaviour is driven by beliefs, meanings, feelings and emotions.
What does the extent of consensus and conflict theories mean?
how social orders maintained and how people manage to live together with some degree of relative harmony and stability despite differences.
What does the problem of determinism and free will mean?
How much freedom and choice people have in society and whether identities and lives of individuals are modded or determined by social forces
How did Durkheim see society existing separately from?
Its members - external social facts shape peoples behaviours to support society’s needs.
What are the instrumental problems in Parsons Gail model?
- Goal attainment - Definitions of societies priorities and how they are achieved - provide means of achieving them by allocating resources.
- Adaptation - Adapting to environment, providing basic material necessities for human existence and resources to achieve valued social goals.
What are the expressive problems in Parsons GAIL method?
Expressive problems:
1. Integration - coordinating all parts of system to achieve shared goals.
- Latency - Minimising social tensions and interpersonal conflicts which might prevent individuals and society working effectively.
Why does Merton criticise Parsons for functional unity?
Parsons assumes all parts of society are united and that each part is functional for the rest however this isn’t necessarily true as modern society has many parts which may only be distantly related and independent from each other.
Why does Merton criticise Parsons for universal functionalism?
Parsons assumes all social institutions perform beneficial positive functions for society and individuals. However Merton recognises that in complex societies there are many ways things can go wrong and so there could be some unforeseen negative consequence when some apparently beneficial functions are performed.
What did Merton introduce to dysfunction to describe?
The situation where some parts of the social structure don’t work as intended and have negative consequences for individuals and society.
Who founded symbolic interactionism?
Mead.
How does symbolic interactionism see society?
Built by interactions between people which take place on the basis of meanings held by individuals.
What are 3 basic features of symbolic interactionism which Blumer suggests?
- People act in terms of symbols
- Meanings develop out if the interaction if an individual with others and can change during interactions.
- Meanings arise from an interpretive process.
How does the structuralist approach see people?
Acting out the roles handed down by the social structure.
Who developed the concept of the looking glass self?
Cooley
What does the looking glass self describe?
The process of negotiated interaction - the view of ourselves was formed through the repossess of others reflecting back to us in an interaction.
How do symbolic interactions see society and social order made by possible by and based on?
Shares meanings developed and learnt through interaction.
What do symbolic interactionists think the aim of sociology is?
To understand how meanings people give to situations are constructed in face-face interaction, how individuals and situations come to be defined in a particular way and the consequences die individual behaviour of such definitions.
What has symbolic interactionism been applied to?
Labelling theory - people label or define individuals and situations in ways that affect how they behave.
What did Goffman study?
How people construct meanings and interpretations through interaction using a dramaturgical model based on the idea of society being like a stage and people acting.
What is impression management - Goffman?
People in society are constantly engaged in managing the impressions they give others by putting on a show to try to convince others of the identity they wish to asset.
How is impression management achieved?
Through the use of symbols e.g. clothing style or music choice.
What does Goffman say everyone is engaged in?
The process of manipulating others and being manipulated to give the best possible impression of themselves.
What do symbolic interactionists suggest structural approaches are inadequate for explaining society?
they don’t penetrate the multiple micro interactions, the generation and interpretation of meanings people attach to behaviour and others influence.
Who developed phenomenology?
Husserl
Why does Hussel say the world makes sense?
Because we impose meaning and order on it by making mental categories we use to classify and file info coming from, our senses.
Through phenomenology how can we obtain knowledge about the world?
Through mental acts of categorising and giving our experiences meanings.
What does Schultz apply phenomenology to?
The social world.
What does Schultz call typifications?
Categories and concepts that aren’t unique to ourselves as we share them with other members of society.
What do typifications allow us to do?
Organise our experiences into a shored world of meaning.
What does Schultz argue about the meanings of experiences?
They vary according to its social context.
How do typifications clarify and stabilise meanings?
By ensuring we are all agreeing the same meanings of things which makes communication and cooperation possible without it social order wouldn’t exist.
In Schultz’s view what do members of society have?
A shared ‘life world’
What is recipe knowledge?
