W2 Sociological Perspective

Developing a Sociological Perspective

Sociological Theorizing

Theory: a set of propositions intended to explain a fact or a phenomenon

• Positivist approaches focus on objective explanation and prediction

  • A lot from natural sciences

  • And objective truth from the social world

  • Explaining and predicting whats going on in the real world

• Interpretive approaches focus on the ways people understand themselves and others, and the world around them

  • No objective truth of the social world, understand how people understand, or what experiences people have of the world depending on factors like status, relationships etc

• Critical approaches focus on the role of power in shaping social relations of domination and subordination

  • Using theory to better understand the world, use this to help the least advantaged in society

Sociological levels of Analysis

• Macro level --> studying social structures and institutions

  • Big picture of society, economy, class division, gender, race

• Micro level --> studying individuals and groups

  • How do people understand themselves, how do they interact with each other

Five Sociological Perspectives

1. Functionalism

   • Functionalist perspectives

     • A macro-level and positivist approach that is concerned with how social order is maintained, especially during times of significant societal change (e.g. the industrial revolution)

     • Society is comprised of structures (like the family, economy, education, government, religion) which each perform a function that keeps society running smoothly

       • Manifest functions are intended functions that particular structures are meant to fulfill (e.g. education is supposed to teach you skills and knowledge)

       • Latent functions are unintended functions that nevertheless have a positive impact (e.g. student social life)

       • Latent dysfunctions are unintended functions that have a negative impact (e.g. student mental health)

   • Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

     • Durkheim, another 'founding father' of sociology, was a key thinker in the functionalist perspective

     • To Durkheim the role of sociologists was to study social facts: aspects of society that exist over and above any specific individuals or groups, and that control people's actions

       • Material social facts have a tangible reality, like money education or government

       • Non material social facts are intangible, such as morals, norms and values

   • Functionalist Perspective on Social Change

     • Like us, Durkheim was living in a time of rapid social change

     • Durkheim thought that pre-industrial societies were bonded together by mechanical solidarity arising from a collective consciousness, or a shared system of morals

     • After industrialization, a complex division of labour arose, necessitating interdependency among more specialized roles, which is called organic solidarity (similar to how bodies have different organs that perform different functions)

   • Durkheim and Anomie

     • During times of rapid social change, anomie can arise --> where traditional norms deteriorate, processes of social control decline, and institutions become dysfunctional

     • Durkheim looked at statistics on suicide and theorized different societal reasons for a seemingly individual acts like suicide

     • He theorized that in times of rapid social change, people become unregulated because of the breakdown of old norms, leading to anomic suicide

• Conflict

  • Conflict Perspectives

    • Conflict theorists look at the macro level using a critical approach emphasizing power and emancipation

    • Conflict theorists propose that society is characterized by conflict and competition over scarce resources

    • Conflict and competition can take place at various levels of analysis, e.g. between the owners and workers (bourgeoisie and proletariat); between entire countries; within families

  • Karl Marx (1818-1883)

    • Like Durkheim, Marx was writing in a time of great social upheaval

    • Marx was a critic of the capitalist system, where the bourgeoisie owns the means of production (e.g., the factories and mills where commodities are produced), and the proletariat majority, which has no choice but to work for the bourgeoisie in exchange for wages

    • The bourgeoisie make profit out of the proletariat labour by extracting surplus value: selling commodities at higher prices than they cost to produce

    • The proletariat than experiences alienation from the product of their labour, the productive process, other workers, and their own humanity

    • Marx believed that scholars should engage with praxis by providing subordinated groups in society with the knowledge they need to end their powerlessness

• Symbolic interactionism

  • Symbolic Interactionist Perspectives

    • Symbolic interactionists are looking at the micro level of society and use an interpretivist lens

    • According to symbolic interactionism, society is comprised of individuals who are engaged in various forms of communication, through words, facial expressions, gestures and clothing

    • These symbolic forms of communication have shared meanings that people create and understand over time

    • Significant others are specific people who are important to us and play a role in our socialization

    • The generalized others is not a specific person, but an overall abstract sense of people's expectations of us

    • As we grow up, we learn to develop the generalized other

    • You can think about is as the difference between thinking "what will my parents think?" vs. "what will people think?"

