sociological lenses

sociological lense

- impacts the way you see the world

- not permanent

- each focused on a set of inquiries, attentive to some questions more than others

some of the major lenses

- functionalism

- conflict

- symbolic interactionism

- feminism

functionalism lens

- traditionally focuses on the role, function, or purpose of particular institutions and tries to identify what policies and/or social patterns are evident

- always a rationale or raison d'être for why things are the way they are

conflict lens

- focuses on questions of inequality and power, of who benefits from particular social arrangements, rules, decisions, and so on

- different groups of people have varied, and often, conflicting interests, and that outcomes will usually end up privileging one group over others

symbolic interactionism lens

- focuses on questions of meaning, of how meaning is constructed by individuals and groups

- different individuals and groups often make sense of the world in fundamentally different ways, and that understanding these processes is an essential part of making sense of why people do, think, and feel the way they do

feminism lens

- focuses on interrogating the taken-for-granted and oft-naturalized category of gender

- helped spawn an interrogation of other social categories as well - ex. race, class

- the assumption is that many of the characteristics traditionally associated with gender are greatly shaped by the social world

what they all share

a special point of view called the sociological perspective