DISCIPLINES AND IDEAS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES REVIEWER // LAZARO

SOCIAL SCIENCES METHODS

- A group of academic disciplines that 1. Analyzing societies
deal with the human aspects of 2. Understanding societies
world 3. Describing societies
*WILLIAM THOMPSON 4. Observing societies
- Coined the term “social sciences” on
1824 which refers to the study that - To explain social realities because
deals between the relationship of we want to bring change (provide
society and culture solutions); it is not simply gaining
- “An Inquiry into the Principles of the knowledge
Distribution of Wealth Most
Conducive to Human Happiness” DEMOGRAPHY
- Study of population in terms of size,
HUMANITIES sex, age, density, etc.
- Study that deals with how human
beings process and document ECONOMICS
human experience - Study of use of scarce resources that
have alternative uses
NATURAL SCIENCES - MICROECONOMICS: individual
- Refer to disciplines that focus only agents/markets
with natural events (Ledoux, 2002) - MACROECONOMICS: entire economy

SOCIAL
HUMANITIES
NATURAL GEOGRAPHY
SCI. SCI.
analyze, - Study of earth and people in it
Explain,
explain,
To appreciate understand, - Places and man’s relationship to his
and
possibly
the meaning and predict environment
FUNCTION and purpose of the world
predict
human using
human
behavior
experience scientific LINGUISTICS
method
- Scientific study of language
Generation Generation
PURPOSE of new
Generation of
of law or
- Language as meaning, form, context
wisdom
knowledge rules
POLITICAL SCIENCE
SOCIAL SCIENCES
- Ideas, behaviors, institutions, and
- The systematic pursuit of knowledge
policies that are needed for public
involving the recognition and
governance
formulation of a problem, the
collection of data through
PSYCHOLOGY
observation and experiment, and the
- Scientific study of the mind and
formulation and testing of
human behavior (individual)
hypothesis
- Memory, freewill, human
- Learn to understand; understand to
development, etc.
change
- Knowledge in social issues helps us
to formulate answers to problems
 DISCIPLINES AND IDEAS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES REVIEWER // LAZARO
SOCIOLOGY
- Human interactions and social
behavior (group)
- Challenges conditional ideas about
social behavior on how humans
actually operate
HUMANKIND OF PAST CIVILIZATIONS
GAINED CURIOSITY
1. GREEKS AND ROMANS
- First to expound on the ideas of
nature of the foundation of an ideal
society
2. PLATO’S THE REPUBLIC
- Earliest thoughts on the foundation
of an ideal society
THE EMERGENCE OF FUNCTIONALISM
3. ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS
- First comprehensive attempt to
come up with the most ideal way of
distributing power
THE RISE OF MEDIEVAL
SCHOLASTICISM
1. THE SCHOLASTICS
- Came from the ranks of priesthood
2. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
- Summa Theologica (Summary of
Theology) was influenced by the
works of Aristotle
ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION
- Making significant strides in its
pursuit of studying the social world
1. AL BIRUNI
- First anthropologist to launch
comparative studies of people and
culture
2. IBN KHALDUN
- A classic luminary in histography
AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
- 17th and 18th centuries ushered new
era of dealing with social inquiries
- PHYSICAL SCIENCES: Natural
Philosophy
- SOCIAL SCIENCES: Moral Philosophy
1. RENE DESCARTES (18TH
CENTURY)
- “I think therefore I am”
- French philosopher and
mathematician
2. AUGUST COMTE (1798-1857)
- The course of positive psychology
- Coined the term “sociology”
- Society has to undergo three stages
of human development when it
comes to human relationship
I. CLASSICAL ECONOMIC
IDEAS DOMINATE
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
- Social life is a competitive game of
people rationally pursuing their
interest, with social order somehow
emerging out of these classes of
self-interest
UTILITARIANISM
- Assumes that actors are rational and
they try to maximize their “utilities”
or rewards and gratifications
ADAM SMITH
- First to conceptualize analytically the
dynamics of competitive markets
and because he postulated the
“invisible hand of order” as emerging
from open competitions in free
markets
II. FUNCTIONALISM AND THE
ORGANISMIC ANALOGY
- Disenchantment with utilitarianism in
Europe was aided by disruptive
social changes due to
industrialization and urbanization,
political instability of the late 19th
Century (French Revolution), and
 DISCIPLINES AND IDEAS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES REVIEWER // LAZARO
19th Century social thinkers in France
profound concern with the problems
of maintaining social order
- Answers shaped by events occurring
in biological events
AUGUST COMTE (1798-1857)
- Founder of Sociology
- 19th Human evolution had reached
the “positive stage” in which
empirical knowledge could be used
to understand the social world and
