Theories (functionalism, marxism, action)

Question 1

What is the functionalist view of society?

Answer 1

Institutions of society work together in order to maintain social cohesion and social order, society is similar to the human body- organic analogy.

Question 2

What is Durkheim’s view of society?

Answer 2

Social solidarity and cohesion is achieved and maintained through the socialisation process and learning of norms and values. Without this society can fall into anomie (normalessness).
Social facts are things like institutions, norms and values which exist external to the individual and constrain the individual.

Question 3

What is Parsons organic analogy?

Answer 3

Society and humans are interconnected and inter dependent parts which function for the good of the whole.
The body needs basic needs such as nutrition and society needs its members to be socialised.
Organs of the body function for the good of the whole body and social institutions function to benefit society as a whole.

Question 4

How is social order achieved according to Parsons?

Answer 4

Social order is achieved through a shared value consensus, the glue that holds society together.

Formal social control (official groups like the police who enforce societies laws) and informal social control (family and peers who keep us in line through punishment and ostracisation) are what maintain social order.

Question 5

What are the internal criticisms of Functionalism?

Answer 5

Merton has three criticisms of Parson’s assumptions
- not all social institutions are functionally indispensable, there are some functional alternatives eg: communism can provide a functional alternative to religion
- not all social institutions are tightly integrated
- universal functionalism: not all social institutions perform a positive function for society eg: domestic abuse makes the family dysfunctional for its members

Question 6

What are the external criticisms of functionalism?

Answer 6

• Conflict theorists would argue it is a conservative ideology that maintains the status quo
• Action theorists would argue not all people go along with society like ‘puppets’
• Postmodernists would argue I doesn’t explain diversity and instability in society. Outdated met-narrative.

Question 7

What is the Marxist view of society?

Answer 7

Structural conflict approach that believes society is in conflict between classes. Bourgeoisie oppress proletariat through various social institutions.

Question 8

What is Marx’s view of society?

Answer 8

In a capitalist society the proletariat are oppressed by the bourgeoisie, they are alienated as the workers are made to feel foreign to the product of their labour.
His ideas came to form the basis of communism, which is the belief in a collective ownership and classless society.

Question 9

What are the criticisms of Marxism?

Answer 9

• Feminists argue gender is a more fundamental source of inequality than class
• Two class system is over simplistic, there are over 7 in Britian
• Economic factors aren’t the sole cause of everything
• Action theory says Marx fails to recognise humans have free will and can bring about change through their conscious actions.

Question 10

What is the humanistic Neo-marxist view of society?

Answer 10

Gramsci’s concept of hegemony means the dominance in society of the ruling class ideology and how it’s accepted and consented by the rest of society.

Question 11

How do the ruling class maintain dominance over society (neo-marxist) ?

Answer 11

Coercion: use of army and police to force other classes to accept ruling class ideology
Consent: uses ideas and values to persuade the other classes that ruling class ideology is legitimate

Question 12

Why is ruling class hegemony never complete?

Answer 12

• Ruling class are the minority, to maintain their rule they must create alliances with other groups such as the middle class
• Duel consciousness means the working class can see through the dominant ideology to an extent. influenced by their material conditions.
• Organic intellectuals are class conscious workers who will create a counter hegemony and revolt.

Question 13

What does structural marxist Althusser argue?

Answer 13

Capitalist society has three structures
- economic level, activities which produce something to meet a need dominates capitalism
- political level, organisations (rsa) which coerce workers into false class consciousness
- ideological level, the way people see themselves and the world, the isa manipulates people into false class consciousness.

Question 14

Evaluate Neo-Marxists

Answer 14

• Humanistic neo-marxists under emphasise the role of coercive forces in holding back the formation of a counter hegemony bloc/revolution, for example workers may be unable to form a revolution because of the threat of state-violence.
• Structural marxists discourage political activism by suggesting that individuals can do little to change society.

Question 15

What are the features of ‘social action theory’ according to Weber?

Answer 15

• Micro approach that focuses on individuals/small groups and how they shape the world around them.
• Behaviours are driven by the beliefs, meanings and feelings people give to situations, it is subjective.
• Interpretivist methodology is needed to uncover the meanings individuals give to their behaviour

Question 16

What are the 4 types of actions associated with human behaviour according to Weber?

