Transcript The Sociological Perspective

The Sociological
Perspective
Chapter 1
Sociology as a reasoned and rigorous study of
social life
Sociology as a reasoned and rigorous study of
social life
• The study of how membership of social groups (families, schools,
workplaces) influences people's behaviour
• Sociologists systematically create and test:
• How facts are created (how to produce knowledge that is superior to simple
opinion)
• How facts are linked (how one fact connects to another to create an overall
picture of social reality
• Facts are explained by constructing theories and testing the
theories against known facts
Key Terms
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Culture
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Beliefs
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Ideology
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Social order
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Scientific method
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Positivism
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Capitalism
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Social change
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Weberian theory
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Interpretivism
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Value-freedom
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Post-modernism
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Relations of production•
Value consensus
Traditional society
Mechanical solidarity
Organic solidarity
Hypothetico-deductive method
Hypothesis
Falsification
Researcher bias
Objectivity
Respondent
Feminism
Marxist feminists
Gender
Forces of production
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Social policy
Social problem
Social control
Modern industrial society
Functions: manifest & latent
Globalisation
Liberal feminism
Functionalist theory
Radical feminism
Marxist theory
Structuralist
Macrosociology
Determinism
Economic determinism
Philosophers
Comte (1798-1857)
• Human socieities pass through
three stages:
• Theological
• Metaphysical
• Positive
• Scientific basis of social order
could be revealed through La
Sociologie
Marx
• Social development passed through four
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Primitive communism
Ancient society
Feudal/Pre-industrial society
Capitalist/industrialist society
• Social order is maintained through a mix
of force and persuasion
• Inequality linked to stratificatiion
• Power comes from economic ownership
Philosophers
Weber (1864-1920)
• Weberian theory
• Process of modernisation
• Industrialisation
• Urbanisation
• rationalisation
• Theory of social action
• Rejected idea that economic
forces are always the most
significant factor in social change
Durkheim (1857-1917)
• Societies could only be understood in
terms of the relationship between their
various institutions
• Societies don’t just "exist"--people
have to develop social solidarity
• Traditional societies-->mechanical
solidarity
• Modern societies-->organic solidarity
• Showed sociologists could product
objective knowledge about social
behaviour and explain behaviour as a
result of more than psychological
choices
Sociology as a science: positivist,
interpretivist and postmodernist perspectives
Defining Science
• Science involves identifying a problem to study, collecting information
about it and offering an explanation for it (Popper, 1934)
• Methodology
• Reliable
• Valid
• Hypothetico-deductive method (Popper, 1934)
• Scientific ethos (Merton, 1942)
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Universal
Communal
Disinterested
sceptical
Positivism
• Based on the idea that is possible and desirable to study the social world in the
same way natural scientists study the natural world
• Positivist methodology
• Value-freedom
• Scientific knowledge is:
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Factual
Objective
Evidence-based
testable
• Scientific knowledge is not:
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Opinion
Guesswork
Untested assumptions
faith
Interpretivism
• Different people in different situations interpret the social world in different ways—
sociologists can only describe reality from the viewpoint of those who create and define
it
• People cannot be studied in the same way we study plants or rocks
• Explanations are developed "from within"
• Behavioural rules in a society are determined by context—they change depending on the
situation in which people find themselves
• Qualitative v quantitative data
• Emergent research design:
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Planning
Data collection
Data analysis
Evaluation
Postmodernism
• "Different way of seeing and working, rather than a fixed body of ideas, a clearly
worked out position or a set of critical methods and techniques." (Usher and
Edwards, 1994)
• Critical worldview based on the idea that people construct narratives through
which to make sense of the world
• Metanarratives—religions, political philosophies, nationalities
• Pre-modern --->religion
• Modern ----> science
• Postmodern ----> incredulity toward metanarratives
• Concepts such as truth are inherently subjective because they are based on
power relationships
• Postmodernists vs. Positivists vs. Interpretivists
The uses of sociological knowledge: the role
of values in sociology
Research considerations
• Value-free vs. Value-neutral
• Researchers tend to research topics based on their personal values
• Methods of research also based on values
• Topic choice is influenced by funding
The uses of sociological knowledge
• Classical sociology developed theories to explain ideas:
• Marx
• Weber
• Durkheim
• Now, sociology focuses on social issues:
• Feminism and gender relationships
• Poverty
• Social/environmental costs of development
• Through collection of comparative evidence about different societies,
sociologist influence social policy
Sociology and social policy: the differences
between sociological problems and social problems
Sociological and social problems
• Social problems: crime, poverty, unemployment
• Behaviour is only a problem when it is defined as such according to the beliefs and values
of some influential or dominant group in society.--Carter, 2001
• Sociological problem:
• Societies have to solve certain fundamental problems to survive
• A question that demands explanation—Willis, 2001
• Sociological problems are considered in light of how and why behaviour comes
to be defined as a social problem
• Sociological research:
• Painter and Farrington (1997)
• Street lighting and crime
Disability
Social problem
Sociological Problem
Sociology and social policy
• Social policy: the main principles under which the government directs
economic resources to meet specific social needs (Calvert and Calvert, 1992)
• Affecting value-neutrality
• Agents of social control
• An unimaginative view of sociology as solving social problems reduces
sociology to the accumulation of facts for the purpose of facilitating
administrative decisions (Mills, 1959).
