1. Chapter 2:Sociology’s Family Tree: Theories and Theorists

2. What is a Theory? A set of assumptions
Attempts to provide a plausible explanation
Of cause-and-effect (causal) relationships
Among observed phenomenon
Origin (from the Greek thorós, a spectator), stresses that all theories are mental models of perceived reality.

3. Theory Vital to making sense of social life
Facts make sense because we interpret them using categories and assumptions

4. Categories
Class of people or things regarded as having particular shared characteristics

5. Assumptions
Assumptions are beliefs or ideas that we hold to be true — often with little or no evidence required.

6. Assumptions About Human Nature
Selfish or Selfless
Aggressive or Compassionate
Competitive or Cooperative
Have basic needs:
Food / Water
Companionship
Perception of control

7. Formal Sociological Theory
Formal sociological theorizing makes
Assumptions and categories explicit
Open to examination
Scrutiny, and
Reformulation

8. Practical Theory
Our lives are filled with theories as we try to understand the world around us
Examples:
How do we make friends?
How to succeed in college?
How to get a job?

9. Sociological Theories
Explain the social world and
Make predictions about future events
Theories—Sometimes referred to as Approaches,
Schools of thought,
Paradigms, or
Perspectives
Your book mentions the poem about the blind men and the elephant. The purpose of this is to suggest that there are different ways of approaching or looking at a specific topic. While people (even sociologists) may disagree about which way is the best, there are times when considering many different perspectives or theories would help us understand the topic the best.

10. Founders of Sociology Auguste Comte (1798–1857)
Coined the term “sociology” in 1839
Also used the term “social physics” to refer to the new discipline and…
His organic conceptualization of society
Auguste Comte was the first thinker to provide a program for the scientific study of society, or a “social physics,” as he first labeled it. Comte, a French scientist, developed a theory of the progress of human thinking from its early theological and metaphysical stages toward a final “positive,” or scientific, stage.

11. Auguste Comte Sociology is like other scientific disciplines
Groundwork for future sociologists
Helped build the discipline

12. Auguste Comte Bettmann/Corbis
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13. Founders of Sociology Harriet Martineau (1802-1876): A social activist
Supported labor unions
Abolition of slavery
Women’s suffrage
Traveled around the United States
Translated Comte’s work from French into English
Martineau became a journalist and political economist, proclaiming views that were radical for her time: for example, she supported labor unions, the abolition of slavery, and women’s suffrage.

14. Harriet Martineau Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis
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15. 9/6 Founders of Sociology
Herbert Spencer  ( )
Believed that societies evolve by adapting to the changing environment
Coined the phrase “survival of the fittest”
Philosophy is often referred to as “Social Darwinism”
His work was primarily responsible for the establishment of sociology in Britain and America. Although Spencer did not receive academic training, he grew up in a highly individualistic family, and was encouraged to think and learn on his own. His interests as a young man leaned heavily toward physical science, and instead of attending college, he chose to become a railway engineer. When railway work dried up, Spencer turned to journalism and eventually such books as The Study of Sociology (1873) and The Principles of Sociology (1897).

16. Herbert Spencer Bridgeman Art Library
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17. Founders of Sociology Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
Helped establish sociology as an academic discipline
Interested in the social factors that bond and hold society together
Social solidarity
Mechanical solidarity
Organic solidarity
In his work, he demonstrated the effectiveness of using scientific (empirical) methods to study “social reality,” essentially completing the project that his countryman Comte had anticipated half a century earlier.
In his first major study, The Division of Labor in Society (1893), Durkheim expressed his belief that social bonds were present in all types of societies, but that different types of societies created different types of bonds. He suggested that the mechanical solidarity experienced by people in an agrarian society bound them together on the basis of shared tradition and beliefs and similarities of experience. In industrial societies, on the other hand, where factory work was becoming increasingly specialized, organic solidarity prevailed: people’s bonds with each other were based on the tasks they performed, interdependence, and individual rights. In both cases, we are bound to each other—it is the qualities of the bonds that are different.
Durkheim believed that even the most individualistic of actions had sociological explanations, and set out to establish a scientific methodology for studying these actions. He chose for his ground-breaking case study the most individualistic of actions, suicide, and used statistical data to show that suicides were related to social factors such as religious affiliation, marital status, and employment. Explaining a particular suicide by focusing exclusively on the victim’s psychological makeup neglected the impact of social bonds.

18. Emile Durkheim Bettmann/Corbis
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19. Founders of Sociology Karl Marx (1818-1883) German philosopher
Political activist
Contributed significantly to sociology’s Conflict Theory
Sociologists have found that Marx’s theories continue to provide powerful tools for understanding social phenomena. His idea that conflict between social groups is central to the workings of society and the engine of social change is one of the most vital perspectives in sociology today.

20. Videos about Marx
Marxism made simple
The Communist Manifesto Cartoon

21. Karl Marx Bettmann/Corbis
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22. Marx Core Ideas
Reaction to economic & social conditions due to Industrial Revolution
Theory not only interprets the world, but also changes it

23. Marx
Focus: Economic classes
Bourgeoisie--owners
Proletariat--workers

24. Founders of Sociology Capitalism created social inequality
Between the bourgeoisie, who owned the means of production (money, factories, natural resources, land), and the proletariat, who were the workers
According to Marx, this inequality leads to class conflict
Marx noted that a small percentage of the population owned the means of production, and were able to exploit the masses and thereby ensure even greater gains for themselves. This is the basic tenet of capitalism today, and many modern sociologists use Marx’ theories to evaluate the contemporary workplace.

