Discuss The Major Theoretical Perspectives of Sociology
Discuss The Major Theoretical Perspectives of Sociology
Discuss The Major Theoretical Perspectives of Sociology
A theoretical perspective is a set of assumptions about reality that inform the questions we ask and the
kinds of answers we arrive at as a result. In this sense, a theoretical perspective can be understood as a
lens through which we look, serving to focus or distort what we see. It can also be thought of as a frame,
which serves to both include and exclude certain things from our view. The field of sociology itself is a
theoretical perspective based on the assumption that social systems such as society and the family
actually exist, that culture, social structure, statuses, and roles are real.
A theoretical perspective is important for research because it serves to organize our thoughts and ideas
and make them clear to others. Often, sociologists use multiple theoretical perspectives simultaneously
as they frame research questions, design and conduct research, and analyze their results.
We'll review some of the major theoretical perspectives within sociology, but readers should bear in
mind that there are many others
The different but complementary nature of these two approaches can be seen in the case of armed
robbery. Macro sociologists would discuss such things as why robbery rates are higher in poorer
communities and whether these rates change with changes in the national economy. Micro sociologists
would instead focus on such things as why individual robbers decide to commit a robbery and how they
select their targets. Both types of approaches give us a valuable understanding of robbery, but together
they offer an even richer understanding.
Within the broad macro camp, two perspectives dominate: functionalism and conflict theory. Within the
micro camp, two other perspectives exist: symbolic interactionism and utilitarianism (also called rational
choice theory or exchange theory) (Collins, 1994). We now turn to these four theoretical perspectives,
which are summarized in
Functionalism
Functionalism, also known as the functionalist perspective, arose out of two great revolutions of the
18th and 19th centuries. The first was the French Revolution of 1789, whose intense violence and
bloody terror shook Europe to its core. The aristocracy throughout Europe feared that revolution would
spread to their own lands, and intellectuals feared that social order was crumbling.
The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century reinforced these concerns. Starting first in Europe and
then in the United States, the Industrial Revolution led to many changes, including the rise and growth
of cities as people left their farms to live near factories. As the cities grew, people lived in increasingly
poor, crowded, and decrepit conditions. One result of these conditions was mass violence, as mobs of
the poor roamed the streets of European and American cities. They attacked bystanders, destroyed
property, and generally wreaked havoc. Here was additional evidence, if European intellectuals needed
it, of the breakdown of social order.
In response, the intellectuals began to write that a strong society, as exemplified by strong social bonds
and rules and effective socialization, was needed to prevent social order from disintegrating (Collins,
1994). In this regard, their view was similar to that of the 20th-century novel Lord of the Flies by William
Golding (1954), which many college students read in high school. Some British boys are stranded on an
island after a plane crash. No longer supervised by adults and no longer in a society as they once knew it,
they are not sure how to proceed and come up with new rules for their behavior. These rules prove
ineffective, and the boys slowly become savages, as the book calls them, and commit murder. However
bleak, Golding’s view echoes that of the conservative intellectuals writing in the aftermath of the French
and Industrial Revolutions. Without a strong society and effective socialization, they warned, social
order breaks down, and violence and other signs of social disorder result.
This general framework reached fruition in the writings of Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), a French
scholar largely responsible for the sociological perspective as we now know it. Adopting the conservative
intellectuals’ view of the need for a strong society, Durkheim felt that human beings have desires that
result in chaos unless society limits them. He wrote, “To achieve any other result, the passions first must
be limited.…But since the individual has no way of limiting them, this must be done by some force
exterior to him” (Durkheim, 1897/1952, p. 274). This force, Durkheim continued, is the moral authority
of society.
How does society limit individual aspirations? Durkheim emphasized two related social mechanisms:
socialization and social integration. Socialization helps us learn society’s rules and the need to
cooperate, as people end up generally agreeing on important norms and values, while social integration,
or our ties to other people and to social institutions such as religion and the family, helps socialize us
and integrate us into society and reinforce our respect for its rules. In general, Durkheim added, society
comprises many types of social facts, or forces external to the individual, that affect and constrain
individual attitudes and behavior. The result is that socialization and social integration help establish a
strong set of social rules—or, as Durkheim called it, a strong collective conscience—that is needed for a
stable society. By so doing, society “creates a kind of cocoon around the individual, making him or her
less individualistic, more a member of the group” (Collins, 1994, p. 181). Weak rules or social ties
weaken this “moral cocoon” and lead to social disorder. In all of these respects, says Randall Collins
(1994, p. 181), Durkheim’s view represents the “core tradition” of sociology that lies at the heart of the
sociological perspective.