A stock of shared typifications or common knowledge about what certain situations mean.
For Schultz what is the social world?
A shared intersubjective world that can only exist when we share the same meanings.
What does Schultz’s example of posting a letter to a book shop to order a book explain?
That we presume some unknown and unseen individual will perform a series of operations in a sequence that will result in us receiving a book.
What is the natural attitude - Schultz
We assume the social world is a solid natural thing.
What do Berger and Luckmann say reality does once its is constructed?
It takes in a kids of its own becoming and external reality that reacts back on us.
What did Weber emphasise the importance of?
Understanding the subjective meanings people hold and how their view the world is reflected in his concept of verstehen
What does verstehen involve researchers doing?
Putting themselves in the position of those they are studying to see the world from their eyes and discover meanings behind their actions.
What did Weber reject?
The determinisms of structural theories especially Marx’s economic determinism.
What did Weber recognise?
That people aren’t puppets and that they also aren’t completely free to choose how they behave.
What did Weber identify in his study of the emergence of capitalism in Western Europe?
The significance of religious ideas people held in creating changes in social structures.
What are the 4 groups Weber categorises subjective meanings into?
Instrumental rational action
Value-rational action
Traditional action
Affectual action
What i s instrumental rational action?
Actors calculate the most efficient means of obtaining the goal e.g. capitalists maximising profit by keeping wages low.
What is value rational action?
Action towards a desired goal
What are traditional actions?
Routine actions
What is affectual action?
Actions that express emotional violence due to anger, crying due to grief.
Strengths of Weber
Ideas correct the over emphasis on structural factors shown by functionalism and Marxism.
Stresses the importance of understanding actors subjective meanings if we want to explain actions adequately.
Limitations of Weber
Schultz - Weber’s view of action is too individualistic and doesn’t explain shared meanings.
Weber’s typology is difficult to apply - trobiand islanders exchange gifts ‘kula’ with tribes on neighbouring islands is this traditional action or instrumentally rational action?
Weber’s use of Verstehen is hard to apply - we can never know someone’s true and full motivation.
What does Giddens theory of structuration attempt to do?
Combine structures and action.
What is the duality of structure - Giddens
The link between structure and action.
What do structuration and the duality of structure refer to?
The 2 way process which people are constrained or shaped by society and social institutions however these structures can only exist as long as people continue to take action to support them and they can at the same time take action to shape and change them.
What do structuration and the duality of structure refer to?
The 2 way process which people are constrained or shaped by society and social institutions however these structures can only exist as long as people continue to take action to support them and they can at the same time take action.
What is reflexivity?
The way the knowledge people gain about society can affect the way they behave.
What does Giddens suggest the existence of the social structure provides people with?
A framework of rules which are established ways of doing things that let them live in society and by doing so they are reproducing that structure at the same time.
How can individuals change the structure?
Ignoring, modifying or replacing rules.
What does Giddens say people are constantly reflecting on?
Their everyday behaviour and may decide some laws are outdated and no longer relevant and so break them.
Why have integrated approaches been criticised by structuralist?
For overstating the capacity of individuals to change society’s social structures and for underestimating the constraints on individual choice of action.
Why have integrated approaches been criticised by action theorists?
For understating the capacity of individuals to change society and overestimating the constraints of the social stricture on individual choice of action.
Why did feminists sociology emerge?
As a challenge to mainstream maletsream sociology which by neglecting women has provided a distorted and incomplete description of sociology and explanation of social life.
What new areas into the study of the family has feminism introduced?
Housework and its contribution to the economy, domestic division of about, domestic violence.
What new areas of the study into education has feminism brought?
Issues of gender and achievement and construction of gender identities throughout school.
What has different feminism exposed?
The limitations of the early white middle class feminist perspective and its inadequacy and neglect of issues like ethnicity and class.
How does Walby define patriarchy ?
As a system of social structures and practices which men dominate, oppress and exploit women.
What is Walby’s 6 structuresram of patriarchy?
- The home
- Paid work
- The state
- Sexuality
- Male violence
- Cultural institutions
