SFFG 152 LONG QUIZ

Sociological Imagination

• According to, C.W. Mills (1959), it is a skill that allows sociologists to see how social forces impact private lives.

• Through this, sociologists are trained always to see the connections between the historical milieu and personal lives.

Sociological Imagination

Mills (1959) pointed out that the first fruit of this is the “idea that individuals can understand their own experience and gauge their own fate only by locating themselves within their period, that they can own changes in life only by becoming aware of those individuals in their circumstances.”

no matter how personal we think our experiences are, many of them, if not all, are products of social processes that envelop us

what does Mills asserted regarding sociological imagination

• agency

• structure

You might choose what you wear today (…), but you didn't choose the fashions available in 2026, the factory conditions where the clothes were made, or the cultural norms that say you have to wear pants in public (…).

Sociological Perspective

▪ provide some ways to conceptualize the social

world including behavioral patterns, collective actions,

and other events transpiring therein.

▪ contain abstract assumptions regarding human

actions, social structures and other aspects of the

interactions between individuals and society.

▪ Each perspective can be likened to a spotlight that

brightly illuminates select aspects of behavior and

social relations while leaving other areas shrouded in

darkness

• micro perspective

• macro perspective

Sociology contains a large number of perspectives, and

they can be divided into two broad categories:

Micro perspectives

• are oriented toward small time and

  small space

• usually concerned with the

  conduct of individuals and small groups as it

  unfolds in relatively small spatial contexts and over

  short durations of time.

Macro perspectives

• are oriented toward big time

  and big space

• focus on larger entities – not

  individuals and small groups, but institutions, entire

  societies, and even the global system – and on how

  these entities emerge, maintain themselves, and

  change over decades, centuries, and millennia.

Sociological Perspective

conglomerate of sociological theories with a

similar orientation that allows us to understand

the world from different points of view.

point and view.

People commonsensically define perspective as

a point of view. So, if the perspective is a point

of view, there are two (2) main elements that we

can find in it

Point

• In ordinary parlance, it is the sharp end of a tool,

a weapon, a dot or punctuation mark (as in period), or

a direction. In geometry, it is a location. It has no

dimensions; no size, no width, no length, and no

depth.

• it has a location. Although it is dimensionless in

  geometry, a (..) with a location gives us an idea of how we should view things from different sides

• physical location

• socio-economic location

• mental-emotional location

types of point

Physical location

• Each point that you make speaks of where you are at.

• it means where you are — your residence, your neighborhood, your community. Where you live speaks about how you have lived. and how you have honed your point of view. Where are you also talks about your mobility — how often have you changed location?How often do you relocate as a family? Are you still living where you grew up?

Socio-economic location

• Each point that you make speaks of your socioeconomic position.

• where are you in the income strata of our society? how much wealth have your families accumulated since your ancestors? where you are at the social strata speaks about how you have enjoyed life and how you tend to see life because of these privileges or underprivileges. your point of view will not jive with the points of view of those who did not enjoy the status, wealth, and prestige you and your family had enjoyed all your life.

Mental-emotional location

• Each point of view is surrounded by emotional and mental location (state)

• When we remark, “ang lalim ng hugot”, of course, we refer to a location from where such a point of view is based. “Kung may hugot, may pinanghuhugutan.” We do not ignore the emotions that come with the point of view. Most of the time, the emotional location of our perspective is more powerful than the cognitive part of such.

View

• defined as a sight or prospect. In construction or engineering, there are different views of an object – its front, rear, left, right, top and bottom views depending on which sides you are looking at.

• Having said that, it allows us to see or gain insights on the side we are looking at.

view

• having this means highlighting what you can based on what you have seen

• means having a spotlight. in order to highlight the spot, you need to brighten the light and at the same time, darken those outside the reach of the spotlight

structural functionalism

• a macro-level framework that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability

• views society as a system

• draws analogy between society and the human body

• society and human interaction are characterized by harmony, cooperation, balance, and consensus

• social institutions (e.g., family, religious institutions, etc.) help meet the functional prerequisites of society

• believe that all social groups benefit society, run smoothly, and prosper

what are the general claims in structural functionalism

1. Societies can be likened to problem-solving entities.

2. Functionalists assume that during the course of human history, societies have developed many different answers to basic needs

3. The particular practices and institutions that arise in response to one problem have crucial repercussions for the practices and institutions devised to address other problems

4. In contemporary societies containing scores of specialized institutions and hundreds of heterogeneous sub-groups, societal integration is a recurring but manageable problem

5. Deviance and conflict arise from social strains, or contradictions within an institutions or between institutions

assumptions of structural functionalism

principle of institutional alternatives

the 2nd assumption of structural functionalism can also be termed as (..) (implies that any single functional prerequisite can be met in many different ways)

functional analysis

the 3rd assumption is referred to as (..), this method examines a practice or institution’s effects on other institutions and the larger society.

institutional means

the 5th assumption states that cultural goal does not equate?

• weak in explaining inequalities and conflict among groups in the society

• assumes that societies have a natural order

• exaggerates the unity, stability, and harmony of social systems

criticisms in structural functionalism

Conflict Perspective

• It is a macro-sociological approach that examines the emergence, persistence, and transformation of long-standing practices, institutions, and societies.

