1. Key People & Contemporary Perspectives

2. What is the “glue” that holds societies together?
What provides people with a sense of belonging?
Why are these bubbles coming out of my head?

3. Emile Durkheim Concerned with social order and stability
People are a product of their social environment
Human potential is socially based, not biologically based
Societies are built on social facts
Rapid social change produces social strain

4. Key Terms for Durkheim Social Facts Anomie
Patterned ways of acting, thinking, and feeling that exist outside any one individual but that exert social control over each person.
Anomie
Social control becomes ineffective as a result of the loss of shared values and a sense of purpose in society

5. Conflict is necessary to produce social change and a better society
I think today I will establish a free and classless society
I, too, have these bubbles popping out my head!

6. Karl Marx
History is a continuous clash between conflicting ideas and forces
Economic changes are most important
Class conflict between capitalist class (bourgeoisie) and the working class (proletariat)
Alienation
Fetishism of Commodities
Society should be changed
Criticized for too much emphasis on class struggle

7. It really isn’t possible for sociologists to be value-free is it?
Sociology should be value-free – it should exclude the researcher’s personal values and economic interests
It really isn’t possible for sociologists to be value-free is it?
Then, we need to gain the ability to see the world as others see it

8. Max Weber
Bureaucracies – determines the social relationships among people
These are destructive to human vitality and freedom
Rationalization – the modern world has become dominated by structures devoted to:
Efficiency
Calculability
Predictability
Technological Control
Emphasized the goal of value-free inquiry & necessity of understanding how others see the world

9. Structural Functionalist
Based on the assumption that society is a stable, orderly system (Durkheim)
Societal Consensus
Common set of values, beliefs, behavioral expectations
Society composed of inter-related parts
Social structures and institutions persist because they help society persist
Strains

10. Functionalism & Merton
Manifest Functions
Intended or overtly recognized by participants in a social unit
Examples
Latent Functions
Unintended functions that are hidden and unacknowledged by participants
Dysfunctions
Undesirable consequences
May threaten a society’s capacity to adapt and survive

11. Conflict Perspective
Groups in society are engaged in continuous power struggle for control of scarce resources (Marx, Weber)
Encompasses several branches:
Neo-Marxist (class struggle)
Racial-Ethnic (exploitation)
Feminist (gender issues)

12. Symbolic Interactionist
Examines people’s day-to-day interactions and their behavior in small groups (micro-level)
Society is the sum of the interactions of individuals and groups
Subjective Reality
Each person’s interpretation or definition of a given situation (shared or not shared symbols)

13. Post-Modern
Existing theories have not successfully explained social life in a contemporary society
Society focused on a shift from production to consumption
Postmodern Society
Information explosion
Rise of a consumer society
Global Village