Sociological theory

Question 1

Macrosociology

Answer 1

Macrosociology refers to the study of large-scale social structures and the broad social forces that constrain individuals.

Question 2

Microsociology

Answer 2

Microsociology focuses on the interactions between individuals and how those interactions are responsible for producing all culture and social systems.

Question 3

Functionalism

Answer 3

is a macro-level analysis of large social institutions.

This school of thought is also referred to as “structural functionalism.”

Functionalism considers society a system of interrelated parts that function together to create balance and harmony.

Researchers with a functionalist perspective will be interested in studying various social institutions to understand how they function to regulate society and to maintain its stability.

Question 4

Functionalism 2

Emil D

Answer 4

Émile Durkheim was an early theorist who put forth the idea of “mechanical solidarity”: shared social bonds (e.g., family ties), traditions, and values that solidify a social network. These bonds would ensure social integration of individuals into a traditional society.

In a modern society, “mechanical solidarity” differs from “organic solidarity,” where connections are based on social roles, the division of labor, and work specialization.

Durkheim coined the term “anomie” to refer to social systems where there is breakdown of norms and common values; such a state may lead individuals to feel disconnected from society and its institutions and to feel general purposelessness and emotional despair.

Question 5

Functionalism 3

Answer 5

The functionalist perspective is analogized to the organismal principle of homeostasis: each of the component parts (organs and tissues) of the society (the organism) performs its roles in service of maintaining a beneficial equilibrium. This concept ties into organic solidarity.

• This equilibrium is important because it allows for members of society to share value systems and expectations of one another.
• Functionalism is a very broad theory that attempts to account for the many complicated social relationships that exist in any society.
• Virtually all sociologists share the functionalist perspective that social institutions feature both overt (intended and explicit, or “manifest”) and covert (unintended and implicit, or “latent”) purposes, as put forth by Robert Merton.

Question 6

Manifest functions

Answer 6

Manifest functions: clearly stated and broadly recognized outwardly-apparent functions of an institution. For example, schools are understood explicitly to serve an educational function.

Question 7

Latent Functions

Answer 7

Latent functions: unpredicted, typically unintended, and sometimes unrecognized consequences of the functioning of social institutions. Latent functions may serve to undercut the manifest functions, but may on the other hand, not significantly impact the manifest functions. For example, schools may provide an entertainment (football games and school dances) or child-care role (especially for younger children).

Question 8

Functionalism 4

Answer 8

• A function that appears manifest to one individual or group may appear latent to another, and vice-versa.
• Example: To upper middle class suburbanites, the manifest function of a police force might be thought of as maintenance of order and protection of the citizenry. To low-income, urban—especially African- American—residents, the manifest function of a police force might be to exert control and occasionally community disruption, with law-and-order/protection functionality representing at best (and only in rare cases) a very latent function. Suburbanites might not even recognize the perspective of the control/ harassment function at all.

Functionalism has been heavily criticized for its conservative bias:

1. Because the functionalist perspective assumes that all parts of society fit together smoothly and harmoniously, it automatically assumes that the system is working well.
2. Conflict is seen as something negative that disrupts the natural order of the social system.

Question 9

Conflict theory

Answer 9

Conflict theory is also a macro-level analysis of large social institutions.

Conflict theory is rooted in the work of Karl Marx; it views society as constantly evolving in response to social inequality and the conflict which results from that inequality.

In contrast to functionalists, conflict theorists view the default state of a society as that of change brought about by conflict between dominant and subordinate social groups.

The social order is an agent by which powerful groups are able to ensure that less powerful groups remain subordinate:

1. Those groups in positions of power will use social structures to convince, trick, or even force subordinate groups to participate in the existing social system.
2. Change results when subordinate groups can no longer be persuaded/deluded to participate in the existing system; thus, they then rebel against the social order.

Question 10

Conflict theory 2

Answer 10

Conflict theorists are generally concerned with investigating which individuals and social groups benefit from particular social institutions and arrangements:

• The ruling class spreads certain beliefs and values in order to enhance its power and wealth and to maintain its position in society.

Conflict theorists are often criticized for focusing too much on conflict and not considering how society can remain relatively stable for periods of time (the opposite of the criticism leveled at functionalists).

