Major Sociological Paradigms: Crash Course

“All scientific disciplines make assumptions about the world, and all scientific disciplines use
different perspectives, depending on the questions they’re asking.” 2:31 raw facts need a
perspective to be interpreted.

Sociologists ask macro(often all of society) and micro(often only a group of society) questions.
Micro helps to understand macro

Main theoretical paradigms

Structural functionalism
● Originated with french sociologist Emile Durkheim
● Looked at a society as an organism with different parts that kept it running smoothly
● “Society is seen as a complex system whose parts work together to promote stability
and social order.”
● Parts of society = Social Structures or relatively stable patterns of social behaviour
(religion, division of labor, tasks in society)
● Social functions are the things that social structures fulfill
○ Types of social functions
■ Maifest functions are intended or obvious consequenses of a certain
structure
■ Latent functions are unintended or unrecognized consequences
● Social Dysfunction any social pattern that disrupts the smooth social patterns of society
● This paradigms can be bad for dealing with change and explaining change
● Macro

Conflict theory
● Imagine society as different groups who struggle over scarce resources.
● Class conflict by Karl Marx imagines society as having different classes based on their
relationships to the means of production
● Race conflict theory by WEB DuBois understands social inequality as the result of
different racial and ethnic groups
● Gender conflict theory focuses on inequality between women and men
● Macro

Symbolic Interactionism
● Micro
● By Max Weber believed that sociology needed to focus on people’s individual social
situations and the meaning that they attached to them. Understands society as the
product of everyday social interactions.
● Shared reality created through interactions
● Looks at the world we create through giving meaning to certain things
Next Video to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV50AV7-Iwc&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtMJ-
AfB_7J1538YKWkZAnGA&index=12
How we got here? Sociology #12
Society- a group of people who share a culture or territory
Sociocultural Evolution- The changes that occur as a society gains new technology

Types of societies(Oldest to newest)

Hunter-gatherer- Nomadic

Pastoral-Nomadic

Horticultural-First non-nomadic, and first society with a material surplus. This gives way to
growth, roles of specialization (religious, military, political, etc), and inequality.

Agrarian- Permanent settlements based around agricultural production. Larger material surplus.
Increase in specialization, settlement size, population, and inequality. The family becomes less
important. Larger social institutions are possible which take the family’s role in education.

Industrial- start around 1750, All things before increase. Increased centralized power. As mass-
production became possible people moved away from a subsistence economy towards a
capitalist economy. Everything centralizes in cities.

Post-Industrial- As before specialization, inequality, and material surplus continue. Main change
from industrial is moving away from raw materials and manufacturing to services, technology,
and information.

All are connected and support each other.

Lenski’s understanding societal change is driven by technological change.

Social Development: #13

Nature vs nurture