  • Erving Goffman (1922-1982)

    • Goffman proposed a theory of dramaturgy, a subset of symbolic interactionism

    • He conceptualized social life like a theatre, where there is a front stage and a back stage

      • The front stage corresponds to the part of life where we are performing a certain social role

      • The back stage is that part of life where we discard those social roles

    • We engage in impression management to ensure that our appearances, words, and actions correspond to the specific roles we are playing

    • Goffman also theorized total institutions: places where people are segregated from the outside world and therefore must take on a specific role and identity

• Feminism

  • Feminist Perspectives

    • Feminism is the system of ideas and political practices based on the principle that women are human beings equal to men

    • Feminist theorists use a critical perspective at macro and micro levels

      • Micro level --> how individuals make choices, carry out every day activities, interact with partners, socialize children

      • Macro level --> how the structure of society can change, sometimes through social movements

    • Some feminists focus on patriarchy, the legal and social power vested in men

    • While feminist scholarship is diverse and interdisciplinary, there are some common threads

    • Feminist perspectives contended that academic research has been traditionally androcentric, or male-centered, taking mens experiences as the normative human experience

    • Feminist perspectives assume that society is structured on the basis of gender (the macro level), so individual experiences are also gendered (the micro level)

    • Feminist perspectives contend that research and theory must be intertwined with practice

  • Key Feminist Thinkers

    • Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) was an early feminist sociologist who advocated for social reform for women and the abolition of slavery

    • Dorothy Smith (1926-2022) theorized that because men and women have occupied different positions in society, they have developed distinct standpoints. She proposed that to understand and change the macro level, we need to understand people's every day lived experiences, or standpoints at the micro level

• Postmodernism

  • Postmodern Perspectives

    • Postmodernism arose after World War 2 in the context of deindustrialization and the rise of mass media

    • Skeptical postmodernism proposes that social changes have created such chaos that we cannot make any social understanding of the world. This has not had traction in sociology

    • Affirmative postmodernism proposes that due to societal upheavals we cannot rely on grand, overarching theories of society or broad categorizations of people. Sociologists working in the postmodern perspective deconstruct what is perceived as knowledge

  • Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

    • Some people, including the textbook authors, consider poststructuralism a form of postmodernism

    • Poststructuralism is an interpretivist framework that posits that there is no objective truth, but it is always historically produced in relation to knowledge and power

    • Foucault argued that power is expressed through discourse: ways of talking about a social phenomenon, or the body of knowledge about that phenomenon

    • For example, what is the discourse about masculinity and femininity

Understanding Sociological Perspectives

Applying Theory to Empirical Evidence

• These theories are only useful insofar as they can help us understand real-life empirical observations

• Sociology is all about using theory to understand empirical observations, and using those observations to build on and improve theory

Learning Critical Thinking

• Through SOC100 you are learning how to move from lower order thinking (remembering, understanding, applying) to higher order thinking (analyzing, evaluating, creating)

• At a micro level, the ability to think critically helps you succeed in your classes and get as much out of them as possible

• At a macro level, critical thinking is linked to social action

Applying Theory to Family Trends

** Let's look at some empirical evidence about changing family forms in Canada and apply the five theoretical perspectives to that evidence

Theory Can Help Us Define a Concept Like Family

• Positivist approaches to family

  • For example, the Canadian census defines a family as parents/guardians and children living in the same dwelling

  • Positivist approaches help us to gather data that can be used to establish trends, see change over time, and compare across contexts

• Interpretivist approaches to family

  • For example, some sociologists look at fictive kin: people who are not related by blood, marriage, or adoption, but feel attached to one another and perform some of the same functions of a traditional family

  • Interpretivist approaches help us to understand how people conduct their day-to-day lives, relate to each other, create meaning

What is the Empirical Evidence on one-person households?

• Rise in one-person households: 4.4 million people lived alone in 2022, compared to 1.7 million in 1981

• One-person households are most prevalent at older ages: 42% of people aged 85 and older lived alone, compared to 7% of people ages 20-24

Empirical Evidence on Divorces

• We often hear the statistic that "half of all marriages end in divorce" but divorce rates have actually been falling since the 1980s

• In 1991, 12.7 people were divorced per 1,000 married people; by 2020, that rate had fallen to 5.6

Empirical Evidence on Marital status and Sexual Orientation

• Straight people are more likely to be married, while people identifying as lesbian, gay, and bisexual are more likely to be in common-law partnerships or single

• People identifying as gay or lesbian are less likely to be divorced/separated/widowed than straight people. The small difference between bisexual and straight people is statistically insignificant

The Takeaway

• Practice applying the different theoretical approaches to common sociological topics in your life: for example, gender, race, immigration, education, physical and mental health, the environment

• In each week of this course, we will be applying these theoretical approaches to the week's topic - in other words, engaging in higher order thinking

Building your Sociological Imagination

• Empirical research methods are the means for creating verifiable knowledge

• Sociological theories and concepts provide a larger context of explanation for that knowledge

• Critical thinking enables us to evaluate and extrapolate that knowledge