The social relations are intangible and abstract hence can only be realized. This makes abstractness to be an element of a society. Every member of a society forms a social class, which in turn leads to social relations making such social classes to be abstract Macionis, The study of racism in a society scientifically needs to be restricted to collection of information about organisms that can be observed and classified according to my own theory.
A survey is a research method would be suitable for this topic because it would require my subjects respond to a series of questions or statements in an interview or a questionnaire Macionis, I consider it to be a cheaper method because it would require fewer resources. It is the most widely used of the research methods. Research work on racism focuses on descriptions of the subjects themselves or their social settings which is best conducted using survey method.
I would use the participant observation research method because it involves systematic observation of the routine activities in the field of the individuals under the study.
Participant observation method requires researchers to do field work while the survey method does not. Participant observation method can be very tiresome and expensive as opposed to the survey research method. Your email address will not be published. It does not give its consent or authority to the client to copy and reproduce entirely or a portion of any project without proper reference.
Furthermore, the company will not be responsible to third parties for the unauthorized use of its products. Thus, social sciences help people understand how to interact with the social world—how to influence policy, develop networks, increase government accountability, and promote democracy.
Value-free social science is a fundamental principle of the philosophy of social science; all social scientists must consciously adhere to this in their research. The social sciences provide systematic approaches to understanding relationships that arise among individuals, organizations, or institutions. Positivism fails to prove that there are not abstract ideas, laws, and principles, beyond particular observable facts and relationships and necessary principles, or that we cannot know them.
Comte suggested that all societies have three basic stages: theological, metaphysical, and scientific. Finally, Comte believed in positivism, the perspective that societies are based on scientific laws and principles, and therefore the best way to study society is to use the scientific method. Positivism describes an approach to the study of society that specifically utilizes scientific evidence such as experiments, statistics, and qualitative results to reveal a truth about the way society functions.
Epistemology, the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge. We discern four stages of positivism: an early stage of positivism, logical positivism, a later stage called instrumental positivism, and finally postpositivism. A primary group is typically a small social group whose members share close, personal, enduring relationships. These groups are marked by concern for one another, shared activities and culture, and long periods of time spent together.
Positivism is using brief, clear, concise discussion and does not use a descriptive story from human feelings or subjective interpretation.
It does not allow any interpretation because of the value-free reason. The research reflects some theories or basic concepts and applies it to the object of study. Skip to content What makes critical social science different from positivist and interpretive social science? 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.
The main criticisms of both quantitative positivism and structural functionalism have to do with the way in which social phenomena are turned into objective social facts.
On one hand, interpretive sociology suggests that the quantification of variables in quantitative sociology reduces the rich complexity and ambiguity of social life to an abstract set of numbers and statistical relationships that cannot capture the meaning it holds for individuals.
Similarly, interpretive sociology argues that structural functionalism , with its emphasis on systems of structures and functions tends to reduce the individual to the status of a sociological dupe, assuming pre-assigned roles and functions without any individual agency or capacity for self-creation.
On the other hand, critical sociology challenges the conservative tendencies of quantitative sociology and structural functionalism. However, both types of positivism also have conservative assumptions built into their basic approach to social facts. The focus in quantitative sociology on observable facts and law-like statements presents a historical and deterministic picture of the world that cannot account for the underlying historical dynamics of power relationships and class or other contradictions.
One can empirically observe the trees but not the forest so to speak. Similarly, the focus on the needs and the smooth functioning of social systems in structural functionalism supports a conservative viewpoint because it tends to see the functioning and dynamic equilibrium of society as good or normal, whereas change is pathological.
Critical sociology challenges both the justice and practical consequences of social inequality. Table 1. Sociological Theories or Perspectives. Different sociological perspectives enable sociologists to view social issues through a variety of useful lenses.
The interpretive perspective in sociology is aligned with the hermeneutic traditions of the humanities like literature, philosophy, and history. The focus is on understanding or interpreting human activity in terms of the meanings that humans attribute to it. Sociology… is a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects.
