Sociology Theories

As a Structural theory, Functionalism sees social structure or the organisation of a society as more important than the individual. Functionalism is a top down theory. Individuals are born into society and become the product of all the social influences around them as they are socialised by various institutions such as the family, education, medai and religion. Functionalism sees society as a system; a set of interconnected parts which together from a whole. There is a relationship between all these parts and each part is vital for the system to run smoothly. Together, they all contribute to the maintenance of society as a whole. Social consensus, order and integration are key beliefs of functionalism as this allows society to continue and progress because there are shared norms and values that mean all individuals have a common goal and have a vested interest in conforming and thus conflict is minimal. 

FUNCTIONALISM is a perspective created by Durkeihm. He believed that society was made up of interconnecte institutions [education,family,government] which depended on eachother to function.

They see society as being similar to the human body. This is called the 'ORGANIC ANALOGY'

The body relies on the heart to pump blood around the whole body towards the other vital organs like the lungs, brain and the heart. without the blood the body will eventually fail, similar to the society. Parsons argued that without society being well constructed it will fail. E.g. the society will stop working if the family stopped functioning properly.

• Parsons says that this will happen because the family is an institution in which primary socialisation occurs. PRIMARY SOCIALISATION is where the younger members of the family are taught societies norms, values and beliefs.

• By having the same values which we all share, a VALUE CONSENSUS is established. Therefore we can see the family has a function in the social system. The family has a positive impact towards the society.

These are the basic needs to survive. allows society to maintain social order

• SOCIAL CONTROL- how to keep things running [functioning] by bringing poeple into line and prevent any anti-social behaviour

• SOCIALISATION- how societys values are transmitted from one generation to the next

• ADAPTION- the need for housing and shelter as well as the production of food and material

• A BELIEF SYSTEM- religion or ideology so a set of values and culture is passed on

• GOAL ATTAINMENT- motivation of the members of society to set out and achieve goals

• LEADERSHIP- a person or a group to make things happen

Parsons argued thjat any successful social systems have 4 principles [Functional Prerequisites]

e.g. adaption, goal attainment, intergration and pattern maintenence

This is a term used by sociologists to describe the "modern" period which began in Europe several hundred years ago. Some of the key features of modern societies are: 

1. Economic production is industrial and capitalist, with social class as the main form of social division. Social classes are based on peoples social and economic position. Marx's view for instance, was that industrial society people were divided into two main classes, those who owned businesses (ruling class) and those who sold their labour to them (working class). The growth of cities, or urbanisation. During the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries thousands of peopke moved to cities to find work and make their homes. The economy was built on mass production- most of the working classes worked in factories producing things such as cars.

2. A powerful central government, known as a bureaucratic state. Local and central government have played an ever increasing part in our lives, the development of compulsory education, public housing and the welfare state for exampe. People's class identity was strong and linked to their political beliefs. There was a clear divide between the working class and the ruling class

3. peoples knowledge is derived from scientific and rational  thinking rather than religious  faith, magic or superstition. During this period people have looked to science and logical thinking to explain the world. Natural disasters such as earthquakes, for example, have tended to be explained scientifically rather than as an "act of god".

4. A widely held faith in scientifically based progress. An associated view has been that the more we trust in science and technological progress, the better our society will be.

Post-Modernity refers to the view that the institutions and ways of living characteristics or modernity have been replaced to such a profound extent that our society is fundamentally different to the 'modern' society. Postmodernity is characterised by:   

1. Globalisation -                                                                                                              this is the increasing connectedness between societies across the globe. this means that there are more flows of information and ideas, money, and people moving across national boundaries.   

2.The increasing importance of the mass media -                                                             the post-modern era has witnessed a huge expansion in media technology. The rise of digital media, especially the internet, has lead to a massive and unprecedented increase in the number of people using the media; a huge increase in diversity of media products both factual and fictional; an increase in the number of people creating their own music, videos, profile sites and uploading them for public consumption, greter interactivity, more flexibility. One consequence of this is that our society has an increase reliance on the media to tell us what is going on in the world. This leads to the breakdown of local communities, as people dont communicate with their next door neighbours.                        