to create better society
- POSITIVISM = application of
scientific method to the study of
society
HIERARCHY OF THE SCIENCES
- SOCIOLOGY = as the queen of
sciences
- Affinity (seen society as an
organism) between sociology and
biology to reside in their common
concern with organic bodies
DIVISION OF SOCIOLOGY
1. SOCIAL “STATICS” OR
MORPHOLOGY – steady/state of
equilibrium
2. SOCIAL DYNAMICS – masters and
servants
3. SOCIAL GROWTH AND
PROGRESS
*Society is always changing because of the
happenings/events in the society.
THE ANALYTICAL FUNCTIONALISM OF
HERBERT SPENCER (1820-1903)
- Universe divided into realms or
domains
1. INORGANIC (PHYSICAL,
CHEMICAL)
- People or society
2. ORGANIC (BIOLOGICAL,
PSYCHOLOGICAL)
- Behaviors/challenges of the mind
3. SUPER-ORGANIC
(SOCIOLOGICAL)
- Our relationship with others/group
interaction
FUNCTIONALISM AND EMILE
DURKHEIM (1858-1917)
- “Division of Labor in the Society”
BASIC ASSUMPTIONS REFLECTED
THOSE OF ORGANICISTS:
1. Society was to be viewed as an
entity that could be distinguished
from and was not reducible to its
constituent parts.
- In conceiving of society as a reality,
SUI GENERIS, analytical priority to
social whole.
2. In giving casual priority to the
whole, he viewed system parts as
fulfilling basic functions, needs, or
requisites of that whole.
3. Social systems have “functional
needs” that must be fulfilled if
“abnormal” states are to be avoided.
- Abnormality/disequilibrium
4. In viewing systems as normal and
pathological, as well as in terms of
functions, there is the additional
implication that systems have
equilibrium points around which
natural functioning occurs.
FUNCTIONALISM AND THE
ANTHROPOLOGICAL TRADITION
A. R. RADCLIFFE-BROWN (1881-
1955)
- Structural analysis assumptions
 DISCIPLINES AND IDEAS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES REVIEWER // LAZARO
1. One necessary condition for
survival of a society is minimal
integration of its parts.
2. The term function refers to those
processes that maintain this
necessary integration or
solidarity.
3. In each society, structural
features can be shown to
contribute to the maintenance of
necessary solidarity.
*Society as a reality in and of itself –
cultural items such as kinship rules and
religious ritual (necessity for solidarity and
integration)
B. BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI
(1884-1942)
THREE SYSTEM LEVELS:
1. SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS
2. SOCIAL STRUCTURES – family,
educational system, health,
government, media
3. BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS – food,
shelter, clothing
REQUISITES OF SYSTEM LEVELS:
1. CULTURAL (SYMBOLIC) SYSTEM
LEVEL
a. Provide information necessary to
adjust to the environment.
b. Provide a sense of control over
people’s destiny and over chance
results.
c. Provide members of a society
with a sense of a “communal
rhythm” in their daily lives and
activities.
2. STRUCTURAL (INSTRUMENTAL)
SYSTEM LEVEL
a. Economic institution (requisite for
protection and distribution of
consumer goods)
b. For social control of behavior and its
regulation
c. Educational institution (for education
of people in tradition and skill)
d. Family institution (for organization
and execution of authority relations)
INSTITUTIONS
1. PERSONNEL – who and how
many people participate in the
institution
2. CHARTER – what is the purpose
of the institution; its avowed
goals
3. NORMS – key norms that
regulate and organize conduct
4. MATERIAL APPARATUS –
what is the nature of tools and
facilities used
5. ACTIVITY – how are tasks and
activities divided; who does that
6. FUNCTION – what requisite
does a pattern of institutional
activity meet
THE ANALYTICAL FUNCTIONALISM OF
TALCOTT PARSONS
I. THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIAL
ACTION – GENERAL THEORY
- Theory must involve the
development of concepts that
abstract from empirical reality, in all
its diversity and confusion, common
analytical elements
- COPERNICUS = said that the sun is
the center of the universe (heresy)
- PTOLEMY = dogma; earth is the
center of universe; man is the center
of everything
 DISCIPLINES AND IDEAS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES REVIEWER // LAZARO

7. Action involves actors making

II. “VOLUNTARISTIC THEORY
OF ACTION”
- A synthesis on the useful
assumptions and concepts of
utilitarianism, positivism, and
idealism
CRITICAL PROBLEMS:
1. Do humans always behave
rationally?
2. Are they indeed free and
unregulated?
3. How is order possible in an
unregulated and competitive
system?
subjective decisions about the
means to achieve goals, all of which
are constrained by ideas and
situational conditions.
*The structure of social systems cannot be
derived directly from the actor-situation
frame of reference. It requires functional
analysis of the complications introduced by
the interaction of a plurality of actors.
PARSONS: THE SOCIAL SYSTEM
- Parson’s conception of action,
interaction