This emphasis on the meaningfulness of social action is taken up later by phenomenology, ethnomethodology, and symbolic interactionism. The interpretive perspective is concerned with developing a knowledge of social interaction as a meaning-oriented practice. It promotes the goal of greater mutual understanding and the possibility of consensus among members of society. Symbolic interactionism provides a theoretical perspective that helps scholars examine the relationship of individuals within their society.
This perspective is centred on the notion that communication—or the exchange of meaning through language and symbols—is how people make sense of their social worlds.
As pointed out by Herman and Reynolds , this viewpoint sees people as active in shaping their world, rather than as entities who are acted upon by society Herman and Reynolds This approach looks at society and people from a micro-level perspective.
George Herbert Mead — is considered one of the founders of symbolic interactionism. In other words, human interaction is not determined in the same manner as natural events. Nor do people directly react to each other as forces acting upon forces or as stimuli provoking automatic responses. Interaction is symbolic in the sense that it occurs through the mediation, exchange, and interpretation of symbols. Social life can be seen as the stringing together or aligning of multiple joint actions.
Social scientists who apply symbolic-interactionist thinking look for patterns of interaction between individuals. Their studies often involve observation of one-on-one interactions. For example, while a structural functionalist studying a political protest might focus on the function protest plays in realigning the priorities of the political system, a symbolic interactionist would be more interested in seeing the ways in which individuals in the protesting group interact, or how the signs and symbols protesters use enable a common definition of the situation—e.
The focus on the importance of symbols in building a society led sociologists like Erving Goffman — to develop a framework called dramaturgical analysis. There is always the possibility that individuals will make a gaff that prevents them from successfully maintaining face. Moreover, because it can be unclear what part a person may play in a given situation, he or she has to improvise his or her role as the situation unfolds.
Social reality is not predetermined by structures, functions, roles, or history Goffman Symbolic interactionism has also been important in bringing to light the experiences and worlds of individuals who are typically excluded from official accounts of the world. The significance of labelling theory is to show that individuals are not born deviant or criminal, but become criminal through an institutionalized symbolic interaction with authorities.
As Becker says:. Studies that use the symbolic interactionist perspective are more likely to use qualitative research methods, such as in-depth interviews or participant observation, because they seek to understand the symbolic worlds in which research subjects live.
Research done from this perspective is often scrutinized because of the difficulty of remaining objective. Others criticize the extremely narrow focus on symbolic interaction.
Proponents, of course, consider this one of its greatest strengths. One of the problems of sociology that focuses on micro-level interactions is that it is difficult to generalize from very specific situations, involving very few individuals, to make social scientific claims about the nature of society as a whole. The danger is that, while the rich texture of face-to-face social life can be examined in detail, the results will remain purely descriptive without any explanatory or analytical strength.
In a similar fashion, it is very difficult to get at the historical context or relations of power that structure or condition face-to-face symbolic interactions.
The perspective on social life as an unstructured and unconstrained domain of agency and subjective meanings has difficulty accounting for the ways that social life does become structured and constrained. Sociologists around the world are looking closely for signs of what would be an unprecedented event: the emergence of a global culture.
In the past, empires such as those that existed in China, Europe, Africa, and Central and South America linked people from many different countries, but those people rarely became part of a common culture.
They lived too far from each other, spoke different languages, practised different religions, and traded few goods. Today, increases in communication, travel, and trade have made the world a much smaller place. More and more people are able to communicate with each other instantly—wherever they are located—by telephone, video, and text. They share movies, television shows, music, games, and information over the internet.
Students can study with teachers and pupils from the other side of the globe. Governments find it harder to hide conditions inside their countries from the rest of the world. Sociologists are researching many different aspects of this potential global culture. Some are exploring the dynamics involved in the social interactions of global online communities, such as when members feel a closer kinship to other group members than to people residing in their own country.
Other sociologists are studying the impact this growing international culture has on smaller, less-powerful local cultures. Yet other researchers are exploring how international markets and the outsourcing of labour impact social inequalities. The critical perspective in sociology has its origins in social activism, social justice movements, revolutionary struggles, and radical critique.
The key elements of this analysis are the emphases on power relations and the understanding of society as historical—subject to change, struggle, contradiction, instability, social movement and radical transformation. Rather than objectivity and value neutrality, the tradition of critical sociology promotes practices of liberation and social change in order to achieve universal social justice.