3. A world in fragments -the pace of change is much more rapid than in modern society. This society is thus more dynamic, and more fluid. The economy is no longer based on mass production, instead we now have a service economy. Therefore there is more job insecurity and risk, everything is more unpredictable.

4.The consumer society -according to Post-modernists, one fundamental difference between the two socities is that Post-modern society is consumer oriented, rather than work oriented. this means that consuming things, and leisure activities are more important today than work. The image of the Post-modern society is thus of a shopping mall, rather than a factory. Society is no longer divided along class lines, or gender lines, or even ethnic lines. Being born working class, being born a women, or being born black, does not, acoording to post-modernists, pre-determine ones future. or shape ones identity as it did in modernity. Your identity is now based more on what you buy/wear or take part in.

5.cultural diversity and hybridity -The ever increasing pace of globalisation has lead to an increase in cultural diversity and 'hybridity'. which refers to the mixing of different cultural traditions. if we compare society today to what of 100 or even 50 years ago we see a bewildering increase in the diversity of social and cultural forms. There is also a diversity of religion as compared with the christian-orientated UK previously.

Marxism comes from the work of Karl Marx. Like functionalism it is a modernist theory that scientific analysis of society would provide the means for improving it. in Marxists case - this is through revolution and the establishment of communist society. Marxism is a structural perspective that sees society as based on class conflict. In Capitalism, the bourgeoisie exploit the labour of proletariat. They maintain there position through ideology or hegemony. However, Marx believd that ultimately a revolution leading to a classless, communist society was inevitable.

WHAT IS MARXIST THEORY OF CAPITALISM?

what is capitaliam?

capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.

Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labour, voluntary exchange, a price system, and competitive markets. In a capitalist market economy, decision-making and investment is determined by the owners of the factors of production in financial and capital markets, and prices and the distribution of goods are mainly determined by competition in the market

Marx and his colleague Engels believed that the transition from feudalism to capitalism and the associated rise to economice and political dominance of the Bourgeoisie would resuld result in the decline of conservative traditions and to increasing economic efficiency as capitalist principles were increasingly applied on national and international scale. Marx and Engels believed that capitalism should be allowed to develop because it would create the scientific, technological and economic potential necessary for higher living standards for all but capitalism also contained the seed of its own destruction because it was also an unfair and unjust sytem in which the poor were exploited at every turn by the rich and whose organisation actually prevented the full development and effective use of its massive economic resources in the interests of all of the members of capitalist societies.

Under capitalism workers have little or no overall control over the production process which is often based upon the division of labour involving the breaking down of the production process into a series of simple repetitive and boring tasks which give no opportunity for worker creativity. It has been said that under conditions of modern capitalism many workers exercise more skill driving to work [if they can afford a car] than in their daily work while in Marx's analysis od C19th capitalism work becomes means to an end [earning money necessary to survive] rather than an end itself and "as soon as there are no physical or other compulsion men flee from labour like the plague".

Marx believed that the economy was the driving force in society, and it was this that determined the nature of social institutions, and peoples values and beliefs. Marxism is also a structural theory and is concerned with the overall structure of society. Marxism argues that individual behaviour is moulded by social institutions like the family, the education system, media and work. individuals are determined and moulded by social forces acting upon us. we are like a puppet being controlled by the social institutions we are a part of. As a result Marxism wishes to understand society as a whole to understand its impact on the individual - This approach to studying to society is known as a 'macro' (meaning large scale).

Marx explains the structure of society as being split into the 'base' and the 'superstructure'.

- The superstructure is made up of societies beliefs, values and institutions, such as the family, education and the media and this is influenced by the economic system (the base).

-the economic base, or infastructure underpins and determines everything else in society. This is made up of 2 things:

1. The Means Of Production

these are the resources necessary for reproducing societies goods, such as land to grow crops, factories to produce clothes, and machines to make technology.