VOLUNTARISM Models of
Orientation
Types of Action
Interactions among
oriented actors
- As the subjective decision-making
processes of individual actors, but
Parsons views such decisions so the
partial outcome of certain kinds of Social system of Institutionalization
status, roles, norms of Interaction
constraints, both normative and
situational

BASIC ELEMENTS OF
MODELS OF ORIENTATION
VOLUNTARISTIC ACTIONS
1. MOTIVATIONAL
1. Actors – individual persons/doer of
a. COGNITIVE
2. the actions
- Need for information/to be aware
3. Actors are viewed as goal-seeking.
b. CATHETIC
- Need for emotional attachment/to
4. Actors are also in possession of
be recognized
alternative means to achieve goals.
c. EVALUATIVE
5. Actors are confronted with a variety
- Need for assessment/to be
of situational conditions (such as
appreciated
their own biological makeup and
heredity as well as various external
2. VALUE
ecological constraints) that influence
a. COGNITIVE
the selection of goals and means.
- Evaluation in terms of objective
standard
6. Actors are seen to be governed by
values, norms, and other ideas and
b. APPRECIATIVE
that these ideas influence what is
- Evaluation in terms of aesthetic
considered a goal and what means
standard
are selected to achieve it.
c. MORAL
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- Evaluation in terms of absolute A. PATTERN MAINTENANCE

rightness and wrongness - Pertains to the problem of how to
ensure that actors in the social
TYPES OF ACTION system display the appropriate
1. INSTRUMENTAL characteristics (motives, needs, role-
- Action oriented to realize explicit playing, etc.)
goals efficiently
B. TENSION MANAGEMENT
2. EXPRESSIVE - Concerns the problem of dealing
- Action directed at realizing emotional with the internal tensions and strains
satisfaction of actors in the social system

3. MORAL PARSON’S FUNCTIONAL

- Action concerned with realizing IMPERATIVISM OR REQUISITE
standards of right and wrong FUNCTIONALISM

*UNIT ACTS = involve motivational and

value orientations and have a general A universal
direction because of values and motives Specific
functional The survival
prevail for an actor structures
requisite for capacity of
AGIL which, the social
meet
in turn, system
INSTITUTIONALIZATION determines
- Process through which social
structures is built up and maintained
- Structures are explicitly viewed in
FOUR SURVIVAL PROBLEMS OF
terms of their functional
SYSTEMS OF ACTION (4 FUNCTIONAL
consequences for meeting the four
REQUISITES)
requisites
1. ADAPTATION
- Involves the problem of securing
- Interrelationship among specific
from the environment sufficient
structures are analyzed in terms of
facilities and then disturbing these
how their interchanges affect the
facilities throughout the system
requisites that each must meet
- Maximize the availability
- Each of these subsystems is fulfilling
2. GOAL ATTAINMENT
one of the system requisites – AGIL
- Refers to the problem of establishing
– of the overall action system
priorities among system goals and
mobilizing system resources for their
THE EMPIRICAL FUNCTIONALISM OF
attainment
ROBERT K. MERTON
3. INTEGRATION
EMPIRICAL FUNCTIONALISM
- Denotes the pattern of coordinating
- Middle range theory
maintaining viable interrelationships
- No grand theory can explain
among system units
everything in society
4. LATENCY
- Embraces two related problems:
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MERTON’S PARADIGM FOR - For actual groups or whole societies

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS it is possible to ascertain the
1. THE FUNCTIONAL UNITY OF “conditions necessary for their
SOCIAL SYSTEMS survival”
- Emphasis on how different patterns
of social organization are created, B) ARE THERE CERTAIN CRUCIAL
maintained, and changed not only STRUCTURES THAT ARE
by requisites of the total system but INDISPENSABLE FOR
also by interaction among socio- FULFILLING THESE
cultural items within systematic FUNCTIONS?
wholes
- There should be a manner of - Analysis should then determine why
creating order an item was selected from a range
- A certain institution’s goal may of possible alternatives, leading to
contradict with the other goals that questions about the “structural
other institutions have context” and “cultural limits”
- That might circumscribe the range of
2. THE FUNCTIONAL alternatives and account for the
UNIVERSALITY OF SOCIAL emergence of one item over
ITEMS another.
- Analysis of diverse consequences of
functions of socio-cultural items MERTON’S NET FUNCTIONAL
(positive or negative) BALANCE ANALYSIS
- In turn, the analysis of varied
consequences requires the SOCIAL
calculation of a “net balance of STRUCTURAL
LEVEL
consequences”
- In every action that we’re doing in
the social system, there is a given SPECIFIED
EMPIRICAL PART
• CONSEQUENCES FOR
MEETING
consequence
- We don’t do something that will only
benefit our personal interests EMPIRICALLY
ESTABLISHED ASSESSME
- ID – biological, personal aspect NEEDS OF SOCIAL
CONTEXT
NT OF NET
BALANCE
- SUPEREGO – OF

