MCAT - Sociology - Unit 1 - Social Structures

Macrosociology

large scale affects → whole populations, civilizations, institutions, how big groups affect smaller ones

Microsociology

face-to-face interactions, smaller scale. Families, schools, small communities → directly face each other and can affect a bigger picture

Functionalism

How society impacts one another → how society keeps functioning

Father of Functionalism

Emile Durkheim

Conflict Theory

How there is conflict amongst big institutions vs smaller ones → society benefits bigger ones while smaller ones don’t get as much = creates inequalities

father of Conflict Theory

Carl Marx

Symbolic interactionism

focuses on individuals, interactions with symbols in one’s life - personal

Father of Symbolic Interactionism

George Herbert Mead

Social Constructionism

How people actively shape their reality through social interactions - everyone agrees on things that inherently become truth/reality

Weak Social constructionism

Made from brute facts → most basic, fundamentals

Strong Social Constructionism

made from a reality dependent on language and socially constructed facts, nothing just ‘exists’; there are thoughts of humans that form this existence.

Feminist Theory

from conflict theory, the conflict of women’s roles in education, family, and workforce

4 types of Feminist Theory

• Gender differences

• Gender Inequality

• Gender Oppression

• Structural Oppression

Gender Difference Theory of Fem.

How women’s social situations are different from men's - women more soft and submissive, while men are more aggressive and dominant

Gender inequality

Central to all behaviour → Society as a patriarchy → focus on men as a governing body, have more influence, more authority while women’s opinions are deemed less

Gender Oppression

Women are not only unequal to men, but also abused and oppressed → Home labour done by women, women stay at home

Structural Oppression

Women’s oppression due to capitalism, patriarchy, and racism

Rational Choice Theory

Everything people do is fundamentally rational → ex. getting more money because it has more pros to having more → looking into pros and cons of things

Three assumptions of RCT

CTI

• Completeness - actions are ranked, best first

• Transitivity - if A is preferred to B, then A is better than C

• Independence - a new option comes last in order, doesn’t change existing rank

Exchange theory

Applying RCT to social situations → ex. social selection, sexual selection