Answer 16

1) Instrumental rational action: the actor works out the most efficient way to achieve a goal, eg the most efficient way to make profit is to pay low wages.
2) Value rational action: action towards a goal that is seen as desirable for its own sake, eg believing in God and completing rituals in order to reach salvation.
3) Traditional action: routine, customary or habitual actions that are done without thought.
4) Affectual action: action that expresses emotion.

Question 17

Symbolic interactionism

Answer 17

Focuses on our ability to create the social world through our actions and interactions, these interactions are based on the meanings we give to situations. we convey these meanings through symbols.

Question 18

GH Mead

Answer 18

• Saw the world via symbols, which are things we have attached meanings to. He compared us to animals who have a stimulus response by saying that human actions have an added interpretive phase where we have to make sense of the other persons actions ‘taking role of other’ (if you raise your hand in class, the teacher thinks you want to ask an question; if you raise your hand in an auction it means you want to buy something).
• We learn the meanings that symbols hold and how to respond to them through the significant other which is the family during primary socialisation/play. Then we learn through the generalised other which is education and the wider community during secondary socialisation.

Question 19

Blumer (develops and systematises Meads idea)

Answer 19

There are 3 key principles to our actions:
- Our actions are based on the meanings we give to situations, events and people
- These meanings come from the interactions we have experienced, they are not fixed and are changeable!!
- The meanings we give to situations are the result of interpretive procedures we use, such as ‘taking on the role of the other’. For example if someone makes a hand gesture at you, you will interpret whether this was out of anger/joke. If someone is sad we put ourselves in their shoes.

Question 20

Evaluate this view with Functionalism

Answer 20

• Functionalists would argue that there is no negotiation of actions, Parsons sees individuals as puppets who passively respond to the systems needs.
• Socialisation and social control ensures that individuals conform to societies norms and act in a predictable and fixed way, maintaining a consensus.
• EG: Parsons expressive and instrumental roles are biologically determined so they are fixed and not negotiable.

Question 21

Labelling Theory:
Thomas- the definition of the situation

Answer 21

A definition of something is a label for that thing. If we attach a label to situations, events and people this can have real world consequences.
For example, if a teacher labels a boy as ‘troublesome’, the teacher will act differently towards him and punish him more harshly

Question 22

Labelling theory:
Cooley- looking glass self

Answer 22

Self concept is developed through how when you get labelled, you start to see yourself in the way that you have been labelled, like looking in a mirror, which creates a self fulfilling prophecy (we become as others see us).

Question 23

Labelling theory:
Becker and Lemert

Answer 23

• Becker ideal pupil: Teachers have a preconceived idea of the ideal pupil who is middle class and speaks in elaborate code. Students who fail to meet this are labelled and treated as failures, this leads to a self fulfilling prophecy.
• Becker deviant career:
  Moral entrepreneurs are the people that go on crusade to change the law, people that break the law become ‘outsiders’. As a result of being labelled, people are only seen as their label ie it becomes their ‘master status’ (criminals are only seen as criminals, overrides them being a son or daughter). As a result it becomes difficult to gain status legitimately, ending in a deviant career.

Question 24

Evaluate labelling theory

Answer 24

• It is accused of being too deterministic, not everyone negatively labelled will go onto fail or a deviant career.
  EG: Fullers research into black girls and their achievement demonstrated this.

Question 25

Goffman- Dramaturgical Analogy

Answer 25

We actively construct ourselves through manipulating other people’s impressions of us, like actors on a stage, emblematic of real life.
- Dramaturgical model: we are actors, acting out scripts and using props to present ourselves to an audience.
- Impression Management: we seek to present ourselves in a favourable light, so we must control the impression our performance gives. This involves constantly studying our audience to see how they are responding so we can adjust our performance to present the best image.
- Roles: There are backstage roles where we can be ourselves and front stage roles where we act out roles, creating a ‘role distance’, there is some freedom to how we perform our roles.
EG: On social media we impression manage by posting our best moments and editing. Our public self is what we post whereas our private self is our DM’s.

