Joshua C.

Bueno 11- Tower Of David

Symbolic Interactionism

-  takes a small scale view of society. It focuses on a small scale perspective of the
interactions between individuals, like when you hang out with a friend, instead of looking
at large scale structures, like education or law. By looking at the small scale, symbolic
interactionism explains the individual in a society and their interactions with others. And
through that, it can explain social order and change. The theory was compiled from the
teachings of George Herbert Mead in the early 20th century. He believed that the
development of the individual was a social process, as were the meanings individuals
assigned to things. People change based on their interactions with objects, events, ideas,
other people. And they assign meaning to things in order to decide how to act. For
example, if I had sat under the shade of trees all my life, and I was on a long walk today
and spotted a big tree, I might want to sit under it. The tree means shade on a hot day to
me. Herbert Bloomer continued Mead's work and actually coined the term symbolic
interactionism to describe this theory of society. He proposed three tenets to explain
symbolic interactionism. Let's say I do decide to sit under that tree on my long walk
today. I step off the path and sit down and lean back against the trunk. Bloomer's first
tenet was that we act based on the meaning we have given something. I consider the tree
as a place to rest, so I'll go lean against it. As I'm sitting there, another person stops to
warn me that all trees are infested with ants. Bloomer's second tenet was that we give
meaning to things based on our social interactions. The same thing can have a different
meaning for different people.
 Conflict Theory

- is a way of studying society that focuses on the inequalities of different groups in a

society. It is based on the ideas of Karl Marx from the 19th century, who believed a
society evolved through several stages, the most important of which were feudalism,
capitalism, and finally socialism. 19th century Europe was a capitalist society where the
rich upper class called the bourgeoisie were a minority of the population. And the poor
lower class, called the proletariat, were the majority. Now you might think that the
majority would have more sway over the society. But it was actually the bourgeoisie that
had the power. They owned the factories that produced everything people needed. And
they sold what they produced to earn a living. The proletariat only had their labor to sell
to make a living, and they were dependent on the factory owners to get paid. But this
wasn't just a one-sided dependence. The factory owners were also dependent on the
workers to work in the factories, though they would never admit it because they would
lose some of their power. There was a significant economic inequality between the
factory owners and the workers. It was this economic inequality that Marx believed
would fuel a change in society. As the working class realized they were being exploited,
they would unite to create a class consciousness. This class consciousness is kind of like
getting everyone on the same wavelength so they can be stronger and overthrow the
capitalist status quo. Marx created a model which proposed that a society where one
group exploited another group economically would actually contain the seeds of its own
destruction. The existing generally accepted state, or thesis, of a society would cause the
formation of a reaction or antithesis that opposed the accepted state. In a capitalist
society, the accepted thesis was that the bourgeoisie ran the factories while the working
class provided the labor.
 Sociological Perspective

- The basic insight of sociology is that human behavior is shaped by the groups to which
people belong and by the social interaction that takes place within those groups. We are
who we are and we behave the way we do because we happen to live in a particular
society at a particular point in space and time. People tend to accept their social world
unquestioningly, as something "natural." But the sociological perspective enables us to
see society as a temporary social product, created by human beings and capable of being
changed by them as well. The sociological perspective invites us to look at our familiar
surroundings in a fresh way. It encourages us to take a new look at the world we have
always taken for granted, to examine our social environment with the same curiosity that
we might bring to an exotic foreign culture.The study of sociology leads us into areas of
society that we might otherwise have ignored or misunderstood. Since our world view is
shaped by our personal experience and since people with different social experiences
have different definitions of social reality, sociology helps us to appreciate viewpoints
other than our own and to understand how these viewpoints came into being.Sociology
also helps us understand ourselves better. Without the sociological perspective (which
has been called the "sociological imagination"), people see the world through their
limited experience of a small orbit of family, friends, co-workers. The sociological
imagination allows us to stand apart mentally from our limited experience and see the
link between private concerns and social issues. It permits us to trace the connection
between the patterns and events of our own and the patterns and events of our society.
 Structural Functionalism

- simply, functionalism, is a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex
system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. Two theorists, Herbert
Spencer and Robert Merton, were major contributors to this perspective. Important concepts
in functionalism include social structure, social functions, manifest functions, and latent
functions. Let's examine this perspective deeper and take a look at a few examples. The
structural-functional approach is a perspective in sociology that sees society as a complex
system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. It asserts that our lives
are guided by social structures, which are relatively stable patterns of social behavior.
Social structures give shape to our lives - for example, in families, the community, and
through religious organizations. And certain rituals, such as a handshake or complex
religious ceremonies, give structure to our everyday lives. Each social structure has social
functions, or consequences for the operation of society as a whole. Education, for example,
has several important functions in a society, such as socialization, learning, and social
placement. , in harness, structure and system. Under the auspices of Radcliffe-Brown (1881–
1955) it emerged as a clear-cut alternative to hybrid Boasian functionalism and successor to
Malinowski's particular brand of economism and radical individualism. It derived not from
German and British precursors but mainly from Durkheimian French with supplementary
insights from the Russian geographer and anarchist, Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921).Structural-
functionalism emphasized the formal ordering of parts and their functional interrelations as
contributing to the maintenance needs of a structured social system. The function of any
institution (or ‘recurrent social activity’) was the part it played in the maintenance of the
larger structural whole. This assumption attributed to social systems an internal integration of
parts similar to that found in organisms.