2. The Relations Of Production

these are the forms of relationships between those people who are involved in the production, for example a 'cooperative' where everyone owns a business collectively such as 'Daily Bread' or a more common organisation of 'private ownership' where ther is an owner/manager and workers/employees.

Bourgeoisie

• these are the people who own/run the means of production
• they are often known as the ruling class
• the ruling class own the companys which employ the workers who pay them money to work for them
• they own firms which make the surplus profit which the ruling classes keep

Proletariat

• these are the workers also known as the workng class
• the workers, work in a factory and make the surplus cash (profit) for the ruling class
• in capitalist societies the proletariat can only sell their labour to the ruling class

Social Class Conflict

Because the relationship between the two classes is one of exploitation there is a perpetual conflict between these classes

structuralist neo-marxism: Althusser and the economic, political and ideological levels Althusser argued that the structure of capitalist society consists of not just the economic base and superstructure, but of the there levels:

• The economic level - consisting of the economy and the production of material goods.

• The political level - consisting of the government and organisations involve in the political organisation and control of society, including what he called the repressive state apparatus (RSA). The RSA refers to those parts of the state which are concerned with mainly repressive, physical means of keeping a population in line, such as the army, police, courts and prisons.

• The ideological level - concerned with ideas, beliefs and values. This consists of the ideological state appararuses, which are a series of institutions which spread the dominant ideology and justify the poor of the dominant class. These include the media, the education sysytem and religion.

Structralist Marxist  reject humanistic views and believe that it does not offer a new structural model which has three levels.

Craib calls this model "structural determinism". Different to Marx's base superstructure model because the political and ideological levels have partial independence - they are not a mere reflection of the economic level and they can affect what happens to the economy, unlike Marx where there is a one-way causality relationship (economy determines rest of society), here there is a two-way causality as the economy can influence political and ideological level and vice versa. Argues that although in capitalist society, the economic level is the most dominant, the other two perform indispensable functions: e.g. If capitalism is to continue, workers must be socialised, workers who rebel must be punished etc.

The repressive state apparatuses: the "armed bodies of men" who force the working class to comply with the will of the bourgeoisie. The ideological state apparatuses: the media, education system, the family, trade unions etc. The ISAs ideologically manipulate the working class into accepting capitalism as legitimate. These views are similar to Gramsci's distinction between coercion (RSAs) and consent (ISAs) as different ways the ruling class dominate over the working class

Humanistic neo-marxism: Gramsci's concept of hegemony.

The Marxist Gramnsci thought Marx was mistaken in giving such over-riding importance to the economy, and he saw ideology and people ideas having relative autonomy from the economic base. His concepts of hegemony placed much more emhpasis than Marx did on the role of ideas rather than the economy in maintaining the ruling-class power and in influencing peoples behaviour. Gramsci emphasised that peoples ideas underpin the actions they choose to make. He stressed the importance of peoples ideas, choices and actions in bringing about change, and not just economic conditions like poverty, homelessness and unemployment. By hegemony, Gramsci was referring to the dominance in society of the ruling class's set of ideas over others, and acceptance of and consent to them by the rest of society. He saw this control of people's minds by the dominant ideology, rather than simply control by the police, prisons and other repressive agencies of the state, as one of the main reasons why the working class had rarely rebelled against the ruling class, as they had failed to develop their own alternative Vision of how society might be. The concept of hegemony meant Gramsci's neo-Marxism was leaning more towards a social action approach to society, with a greater emphasis on people's ideas, meanings and actions in bringing about revolutionary change, and less on the structuralismn approach and economic determinism of classical Marxism.

Main interest: ideology and hegemony.

hegemony means the dominant ideas in society e.g. laws, norms and values  (made by the ruling class). Gramsci uses the concept of hegemony to explain how the ruling class maintains its position. He argues that the proletariat needs to develop its own 'counter-hegemony' to win the leadership of society because he believed that although mass unemployment and falling wages may create the conditions for a revolution - ideas play a central role in determining whether or not change will actually occur.