Today’s functionalist perspective arises out of Durkheim’s work and that of other conservative
intellectuals of the 19th century. It uses the human body as a model for understanding society. In the
human body, our various organs and other body parts serve important functions for the ongoing health
and stability of our body. Our eyes help us see, our ears help us hear, our heart circulates our blood, and
so forth. Just as we can understand the body by describing and understanding the functions that its
parts serve for its health and stability, so can we understand society by describing and understanding
the functions that its “parts”—or, more accurately, its social institutions—serve for the ongoing health
and stability of society. Thus functionalism emphasizes the importance of social institutions such as the
family, religion, and education for producing a stable society. We look at these institutions in later
chapters.
Similar to the view of the conservative intellectuals from which it grew, functionalism is skeptical of
rapid social change and other major social upheaval. The analogy to the human body helps us
understand this skepticism. In our bodies, any sudden, rapid change is a sign of danger to our health. If
we break a bone in one of our legs, we have trouble walking; if we lose sight in both our eyes, we can no
longer see. Slow changes, such as the growth of our hair and our nails, are fine and even normal, but
sudden changes like those just described are obviously troublesome. By analogy, sudden and rapid
changes in society and its social institutions are troublesome according to the functionalist perspective.
If the human body evolved to its present form and functions because these made sense from an
evolutionary perspective, so did society evolve to its present form and functions because these made
sense. Any sudden change in society thus threatens its stability and future. By taking a skeptical
approach to social change, functionalism supports the status quo and is thus often regarded as a
conservative perspective.
Conflict Theory
In many ways, conflict theory is the opposite of functionalism but ironically also grew out of the
Industrial Revolution, thanks largely to Karl Marx (1818–1883) and his collaborator, Friedrich Engels
(1820–1895). Whereas conservative intellectuals feared the mass violence resulting from
industrialization, Marx and Engels deplored the conditions they felt were responsible for the mass
violence and the capitalist society they felt was responsible for these conditions. Instead of fearing the
breakdown of social order that mass violence represented, they felt that revolutionary violence was
needed to eliminate capitalism and the poverty and misery they saw as its inevitable result (Marx,
1867/1906; Marx & Engels, 1848/1962).
According to Marx and Engels, every society is divided into two classes based on the ownership of the
means of production (tools, factories, and the like). In a capitalist society, the bourgeoisie, or ruling
class, owns the means of production, while the proletariat, or working class, does not own the means of
production and instead is oppressed and exploited by the bourgeoisie. This difference creates an
automatic conflict of interests between the two groups. Simply put, the bourgeoisie is interested in
maintaining its position at the top of society, while the proletariat’s interest lies in rising up from the
bottom and overthrowing the bourgeoisie to create an egalitarian society.
In a capitalist society, Marx and Engels wrote, revolution is inevitable because of structural
contradictions arising from the very nature of capitalism. Because profit is the main goal of capitalism,
the bourgeoisie’s interest lies in maximizing profit. To do so, capitalists try to keep wages as low as
possible and to spend as little money as possible on working conditions. This central fact of capitalism,
said Marx and Engels, eventually prompts the rise among workers of class consciousness, or an
awareness of the reasons for their oppression. Their class consciousness in turn leads them to revolt
against the bourgeoisie to eliminate the oppression and exploitation they suffer.
Over the years, Marx and Engels’s views on the nature of capitalism and class relations have greatly
influenced social, political, and economic theory and also inspired revolutionaries in nations around the
world. However, history has not supported their prediction that capitalism will inevitably result in a
revolution of the proletariat. For example, no such revolution has occurred in the United States, where
workers never developed the degree of class consciousness envisioned by Marx and Engels. Because the
United States is thought to be a free society where everyone has the opportunity to succeed, even poor
Americans feel that the system is basically just. Thus various aspects of American society and ideology
have helped minimize the development of class consciousness and prevent the revolution that Marx and
Engels foresaw.