Question 26

Evaluate dramaturgical analogy

Answer 26

• Structural theorists like radical feminists argue women don’t have the opportunity to ‘impression manage’. The patriarchal society means that there are fixed stereotypical gender role of women where women are oppressed by men. (rape, domestic violence, glass ceiling all maintain mens power over women)
• Dramaturgical analogy has its limitations as often people are playing both the actor and audience and usually this is unrehearsed and improvised.

Question 27

Phenomenology- Husserl

Answer 27

Argues that the world only makes sense because we construct mental categories to classify and file information that we receive from our senses. The world as we know it is a product of the individual mind

Question 28

Phenomenology- Schutz, typifications

Answer 28

Developed Husserl’s idea and said that the categories we use to make sense of the world are not individual, but are rather shared with other members of society. These shared categories are called typifications, typifications clarify meanings by ensuring that we are all agreeing on the meanings of things. This makes it possible to cooperate and communicate, thus making social order possible.

Question 29

Example of typification (crime and deviance)

Answer 29

Cicourel applies typifications to crime. Police offers apply common-sense ideas or stereotypes of what the typical delinquent is like. This leads them to police certain ‘types’.

Question 30

Ethnomethodology- Garfinkel

Answer 30

• Unlike interactionists who are interested in the effects of meanings, Garfinkel is interested in how people construct the common sense knowledge, rules and processes we use to produce meanings in the first place.
• Social order is an accomplishment, something that members of society actively work hard to achieve by using common sense knowledge.

Question 31

Methods used to produce meanings: Reflexivity and Indexicality

Answer 31

• Reflexivity: use of common sense knowledge to interpret everyday situations, this creates social order. An example is how coroners make decisions about suicide based on common sense knowledge and assumptions, like a history of mental illness or a note.
• Indexicality: nothing has a fixed meaning; everything is dependent on context

Question 32

Garfinkel- Breaching Experiment

Answer 32

Garfinkle demonstrates how fragile social order in his breaching experiment. He demonstrated this when he got his students to act as lodgers in their own home (being overly polite, asking permission to use bathroom). This shows how the orderliness of everyday situations isn’t fixed, but is an accomplishment of those who take part as we must work hard to maintain social order.

Question 33

Evaluation of phenomenology and ethnomethodology - CARIB

Answer 33

• They are both accused of just merely describing everyday actions that are of no surprise to anyone.
• Ethnomethodology ignores the wider structures that influence our actions
• Functionalists would argue norms and values/common sense knowledge are not a ‘shared fiction’ but a social fact
• Marxists argue shared common sense knowledge is just a ruling class ideology that serves the interests of capitalism, not the individual.

Question 34

Giddens theory of structuration

Answer 34

There is a duality of structure- neither structure or action can exist without the other. Through our actions we reproduce a structure over time and the structure allows these actions to take place.

Question 35

How does language illustrate the duality of structure?

Answer 35

Language is a structure with rules of grammar which determine meanings. We have to follow these rules in order to be understood by others. This shows how our actions (communicating) are dependent on structure (grammar).
Our actions can also change overtime with words taking on new meanings, gay.

Question 36

What are two ways that action reproduce existing structures?

Answer 36

• Societies rules contain knowledge about how we should live our lives, such as earning a living and shopping. When shopping we use resources in the form of money. Thus as we go about our routine activities, we reproduce the existing structure of society.
• We reproduce existing structures through our actions as we have a deep need for ‘ontological security’, which is the need to feel that the world should be orderly and stable/maintaining the status quo.

Question 37

What are two ways that our actions can change society?

Answer 37

• Through reflexive monitoring we constantly reflect on our own actions and the consequences they have, so that we can adjust our action if needed.
• Our actions can have unintended consequences, they may change the world but not in the way we wanted. An example is how the Calvinists adopted the Protestant work ethic to glorify God, but also started the development of the modern capitalist state.

Question 38

Evaluate Giddens structuration theory

Answer 38

• Overemphasises the role of individuals in changing the structure, slaves may wish to abolish slavery but lack the power to do so through their own agency.
• Craib argues it is not even a theory, it is just telling us what we would find if we look at society such as structure, rules and resources.