Conflict theorists are also criticized for their attachment to ideology and their inattention to empirical research methods.

Question 11

Symbolic interactionism

Answer 11

Is a micro-level analysis of social contact between individuals.

While functionalism and conflict theory focus on “big-picture” analysis of social groups and institutions, sociology also recognizes that social interaction exists fundamentally at the level of interactions between individuals.

Question 12

Symbolic interactionism 2

Answer 12

Symbolic interactionism is a paradigm introduced into sociology by George Mead and is based on Max Weber’s focus on how individuals make sense of and interpret the social world they inhabit.

Interactionism is therefore primarily concerned with the content and significance of person-to-person interactions.

Adherents of this perspective will often criticize functionalists and conflict theorists alike for detaching social structures and institutions from the individual participants who inhabit them and give them life.

Symbolic interactionists argue that most of human social action has a significance to participants beyond the concrete acts that people perform.

Question 13

Symbolic interactionism 3

Answer 13

Interactionists focus on the meanings that individuals ascribe to their own and to other people’s behaviors.

1. They believe that much of people’s social behaviors can be attributed to their interpretation of the various signs and symbols with which various actions are associated.
2. Simple actions are viewed as having more complex significations, which are responsible for shaping a participant’s sense of self and their relationship to other individuals.
3. Social interaction, therefore, is a collaborative process by which individuals undertake actions laden with symbolic meaning that other individuals interpret and respond to.

The symbolic interactionist perspective is valuable for understanding how social structures and relationships function on the level of interactions between individuals, but it has been understandably criticized for being unable to connect the level of individual interaction with larger social institutions.

Symbolic interactionism complements functionalism and conflict theory by considering how individuals make meaning of their own actions and the actions of others.

Question 14

Exchange theory 1

Answer 14

Exchange theory is a micro-level theory of individual interactions.

• Another name for exchange theory is rational choice theory.

This theory is predicated on the assumptions that humans are primarily rational beings and that they generally act in their own self-interest to maximize their benefit from any interaction.

This theory considers any individual to be making constant calculations to maximize the benefit of any interaction.

These types of calculations fall under the umbrella of what is called game theory: the study and mathematical modeling of strategic decision making between interacting individuals.

Benefits do not need to take the form of money or even physical objects, but can also be things like time, prestige, status, good will, or the favorable behaviors of others.

Question 15

Exchange theory 2

Answer 15

Exchange theory can be criticized on several grounds:

1. It does not adequately account for altruistic or charitable behavior, which is displayed by many individuals in many societies.
2. It supposes a fundamentally rational calculus to human decision making.

For rational choice theory to be correct, individuals must be aware of all of the costs and benefits to a given interaction and weigh the various options appropriately.

However, disciplines such as psychology and the field of behavioral economics (spearheaded by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky) have shown that people often do not act in their own best interests but rather are affected by various biases that may be the product of social, cultural, and biological influences.

Question 16

Social Constructionism

Answer 16

Social constructionism occupies a middle ground in the theoretical gap between the macro-level analysis of functionalism and conflict theory and the micro-level analysis of symbolic interactionism and exchange theory.

Social constructionism recognizes that while social and cultural reality is often perceived by members of a society as a given or “natural,” individuals actually participate in the construction of social reality through countless interactions.

The primary argument of researchers focused on this theory is that social and cultural processes are not externally determined, but rather that the individuals participating in them are constantly perpetuating and reaffirming these processes.

Under this paradigm, the job of the sociologist is to understand how certain institutions, values, beliefs, norms, and cultural products are reproduced and perpetuated.

idea sociwty i built by the people that make up the society*** so least construction, each society is built by people like language; if see any words like universal or any synonym that is certainly not social construction theory** if behavior of ppl ins ociety constructing society out of those interactions would all be social constructionist

Question 17

Social Constructionism 2

Answer 17

Because social constructionists view culture as being constantly produced by social interaction, they are particularly interested in how that production may change over time and alter the nature of a particular aspect of a society.

Such sociologists tend to be particularly interested in uncovering how seemingly immutable (or “natural”) values, beliefs, and structures are actually the product of social interaction.