Despite this shortcoming, their basic view of conflict arising from unequal positions held by members of
society lies at the heart of today’s conflict theory. This theory emphasizes that different groups in
society have different interests stemming from their different social positions. These different interests
in turn lead to different views on important social issues. Some versions of the theory root conflict in
divisions based on race and ethnicity, gender, and other such differences, while other versions follow
Marx and Engels in seeing conflict arising out of different positions in the economic structure. In general,
however, conflict theory emphasizes that the various parts of society contribute to ongoing inequality,
whereas functionalist theory, as we have seen, stresses that they contribute to the ongoing stability of
society. Thus, while functionalist theory emphasizes the benefits of the various parts of society for
ongoing social stability, conflict theory favors social change to reduce inequality. In this regard, conflict
theory may be considered a progressive perspective.
Feminist theory has developed in sociology and other disciplines since the 1970s and for our purposes
will be considered a specific application of conflict theory. In this case, the conflict concerns gender
inequality rather than the class inequality emphasized by Marx and Engels. Although many variations of
feminist theory exist, they all emphasize that society is filled with gender inequality such that women
are the subordinate sex in many dimensions of social, political, and economic life (Tong, 2009). Liberal
feminists view gender inequality as arising out of gender differences in socialization, while Marxist
feminists say that this inequality is a result of the rise of capitalism, which made women dependent on
men for economic support. On the other hand, radical feminists view gender inequality as present in all
societies, not just capitalist ones. Chapter 11 “Gender and Gender Inequality” examines some of the
arguments of feminist theory at great length.
Symbolic Interactionism
Whereas the functionalist and conflict perspectives are macro approaches, symbolic interactionism is a
micro approach that focuses on the interaction of individuals and on how they interpret their
interaction. Its roots lie in the work in the early 1900s of American sociologists, social psychologists, and
philosophers who were interested in human consciousness and action. Herbert Blumer (1969), a
sociologist at the University of Chicago, built on their writings to develop symbolic interactionism, a
term he coined. This view remains popular today, in part because many sociologists object to what they
perceive as the overly deterministic view of human thought and action and passive view of the
individual inherent in the sociological perspective derived from Durkheim.
Drawing on Blumer’s work, symbolic interactionists feel that people do not merely learn the roles that
society has set out for them; instead they construct these roles as they interact. As they interact, they
“negotiate” their definitions of the situations in which they find themselves and socially construct the
reality of these situations. In so doing, they rely heavily on symbols such as words and gestures to reach
a shared understanding of their interaction.
An example is the familiar symbol of shaking hands. In the United States and many other societies,
shaking hands is a symbol of greeting and friendship. This simple act indicates that you are a nice, polite
person with whom someone should feel comfortable. To reinforce this symbol’s importance for
understanding a bit of interaction, consider a situation where someone refuses to shake hands. This
action is usually intended as a sign of dislike or as an insult, and the other person interprets it as such.
Their understanding of the situation and subsequent interaction will be very different from those arising
from the more typical shaking of hands.
Now let’s say that someone does not shake hands, but this time the reason is that the person’s right arm
is broken. Because the other person realizes this, no snub or insult is inferred, and the two people can
then proceed to have a comfortable encounter. Their definition of the situation depends not only on
whether they shake hands but also, if they do not shake hands, on why they do not. As the term
symbolic interactionism implies, their understanding of this encounter arises from what they do when
they interact and their use and interpretation of the various symbols included in their interaction.
According to symbolic interactionists, social order is possible because people learn what various symbols
(such as shaking hands) mean and apply these meanings to different kinds of situations. If you visited a
society where sticking your right hand out to greet someone was interpreted as a threatening gesture,
you would quickly learn the value of common understandings of symbols.
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is a general view of human behavior that says people act to maximize their pleasure and
to reduce their pain. It originated in the work of such 18th-century thinkers as the Italian economist
Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794) and the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). Both men
thought that people act rationally and decide before they act whether their behavior will cause them
more pleasure or pain. Applying their views to crime, they felt the criminal justice system in Europe at
the time was far harsher than it needed to be to deter criminal behavior. Another 18th-century
utilitarian thinker was Adam Smith, whose book The Wealth of Nations (1776/1910) laid the foundation
for modern economic thought. Indeed, at the heart of economics is the view that sellers and buyers of
goods and services act rationally to reduce their costs and in this and other ways to maximize their
profits.
In sociology, utilitarianism is commonly called exchange theory or rational choice theory (Coleman,
1990; Homans, 1961). No matter what name it goes under, this view emphasizes that when people
interact, they seek to maximize the benefits they gain from the interaction and to reduce the
disadvantages. If they decide that the interaction’s benefits outweigh its disadvantages, they will initiate
the interaction or continue it if it is already under way. If they instead decide that the interaction’s
disadvantages outweigh its benefits, they will decline to begin interacting or stop the interaction if
already begun. Social order is possible because people realize it will be in their best interests to
cooperate and to make compromises when necessary.
