DIISS-PPT-week-4-6

This document introduces three major sociological theories:

1. Sociological Theories Overview

• Goal: To analyze contemporary social issues using diverse theoretical perspectives, highlighting how each offers unique insights and reveals the socially constructed nature of meaning.

• Theories Covered:

  • Structural-Functionalism

  • Marxism

  • Symbolic Interactionism

2. Structural-Functionalism

• Core Concept: Views society as a system of interconnected parts, emphasizing stability, consensus, and social order.

• Key Thinker: Exemplified by Robert Merton.

• Functionality: Institutions (e.g., schools, hospitals, churches) contribute to social order by fulfilling specific functions.

  • Manifest Functions: The recognized and intended consequences of a social pattern.

  • Latent Functions: The unrecognized and unintended consequences of a social pattern.

• Dysfunction: Failure of these institutions to perform their functions leads to negative consequences that disrupt social order.

• Analogy: Society is like a biological organism where each organ has a specific function for the overall health of the body.

3. Marxism

• Core Concept: Focuses on social, political, and economic theories centered on the struggle between classes.

• Key Thinkers: Developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

• Central Conflict: Particularly between the proletariat (working class) and the bourgeoisie (capitalist class), stemming from industrialization.

• Societal Basis: Posits that society is fundamentally based on conflict arising from economic inequality.

• Key Theory: Introduces the base and superstructure theory - where the economic base (means and relations of production) determines the superstructure (culture, politics, law, religion, education).

• Additional Concepts:

  • Highlights economic determinism, where economic relations largely shape all other aspects of society.

  • Introduces the concept of alienation, where individuals are estranged from their labor, products, species-being, and other people under capitalism.

  • Ultimately seeks a classless, communist society through revolutionary change.

4. Symbolic Interactionism

• Core Concept: Emphasizes linguistic or gestural communication and its subjective understanding, stressing that reality is not fixed but is continually constructed through social interaction.

• Focus: Highlights the role of language, symbols, and shared meanings in shaping individuals as social beings and influencing their behavior.

• Human Behavior: Influenced by definitions and meanings created and maintained through symbolic interaction with others.

  • Involves interpreting each other's actions rather than merely reacting to them.

  • Mediated by symbols ( \text{e.g., gestures, words, objects} ).

• Level of Analysis: Primarily a micro level theory, examining face-to-face interactions and the meanings individuals derive from them.

• Sub-Theory: Cooley's Looking-Glass Self Theory

  • Explains: How individual identity develops based on perceived judgments from others.

  • Process Involves:

    1. Imagining how we appear to others.

    2. Imagining how others judge our appearance.

    3. Developing self-feelings (pride or shame) as a result of these imagined judgments.

• Key Idea: Meaning is not inherent but is created and negotiated through interaction, making social life fluid and dynamic.