Feminist theory
• Feminist research focuses on policy issues to highlight the inequality faced by
women worldwide
• Social policy relating to unemployment, poverty reduction and child birth in the
USA have been influenced by women's activism (Misra, 2000)
• Disadvantaged groups are often the target of social policies (which approach?) or
poliicially marginalised
• Impossible to achieve true value-neutrality when it comes to social issues
(Becker, 1967)
• Sociologists make a choice about how and why their research is used
• Left wing vs. Right wing perspective
The diversity of human behaviour and
cultural variation
Class, Age, Gender, Ethnicity
• Cultural universales: behaviours common to all societies—age, family, language,
status, symbols, beliefs, practices
• Different societies interpret them in different ways
• Cultural diversity: cross-cultural & intra-cultural
• Class: Modern industrial society
• Cultural characteristics associated with biological age: child, youth, adult,
elderly
• Gender
Ethnicity, Religion
• Ethnicity—cultural differences between social groups that involves people
seeing themselves as being distinctive in some way from others on the basis of
a shared cultural background and history (Winston, 2005)
• Religions have a dual character (McGuire, 2002)
• Functions: socialisation, social solidarity, social control
• Religious diversity:
• Differences between, differences within, differences include
• UK Census 2001:
• Christians ranked religion 7th most important aspect of identity; Muslims, Sikhs and
Hindues ranked it 2nd
• White Britons ranked religion 10th most important aspect of identity; South Asians ranked
it 2nd
Global Culture
• Rapid global movement of cultural ideas, styles and products that can be picked
up, discarded and adapted to fit the needs of different cultural groups
• Cultural hybridisation
• Expressed in two main ways:
• How local or national cultural developments can spread, be picked up, shaped and changed to
suit the needs of different groups
• Process of convergence and similarity within cultural groups
• Language, activities, consumer products
• Process of globalisation accelerated—culture as a commodity (Plumb, 1995)
• Global cultural development (Skylar 1999):
• Localised globalism changed by cultural behaviours
• Globalised localism—creating new and diverse cultural forms
• Global cultural convergenc
The nature of social order, social control and
social change
Consensus structuralism
• Functionalist: Explanation of order and stability involves looking at how societies
are organised at the social system(various parts of society function in harmony)
• Four functional sub-systems: political, economic, cultural, and family (Parsons,
1937)
• Connections between the parts of the social system are created by institutional
purposes
• Functional prerequisites—things that must happen if society is to function
properly
• Four problems of existence: goal maintenance, adpation, integration, latency
• Societies and institutions can only function if people feel as though they are part
of a larger community—agents of control, conformity
Conflict structuralism
• Societies are generally considered stable because powerful groups impost order
on relatively powerless groups
• Marxism: conflict at the root of all social relationships but only in economic
terms(economic determinism)
• Relationship between economic, political, and ideological institutions as the
basis for social order and control:
• Economy is foundation of society (relations of production)
• Political and ideological superstructure "rests" on economic base
• Forces of production: how labour power is organised to produce wealth by
harnessing it to various forms of technology
Conflict structuralism
• Repressive state apparatuses vs. Ideological state
apparatuses(Althusser, 1972)
• Order and stability are maintained through institutions that make up
the political and ideological superstructure—controlled by a ruling
class whose power comes from ownership of the economic base
• Effectiveness of socialisation
• Feminist theory: all contemporary societies are patriarchal to some
degree
• Interpersonal power vs cultural power
• Liberal feminism v Marxist feminism v radical feminism
Action approach
• Order and control created from the bottom up—people create and recreate
society daily through daily routines(interactionism)
• Society does not exist physically—it exists mentally; people act as though
society is a real force having an effect on them, limiting and controlling
behaviour
• People impose order through meanings given to behaviour:
• People must develop shared definitions of a situation
• Where meanings are negotiated, they can easily change
• If society has no objective reality beyond social interaction, it becomes a label
applied to pressures, rules and responsibilities that arise from social
relationships
Social change
• Functionalism
• Structural differentiation(Parsons, 1937)
• Social strains(Merton, 1938)
• Marxism
• Social change comes through conflict between capitalist forms of economic production—at micro
and macro levels
• Feminism
• Liberal feminism: legal system
• Marxist feminism: economic system
• Radical feminism: matriarchal society
• Action theory
• Fluid and malleable
• Micro: changing attitude; globalisation
• Macro: Role of cultural institutions