A familiar application of exchange theory would be a dating relationship. Each partner in a dating
relationship gives up a bit of autonomy in return for love and other benefits of being close to someone.
Yet every relationship has its good and bad moments, and both partners make frequent compromises to
ensure the relationship will endure. As long as the couple feels the good moments outweigh the bad
moments, the relationship will continue. But once one or both partners decide the reverse is true, the
relationship will end.
A major problem with functionalist theory is that it tends to support the status quo and thus seems to
favor existing inequalities based on race, social class, and gender. By emphasizing the contributions of
social institutions such as the family and education to social stability, functionalist theory minimizes the
ways in which these institutions contribute to social inequality.
Conflict theory also has its problems. By emphasizing inequality and dissensus in society, conflict theory
overlooks the large degree of consensus on many important issues. And by emphasizing the ways in
which social institutions contribute to social inequality, conflict theory minimizes the ways in which
these institutions are necessary for society’s stability.
Neither of these two macro perspectives has very much to say about social interaction, one of the most
important building blocks of society. In this regard, the two micro perspectives, symbolic interactionism
and utilitarianism, offer significant advantages over their macro cousins. Yet their very micro focus leads
them to pay relatively little attention to the reasons for, and possible solutions to, such broad and
fundamentally important issues as poverty, racism, sexism, and social change, which are all addressed
by functionalism and conflict theory. In this regard, the two macro perspectives offer significant
advantages over their micro cousins. In addition, one of the micro perspectives, rational choice theory,
has also been criticized for ignoring the importance of emotions, altruism, and other values for guiding
human interaction (Lowenstein, 1996).
These criticisms aside, all four perspectives taken together offer a more comprehensive understanding
of social phenomena than any one perspective can offer alone. To illustrate this, let’s return to our
armed robbery example. A functionalist approach might suggest that armed robbery and other crimes
actually serve positive functions for society. As one function, fear of crime ironically strengthens social
bonds by uniting the law-abiding public against the criminal elements in society. As a second function,
armed robbery and other crimes create many jobs for police officers, judges, lawyers, prison guards, the
construction companies that build prisons, and the various businesses that provide products the public
buys to help protect against crime.
. Technology
Some would say that improving technology has made our lives easier. Imagine what your day would be
like without the internet, the automobile, or electricity. In The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman (2005)
argues that technology is a driving force behind globalization, while the other forces of social change
(social institutions, population, environment) play comparatively minor roles. He suggests that we can
view globalization as occurring in three distinct periods. First, globalization was driven by military
expansion, powered by horsepower and wind power. The countries best able to take advantage of these
power sources expanded the most, exerting control over the politics of the globe from the late 15th
century to around the year 1800. The second shorter period, from approximately 1800 C.E. to 2000 C.E.,
consisted of a globalizing economy. Steam and rail power were the guiding forces of social change and
globalization in this period. Finally, Friedman brings us to the post-millennial era. In this period of
globalization, change is driven by technology, particularly the internet (Friedman 2005).
But also consider that technology can create change in the other three forces social scientists link to
social change. Advances in medical technology allow otherwise infertile women to bear children,
indirectly leading to an increase in population. Advances in agricultural technology have allowed us to
genetically alter and patent food products, changing our environment in innumerable ways. From the
way we educate children in the classroom to the way we grow the food we eat, technology has
impacted all aspects of modern life.
Of course there are drawbacks. The increasing gap between the technological haves and have-nots––
sometimes called the digital divide––occurs both locally and globally. Further, there are added security
risks: the loss of privacy, the risk of total system failure (like the Y2K panic at the turn of the millennium),
and the added vulnerability created by technological dependence. Think about the technology that goes
into keeping nuclear power plants running safely and securely. What happens if an earthquake or other
disaster, like in the case of Japan’s Fukushima plant, causes the technology to malfunction, not to
mention the possibility of a systematic attack to our nation’s relatively vulnerable technological
infrastructure?
Social Institutions
Each change in a single social institution leads to changes in all social institutions. For example, the
industrialization of society meant that there was no longer a need for large families to produce enough
manual labor to run a farm. Further, new job opportunities were in close proximity to urban centers
where living space was at a premium. The result is that the average family size shrunk significantly.