While conflict is certainly central to the critical analyses of power and domination, the focus of critical sociology is on developing types of knowledge and political action that enable emancipation from power relations i. Historical materialism, feminism, environmentalism, anti-racism, queer studies, and poststructuralism are all examples of the critical perspective in sociology.
One of the outcomes of a systematic analysis such as these is that it generates questions about the relationship between our everyday life and issues concerning social justice and environmental sustainability.
What does the word critical mean in this context? As we noted in the discussion of Marx above, historical materialism concentrates on the study of how our everyday lives are structured by the connection between relations of power and economic processes. The basis of this approach begins with the macro-level question of how specific relations of power and specific economic formations have developed historically.
These form the context in which the institutions, practices, beliefs, and social rules norms of everyday life are situated.
Hunter-gatherer, agrarian, feudal, and capitalist modes of production have been the economic basis for very different types of society throughout world history. It is not as if this relationship is always clear to the people living in these different periods of history, however.
Often the mechanisms and structures of social life are obscure. This transition was nevertheless the context for the decisions individuals and families made to emigrate from Scotland and attempt to found the Red River Colony. It might also not have been clear to them that they were participating in the development of colonial power relationships between the indigenous people of North America and the Europeans that persist up until today.
Through contact with the Scots and the French fur traders, the Cree and Anishinabe were gradually drawn out of their own indigenous modes of production and into the developing global capitalist economy as fur trappers and provisioners for the early European settlements. It was a process that eventually led to the loss of control over their lands, the destruction of their way of life, the devastating spread of European diseases, the imposition of the Indian Act, the establishment of the residential school system, institutional and everyday racism, and an enduring legacy of intractable social problems.
In a similar way, historical materialism analyzes the constraints that define the way individuals review their options and make their decisions in present-day society. From the types of career to pursue to the number of children to have, the decisions and practices of everyday life must be understood in terms of the 20th century shift to corporate ownership and the 21st century context of globalization in which corporate decisions about investments are made.
The historical materialist approach emphasizes three components Naiman The first is that everything in society is related—it is not possible to study social processes in isolation. The second is that everything in society is dynamic i. It is not possible to study social processes as if they existed outside of history. The third is that the tensions that form around relationships of power and inequality in society are the key drivers of social change.
It is not possible to study social processes as if they were independent of the historical formations of power that both structure them and destabilize them. Another major school of critical sociology is feminism. From the early work of women sociologists like Harriet Martineau, feminist sociology has focused on the power relationships and inequalities between women and men.
How can the conditions of inequality faced by women be addressed? As Harriet Martineau put it in Society in America :. All women should inform themselves of the condition of their sex, and of their own position. It must necessarily follow that the noblest of them will, sooner or later, put forth a moral power which shall prostrate cant [hypocracy], and burst asunder the bonds silken to some but cold iron to others of feudal prejudice and usages. In the meantime is it to be understood that the principles of the Declaration of Independence bear no relation to half of the human race?
If so, what is the ground of this limitation? Feminist sociology focuses on analyzing the grounds of the limitations faced by women when they claim the right to equality with men. Inequality between the genders is a phenomenon that goes back at least 4, years Lerner Although the forms and ways in which it has been practised differ between cultures and change significantly through history, its persistence has led to the formulation of the concept of patriarchy.
Patriarchy refers to a set of institutional structures like property rights, access to positions of power, relationship to sources of income that are based on the belief that men and women are dichotomous and unequal categories. Key to patriarchy is what might be called the dominant gender ideology toward sexual differences: the assumption that physiological sex differences between males and females are related to differences in their character, behaviour, and ability i.
These differences are used to justify a gendered division of social roles and inequality in access to rewards, positions of power, and privilege.
The question that feminists ask therefore is: How does this distinction between male and female, and the attribution of different qualities to each, serve to organize our institutions e. Feminism is a distinct type of critical sociology. There are considerable differences between types of feminism, however; for example, the differences often attributed to the first wave of feminism in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the second wave of feminism from the s to the s, and the third wave of feminism from the s onward.
Despite the variations between different types of feminist approach, there are four characteristics that are common to the feminist perspective:. She recognized from the consciousness-raising exercises and encounter groups initiated by feminists in the s ands that many of the immediate concerns expressed by women about their personal lives had a commonality of themes.