The ruling maintain their dominance in two ways:                                                                 coercion: by force - using the army, police, prisons, courts etc to force other classes to accept its rule                                                                                                                       consent (hegemony) - uses ideas and values to persuade the subordinate classes that its rule is legitimate - e.g. it makes laws and controls institutions (media, education, religion etc.) that produce and spread ideas.

-however he argues that the ruling class can be broken down if there is a "counter-hegemony" - meaning that the proletariat need someone in charge. e.g. forming a new revolutionary political party

The feminist approach in sociology is also a form of conflict theory. Feminists view society as fundamentally patriarchal, with men in positions of power and dominance over women in many areas of social life. This generates conflict between men and women. Feminist's main focus of research is to expose these gender inequalities, often using interpretivist methods to understand the feelings and experiences of women.

Different strands of feminism propose different solutions to tackling the problems of gender inequality. For example liberal feminists look to improve opportunities in existing society, Marxist feminists challenge both patriarchy and capitalism as causes of women's inequality, and radical feminists focus on the removal of patriarchy, which it regards as simply turning women into sex objects. They are nonetheless united in recognising the essential conflicts between men and women that gender inequalities create in society

• Blame the exploitation of women on men. it is primarily men who have benefitted from the subordinate of women. Women are an oppressed group.

• Society is patriarchal - men are the ruling class and women are the subject class.

• **** and violence are methods through which men have secured and maintained  dominance and power over women. Dworkin.

• Tong distinguishes between the two types of radical feminists: Radical-Libertarian Feminist: believe that it is both possible and desirable for gender differences to be eradicated, or at least greatly reduced and aim for a state where men and women are not significantly different.  Radical-cultural feminist: believe in the superiority of feminime. According to Tong, radical cultural feminists celebrate characteristics associated with feminism such as emotion, and are hostile to those characteristics associated with masculinity such as highracy.

The various alternatives suggested by these feminists include Separatism: women only communes, and matrifocal households. Some also practice political lesbianism and political celibacy as they view heterosexual relationships as "sleeping with the enemy".

• Capitalism rather than patriarchy is the principle source of womans oppression, and capitalists as the main beneficiaries

WOMANS SUBORDINATION PLAYS A NUMBER OF IMPORTANT FUNCTIONS FOR CAPITALISM.

• Women reproduce the labour force for free (socialisation is done for free)

• Women absorb anger - Women keep the husbands going:                                             -Because the husband has to support his wife and kids he is more dependent on his job and less likely to demand wage increases

• The traditional nuclear also performs the function of 'ideological conditioning' - teaches the ideas that the capitalist class require for their future workers to be passive.

• The disadvantage position of women is seen to be a consequence of the emergence of private property and their lack of ownership of the means of production

• Nobody benefits from existing inequalities: both men and women are harmed

• The explanation for gender inequalities lie in its culture and values

• socialisation into gender roles has the consequence of producing rigid, inflexible expectations of men and women

• Discrimination  prevent women from having equal opportunities

• Liberals do not seek revolutionary changes: they want changes to take place within the existing structure

•  The creation of equal opportunities is the main aim of liberal feminists - e.g. the Sex Discrimination Act and the Equal Pay Act

• Liberals try to eradicate sexism from the childrens books and the media

• Liberals ideas have probably had the most impact on womens lives - e.g. mainstreaming has taken place

• Do not see women as a single homogenous group. MC/WC

• Criticised proceeding feminist theory for claiming a 'false universality' (white, western heterosexual, middle class)

• Criticised proceeding feminists theory of being essentialists

• Postmodern feminism - concerned with language and the relationship between power and knowledge rather than 'politics and opportunities'

• Helene Cixoux - an example of a postmodern theorist

MARXIST

1 - radical feminists - ignores other sources of inequalitiy such as sexual violence

2 - patriarchal systems existed before capitalism, in tribal societies for example

3 - the experience of women has not been particularly happy under communism

LIBERAL

1 - based upon male assumptions and norms such as individualism and competition, and encourages women to be more like men therefore deny the 'value of qualities' traditionally associated with woman such as empathy

2 - it is accused of emphasising public life at the expense of private life

3 - radical and marxist feminists - it fails to take account of deeper structural inequalities