25. Founders of Sociology
Max Weber interested in how society was becoming industrialized and
Rationalization
Economic logic to human activity
Much of Weber’s work expressed a pessimistic view of social forces, such as the work ethic, that shaped modern life. Like other social theorists of his time, Weber was interested in the shift from a more traditional society to a modern industrial society.
Weber proposed that modern industrialized societies were characterized by efficient, goal-oriented, rule-governed bureaucracies. He believed that individual behavior was increasingly driven by such bureaucratic goals, which had become more important motivational factors than tradition, values, or emotion.
Weber believed that this lifestyle left people trapped by their industrious way of life in what he called an iron cage of bureaucratic rules which led to disenchantment.

26. Max Weber Contemporary life filled with disenchantment
Dehumanizing of modern societies
Bureaucracy
Capitalism
Oligopolies

27. Weber: Dehumanizing Effect of Modern Society
Modern capitalism--lifelong entrapment of individuals organizational structures
Efficient accumulation of private wealth as end in itself
Humanity's increasing confinement within a bureaucratized, "disenchanted" world, no escape
“The Iron Cage”

28. Max Weber
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29. Modern Schools of Thought
Structural Functionalism:
Society as:
Stable
Ordered system
Interrelated parts (structures)
The key word here is “function.” According to this theory, everything in our society has a function.
The main principles of the functionalist paradigm are these:
1. Society is a stable, ordered system of interrelated parts, or structures.
2. Each structure has a function that contributes to the continued stability or equilibrium of the whole.

30. Structural Functionalism
Social institutions:
Family
Education
Politics
Economy
Each meets a need of society
Function

31. Modern Schools of Thought
Conflict Theory:
Social conflict as basis:
Of society and
Social change
Source of Conflict: Inequality
Conflict theory proposes that conflict and tension are basic facts of social life and suggests that people have disagreements over goals and values, and are involved in struggles over both resources and power. The theory thus focuses on the processes of dominance, competition, upheaval, and social change. The main emphases:
1. a materialist view of society (focused on labor practices and economic reality)
2. a critical stance toward existing social arrangements
3. a dynamic model of historical change (in which the transformation of society is inevitable)

32. Conflict theory Conflict and tension Struggles Basic to social life
Disagreements over goals & values
Struggles
Resources
Power

33. Conflict theory
Focus on:
Dominance
Competition
Social change

34. Conflict theory Materialist Labor and Economic reality
2. Critical of existing arrangements
Dynamic historical change
Societal transformation inevitable

35. Modern Schools of Thought
Symbolic Interactionism:
Interaction & Symbols
Meaning not inherent in object
Shared meaning through
Face-to-face interaction
Using symbols
It is America’s unique contribution to sociology and has proved to be the most influential perspective of the twentieth century.
For symbolic interactionists, society is produced and reproduced through our interactions with each other, by means of language, and our interpretations of that language. Symbolic interactionism sees face-to-face interaction as the building block of everything else in society, because it is through interaction that we create a meaningful social reality. Here are the three basic tenets of symbolic interactionism, as laid out by Blumer in 1969 (p. 2):
1. We act toward things on the basis of their meanings. For example, a tree can provide a shady place to rest, or it can be an obstacle to building a road or home; each of these meanings suggests a different set of actions, and this is as true for physical objects like trees as it is for people (like mothers or cops), institutions (church or school), beliefs (honesty or equality), or any social activity.
2. Meanings are not inherent; rather, they are negotiated through interaction with others. That is, whether the tree is an obstacle or an oasis is not an intrinsic quality of the tree itself, but rather something that people must hash out themselves. The same tree can mean one thing to one person and something else to another.
3. Meanings can change or be modified through interaction. For example, the contractor who sees the tree as an obstacle might be persuaded to spare it by the neighbor. Now the tree is something to build around rather than bulldoze.
Although symbolic interactionism is focused on how both self and society develop through interaction with others, it is useful in explaining and analyzing a wide variety of specific social issues, from inequalities of race and gender to the group dynamics of families or co-workers.

36. New Theoretical Approaches
Feminist Theory:
Gender inequalities
How gender structures social world
Remedies to inequalities
There is a link between feminist theory and conflict theory in that both deal with stratification and inequality in society, and both seek not only to understand that inequality but to provide remedies for it.

37. New Theoretical Approaches: Queer Theory
Categories of sexual identity are social constructs
No sexual category is fundamentally deviant or normal
Queer theory, which arose in the late 1980s and early 90s, proposes that categories of sexuality—homo, hetero, bi, trans—are social constructs (Seidman 2003). In other words, no sexual category is fundamentally deviant or normal; we create these meanings socially (which means that we can change those meanings as well).

38. New Theoretical Approaches Postmodernist Theory
Social reality is:
Diverse
Changing
No truth, reason, right, order, or stability
Everything relative & temporary
In order to understand postmodernism, we first need to juxtapose it with modernism, the movement against which it was a reaction. Modernism is both a historical period and an ideological stance that began with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, or “age of reason.” Modernist thought values scientific knowledge, a linear (or timeline-like) view of history, and a belief in the universality of human nature. In postmodernism, on the other hand, there are no absolutes—no claims to truth, reason, right, order, or stability. Everything is therefore relative—fragmented, temporary, and contingent.

39. Theory in Everyday Life
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40. Theory in Everyday Life
Perspective
Level of Analysis
Focus of Analysis
Case Study
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