These themes were nevertheless difficult to articulate in sociological terms let alone in the language of politics or law. Part of the issue was sociology itself. Smith argued that the abstract concepts of sociology, at least in the way that it was taught at the time, only contributed to the problem.
Whereas critical sociologists often criticize positivist and interpretive sociology for their conservative biases, the reverse is also true.
However, at a deeper level the criticism is often aimed at the radical nature of critical analyses. Critical sociology is also criticized from the point of view of interpretive sociology for overstating the power of dominant groups to manipulate subordinate groups. For example, media representations of women are said to promote unobtainable standards of beauty or to reduce women to objects of male desire. This type of critique suggests that individuals are controlled by media images rather than recognizing their independent ability to reject media influences or to interpret media images for themselves.
In a similar way, critical sociology is criticized for implying that people are purely the products of macro-level historical forces rather than individuals with a capacity for individual and collective agency. The consumption of food is a commonplace, daily occurrence, yet it can also be associated with important moments in our lives.
Eating can be an individual or a group action, and eating habits and customs are influenced by our cultures. Any of these factors might become a topic of sociological study. Food production is a primary example of how human systems adapt to environmental systems. In many respects the concerns of environmentalists and others with respect to the destructive relationship between industrial agriculture and the ecosystem are the results of a dysfunctional system of adaptation.
The concept of sustainable agriculture points to the changes needed to return the interface between humans and the natural environment to a state of dynamic equilibrium. A sociologist viewing food consumption through a symbolic interactionist lens would be more interested in micro-level topics, such as the symbolic use of food in religious rituals, or the role it plays in the social interaction of a family dinner.
The increasing concern that people have with their diets speaks to the way that the life of the biological body is as much a symbolic reality, interpreted within contemporary discourses on health risks and beauty, as it is a biological reality.
Or a critical sociologist might be interested in the power and powerlessness experienced by local farmers versus large farming conglomerates. In the documentary Food Inc. Another topic of study might be how nutrition varies between different social classes. When Bernard Blishen picked up the phone one day in , he was surprised to hear Chief Justice Emmett Hall on the other end of the line asking him to be the research director for the newly established Royal Commission on Health Services.
Publically funded health care had been introduced for the first time in Canada that year by a socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation CCF government in Saskatchewan amid bitter controversy. Doctors in Saskatchewan went on strike and private health care insurers mounted an expensive anti-public health care campaign.
Blishen went on to work in the field of medical sociology and also created a widely used index to measure socioeconomic status known as the Blishen scale. He received the Order of Canada in in recognition of his contributions to the creation of public health care in Canada.
Since it was first founded, many people interested in sociology have been driven by the scholarly desire to contribute knowledge to this field, while others have seen it as way not only to study society, but also to improve it.
Besides the creation of public health care in Canada, sociology has played a crucial role in many important social reforms such as equal opportunity for women in the workplace, improved treatment for individuals with mental and learning disabilities, increased recognition and accommodation for people from different ethnic backgrounds, the creation of hate crime legislation, the right of aboriginal populations to preserve their land and culture, and prison system reforms.
The prominent sociologist Peter L. This is the point at which one begins to sense the excitement of sociology Berger Sociology can be exciting because it teaches people ways to recognize how they fit into the world and how others perceive them. Looking at themselves and society from a sociological perspective helps people see where they connect to different groups based on the many different ways they classify themselves and how society classifies them in turn.
It raises awareness of how those classifications—such as economic and status levels, education, ethnicity, or sexual orientation—affect perceptions. Sociology teaches people not to accept easy explanations. It teaches them a way to organize their thinking so that they can ask better questions and formulate better answers. It makes people more aware that there are many different kinds of people in the world who do not necessarily think the way they do. This prepares them to live and work in an increasingly diverse and integrated world.
Studying sociology can provide people with this wide knowledge and a skill set that can contribute to many workplaces, including:. Sociology prepares people for a wide variety of careers.
Besides actually conducting social research or training others in the field, people who graduate from college with a degree in sociology are hired by government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and corporations in fields such as social services, counselling e. Even a small amount of training in sociology can be an asset in careers like sales, public relations, journalism, teaching, law, and criminal justice.