4 - difference feminists argue it is an ethnocentrics perspective - based mostly on the experiences of middle class, educated women

RADICAL

1 - the concept of patriarchy has been criticised for ignoring variations in the experience of oppression

2 - some critics argue that it focuses too much on the negative experiences of women failing to recognise that some women can have happy marriages

3 - it tends to portray women as universally good and men as universally bad, it has ben accused of man hating, not trusting all men

DIFFERENCE

1 - women are still oppressed by objective social structures - patriarchy

2 - dividing women sub-groups weakens the movement for change

MAX WEBER - one of the 'founding fathers' of sociology. He saw both structural and action approaches as necessary for a full understanding of human behaviour. He argued tha a full sociological explanation involves two levels:

THE LEVEL OF CAUSE - explaining the objective structural factors that shape peoples behaviour

THE LEVEL OF MEANING - understanding the objective meanings that individuals attach to their actions

Types Of Actions

1. Instrumentally rational action is where the actor works out the most efficient means of achieving a given goal. e.g. a capitalist may calculate that the most efficient way of maximising profit is to pay low wages

2. Value-rational action involves action towards a goal that the actor regards as desirable for its own sake. For example, a believer worshipping their god in order to get to heaven

3. Traditional action involves routine actions. This action isnt rational as the actor has always done it and no conscious thought has gone into it

4. Affectional action is an action that expresses emotion. For example, weeping out of grief, or violence sparked by anger. 

ACTION THEORIES start from the opposition to structural theories such as functionalism and marxism. They are micro-level. 'Bottom up' approaches focusing on the actions and interactions of individuals. Action theories are voluntaristic and believe individuals have free will and choice. 

CRITICISM

Alfred Schutz

argues Webers views of action is too individualistic and cannot explain the shared nature of meanings. For example, when a person at an auction raises their arm, they mean that they are making a bid, but how does everyone else who is present give this gesture the same meaning?

This focuses on how we create the social world through our actions and interactions which are based on the meanings we give to situations and conveyed through symbols, especially language.

G.H. Meade formed the basis for many later interactionists.

SYMBOLS VS INSTINCTS

Unlilke animals, human behaviour is not governed by instincts. We respond to the world by giving meanings to the things that are significant to us and so create a world of meanings by attaching symbols to the things around us. Therefore, there is an interpretive  phase between a stimulus and our response to it, in which we interpret its meanings. For example, if someone shakes their fist at you, there are many ways of interpreting this, e.g. Anger, Humour etc.

TAKING THE ROLE OF THE OTHER

We interpret other peoples meanings by taking their role; seeing ourselves as they see us. The ability develops through interactions. Young children internalise significant others such as parents, while later in life we see ourselves from the point of viewers society, the generalised other. Shared symbols, especially loanguage are very important for us to become conscious of the ways of acting that others require of us.

BLUMER - identified three key principles of interactionism...

1. Our actions are based on the meanings we give to the situations, people etc. and so arent automatic responses to stimuli

2. These meanings arise from interactions and are to some extent negotiable and changeable

3. The meanings we give to situations are mainly the result of taking the role of the other

He argues that although our actions are partly predictable because we internalise the expectations of others, there are always some room for choice in how we perform our roles.

1. Definition Of The Situation  - defining something labels it. Thomas argued that if people define a situation as real, it will have real consequences: if we believe something to be true, this will affect how we act and in turn may affect those involved

2. Looking-Glass Self - Cooley argues that our self-concept arises out of our ability to take the role of the other. Others act as a looking-glass to us: we see our self mirrored in how they respond to us, so through this process a self-fulfilling prophecy occurs and we become what they see, even if the initial definition was false.

