P1 Explain The Principal Sociological Perspectives

A sociological perspective is a framework for thinking about, describing, or explaining how human activities are organized and how people relate to one another and respond to their surroundings.

The British Sociological Association defines sociology as being ‘how society is organized and how we experience life’. It looks at the different societies, the groups within these, and how they all interact. Society is organised into various different social institutions, which can be built like building block to make our society; families, the education system, the legal system, the healthcare services etc. Social institutions function accordingly with customs, rules and regulations. A family is a group of people who are related to one another i.e. grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, cousins etc. A household is a term to describe these family members who live in the same house, e.g. parents and their children

A problem that faces many college students face is college debt. This social problem is a continual problem with more students registering at colleges and universities. A social problem is defined as “any condition or behavior that has negative consequences for large numbers of people and that is generally recognized as a condition or behavior that needs to be addressed (Barkin 6).” Members of the Seton Hall University community along with other students worldwide experience this. Based on people I know, they use loans to pay for school because they can’t afford to pay for it themselves or their parents can’t afford it. Along with that, I know from personal experiences, I have two very close friends who are paying for school

All throughout society, the opinions of legalizing marijuana conflict with one another, placing people in the position to be on one side of the argument or the other. People either want to see the government legalizing it to the community or are totally against the subject; there is not really any ground in-between the matter. When I think of this topic I see it from two different perspectives, a symbolic interactionists point of view and Functionalism. To the symbolic interactionist’s perspective, people attach meaning to symbols and than they act according to their own interpretations of the meaning. In the case of legalizing marijuana half of people see the image of a cannabis leaf and they automatically

Sociological perspectives give us a variety of explanations about the social behavior and social interactions of human in society. It also helps us understand ourselves better. Without the sociological perspective, humans see the world through their very small groups of family, friends or coworkers. I will be comparing two sociological perspectives, Functionalist Perspective and Conflict Perspective, and how they would assess the role of culture in society.

1. The sociological perspective, as a way of thinking about the world, includes the sociological imagination from C. Wright Mills, the beginner’s mind from Bernard McGrane, and the idea of culture shock from anthropology. Explain what all three of these concepts have in common.

Sociologists employ three major theoretical perspectives in sociology today. They are the structural-functionalist perspective, the conflict perspective, and the symbolic interactionism. The structural-functionalist perspective is done at a macro level and its focus is on the relationships between the parts of society. The Conflict perspective is done at a macro level and its main focus is on how the wealthy controls the poor and weak.

In this blog I will be explaining the principal sociological perspectives (Marxism, Interactionism, Functionalism and collectivism). The open view in sociology can cause debates, disclosure and sometimes even controversy as we will see in the blog.

After a careful study and a deeper research on an introduction to sociology, I have come to understand that no problem can be solved well enough if one does not have the sociological perspective which is defined as a way of looking at the world through a sociological lens. In fact, there is the need of the lens that will help one to view situations and have the eye to emerge through different views to solve that problem. This mirror has become a doorway that will help one to have a beginner’s mind to approach problems.

C. Wright Mills defined sociological perspective as the ability to “think yourself away from the familiar routines of everyday life” and “the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society.”

Sociologists use one or more theoretical perspective approaches to make different assumptions about society three of the most common theoretical perspectives is the conflict, functionalist, and interactionist. Each one of these three major sociological perspectives have similarities and differences among each other.

After reading the Three Main Sociological Perspectives, I developed a brief understanding about sociology. Out of all three perspectives, I have witnessed numerous examples that represent functional perspective. There are two parts that make up the functional perspective. The two parts are manifest function and latent function. One event that I witnessed that demonstrated a latent function was when Carmen Farina opened schools after a severe snow storm. In the winter of 2014, Carmen Farina made the decision that required all New York City schools to open. On the previous night, New York City endured a snow storm accumulating multiple feet. Her reason to open schools was due to the unintentional or latent function it provides to many individuals.

This hand-out will be explaining the seven principle sociological perspectives. The seven principle sociological perspectives are Functionalism, Marxism, Feminism, Interactionism, Postmodernism, The New Right and Collectivism. Sociology is the understanding of different people, breaking down the word sociology; ‘soci’ means society and ‘ology’ means the science of. The main aim of sociology is to try to describe and explain human behaviour within society. Sociology studies subjects such as religion, crime, family, law, poverty, prejudice, race and gender. Sociology also studies different terms which include social structures, social diversity and socialisation. A social structure means the things that make up society in the UK, for example how we have a free education system whereas a lot of other countries don’t and how we have the NHS which is a free health care system. Social diversity means the differences between people within a society, for example age, race and gender are all diverse factors of society as they are all differences, other differences include religion, languages and ethnicity. There are two types of socialisation, primary socialisation is learning the norms like manners and expected behaviour from family members and what they believe is a ‘norm’. This is why people exhibit certain behaviour, because it’s what they’re family believe and what they are brought up to be like, for example their view on racism could differ due to what their family think.

A sociological perspective on human behavior is connected to the society as a whole. It invites us to look for the connections between the behavior of individuals and the structures of the society in which they live. (Appendix 1)

Throughout the semester, we have learned about a variety of things that have changed the way I perceive people and the world around me that I never did before. One thing we learned about is sociological perspective. This is a perspective on humans and society as a whole. It means looking at society and how it is affected by humans, then looking at humans to see how the different changes in society have affected us. Before our Soc 101 class, I thought stuff just happened. The way perceive things and act as humans is because of the way society has socialized us. The three main sociological perspectives are the functionalist perspective, conflict perspective, and symbolic interactionism. The functionalist perspective claims that all parts of society