Because culture defines and shapes the way individuals view the world, it is often difficult for those individuals to see how many aspects of a culture are not natural reflections of the empirical world.

Many social concepts that we take for granted are, to a large extent, products of the social and power dynamics that surround and permeate the interactions that they govern, and they are not necessarily reflections of some kind of natural or empirical order.

Certain knowledge can be widely recognized and understood as socially constructed because it is not grounded in the empirical facts from which it arises:

• Examples: the rules of a baseball game, the use of paper money, the concept of citizenship.

Question 18

Social Constructionism 3

Answer 18

Most social constructionists argue that the more dangerous and insidious type of social construction is that which surrounds categories and distinctions that appear to reflect physical reality.

Cultural judgments about gender, morality, power, and deviance are often framed as reflecting an underlying biological or natural order.

Social constructionists argue that actually much of what we may consider fundamental about these kinds of distinctions is the product of social and historical processes.

Social constructionists are often criticized for ignoring the role that biology and other empirical factors may play in determining culture and social processes.

The value of the social constructionist perspective is not that it imagines all culture as detached from empirical reality, but that it reminds us that biological and empirical factors will always be filtered through various social, cultural, and psychological processes.

Our attitudes about seemingly empirically based constructs such as gender, sexuality, family, age, race, health, illness, and disease do not just reflect some biological reality but also embody the social and power dynamics that have shaped the countless individual interactions that perpetuate the concepts themselves.

Question 19

Feminist Theory

Answer 19

Feminist theory can be applied to both micro-level and macro-level analyses of society.

Feminist theory argues that the historical sociological perspective is constructed almost entirely from a dominant male perspective and therefore has not paid sufficient attention to the importance of gender in the organization of society.

Feminist theory is not necessarily a specific theoretical perspective. Rather, feminist theory draws on all other types of theory but focuses on the patriarchal structure of Western society.

Feminist theory draws heavily on conflict theory to analyze the hierarchical structure of society:

1. Because women are a disprivileged group in most societies, feminist theory is interested in examining how women may be oppressed or disempowered and how the secondary status of women is perpetuated.
2. Men are considered to be a class of individuals interested in perpetuating the status quo and maintaining their dominant role in society.

Question 20

Feminist Theory 2

Answer 20

Additionally, some feminist theories will draw on symbolic interactionism to consider how various behaviors, cues, and symbols are associated with gender and, as a result, how gender shapes the interactions between individuals.

Feminist theory is often criticized for placing undue stress on the importance of stratification of gender and not recognizing other groups that are disadvantaged or oppressed.

Critics of feminist theory argue that the approach needs to be broadened to include the role of other hierarchical social constructs such as class, race, age, sexual orientation, and religious affiliation.

Question 21

In a study that spanned more than ten years, sociologists aimed to monitor the approaches used by primary-school students to call for their teachers’ attention. The original cohort of experimental-group participants was told from a young age that they could alert a teacher in any of three ways: raising their hands, calling the teacher’s name, or pressing a button that ignited a light on their desks. The control group consisted of a random assortment of public-school children who were treated like typical American students. Their preferences are depicted in table form below.

One might explain the results of the control group through the lens of social constructionism by saying that:

Answer 21

C.respect is a social construct, and the students knew that raising their hands was the most respectful choice.

Social constructionism accounts for respect as a notion upon which society places a certain amount of value. By choosing to raise their hands respectfully, students are acknowledging respect as a social construct that is important to them.

Question 22

Anthropologists are studying a newly-discovered culture that was centered on a chain of islands in the South Pacific over a thousand years ago. It appears that, instead of bartering with various items, members of this island society traded types of rare stones in exchange for goods. What does this monetary agreement exemplify?

A.Symbolic interactionism

B.Exchange-rational choice

C.Social constructionism

D.Functionalism

Answer 22

C.Social constructionism

Social constructionism accounts for our assignment of meaning to certain constructs, including money, obedience, and trustworthiness. Here, the ancient culture chose to assign meaning to the rare stones as a form of currency.

Question 23

Social construction ism versus social intreactionism

Answer 23

Words like “value” are typically associated with social constructionism, which explains how we assign importance to certain social constructs. Symbolic interactionism is more concerned with meaning than with value.