3.Career - Becker and Lemert apply this concept for example to mental patients. The indivdual has a career running from 'pre-patient' with certain symptoms, through labelling by a psychiatrist to hospital in-patient to discharge etc. 'Mental patient' may become our master status.                                                                                                                     However, labelling theorists ignore wider social structures such as class inequality and fail to explain the origin labels and consistent pattern in behaviour. Whereas labelling sees the individual as the passive victim of other peoples labels, Goffman describes how we actively construct our 'self' by manipulating other peoples impression of us. This is a dramaturgical approach as it uses analogies with drama such as 'actors', 'scripts','props'.

we seem to present a particular image to our audiences, controlling the impression our 'performance' gives. Impression management techniques include tone of voice, gestures, props, dress, make-up. As in theatre, there is a 'front' stage where we act out our roles while 'back' stage we can step out of our role and 'be ourselves'.

(e.g. how we act at school vs how we act at home)

Roles - there is a role distance between our real self and our roles which are only loosely scripted by society and allow us alot of freedom in how we play them. Role distance implies that we dont always believe in the roles we play. We may be calculating, manipulating  audiences into accepting an impression that conceals our true self.

The philosopher Husserl argues that the world only makes sense because we impose meaning and order on it by constructing mental categories that we use to classify the information coming from our senses. So we cant have definite knowledge about what the world is really like, all we can know is what our mind tells us about it.

SCHUTZ applies this idea to the social world. We share the categories that we use to classify the world with other members of society...

• He calls these shared categories typifications which enable us to organise our experiences into a shared world of meaning
• The meaning of action varies according to its social context. Meaning is given by the context, not by the action itself, so meanings are potentially unclear and unstable; Indexicality
• Fortunately, typifications make social order possible because they give members of society a shared life and a world of commonsense knowledge that we can use to make sense of our experience; Reflexitivity
• The fact that society appears to us as a real, objective thing outside of us simply shows  us that all members of society share the same meanings; he calls this the natural attitude in turn, this allows us to cooperate and achieve goals.

They object the fact that the ideo of society as a real objective structure

GARFINKEL argues that social order is constructed from the 'bottom-up' and is an accomplishment. It is something members of society actively construct in evryday life using their commonsense knowledge. The sociologists task is thus to uncover the taken-for-granted rules people use to construct social reality. Indexicality refers to the fact that meanings are always potentially unclear. This is a threat to social order because if meanings are unclear or unstable, communication and cooperation become our commonsense knowledge to construct a sense of meaning and order, so prevent indexicality occuring.

Language is a vital importance in achieving reflexitivity. It gives us a sense of reality existing, although infact all we have done is construct a set of shared meanings. Garfinkel used breaching experiments to disrupt peoples expectations of a situation (e.g. students acting like lodgers in their parents homes which led to parents becoming angry, anxious or embarrassed). These show how the orderlines of everyday situations is not inevitable and how we use our commonsense, taken-for-granted assumptions to actively create social order.

ACTION THEORIES - are 'micro-level', voluntaristic theories that see society as inter-subjective, constructed through interaction and meaning

STRUCTURAL THEORIES - are 'macro-level' , deterministic theories that see society as objective and external to individuals

There is so much to be said about each theory, so GIDDENS' created the structuration theory, a single unified theory which combines both.

STRUCTURATION THEORIES - Giddens argues there is a duality of structure. Structure and agency (i.e. action) are two sides of the same coin; neither can exist without the other. Our actions produce, reproduce and change structures over time and space, while these strutures are what makes our actions possible in the first place; he calls the relationship structuration. This can be applied to language. It is a structure with rules that make it possible for us to communicate, but our use of it can also change its structure, for example giving words new meanings.

For Giddens, structure has two elements...

• RULES- the norms, customs and laws that the government action
• RESOURCES- both economic resources and power over other

Rules and resources can be either reproduced or changed through human action. However, our actions generally tend to reproduce rather than change them. This is because societys rules contain a stock of knowledge about how to live our lives, so our routine activities tend to reproduce the existing structures because we have a deep-seated need for ontological security - a need to feel that the world is orderly, stable and predictable.

Change can happen because....

• We reflexively monitor our actions and we can deliberately choose a new course of action. In late modern society, where tradition no longer dicates action
• Our actions may have unintended consequences, producing changes that were not part of our goal

ARCHER argues that his claim that actors can change structures underestimates the capacity of structures to resist change; e.g. slaves.