This same shift towards industrial corporate entities also changed the way we view government
involvement in the private sector, created the global economy, provided new political platforms, and
even spurred new religions and new forms of religious worship like Scientology. It has also informed the
way we educate our children: originally schools were set up to accommodate an agricultural calendar so
children could be home to work the fields in the summer, and even today, teaching models are largely
based on preparing students for industrial jobs, despite that being an outdated need. As this example
illustrates, a shift in one area, such as industrialization, means an interconnected impact across social
institutions.
Population
Population composition is changing at every level of society. Births increase in one nation and decrease
in another. Some families delay childbirth while others start bringing children into their fold early.
Population changes can be due to random external forces, like an epidemic, or shifts in other social
Making Connections: Sociology in the Real World institutions, as described above. But regardless of why
and how it happens, population trends have a tremendous interrelated impact on all other aspects of
society.
In the United States, we are experiencing an increase in our senior population as baby boomers begin to
retire, which will in turn change the way many of our social institutions are organized. For example,
there is an increased demand for housing in warmer climates, a massive shift in the need for elder care
and assisted living facilities, and growing awareness of elder abuse. There is concern about labor
shortages as boomers retire, not to mention the knowledge gap as the most senior and accomplished
leaders in different sectors start to leave. Further, as this large generation leaves the workforce, the loss
of tax income and pressure on pension and retirement plans means that the financial stability of the
country is threatened.
Globally, often the countries with the highest fertility rates are least able to absorb and attend to the
needs of a growing population. Family planning is a large step in ensuring that families are not burdened
with more children than they can care for. On a macro level, the increased population, particularly in the
poorest parts of the globe, also leads to increased stress on the planet’s resources.
The Environment
Turning to human ecology, we know that individuals and the environment affect each other. As human
populations move into more vulnerable areas, we see an increase in the number of people affected by
natural disasters, and we see that human interaction with the environment increases the impact of
those disasters. Part of this is simply the numbers: the more people there are on the planet, the more
likely it is that people will be impacted by a natural disaster. But it goes beyond that. We face a
combination of too many people and the increased demands these numbers make on the earth. As a
population, we have brought water tables to dangerously low levels, built up fragile shorelines to
increase development, and irrigated massive crop fields with water brought in from several states away.
How can we be surprised when homes along coastlines are battered and droughts threaten whole
towns? The year 2011 holds the unwelcome distinction of being a record year for billion-dollar weather
disasters, with about a dozen falling into that category. From twisters and floods to snowstorms and
droughts, the planet is making our problems abundantly clear (CBS News 2011). These events have
birthed social movements and are bringing about social change as the public becomes educated about
these issues.
Modernization
Modernization describes the processes that increase the amount of specialization and differentiation of
structure in societies resulting in the move from an undeveloped society to developed, technologically
driven society (Irwin 1975). By this definition, the level of modernity within a society is judged by the
sophistication of its technology, particularly as it relates to infrastructure, industry, and the like.
However, it is important to note the inherent ethnocentric bias of such assessment. Why do we assume
that those living in semi-peripheral and peripheral nations would find it so wonderful to become more
like the core nations? Is modernization always positive? One contradiction of all kinds of technology is
that they often promise time-saving benefits, but somehow fail to deliver. How many times have you
ground your teeth in frustration at an internet site that refused to load or at a dropped call on your cell
phone? Despite time-saving devices such as dishwashers, washing machines, and, now, remote control
vacuum cleaners, the average amount of time spent on housework is the same today as it was fifty years
ago. And the dubious benefits of 24/7 email and immediate information have simply increased the
amount of time employees are expected to be responsive and available. While once businesses had to
travel at the speed of the United States postal system, sending something off and waiting until it was
received before the next stage, today the immediacy of information transfer means there are no such
breaks. Further, the internet bought us information, but at a cost. The morass of information means that
there is as much poor information available as trustworthy sources. There is a delicate line to walk when
core nations seek to bring the assumed benefits of modernization to more traditional cultures. For one,
there are obvious pro-capitalist biases that go into such attempts, and it is short-sighted for western
governments and social scientists to assume all other countries aspire to follow in their footsteps.
Additionally, there can be a kind of neo-liberal defense of rural cultures, ignoring the often crushing
poverty and diseases that exist in peripheral nations and focusing only on a nostalgic mythology of the
happy peasant. It takes a very careful hand to understand both the need for cultural identity and
preservation as well as the hopes for future growth