SOCIOLOGICAL

PERSPECTIVE OF SOCIETY
Week 6-Part 1
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE OF SOCIETY
Social groups are fundamental parts of human life. They are
a multitude of people who see each other often and think of
themselves as part of a group. There appears to be groups
of people everywhere. We could be a member of a church
group, college class, workplace, sports team, club, and
others. The discipline of Sociology focuses primarily on the
study of social groups in a society
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 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES OR PERSPECTIVES
Sociological Level of Focus
Perspective Analysis
Structural Macro or Mid The way each part of society
Functionalism functions tog
Conflict Theory Macro The way inequalities contribute to
social differences and perpetuate
differences in power
Symbolic Macro One -to-one interactions and
Interactionism communications
Structural-functional theory, also called functionalism, sees
society as a structure with interrelated parts designed to
meet the biological and social needs of the individuals in that
society. Functionalism grew out of the writings of English
philosopher and biologist, Hebert Spencer (1820–1903),
who saw similarities between society and the human body.
He argued that just as the various organs of the body work
together to keep the body functioning, the various parts of
society work together to keep society functioning (Spencer
1898).

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The parts of society that
Spencer referred to were the
social institutions, or patterns
of beliefs and behaviors
focused on meeting social
needs, such as government,
education, family, healthcare,
religion, and the economy.
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Durkheim (Sociologist) believed that
individuals may make up society, but in
order to study society, sociologists have to
look beyond individuals to social facts.
Social facts are the laws, morals, values,
religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals,
and all of the cultural rules that govern
social life (Durkheim 1895).
For example, one function of a society’s
laws may be to protect society from
violence, while another is to punish criminal
behavior, while another is to preserve
public safety.
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Émile Durkheim
Robert Merton Robert Merton (1910–2003),
pointed out that social processes
often have many functions. Manifest
functions are the consequences of a
social process that are sought or
anticipated, while latent functions
are the unsought consequences of a
social process. A manifest function of
college education, for example,
includes gaining knowledge,
preparing for a career, and finding a
good job that utilizes that education.
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Latent functions of your college years include
meeting new people, participating in
extracurricular activities, or even finding a spouse
or partner. Another latent function of education is
creating a hierarchy of employment based on the
level of education attained. Latent functions can be
beneficial, neutral, or harmful.
Social processes that have undesirable consequences for the
operation of society are called dysfunctions. In education, examples
of dysfunction include getting bad grades, truancy, dropping out, not
graduating, and not finding suitable employment.
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CONFLICT THEORY

Conflict theory looks at

society as a competition for
limited resources. This
perspective is a macro-level
approach most identified with
the writings of German
philosopher and sociologist
Karl Marx (1818–1883)
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•Karl Marx (1818–1883), saw
society as being made up of two
classes, the bourgeoisie
(capitalist) and the proletariat
(workers), who must compete for
social, material, and political
resources such as food and
housing, employment, education,
and leisure time.
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In the economic sphere, marx focused on the “mode of production” (e.G.,
The industrial factory) and “relations of production” (e.G., Unequal
power between workers and factory owners). The bourgeoisie owns and
controls the means of production, which leads to exploitation due to the
profit motive. In this arrangement, proletarians have only their labor to
sell, and do not own or control capital .
False consciousness is Marx’s term for the
proletarian’s inability to see her real position
within the class system, a mis-recognition
that is complicated by the control that the
bourgeoisie often exerts over the media
outlets that disseminate and normalize
information. These are just some of the
structural constrains that prevent workers
from joining together in what Marx called
class consciousness, or a common group
identity as exploited proletarians and
potential revolutionaries.
Symbolic Interactionist Theory
is a micro-level theory that
focuses on meanings attached
to human interaction, both
verbal and non-verbal, and to
symbols. Communication—the
exchange of meaning through
language and symbols—is
believed to be the way in
which people make sense of
their social worlds.
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Charles Horton Cooley introduced the
looking-glass self (1902) to describe
how a person’s self of self grows out of
interactions with others, and he proposed
a threefold process for this development:
1) we see how others react to us, 2) we
interpret that reaction (typically as
positive or negative) and 3) we develop
a sense of self based on those
interpretations. “Looking-glass” is an
archaic term for a mirror, so Cooley
theorized that we “see” ourselves when
we interact with others.
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 George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) is
considered a founder of symbolic
interactionism, though he never published his
work on this subject (LaRossa and Reitzes
1993). Mead’s student, Herbert Blumer, actually
coined the term “symbolic interactionism” and
outlined these basic premises: humans interact
with things based on meanings ascribed to those
things; the ascribed meaning of things comes
from our interactions with others and society; the
meanings of things are interpreted by a person
when dealing with things in specific circumstances
Herbert Blumer (Blumer 1969).
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 If you love books, for example, a symbolic
interactionist might propose that you learned that
books are good or important in the interactions you
had with family, friends, school, or church; maybe
your family had a special reading time each week,
getting your library card was treated as a special
event, or bedtime stories were associated with
warmth and comfort.

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 The focus on the importance of interaction in building a
society led sociologists like Erving Goffman (1922–1982)
to develop a technique called dramaturgical analysis.
Goffman used theater as an analogy for social interaction
and recognized that people’s interactions showed patterns
of cultural “scripts.” Since it can be unclear what part a
person may play in a given situation, as we all occupy
multiple roles in a given day (i.e., student, friend, son/
daughter, employee, etc.), one has to improvise his or her
role as the situation unfolds (Goffman1958)
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