- EGO – bridging the id and superego;

CONSEQUE
NCES OF
rationality
PSYCHOLOGICAL THE ITEMS
NEEDS SERVED

3. THE ISSUE OF UNDERSTANDING • CONSEQUENCES FOR

INDESPENSABILITY OF MEANING TO
INDIVIDUALS MEETING

A) DO SOCIAL SYSTEMS HAVE

FUNCTIONAL REQUISITES THAT PSYCHOLOGICAL
LEVEL
MUST BE FULFILLED?

- Yes, but the functional requisites or

needs must be established
empirically for specific systems.
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THE SYSTEMS FUNCTIONALISM OF
NIKLAS LUHMANN
LUHMANN’S GENERAL SYSTEM
APPROACH
- Stresses the fact that human action
become organized and structured
into systems
- The basic mechanism by which
actions become interrelated so as to
create social systems is
communication via symbolic codes,
such as words and other media
- A social system must develop
mechanisms for reducing
complexity. Selection involves a
process of choosing how to reduce
the complexity of the environment.
- Proper communication is needed for
it to be organized and structured.
- We communicate to reduce
complexity
DIMENSIONS OF THE ENVIRONMENT
1. TEMPORAL DIMENSION
- Time as a dimension of the social
universe
- Time always presents a system with
complexity because it reaches into
the past, because it embodies
complex configurations of acts in the
present and because it involves the
vast horizons of the future
- A social system must develop
mechanisms for reducing the
complexity of time to orient actions
to the past, present, and the future
2. MATERIAL DIMENSION
- With all the possible relations among
actions in potentially limitless
physical space
- What you have in today’s hand
- POSSIBLE QUESTIONS:
➢ What mechanisms are developed
to order interrelated actions in
the physical space?
➢ What is the structure and form
of such ordering of relations?
3. SYMBOLIC DIMENSION
- Of all the complex symbols and their
combinations that humans can
conceivably generate, what
mechanisms operate to select some
symbols over others and to organize
them in some ways opposed to the
vast number of potential
alternatives?
- What kinds of symbolic media are
selected and used by a social system
to organize social actions?
TYPES OF SOCIAL SYSTEMS
1. INTERACTION SYSTEMS
- Emerges when individuals co-
present and perceive each other
- How does the language act and its
organization into codes shape
people’s perception of time?
- Who is included in the conversation?
- What codes and agreements guide
conversation and other actions?
- Interaction systems reveal certain
inherent limitations and
vulnerabilities.
- Only one topic can be discussed at a
time, lest the system collapses
- The varying conversation sources of
participants often lead to
competition
- Talk and conversation are time
because they involve only those who
can be co-present, perceived, and
talked to, they are vulnerable to
conflict and tension.
2. ORGANIZATION SYSTEM
- These systems coordinate the
actions of individuals with respect to
specific conditions, such as work on
a specific task in exchange for a
specific amount of money
- Have entry and exit rules
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- Main function is to stabilize highly providing a regular opportunity for

artificial modes of behavior over a
long stretch of time. They resolve
the basic problem of reconciling the
motivations and dispositions of
individuals and the need to get
certain tasks done.
*Organizational system is thus essential to a
complex social order. They reduce
environmental complexity by organizing
people.
1. IN TIME
- By governing entrance and exit rules
and by ordering activities in present
and future
the members of a group to meet and
engage in common activity
MANIFEST DYSFUNCTION
- Intended, recognized, and has a
negative effect on society
- Anticipated disruptions of social life
- POSITIVE -> NEGATIVE
LATENT DYSFUNCTION
- Unintended or unanticipated
disruptions of order and stability
- Creates negative consequences
- Always produces negative results
- NEGATIVE -> NEGATIVE

2. IN SPACE
- By creating a division of labor which
authority coordinates

3. IN SYMBOLIC TERMS
- By indicating what is appropriate,
what rules applies, and what media,
such as money or pay, are to guide
action

MERTON’S MANIFEST VS LATENT

FUNCTION
1. MANIFEST FUNCTION
- Conscious, deliberate, beneficial, and
intended
- Outcome is expected
- Produces beneficial outcome
- Consequences that people observe
or expect
- Explicitly stated and understood by
the participants in relevant action

2. LATENT FUNCTION
- Neither recognized nor intended
- Not explicitly stated
- Positive outcome
- Promotes group solidarity, sense of
belongingness
- RAIN CEREMONY = latent function
reinforces the group identity by