The phenomenon known as Facebook was designed specifically for students. Instead of having to meet up on campus, students can call, text, and Skype from their dorm rooms.
Instead of a study group gathering weekly in the library, online forums and chat rooms help learners connect.
The availability and immediacy of computer technology has forever changed the ways students engage with each other. Now, after several social networks have vied for primacy, a few have established their place in the market and some have attracted niche audience. LinkedIn distinguished itself by focusing on professional connections, serving as a virtual world for workplace networking.
Newer offshoots like Foursquare help people connect based on the real-world places they frequent, while Twitter has cornered the market on brevity.
These newer modes of social interaction have also spawned questionable consequences, such as cyberbullying and what some call FAD, or Facebook addiction disorder. Yet, in the international study cited above, two-thirds of to year-old smartphone users said they spend more time with friends online than they do in person. All of these social networks demonstrate emerging ways that people interact, whether positive or negative.
Sociologists ask whether there might be long-term effects of replacing face-to-face interaction with social media. Moreover, he argues, they do not allow people to be alone with their feelings. What do you think? How do social media like Facebook and communication technologies like smartphones change the way we communicate? How could this question be studied? What Is Sociology? Sociology is the systematic study of society and social interaction.
In order to carry out their studies, sociologists identify cultural patterns and social forces and determine how they affect individuals and groups. They also develop ways to apply their findings to the real world. The History of Sociology Sociology was developed as a way to study and try to understand the changes to society brought on by the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Those perspectives continue to be represented within sociology today. Theoretical Perspectives Sociologists develop theories to explain social events, interactions, and patterns. A theory is a proposed explanation of those patterns.
Theories have different scales. Macro-level theories, such as structural functionalism and conflict theory, attempt to explain how societies operate as a whole. Micro-level theories, such as symbolic interactionism, focus on interactions between individuals.
Why Study Sociology? Studying sociology is beneficial both for the individual and for society. By studying sociology people learn how to think critically about social issues and problems that confront our society. Society benefits because people with sociological training are better prepared to make informed decisions about social issues and take effective action to deal with them.
Which of the following best describes sociology as a subject? A sociologist defines society as a group of people who reside in a defined area, share a culture, and who:. The History of Sociology 5. Which of the following was a topic of study in early sociology? Weber believed humans could not be studied purely objectively because they were influenced by:. Theoretical Perspectives The interpretive approach has in -depth understanding of communication in specific situations and insight into the purpose of those messages.
Various methods across disciplines are used in conducting interpretive research, including a variety of ethnographic methods, classic traditional interviews, case studies, focus groups , observational studies apart from ethnographies, and analyses of cultural records, archival documents, artifacts, visual materials,.
When studying society, Positivists like to collect quantitative , objective data using surveys, structured interviews and official statistics. Positivists prefer using these methods because the data produced is quantifiable, it uncovers patterns of behaviour which can be analysed for patterns and trends. The positivist paradigm of exploring social reality is based on the idea that one can best gain an understanding of human behaviour through observation and reason.
According to the positivist paradigm true knowledge is based on experience of senses and can be obtained by observation and experiment. Positivism is a philosophical theory stating that certain "positive" knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their properties and relations.
Thus, information derived from sensory experience, interpreted through reason and logic, forms the exclusive source of all certain knowledge. Anti- positivists , or interpretivists, argue the opposite. They take the view that since human beings think and reflect, scientific methods are inappropriate for the study of society. Specifically, positivism was traditionally considered to be chiefly associated with quantitative methods, whereas qualitative research tends to be associated with more subjectivist positions of the researchers.
However, the positivist paradigm and qualitative methods can coexist in harmony. The interpretive paradigm is concerned with understanding the world as it is from subjective experiences of individuals. They use meaning versus measurement oriented methodologies, such as interviewing or participant observation, that rely on a subjective relationship between the researcher and subjects. The Qualitative Paradigm. The design of a research study begins with the selection of a topic and a paradigm.
A paradigm is essentially a worldview, a whole framework of beliefs, values and methods within which research takes place. It is this world view within which researchers work.
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