• It assumes many forms.

conflict perspective

• it states that there are groups in the society that have different interests

• social arrangements will tend to benefit some groups at the expense of others

• groups with varying interests clash and produce some degree of instability in the society

competition

describes a conflict over the control of resources or advantages desired by others where actual physical violence is not employed

conflict

involved regulated and unregulated competition (i.e., market)

• karl marx

• max weber

• leading contemporary conflict theorists

  • william chambliss

  • randall collins

  • ralf dahrendorf

  • william domhoff

  • c. wright mills

lead theorists in conflict perspectives

Karl Marx

whose work first appeared in the mid-nineteenth

century, is usually credited with crystallizing the key principles

of this approach.

Max Weber

an early twentieth-century German sociologist, is

also recognized as a founding figure of conflict sociology.

• Conflict perspective rejects the functionalist notion that societies

can be accurately portrayed as problem-solving entities.

• There is no true consensus (versus functional theory);

society’s norms and values are those of the dominant group

• Emphasize the role of power and the inequality found

systematically throughout society

• Conflict is inevitable; there are always winners and losers,

dominant and submissive.

key points in conflict perspective

1. societies are arenas in which groups with fundamentally antagonistic interests struggle against one another

2. conflict among classes, status groups, and between those exercising authority and those subject to it supplies the energy and the motivation for constructing and maintaining (as well as challenging and transforming) practices and institutions

3. characterizes ongoing practices and institutions as structures of domination that promote the interests of a relatively powerful, superordinate group while subverting the interests of a relatively powerless, subordinate groups, even though the latter are usually much larger, numerically, than the powerful elites

4. reconceptualizes what functionalism terms values as ideologies

5. the conflict approach holds that significant social change usually reflects the efforts of groups mobilizing to advance their collective interests, often at the expense of other group’s interesrs

assumptions of conflict perspective

builds, maintains, challenges, and transforms

conflict (..) institutions

functionalism

• values = shared moral agreement

• promote social stability

• benefit society as a whole

conflict perspective

• values = ideologies shaped by power

• legitimize inequality

• often benefit dominant groups

difference between functionalism and conflict perspective

when groups exert efforts to advance their interests against other groups, and oftentimes at the expense of their opposing groups

according to the conflict perspective in the 5th assumption. social change is achieved when?

overlooks interdependence, consensus, and unity

main criticism in conflict perspective

Symbolic Interactionism

• Provides an avenue for a micro level of analysis.

• It deals with small time and small space of interactions.

• States that INTELLECTUAL ROOTS → reside in pragmatism

pragmatism

• a philosophical tradition or movement that believes that the truth of the meaning of theories or beliefs lies in the success of their respective practical application. ideas can only become useful if you can apply them in real-life situations

• “what works best” thinking

Chicago school

because it originated at the University of Chicago, symbolic interactionism is sometimes called the?

1. assumes that human beings act in terms of the meanings they assign to objects in their environment

• interactionists broadly define the term object to include material things, events, symbols, actions, and other people and groups

• people’s conduct is powerfully influenced by their definition of the situation

• even when a definition of the situation is demonstrably false, it can still exert a powerful effect on behavior

2. asserts that social action typically involves making a series of adjustments and readjustments as an individual’s interpretation of the situation changes

• as human beings interacting with one another, we tend to observe other people’s reactions to us—on what we say, do, and act. we rely on their verbal and non-verbal signals to help us adjust and re-adjust to them

• SI asserts that our behavior changes as our definition of the situation changes

3. asserts that the meanings imputed to an object are socially constructed

• rather than being intrinsic to an object, meanings are attributed to it by individuals, groups, and communities

• social construction is processual—meaning, a process. it involves deciding on the meanings of objects in the society

• however, once these meanings are shared with other members of the society, and once these members subscribe to the meanings in return, the meanings originally assigned to such an object will take a life of its own

4. asserts that SI holds that in modern, heterogeneous societies, different groups often assign divergent meaning to the “same” object

• since group members interact and communicate frequently with one another, they tend to develop a common “universe of discourse” or shared meanings about the objects comprising their social world

5. establishes that meanings are always subject to transformation, and interactionists maintain that the emergence and diffusion of novel definitions of reality are a critically important feature of social change

• at any given time, the meanings attached to some objects and practices are so entrenched that they appear natural and beyond question

• behavior that deviates sharply from these prescribed meanings is regarded as threatening, immoral, and even a little crazy

5 core ideas pf symbolic interactionism

behaviorism

the 5th assumption can be clarified by contrasting it to a rudimentary model of social action advanced by a psychological perspective known as?

• the behaviorists’ approach characterizes conduct as a response to objective stimuli, and suggests that human behavior resembles a series of stimulus-response chains

• SI rejects the notion that individuals respond directly to an

  objective stimulus, interactionists insist that people interpret,

  or assign meanings to, the stimulus before they act:

difference between SI and behaviorism

feedback mechanism

the series of adjustments and readjustments in the interpretation of an individual is referred to as a (..) by which we base the changes we make in our behavior

social constructs (Durkheim)

social facts (like laws, norms, and customs) are created by society and shape individual behavior

social constructs (marx)

social class, power, and capitalism as created by those in power to maintain control

social constructs (foucault)

knowledge itself is a social construct, shaped by those in power

social constructs (berger & luckmann)

reality is socially constructed through shared meanings, language, and interactions

major theoretical perspectives in sociology